Edward Morley - Biography

Biography

Morley was born in Newark, New Jersey to Anna Clarissa Treat and the Reverend Sardis Brewster Morley. Both parents were of early colonial ancestry and of purely British origin. Morely grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. During his childhood, he suffered much from ill health and was therefore educated by his father at home until the age of nineteen.

In 1857, Morley entered Williams College at Williamstown, Massachusetts, his father’s alma mater. He graduated in 1860 as A.B., and in 1863 received his master’s degree. Around 1860 he gradually shifted his attention from chemistry, which fascinated him since he was child, to optics and astronomy. In 1860–61 he mounted a transit instrument, constructed a chronograph, and made the first accurate determination of the latitude of the college observatory. This determination was the subject of his first published paper, which was read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1866.

Upon advise of his parents, Morley entered Andover Theological Seminary in 1861 and completed the course in 1864. It was here, probably, that he acquired a good working knowledge of Hebrew. From 1866 to 1868 he was a teacher in a private school, and later, in 1868, he was called to preach in a small country parish in Ohio. At about the same time, he was appointed professor of chemistry in Western Reserve College (then situated at Hudson, Ohio and later moved to Cleveland and renamed Case Western Reserve University), where he remained until his retirement in 1906. This appointment was the turning point in his career. In 1873 he also became professor of chemistry in Cleveland Medical College, but resigned this chair in 1888 to have more time for research. Just before moving to Hudson he married Miss Imbella A. Birdsall.

During his residence in Cleveland, Morley assembled one of the best private collections of chemical periodicals in America. He even included Russian journals and learned enough of the Russian language to use them. After his retirement from teaching, the university purchased his library and relocated to the chemical laboratory named after him. In 1906, Morley moved to West Hartford, Connecticut, where he built a small house and a laboratory for his personal studies of rocks and minerals.

Morley was not a voluminous writer and published only 55 articles. He outlived his wife by only a few months, and died, following a surgical operation, in the Hartford Hospital in 1923.