new University soon showed its broadminded attitude toward education by providing a scientific course parallel with the classical course. As early as the year 1854-55 the number of freshmen in the scientific course exceeded the number pursuing the classical course, this year marking the beginning of the popularity of the new course. The number of upperclassmen who had chosen it was only eleven — less than one-sixth of the enrollment in the junior and senior classes. The curriculum for students enrolled in the scientific course included an additional term of calculus and such applied subjects as surveying, navigation, descriptive geometry, and drawing and architecture.
Even in these very early days extensive plans were in mind for a more advanced development:
university course
This Course … for those who have taken the degree of Bachelor of Arts or … Bachelor of Science … when completely furnished with able professors and the material of learning, will correspond to that pursued in the Universities of France and Germany.
Cat.
A skeleton outline of the proposed course lists twenty subjects of study, in which higher mathematics occupies the seventh place. The first step toward a realization of this more advanced program was signalized by the appearance, in the Catalogue of 1856-57, of a list of books for reference. In the higher mathematics mention was made of Church's Analytical Geometry, Church's Differential and Integral Calculus, Courtenay's Calculus, and Peirce's Curves and Functions.
In the Catalogue of 1858-59 appeared the announcement of a "Programme of Studies for the Degrees of A.M. and M.S." Professor Williams offered further work in calculus, and Assistant Professor Clark offered courses in the same program — Higher Algebra; Calculus, which proposed to give a general view of definite integrals, differential equations, including the theory of singular solutions, and partial differential equations; and Method of Variations. It is interesting to speculate what the results might have been if Assistant Professor Clark had remained to perfect this ambitious program.
With a staff consisting of Professor Williams and Instructor Watson it was inevitable that the emphasis during the remaining four years of this first period should be on applied mathematics. Watson, in addition to his instructorship in mathematics, was Professor of Astronomy in 1859-60 and then for three years was Professor of Physics. He offered as Physics in the graduate program analytical mechanics and the mathematical theory of heat, light, and sound.
The second period, 1863-87. — The fall of 1863, with the departure of Brünnow as Professor of Astronomy and the appointment of Edward Olney (A.M. hon. Madison University '53, LL.D. Kalamazoo '73) as Professor of Mathematics, marks the beginning of the second period. Watson became Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Detroit Observatory, and Williams, Professor of Physics, a position which he held until 1875. From that year until his death in 1881 he was Professor Emeritus.
At the opening of the second period Professor Olney and one instructor constituted the staff. Olney was thirty-five years old when he came to the University to take charge of the work in mathematics. He was not a college graduate, but had educated himself while working on a farm. He had served five years as principal of the Perrysburg Union School in Perrysburg, Ohio, and for ten years had held the chair of mathematics in Kalamazoo College. During his first two years at the University of Michigan Olney
