Charles Thomas Jackson

Chemist, born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA. After graduating from Harvard Medical School, he continued his studies in Paris, then returned to Boston and established the first laboratory in analytical chemistry to accept students (1836). Of wide-ranging interests (he did major geological surveys of New England), he became increasingly paranoid. In 1832 he had suggested to Samuel F B Morse the idea of an electric telegraph, and in 1844 had suggested to William Morton the use of ether as an anaesthetic; when both men were hailed as the discoverers of the true functional applications of these concepts, Jackson devoted himself to his claims to priority. By 1873 he had evidently become insane and he spent his final years in a mental institution.

Charles Thomas Jackson (21 June 1805 - 28 August 1880) was an American physician and scientist who was active in medicine, chemistry, mineralogy, and geology.

Born at Plymouth, Massachusetts of a prominent New England family, he was a brother-in-law of Ralph Waldo Emerson and a graduate of the Harvard Medical School in 1829, where he won the Boylston prize for his dissertation.

Upon returning to the United States he played an active role in the new state geological survey movement, serving successively between 1836 and 1844 as the state geologist of Maine, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

In 1847 Jackson was appointed United States Geologist for the Lake Superior land district, which was about to become one of the major copper-producing regions of the world.

Jackson is particularly remembered for his involvement in a series of often bitter priority conflicts that left their marks on the scientific and social scenes of his day.

Jackson also made a similar priority claim (in 1849) for the discovery that the unusual native copper deposits of Lake Superior, contrary to all previous geological expectations, could be successfully mined, although at that time it was universally acknowledged that credit for that discovery belonged to the recently deceased Douglass Houghton, Michigan's first state geologist.

In this case, however, the historical evidence does indicate that Jackson's claim for himself was indeed valid, and his mineralogical insights were significantly in advance of those of his contemporaries, including Houghton.