William Ruggles - Biography

Biography

William Ruggles was born in Rochester, Massachusetts, about fifty miles south of present day Boston, on Tuesday September 5, 1797. He was the son of Elisha Ruggles and Mary Clap who also parented six other children: Nathaniel, Micah, Henry, Charles, James, and Lucy. William was the second youngest child in his family. Not much is known about his childhood growing up in Massachusetts until he enrolled in Brown University; where he later graduated from, at the age of twenty-three, in the class of 1820. Two years after graduating from Brown University, Ruggles became a tutor at Columbian College. On February 9, 1821 Congress chartered Columbian College, a nonsectarian school but with Baptist sponsorship that would not become the George Washington University until January 23, 1904. In 1824, two years after he became a tutor, Ruggles became a Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, a position he would retain until 1865. In 1827 William Ruggles became the chair of both mathematics and natural philosophy. In 1865 Ruggles was made professor emeritus. He continued to lecture on political economy and civil polity from 1865 to 1874. He died at Schooley's Mountain, New Jersey, on Monday, September 10, 1877, five days after his eightieth birthday.