Silliman was born in a tavern in North Stratford, now Trumbull, Connecticut, a few months after his mother, Mary (Fish) Silliman (widow of John Noyes), fled for her life from their Fairfield, Connecticut, home to escape two thousand invading British troops that burned Fairfield center to the ground.
The British forces had taken his father, General Gold Selleck Silliman, prisoner in May 1779.


Silliman was educated at Yale, receiving a B.A. degree in 1796 and a M.A. in 1799.
He studied law with Simeon Baldwin from 1798 to 1799 and became a tutor at Yale from 1799 to 1802.
He was admitted to the bar in 1802.
That same year he was hired by Yale President Timothy Dwight IV as a professor of chemistry and natural history despite his never having studied chemistry.
To prepare for this new position, Silliman studied chemistry with Professor James Woodhouse at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and delivered his first lectures in chemistry at Yale in 1804.
These lectures were the first science lectures ever given at Yale.
In 1805, he traveled to Edinburgh for further study.
Silliman was born in a tavern in North Stratford, now Trumbull, Connecticut, a few months after his mother, Mary (Fish) Silliman (widow of John Noyes), fled for her life from their Fairfield, Connecticut, home to escape two thousand invading British troops that burned Fairfield center to the ground. The British forces had taken his father, General Gold Selleck Silliman, prisoner in May 1779.

Silliman was educated at Yale, receiving a B.A. degree in 1796 and a M.A. in 1799. He studied law with Simeon Baldwin from 1798 to 1799 and became a tutor at Yale from 1799 to 1802. He was admitted to the bar in 1802. That same year he was hired by Yale President Timothy Dwight IV as a professor of chemistry and natural history despite his never having studied chemistry. To prepare for this new position, Silliman studied chemistry with Professor James Woodhouse at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and delivered his first lectures in chemistry at Yale in 1804. These lectures were the first science lectures ever given at Yale. In 1805, he traveled to Edinburgh for further study.
Benjamin Silliman