Historical perspective: Benjamin Silliman (Yale class of 1796), b.1779 – d.1864, was a chemistry and natural history professor at Yale University, and the first individual to use the process of fractional distillation in America. According to an AI search, by 1933 the School was incorporated into Yale College and named for/after him as he was considered one of America’s pioneers in science.
A 1923 Science article about Niels Bohr’s Silliman Lectures: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.58.1510.459