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Robert Simpson Woodward (July 21, 1849 – June 29, 1924) was an Americancivil engineer,physicist andmathematician.
He was born atRochester,Michigan, on July 21, 1849, to Lysander Woodward and Peninah A. Simpson.[1]
He graduated with a degree incivil engineering at theUniversity of Michigan in 1872. He was appointed assistantengineer on theUnited States Lake Survey. In 1882 he became assistantastronomer for the United StatesTransit of Venus Commission. In 1884 he became astronomer to theUnited States Geological Survey, serving until 1890, when he was hired byThomas Corwin Mendenhall as assistant in theUnited States Coast and Geodetic Survey. In 1893 he was called toColumbia asprofessor ofmechanics and subsequently became professor ofmathematical physics as well. He wasdean of thefaculty ofpure science at Columbia from 1895 to 1905, when he became president of theCarnegie Institution ofWashington, whose reputation and usefulness as a means of furthering scientific research was widely extended under his direction. He was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences in 1896. In 1898-1900 he was president of theAmerican Mathematical Society, and in 1900 he becamePresident of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1902, he was elected as a member to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[2] In 1915 he was appointed to theNaval Consulting Board.
He died on June 29, 1924, inWashington, D.C.
Professor Woodward carried on researches and published papers in many departments ofastronomy,geodesy, andmechanics. In the course of his work with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey he devised and constructed the "iced bar and long tape base apparatus," which enables abase line to be measured with greater accuracy and with less expense than by methods previously employed. His work on the composition and structure of the earth and the variation of latitude found expression in a number of valuable papers.
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