Page:Scientific Papers of Josiah Willard Gibbs - Volume 2.djvu/284

 was born on March 19th, 1830, at Sherburne, N.Y., and died at New Haven, Conn., on the 12th day of August, 1896. He was the fifth son of a family of seven sons and four daughters, children of William and Lois (Butler) Newton. The parents traced their ancestory back to the first settlers of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and had migrated from the latter to Sherburne, when many parts of central New York were still a wilderness. They both belonged to families remarkable for longevity, and lived themselves to the ages of ninety-three and ninety-four years. Of the children, all the sons and two daughters were living as recently as the year 1889, the youngest being then fifty-three years of age. William Newton was a man of considerable enterprise, and undertook the construction of the Buffalo section of the Erie canal, as well as other work in canal and railroad construction in New York and Pennsylvania. In these constructions he is said to have relied on his native abilities to think out for himself the solution of problems which are generally a matter of technical training. His wife was remarkable for great strength of character united with a quiet temperament and well-balanced mind, and was noted among her neighbors for her mathematical powers.

Young Newton, whose mental endowments were thus evidently inherited, and whose controlling tastes were manifested at a very early age, fitted for college at the schools of Sherburne, and at the age of sixteen entered Yale College in the class graduating in 1850. After graduation he pursued his mathematical studies at New Haven and at home, and became tutor at Yale in January, 1853, when on account of the sickness and death of Professor Stanley the whole charge of the mathematical department devolved on him from the first.