John Addison Porter | |
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Carbon print of John Addison Porter
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Born |
Catskill, New York, United States |
March 15, 1822
Died | August 25, 1866 New Haven, Connecticut, United States |
(aged 44)
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Yale University |
Occupation | Professor |
Spouse(s) | Josephine Earl Sheffield |
Children | John Addison Porter, Jr. Edgar Sheffield Porter |
Parent(s) | Addison Porter Anne Hogeboom |
Relatives | Joseph Earl Sheffield (father-in-law) |
John Addison Porter (March 15, 1822 – August 25, 1866) was an American Professor of Chemistry. He is the namesake of the John Addison Porter Prize and was a founder of the Scroll and Key senior society of Yale University.
Porter was born in Catskill, New York.
Porter graduated from Yale College in 1842. At Yale, he, along with William Kingsley, publisher of The New Englander, and eleven others, founded the senior or secret society Scroll and Key and incorporated the Kingsley Trust Association in 1841.
He and moved to Philadelphia for further study. In 1844 he became a professor at Delaware College and remained there until 1847 when he moved to Germany to study at the University of Giessen under Justus von Liebig.
In 1850 he returned to the United States and became a professor at Brown University. He left in 1852 to take the place of the retiring Professor John Pitkin Norton at Sheffield Scientific School (then Yale Scientific School). He was the Professor of Analytical and Agricultural Chemistry from 1852 to 1856, and Professor of Organic Chemistry from 1856-1864. He remained at Yale until he had to resign for health reasons in 1864, two years before his death in New Haven. In 1872 the Kingsley Trust endowed at Yale a prize in his honor to be given annually.
In 1855 he married Josephine Earl Sheffield, daughter of Joseph E. Sheffield, whose name was to eventually adorn the school where he was professor for 12 years.