James Renwick was born in Liverpool, England, on 30 May 1792. He graduated from Columbia College in 1807. In 1820 he was appointed professor of natural philosophy in that college, a position he held until 1854. In 1838 he was appointed by the U.S. government one of the commissioners to explore the line of the boundary, then settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, between Maine and New Brunswick. In addition to his collegiate duties he wrote the biographies of Robert Fulton, David Rittenhouse, and Count Rumford, in Sparks's American Biography; a Memoir of DeWitt Clinton (1834); and a Treatise on the Steam-engine (1830). His textbooks, Outlines of Natural Philosophy (1822), Elements of Mechanics (1832), and First Principles of Chemistry (1840) were among the first works of their kind published in the United States, the first and third of these, along with his other educational works, passing through multiple editions. Renwick died in 1863. He married Margaret Brevoort, from a wealthy and socially prominent New York family. His eldest son, Henry Brevoort Renwick, was a mechanical engineer and inspector of steamboat engines. His middle son, James Renwick, Jr., was a noted Gothic Revival architect, designer of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York and the Smithsonian Castle in Washington, D.C., among many other buildings. His youngest son, Edward S. Renwick was a mechanical engineer, inventor and patent expert.