Charles William Eliot

Charles William Eliot (born March 20, 1834 in Boston , Massachusetts , † August 22, 1926 in Northeast Harbor , Maine ) was an American professor of chemistry , author and editor. With a term of 40 years (1869-1909) he is the longest serving President of Harvard University to this day .

Life

Charles William Eliot was born and raised in Boston. His father Samuel Atkins Eliot (1798-1862) was Mayor of Boston, US Congressman and from 1842 to 1853 treasurer at Harvard. Charles W. Eliot himself attended Harvard College from 1849, where he graduated in 1853. There he taught mathematics and chemistry from 1854. In 1857 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Between 1858 and 1863 he held a position as assistant professor before living in Europe for two years. Here he studied in particular the training systems of France and Germany. He returned in 1865 and became Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In particular, his two-part article The New Education: Its Organization , which dealt with reforming the education system in the United States and appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1869 , was very well received and eventually earned him the presidency of Harvard. Since 1871 he was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society .

Eliot as president

During his tenure, Harvard went from college to a modern university. At the Law School , he introduced the three-year training course and added specific case studies to the curriculum . Medical training also became more practical: the newly introduced laboratory work was soon enriched by the collaboration between Harvard University and Boston hospitals. In addition, written exams had to be taken in all subjects. Since 1872 it has been possible to obtain a doctorate from Harvard. Eliot's efforts also extended to secondary school education. He called for more foreign languages and mathematics to be taught in the seventh grade. With the introduction of junior high schools in the United States in 1910, these demands were finally implemented.

In order to recruit the best staff, Eliot made several choices. In the first year of his presidency, he raised salaries from $ 3,000 to $ 4,000 . In addition, faculty members of any religion were welcome - unusually for this time - as long as the quality of education improved. A pension system was introduced in 1880 so that skilled workers could be separated more quickly. It should be an incentive to retire.

However, the most famous innovation under Eliot is the electoral system that undergraduates allowed even to choose in addition to compulsory courses of courses for advanced students, instead of following a rigid preset timetable. The graduates were even given complete freedom of choice. That he demanded more freedom for the students was also shown by the fact that during his presidency the rule book was reduced from forty to five pages.

In 1894 Eliot was the first to propose standardized entrance exams , which eventually led to better coordination between the various colleges. By the turn of the century, Harvard had already developed into an outstanding research institution. In 1909 he resigned from the office of President and was replaced by Abbott Lawrence Lowell .

further activities

In addition to his position at Harvard, Charles W. Eliot was also involved in the National Education Association (NEA), the American teachers' union, of which he became president in 1903. He was also a member of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching . In 1910 he published the 50-volume anthology Harvard Classics (also called Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf ), which was supposed to enable everyone to receive a liberal education with fifteen minutes of daily study. Between 1914 and 1917 he was also active in the Rockefeller Foundation and in 1919 was made Honorary President of the Progressive Education Association .

Death and legacy

Charles William Eliot died on August 22, 1926 in Northeast Harbor, Maine and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge , Massachusetts. He was married twice. His first wife, Ellen Derby Peabody , whom he married in 1858, died of tuberculosis in 1869 . Their marriage resulted in two sons. Among them was Charles Eliot (1859-1897), who was a famous Boston landscape architect . With his second wife, Grace Mellen Hopkinson (1846-1924), he had no children.

Charles W. Eliot, along with Andrew D. White , James Rowland Angell, and Daniel Coit Gilman, was one of the outstanding educational reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States.

Prizes and awards

1909: Honorary Doctorates in Medicine and Law from Harvard University

1915: Gold Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

2015: An asteroid named after him: (5202) Charleseliot

Bibliography (selection)

1896: The Happy Life
1897: Five American Contributions to Civilization, and Other Essays and Addresses
1902: Charles Eliot, Landscape Architect
1903: More Money for the Public Schools
1906: Four American Leaders
1908: University Administration
1910: The Durable Satisfactions of Life
1910: The Conflict between Individualism and Collectivism in a Democracy

literature

Hugh Hawkins: Between Harvard and America; The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot. Oxford University Press, 1973, ISBN 0-19-501595-9 .
Samuel Eliot Morison : Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636-1936. Belknap Press, 1964, ISBN 0-674-88891-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Member History: Charles W. Eliot. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 28, 2018 .
^ Harvard Gives Eliot Two Honor Degrees , in: New York Times, July 1, 1909

personal data
SURNAME	Eliot, Charles William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	President of Harvard University
DATE OF BIRTH	March 20, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH	Boston
DATE OF DEATH	August 22, 1926
Place of death	Northeast Harbor

[1] Member History: Charles W. Eliot. American Philosophical Society, accessed July 28, 2018 .

[2] Harvard Gives Eliot Two Honor Degrees , in: New York Times, July 1, 1909