John Mallet

John William Mallet FRS (10 October 1832 – 7 November 1912) was an Irish chemist who lived and worked in the United States. Biography John William Mallet was born near Dublin to Robert Mallet and Cordelia Mallet (Watson). Robert Mallet was a civil engineer and a fellow of the Royal Society and other societies and had an ample scientific library which his son had explored. Before entering college, John was attending private lessons in chemistry and at the age of 17 was admitted to Trinity College Dublin, where he obtained the degree Bachelor of Arts in 1853. During his college years, Mallet assisted his father in seismological studies, received a gold medal in experimental physics, and published a paper on "Chemical examination of Killiney" in 1849, just after entering college. In the summers of 1851 and 1852 he went to the University of Göttingen where he attended the lectures of Friedrich Wöhler and received a degree in 1852. He presented the associated thesis on the chemical composition of Celtic antiquities to the museum of the Royal Irish Academy. After returning to Ireland and completing his college courses, Mallet went to the United States for the purpose of acquiring information for his father. He resided there for the rest of his life, but never became an American citizen. In 1854, he was appointed professor of analytical chemistry at Amherst, where a Göttingen friend William S. Clark held a leading position, but in January 1855 moved to the State Geological Survey of Alabama and became professor of chemistry at the University of Alabama. He served in that capacity, with a brief leave of absence spent at Mobile, until the American Civil War. In the autumn of 1861 he enlisted as a private in a troop of Confederate Cavalry, but almost immediately was chosen as aide-de-camp on the staff of General Robert E. Rodes. He was transferred to the artillery in May 1862 and by 1865 became lieutenant colonel and then superintendent of the ordnance laboratories of the Southern States. After peace had been established Mallet became professor of chemistry in the medical department of the University of Louisiana. The appointment was the outcome of a mission which he undertook on behalf of some Northern financiers, to search for petroleum in this southern state. The result of the appointment was to direct his attention to medicine, in which he gained the degree of M.D. in 1868.