4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wherever truth and duty, as he conceived them, might lead " — was 

 pastor of a church. He grew up inclined to sedentary habits, hav- 

 ing a taste for mathematics inherited from his father, and exhibit- 

 ing a love for the languages at an age so early that he was reading 

 with ease the New Testament in Greek at a period when many 

 bright boys still have hard work with the reading of English. He 

 prepared for college chiejly under the instruction of his father, 

 spending only one winter at the academy, and was examined and 

 admitted to Yale College at the age of fourteen, but waited, on ac- 

 count of his health, another year before taking his place in class. 

 In college he took a good rank in all his studies, without showing 

 a particularly superior proficiency in any one over another. A 

 few weeks before his graduation, in 1830, he entered Mount Hope 

 Institute, near Baltimore, as a teacher. Thence he went, in the 

 fall of 1831, to Andover Theological Seminary as a student for 

 the ministry, but was called from that vocation in May, 1833, to 

 become a tutor in Yale College. He remained in this position till 

 the spring of 1836, when he was appointed Professor of Mathe- 

 matics and Natural Philosophy in Western Reserve College, Hud- 

 son, Ohio. Prior to entering upon the duties of this chair he 

 spent a year in Europe attending the lectures of the distinguished 

 French physicists of the time. He also purchased in London 

 and Paris apparatus for use in his professorship and an outfit for 

 a small observatory. He remained at Hudson — the college and 

 himself being both in straitened financial condition — till 1844, 

 when he became Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philoso- 

 phy in the University of New York. He then spent one year at 

 Princeton College in the professorship which had been vacated 

 by the resignation of Prof. Joseph Henry to become Secretary of 

 the Smithsonian Institution, then returned to his old place in the 

 University of New York, and continued there till 1860, when he 

 was elected to the professorship in Yale College made vacant by 

 the death of Prof. Olmsted. Here he spent the remainder of his 

 life in active service, teaching, investigating, experimenting, and 

 publishing as long as he was able to work. 



For a summary of Prof. Loomis's labors for the increase and 

 extension of knowledge we are indebted to the memorial address 

 of Prof. H. A. Newton, delivered before the President and Fellows 

 of Yale College, in April, 1890, of which what follows is essen- 

 tially an abridgment. 



He had begun his active career before his mind seemed to in- 

 cline to any one direction of study in preference to another. In 

 childhood he was most ready in Greek ; in college he was equally 

 proficient in all his studies ; at Andover he led his class in He- 

 brew ; in his tutorship at Yale he taught Latin when he might have 

 had mathematics. The great meteoric shower of 1833 was the sub- 



