Hamilton Lanphere Smith (November 5, 1819 – 1903) was an American scientist, photographer, and astronomer.
He was born in New London, Connecticut and graduated from Yale in 1839,[1] where he constructed the largest telescope in the country at the time in 1838.
In 1848 Smith wrote The World, one of the first science textbooks written in America.
Smith is best known for patenting the tintype photographic process, which popularized photography in America.
He published the exsiccata-like series Diatomacearum species typicae with glass-slides distributed [2]