E.W. Hyde, a native of Saginaw, Michigan, was educated at Cornell University, where he
received degrees in Civil Engineering in 1872 and 1874. After teaching at Cornell for
several years, he was appointed an Assistant Professor (the only mathematics professor
in the "Academic Department") at the University of Cincinnati in 1875. He served as
Professor of Mathematics, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and President of the
University. He was forced from his faculty position when President Howard Ayres, in an
academic bloodbath that came to be known as the "Upheaval of January 12," completely
reorganized the faculty in 1900. As Chairman of the Faculty Hyde pushed through a rule
in 1897 prohibiting smoking in all University buildings. The regulation was later to be
rescinded only to be reinstated nearly a century later in 1992 [GH].
Hyde was also apparently ahead of his time mathematically, serving as an Associate Editor of the Annals of Mathematics and publishing books on advanced subjects when America was a mathematical backwater. It is noteworthy that his first book was reissued on the World Wide Web in the year 2000, a hundred and twenty five years after it was first published.
Skew Arches, Van Nostrand, New York, 1875.
The Directional Calculus, Ginn and Co., Boston, 1890.
Grassmann's Space Analysis, Wiley, New York, 1906.
[GH]: K. Grace and G. Hand, The University of Cincinnati, Community Communications, Montgomery, AL, 1995.
Article by Charles Groetsch
University of Cincinnati