Howarth, RJ;
Müller, WH;
(2019)
The life and work of Robert J. Adcock. Part II: biography and establishment of authorship.
Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
10.1098/rsnr.2019.0028.
(In press).
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Abstract
Between 1870 and 1896, the American mathematician Robert Jackson Adcock (1826–1895) contributed a number of short articles to early mathematical journals such as The Analyst. His biography is given here for the first time. An obscure figure hitherto associated with the history of regression analysis and least-squares, he has, on occasion, been confused with a nephew of the same name. Before the American Civil War, Adcock was first a pupil and then taught at the Western Military Institute, which became the Kentucky Military Institute, near Frankfort, Kentucky. Afterwards, despite occasionally being hospitalized during periods of mental illness, he became a wealthy farmer who could afford mathematical recreation as a hobby. His self-published pamphlet ‘Gravitation to the sphere and the two ellipsoids of revolution’ (1872), recently discovered in the Library of the Royal Society, is discussed in Part I. Here we establish his authorship of all mathematical works by ‘R. J. Adcock’.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | The life and work of Robert J. Adcock. Part II: biography and establishment of authorship |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.1098/rsnr.2019.0028 |
Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2019.0028 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
Keywords: | biography, Kentucky Military Institute, Knox College, history of mathematics |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10108718 |
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