Elias Loomis
| Elias Loomis | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | August 7, 1811 Willington, Connecticut, United States |
| Died |
August 15, 1889 (aged 78) New Haven, Connecticut, United States |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Mathematics, Terrestrial Magnetism |
| Institutions | Western Reserve College, New York University, Yale College |
| Alma mater | Yale College |
Elias Loomis (August 7, 1811 – August 15, 1889) was an American mathematician.
Loomis was born in Willington, Connecticut in 1811. He graduated at Yale College in 1830, was a tutor there for three years (1833–36), and then spent the next year in scientific investigation in Paris. On his return, Loomis was appointed professor of mathematics in the Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio. From 1844 to 1860 he held the professorship of natural philosophy and mathematics in the University of the City of New York, and in the latter year became professor of natural philosophy in Yale. Professor Loomis published (besides many papers in the American Journal of Science and in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society) many textbooks on mathematics, including Analytical Geometry and of the Differential and Integral Calculus, published in 1835.
In 1859 Alexander Wylie, assistant director of London Missionary Press in Shanghai, in cooperation with fellow Chinese scholar Li Shan Lan, translated Elias Loomis's book on Geometry, Differential and Integral Calculus into Chinese. The Chinese text was subsequently translated twice by Japanese scholars into Japanese and published in Japan. Loomis's writings thus played an important role in the transfer of analytical mathematical knowledge to the Far East.
In his memoir of Loomis, Hubert Anson Newton summarized Loomis' work on the historical Geomagnetic Storm of 1859.
Closely connected with terrestrial magnetism, and to be considered with it, is the Aurora Borealis. In the week that covered the end of August and the beginning of September, 1859, there occurred an exceedingly brilliant display of the Northern Lights. Believing that an exhaustive discussion of a single aurora promised to do more for the promotion of science than an imperfect study of an indefinite number of them, Professor Loomis undertook at once to collect and to collate accounts of this display. A large number of such accounts were secured from North America, from Europe, from Asia, and from places in the Southern Hemisphere; especially all the reports from the Smithsonian observers and correspondents, were placed in his hands by the Secretary, Professor Henry.
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