The book follows Smithson through his university years and his passionate study of minerals across the European continent during the chaos of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Detailed are his imprisonment--simply for being an Englishman in the wrong place, his experiences in the gambling dens of France, and his lonely and painstaking scientific pursuits.

It was one of the nineteenth century’s greatest philan-thropic gifts--and one of its most puzzling mysteries.In 1829, a wealthy English naturalist named James Smithson left his library, mineral collection, and entire fortune to the "United States of America, to found.., an establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men"--even though he had never visited the United States or known any Americans. In this fascinating book, Burleigh pieces together the reclusive benefactor’s life, beginning with his origins in the splendidly dissipated eighteenth-century aristocracy as the Paris-born bastard son of the first Duke of Northumberland and a wild adventuress who preserved for her son a fortune through gall and determination.

The book follows Smithson through his university years and his passionate study of minerals across the European continent during the chaos of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Detailed are his imprisonment--simply for being an Englishman in the wrong place, his experiences in the gambling dens of France, and his lonely and painstaking scientific pursuits.

After Smithson’s death, nineteenth-century American politicians were given the task of securing his half-million dollars--the equivalent today of fifty million--and then trying to determine how to increase and diffuse knowledge from the muddy, brawling new city of Washington.Burleigh discloses how Smithson’s bequest was nearly lost due to fierce battles among many clashing Americans--

Acknowledgments

1. THE BODY SNATCHERS

2. THE DUKE AND THE WIDOW

3. NOBODY’S CHILD

4. CHOOSING SCIENCE

5. DISCOVERIES AND  REVOLUTIONS

6. THE GIFT

7. IO5 SACKS OF GOLD

8. "A RATTLESNAKE’S FANG"

9. FOR THE INCREASE AND DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE

10. THE SMITHSON MYSTERY

Notes

Bibliography