Robert Adrain
(1775-1843)

Died aged c. 68

Robert Adrain (30 September 1775 – 10 August 1843) was an Irish political exile who won renown as a mathematician in the United States. He left Ireland after leading republican insurgents in the Rebellion of 1798, and settled in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. With Nathaniel Bowditch, he shares the distinction of being the first scholar to publish original mathematical research in America. This included his formulation of the method of least squares while working on a surveying problem (in two proofs of the exponential law of error published independently of Carl Friedrich Gauss) for which he is chiefly remembered. His fields of applied mathematical interest included physics, astronomy and geodesy. Many of his mathematical investigations focussed on the shape of the Earth.

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