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Biography of Benjamin Peirce
Name: Benjamin Peirce
Birth Date: April 4, 1809
Death Date: October 6, 1880
Place of Birth: Salem, Massachusetts, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Occupations: mathematician
Benjamin Peirce
Mathematician, physicist, and astronomer, Benjamin Peirce (1809-1880) has been called the "father of American mathematics." He distinguished himself as superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey. Peirce was a professor at Harvard College from 1833 until his death, and contributed to the founding of its observatory.Peirce is remembered for calculating the exact location and path of the planet Neptune, using a series of lengthy and complex mathematical equations. He also tracked and calculated the paths of many comets and charted the phases of the moon for the United States government. Soon after the discovery of Saturn's rings in 1850, he calculated and published his assessment of the possible composition of the rings. Peirce's work and his writings on practical mathematics extended to the fields of astronomy, mechanics, and geology. His contributions to the field of theoretical mathematics included commentary on hypercomplex number theory.A Prominent PuritanBenjamin Peirce was born in Salem, Massachusetts, …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…accurately such phenomena as the recurrence of comets and the phases of the moon demonstrated the practicality of his knowledge. He performed his extensive calculations without the convenience of an adding machine, much less a calculator or computer.Peirce married Sarah Hunt Mills on July 23, 1833. Together they had five children: James Mills, born in 1834; Charles Sanders, born in 1839; Benjamin Mills, born in 1844; Helen Huntington, born in 1845; and Herbert Henry Davis, born in 1849. The children, like their father, grew to be prominent citizens: a Harvard professor, a noted Harvard-based scientist and philosopher, a mining engineer, the wife of a realtor, and a foreign diplomat respectively. Further Reading Dictionary of American Biography, American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936.Lenzen, V.F., Benjamin Peirce and the U.S. Coast Survey, San Francisco Press, 1968.New Solidarity, August 22, 1986."Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics," http://members.aol.com/jeff570/i.html (February 5, 2001).
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