Eugenius Nulty Explained

Eugenius Nulty
Birth Date:1790
Birth Place:Ireland
Death Date:July 3, 1871 (age 82)
Death Place:Pennsylvania
Occupation:Mathematician, actuary, teacher

Eugenius Nulty (1790 – July 3, 1871) was an Irish born American mathematician of the 19th century.[1] He served on the faculty of Dickinson College from 1814 to 1816, and later taught and tutored prominent Philadelphians, including the brothers Mathew Carey Lea and Henry Charles Lea.

Career

After arriving in the United States from his native Ireland, Nulty quickly became ensconced as a member of the new nation’s small intelligentsia. Contemporaries described him as “brilliant”.[2] [3]

In 1814, Nulty became a professor of mathematics at Dickinson College, where he remained for two years.[4] [5] In 1816 he moved to Philadelphia at the invitation of The Philadelphia Life Insurance Company and the Pennsylvania Company, who each recruited Nulty as one of the first U.S. actuarial scientists.[6] His new countrymen also called Nulty to assist with mathematics for the Survey of the Coast[7] (which became the United States Coast Survey in 1836 and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878).

In 1817, Nulty was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.[8] In 1823, the University of Pennsylvania awarded Nulty an honorary A.M.[9] He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1832.[10] Nulty was also a correspondent of mathematician, chemist and natural philosopher Robert M. Patterson.[11]

Nulty contributed to the defunct Mathematical Diary, one of the 3 earliest learned mathematical journals published in the U.S. His Elements of Geometry, theoretical and practical Philadelphia: J. Wetham (1836) was one of the first two or three original geometries published in the United States[12] and is still over 150 years later available from multiple publishers in historical reprints.[13]

In 1840, P.J. Walker, director of the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, called Nulty "unsurpassed at home or abroad" in pure mathematics.[14] [15]

Notes and References

  1. Florian Cajori "The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States", Vol. 890–893 (Circulars of Information, United States Bureau of Education, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States, Florian Cajori, Issue 3 of U.S. Bureau of Education, circular of information, 1890, No. 3) Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office (1890), pages 95–96
  2. http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/histories/sellers/chapter_seven.htm#157
  3. James Henry Morgan Dickinson College Mount Pleasant Press, J. Horace McFarland Company (1933) Chapter 15 http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/histories/morgan/chapter_15.html
  4. http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/f/faculty/
  5. Charles Francis Himes A Sketch of Dickinson College, Carlisle, Penn’a Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart (1879), p 152
  6. E.J. Moorhead “Sketches of Early North American Actuaries” Transactions of Society of Actuaries Vol. 36 (1984) “JOSEPH ROBERTS, JR.” p 356;
  7. Hugh Richard Slotten Patronage, Practice, and the Culture of American Science Cambridge University Press (1994), p 130
  8. Web site: APS Member History. 2021-04-02. search.amphilsoc.org.
  9. Committee of the Society of the Alumni Graduates of the Departments of Arts and Sciences and of the Honorary Graduates of the University of Pennsylvania 1749–1880 Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. (1880), p 82
  10. Web site: Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter N. American Academy of Arts and Sciences. September 13, 2016.
  11. http://www.amphilsoc.org/mole/view?docId=ead/Mss.B.P274-ead.xml
  12. http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/browse?type=lcsubc&key=Geometry&c=x
  13. Eugenius Nulty Elements of Geometry, theoretical and practical (1836), reprint Ulan Press (June 4, 2011) BOOATT9698; Eugenius Nulty Elements of Geometry, theoretical and practical (1836), reprint BibloBazaar (August 21, 2008) ; Eugenius Nulty Elements of Geometry, theoretical and practical (1836), Kessinger Legacy Reprints (September 1, 2010) ; and others
  14. https://books.google.com/books?id=_MoAAAAAYAAJ&dq=eugenius+nulty+mathematician&pg=PA447
  15. Proceedings, American Philosophical Society, Commemorating Centennial Anniversary of First Occupation of Hall, Vol. 27, No. 131, Nov. 21, 1889, p 147

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