Joseph Caldwell

Joseph Caldwell was a United States educator, Presbyterian minister, mathematician and astronomer, born at Lamington, New Jersey, on 21 April 1773 and dead on 27 January 1835. He graduated from the College of New Jersey, now Princeton, as Latin salutatorian in 1791, worked as a tutor, and became presiding professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1797, then its first president from 1804 to 1812 and again from 1816 until his death. He wrote a textbook, A Compendious System of Elementary Geometry, in 1822, and as Carlton wrote letters and a set of twenty-two essays in 1827 and 1828 advocating a public education system and improved transportation in North Carolina.