Results of meteorological observations made at Providence, R.I.,: Extending over a period of forty-five years, from December, 1831, to December, 1876 (Smithsonian contributions to knowledge)
Address Before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, August, 1859 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Address Before the American Association for ...)
Excerpt from Address Before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, August, 1859
Permitted to convene our, Thirteenth Annual Meet ing, it is fit th as a first duty, pay a passing trib ute of respect to the memory of those who have left us. It is well that we should pause even in the grave and urgent pur suits of life to ponder on its brevity.
Since our last meeting, several who have been accustomed to participate in our proceedings, have ceased to be numbered with the living. Prof. Ira Young, of Dartmouth College; Prof. William M. Mather, of the University of Ohio, and at the time of his death the acting President; and Prof. Denison Olm sted, of Yale College, have been borne to their long homes. They were all widely known in Academic, circles.
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Alexis Caswell was an American college president and scientist.
Background
Alexis Caswell was born on January 29, 1799 in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was a twin son of Samuel and Polly (Seaver) Caswell. He came of a line of farmers which went back to Thomas Caswell, an Englishman, one of the incorporators of Taunton, Massachussets, in 1639. His maternal grandmother, Zibiah White, was descended from Peregrine White, born on the Mayflower.
Education
After three years in Taunton Academy Caswell entered Brown University, graduating in 1822 at the head of his class.
Career
For five years he taught in Columbian College, Washington, the last two years as professor of ancient languages, meanwhile studying theology with the president. He entered the ministry in 1827, and served as pastor of a Baptist church in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for nearly a year. But in 1828 he accepted the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy in Brown University, where he taught continuously for thirty-five years except for a year abroad in 1860-61. His professorships (mathematics and natural philosophy, 1828-50, mathematics and astronomy, 1850-55, natural philosophy and astronomy, 1855-63) forbade him to confine himself to one science, but his favorite field was astronomy. His lectures on this subject at the Smithsonian Institution in 1858 "were of the highest order of popular instruction, " wrote Prof. Joseph Lovering of Harvard, who adds that "he was never superficial. " He published admirable reviews of William Whewell's Astronomy and General Physics (1833) and of J. P. Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens (1838), his easy, lucid style presenting scientific subjects pleasantly yet with precision (Christian Review, June 1836, December 1841).
After his retirement in 1863, he became president of the National Exchange Bank and of the American Screw Company, in Providence. In 1868 he was called to the presidency of Brown University, to meet an emergency caused by two declinations. He was sixty-nine at the time. A man of that age, called obviously to fill a gap, might only have discharged the routine duties of the office, with which Caswell was already familiar as president pro tempore in 1840-41, and as regent, or dean, from 1852 to 1855. But he did more, vigilantly maintaining the scholarship of the university and making some advance. Long before, in 1836, in an article in the North American Review he had attacked the prevailing system of higher education in America, referring to the "practise of conferring degrees on easy terms" with the result that "with us, degrees are not distinctions, "adding that in England examinations" are conducted with a severity, at which, in this country, all our college fraternities would stand aghast. " In his president's report, in 1872, he spoke of "the weary task" of educating youths "who were not born to study. " He retired from the presidency in 1872, but served as trustee from 1873 to 1875 and as fellow the next two years. From 1875 till his death he was president of the Rhode Island Hospital, of which he had been a trustee since its founding.
He was untroubled by the supposed conflict between science and religion; "the legitimate results of all true science, and all discovery, " he wrote in 1841, "will be to fix the truths of Christianity upon a broader and deeper foundation. "
Membership
He was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1850), and by the government's choice of him as one of fifty incorporators of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.
Personality
In all his work Caswell is revealed as a Yankee of the best type, cool, shrewd, kindly, able to turn his hand with confidence to varied tasks.
Quotes from others about the person
"Dr. Caswell is universally known to be a man of imperturbable good nature. He never told your son that he was a liar, but he did tell him that he found great difficulty in believing the account which he had given. "
"Inflexible in his own peculiar theology, he had no taint of illiberality in his intellect or his heart. "
Connections
He was married in 1830 to Esther L. Thompson, who died in 1850, and in 1855 to Elizabeth B. Edmands, who survived him.