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Thomas Hill (clergyman)

American clergyman (1818–1891)

Summary

American clergyman (1818–1891)

Field	Value
honorific_prefix	The Reverend
name	Thomas Hill
image	Thomas Hill 1818-1891.jpg
order	20th
title	President of Harvard University
term_start	1862
term_end	1868
predecessor	Cornelius Conway Felton
successor	Charles William Eliot
order2	2nd
title2	President of Antioch College
term_start2	1860
term_end2	1862
predecessor2	Horace Mann
successor2	Austin Craig
birth_date
birth_place	New Brunswick, New Jersey, U.S.
death_date
death_place	Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S.
profession	Clergyman and educator
relatives	Henry Barker Hill (son)
signature	Signature of Harvard president Thomas Hill.png
footnotes

Thomas Hill (January 7, 1818 – November 21, 1891) was an American Unitarian clergyman, mathematician, scientist, philosopher, and educator.

Biography

Taught to read at an early age, Hill read voraciously and was well regarded for his capacious and accurate memory. His father taught him botany, and he took a delight in nature and devised scientific instruments, one that calculated eclipses and was subsequently awarded the Scott Medal by the Franklin Institute.

Though not formally educated in his youth, Hill briefly attended the Lower Dublin Academy in Holmesburg, Pennsylvania and the Leicester Academy in Massachusetts, now the Leicester campus of Becker College, leaving in 1837.

He earned his A.B. and D.Div. from Harvard University in 1843 and 1845 respectively. He was later made an honorary member of the Hasty Pudding. Hill was president of Antioch College from 1860 to 1862 until the Civil War forced the college to shut down; he then held the presidency of Harvard University from 1862 to 1868. Ill health caused his retirement from Harvard, but he was able to serve as official botanist during the Hassler Expedition circumnavigating South America through the Magellan Strait from Boston in December 1871 to San Francisco in August 1872. From 1873, he was head of the Unitarian parish in Portland, Maine.

In 1863, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society. Hill claimed to have injured his testicle while gardening, an incident that made him wary of laboratory instruction at Harvard, warning students not to exert themselves too much in their studies.

Hill's home in Waltham, Massachusetts, where he began his career, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

References

Chiddister, Diane. (2005). "Two hundred years of Yellow Springs: a collection of articles first Printed in the Yellow Springs News For the 2003 Bicentennial of Yellow Springs, Ohio". The Yellow Springs News.
Hill, Thomas. "Papers of Thomas Hill: an inventory".
(November 29, 1891). "Harvard University". The New York Times.
"Hassler Expedition". Smithsonian Institution.
"APS Member History".
A. J. Angulo. (2009). "William Barton Rogers and the Idea of MIT". Johns Hopkins.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

1818-births 1891-deaths people-from-new-brunswick,-new-jersey american-unitarians leicester-academy-alumni harvard-college-alumni harvard-divinity-school-alumni presidents-of-antioch-college presidents-of-harvard-university members-of-the-american-philosophical-society people-from-waltham,-massachusetts

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