Career
He was the elder brother of Secretary of State Elihu Root. Oren Root, Junior. was born on May 18, 1838, in Syracuse, New York, to Oren Root I, a professor of mathematics at Hamilton College. He graduated from Hamilton in 1856 then attended Rutgers College for a Doctor of Divinity degree.
In 1866 he became a professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Oren founded the Zeta Phi Society in 1870, now the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi. Root was also co-editor of the Columbian Speaker.
He took up work at Hamilton College in 1880 where he taught natural sciences and mathematics for the last twenty seven years of his life. Root succumbed to a year long battle with cirrhosis of the liver.
