The fading amateur: William Lenhart and 19th-century American mathematics

Abstract

William Lenhart was an American mathematician who was active in the first part of the 19th century. His biographer, Samuel Tyler, described him as the greatest Diophantine algebraist who ever lived. Lenhart was introduced to Diophantine analysis by Robert Adrain, who wrote the first article on this topic that was published in the United States. Lenhart often worked on mathematical problems as a distraction from pain that was caused by an accident that occurred when he was a young man. He was an amateur mathematician in a country where mathematics was undergoing the process of professionalization.