University of Chicago - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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COBB HALL

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would otherwise have been neglected. By the time of President Harper's death in 1906, the University of Chicago had become a pioneer in the field of education. The man who was Chosen to succeed Presi- dent Harper was faced with the problem of maintaining the high standard, set by the first president whose reputation still dominated the university. Henry Pratt JudsonJ the former Dean of Faculties, overcame this handicap and remained president for seventeen years. At the time of his ascension, he had already taught at the university for fifteen years and had served as acting president during President Harper's illness, so that he knew his associates and his organization well. A more practical, less in- spired man than Har er, Judson turned his attention to the backing of the school and when e retired, left a financiallyr strong university whose student body had increased eighty-six pet-eent and whose endowment had more than doubled. His successor, Ernest De Witt Burton, is probably most noted for the agreeable way in which his name combines with Judsonls to form the 0ft pronounced Burton-Judson Court. His services as Dean of Libraries had illustrated his ability as an organizer, but his untimely death in 1925 brought his career as president to an early end. Max Mason was brought from the University of Wisconsin to succeed him. A professor of mathematical physics, Mason was probably better known for his submarine detectors, invented during the World War I, than for all of his academic research. His reign of ofhce was short, for after three years he resigned to become director of natural sciences for the Rockefeller Foundation. It was then in 1929 that Robert Maynard Hutchins was appointed president. His reputation was almost as fabulous as that of Harper's. At twentyathree he had been secretary of Yale University; at twenty- eight he had been made Dean of the Yale Law School and had, thereupon, reorganized it to suit his theories,and now at thirty, he had become presi- dent of a great university. His likeness to the hrst president did not end there, for he, like Harper, had i'einzilutionatjrr plans for education and meant to make them work. His llnew plan , so successful today, meant two years of a broad college education and two years of specialized study. All work was voluntary and a student could advance as rapidly as he was