In 1813 he presented to the Albany Society of Arts a comprehensive paper on the mineral resources of the United States.

In 1815 he was appointed professor of the institutes of medicine, and lecturer on medical jurisprudence in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Western New York, at Fairfield.

[2] In 1823, while secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Useful Arts (SPUA), he founded the Albany Lyceum of Natural History, which focused on the preservation of mineral and botanical specimens collected in New York state surveys.

During his service, he collected statistics on deaf-mutes, which influenced the legislature to pass laws for the education of the mentally ill.

Another of his brothers, Lewis Caleb Beck, wrote a noted book on the Mineralogy of New York (1842).