Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard Barnard, Frederick Augustus
Porter, 1809–89, American educator and mathematician, b.
Sheffield, Mass., grad. Yale, 1828. After tutoring at Yale and
teaching in institutions for the deaf and mute, he joined the
faculty of the Univ. of Alabama, serving as professor of
mathematics and natural philosophy (1837–48) and as professor of
chemistry and natural philosophy (1848–54). From 1854 to 1856 he
was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the Univ.
of Mississippi. He served there as president (1856–58) and
chancellor (1858–61), but resigned at the outbreak of the Civil
War to return to the North. After a period of research in
astronomy and after work as head of the map and chart department
of the U.S. Coast Survey, he was selected to succeed Charles
King as president of Columbia College (now Columbia Univ.).
During his long administration (1864–89), Columbia grew from a
small undergraduate college of 150 students into one of the
nation's great universities, with an e