Thomas Corwin Mendenhall

Thomas Corwin Mendenhall ( born October 4, 1841 in Hanoverton, Ohio, † March 23, 1924 in Ravenna ( Ohio)) was an American physicist, meteorologist and self-taught Shakespeare researchers.

Life

Mendenhall was born in Hanoverton, Ohio, the son of the farmer Stephen Mendenhall and his wife Mary Thomas. He married in 1870 Susan Allan Marple. The marriage produced a child went forth. 1852 the family moved to Marlboro, Ohio, where he was director of the elementary school in 1858. In 1861 he improved his teaching skills at the "Southwest Normal School " by an "IN" Instructor normalis qualification at a school in Lebanon (Ohio ), the only ever " acquired " from his academic degree. He taught at various high schools and gained high recognition as a teacher and educator. Although he had not undergone conventional academic training, he was sent to the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical School ( later Ohio State University ) was appointed in 1873 as professor of physics and mechanics.

In 1878 he was probably chosen on the recommendation of Morse, to promote the modernization of meteorology in the Japanese Meiji era, where he served as o- yatoi gaikokujin at the Imperial University of Tokyo, the meteorological service of the Japanese government helped to develop. In addition, he kept during his three-year stay in Japan (1878-1880) lectures on various scientific topics and ascended the Fuji, on whose summit he performed gravity measurements in August 1880.

Upon his return to Ohio in 1881, he was instrumental in setting up the state weather service, before he received in 1884 a professorship at the U.S. Army Signal Corps. In 1886 he gave up this position and took over the Presidency of the Rose Polytechnic Institute in Terre Haute from 1886 to 1889.

In 1889 he became superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. In this time he wrote in 1893 called Mendenhall Order and oversaw the transition of the U.S. weight and measurement systems from the English to the metric system of units with the introduction of meters and kilograms as standard units in the United States. During this time (1889 ) may also be presided as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ( AAAS) falls. He was responsible for the exact boundary between the United States and Canada. From 1894 to 1901 he was president of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute ( WPI). After that, he retired with his wife for 11 years, traveling extensively overseas back to Europe, Egypt, Japan, among others He returned back to the U.S. in 1912 and died in 1922 in Ravenna / Ohio.

Scientific Importance

His scientific achievements were more on the integrative- organizational than the purely scientific side. He adapted Kater 's pendulum and developed a new ring pendulum for gravity determination. He also worked in the field of seismology and atmospheric electricity. With his assistant, " MC Adie " he conducted research into lightning strike through on the 1884 built, then highest building in the world, the Washington Monument. He is considered a pioneer of Japanese-American scientific cooperation.

Stylometrie and Shakespeare authorship debate

In 1887 he published one of the first quantitative scientific studies to measure literary style criteria ( Stylometrie ), that is a form of statistical style analysis, which should contribute to the authorship determination of historical texts. It had been suggested for this purpose in 1851 by the English mathematician Augustus de Morgan. Mendenhall tried in particular to bring out the style characteristics of different authors by statistical analysis of the frequency distributions of different word lengths. Because of his studies he came within the research about the Shakespearean authorship debate to the conclusion that Francis Bacon could not be the suspected author of Shakespeare's works. While in 1975, C. B. Williams Mendenhall presented results due to statistical error of the data grouping questioned Peter Farey came with computer methods give similar results as Mendenhall, after Christopher Marlowe's works stylistically coincide with the beginning of Shakespeare's works canon.

Honors

  • Honorary Doctorate Ph.D. of Ohio 1878
  • Member of the National Academy of Sciences 1887
  • Doctor of Juridical Science, LL.D., of the University of Michigan in 1887
  • President of the " American Association for the Advancement of Science" in 1889
  • The Mendenhall Valley and the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska in 1892 were named after him.
  • Franklin Medal in 1918
  • The Mendenhall Laboratory on the campus of The Ohio State University bears his name in 1926

Literature

Writings

  • TC Mendenhall and OHTittmann, The Geographical Work of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, The Geographical Journal 1898

Swell

  • C. W Carey. (1999) " Mendenhall, Thomas Corwin ," Oxford University Press, 15
  • Obituary in Science, 1924
  • TCMendenhall, Report on Studies in Atmospheric Electricity Nat.Acad.Sciences Memoirs 1891
  • H. Crew " Thomas Corwin Mendenhall ," Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (1934 )
  • R.Rubinger (ed.). An American Scientist in Early Meiji Japan: The autobiographical notes of Thomas C.Mendenhall, Univ.of Hawaii Press 1989.
  • T. C. Mendenhall. (Jr. ) ( 1989) American Scientist in Early Meiji Japan: The Autobiographical Notes of Thomas C. Mendenhall, ISBN 0-8248-1177-1
  • P.Grzybek, ( ed.) ( 2006): Contributions to the Science of Text and Language. Word Length Studies and Related Issues. Dordrecht, Springer2006
Ravenna (Ohio) William Shakespeare Lebanon (Ohio) Samuel Morse Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Stylometry Science (journal) Integrated Authority File
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