Elias Loomis was an American mathematician and astronomer. During his career, he worked at Yale College, Case Western Reserve University, University of the City of New York and Princeton University.
Background
Loomis was born on August 7, 1811, in Willington, Connecticut, one of six children of Reverend Hubbel Loomis and his wife, Jerusha Burt of Longmeadow, Massachusetts. The father was a Baptist clergyman and a descendant of Joseph Loomis who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1638 and two years later was in Windsor, Connecticut. As a young man Hubbel Loomis attended Union College for a time, and in 1812 Yale University conferred upon him the honorary degree of master of arts. Soon after the death of his wife in 1829, he joined the pioneers in what was then known as the West, settling in Illinois. Here he became vice-president of the state antislavery society and was one of the prime movers in establishing Shurtleff College.
Education
Loomis was admitted to Yale College at the age of fourteen and graduated in 1830. Later he entered Andover Theological Seminary in 1831, but two years later abandoned his intention to become a minister.
Loomis started his career as a teacher of mathematics in Mount Hope Academy, near Baltimore. From 1833 to 1836 he was a tutor at Yale, where he taught Latin, mathematics, and natural philosophy. Here he found the opportunity to pursue further some work in astronomy in which he had been interested while in college. He devoted much attention to the study of the variations of the magnetic needle and with Professor Alexander C. Twining of West Point carried on a series of important observations (1834) to determine the altitude of shooting stars.
In 1836 he was appointed to the professorship of mathematics and natural philosophy at Western Reserve College, then at Hudson, Ohio, and went abroad for further scientific investigation in Paris (1836 - 1837) under the direction of Arago, Biot, and others. There and in London he purchased the apparatus needed for the professorship awaiting him, and particularly the outfit for a small observatory. Returning to America in 1837, he assumed his duties at Western Reserve, where he remained until 1844.
From 1844 to 1860, except for one year (1848) at Princeton, he was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in the University of the City of New York. Thence he went to Yale, succeeding Denison Olmsted, and there he remained until his death in 1889. He contributed to various scientific journals, notably the American Journal of Science, in which he published a series of papers on the aurora borealis (November 1859 - September 1861) and a series of twenty-three papers with the general title "Contributions to Meteorology" (July 1874 - April 1889).
In his will he left $300, 000 to Yale, the largest single donation received by his alma mater up to that time. Loomis was interested in the history of his family and compiled a genealogy, The Descendants of Joseph Loomis, Who Came from Braintree, England, in the Year 1638, and Settled in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1639, first published in 1870, which went through three editions in his lifetime and was again revised in 1908.
Achievements
Elias Loomis's fame and influence rested on the series of his textbooks. These included works on natural philosophy, astronomy, meteorology, analytic geometry, and the calculus, besides other and more elementary subjects. The series numbered sixteen volumes, of which about 600, 000 copies have been sold. His books were translated into Chinese and Arabic and did much to make western mathematics known in the Orient. Among his other achievements was rediscovery with Professor Denison Olmsted of Halley's Comet on its return to perihelion (1835) and computation of its orbit.
Throughout his life Loomis was strongly interested in geomagnetism. In 1833–1834 he conducted a series of hourly observations of the earth’s magnetic field and mapped his results for the United States. In 1860 Loomis prepared the first map of the frequency distribution of auroras and pointed out that the oval belt of most frequent auroras was not centered on the geographic pole but approximately paralleled the lines of equal magnetic dip.
Loomis devoted much of his time to astronomical investigations. These studies dealt mainly with the observation of meteors and the determination of longitude and latitude of various localities. Together with D. Olmsted he rediscovered Halley’s comet on its return in 1835 and computed its orbit.
Membership
National Academy of Sciences
,
United States
1873
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"If I have been successful in life, I owe that success to the influence of tutor Loomis more than to any other cause whatsoever. " - Chief Justice Waite
Connections
Loomis was married, May 18, 1840, to Julia Elmore Upson, of Tallmadge, Ohio, who died in 1854. They had two sons, Francis Engelsby and Henry Bradford Loomis, each of whom established a scientific fellowship at Yale.
