James Span (241)

Election date: 1768 (Elected to the American Society when it absorbed the membership of the Medical Society.)

James Span (1734–1773) was a botanist and chemist, and a member of the American Philosophical Society via the absorption of the Medical Society by the American Society in 1768. Born in Dublin, he graduated from Trinity College in 1754 and headed to Edinburgh University to study medicine, which led to his election to the Medical Society in early 1759. He left Edinburgh and took his medical degree from Trinity in 1763, where he stayed to lecture on botany. His friendship with APS Member Dr. John Morgan (to whom Span likely owed his election into the Medical Society) put him in contact with other APS Members, including Francis Hopkinson. By 1767, Span was also appointed a lecturer in chemistry. Besides his membership in the APS, Span was elected at Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (1769), was an honorary member of the Medical Society of Edinburgh, and was a corresponding member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce of London. He died in 1773. (PI)
 

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