Governor of California physician
He is ""credited with counseling Mistress Stanford sufficiently so that after eighteen years of marriage, she bore a son, Leland Junior., in whose memory Stanford University was established by his father." The nature of this miraculous counseling is not specified.".
He and Stanford published The Horse in Motion, the photographs in which (by Eadweard_Muybridge) answered affirmatively the question which had been the basis of a longstanding wager among Stanford and others: whether all four hooves of a galloping horse are ever off the ground simultaneously. Born 1819 in Schenectady, New York Jacob Davis Babcock Stillman, better known as JDB, migrated to California in 1849 and made a name not only as a physian but also as an adventurist, writer and a pioneer in the medical field Following his graduation in botany and biology in 1843 from the Union University in Schenectady, the third in the United States at the time, JDB worked as a director in a boarding and later as a surgeon at the Bellevue Hospital Center.
During his tenure at the hospital, he set off at age thirty on a 194-day ship journey on the Pacific Ocean for San Francisco via Cape Horn.
He narrates the adventure and hardships he faced during the long journey he made along with a bunch of 97 gold hunters--the misery made worse by a ruthless captain of the ship--in his maiden book, “ Seeking the Golden Fleece.” His wanderlust did not stop there. His book An 1850 Voyage, San Francisco to Baltimore, By Sea and Land, recounts his another epic voyage.
After retiring from his profession, JDB moved to Redlands, California, where he bought 200 acre land and started a vineyard. JDB died in Redlands at the age of 69.
