John Hopkins Harney

Who was John Hopkins Harney?

John Hopkins Harney was a Kentucky legislator native of Bourbon County, Kentucky. He was a distant cousin of General William Selby Harney.

Harney was orphaned at an early age, leaving him in dire economic circumstances that forced him to educate himself instead of attending school. And, he began working on a land surveying crew. At the age of seventeen, he successfully solved a problem on one of their surveying expeditions which attracted so much attention that he was soon made principal of an academy in Paris, Kentucky.

After saving up money from his teaching position, Harney was able to purchase a scholarship to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he graduated in 1827 with a degree in belles letres and theology. He was immediately thereafter appointed a professor of mathematics at Indiana University.

In 1833, Professor Harney transferred to the math department at Hanover College in Indiana, where he began preparing an algebra textbook. He put the final touches on this project after being named president of Louisville College in Kentucky in 1839. Published in 1840, it was the first such book ever written by an American.