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\title{The Early History of the Mathematics Department\\ 1769 --
  1961\\
  {\normalsize Dedicatory Conference, Albert Bradley Center for Mathematics}}

\author{Bancroft H. Brown}
\date{November 3, 1961}


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Dartmouth's poet, Richard Hovey, described the intellectual start of
the College in the words: 
\begin{verbatim}
      Eleazar was the Faculty, 
      And the whole curriculum 
      Was five hundred gallons of New England rum.
\end{verbatim}


The last two lines may be undergraduate exuberance, but the first line
is the truth. The Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, who founded the College in
1769, was Professor of Divinity (in addition to being President,
Treasurer, and Trustee), and he was the only professor at Dartmouth
for many years. The remainder of the instruction was given by tutors,
recent graduates of Yale or of Dartmouth, under the easily understood
assumption that if you had graduated from college, you were competent
to teach any course in the college.

The first Professor of Mathematics was Bezaleel Woodward, who was
promoted from Tutor in 1782. As would be true for many of his
successors, he was a man of varied talents. He was Vice-President,
Trustee, Treasurer, and Librarian of the College. He was a prominent
politician, a Justice of the Municipal Court (he sent two college
cooks to the whipping stand for stealing supplies), a noted Surveyor,
Promoter of the Dartmouth College lotteries, and ``Contractor'' for the
construction of the first permanent College building: Dartmouth Hall.
His teaching activities comprised ``advanced'' arithmetic (allegation,
false position, the mechanical powers, gauging), and algebra, plane
and solid geometry, trigonometry, and surveying. This was the standard
college fare of the times.

During the next 125 years he was followed by a succession of twelve
worthies whose individual fortunes it seems hardly necessary to trace
out. No one of them was in any sense a trained mathematician, and no
one of them considered mathematics to be his inevitable career. It was
not uncommon to begin as a tutor in Latin and Greek, be appointed to
the chair of Mathematics (generally regarded as the least desirable
regular post), and end up as Professor of Oratory and Eelles Letters.

A few names stand out. From 1810 to 1833 there was Ebenezer Adams, he
of ``the roaring voices and the author of a best-selling text \textit{The
Scholar's Arithmetic}'', which on page 210 contained a set of ``Pleasant
and diverting Questions''. It was a new idea to find pleasure and
diversion, even briefly, in this dreadful mathematics.

And there was Stephen Chase, `Brunol' to the undergraduates who for 13
long years was the most detested professor Dartmouth has over known,
and that is not a light statement. Mathematics was a requirement
throughout Freshman and Sophomore years. Bruno, stall, slim, sandy
complexion, red hair", with his gift of exquisite sarcasm did nothing
to ease this loads At the end of the Sophomore year an elaborate rite
of burying the text-books was conducted, a rite with a real coffin,
pallbearers, mourners, an ode, and an oration.

At the other extreme was James W. Patterson, in his time easily the
most popular man in the College community. He had accepted the
position of Professor of Mathematics not that he cared at all for the
subject, but because be wanted to be on the Faculty, and this was the
only position opens President Lord was extremely critical of his
scientific ability, and, reading between the lines, one guesses that
his students were not over-worked But while his mathematical talents
may have been mediocre, his fame as an orator spread rapidly: he was
twice elected to the national House of Representatives, and then
became United States Senators He returned briefly to his College,
years later, as Professor of Oratory.

The one example of mathematical competency was furnished by Arthur
Sherburn Hardy who wrote a book on quaternions, an adequate, if not
inspiring text. It was something for Dartmouth to offer a course in
such an abstruse field, and the course was actually given a few times
when a student and an instructor could be found simultaneously. In
1893 Professor Hardy failed in his ambition to be elected President of
Dartmouth College. He resigned, entered the diplomatic service, and
was successively Ambassador to Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, and Spain.
He was also a novelist with a national reputation, and if a modern
generation fails to find in his books the values which their
great-grandfathers found, the fact remains that his books were
best-sellers in their day.

The turning point in the College came in 1893 when Dr. Tucker was
elected to the presidency He inherited a small, moribund college,
probably the most orthodox and conservative institution in New
England, with a Faculty which a not too charitable public believed to
consist largely of broken-down Congregational ministers. It was a
college which for years had been torn by wrangles between President,
Trustees, Faculty, students and alumni As assets he had:

\begin{itemize}
\item the reputation of the College as a citadel of freedom resulting
  from the Dartmouth College Case,
\item a record of distinguished graduates,
\item a loyal alumni body.
\end{itemize}

Dr. Tucker did everything. He healed the discords; he went out and
engaged new and stimulating men as professors in the humanities, the
sciences, and especially the social sciences. He immediately won the
affection of the alumni, the Faculty recognized him as a leader, and
his powerful personality was impressed on the students through his
chapel talks. He was a community leader, he secured an adequate water
system, and a competent fire departments You have to live in a small
community to realize how much these last two things mean.

Every one spoke of ``the new Dartmouth'' A new vitality was apparent
Professors Nichols and Hull were doing research of fundamental
importance in Physics. Other significant research names were Frost in
Astronomy, Hitchcock in Geology, Bartlett in Chemistry, and Patten in
Biology. There was no such activity in mathematics Two men, Frank
Asbury Sherman and Thomas Wilson Dorr Worthen, with temporary help
from Professor Hardy and an occasional tutor, had constituted the
Department since the early 70's, and would continue until 1911,
actually after Dr. Tucker had retired. These were men of standing and
even eminence in the community. But they taught exactly as every
Dartmouth Professor of Mathematics had taught since the days of
Bezaleel Woodward. A class meeting was literally a recitation, you
recited on what you had ``committed'', or you were sent to the
blackboard to work out a problem which you theoretically hid dove the
night before. No mathematical lecture was ever given in the 19th
century, and there was very little in the way of explanation.
Dartmouth was, and too long would continue to be, a textbook
colleges The texts were announced in the college catalogue, and quite
frequently you could use the books your father had used. There was no
mathematical library at all. The concept of mathematical Search had
simply never occurred to any one on Hanover Plain. For 40 years
"Frankie" Sherman, and ``Tute'' Worthen conducted recitations with
terrific vigor, and complete lack of rigor.

Professor Nichols succeeded Dr. Tucker in the Presidency in 1909.
Professors Sherman and Worthen were due to retire in 1911. President
Nichols, himself a research physicist with an international
reputation, wanted a top-notch mathematician who could take over, and
so in 1909 Charles Nelson Haskins was elected Assistant Professor of
Mathematics, with every expectation that he would be made Head of the
Department two years later. An outstanding record at M.I.T. had won
him a fellowship at Harvard where his graduate career was brilliant. 
He was the first mathematician to come to Dartmouth with an earned
Ph.D., he had had considerable teaching experiences It looked like an
excellent appointments.

To his aging colleagues who had probably never heard of an
epsilon-delta proof, the rigorous standards of this young man must
have seemed appalling under his skillful handling (and uncanny
knowledge of the market) the mathematical section of the library grew
from zero to one of the very best college collections in the country.
The Faculty, who had assumed that an M.I.T. graduate would be totally
lacking in the humanities, were surprised to find that Haskins had
mastered 12 languages, and could converse with any of them, on equal
terms, and in German, on the merits of Goethe. His manual dexterity
won the ungrudging respect of the Hanover artisans - a group that is
not easily impressed. A man who practically single-handed installs a
complete plumbing system in an old rambling residence does not fit
easily into the professorial pattern. He failed in only one respect--
but here his failure was absolute - he could not teach Freshmen and
Sophomores.

He was the first man in Hanover to lecture in mathematics; but his
hand-writing was execrable, he constantly obstructed any view of the
blackboard with his vast bulk, and the eraser in his left hand worked
as steadily as the chalk in his right. It never occurred to him that
students perversely prefer x, y, and z, to xi, eta, and zeta. These
last were his favorites and he made them almost exactly alike. His
students sat back in their seats, respecting his abilities, but
completely failing to understand his terrific blasts of mathematical
rigor. Fifty years ago, student nick-names for the Faculty were
standard. They were not always complimentary, but they were pertinent.
Inevitably he became "Hippo" Haskins.

In 1911, the Head of a Department really was the Head. He could hire,
fire, and within limits set by the Trustees, fix all salaries. He
defined the department curriculum, selected the text-books, and drew
up the teaching assignments. The Trustees simply did not dare to give
Haskins this powers Their choice fell on John Wesley Young. It was an
excellent choice Young had taught at Princeton and had collaborated
with Veblen in the advanced text: Projective Geometry one of the few
first class American productions of the early 20th century. His
"Fundamental Concepts' was a pioneering efforts it had an
extraordinary appeal to both the secondary and the college field --
fifty years later it is still surprisingly good reading. At Dartmouth
he taught well, was held in high esteem by faculty and administration,
and was a rather easy-going, democratic department head. As the
College expanded, a steady stream of new teachers flowed into Hanover;
a few moved on, a surprising number stayed. In 1919 when the new
President, Ernest Martin Hopkins abolished the archaic Head of
Department and established a rotating Chairmanship, a real democracy
was achieved. A Dartmouth post became attractive to a young instructor
in mathematics or in anything else.

There is bound to be conflict in a Department which contains a
liberal, even radical leader like Young, and an ultra-conservative man
like Haskins. It is not true that from 1920 on there were two opposing
camps; there was, rather, a complete spectrums with the moderates in
the middle showing as much independence as the extremists.

Young would want to try a ``modern'' unified course such as Griffints
\textit{An Introduction to Mathematical Analysis}.  Haskins could find
virtue only in the orthodox Osgood and Graustein \textit{Analytic
  Geometry}.  We would try each in turn, and not think too well of
either.

This contrast existed in many fields; in none was it more striking
than in the method of recruiting new teachers. Young, as Head of the
Department, had secured Bill with a degree from Acadia, Silverman from
Missouri, Forsyth from Michigan, Mathewson from Illinois, and later
Tamarkin from Russia. Haskins, commissioned by the Department to
recruit a young instructors would take the noon train to Boston, go
over to Cambridge, and ask who was the best bet in this years crop of
Ph.D.'s -- native-born New England Yankees preferred. By staying
over night with one of his Harvard friends, he could keep the cost, to
the College, of such a trip well under ten dollars. This
unimaginative, hide-bound procedure has obviously nothing to commend
it except for the fact that these sallies secured for the Department
Wilder, Brown, Perkins, and Robinson, who have by now contributed an
aggregate of some 135 years of service to the College.

But throughout the twenties, the Department never achieved its full
potential. We didn't ask enough or each other. Once you were well
started at Dartmouth, promotion and a continued career were too much
assumed -- and in actual facts assured There was some good creative
work, there should have been more. We missed the stimulus of the new;
and we were too well acquainted with each other Wilder and Brown
coming here in 1922, Perkins in 1927, and Robinson in 1928 were
Harvard-trained New England Yankees. In an expansive moment, Haskins
once admitted to me: "It was my mistakes I waved the Crimson banner
too much. I should have taken the sleeper to Chicago."  But I don't
think anything could have persuaded Charles Haskins to go west of
Chicago, or north into Canada, or south of the Mason-Dizon line.

Admittedly, every young college teacher has to make his own adjustment
among teaching, research and Committee work (and there are other
things). I think we taught well, I think the urge to do creative work
diminished in too many of us; but no one can say we didn't do our
share Or Committee work. In fact we did much more than our share. A
little of it was new and invigorating planning for the future; much Of
it was the necessary routine; some of it (admission, counseling,
discipline), really is not our Job -- that is, the Faculty may lay
down policies, but the administration is best left in the hands of
professionals. I note one unusual assignment. Professor Haskins, as
Chairman of the Joint Trustee-Faculty Committee on the new Library,
did no teaching or research for two years, devoting all of his very
considerable energies to this work. He did a magnificent job, and the
Trustees very appropriately gave him an honorary degree. But this
isn't what makes a Department strong.

The thirties found us with a seasoned group of ten veterans: Beetle,
Haskins, Young, Mathewsong Forsyth, Silverman, Brown, Wilder, Perkins
and Robinson. This was a rugged outfit, not brilliant, but dependable,
hard-working, not without a touch of the Spartan, and inclined to be
a bit intolerant of the more easy-going members of the college
community. As the depression bit in, we tightened our belts, taught
more and larger classes, and pared a very frugal budget to the bone.
We typed our own letters, and paid our own expenses to Society
meetings, Since the College he a considerable endowment for books, the
Library did not suffers and in a buyer's market, Haskins was able to
keep abreast of the new, and also to round out the sets of standard
Journals and the collected works. There was some good creative work,
but as I look back at a paper of mine published in 1935, I see that
while it was an exhaustive clean-up of a minor topic, and while no
one will have to go through that laborious procedure again, still it
doesn't strike sparks. Possibly this characterizes our research of the
thirties -- we were working on past momentum. There were not enough
new ideas, new challenges. We lost Young in 1932, and Beetle in 1937,
and Haskins health permitted only limited teaching from 1935 until his
death in 1943. We took another notch in our belts, and carried on with
no additions to the group.

The story of the war years is utterly fantastic, but of no particular
importance in a historical sketch of this kind, except to indicate the
need for a college of liberal arts to show adaptability in an
emergency. Credit for the initial step goes to Prof. Haskins, who in
1940 urged us to organize large groups of Juniors and Seniors who had
never elected mathematics and give them a year course. With
characteristic bluntness, Haskins said: "All these young roosters will
be in the Army in a couple of years. If they have a year or college
mathematics, they can get commissions. Plan out some kind of a course
that they can pass, and then ``Drill, ye tarriers, drill!'' First and
last we processed, with a minimum of pain, about 1000 upper-classmen
who had previously exhibited a complete antipathy to mathematics. I
would hesitate to say what effect, if any, this had on the outcome of
the war.

With the expected arrival of 2000 members of a Naval V-12 unit, a
refresher course for faculty members was organized, and in the summer
of 1943, thirteen brave souls with specialties ranging from
Archaeology to Zoology were named Associates in Mathematics, and
assisted the seven mathematical regulars Half a dozen temporary
appointments were made to men for whom mathematics was an avocation,
but who were completely competent for the Job -- men varying from
Benedictine monks to retired Army colonels.  I don't think the Navy
mathematical program was a particularly good one, but then it was not
of our making. I think the teaching was adequate, and I would venture
the guess that the Associates taught with more enthusiasm than the
regulars, which is fair enough -- no professor likes to have it
spelled out for him, especially when emphasis is put on such a dreary
subject as spherical trigonometry. This should be added -- in the
College of Liberal Arts, of course greatly reduced in numbers, we
maintained a complete mathematical curriculum, taught only by
professionals, But every one was glad when the emergency and the V-12
program were over.

A mathematical emergency replaced the national. Suddenly we realized
that for 17 years, ever since 1928, we had made no new appointments,
except on the most temporary basis. Our group was now reduced to 6,
with 3 more retirements in the not too distant future; the college was
expanding, and an extensive recruiting program was essential. During
the next few years we did well, but on looking back we can see that we
didn't do as well as we could have done.

First, our recruiting was certainly not the horse-and-buggy type
which Haskins used. We went out and hunted for them. But we were too
easily satisfied, when we found some one who looked promising, we took
him. We didn't keep hunting until we had lined up half a dozen from
whom we might select one or two.

Second, we didn't give our new members enough encouragement to plan
new courses and carry out new ideas. And 6 men who have lived together
and worked together for 20 years, through good times and hard times,
seem to present an inevitable wall of inertia. I think we recognized
this at times, I think we honestly tried to do something about it, and
I don't think we were very successful.

The man primarily responsible for the change in the Department was the
late Donald H. Morrison, then Dean of the Faculty. He had inherited a
faculty which was extraordinarily heavy at the full professorial
level. His problem - and the mathematics department comprised only a
small if aggravated part of the whole - was to recruit immediately
and continuously, and yet to abolish the widely prevalent opinion that
a Dartmouth appointment was almost a guarantee of eventual tenure -
an opinion which the past did to some extent render plausible. His
success in handling this problem is today a case history in successful
administration.

Dean Morrison told us what was ineffective in our recruiting, and told
us what to do about it. Professor Robinson was obviously the best of
the older group to do the leg-work, and he was highly successful from
the start. Further, recruiting is a snowball Process, the more you
get, the more promising contacts you have.

One thing more was necessary. These new recruits must be assured that
at Dartmouth there would be no conservative restraints from the old
guard. It must be much more than a grudging capitulation. We must tell
them that we've had our day, it's their turn now. Anything they decide
they want to do, we will not merely accepts we will Join in with this
enthusiastically, and without reservations to the best of our
abilities As an incidental, but an important incidental, we saw to it
that no young instructor was loaded up with freshman calculus classes.
Effective freshman instruction is neither necessary nor sufficient for
a successful academic career. We could promise him an honors section
of sophomores, and an advanced course. That kind Of understanding is
very effective when you are recruiting. And that is by far the best
program for the full development Of a young instructor, and it
furnishes a sounder basis for a decision as to whether you may want to
make a reappointment.

This is not the time to pass Judgment on the progress made by our
younger group of teachers - progress which has changed the Department
from a good average outfit into an outstanding one. It would embarrass
the
Kemeny-Snell-Mirkil-Norman-Kurtz-Crowell-Kuller-Williamson-Kreider-Ritchie-Fraleigh
group to attempt to evaluate their activities for the past few years.
But as the oldest inhabitant and as one only incidentally associated
with these new trends, I can sketch out a few with almost complete
objectivity. Speaking then generally, these are the things I have
liked.

A sensitive selection or important subjects Of modern mathematics,
incorporation of these in two outstanding books, \textit{Finite
  Mathematics}, and \textit{Finite Mathematical Structures}, and
finally integration of these with the standard calculus sequences.

A unanimous and enthusiastic reception by the Department of the new
3-course, 3-term program.

Large lecture classes in Freshman and Sophomore courses, with
intelligent use of graduate students in small conference groups. It
seems to us of fundamental importance that we should give graduate
students a limited teaching experience, but that we should never give
first or second-year graduate students full responsibility for a
freshman section. This last procedure, all too common in large
universities, is unfair to the graduate student, whose first business
is study and research, and very unfair to the freshman who only too
frequently gets a very small return for his tuition.

Honors treatment for the gifted students, lasting from matriculation
to graduation Associated with this is a program for advanced placement
for students who have had some calculus in secondary school -- a
very flexible program since their preparation is varied.

More coordination with the leaders in secondary schools and in
graduate schools. This is particularly true with respect to the
Dartmouth Schools of Engineering, Business Administration, and
Medicine.

A successful beginning in a Joint major, "Mathematics and Social
Sciences."

The installation and effective use of a high-speed digital computer.

A succession of projects, financed by various foundations, involving
cooperative work by professional mathematicians and students, both
graduate and undergraduate. The partial release of our staff from
teaching makes possible a wide-spread use of visiting lecturers and
research instructors -- an experience from which every one profits.

Professor Haskins was a great admirer of Riemann. Partly for the
profit which others might receive, mostly for his own pleasure, he
translated from the original Latin the great paper of Riemann on the
flow of heat, the paper for which Riemann received the prize of the
Academy of Paris. The translation is preserved in the Dartmouth
Library. Fortunately, it is in English, for Haskins' German was almost
as formidable as Riemann's Latin. Riemann, in submitting his paper -
anonymously, as was the custom of the time -- chose as his motto:

\begin{quote}
             'RET HIS PRINCIPIIS VIA STERNITUR AD MAJORA'
\end{quote}

This Haskins translated with discrimination:

\begin{quote}
"And by these principles the way is prepared for greater things".
\end{quote}

When Professor Haskins equipped the room in Baker Library, in the west
monzanine, dedicated to Bezaleel Woodward, his inscription would seem
to sum up the past and present - and, we hope, the future of our
Department.

The inscription reads:
\begin{verbatim}
                               THIS ROOM
                    CONTAINING THE SURVIVING LOOKS
                                OF THE
                             FIRST LIBRARY
                                  OF
                          DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
                       IS EQUIPPED IN MEMORY OF
                       BEZALEEL WOODWARDs A.M.
                    A TUTOR, TREASURER, TRUSTEE
                  AND VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE
                                 ITS
                           FIRST LIBRARIAN
                                AND ITS
                   FIRST PROFESSOR OF MATHEMATICS
                                 AND
                         NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
                         "ET HIS PRINCIPIIS
                      VIA STERNITUR AD MAJORA"

\end{verbatim}
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