Background
Mathew Carey Lea was born in 1823, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Isaac Lea was descended from a Philadelphia Quaker family.
Mathew Carey Lea was born in 1823, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Isaac Lea was descended from a Philadelphia Quaker family.
Mathew was tutored privately in law (admitted to the bar in 1847) and later studied chemical research in James C. Booth's Philadelphia laboratory.
Lea was forced to give up his legal career (health problems), and he spent the next several years traveling in Europe before turning his interest to the scientific field. He made numerous contributions to photographic chemistry, including a methodology for making mordant dye pictures (1865), research on the effect of colors on the sensitivity of photographic plates (1865), a plate-cleaning solution of bichromate of potash and sulphuric acid, a ferrous oxalate developer modified two years later by Eder for use with silver emulsions (1877), and the discovery of the allotropic forms of silver (1889-1991).
Also, Lea wrote Manual of Photography, which became a valued handbook for the wet-collodion photographer; recommended the use of green glass for the darkroom (in 1870), and described the photo-bromide and photo-iodide of silver and their relation to the latent photo image (1887).
Lea published frequently in American and European scientific and photographic publications, including The Philadelphia Photographer and American Journal of Science.
In 1852, Matthew Carey Lea married Elizabeth Jaudon, sister of Henry Charles Lea's wife. Elizabeth had earlier married merchant William Bakewell, but Blakewell had died in Cincinnati in 1850, leaving her with a young daughter. The couple had a son, George Henry Lea, who helped in the family publishing business. After Elizabeth's death, Carey Lea married Eva Lovering, daughter of Harvard Professor Joseph Lovering, but they had no children.