Samuel Webber

Samuel Webber was an American Congregational clergyman, mathematician and academic, born at Byfield, Massachusetts, in 1759 and dead at Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 17 July 1810, and the thirteenth president of Harvard University from 1806 until his death. He was educated at Dummer Academy and at Harvard College, taking his B.A. in 1784 and M.A. in 1787, and distinguished himself in mathematics. Ordained in 1787, he became Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard two years later and served on the commission that drew the boundary between the United States and the British provinces. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1789 and wrote a System of Mathematics, for many years the only textbook of the subject in New England.