Joseph Lovering
American mathematician (1813–1892)
Joseph Lovering (25 December 1813 – 18 January 1892) was an American scientist and educator.
Biography
Lovering graduated from Harvard in 1833. In 1838, he was named Hollis Chair of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy at Harvard. He held this chair until 1888, when he was appointed Professor Emeritus, after 50 years service. He was acting regent of the university (1853–1854) and succeeded Felton as regent.
He was director of Jefferson Physical Laboratory from 1884 to 1888, and was associated with the Harvard College Observatory, especially in the joint observations of the United States and the London Royal Society on terrestrial magnetism.
From 1869 to 1873 he served as corresponding secretary, from 1873 to 1880 vice president, and from 1880 to 1881 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He contributed to numerous scientific publications, prepared a volume on The Aurora Borealis (1873), and edited a new edition of Professor John Farrar's Electricity and Magnetism (1842).
In 1837, several Yale professors - Denison Olmsted, Alexander Twining, Elias Loomis, along with Edward Herrick had published papers supporting the existence of an annual meteor storm in August (which peaks around the 9th/10th of the month). Lovering was a strong opponent of this idea.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6285034. VIAF identifies the subject as 36208217. The Library of Congress control number is n97119471. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1813, 1892, 1833 and 1838.
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This entry incorporates text from “Joseph Lovering” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.