Robert Stewart Hyer was born at Oxford, Ga. , in 1860, the eldest of the four children of William L. Hyer, a locomotive engineer, and Laura (Stewart) Hyer, a daughter of a Methodist minister. He was of Huguenot and Scotch-Irish ancestry. As his mother was an invalid, her sister, Miss Ray Stewart, cared for the boy until 1874.
He attended school in Atlanta. Then, until 1881, he made his home at Oxford with an uncle, Joseph S. Stewart, whose assistance made possible the completion of his course at Emory College. He was graduated with first honors in the class of 1881. He was a reticent youth, had few intimate friends, and took little interest in college sports and pastimes.
His interest in science appears to have been awakened by Darwin's On the Origin of Species, which he considered the greatest scientific work in English. At the age of twenty-two he became professor of sciences in Southwestern University at Georgetown, Tex. , a Methodist institution then nine years old. His going to Texas may be said to mark the beginning of education in the physical sciences in the state.
A decade after his arrival he began a series of experiments in the X-ray and ether waves which promised significant results; but the demands of the presidency, which he reluctantly added to his professorial duties in 1898, left him little time for research. A report in the Transactions of the Texas Academy of Science, volume II (1899), would indicate that his experiments in ether waves antedated those of Marconi. In 1904 he designed the first wireless station in Texas, which transmitted messages for the distance of a mile. He was also a pioneer in X-ray work in the Southwest.
When, at the age of thirty-seven, he became president of Southwestern, it was without endowment, its enrolment was 425, and its physical plant wholly inadequate. During his thirteen-year tenure in the presidency, the number of students increased to 1, 123, new buildings were erected – one of them designed by Hyer, an endowment of $300, 000 was obtained, and a medical college was established in Dallas (1903).
After an effort to move the University to North Texas had failed, Hyer resigned his connection with the Georgetown institution to become president and professor of physics at Southern Methodist University, founded at Dallas in April 1911 by five Texas Conferences, and made the "connectional" university of the Church west of the Mississippi three years later. Hyer planned the campus, determined the architectural design, supervised the erection of the first five buildings, and obtained an endowment of about $300, 000. The initial enrolment of the university (1915 – 16) was 706, and when Hyer became president emeritus, in February 1920, the enrolment had grown to 1, 118. He retained his professorship until his death and during these years began experiments to determine the location and character of petroleum deposits by the use of electrical instruments.
His air of innate distinction was heightened by his reserve and dignity. He was primarily a student, and although he was for twenty-three years a college president, he regarded administrative functions as secondary to the calling of a teacher.
In addition to miscellaneous contributions, he published papers in the Transactions of the Texas Academy of Science and in the Methodist Quarterly Review. He was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conference at London (1902) and Toronto (1912).
For many years a critical student of the Bible. He represented the Methodist Church, South, on the Joint Commission on Unification.
He was elected a member of the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Emory University in recognition of his scientific achievements.
He was a charming conversationalist, a delightful essayist, and a singularly effective public speaker. He was a man of quiet, unostentatious piety.
He was twice married: in 1881 to Madge Jordan, of Savannah, Ga. , who died in 1883; and in 1887 to Margaret Lee Hudgins, of Georgetown.
