Dear Art:
 
Thomas Jefferson was never a senator.  He did, however, that greatest of
all American "Renaissance Man": lawyer, statesman, inventor, author,
architect, etc;, commit a scientific faux pax with the statement he made
in 1807 when a Yale professor, Benjamin Sillman, postulated that
metorites were objects from space.  Jefferson replied " I would rather
believe a Yankee would lie, than that stones could fall from the sky."
This president indeed have a shell (fossil pecten) named for him.  What
other presidents, or leaders of other nations, have had shells named for
them?  Prunum roosevelti in 1937 is one example.
 
Alan Gettleman
Merritt Island, FL
 
 
MR ART WEIL wrote:
>
> Hi Marlo;-
>       If I remember correctly (and I rarely do), it was during the
> presidency of Tom Jefferson that a Senator stood and moved that the U.
> S. Patent Office be closed. He told us that it was obvious that,"---
> everything that  could be invented HAS been invented."