Thomas Corwin Mendenhall
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| Thomas Corwin Mendenhall | |
 Thomas Corwin Mendenhall
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| Born | October 4, 1841 Hanoverton, Ohio |
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| Died | March 23, 1924 Ravenna, Ohio |
| Nationality | US |
| Fields | physics meteorology |
| Known for | gravity |
Thomas Corwin Mendenhall (October 4, 1841 – March 23, 1924) was an autodidact US physicist and meteorologist.
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[edit] Life
Mendenhall was born in Hanoverton, Ohio to Stephen Mendenhall, a farmer and carriage-maker, and Mary Thomas, and married Susan Allan Marple in 1870. The couple had one child. In 1852 the family moved to Marlboro, Ohio and Mendenhall became principal of the local primary school in 1858. He formalised his teaching qualifications at Southwest Normal School in 1861 with an Instructor Normalis qualificaction.[1]
He taught at a number of high schools, gaining an impressive reputation as a teacher and educator until 1873 when, though he lacked conventional academic credentials, he was appointed professor of physics and mechanics at the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College. The College ultimately became Ohio State University,[1] Mendenhall being the first member of the original faculty.[citation needed]
In 1878,[1] on the recommendation of Edward S. Morse,[citation needed] he was recruited to help the modernisation of Meiji Era Japan as one of the o-yatoi gaikokujin (hired foreigners). Serving as visiting professor at the University of Tokyo, he helped develop the government's meteorological service. During his time in Japan, he also gave public lectures on scientific topics.[1]
Returning to Ohio in 1881, Mendenhall was instrumental in developing the state meteorological service before becoming professor at the US Signal Corps in 1884. Resigning in 1886, Mendenhall took up the presidency of the Rose Polytechnic Institute in Terre Haute, Indiana before becoming superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1889. During his time as superintendent, he issued the Mendenhall Order and oversaw the consequent transition of the USA's weights and measures from the customary system, based on that of England, to the metric system. He was also responsible for defining the exact national boundary between the USA and Canada. Mendenhall was president of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute from 1894 until 1901 when he emigrated to Europe.[1]
He returned to the US in 1912 and died in Ravenna, Ohio.[1]
Mendenhall adapted Kater's pendulum and developed a novel ring pendulum as a means of measuring gravity. He also worked in the fields of seismology[1] and atmospheric electricity.[citation needed]
[edit] Work on stylometry
In 1901 Mendenhall published one of the earliest attempts at stylometry, the quantitative analysis of writing style. Prompted by a suggestion made by the English mathematician Augustus de Morgan in 1851, Mendenhall attempted to characterize the style of different authors through the frequency distribution of words of various lengths. After generating the relevant statistics from published works, he applied his "word spectra" methods to a comparison of the works of William Shakespeare and Sir Francis Bacon. He found that the results did not support long-standing claims that Bacon was the true author of the works usually attriuted to Shakespeare. It has however since been shown by Williams that Mendenhall failed to take into account "genre differences" that could invalidate his conclusions.[2]
[edit] Honors
- Honorary Ph.D. from Ohio, (1878);[citation needed]
- Member of the National Academy of Sciences, (1887);[1]
- LL.D. from the University of Michigan, (1887);[citation needed]
- President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, (1889);[1]
- The Mendenhall Valley and glacier in Juneau, Alaska was named for him in (1892);[citation needed]
- The Mendenhall Laboratory on the campus of The Ohio State University is also named in his honor.[3]
[edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Works by Mendenhall
- Mendenhall, T. C. (1887). A Century of Electricity. New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co..
[edit] Obituary
- Science, 11 July 1924
[edit] Works about Mendenhall
- Alexander, W. H. (1926). "Report of the thirtysixth annual meeting of the Ohio Academy of SciencePDF (1.66 MiB)". Ohio Journal of Science 26(4): 185-186.
- [Anon.] (2001) "Mendenhall, Thomas Corwin", Encyclopaedia Britannica, Deluxe CDROM edition
- Carey, C. W. (1999) "Mendenhall, Thomas Corwin", American National Biography, Oxford University Press, 15: 297-298, ISBN 0-19-520635-5
- Crew, H. (1934) "Thomas Corwin Mendenhall", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 16: 331-315
- Hebra, A. & Hebra, A. J. (2003) Measure for Measure: The Story of Imperial, Metric, and Other Units ISBN 0-8018-7072-0
- Joncich, G. (1966). "Scientists and the schools of the nineteenth century: The case of American physicists". American Quarterly 18(4}: 667-685.
- Mendenhall, T. C. (Jr.) (1989) American Scientist in Early Meiji Japan: The Autobiographical Notes of Thomas C. Mendenhall, ISBN 0-8248-1177-1
- Williams, C. B. (1975). "Mendenhall's Studies of Word-Length Distribution in the Works of Shakespeare and Bacon". Biometrika 62(1): 207-212. (subscription required)
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mendenhall, Thomas Corwin |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | autodidact US physicist and meteorologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 4, 1841 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hanoverton, Ohio |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 23, 1924 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Ravenna, Ohio |
