Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/313

Rh It is a curious fact that the two institutions, after the unsuccessful attempts to form a merger two years ago, should now at the same time elect new presidents. In the men selected and even in the methods of selection, the institutions have shown their individuality. Harvard has in the most gentlemanly manner elected a member of its own set; the institute after floundering about has chosen a man from the antipodes.

Professor A. Lawrence Lowell, elected to succeed Mr. Eliot as president of Harvard University, belongs to the Harvard and New England aristocracy. The cities of Lowell and Lawrence were named from his ancestors, who for generations have maintained traditions of wealth and culture. Of this stock he is typical, even to the extent of having married his cousin and having no children. In an address made very shortly before the election of his successor. President Eliot said: "When the corporation selects some young man to take my place I hope you will all lock at him with this one inquiry—is this a promising young man, is he a young man who has in him a large capacity to grow?" But the corporation chose a man completely formed by heredity and experience, eminent as an author of important books on government, trained first as a lawyer in charge of large vested interests and later as a professor, lecturing in courses attractive to college students. We may be sure that Mr. Lowell will be as exemplary as president of Harvard as in every other relation of life, and that the traditions and spirit of the university will be safe in his hands.

Professor Richard C. MacLaurin, president-elect of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, though born in Scotland and completing his university studies in Cambridge, has spent most of his life in New Zealand, where he was professor of mathematics in Wellington. A little over a year ago, he accepted the chair of mathematical physics in Columbia University, which had been vacant since the election of Professor R. S. Woodward to the presidency of the Carnegie Institution. Professor MacLaurin has recently published