Photograph of a Harvard mathematician whose defense of homosexuality was published in 1897. Salt print, 150x120 mm; 5¾x4½ inches oval, on larger paper mount captioned "James Mills Peirce" in pencil; minor dampstaining to lower edge of mount. [Cambridge, MA], circa 1860s.
Peirce graduated from Harvard in 1853, and joined the Harvard mathematics faculty in 1861; he was an expert in the now-obscure quaternion number theory. A convincing case for Peirce's sexuality has been made by Jonathan Katz in "Gay American History" (1976), and especially by Hubert Kennedy in the Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 4:2 (Winter 1978) and elsewhere. Most notably, Peirce was very likely the author of a letter credited to "Professor X" which was published in the 1897 book "Sexual Inversion" by Havelock Ellis and J.A. Symonds, in which he argued that "no breach of morality is involved in homosexual love. . . . I have known many persons more or less the subjects of this passion, and I have found them a particularly high-minded, upright, refined, and (I must add) pure-minded class of men." Symonds had noted in a private letter: "I found a fierce & Quixotic ally, who goes far beyond my expectations in hopes of regenerating opinion on these topics, in a Prof. Pierce (?) of Cambridge Mass."
