The Smithsonian Institution was established with funds from James Smithson (1765–1829), a British scientist who left his estate to the United States to found “at Washington, under the name of the ...

Smithson was one of the first researchers to systematically categorize calamine—or zinc as it was later called. In 1832, three years after Smithson’s death, French mineralogist François Sulpice ...

The signature of Elizabeth Macie, James Smithson’s mother, on the Hungerford Deed, 1787, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Acc. 19-150. Smithsonian Libraries and Archives ...

In 1826, James Smithson ... under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." The motives behind Smithson’s bequest remain ...

Dickinson, then 18, died just six years later, and so President James K. Polk signed the act approving the Smithsonian Institution into law in 1846. Curiously, Smithson had never even visited the ...