This is a portrait of Martin Hans Boyè from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania art and artifact collection. Boyè was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, the son of a chemist. He attended the Copenhagen University and then the Polytechnic School, graduating with honors in 1835. At the age of 24, in 1836, Boyè emigrated to New York, and in 1837 moved to Philadelphia. In 1838 he was employed as a geologist in the New Jersey geological survey under Henry Darwin Rogers. In 1839 the Journal of the Franklin Institute published an analysis of a specimen of iron ore from "Iron Mountain", Missouri by Rogers and Boye. In 1840 the same journal published a paper by Robert E. and Martin Boyè on the determination of the presence of calcium using sulphuric acid. In 1840 the American Journal of Science contained an article on a new compound of platinum discovered by Rogers and his friend Boyè. He received an MD degree in 1844 from the University of Pennsylvania, with a graduate thesis on "the Structure of the Nervous System". In 1847, Boyè invented a method of refining cottonseed oil, and later he entered into large-scale production of this oil for cooking and as an ingredient in toilet soap. His research included development of perchloric ether used as a smokeless gunpowder, analysis of feldspar, a treatise on the composition of water in the Schuylkill River, an analysis of concretion from a horse's stomach, analysis of Chinese artificially colored tea, and an investigation of the Aurora Borealis. Boyè was Chair of Chemistry in Central High, Philadelphia, from 1851 to 1859, when he resigned due to poor health. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Association of Geologists.