David Rittenhouse: Modern Mathematician

O n the surface it seems implausible that a colonial scientist could be characterized as a mathematician by today’s standards. Yet the single aim of this note is to provide evidence that two of David Rittenhouse’s papers from 220 years ago qualify him as a modern analyst. Rittenhouse (1732–1796) had no formal education and never earned a degree. Except for a brief appointment as professor of astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, he never held an academic position. Yet he became one of America’s leading colonial scientists. Rittenhouse can be regarded as a modern mathematician in three ways. For one, his research on the transit of Venus of 1769 was financed by a governmental agency (the Colony of Pennsylvania) for the first time in American history, setting an early precedent for NSF grants. For another, much like Oswald Veblen in World War I, he aided a war effort by refining the ballistics of rifles and cannons as well as locating forts to maximize defenses for General Washington. But the main reason is because of two papers he read at scientific meetings and subsequently published in that society’s Transactions. A close reading of these papers would label him an analyst—even, perhaps, a numerical analyst—today.