ABSTRACT
TROWBRIDGE 25.05. 1828 Troy MI/USA 12.08. 1892 New Haven CT/USA William Pettit Trowbridge graduated in 1848 first in class from the US Military Academy, West Point NY. He joined in 1850 the Corps of Topographical Engineers, surveying the coast of Maine; he was promoted in 1854 to first lieutenant. He was in 1856 appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, becoming in 1857 also scientific secretary of the Coast Survey. He installed in 1860 self-registering instrument in the permanent magnetic observatory, Key West FL, and there was also in charge of Gulf Stream observations. From 1862 he was in charge of the Ney York City branch office, constructing the NYC defences. He was professor of dynamic engineering from 1870 to 1877 at the Yale College, from 1872 to 1876 adjutant general, and from 1873 to 1878 was commissioned to build the State Capitol, Albany NY. He was from 1877 until his death professor of engineering at the School of Mines, Columbia College, New York NY. He was awarded in 1877 honorary membership of Yale University, New Haven CT, in 1879 the honorary PhD from Princeton University, Princeton NJ, among many others. He was elected a member of the National Academy in 1872. Trowbridge has written books and papers; important in the present connection are his works on thermodynamics and on turbines. One of his colleagues at Columbia College noted: ‘He had that rare combination of personal qualities of character with intellectual capacity and technical acquirement which made him an almost ideal selection for the position he was called upon to fill. With ability to appear before a broader public with credit, and appreciating the advantages which follow to an institution from such wider recognition of its professors, yet withal so modest and conscientious as never to be tempted to neglect a new duty because inconspicuous, his loss is made the more grevious by the very rarity of the union of these qualities in one person’. Anonymous (1908). W.P. Trowbridge. Trowbridge genealogy: 608-609. Compiler: New Haven P Comstock, C.B. (1895). William P. Trowbridge. Biographical memoirs 3: 363-367. National Academy of Sciences: Washington DC. Trowbridge, W.P. (1874). Heat as a source of power, with applications of general principles to the construction of steam generators. Wiley: New York. Trowbridge, W.P. (1879). Turbine wheels: On the inapplicability of the theoretical investigations of the turbine wheel, as given by Rankine, Weisbach, Bresse and others, to the modern constructions introduced by Boyden and Francis. Van Nostrand: New York.
