The New International Encyclopædia/Barnard, Frederick Augustus Porter

BARNARD, Frederick Augustus Porter (1809-89). An American mathematician and educator. He was born at Sheffield, Mass., graduated at Yale 1828, and in 1831 became teacher in the Hartford Deaf and Dumb Asylum. He was professor of natural philosophy and mathematics in the University of Alabama, from 1837 to 1848, and of chemistry until 1854, when he took orders in the Episcopal Church. In 1855 he was professor of astronomy and mathematics in the University of Mississippi, and became president of that institution in 1856. He became president of Columbia College, New York, in 1864, and during twenty-four years labored with great success for its advancement. He was United States Commissioner to the Paris Exposition of 1867, and published a report on machinery and industrial arts, in 1869. He wrote a Treatise on Arithmetic (1830), Analytical Grammar with Symbolic Illustration (1836), Letters on College Government (1855), History of the United States Coast Survey (1857), Recent Progress of Science (1869), The Metric System (1871), and various smaller papers. 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 Gillis'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 1860; a member of the board of experts of the Bureau of Mines in 1865, and a member of the American Institute in 1872. He left the bulk of his property to Columbia College. Barnard College, affiliated with Columbia University, is named after him. Consult: Fulton, Memoirs of Barnard (New York, 1896).