David Rittenhouse - Tributes To David Rittenhouse

Tributes To David Rittenhouse

• Rittenhouse Crater is a lunar crater named for David Rittenhouse.

• In 1825, one of William Penn's original squares in Philadelphia, called 'Southwest Square' (being in the southwest quadrant of the original city plan) was renamed Rittenhouse Square in David Rittenhouse's honor.

• To the west of Rittenhouse Square, on Walnut Street, the University of Pennsylvania houses its Physics and Mathematics departments in the David Rittenhouse Laboratory.

• One admirer and colleague of Rittenhouse, Francis Hopkinson, was on the Navy Board that wrote the Flag Act of 1777, which defined the Flag of the United States of America and explained the blue field of stars as a representation of "a new constellation." This is thought by some to be a direct tribute to Rittenhouse. Biographer Brooke Hindle wrote, "Few admired Rittenhouse more unrestrainedly than Francis Hopkinson."

• David Rittenhouse Junior High School, Norristown, Pennsylvania; listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.