Thomas Messinger Drown was the fourth University President of Lehigh University

Lehigh University

Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...

 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Bethlehem is a city in Lehigh and Northampton Counties in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 74,982, making it the seventh largest city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie,...

.

Background

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

 in 1842. He graduated high school in 1859. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 and graduated in 1862. He went abroad to Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 to study chemistry

Chemistry

Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....

 in Freiberg, Saxony

Freiberg, Saxony

Freiberg is a city in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, administrative center of the Mittelsachsen district.-History:The city was founded in 1186, and has been a center of the mining industry in the Ore Mountains for centuries...

, and mining

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 at the University of Heidelberg. From 1869 to 1870 he was an instructor of metallurgy

Metallurgy

Metallurgy is a domain of materials science that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their intermetallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are called alloys. It is also the technology of metals: the way in which science is applied to their practical use...

 at Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. In 1872 he was doing research in his private laboratory back in his hometown of Philadelphia, where he would hire a former student as an assistant John Townsend Baker. From 1874 to 1881 he was the chair of Analytical Chemistry

Analytical chemistry

Analytical chemistry is the study of the separation, identification, and quantification of the chemical components of natural and artificial materials. Qualitative analysis gives an indication of the identity of the chemical species in the sample and quantitative analysis determines the amount of...

 at Lafayette College

Lafayette College

Lafayette College is a private coeducational liberal arts and engineering college located in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA. The school, founded in 1826 by James Madison Porter,son of General Andrew Porter of Norristown and citizens of Easton, first began holding classes in 1832...

. Baker followed him to Lafayette and later would found the J. T. Baker Chemical Co., which merged with Mallinckrodt

Mallinckrodt

Mallinckrodt is a set of pharmaceutical, chemical, imaging, and respiratory equipment suppliers based in the St. Louis, Missouri, area. Founded in 1867 when the Mallinckrodt brothers formed G. Mallinckrodt & Company to manufacture pharmaceutical chemicals, Mallinckrodt was purchased by Tyco...

 and was absorbed and spun off of Tyco International

Tyco International

Tyco International Ltd. is a highly diversified global manufacturing company incorporated in Switzerland, with United States operational headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey...

 as a component company of Covidien

Covidien

Covidien , formerly Tyco Healthcare, is a healthcare device and supply company, incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, although its corporate offices are located in Mansfield, Massachusetts. On June 29, 2007, Covidien became an independent publicly traded company after being spun off from Tyco...

.

MIT and the Board of Health Lawrence Experiment Station

Drown then held a leadership post in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

. He helped start MIT’s chemical engineering

Chemical engineering

Chemical engineering is the branch of engineering that deals with physical science , and life sciences with mathematics and economics, to the process of converting raw materials or chemicals into more useful or valuable forms...

 curriculum in the late 1880s. In 1887, he was appointed by the newly-formed Massachusetts Board of Health to a landmark study of sanitary quality of the state's inland waters. As Consulting Chemist to the Massachusetts State Board of Health, he was in charge of the famous Lawrence Experiment Station

Lawrence Experiment Station

The Lawrence Experiment Station, now known as the Senator William X. Wall Experiment Station, was the world's first trial station for drinking water purification and sewage treatment...

 laboratory conducting the water sampling, testing, and analysis. There he put to work the environmental chemist and first female graduate of MIT, Ellen Swallow Richards

Ellen Swallow Richards

Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 19th century, pioneering the field of home economics. Richards graduated from Westford Academy...

. This research created the famous "normal chlorine" map of Massachusetts that was the first of its kind and was the template for others. As a result, Massachusetts established the first water-quality standards in America, and the first modern sewage treatment plant was created. As a professor, Drown published a number of papers on metallurgy, mostly in Transactions of the American Institute of Engineers.

Dr. Drown was founder of the American Institute of Mining Engineers

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers

The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers is a professional body for mining and metallurgy, with 90,000 members. It was founded in 1871 by 22 mining engineers in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, United States, being one of the first national engineering societies in the...

. He served as its secretary, and editor of its Transactions from 1871 till 1884. He was elected their president in 1897.

Lehigh presidency

In 1895 he left MIT to become the fourth President of Lehigh University

Lehigh University

Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...

. Lehigh's endowment was predominantly in the stock of the major company of its founder, Asa Packer

Asa Packer

Asa Packer was an American businessman who pioneered railroad construction, was active in Pennsylvania politics, and founded Lehigh University.-Early life:...

's Lehigh Valley Railroad

Lehigh Valley Railroad

The Lehigh Valley Railroad was one of a number of railroads built in the northeastern United States primarily to haul anthracite coal.It was authorized April 21, 1846 in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and incorporated September 20, 1847 as the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill and Susquehanna Railroad...

. The Panic of 1893

Panic of 1893

The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...

 crashed the market, brought the country into depression that lasted years, and nearly brought the university to financial insolvency. Many prominent railroads such as the Northern Pacific Railway

Northern Pacific Railway

The Northern Pacific Railway was a railway that operated in the west along the Canadian border of the United States. Construction began in 1870 and the main line opened all the way from the Great Lakes to the Pacific when former president Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final "golden spike" in...

, the Union Pacific Railroad

Union Pacific Railroad

The Union Pacific Railroad , headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is the largest railroad network in the United States. James R. Young is president, CEO and Chairman....

 and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad went into bankruptcy, and over 15,000 companies and 500 banks failed. In order to gain new sources of funding, President Drown broke the university's ties with the Episcopal Church in 1897, qualifying the university for aid from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. During his term, which started during a major financial crisis, he was able to save Lehigh from bankruptcy, grow enrollment, grow academics, and build. Williams Hall was completed. The curriculum leading to a degree in arts and engineering was established, as was the department of zoology

Zoology

Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 and biology

Biology

Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

. New curricula were adopted in metallurgical engineering, geology, and physics. In 1904 Dr. Drown died, effectively ending his term.

In 1908, Lehigh University opened up Drown Hall

Lehigh University Buildings

Lehigh University has many buildings, old and new, on its three campuses. When the university was founded in 1865, it took over several buildings from the surrounding property. One which remains today is Christmas Hall, now part of Christmas-Saucon Hall...

which houses Lehigh's English Department.

External links

• "About Lehigh - Past to Present - Past Presidents"
• "Lehigh inaugurations bridge past, future"
• "SERMON IN STONE" Packer Memorial Church: An Historical Essay
• "Purity by the ounce" J. T. Baker’s dissatisfaction with flawed research material refined the chemical industry.
• "Tributes to Ellen Swallow Richards" From Technology Review, vol. 13, 1911, pp. 365–373
• "MIT Scientists Play Major Roles in the Early Work of the Station" includes picture of Dr. Drown
• "autographed photograph of him"
• "another photograph"