Benjamin Peirce

Benjamin Peirce (April 4, 1809, Salem, Massachusetts – October 6, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1880) was the first internationally known American-born mathematician and is sometimes called "the father of American mathematics". He was the first to recognize the linear associative algebra as an important mathematical structure and to give several of its properties.

Peirce was also a highly respected astronomer who helped determine the orbit of the newly discovered (1846) planet Neptune and calculated the perturbations produced between its own orbit and those of Uranus and other planets.

Benjamin Peirce is the father of Charles Sanders Peirce, a well-known philosopher and mathematician.

Life

Benjamin Peirce graduated from Harvard in 1829 and accepted a teaching position with George Bancroft at his Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts. Two years later, at the age of twenty-two, Peirce was asked to join the faculty at Harvard as a tutor in mathematics. He stayed there until his death in 1880. In 1833 Peirce received his M.A. from Harvard and was promoted to professor of astronomy and mathematics.

In the same year Peirce married Sarah Hunt Mills; four sons were born to the couple. The eldest, James Mills Peirce, was for forty-five years a prominent mathematician at Harvard; Charles Sanders Peirce, was known for his work in mathematics and physics, but also recognized for his discoveries in logic and philosophy; Benjamin Mills Peirce, brilliant but undisciplined, died in early manhood; and Herbert Henry Davis Peirce was a Cambridge businessman.

When the American Civil War started, Peirce was at first a pro-slavery Democrat with many good friends in the South. After the fall of Fort Sumter Peirce became a strong Union supporter.

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