Timothy Dwight V | |
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12th President of Yale University | |
In office 1886–1899 |
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Preceded by | Noah Porter |
Succeeded by | Arthur Twining Hadley |
Personal details | |
Born |
Norwich, Connecticut |
November 16, 1828
Died | May 26, 1916 New Haven, Connecticut |
(aged 87)
Timothy Dwight V (November 16, 1828 – May 26, 1916) was an American academic, an educator, a Congregational minister, and President of Yale University (1886–1898). During his years as the school's president, Yale's schools first organized as a university. His grandfather was Timothy Dwight IV, who served as President of Yale College ninety years before his grandson's tenure.
Dwight was born in Norwich, Connecticut, the son of James Dwight. His paternal grandfather, Timothy Dwight IV, served as president of Yale College from 1795 to 1817. He was the great-grandson of Major Timothy Dwight and Mary (Edwards) Dwight, the latter's father being Rev. Jonathan Edwards, the third president of Princeton University. His mother was Susan, daughter of John McLaren Breed, by his second wife Rebecca (Walker) Breed, who was the daughter of Robert Walker, a judge of the Superior Court of Connecticut.
Timothy Dwight entered Yale in 1845, and during his undergraduate course received prizes in mathematics and Latin, and was a member of the Linonian Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and Skull and Bones. As the Clark Scholar, he spent the period from 1849 to 1851 in graduate work at Yale, in the fall of the latter year entering the Theological Department, where he studied for two years. He served as a tutor in the College from 1851 to 1855, and then went abroad to continue his studies at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin.
Returning to America in July, 1858, he became professor of sacred literature at Yale at the opening of the next college year. His work in the Divinity School continued until 1886, when he was elected president of Yale College. Yale had begun to develop the departments of professional study—particularly of theology and medicine—at the beginning of the nineteenth century, during the administration of the elder President Dwight; and the institution, long a University in fact, became one in name at the inauguration of the younger Dwight. During the thirteen years of his presidency, from 1886 to 1899, the University began that rapid development in scope, in numbers of students and faculty, in material prosperity, and in national influence.