AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
(THIRD SERIE s.t 
ArT. X XIX.—BENJAMIN PEIRCE.* 
BENJAMIN PEIRCE was born in Salem, Mass., on the 4th day 
of April, 1809, and he died at Cambridge, on the 6th day of 
October, 1880. 
In his early years he had the good fortune to come under the 
influence of Doctor Nathaniel Bowditch. It is said that their 
rst acquaintance was made while Dr. Bowditch’s son Ingersoll 
and young Peirce were schoolmates. Ingersoll showed his 
comrade a solution which his father had prepared of a problem 
that the boys had been at work upon. Some error, real or con- 
ceived, was pointed out in the work, which was reported by 
Ingersoll to his father. ‘Bring me that boy who corrects my 
mathematics!” was the invitation to an acquaintance, the im- 
portance of which in Professor Peirce’s own estimation is told 
in the dedication, more than thirty years later, of his “ Analytic 
Mechanics” “to the cherished and revered memor 
Master in Science, Nathaniel Bowditch, the father of American 
Geometry.” 
Peirce entered Harvard College in 1825. As Doctor Bow- 
ditch was now in Boston, having removed from Salem in 1823, 
and was preparing the first volume of his translation of La- 
place’s “ Mécanique Céleste” for the press, it followed almost as 
a matter of course that the college student was more influenced 
in his studies by him than by the college course. Doctor Bow- 
ditch’s first volume was completed and the second entered for 
_ * The Journal is indebted for this memoir to advance sheets from the Proceed- 
ings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston. 
Am, Jour. — Serres, Vou. XXII, No. 129.—8 
ER, 1881 
