Math Department (History)

The Turn of the Century: 1877 - 1930

Isaac Jackson retired in 1877, and was followed by Isaiah B. Price, who had graduated from Union in 1872 and served as Tutor from 1872-75. Upon the death of Jackson, Price became Professor of Mathematics (and Assistant Professor of Physics), 1878-84. He was succeeded by Thomas W. Wright, who served as Professor of Applied Mathematics and Chairman of the Department of Physics (1895-1904). Benjamin Ripton was appointed Adjunct Professor of Mathematics in 1886, and became Professor the following year. In 1894, he was appointed Professor of History and Government, a post he held until 1921. He also served as Dean from 1894-1919. Edwin H. Winans (A. B. Union, 1888) became an instructor in the department in 1889, and subsequently held the post of Assistant Professor for eight years. While teaching at Union, Winans also studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1892. He left to practice that profession in Rochester in 1899.

Since Steinmetz was the foremost electrical engineer in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was inevitable that his influence on the mathematics curriculum would be swift and powerful. Soon after his arrival at Union in 1895, that curriculum included, for the engineers, Advanced Calculus, Ordinary Differential Equations, and a choice between Geometry of Three- Space, Determinants, and Quaternions. More and more mathematics courses were offered by the Electrical Engineering Department, so that, for instance, by 1909-10, Charles F. F. Garis was the sole member of the "Academic" Mathematics Department, while "Engineering" Mathematics boasted a Professor (Garrison) and an Instructor (Mark).

By 1914-15, the Mathematics Department seems to have subsumed Engineering Mathematics, and its combined faculty now numbered five, with Garis at its head. It is interesting to note that in 1917, Assistant Professor Sidney Rowland took leave from the College to accept a commission as Lieutenant in the U. S. Army - and that he continued to be listed in the Catalogue as a member of the faculty. He returned to Union after the war and held the position of Assistant Professor of Mathematics until he left in 1924 to become head of the mathematics department at Ohio Wesleyan (and later held that post as well as being mayor of Delaware, Ohio). In 1919, Garis was named Dean of Students (and continued to hold his position as Professor and head of the Mathematics department). The previous year, David Sherman Morse had accepted a position as Instructor in the department. Morse left in 1920 to pursue studies toward the Ph.D. at Cornell. He obtained that degree in 1923 and rejoined the faculty at Union as Assistant Professor in 1924, the first person in the history of the department to hold the Ph.D. degree in mathematics.

Math Department web pages
Created: 06 Mar 1997
Last modified: 09 Oct 1999 00:00:00
Comments to: math@union.edu