Dictionary of Scientific Biography

Unlike those of some contemporaries, Lea's disputes with fellow scientists were never acrimonious. He thought Rafinesque's descriptions “very imperfect”; and in a “rectification” of T. A. Conrad's errors and omissions, he asserted his own claims to priority in discoveries (1854). His report on the footprints of the reptile Sauropus primaevus in the Old Red Sandstone was disputed by Agassiz, who asserted that no air-breathing animals had existed earlier than the new Red Sandstone. Lea maintained his position in a carefully argued and illustrated monograph, which he ultimately reproduced in elephant folio, with a lithograph of the footprint in actual size. Of some importance then, the matter is of less concern now that fossils of air-breathers have been found in other formations.

Lea was a striking example of the self-taught amateur who by single-minded attention to a limited subject makes a comprehensive, basic, and lasting contribution to knowledge. He expressed the spirit that guided him in 1826: “To scrutinize the first cause is vain; we must make ourselves acquainted with the effects and compare them. In this we have ample room to engage all our faculties.” Lea served as president of the Academy of Natural Sciences, vice-president of the American Philosophical Society (where he was also chairman of the finance and publications committees), and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received an honorary LL.D. from Harvard in 1852 and was a member or fellow of a score of foreign academies. On visits to England and Europe in 1832 and 1852-1853 he was warmly received by Alexander von Humboldt, William Buckland, Charles Lyell, Roderick Murchison, and Adam Sedgwick; and he inspected and named specimens of Unionidae in the British Museum, the Jardin des Plantes, and private collections.

Lea did his scientific work at the end of days filled with business and social obligations. Having joined Mathew Carey's publishing firm in 1821 after his marriage to Carey's daughter Frances Anne, he eventually became president, but retired in 1851. He was rich, with the obligations that wealth entails. Commenting on several unexpected family deaths that left him in 1845 responsible for the children of four relatives, he exclaimed to J. C. Jay, “God knows when I shall have leisure to pursue my wishes in our beautiful branch of Science.” Of his three children, M. Carey Lea was a pioneer in photochemistry; and Henry Charles Lea, whose first published paper was on shells, became, after retiring from the publishing firm, the historian of the Inquisition. Lea bequeathed his collection, numbering nearly 10,000 specimens, to the National Museum, Washington.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. ORIGINAL WORKS.

Lea's contributions are analyzed in Newton P. Scudder, Published Writings of Isaac Lea, LL.D., Bulletin. United States National Museum, no. 23 (Washington, D.C., 1885). The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the American Philosophical Society Library possess correspondence used in this sketch. Lea's journals of foreign travel are available on film at the American Philosophical Society Library.

II. SECONDARY LITERATURE.

The principal biographical sketch is by Newton P. Scudder, introducing Lea's Published Writings, cited above. For other data see “A Sketch of the History of Conchology in the United States,” in American Journal of Science and Arts, 2nd ser., 33 (1862), 161-180; W. H. Dall, “Isaac Lea, LL.D.,” in Science, 8 (17 Dec. 1886), 556-558; Joseph Leidy, “Biographical Notice,” in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 24 (1887), 400-403; and W. J. Youmans, Pioneers of Science in America (New York, 1896), 260-269.

WHITFIELD J. BELL, JR.