Samuel Stehman Haldeman

Samuel Stehman Haldeman (August 12, 1812 – September 10, 1880) was an American naturalist and philologist. During a long and varied career he studied, published, and lectured on geology, conchology, entomology and philology. He once confided, "I never pursue one branch of science more than ten years, but lay it aside and go into new fields." Two years after entering Dickinson, the college was forced to close temporarily and Peck left without earning a diploma.

Career

After leaving school, Haldeman took over management of his father's new sawmill and became a silent partner with two of his brothers who started an iron manufacturing business in the area. He eventually became an authority on smelting iron. However, he was always drawn to science and often neglected the family businesses in pursuit of these interests. The monograph was well received by the scientific community in America and Europe. In an addendum he described Scolithus linearis, a trace fossil of some burrowing organism, the most ancient organic remains known at the time. In 1844 he wrote a paper, "Enumeration of the Recent Freshwater Mollusca Which are Common to North America and Europe", where he laid out in detail the case for Lamarckian evolution and transmutation of species. In 1861, Charles Darwin wrote in a preface to his On the Origin of Species an acknowledgment of Haldeman's ideas in support of evolution.

He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1844.

In 1842, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Entomological Society of Pennsylvania, the first scientific society formed to study insects in America. Haldeman's participation in the society put him in regular contact with other leading American entomologists including Frederick E. Melsheimer and John G. Morris. His first entomological paper was the "Catalogue of the Carabideous Coleoptera of South Eastern Pennsylvania," published in 1842. Over the next 15 years he published many papers on the systematics of beetles and other insects, describing many new species. His ear was remarkably sensitive, and he discovered a new organ of sound in lepidopterous insects, which was described by him in Benjamin Silliman's American Journal of Science in 1848. In 1852 he wrote a description of the insects collected by the Stansbury survey of the Great Salt Lake.

In the 1850s, Haldeman's focus turned to the study of language. He carried out extensive research among Amerindian dialects, and also in Pennsylvania Dutch, besides investigations in the English, Chinese, and other languages. Haldeman was an earnest advocate of spelling reform. He was a member of many scientific societies, was the founder and president of the American Philological Association, and one of the early members of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1858, Haldeman was awarded the Trevelyan Prize, given by the Phonetic Society of Great Britain, for his article entitled "Analytic Orthography".

Works He was the author of some 150 publications including important works on entomology, conchology, and philology.

A monograph of the Limniades and other freshwater univalve shells of North America. Philadelphia, J. Dobson. (1840) A monograph of the freshwater univalve mollusca of the United States, including notices of species in other parts of North America (1842) Zoological Contributions, Parts 1,2,3 (1842–1844) "Enumeration of the Recent Freshwater Mollusk Which are Common to North America and Europe, with Observations on Species and their Distribution" (1844) "Monographie du genre leptoxis" (in Chenu's Illustrations conchologiques, Paris, 1847) "On some Points in Linguistic Ethnology" (in Proceedings of the American Academy, Boston, 1849) "Zoölogy of the Invertebrate Animals" (in the Iconographic Encyclopædia, New York, 1850) Elements of Latin Pronunciation. (1851) "On the Relations of the English and Chinese Languages" (in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1856) Analytic Orthography (1860) In 1858, this essay gained Haldeman the Trevelyan Prize in England over 18 European competitors. Tours of a Chess Knight (1864) Pennsylvania Dutch, a Dialect of South German with an Infusion of English (1872) Outlines of Etymology (1877) Word-Building (1881)