John Ewing (66)

Election date: 1768 (Elected to the revived American Philosophical Society.)
APS Office(s): Secretary of the revived APS (1768-1769) and of the unified APS (1769-1772, 1779-1783), vice-president of the unified APS (1783-1795)

John Ewing (22 July 1732–8 September 1802) was a clergyman, natural philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, and university administrator, as well as a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born in Cecil County, Maryland, he studied and then tutored at APS member Francis Alison’s New London Academy and at the College of New Jersey. After teaching at the College of Philadelphia, Ewing completed his studies under Alison, received his ordination, and became pastor of Philadelphia’s First Presbyterian Church. He continued to promote education, corresponding with the Astronomer Royal about establishing an observatory in Philadelphia and soliciting funds in England for an academy in Delaware. He returned to America with an honorary D.D. degree from the University of Edinburgh and in 1779 was appointed provost of the University of the State of Pennsylvania, as well as professor of natural philosophy. He remained provost when the school united with the College of Philadelphia to become the University of Pennsylvania in 1791. He also engaged in a dispute with APS member Benjamin Rush over the latter’s founding of a competing institution, Dickinson College. Ewing’s articles on astronomy appeared in the first American edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1798) and in the APS Transactions, the first volume of which he saw through the press. He served on numerous APS committees, on boundary commissions with APS member David Rittenhouse, and on the survey for a proposed Chesapeake-Delaware River canal. Ewing also played an important role in observing the 1769 Transit of Venus, which secured the APS’s international reputation, and helped to draft the instructions for the 1793 Michaux expedition. He supported Pennsylvania’s radical new constitution and was an Anti-Federalist in national politics. He is best remembered for his sermons and his lectures on natural philosophy, both of which were posthumously published. (PI, DAB)

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