Isaac Lea | |
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| Born | (1792-03-04)March 4, 1792 Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. |
| Died | December 8, 1886(1886-12-08) (aged 94) |
| Resting place | Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3 (incl.Henry Charles Lea andMathew Carey Lea) |
| Relatives | Mathew Carey (father-in-law) |
Isaac Lea (March 4, 1792 – December 8, 1886) was an American publisher,conchologist andgeologist. He was a partner in the publishing businessesMatthew Carey & Sons; Carey, Lea & Carey; Carey, Lea & Blanchard; and Lea & Blanchard.
He authored multiple books describing the freshwater musselgenusUnio and named 1,842 species of fifty genera of freshwater and land mollusks. He sparked a scientific controversy amongst geologists when he published about his discovery of fossilized footprints inMount Carbon, Pennsylvania, that he incorrectly proposed were from areptile from theDevonian Period over 360 million years old. The fossil has since been identified as that of anamphibian from theMississippian Age over 330 million years old.
He served as president of theAcademy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia from 1858 to 1863 and of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Sciences in 1860.
Lea was born on March 4, 1792, in Wilmington, Delaware. His grandparents, John and Hannah Hopton Lea, emigrated to theProvince of Pennsylvania withWilliam Penn in 1699. His parents were James J. Lea, a merchant, and Elizabeth Gibson Lea. He was studying to be a physician, but began working at his brother John's import business in Philadelphia at the age of 15.[1]
He was close friends withLardner Vanuxem as a child and the two developed an interest in geology and were exposed to the mineralogical collection ofAdam Seybert.[2]
Lea was born aQuaker but forsook his faith's traditional pacifism and joined the 7th Company of the 24th Pennsylvania Militia during theWar of 1812. The unit served as a home guard and never saw action, however he was still expelled from the Religious Society of Friends.[1] In 1820, he married Frances Ann Carey, daughter of noted publisherMathew Carey.[3]
He received an LL.D. degree from Harvard in 1853.[4]
His father-in-law Mathew Carey founded the Matthew Carey & Company publishing company and brought his sonHenry Charles Carey and Lea in as partners and changed the company name to Matthew Carey & Sons. Matthew retired in 1824 and another of his sons joined the firm and the name was changed to Carey, Lea & Carey. In 1833, William A. Blanchard was brought on as a partner and the firm was briefly known as Carey, Lea & Blanchard until Henry Charles Carey retired in 1836 and the firm name was changed again to Lea & Blanchard.[5][6] The publishing house became one of the most successful in America, and was known for publishing items such asThe Encyclopedia Americana and a dictionary of German lexicon.[6]
In the early 1830s, he became a partner in the Dauphin and Susquehanna Coal Company which owned 42,000 acres on the eastern bank of theSusquehanna River.[1]
In 1851, Isaac retired from the publishing business and made his son Henry Charles Lea a full partner and the name was changed to Lea Brothers.[5]
Lea worked withLardner Vanuxem during his work on the geology of New York. Many geological histories are defined by mollusk fossils which led Lea to also study living mollusks.[7]
In 1815, Lea joined the Academy of Natural Sciences and published his first paper on minerals found in the Philadelphia area in 1817.[1]
Lea devoted his leisure time to natural history, both collecting objects and publishing books (some illustrated by his son Henry Charles Lea).[8] He was especially interested in freshwater and landmollusks. He studied mollusks from the Ohio River submitted to the Academy of Natural Sciences by MajorStephen Harriman Long and shells collected by his brother near Cincinnati.[1] Lea described these specimens in the publicationDescription of Six New Specimens of the Genus Unio which he presented at the American Philosophical Society in 1827 and was the first of multiple papers onUnio.[9] For 50 years he delivered and published 279 scientific articles, books and essays. He named 1,842 species of fifty genera of freshwater and land mollusks, however many of the species he described are not distinct. His publications on geology included a range of topics including coal, earthquakes, fossils and minerals.[1]
In 1849, Lea presented a paper on fossilized footprints he discovered in red sandstone in Mount Carbon, Pennsylvania.[10] Lea contended the tracks were reptilian and that due to the strata of rock where the footprints were found, they were from theDevonian Period between 360 and 408 million years old and constituted a new species that he namedSauropus primaevus. The finding sparked a controversy in the geology community and the date of the fossil was challenged byHenry Darwin Rogers, the state geologist of Pennsylvania. Noted geologistLouis Agassiz proposed that the footprints were not those of a reptile but rather those of an amphibian. The footprints have since been identified as coming from an amphibian known asPalaeosauropus primaevus from theMississippian Age over 330 million years ago.[1]
He was a member and vice-president of theAmerican Philosophical Society (elected in 1828)[11] and also served as president of theAcademy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (1858–1863), both based in Philadelphia. Lea served as president of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science in 1860.[12]
His two sons,Henry Charles Lea andMatthew Carey Lea achieved distinction in scholarly fields and the family publishing business. The brothers married the Jaudon sisters and their children also joined the family business, which ultimately becameLea & Febiger. Henry Charles Lea (September 19, 1825 – October 24, 1909) was an American historian, civic reformer, and political activist in Philadelphia. Mathew Carey Lea (1823–1897) was a lawyer as well as founder ofmechanochemistry and early photographer.[13]
He died on December 8, 1886, in Philadelphia and was interred inLaurel Hill Cemetery.[14] In 1829Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem dedicated to Lea titled "To Isaac Lea".[15]
Three mollusks were named in his honor,Crenella leanaDall, 1897,[16]Lymnaea leaiF.C. Baker, 1907[17] andPeriploma leanum(Conrad, 1831).[18][19]
TheNational Museum atWashington now has his immense collection offreshwater mussels from the familyUnionidae, as well as other collections.[8][20]
TheHistorical Society of Pennsylvania has the records of Lea & Febiger, as well as predecessor companies.[5]
Two slabs of rock containing the fossilized footprints and plaster casts of the footprints discovered by Lea are in the collections of theSmithsonian Institution.[1]
Molluscantaxa named by Lea include:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Lea, Isaac (1792-1886)".New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.| International | |
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