Benjamin Pierce was an American mathematician, astronomer and scientist.
Background
Benjamin Pierce was born on April 4, 1809 in Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. He was the third child and second son of Benjamin Peirce (1778 - 1831), for several years a member of the Massachusetts legislature, librarian of Harvard from 1826 to his death, who prepared the last printed catalogue of the Harvard library (3 vols. in 4, 1830 - 1831) and left a manuscript history of the university to the period of the Revolution, subsequently edited by John Pickering and published in 1833. His mother was Lydia Ropes (Nichols) Peirce, first cousin of her husband and sister of the Rev. Ichabod Nichols, himself versed in mathematics. Benjamin was of the purest Puritan stock. On his father's side he was descended from John Pers or Peirce, a weaver of Norwich, Norfolk County, England, who had come to Watertown, Massachussets, by 1637, and the latter's son Robert who emigrated to America probably in 1634.
Education
While in his teens at the Salem Private Grammar School, through a classmate, Henry I. Bowditch, young Peirce was brought into contact with the latter's father, Nathaniel Bowditch. Peirce entered Harvard in 1825 and graduated in 1829. Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Freeman Clarke, and Benjamin R. Curtis were classmates.
Career
After graduation during 1829 - 1831 Benjamin Peirce was associated with George Bancroft at his noted Round Hill School, Northampton, Massachussets. Then for forty-nine years he was a member of the faculty at Harvard University, first as a tutor in mathematics in the college, in full charge of the mathematical work; for the nine years (1833 - 1842) as university professor of astronomy and mathematics; and from 1842 till his death as Perkins professor of mathematics and astronomy. Peirce's earliest mathematical work was in the solution of problems proposed in the Mathematical Diary (New York, 1825 - 1832), and in revising and correcting Bowditch's translation, with commentary, of the first four volumes of Laplace's Traité de Mécanique Céleste (1829 - 1839). In a paper of the last number of the Mathematical Diary he proved the important result that there is no odd perfect number with fewer than four distinct prime factors. During the next few years he published a series of textbooks which, while distinctly inferior to the best current in his time, were certainly stimulating.
The plane and spherical trigonometries of 1835 - 1836 were afterward elaborated into An Elementary Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry, particularly adapted to explaining the construction of Bowditch's Navigator and the Nautical Almanac (1840; 3rd ed. , with additions, 1845; other eds. or reprints, 1852, 1861). He compiled An Elementary Treatise on Sound (1836) based on J. F. W. Herschel's treatise in a volume (1830) of Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, and the original bibliography at the beginning was interesting and valuable. An Elementary Treatise on Algebra (1837) and An Elementary Treatise on Plane and Solid Geometry (1837), of both of which there were many later editions or reprints, were followed by a more advanced work, An Elementary Treatise on Curves, Functions, and Forces, vol. I (1841, new ed. , 1852) containing analytical geometry and differential calculus; vol. II (1846) containing calculus of imaginary quantities, residual calculus, and integral calculus, noteworthy for conciseness of style and free use of operative symbols. The projected third volume of this work dealing with applications to analytical mechanics was never published, being doubtless superseded by his characteristic, very notable, and most extensive work, A System of Analytic Mechanics (1855), suitably expounded for those who had already achieved a good grounding in the subject.
A "masterly" discussion of determinants and functional determinants, in chapter ten, and numerous other features, were at the time new in English treatises. The general title-page of the work suggests that a much larger scheme of four volumes was in the author's mind. Along with his textbooks may be mentioned the periodical which Peirce started and edited, the Cambridge Miscellany of Mathematics, Physics, and Astronomy (April 1842 - January 1843), his colleague, Joseph Lovering, being associated with him as editor of three numbers. About half of the material consisted of problems and solutions, and half of brief articles. He took an active part in the foundation of the Harvard Observatory, the occasion being afforded by the great comet of 1843. The work which first extended Peirce's reputation was his remarkably accurate computation of the general perturbations of Uranus and Neptune. "In his views of the discrepancy between the mean distance of Neptune as predicted by Leverrier, and as deduced from observation, he was less fortunate, although, when due consideration is given to Leverrier's conclusions, there was much plausibility in the position taken by Peirce".
In 1849 the American Nautical Almanac office was established by a congressional appropriation at Cambridge, where it could have the benefit of the technical knowledge of experts, and "especially of Professor Benjamin Peirce, who was recognized as the leading mathematician of America". Until 1867 he was consulting astronomer for the Almanac (after 1860, Astronomical Almanac for the Use of Navigators). By this time Europe had joined with America in taking cognizance of his achievements.
In 1847 Benjamin Peirce was one of a committee of five appointed by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to draw up a "program for the organization of the Smithsonian Institution. " He was director of the longitude determinations of the United States Coast Survey 1852 - 1867, and superintendent of this Survey 1867 - 1874, while continuing to serve as professor at Harvard. While superintendent, Peirce took personal charge of the American expedition to Sicily to observe the eclipse of the sun in December 1870; and for the transit of Venus in 1874 he is often said to have organized the two American expeditions. Peirce continued as consulting geometer of the Survey from 1874 until his death. It was doubtless in connection with problems such as those of the Survey that he was led to formulate in 1852 and elaborate in 1878 what is widely known as "Peirce's criterion". The object of the criterion was to solve a delicate and practically important problem of probabilities in connection with a series of observations. From the first there were critics of the criterion, and its fundamental fallacy was finally proved in 1920.
In 1863 Peirce was one of the fifty incorporators of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the nine members of the committee of organization, and chairman of the mathematics and physics class. During the early years of the Academy's existence, Peirce presented a number of papers in a new field which developed into his Linear Associative Algebra (1870), of which one hundred "lithographed" copies were prepared through "labors of love" by persons engaged at the Coast Survey; a new edition, with addenda and notes by C. S. Peirce, in the American Journal of Mathematics, IV, 1881, was reprinted in 1882. The oft-quoted first sentence of the work is as follows: "Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions. "
Though Benjamin Peirce was the leading mathematician of America, almost up to the time of his death, he was probably in no wise comparable in scientific ability with many contemporary Europeans. But he was exceptional among American mathematicians, at universities of his time, in that the publications of Europeans were the basis of much of his teaching. Two of his portraits are owned by Harvard University: one was painted by J. A. Ames, and the other by Daniel Huntington. Benjamin Pierce died on October 6, 1880.
Achievements
Views
Quotations:
"Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth. "
"Gentlemen, as we study the universe we see everywhere the most tremendous manifestations of force. In our own experience we know of but one source of force, namely will. How then can we help regarding the forces we see in nature as due to the will of some omnipresent, omnipotent being? Gentlemen, there must be a GOD. "
Membership
In 1842 Benjamin Pierce became a member of the American Philosophical Society, in 1850 an associate of the Royal Astronomical Society, London, in 1858 a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1860 an honorary fellow of the University of St. Vladimir at Kiev, Russia, in 1861 a corresponding member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1867 an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a correspondent in the mathematics class of the Royal Society of Sciences at Göttingen.
Personality
A passport of 1860 describes Benjamin Peirce as of height 5 feet 7 3/4 inches, and with high forehead, hazel eyes, straight nose, regular mouth, round chin, brown hair, light complexion, and oval face. He was thick set, and wore a full beard and long hair. He was an ardent and enthusiastic friend, ever ready to encourage young men and to promote their work. Pierce had an especial fondness for seeking out comparatively unknown men whose ability had been overlooked. Benjamin Pierce loved children and children loved him "because he was full of humor, with an abounding love of nonsense".
Quotes from others about the person
President Abbott Lawrence Lowell wrote in 1924: "I have never admired the intellect of any man as much as that of Benjamin Peirce. I took every course that he gave when I was in College, and whatever I have been able to do intellectually has been due to his teaching more than to anything else".
"[Benjamin Peirce's] lectures were not easy to follow. They were never carefully prepared. The work with which he rapidly covered the blackboard was very illegible, marred with frequent erasures, and not infrequent mistakes (he worked too fast for accuracy). He was always ready to digress from the straight path and explore some sidetrack that had suddenly attracted his attention, but which was likely to have led nowhere when the college bell announced the close of the hour and we filed out, leaving him abstractedly staring at his work, still with chalk and eraser in his hands, entirely oblivious of his departing class. " ― William Elwood Byerly.
Interests
In his younger days, Benjamin Pierce enjoyed participating in private theatricals.
Connections
On July 23, 1833 Benjamin Peirce was married to Sarah Hunt Mills, daughter of Elijah Hunt Mills, and had four sons and a daughter. His eldest son, James Mills Peirce, was a mathematician and administrator at Harvard for half a century. His next son, Charles S. , was a noted scientist and philosopher. His youngest son, Herbert Henry Davis (1849 - 1916), was a diplomat.