Harry Walter Tyler

Abstract

A pioneer in the history of science movement in the United States, H. W. TYLER devoted forty years of his life to the interests of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with which he was identified from his undergraduate days until he retired from active teaching. He was influential in promoting throughout the country improved methods of education in mathematics, and for many years he was engaged in organized effort to protect the freedom of academic thought and instruction. He was born April I6, 1863, of old New England rural stock in Ipswich, a small town of northern Massachusetts, to which his father, DAVID M. TYLER, had migrated from New Hampshire to engage in the business of watch-maker and jeweller. His mother, HARRIET WILLCOMB, was the daughter of a merchant of the town. At the age of seventeen, after preparation at the Ipswich High School and, it is said, reading Latin and Greek with the village minister, TYLER matriculated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then in Boston. There he specialized in chenmistry, at the same time taking all the advanced courses that were offered in nmathematics, and serving on the editorial staff of a newspaper conducted by the undergraduates. Having presented a thesis on The Decomposition of Hexane at High Temperatures, he was graduated Bachelor of Science in i884; and, declining an assistantship in chemistry, was appointed Assistant in Mathematics. In I886 he was advanced to the grade of Instructor, and in 1887, having obtained leave of absence, he married a classmate, ALICE IRVING BROWN. They went abroad and he studied for a year at G6ttingen, where FELIX KLEIN was professor of mathematics, and then at Erlangen under PAUL GORDAN and MAX NOETHER. His dissertation was on Beziehungen zwischen der SYLVESTER'schen und der BizouT'schen Deternminante and he was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1889. Returning to the Institute of Technology, TYLER served for a