Isaac Greenwood

Background

Isaac Greenwood was born on March 11, 1702, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Education

Isaac graduated from Harvard College in 1721. He then travelled to London, where he lodged with John Theophilus Desaguliers and attended his lectures on Newtonian Experimental Philosophy.

Career

Greenwood was installed at Harvard in 1727 as the first Hollis professor of mathematics and natural and experimental philosophy. He offered the public an experimental course in mechanical philosophy in 1726, for which he published a prospectus. To his new professorship he brought this experience, the gift for teaching, a good knowledge of science, keen powers of observation, and an excellent collection of apparatus contributed by Thomas Hollis.

Greenwood’s course made use of experiment and demonstration and probably rested heavily upon Newton’s work, as did his public lectures. He took an important step to improve the level of Harvard preparation in mathematics in 1729 when he published Arithmetick, Vulgar and Decimal textbook. He produced a manuscript text on algebra and seems to have taught Newtonian fluxions. His success was substantial but, after several attempts to reform him, the Harvard Corporation dismissed him in 1738 for excessive drinking. Thereafter, Greenwood sought to set up a private school of experimental philosophy in Boston, delivered lectures in Philadelphia. Unable to support his family, he joined the Royal Navy as a chaplain aboard HMS Rose in 1742, transferring to HMS Aldborough in 1744. He was released from service in Charleston, South Carolina, on 22 May 1744. At his death, his career was in ruins, but his service to science was best measured by the tradition he developed at Harvard and by the students he inspired, including Professor John Winthrop.

During his professorship, Greenwood published three papers in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: one urging the charting of winds, another a study of the effects of damps in wells, and the third a description of an aurora borealis. In response to an English request he made very careful drawings of the inscriptions on Dighton Rock, now understood to have been of Indian origin.

Achievements

• Isaac Greenwood was a well-known mathematician. However, his contribution to science in America lay in strengthening and modernizing the science program at Harvard College. He also wrote the first natively-published American book on mathematics - the Greenwood Book, which made the first published statement of the short-scale value for billion in the United States.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Arithmetick vulgar and decimal: with the application thereof, to a variety of cases in trade, and commerce. 1729
  • A philosophical discourse concerning the mutability and changes of the material world 1731

Personality

Precision and care marked all of Greenwood's work, but it was less significant than his teaching.

Connections

Greenwood married Sara Shrimpton Clarke, daughter of Dr. John Clarke, on 31 July 1729, and had five children, of whom the eldest, Isaac, became a noted dentist.

Spouse:

Sara Shrimpton Clarke Greenwood

Son:

Isaac Greenwood

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography