The life and work of Robert J. Adcock. Part II: biography and establishment of authorship

Abstract

Between 1870 and 1896, the American mathematician Robert Jackson Adcock (1826–1895) contributed a number of short articles to early mathematical journals such as The Analyst . His biography is given here for the first time. An obscure figure hitherto associated with the history of regression analysis and least-squares, he has, on occasion, been confused with a nephew of the same name. Before the American Civil War, Adcock was first a pupil and then taught at the Western Military Institute, which became the Kentucky Military Institute, near Frankfort, Kentucky. Afterwards, despite occasionally being hospitalized during periods of mental illness, he became a wealthy farmer who could afford mathematical recreation as a hobby. His self-published pamphlet ‘Gravitation to the sphere and the two ellipsoids of revolution’ (1872), recently discovered in the Library of the Royal Society, is discussed in Part I. Here we establish his authorship of all mathematical works by ‘R. J. Adcock’.