1. Amos Eaton was an American botanist, geologist, and educator who is considered the founder of the modern scientific prospectus in education, which was a radical departure from the American liberal arts tradition of classics, theology, lecture, and recitation.
Amos Eaton's teaching laboratory for botany in the 1820s was the first of its kind in the country.
Amos Eaton held the rank of senior professor at Rensselaer until his death in 1842.
Amos Eaton's father, Captain Abel Eaton was a farmer of comfortable means.
Amos Eaton belonged to a family that traced its lineage to John Eaton, who arrived from Dover, England in 1635, settling two years later in Dedham, Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Amos Eaton showed early preference for nature, by the age of sixteen constructing his own compass and chain to survey land as a chain bearer.
Amos Eaton was sent to Williamstown with the Rev Dr David Potter, of Spencertown, to study at Williams College.
In New York, Eaton formed an association with naturalists David Hosack and Samuel L Mitchill and under their influence, he became committed to the natural sciences, and in particular botany.
Nevertheless, Amos Eaton pursued a legal career and arranged to study law with Elisha Williams, of Spencertown, and Josiah Ogden, of New York.
Amos Eaton worked as a lawyer and as a land agent in Catskill, New York.
Amos Eaton became deeply involved in land-speculation and was charged with forgery in 1810, possibly as a result of securing a loan using property that was already mortgaged.
Amos Eaton was found guilty and spent nearly five years in Newgate Prison, the state penitentiary at Greenwich Village.
On his release in 1815, Amos Eaton moved to New Haven at Yale College to take up the study of botany, chemistry and mineralogy under the tuition of Benjamin Silliman and Eli Ives.
Amos Eaton then returned to Williams College to offer a course of lectures and volunteer classes of the students on botany, mineralogy zoology, and geology and published a botanical dictionary.
Amos Eaton returned to New York in 1818 following Governor DeWitt Clinton's invitation for him to deliver a series of lectures on the state's geology to the New York State Legislature in connection with the building of the Erie Canal.
Ultimately, Amos Eaton completed a survey fifty miles wide from Buffalo to Boston.
Amos Eaton delivered talks at the Lenox Academy and the Medical College at Castleton, Vermont, where he was appointed professor of natural history in 1820.
Amos Eaton gave lectures and practical instructions in Troy, laying the foundation of the Lyceum of Natural History.
In 1820 and 1821, Amos Eaton initiated geological and agricultural surveys of Albany and Rensselaer counties, which were financed by Van Rensselaer.
Amos Eaton was a recognized pioneer in botany and principal land surveyor in the country.
Amos Eaton immediately set about to develop a new kind of institution devoted to the application of science to life, a modern scientific prospectus, new methods of instruction and examination, recognizing women in higher education, and practical training for adults.
Amos Eaton often led day excursions, taking students to observe the application of science on nearby farms and in workshops, tanneries, and bleaching factories.
Amos Eaton's principal focus was the training of students to teach science and its applications to the New York farming community via experimental demonstrations, a goal in keeping with Britain's mechanics' institutes and lyceum movements on diffusing useful knowledge.
Amos Eaton believed that women were capable of learning practical science and mathematics; they simply had not been taught the subjects at traditional female academies.
The eight young ladies who participated in Amos Eaton's experiment continued their education at the Troy Female Seminary.
Amos Eaton trained a bevy of future, notable, scientists and lectured to countless later educationists.
Today Amos Eaton Hall houses the mathematics department, and the Amos Eaton Professorship is a faculty endowment named at the institute.
The Amos Eaton Chair was originally given by students to Amos Eaton in 1839, but was later returned to the institute by the Eaton family.
Amos Eaton having died, Eaton married Alice Johnson in 1827, who bore him one son, and survived him about four years.
Hezekiah Hulbert Amos Eaton became a chemist at Transylvania University but died at the age of twenty-three.
Major General Amos Beebe Eaton was a US Army officer interested in natural philosophy.
Sara Cady Amos Eaton taught natural sciences and modern languages in a young woman's seminary at Monticello, Illinois.
Amos Eaton published on agriculture, botany, engineering, geology, surveying, and zoology.