Amos Eaton

Who was Amos Eaton?

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, religious classes, lecture, and recitation. Eaton co-founded the Rensselaer School in 1824 with Stephen van Rensselaer III "in the application of science to the common purposes of life". His books in the eighteenth century were among the first published for which a systematic treatment of the United States was attempted, and in a language that all could read. His teaching laboratory for botany in the 1820s was the first of its kind in the country. Eaton's popular lectures and writings inspired numerous thinkers, in particular women, whom he encouraged to attend his public talks on experimental philosophy. Emma Willard would found the Troy Female Seminary, and Mary Mason Lyon, the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary. Eaton held the rank of senior professor at Rensselaer until his death in 1842.