Courtenay was born in Baltimore on November 19, 1803. His youth was distinguished by remarkably precocious academic performance. Entering as the United States Military Academy’s youngest cadet in 1818, he graduated at the head of his West Point class after just three years (the course usually took four). He was immediately appointed to a teaching post at the Academy, and during the next few years held a number of assistant professorial positions, before obtaining the professorship of natural and experimental philosophy in February 1829, while still just 25. While in this position, which primarily involved teaching applied mathematics to engineers, he published An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (1833), a translation of a work in French by Jean-Louis Boucharlat.

In 1834, Courtenay was offered the chair of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, a post he held for two years before making a career change by becoming a professional engineer, first for the New York and Erie Railroad, then between 1837 and 1841, as a civil engineer of Fort Independence at Boston Harbor, and finally, as the chief engineer of Dry Dock Navy Yard, Brooklyn. After holding this last position for less than a year, he re-entered academe, taking the chair of mathematics at the University of Virginia, recently vacated by the departure of Sylvester.

His tenure at Virginia was, in contrast to that of his predecessor, a success. He was described as a model professor: “He never by look, act, word, or emphasis disparaged the efforts or undervalued the acquirements of his pupils. His pleasant smile and kind voice, when he would say, ‘Is that answer perfectly correct?’ gave hope to many minds struggling with science.” [1, vi-vii] His premature death on 21 December 1853 came as a great shock to colleagues and students alike. He left as his legacy A Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus, and on the Calculus of Variations (1855), the manuscript of which was largely complete at the time of his death. This book, his chief mathematical publication, which ran to several editions over the next twenty years, was in its day the most comprehensive American work on the subject.
 

REFERENCES:

1. Anon., Preface to Edward H. Courtenay, A treatise on the differential and integral calculus: and on the calculus of variations, New York/Chicago: A.S. Barnes & company, 1876.
2. Florian Cajori, The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States, Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1890, 195-196.
3. Francis S. Drake, Dictionary of American Biography, Boston: James R. Osgood, 1872, 224.

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