Abstract
ON November 20, 1843, the death occurred of the Swiss-American mathematician and geodesist, Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, who was the first superintendent of the United States Coast Survey, now the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. To-day the Survey is responsible for hydrographic, geodetic, tidal, magnetic and seismological work throughout the whole of the United States dominions from Florida to the Aleutians, but when it was founded the United States only fronted the Atlantic seaboard. The suggestion for the Survey came from the American Philosophical Society, the recommendations of which were adopted by President Jefferson, and it was through the Society that Hassler became connected with it when Congress on February 10, 1807, passed the necessary law. Hassler had only been in America two years then, but he had taken with him a library of more than 3,000 volumes and a good collection of instruments, and it was his interest in science which had led to his contact with the members of the Philosophical Society.
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Centenary of Ferdinand R. Hassler, 1770–1843. Nature 152, 594–595 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/152594c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/152594c0