Abbott Lawrence Lowell

Portrait of Abbott Lawrence Lowell, painting from 1923, ( John Singer Sargent )

Abbott Lawrence Lowell (born December 13, 1856 in Boston , Massachusetts , † January 6, 1943 ) was a non-fiction author, lawyer and political scientist, and President of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933.

Life

Abbott Lowell came from one of the most respected and wealthy patrician families in Boston . He was the brother of the renowned astronomer Percival Lowell , the writer and suffragette Amy Lowell and the pioneer of prenatal child care Elizabeth Lowell Putnam (1862-1935). His cousin Abbott Lawrence Rotch founded the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory.

He received his bachelor's degree from Harvard College with top marks in mathematics in 1877. He successfully completed his Master of Arts at Harvard Law School in 1880. In the following years until 1897 he ran a law firm with his cousin Francis Cabot Lowell. Both were authors of the non-fiction book Transfer of Stock in Corporations (1884). In 1897 Lowell was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1910 to the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 1913 he became a corresponding member of the British Academy .

Services

In 1897 he became a lecturer and in 1898 a full professor at Harvard University. Eleven years later he was elected president of the university, an office he would hold successfully for 24 years. In the same year 1909 he was elected head of the American Political Science Association . He has presented scientific non-fiction books: Essays on Government (1889), Governments and Parties in Continental Europe (2 volumes, 1896), Colonial Civil Service (1900) and The Government of England (2 volumes, 1908).

At the same time he was appointed CFO of the Lowell Institute in Boston in 1900, succeeding his father, Augustus Lowell .

His main achievements as university president are the reorganization of the house system (construction of student dormitories on campus) and the co-founding of the Harvard Society of Fellows . In recent historical studies and press articles, Lowell has been criticized for being anti-Semitic, which is typical of the time.

Web links

• Literature by and about Abbott Lawrence Lowell in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Members: Abbott Lawrence Lowell. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 11, 2019 . 
2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 2, 2020 .