Peirce, Benjamin

Benjamin Peirce, (born April 4, 1809, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 6, 1880, Cambridge, Massachusetts), American mathematician, astronomer, and educator who computed the general perturbations of the planets Uranus and Neptune.

Peirce graduated from Harvard University in 1829 and accepted a teaching position with George Bancroft at his Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts. Two years later Peirce was asked to join the faculty at Harvard as a tutor in mathematics. Much of his reputation was based on two of his early works. The first was his solution to a mathematical problem proposed in the journal Mathematical Diary, in which he proved that there is no odd perfect number (a number that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors) with fewer than four distinct prime factors; the second was his commentary and revision of his countryman Nathaniel Bowditch’s translation of the first four volumes of the Frenchman Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Traité de mécanique céleste (1798–1827; “Treatise on Celestial Mechanics”).

In 1833 Peirce received his M.A. from Harvard and was named a professor of astronomy and mathematics. During the next decade he wrote a series of textbooks and monographs dealing with trigonometry, algebra, geometry, astronomy, and navigation, as well as An Elementary Treatise on Sound (1836), based on the work of physicist Sir William Herschel. Peirce was instrumental in establishing the Harvard Observatory, and in 1842 he became Harvard’s Perkins Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy, a position he held until his death. In this capacity he helped determine the orbit of the newly discovered planet Neptune and calculated the perturbations produced between its own orbit and those of Uranus and other planets. Peirce, who was an influential proponent of Sir William Hamilton’s ideas, did more than anyone else to develop interest in quaternions (Hamilton’s generalization of complex numbers to three dimensions) in the United States.

Considered the leading American mathematician of his day, Peirce was named to a five-man committee by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1847 to plan and organize what was to be the Smithsonian Institution. From 1849 to 1867 Peirce served as consulting astronomer to the newly created American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, and in 1852 he began a long association with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Starting as director of longitude determinations, he eventually became superintendent of the survey (1867–74) and oversaw the production of the first geodetic map of the country independent of local surveys. Peirce also served, in 1863, as one of the 50 incorporators of the National Academy of Sciences. His book A System of Analytical Mechanics (1855) is considered one of the most important mathematical books produced in the United States up to that date. His best work, Linear Associative Algebra (1870), which is a study of possible systems of multiple algebras, stemmed from his interest in quaternions.