Charles W. Eliot - Watertown, MA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

“…this year I'm told the team did well because one pitcher had a fine curve ball. I understand that a curve ball is thrown with a deliberate attempt to deceive. Surely this is not an ability we should want to foster at Harvard.”
- Charles W. Eliot

Charles W. Eliot, who served as president of Harvard for 40 years (1869-1909), is largely credited with the transformation of that institution from a small but respected college into the major research university that it is today. He was the longest serving president in Harvard’s history.

While the Civil War raged in America, Eliot spent two years in Europe studying their various educational systems. When he returned in 1865, he was bristling with ideas on how to reform higher education in the United States. At that time, most colleges in the U.S. only offered a classical curriculum with courses in Greek and Latin, classical literature and philosophy. After a short stint with the recently chartered MIT, Eliot was appointed as president of Harvard and immediately started implementing reforms.

Over the course of his forty years as president, Harvard expanded its educational offerings allowing students to elect certain courses toward a specified discipline. It also greatly expanded its foray into scientific and technical areas and established various research facilities. The goal of many of these reforms was to produce students more suited to the needs of the growing nation and allow students to concentrate their studies in the areas that interested them most.

Many of the reforms that were implemented at Harvard were also implemented at other colleges in America and even extended into public high schools. But there was an area where Eliot’s attempted reforms failed. As the above quote suggests, Charles W. Eliot was not very fond of sports. While president of Harvard, Eliot tried to abolish football but was unsuccessful. I guess not all change is good.

There was another area in which Charles W. Eliot was considered an expert and that was writing concise, meaningful inscriptions on buildings, churches, monuments and other memorials. He did this mainly as favors and didn’t keep track of every inscription he wrote but there have been over 50 such inscriptions on major public buildings and monuments attributed to Charles W. Eliot.

There have been any number of schools named after Charles W. Eliot and also a mountain and an asteroid. He received many honorary degrees during his lifetime and was honored on a U.S. postage stamp issued in 1940. Eliot is buried in Cambridge’s famous Mount Auburn Cemetery (not far from Harvard) along with his second wife. His first wife died of tuberculosis in 1869.
(Source: wikipedia.org)

Description: See Long Description above. Date of birth: 03/20/1834 Date of death: 08/22/1926 Area of notoriety: Education Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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