PEIRCE, BENJAMIN (1809-188o), American astronomer and mathematician, son of a Harvard university librarian and his torian, was born at Salem, Mass., on April 4, 1809. He graduated from Harvard in 1825 and, returning there as a tutor in mathe matics in 1831, continued to teach in the university till his death nearly so years later. Tributes concur in the estimate that he was a wonderfully inspiring teacher. In the United States he was the leading mathematician of his time. In Europe he was elected an associate of the Royal Astronomical Society, a foreign member of the Royal Society of London, a correspondent of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a correspondent of the Gesellschaft der Wissenschaf ten in Gottingen. About one-quarter of Peirce's publications deal with topics in pure mathematics and three-quarters with topics mainly in the fields of astronomy, geod esy and mechanics. Of his II works, in 12 volumes, six were ele
mentary texts some of which went through several editions. Among his other works were the notable Analytic Mechanics (1855), and the remarkably original Linear Associative Algebra (lithographed edition of ioo copies, 1870; new ed. by his son C. S. Peirce in American Journal of Mathematics, vol. iv., 1881, reprinted 1882), anticipating important work of Study and Scheffers. There are many references in scientific literature to Peirce's criterion for the rejection of doubtful observations, and it was only recently shown (Popular Astronomy, 1920) that this was fallacious. The computation of the general perturbations of Uranus and Neptune, and the resulting controversy with Leverrier, was the first work to extend Peirce's reputation. He died on Oct. 6, 1880.