PECKHAM, Stephen Farnum, chemist, born near Providence, Rhode Island, 26 March, 1839. After a special course in the chemical laboratory of Brown he was two years in a pharmaceutical laboratory in Providence, after which he completed his studies in 1861 by a further course in chemistry at Brown. Subsequently, in association with Nathaniel P. Hill (q. v.) and others, he began the manufacture of illuminating oils from petroleum. The works were planned and successfully constructed by him, but their operation was unremunerative, and he became in 1862 hospital steward of the 7th Rhode Island regiment. He continued in the military service until near the close of the civil war, having at that time charge of the chemical department of the United States army laboratory in Philadelphia. His next engagement was as expert for the California petroleum company, for which corporation he spent a year in southern California studying the occurrence of petroleum in that region. He subsequently prepared for the geological survey of that state several reports on similar subjects, including a technological examination of Californian bitumen, which he made on his return to the east in 1867. In that year he also began to teach chemistry in Brown, and he afterward held chairs on that subject successively in Washington and Jefferson college, the state agricultural college, Orono, Maine, Buchtel college, Akron, Ohio, and in the University of Minnesota, where he was also chemist to the geological survey of that state. In 1880 he returned to Providence, and he has since been engaged in various chemical industries. Professor Peckham has contributed many articles to current scientific literature, both in the United States and abroad, chiefly on his specialty of petroleum, its manufacture and applications. He served in 1880 as special agent on the United States census, and contributed to the reports a valuable monograph on the subject, including a fall bibliography. In addition to his reports he wrote the article on " Petroleum" for the "Encyclopedia Britannica," and he has published an "Elementary Treatise on Chemistry" (Louisville, 1876).