Adrain

Robert Adrain

Born: 30 Sept 1775 in Carrickfergus, Ireland
Died: 10 Aug 1843 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

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Adrain took part in the Irish rebellion of 1798 and escaped with his wife to the USA. He was professor of mathematics at Queen's University (now Rutgers) New Brunswick from 1809 to 1813 then at Columbia University from 1813 to 1826.

Adrain published on the normal law of errors in 1808, one year before Gauss. He studied the catenary and other curves. He gave 1/319 as the elipticity of the Earth, a figure better than Laplace who gave 1/336.

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. J J Coolidge, Robert Adrain and the beginning of American mathematics, Amer. Math. Monthly 33 (1926), 61-76.
  3. J Dutka, Robert Adrain and the Method of Least Squares, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 41 (1990-91), 171-184.
  4. E R Hogan, Robert Adrain : American mathematician, Historia Mathematica 4 (1977), 157-172.
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