Charles William Eliot

Charles William Eliot (March 20, 1834 – August 22, 1926) was an American academic who was selected as Harvard's president in 1869. He transformed the provincial college into the preeminent American research university. Eliot served until 1909, having the longest term as president in the university's history. He was a cousin of the Nobel Prize-winning poet T.S. Eliot.

Background

Charles Eliot was a scion of the wealthy Eliot family of Boston, and was the grandson of banker Samuel Eliot. His mother Mary Lyman Eliot had ancestral roots in early Massachusetts Bay Colony as a descendant of John Eliot, and Edmund Rice. Eliot graduated from Boston Latin School in 1849 and from Harvard University in 1853. He was later made an honorary member of the Hasty Pudding.

Although he had high expectations and obvious scientific talents, the first fifteen years of Eliot's career were less than auspicious. He was appointed Tutor in Mathematics at Harvard in the fall of 1854, and studied chemistry with Josiah P. Cooke. In 1858, he was promoted to Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Chemistry. He taught competently, wrote some technical pieces on chemical impurities in industrial metals, and busied himself with schemes for the reform of Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School.