La Salle Peru Township High School - Ell Ess Pe Yearbook (La Salle, IL)

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2111 gmlemurizrm Thomas Joseph McCormack THOMAS MCCORMACK, son of the late Thomas and Eleanor Burke McCormack, was born in Brooklyn, New York. He attended the grammar and high schools in that city and in Manhattan. Later he went to Princeton University at Princeton, New Jersey, where he received a classical education and was awarded, on graduation, the Fellowship in Modern History. Mr. McCormack then spent two years in Europe where he attended the Universities of Leipzig and Tubingen, studying history, political science, and the modern languages. On his return, he took up the study of jurisprudence at Columbia University, New York, and later at the Chicago Law School, receiving an L. L. B. degree from that institution. He was admitted to the bar but never prac- ticed law. Shortly after the Open Court Publishing Company was founded by the late E. C. Hegeler, Mr. McCormack came west, first to Chicago, and then in 1893, to La Salle where he worked for many years with that organization in the ca- pacity of writer, editor, and translator. His work and studies during this period were chiefly concerned with the history and Kphilosophy of science, eilpecially the philosophy of mathematics and physics, an with the psychology an theory of education. During this period, Mr. McCormack edited many philosophical and mathematical works, wrote numerous articles and reviews for the Monist and Open Court, of which he was assistant editor, and translated from the French, German, Italian, and other languages, a long list of books on science and phil- osophy. These works, and especially the notable translations in 1893 and 1895 res ectively of Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung CThe Science of Mechanicsl and, Popularwissenschaftliche Vorleslungen CPopular Scientific LecturesD, works of Ernst Mach, the renowned Austrian physicist and psychologist, brought Mr. McCormack into prominence and added much to his reputation in scientific circles abroad. Later he edited a large historical work, The Memoirs of Gustave Koerner. In 1903 Mr. McCormack was elected to the superintendency of the La Salle- Peru Township High School and, giving up his literary and scientific career, he devoted his time to the practical problems of secondary education as presented in that high school. In 1924 he was made Director of the La Salle-Peru-Oglesby Junior College. Perhaps Mr. McCormack's most widely known venture in prac- tical education was the establishment in 1923 of the Bureau of Educational Counsel, an organization devoted to the study of the individual needs of high school pupils. The La Salle-Peru Township High School was the first public school in the country in which mental hygiene was introduced as an auxiliary technique for the treatment of student problems. Mr. McCormack was a member of several scientific societies and academies, among them the American Philosophical Society and the American Mathe- matical Society, and his name is one of the one hundred and sixty-four repre- sentatives from Illinois in the Biographical Directory of American Men of Science, published by the MacMillan Company of New York. He was also the author of numerous contributions on educational subjects to national and tech- nical journals, and was, for several years, associate editor of The American Review.

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THOMAS JOSEPH MCCORMACK

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The volume, Who's Who in America, credits Mr. McCormack with editing a Series of Philosophical Classics, Mathematical Series, and the volumes ofthe Memoirs of Gustave Koerner which he prepared in 1909. That volume also notes the translations of the following foreign works: Binet's Psychic Life of Micro- Organisms, 1889, Mach's Science of Mechanics, 18935 Mach's Popular Scientific Lectures, 1895, Weismann's Germinal Selection, 18964 Eimer's Orthogenesis, 1898, LaGrange's Lectures on Elementary Mathematics, 1898, Topinard's Science and Faith, 1899, Delitzsch's Babel and Bible, 1902, Cumont's Mysteries of Mithra, 1902, Mach's Space and Geometry, 1907. Mr. McCormack was given the honorary degree of Master of Science in 1919, by Princeton University, and in June 1930 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, from Northwestern University. Upon the latter occasion, Professor Henry Crew paid tribute to him in the following words: A great teacher who has realized and has met the needs of his entire community by devoting his efforts to the individual student, an accomplished linguist whose studies have resulted in a remarkable mastery of his mother tongue, a philosopher who has followed the advances of science, both social and physical, without for a moment losing sight of the fundamentals, a scholar of catholic tastes who has grasped the large problems of life, but without superficiality, an enemy of chauvinism and a strong advocate of fairmindedness among nations. The death of Thomas J. McCormack, on June 24, 1932 took from our midst a foremost leader, educator and man whose ability and influence cannot be re- placed. :N ! s vi f' aged .fa .yi A 1 ll 'T