He graduated with the degree of C. E. from the University of Michigan in 1872 and immediately entered the United States Lake Survey to spend some ten years in triangulation along the Great Lakes; the two years following this period, 1882-84, he spent with the federal commission appointed to observe the transit of Venus.
He also studied the field methods for topographic mapping and for primary and secondary triangulation and put them on a practical engineering basis.
At that time the Geological Survey was comparatively new, but its members--including G. K. Gilbert, Clarence King, and Thomas C. Chamberlin [qq. v. ]
-- were enthusiastic and eager for accomplishment.
The atmosphere stimulated original work and during the next decade Woodward wrote his most important scientific papers.
These contributions were of a geophysical nature, having in part to do with the deformation of the earth's surface as the result of the removal or addition of load over a large area and in part with the secular cooling of the earth.
The years 1890-93 he spent with the Coast and Geodetic Survey, working on the problem of base-line measurement in primary triangulation.
He developed the iced-bar apparatus for measuring base-lines and for calibrating steel tapes and was the first to prove that base-lines could be measured with sufficient accuracy by means of long steel tapes.
This work was of fundamental importance to geodesy and resulted in the saving of much expense and time in field work; also it placed the primary triangulation work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey on a higher plane than had previously been possible.
The earlier years were a critical period for the Institution, which needed his mature judgment and experience to discriminate between worth-while projects and the far greater number of suggested projects of doubtful promise.
His common sense and sense of humor, however, enabled him to meet the problems that confronted him and his sane and kindly attitude bred confidence that he would handle fairly each proposal submitted.
From 1884 to 1924 he was one of the editors of Science, and in 1888-89, of the Annals of Mathematics.
With Mansfield Merriman, he edited Higher Mathematics (1896), a college textbook, to which he himself contributed the chapter on probability and the theory of errors.
[F. E. Wright, memoir with full list of writings, in Bull.
Geol.
Soc.
of America, vol.
XXXVII (1926); Who's Who in America, 1924-25; Science, July 11, 1924; Evening Star (Washington), June 30, 1924. ]
Woodward was awarded many honors; he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1900), the American Mathematical Society (1898 - 1900), the New York Academy of Sciences (1900 - 01), the Washington Academy of Sciences (1915).
