Blake, Eli Whitney ()
Role:Dates:
Portrait Location: Barus & Holley 400
Artist: Walker, John Hanson ()
Portrait Date:
Medium:
Dimensions: 24 3/8
Framed Dimensions: 35 1/2
Brown Portrait Number: 75
Brown Historical Property Number: 1502
Eli Whitney Blake (1836-1895) belonged to a dynasty of scientists: as his name reveals, the inventor of the cotton gin was a family connection (his great-uncle). Blake's father, also named Eli Whitney Blake, was an inventor and scientist in his own right, and created the Blake crusher, which crushed pieces of rock into gravel. The Eli Whitney Blake depicted in this portrait was born the son of this inventor in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1836. He graduated from Yale University in 1857. Having the family penchant for science, he studied chemistry and physics at the best universities in Great Britain and Germany. Blake's specialty was physics, and when he returned to the United States, he immediately set out on a distinguished academic career in this science. He was the first professor of physics at Cornell University, where he taught from 1868-1869. This was a distinction he enjoyed as well at Brown University, where he served as the Hazard Professor of Physics from 1870-1895.
While at Brown, Blake and a number of his students and colleagues were involved in the development of a telephone. Alexander Graham Bell happened to be working on a similar invention, and patented his first; however, the academics had the luxury of being able to pursue their product for the sake of science and not for a livelihood, so although they were aware of one another's work, there were few territorial tussles between Bell and Blake's group. In fact, Blake aided Bell in developing a less bulky receiver component for his telephone (a fact which Blake was able to prove to his colleagues, but which was not mentioned in Bell's public presentation of the instrument). Blake died in 1895.
This portrait was given to Brown by Mrs. Elizabeth Vernon Blake, in 1900. It was painted by John Hanson Walker (1844-1933). Walker was a British portrait artist who executed this portrait in London in 1896, after photographs.