Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard (1809-1889) was an American educator and scientist who, as president of Columbia College, worked to develop the institution into a modern university.

Frederick Barnard was born in Sheffield, Mass., on May 5, 1809. He attended Yale from 1824 to 1828, graduating second in his class. After two years of teaching at the Hartford, Conn., grammar school, he returned to Yale as a tutor. His growing deafness led to his acceptance in 1831 of a position at a Hartford school for deaf-mutes, and a year later he moved to the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. In 1837 he was appointed professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the University of Alabama, where he remained for 17 years, the last six as professor of chemistry. In 1854 he moved to the University of Mississippi as professor of mathematics and two years later became head of that institution.

Barnard's scientific activities and...