William Fairfield Warren

William Fairfield Warren (March 13, 1833 – December 7, 1929) was the first president of Boston University.

Born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, he graduated from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut (1853), and there became a member of the Mystical Seven. He later studied at Andover Theological Seminary and at Berlin and Halle. He entered the New England Conference in 1855 and was professor of systematic theology in the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Institute at Bremen, Germany (1860–1866). He was acting president of the Boston University School of Theology (1866–1873), president of Boston University (1873–1903), and dean of the Boston University School of Theology (1903–1911). After 1873 he was also professor of comparative theology and philosophy of religion. He published:

When Boston University was chartered in 1869, he helped make it the first university in the country fully open to women. He also helped create Wellesley College in 1870. He was the brother of Henry White Warren.

William was married to Harriet Merrick Warren, the first editor of The Heathen Woman's Friend. He died on December 7, 1929, at the age of 96.

Warren wrote a book promoting his belief that the original centre of mankind once sat at the North Pole entitled Paradise Found: The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole (1885). In this work Warren placed Atlantis at the North Pole, as well as the Garden of Eden, Mount Meru, Avalon and Hyperborea. Warren believed all these mythical lands were folk memories of a former inhabited far northern seat where man was originally created.

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