Jeffries Wyman - Career

Career

He graduated Harvard College in 1833 and Harvard Medical School in 1837. He was made curator at Lowell Institute, Boston, in 1839 and remained affiliated there until 1842. Fees from Lowell Institute lectures enabled him to study in Europe, from 1841-842, where he had the opportunity to study under anatomist Richard Owen in London. Upon his return to the United States, he had hoped to gain a professorship at Harvard College but the position went to Asa Gray. In 1843, he was elected professor of anatomy and physiology at Hampden-Sydney College, Richmond, Virginia. A series of letters written between 1843 and 1848 to his Boston friend and fellow M.D., David Humphreys Storer, reveal his unhappiness with the quality of the school, the treatment of the professors, and life in the South, writing "as soon as circumstances will permit I shall make my way back to the glorious city of Boston, the like of which exists not on the face of the earth." In 1847, he got his wish when he became Hersey Professor of Anatomy at Harvard College, where he remained until his death, becoming the first curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology there in 1866. He made extensive and valuable collections in comparative anatomy and archæology, and he published nearly 70 scientific papers. He was the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1858. Although he did not achieve the fame of some of his contemporaries, he was respected by peers: "In his special branches his authority was recognized the world over."