Peter, Robert, 1805-1894

Chemist, physician, teacher.

Robert Peter was born in England but emigrated to America in 1817. He lived for a time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After attending the Rensselaer School, in Troy, New York and lecturing on chemistry at Western University of Pennsylvania, Peter moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where he became a professor of chemistry at Transylvania University. He also studied medicine at Transylvania, and received his medical degree in 1834. He only practiced medicine for a short while, but served on the medical faculties of Transylvania and of the Kentucky School of Medicine in Louisville. Peter supervised military hospitals in Lexington during the Civil War and later served as a professor of chemistry at what is now the University of Kentucky. He also served as chemist for two geological surveys of Kentucky and one each of Arkansas and Indiana.

Biographical note: Robert Peter, a native of England, came to America with his family in 1817. Having received some training as a druggist in Philadelphia in the apothecary shop of Charles Ivory, Peter attended Rensselaer Institute in Troy, New York in 1828, and from 1829 to 1831 lectured on natural science and chemistry at the Pittsburgh Philosophical Society and Western University of Pennsylvania. In 1832 he came to Lexington, Kentucky as an instructor at the Eclectic Institute, a school for boys established by Benjamin O. Peers. Peter was named to a chair in chemistry at Transylvania University in the following year.

Peter continued to be associated with Transylvania, then known as Kentucky University, until 1878 when religious and political turmoil resulted in the separation from the university of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, to which Peter adhered as professor of chemistry. In that controversy Peter played a prominent role as a spokesman against the narrow orthodoxy of Kentucky University Board of Curators representing the interests of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

In addition to Peter's duties as an instructor, he was employed as chemist by the Kentucky Geological Survey at various times during the administrations of state geologists, David Dale Owen, N. S. [Nathaniel Southgate] Shaler, and John Robert Proctor. The results of his extensive analyses of Kentucky soils and minerals were published in various reports of the survey. Other Peter writings included a manuscript history of Transylvania University and its Medical Department which were published by The Filson Club subsequent to his death (1896, 1905).