Daniel Draper (2 April 1841 – 21 December 1931) was an American
meteorologist
A meteorologist is a scientist who studies and works in the field of meteorology aiming to understand or predict Earth's atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric phenomena including the weather. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologists ...
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', 22 December 1931
Early life
He was born in
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
in 1841, one of six children of the English scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian, and pioneer photographer
John William Draper
John William Draper (May 5, 1811 – January 4, 1882) was an English polymath: a scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with pioneering portrait photography (1839–40) and producing the first deta ...
and Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira née Gardner. Daniel Draper began his schooling at the NYU primary department, but was mainly homeschooled by his aunt
Dorothy Catherine Draper
Dorothy Catherine Draper (6 August 1807–10 December 1901) was an artist, educator and chemist notable for being the subject of the earliest existent daguerreotype portrait made in the United States.Daniel Draper:Pioneering Meteorologist in a Family of Scientists ''Hastings Historian'', Vol. 30, No. 2, A Publication of the Hastings Historical Society, Spring/Summer 2020 and studied science with his father. Later as his father's assistant in chemistry and physiology, he prepared the amanuensis for his father's ''Intellectual Development of Europe'' and other works. Draper attended
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
, of which his father was a founder, and took his Ph.D. there in 1880.Death of Dr Daniel Draper ''Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society'', Volume 13: Issue 5, 1 May 1932, p. 91 He was unable to serve during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
because he was partially deaf from having
scarlet fever
Scarlet fever, also known as scarlatina, is an infectious disease caused by ''Streptococcus pyogenes'', a Group A streptococcus (GAS). It most commonly affects children between five and 15 years of age. The signs and symptoms include a sore ...
Central Park
Central Park is an urban park between the Upper West Side and Upper East Side neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City, and the first landscaped park in the United States. It is the List of parks in New York City, sixth-largest park in the ...
in 1868 and was its first and only Director until 1911. Draper also invented a number of important weather measurement devices including a self-recording wind direction and velocity instruments, self-recording dry and wet bulb thermometers, a hygrograph, a self-recording rain gauge, a sun thermometer, and a weighing mercurial barograph, thus beginning the 150-plus-year Central Park climatological record that continues to this day. He helped his brother
Henry Draper
Henry Draper (March 7, 1837 – November 20, 1882) was an American medical doctor and amateur astronomer. He is best known today as a pioneer of astrophotography.
Life and work
Henry Draper's father, John William Draper, was an accomplished do ...
to construct the telescopes, grind the mirrors and build his
observatory
An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed.
Th ...
at
Hastings-on-Hudson
Hastings-on-Hudson is a village in Westchester County located in the southwestern part of the town of Greenburgh in the state of New York, United States. It is a suburb of New York City, located approximately north of midtown Manhattan, and i ...
. He was for many years an official of the New York Health Department.
Among others, he corresponded with such prominent scientists as
Cleveland Abbe
Cleveland Abbe (December 3, 1838 – October 28, 1916) was an American meteorologist and advocate of time zones.
While director of the Cincinnati Observatory in Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1871-1916, he developed a system of telegraphic weather r ...
,
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (; born Alexander Bell; March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was a Scottish-born Canadian Americans, Canadian-American inventor, scientist, and engineer who is credited with patenting the first practical telephone. He als ...
,
James McKeen Cattell
James McKeen Cattell (May 25, 1860 – January 20, 1944) was the first professor of psychology in the United States, teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He was a long-time editor and publisher of scientific journals and pub ...
,
Gustave Eiffel
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel ( , ; Bonickhausen dit Eiffel; 15 December 1832 – 27 December 1923) was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway net ...
,
Valentine Mott
Valentine Mott (August 20, 1785April 26, 1865) was an American surgeon.
Life
Valentine Mott was born at Glen Cove, New York. He graduated at Columbia College, studied under Sir Astley Cooper in London, and also spent a winter in Edinburgh. ...
,
Charles Piazzi Smyth
Charles Piazzi Smyth (3 January 1819 – 21 February 1900) was a British astronomer who was Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888; he is known for many innovations in astronomy and, along with his wife Jessica Duncan Piazzi Smyth, hi ...
, and
John Tyndall
John Tyndall (; 2 August 1820 – 4 December 1893) was an Irish physicist. His scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he made discoveries in the realms of infrared radiation and the physical properties of air ...
.
Personal life
His niece was Antonia Maury, the American astronomer, while his brothers included the chemist and surgeon John Christopher Draper and the doctor and amateur astronomer
Henry Draper
Henry Draper (March 7, 1837 – November 20, 1882) was an American medical doctor and amateur astronomer. He is best known today as a pioneer of astrophotography.
Life and work
Henry Draper's father, John William Draper, was an accomplished do ...
. His aunt was
Dorothy Catherine Draper
Dorothy Catherine Draper (6 August 1807–10 December 1901) was an artist, educator and chemist notable for being the subject of the earliest existent daguerreotype portrait made in the United States.daguerreotype
Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photography, photographic process, widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process.
Invented by Louis Daguerre and introduced worldwid ...
National Museum of American History
The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center is a historical museum in Washington, D.C. It collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and m ...
H. W. Lanier, The Marvels of Photography. ''The World's Work'', Vol. XI, No. 3, Jan. 1906, pp. 7163-7173.Joan Marans Dim and Nancy Murphy Cricco ''The Miracle on Washington Square: New York University'' Lexington Books (2001), p. 64
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...
Daniel Draper died of heart disease in 1931 at the Draper family home in
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York
Hastings-on-Hudson is a administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in Westchester County located in the southwestern part of the administrative divisions of New York#Town, town of Greenburgh, New York, Greenburgh in the state of New Yo ...
. He was buried with his wife Nancy Maury née Ludlow in
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York, is the cemetery, final resting place of numerous famous figures, including Washington Irving, whose 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is set in the adjacent burying ground of the ...
Westchester County
Westchester County is a county located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of New York, bordering the Long Island Sound and the Byram River to its east and the Hudson River on its west. The county is the seventh most populous cou ...
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', 11 November 1932, p. 15 Another daughter was Dorothy Catherine Draper (1888-1972), named after her great-aunt, and who married Berthold Hintz Nye (1886-1943). His only son, John William, named for his grandfather (1893-1976), who married Lulu Hazel Clay (1894-1990) had 3 sons. He achieved his Ph.D. in 1920 from Harvard and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship 1927-28 in London. He was Professor Emeritus of English at West Virginia University as well as a prolific author of Shakespeare, Milton and Funeral Elegies.
The archive of Daniel Draper is among the John William Draper Family Papers held by the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...