Henry Smith Pritchett
Henry Smith Pritchett (born April 26, 1857 in Fayette (Missouri) , † August 28, 1939 in Santa Barbara (California) ) was an American educator, science organizer and astronomer.
He was the son of the astronomer and educator Carr Waller Pritchett (1823-1910), first president of Pritchett College in Glasgow (Missouri) and director of the local Morrison Observatory. Pritchett studied at Pritchett College with a bachelor's degree in 1875 and at the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC with Asaph Hall , where he became an assistant astronomer. In 1880 he went back to Glasgow to the Morrison Observatory. In 1882 he was involved in observing the transit of Venus in New Zealand . In 1883 he became professor of mathematics and astronomy and director of the observatory at Washington University in St. Louis . He went back to Germany to study, where he received his doctorate from the University of Munich in 1894 . From 1897 to 1900 he was Superintendent of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey.
From 1900 to 1906 he was the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1901 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
He was then president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) until his retirement (due to revision) in 1930 , where he founded the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association - College Retirement Equities Fund , a pension fund for teachers in 1918 . He was also associated with other Carnegie Foundation projects such as its Peace Prize, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, of which he was a trustee.
Pritchard was a multiple honorary doctor.
He was married twice: in the first marriage since 1881 to Ida Williams, with whom he had three sons and a daughter, in the second marriage from 1900 to Eva McAllister.
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William Barton Rogers | John Daniel Runkle | William Barton Rogers | Francis Amasa Walker | James Crafts | Henry Smith Pritchett | Arthur Amos Noyes | Richard Cockburn Maclaurin | Elihu Thomson | Ernest Fox Nichols | Elihu Thomson | Samuel Wesley Stratton | Karl Taylor Compton | James R. Killian | Julius Stratton | Howard Wesley Johnson | Jerome Wiesner | Paul Edward Gray | Charles Marstiller Vest | Susan Hockfield | L. Rafael Reif
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pritchett, Henry Smith |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American educator and astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 26, 1857 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Fayette (Missouri) |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 28, 1939 |
| Place of death | Santa Barbara (California) |