| Oscar Sherman Adams | |
| Birth Date: | January 9, 1874 |
| Birth Place: | Mount Vernon, Ohio, U.S. |
| Death Place: | Mount Vernon, Ohio, U.S. |
| Alma Mater: | Kenyon College |
| Field: | Geodesy |
| Workplaces: | U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, |
Oscar Sherman Adams (January 9, 1874 – March 5, 1962) was an American mathematician, geodesist, and cartographer who worked for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1910 to 1944. He was one of the foremost experts on map projections, and was instrumental in the foundation of the North American Datum of 1927 and the State Plane Coordinate System.
Adams was born January 9, 1874, on a farm near Mount Vernon, Ohio, the youngest child of David Washington Adams and Louisa A. Adams (née McElroy). He attended local public schools in Gambier, and was an undergraduate student at Kenyon College, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree as valedictorian of the class of 1896.
Both of Adams's parents died in 1893, when he was 19 years old.
In April 1898 the Spanish–American War began. Adams joined Company L of the Fourth Regiment Ohio Volunteers Infantry and was sent as a corporal to fight in the Puerto Rico campaign. The 4th Ohio arrived in Puerto Rico on August 3, captured the town of Guayama, and were set to make another attack when an armistice was signed and hostilities abruptly ended on August 12. By early November the regiment was back home, and in January was disbanded.
After the war, Adams returned to Ohio to teach mathematics, and became the superintendent of schools in Centerburg 1899–1903, Dover 1903–1905, and Rock Creek 1905–1906; he was high school principal in North Madison 1906–1910.
In 1910, Adams took a job as a geodetic computer with the Coast and Geodetic Survey (C&GS) in Manila, the Philippines, at that time an unincorporated U.S. territory conquered in the Spanish–American War. In 1913, he was assigned to the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the C&GS, where he remained until his retirement.
In 1915, Adams published a technical manual (about adjusting triangulation networks) for the C&GS, the first of many, for which he earned a Master of Arts degree from Kenyon; in 1922 Kenyon awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree.
In September 1917, with the entry of the United States into World War I, Adams and many other C&GS employees were transferred to the military, Adams as a first lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. While many of the newly minted C&GS Corps officers were sent on field missions overseas, for instance as marine navigators or artillery orienteering officers, Adams stayed in Washington, D.C. and in less than two months was discharged back to the C&GS.
Adams rose through the geodesy ranks at the C&GS, from geodetic computer to mathematician, senior mathematician, and finally principal mathematician, one of the top technical positions. During the 1920s–1940s he was one of the top theoretical experts on geodesy and map projections within the U.S. federal government, personally making many decision about the projections used for maps of the United States and various states, and overseeing their computations.
On June 20, 1900, Adams, then superintendent of Centerburg, Ohio, married Mary Edna Fuller. The couple had three children together, Catherine, Jane Elizabeth, and George David.
In November 1935, Adams's wife Edna died. Two years later, in 1937, Adams married the widow Pauline Gleason Pealer; they had one daughter, Carola Ann.
In July 1944, Adams retired from the C&GS and moved back to Ohio with his wife, to a farm they bought near Mount Vernon. About 18 years later, on March 5, 1962, he died of viral pneumonia, age 88; he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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In the late 1910s, Adams was a regular contributor of problems and solutions to the American Mathematical Monthly.