Discovery of Thomas Jefferson at University Teaches Researchers About Science

A chemical hearth recently discovered in the walls of the Rotunda dates back to its Jeffersonian origins. (Dan Addison / University of Virginia)

Dan Addison / University of Virginia

So space for experiments was built into the domed building at the head of the Lawn. It was symbolic that he chose to put a library in the Rotunda, rather than a chapel as at other universities, Lahendro said. And it is notable that one level was set aside for chemistry classes.

“It really is the beginning of the teaching of science,” as one of the defining principles of a university rather than religion, he said. “The Enlightenment, changing the viewpoint of the world.”

Chemistry was a popular course of study at U-Va. At times, nearly a third of the student body was enrolled, and members of the public also came to lectures.

It was dangerous, too. Emmet, the natural history professor who started teaching at the university in 1825, suffered greatly from mishaps with chemicals — like the time his assistant forgot to properly cork a bottle of sulfuric acid and spilled it all over him, causing serious burns.

Dan Addison / University of Virginia

A draft report prepared for John G. Waite Associates, Architects, by Diana S. Waite cited a biography of the professor written soon after he died in his 40s:

“Dr. Emmet encountered a full share of these hazards. He met with several accidents, some of which were near proving fatal, and one of them laid him up for eight or nine weeks. On his person he bore the marks of these perils of the laboratory; but they were little heeded by him, and, when adverted to, always afforded him the occasion of some good-humoured pleasantry. His wardrobe paid dearly for the powerful agents with which it was too heedlessly brought into contact, and not unfrequently his attire wore the appearance of the sails of a ship that had just been in action.”

The university will have the hearth on display for visitors and students, with the history of the site and some of the people involved — including, as with so much that Jefferson did, the enslaved people who tended to the hearth and the classroom.

The restoration also will open up classroom space for current students, just across the hall from the chemical hearth, bringing the building back to Jefferson’s original intentions as an active center of student learning.

But there won’t be chemistry labs this time.

“You wouldn’t want to see what the Rotunda would look like with modern fume hoods,” Lahendro said.

The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips contributed to this article.