William Woolsey Johnson was an American mathematician. He was one of the founders of the American Mathematical Society.
Background
Johnson was born on June 23, 1841, in Owego, New York, the son of Charles Frederick Johnson, a lawyer and land owner at Owego, and Sarah Dwight (Woolsey) Johnson, came of distinguished ancestry. He was a descendant of Jonathan Edwards; and Sarah Pierpont, his wife, of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the first president of King's College (now Columbia University), and of his son William Samuel Johnson, one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and the first president of the reorganized (1787) Columbia College.
Education
Johnson was graduated at Yale in 1862, at the age of twenty-one.
Career
Almost and at once after his graduation, Johnson became connected with the United States Nautical Almanac office. After two years of service there he became an instructor in mathematics at the Naval Academy, Newport, Rhode Island, and in 1865 moved with the school to Annapolis, where he remained until 1870, meantime (1868) receiving the degree of master of arts from his Alma Mater. After teaching at Kenyon College, Ohio (1870-1872), and at St. John's College, Maryland (1872-1881), he returned to Annapolis as professor of mathematics, to remain there the rest of his active life.
In 1913, through a special act of Congress, he was commissioned lieutenant in the navy, and in 1921 was retired with the rank of commodore. Johnson was one of the best-known of the expository mathematicians of his time, chiefly because of his numerous contributions to mathematical literature which helped to arouse interest in mathematical studies. He wrote a considerable number of textbooks, including An Elementary Treatise on Analytical Geometry (1869); The Elements of Differential and Integral Calculus Founded on the Methods of Rates or Fluxions (3 vols. , 1874-1876), in collaboration with J. Minot Rice; An Elementary Treatise on the Integral Calculus Founded on the Method of Rates or Fluxions (1881); Curve Tracing in Cartesian Coordinates (1884); A Treatise of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations (1889); The Theory of Errors and Method of Least Squares (1890); and An Elementary Treatise on Theoretical Mechanics (2 parts, 1901). He also wrote several monographs in Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society; "On Napier's Circular Parts" (1919); "General Case of Circular Parts" (1920); and "On Rules Derived by Composition from Cotes's Rules for Approximate Quadrature" (1912).
Johnson died on May 14, 1927, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Achievements
Johnson is mainly remembered by his books on differential calculus, basing it on related rates. He is also known to be the first on probing the conditions of solvability of the 15 puzzle.
Membership
Johnson was a founder member of the American Mathematical Society, and a member of the London Mathematical Society and various other learned organizations.
Connections
On August 12, 1869, Johnson married Susannah Leverett Batcheller of Annapolis.
