John Nelson Stockwell

Background

John was born on April 10, 1832 at West Farms, Northampton, Massachussets, United States, the son of William Stockwell, a farmer, and his wife, Clarissa Whittemore. He was a descendant of William Stockwell, born at Thompson, Connecticut, about 1744, whose forebears had emigrated from England to New England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. After residing in West Farms for seven years the family moved to Ohio.

John, the fifth of eight children, was sent to live on a farm with an uncle in Brecksville, Ohio, when he was eight years of age. In the kitchen of his uncle's house there hung the usual almanac, in which it was stated that there would be a total eclipse of the moon on November 24, 1844. This awesome event so thrilled the twelve-year-old lad that he then and there resolved to learn how to predict such phenomena.

Education

He had never heard of astronomy, and the opportunities for any formal education in that wilderness were limited, but during the winter months when his farm duties were few he studied all the almanacs he could find, solved many of the arithmetical problems proposed in a weekly periodical, the Dollar Magazine, and mastered an old arithmetic which fell into his hands.

About this time he read of the discovery of the planet Neptune in 1846, and was inspired to begin alone to study algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, with the result that in an amazingly short time he seems to have mastered much of these subjects and even some of the calculus also.

Career

In Denison Olmsted's Compendium of Astronomy (1839), and also in the books of Thomas Dick, occasional references to Laplace and the Traite de Mecanique Celeste awakened the curiosity of the young scholar and he decided to order it through a book firm in Cleveland, Ohio. To his consternation he found not one but four stupendous tomes filled with the hieroglyphics of Laplace and, to add to his dilemma, a bill for forty dollars instead of five. He finally paid the bill by working on the farm, and then, by innate ability alone, mastered the great work. He was at the time twenty years of age.

In 1852 he published his first work, The Western Reserve Almanac of the Year of our Lord, 1853. For a short time, thanks to the offer of Benjamin A. Gould, 1824-1896, he worked as a computer in the longitude department of the United States Coast Survey and also in the United States Naval Observatory. A chance acquaintance with Leonard Case, 1820-1880, who had become interested in the Brecksville farmer-astronomer, led to Stockwell's appointment to the first chair of mathematics and astronomy at the Case School of Applied Science from 1881 to 1888. He was also chairman of the faculty.

He died in 1920.

Achievements

• John Nelson Stockwell's chief contributions, made over a period of seventy years, dealt with the theory of the moon's motion or with the computation of eclipses. One of his outstanding works was a Memoir on the Secular Variations of the Elements of the Orbits of the Eight Principal Planets, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge Series, volume XVIII (1873). In his last years he proposed, in Ocean Tides (1919), a theory of the tides in which he took issue with the accepted theory.

Works

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  • Ocean Tides: A New Solution of the Problem of the Tides, With Elaborate Tables, Showing by Mere Inspection, the Nature and Amount of the Fluctuations ... by the Attractive Forces of the Sun and Moon

    (Excerpt from Ocean Tides: A New Solution of the Problem o...)

  • Memoir of the Secular Variations of the Elements of the Orbits of the Eight Principal Planets, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, ... of the Ecliptic, and the Precessio

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Theory of the Moon's Motion

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • A Treatise On The Secular Equations Of The Moon’s Mean Motion (1867)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Membership

He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of a number of scientific societies.

Personality

Stockwell was a natural mathematician. His clear, analytical, and methodical mind enabled him to solve almost any mathematical problem in astronomy to which he turned his attention. Personally he was modest, genial, and gentle, and his life was one of extreme simplicity.

Connections

He was married on December 6, 1855, to Sarah Healy, a foster-daughter of the Brecksville uncle. From this long and happy union there were born six children.

Father:

William Stockwell

Mother:

Clarissa Whittemore

supporter:

Mr. Case

supporter:

Dr. Gould

Wife:

Sarah Healy