University of Illinois - Illio Yearbook (Urbana Champaign, IL)

Page 13 text:

PRESIDENT DRAPER.

Page 15 text:

Thomas Jonathan Burrill, A.M., Ph.D., L.L.D. Thomas Jonathan Burrill, Professor of Botany and Horticulture and Dean of the General Faculty, was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, April 25, 1839. He graduated from the Illinois State Normal University, in 1865. He at once became Superintendent of the Urbana Schools, which position he held for three years. In April, 1868, he became an instructor in the Illinois Industrial University, then just founded. Two years later he was appointed Professor of Botany and Horticulture, the position which he holds at present. He became Botanist of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History, in 1878. In 1882 he was chosen Vice- President of the University, a position which he filled until 1892. He was Acting Regent of the University from 1889 to 1894, and served as Horticulturist and Botanist of the Agricul- tural Experiment Station. Professor Burrill early adopted his chief specialties, Cryptogamic Botany and the Parasitic diseases of plants. He was the first among American investigators to give particular attention to the latter subject, and it is probably true that his students were the first in America to have regular laboratory work with compound microscopes and equipments for the study of minute plants and plant tissues. His writings have, for the most part, been confined to reports upon his investigations. Probably his pamphlets upon Bacteria (1882), and that upon the ' ' Parasitic Fungi of Illinois (1885 to 1887) have attracted the most attention. Samuel Walker Shattuck, C.E. Samuel Walker Shattuck, Professor of Mathematics, was born in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1841. He graduated from the Norwich University in i860 and was appointed tutor in Mathematics and Military Science, which position he held for three years, with the exception of four months in the Spring and Summer of 1861, when he was on the staff of the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteers. In the Summer of 1863 he returned to the army, as Adjutant of the Eighth Vermont Veteran Volunteers, and served until the end of the war. He was pro- moted in 1864, and held different staff positions as Assistant Adjutant General and Assistant Inspector General until the end of the war. In the Fall of 1865 he was appointed Adjunct Professor of Mathematics in Norwich University and in the following year became Vice- President. In 1868 he came to the University of Illinois as Assistant Professor of Mathematics and several years later he was made a full professor. He has been at the head of the Mathematics department since his appointment in 1868. He was Acting Regent during Dr. Gregory ' s six months absence in Europe in 1873. In the Fall of the same year he was elected, by the faculty, Vice-President of the University and held this position for three years. He has been Business Manager of the University since 1873.