Elijah Hinsdale Burritt

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt (born April 20, 1794 in New Britain , Connecticut , † January 3, 1838 in Galveston , Texas ) was an American mathematician and astronomer . He is sometimes called "the forgotten astronomer".

Life

Elijah Burritt was born the first of ten children to a poor farming family in New Britain , Hartford County ( Connecticut , USA ). His parents were Elihu Burritt Jr. (1765-1827) and Elizabeth Hinsdale (1775-1843). Little is known about his early childhood and youth. It is believed that he graduated from the state schools customary at the time. When he was about 18 he was sent to Simsbury (Connecticut) to learn the trade of blacksmith from Samuel Booth. He stayed there for about 2 years. During this time he began to study astronomy and mathematics.

Back in his parents' house there was an accident that restricted his freedom of movement. Circumstances prompted him to delve into his studies, which friends noticed of him. They motivated him to go to Williams College , which he did in 1816. The following year he was forced to teach himself to finance his own studies. He became a teacher at Sanderson Academy in Ashfield, Massachusetts . Burritt resumed his own studies at the same college in 1818, but left it before graduation.

He went to Milledgeville , then the capital of Georgia , in 1819 . During the next few years he worked there as a teacher, editor and owner of a weekly newspaper as well as in civil engineering. On October 28, 1819, he married Ann Williams Watson, who grew up in this town. They had five children together. During this time he was commissioned by the state of Georgia to explore the Chattahoochee River , which is part of the border with Alabama . His report (manuscript) on this activity from 1826 is preserved in the Atlanta City Archives . During the time of the uprising for the liberation of slaves in the north, he received publications from friends in his homeland. Carelessly, he did not move these documents aside, so that various people read it and accused him of a "northern state" attitude, even though he was neutral. Ultimately, this situation forced him to abandon his hard-earned existence and move back to his hometown in 1829.

Once there, he converted his parents' house into a boarding school and day school. On the upper floor he set up an observatory with a newly acquired telescope and other astronomical instruments and opened his own school. His youngest brother Elihu, who would later become a world-famous philologist , received and also taught at this school at times.

In 1837 Elijah Burritt organized a group of 30 colonists who wanted to travel to Galveston , Texas , to settle there after the Mexican troops were defeated by the Texans in the Battle of San Jacinto under Sam Houston . The US government promised willing people a piece of land to colonize the new area. His sister Emily and brother William were among the colonists. A ship was booked, which got caught in a storm shortly before arriving at its destination and ran aground on a sandbank. It took a few days before all the passengers were able to save themselves ashore. After several more days of traveling overland, they reached Houston , but no arrangements had been made for the newcomers. They had to live in tents and soon the yellow fever broke out. Most of the colonists in Burritt's group were killed by this disease, including Elijah himself, as well as his brother. He died at the age of 44 on January 3, 1838, a few weeks after the group had reached their destination.

plant

Elijah Burritt wrote two well-known books, which were consistently characterized by their simple, attractive and interesting writing. As a result, many of his books have been used as helpful teaching aids in schools for years. In addition, he wrote a little book on astronomy in which he documents instructions on how to find objects from Carey's Celestial Globe. It was published in Georgia in 1821. In addition, he published another document in Hartford in 1830 , which simply and clearly contained general factors for calculating interest at the rates customary in the USA at the time.

Logarithmick arithmetick

His first publication was entitled "Logarithmick Arithmetick" and appeared in 1818 while studying at college. Half of it consisted of an introduction to arithmetic, followed by a part on astronomy with tables and a longer set of tables with the logarithms from 1 to 10,000 to seven decimal places and a description of a method for calculating the logarithms up to 10,000 '000 to calculate.

Geography of Heavens & Celestial Atlas

His main work, however, is his well-known “ Geography of the Heavens ” with the accompanying “ Celestial Atlas ”. At the beginning he describes constellations, going deep into the mythology and history of the constellations. He also mentions important individual stars by name and explains known facts about them. With the help of the atlas, anyone can easily orientate themselves to the sky and find the objects quickly. This section is followed by a section on the solar system. Here he introduces all known planets, satellites (moons), comets and the rules of their movements due to gravity. It also includes eclipses, transits, and occultations. In addition, there are many questions and tasks to be solved by students.

In the atlas for the main book, graphic representations of the constellations with stars up to the sixth magnitude as well as the sketches in high-contrast colors of the depicting figures for the corresponding constellations were visible. This made the supplement a lively and very attractive work. In addition, there were seven maps that covered the polar regions and the four cardinal points around the equator. The last map represented the entire sky as a Mercator projection and showed the position of the sun on every day of the year. All representations were drawn by Burritt and produced under his direction. The entire work was designed as a textbook for use in elementary and high schools and was published in Hartford, Connecticut in early 1833 . The work was so popular that the first edition was sold out within a year. A second edition was published in 1835. Due to the great demand, the third, expanded edition was printed a year later, in which the well-known Scottish author of scientific and philosophical books, Thomas Dick, wrote an introduction.

The amount of the respective editions is not known today. It is estimated that in these and other improved editions (a total of ten are known) a total of about 300,000 units were sold by 1876. A considerable amount if you take into account the technical possibilities at that time and the time frame of only 43 years. His main works are still available today in recent editions.

literature

• Geography of the Heavens. new edition. ISBN 0-548-88128-6 . (engl.)
• Mirlyn Catalog Publications by EH Burritt

Web links

• Graphics from Celestial Atlas (Engl.)
• The Forgotten Astronomer Biography in English