Renwick, James, LL.D.

Renwick, James, LL.D., author and physicist, was born at Liverpool in 1790, and graduated at Columbia College, New York, in 1807. In 1820 he was made professor of Chemistry and Physics in that college, a position he held until 1853. In 1838 he was appointed by the United States government one of the commissioners to explore the line of the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick. He wrote, besides smaller text-books and translations, Outlines of Natural Philosophy (1822-23, the first extended work of its kind published in the United States), a Treatise on the Steam-engine (1830), several books on Mechanics, and Lives of De Witt Clinton, Jay and Hamilton, and others. He died 12th January 1863.—One of his sons, James, was architect of Grace Church and St Patrick's Cathedral, New York; other notable buildings from his designs are the Smithsonian Institution, Vassar College, &c.