Benjamin Smith Lyman

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Benjamin Smith Lyman
Meiji Japan

Benjamin Smith Lyman (11 December 1835 – 30 August 1920) was an American mining engineer, surveyor, and an amateur linguist and anthropologist.[1] He was also a promoter of vegetarianism.[2]

Biography

Benjamin Smith Lyman was born in

Freiberg, Saxony (1861–62). Upon returning to the United States, Lyman opened an office as a consulting mining engineer in Philadelphia and worked on surveys from Pennsylvania to Nova Scotia, Arizona and California
.

In 1870, Lyman surveyed oil fields in the

British India, during which he developed an interest in the Far East
.

In 1872 he was

Meiji government. While in Japan, he educated many Japanese in western techniques for natural resource surveys, and published the first geological map of Hokkaidō in 1876.[3] Many of Lyman's Japanese assistants became proficient surveyors and some of them distinguished geologists, although his relations with the Hokkaidō Colonization Office
were often strained. Before leaving Japan, he encouraged his assistants to form the Geological Society of Japan and to publish a journal. He donated his house to the new society for use as its headquarters.

In his study of the Japanese language, Lyman noticed that a necessary condition for the voicing (technically rendaku) of the initial obstruent of the second word in a compound is that the word contain no voiced obstruent in a later syllable. (A sufficient condition for predicting rendaku is not known.) This constraint has come to be known as "Lyman's Law".

After Lyman returned to Northampton, he spent the next several years working on his reports, which he published at his own expense. He attended meetings of technical and scientific societies as well as the

railroad there. On the way, he visited his former assistants in Japan. He hoped to re-visit Japan on his return trip, but was prevented by a long bout with dysentery
.

He died 30 August 1920, aged 84, in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania.

Many of his personal journals, books, maps and papers are preserved in the “Benjamin Smith Lyman Collection” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the "Benjamin Smith Lyman papers" (call number Mss.B.L982) at the American Philosophical Society. He was elected to the APS in 1869.[4]

Vegetarianism

Lyman, a vegetarian for most of his life, published a scholarly cookbook of vegetarian recipes in 1917 at the age of 81. Lyman travelled extensively throughout China, Europe, Japan and the United States. Based on his experiences from his travels he adopted a vegetarian diet in 1864.[5] He was a vegetarian for 56 years of his life, until his death at the age of 84. He was described of believing in vegetarianism "with almost religious devotion."[5]

Partial listing of works

  • 1868 – Telescopic Measurement in Surveying
  • 1870 – General Report on the Punjab Oil Lands
  • 1873 – Topography of the Punjab Oil region
  • 1874 – Preliminary Report on the First Season's Work on the Geological Survey of Yesso
  • 1877 – A General Report on the Geology of Yesso
  • 1877 – Geological Survey of the Oil Lands of Japan
  • General Report on the Punjab Oil Lands
  • 1878 – Notes on Japanese Grammar
  • 1879 – Geological Survey of Japan: Reports of Progress for 1878 and 1879. Tookei: Public Works Department. OCLC: 13342563
  • 1892 – Japanese Swords
  • 1893 – The Great Mesozoic Fault in New Jersey
  • 1894 – Change from surd to sonant in Japanese compounds
  • 1894 – Age of Newark Brownstone
  • 1894 – Some New Red Horizons
  • 1897 – Against Adopting the Metric System
  • 1900 – Movements of Ground Water
  • 1902 – The Original Southern Limit of Pennsylvania Anthracite Beds
  • 1904 – Some Hindoo Marriage Ceremonies
  • 1907 – The Philippines
  • 1909 – Need of Instrument Surveying in Practical Geology
  • 1912 – Natural History Morality
  • 1915 – A Practical Rational Alphabet
  • 1916 – Natural Morality
  • 1917 – Vegetarian Diet and Dishes

References

  1. ^ "LYMAN, Benjamin Smith". The International Who's Who in the World: 722. 1912.
  2. S2CID 247806168
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 406205938X
    .
  4. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-04-26.
  5. ^ a b Anonymous. (1921). Benjamin Smith Lyman. Mining and Metallurgy 2 (170): 23-34.

External links

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