Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Augustus_Porter_Barnard

Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard (May 5, 1809 – April 27, 1889) was an American scientist and educationalist.

Biography

Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard was born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, on May 5, 1809. In 1828 he graduated, second on the honour list, at Yale University. He was then in turn a tutor at Yale, and as he began to lose his hearing due to a hereditary condition he became a teacher (1831—1832) in the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb at Hartford, Connecticut, and a teacher (1832—1838) in the New York Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb.

From 1838 to 1848 he was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy, and from 1848 to 1854 was professor of chemistry and natural history in the University of Alabama, for two years, also, filling the chair of English literature. In 1854 he was ordained as deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church. In the same year he became professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in the University of Mississippi, of which institution he was chancellor from 1856 until the outbreak of the Civil War, when, his sympathies being with the North, he resigned and went to Washington.

In 1860, he was one of the party sent to Labrador to observe an eclipse of the sun; in 1862 he was at work on the reduction of Gilliss's observations of the stars of the southern hemisphere, and in 1863 he superintended the publication of maps and charts of the United States Coast Survey. He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1866; a member of the board of experts of the American Bureau of Mines in 1865, and a member of the American Institute in 1872.

In 1864 he became the tenth president of Columbia College (now Columbia University) in New York City, which position he held until the year before his death, his service thus being longer than that of any of his predecessors. During this period the growth of the college was rapid; new departments were established; the elective system was greatly extended; more adequate provision was made for graduate study and original research, and the enrollment was increased from about 150 to more than 1000 students. Barnard strove to have educational privileges extended by the university to women as well as to men, and Barnard College, for women, established immediately after his death, was named in his honour.

Barnard was a classical and English scholar, a mathematician, a physicist, a chemist, and a good public speaker. His annual reports to the Board of Trustees of Columbia included valuable discussions of educational problems.

Barnard and Arnold Henry Guyot were Editors-in-Chief of the 1876 Johnson’s New Universal Cyclopaedia.

Barnard wrote Treatise on Arithmetic (1830); an Analytical Grammar with Symbolic Illustration (1836); Letters on Collegiate Government (1855); History of the United States Coast Survey (1857); Recent Progress in Science (1869); and The Metric System (1871).

He died in New York City on the 27th of April 1889. He left the bulk of his property to Columbia College.

Family

His brother, John G. Barnard was a career engineering officer in the U.S. Army, serving as the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy and then as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

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Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard was born 5 May 1809 in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He graduated second in the Class of 1828 with honors at Yale. He began teaching at Connecticut’s Hartford Grammar School, and in his spare time he played piano and flute and learned seven languages. By 1832 Barnard had determined that pedagogy was not a good career choice because of his acute hearing impairment. He spent the next six years working at the New York State Institute, a school for the deaf and mute. In 1837, after returning from a research trip to Yale, Barnard met Basil Manly, president of the University of Alabama, who offered Barnard the school’s chair of mathematics and natural philosophy. He accepted.

Barnard spent the next decade and a half there, conducting scientific researching and publishing, before moving on in 1854 to hold the chair of mathematics at the University of Mississippi. Soon after moving to Oxford, Barnard entered the Episcopal priesthood. When Augustus B. Longstreet resigned as the university’s president, the religious factions among the school’s leaders scrambled to select his successor, and in 1856 the Episcopalians, who held a majority on the board, appointed Barnard to the position.

Barnard worked tirelessly to place the university in the top tier of American institutions. His outgoing nature, support of the school’s literary societies, and efforts to construct a recreational gymnasium won him the admiration of the students. He also advocated the creation of departments of medicine, law, agriculture, science, classics, and political history. Barnard used the legislature’s 1856 appropriations for the university to build an observatory for the world’s largest telescope and laboratories for barometry, geology, and chemistry, facilities considered “the most perfect” in America. Although several of his proposed reforms did not materialize, the school added a chair in English literature, expanded the administration, achieved better disciplinary control over students, and instituted an emphasis on grammar and composition during the freshman and junior years.

Despite his successes, Barnard also faced a stream of problems, including disputes with professors and lack of funds for a respectable library. In 1861, when the Civil War erupted, Barnard resigned. Even though he owned slaves, Barnard never accepted the legitimacy of slavery and opposed secession. In December 1861 he moved back to the Northeast, and in May 1864 Barnard accepted the presidency of the small Columbia College (now Columbia University) and shaped it into a first-rate university. While in New York, he helped found the National Academy of Sciences and championed coeducation. Barnard remained at Columbia until his death in 1889, at which time the University of Mississippi faculty paid him tribute: “We hear of his death with regretful sorrow, recognizing the fact that the University of Mississippi has lost a friend, the cause of education, a strong support, and science, a vigorous advocate.”