David Starr Jordan Popular Books

David Starr Jordan Biography & Facts

David Starr Jordan (January 19, 1851 – September 19, 1931) was the founding president of Stanford University, serving from 1891 to 1913. He was an ichthyologist during his research career. Prior to serving as president of Stanford University, he had served as president of Indiana University from 1884 to 1891. Starr was also a strong supporter of eugenics, and his published views expressed a fear of "race-degeneration" and asserted that cattle and human beings are "governed by the same laws of selection". He was an antimilitarist since he believed that war killed off the best members of the gene pool, and he initially opposed American involvement in World War I. Early life and career Jordan was born in Gainesville, New York, and grew up on a farm in upstate New York. His parents made the unorthodox decision to educate him at a local girls' high school. His middle name, Starr, does not appear in early census records, and was apparently self-selected; he had begun using it by the time that he was enrolled at Cornell. He said that it was in honor of his mother's devotion to the minister Thomas Starr King. He was inspired by Louis Agassiz to pursue his studies in ichthyology. He was part of the first freshman class of undergraduates at Cornell University and graduated in 1872 with a master's degree in botany. He wrote in his autobiography The Days of a Man, "During the three years which followed [my entrance as a 'belated' freshman in March 1869], I completed all the requirements for a degree of Bachelor of Science, besides about two year of advanced work in Botany. Taking this last into consideration, the faculty conferred on me at graduation in June 1872, the advanced degree of Master of Science instead of the conventional Bachelor's Degree ... it was afterward voted not to grant any second degree within a year after the Bachelor had been received. I was placed, quite innocently, in the position of being the only graduate of Cornell to merge two degrees into one." His master's thesis was on the topic "The Wild Flowers of Wyoming County". Jordan initially taught natural history courses at several small Midwestern colleges and secondary schools, including at Indianapolis High School. While in Indianapolis, Jordan obtained a Doctor of Medicine degree from Indiana Medical College in 1875. The Indiana Medical College in Indianapolis opened in 1869 and merged out of existence in 1878. Standards at Indiana Medical College were not particularly high. Jordan himself, reflecting on the experience noted that "I was also able to spend some time in the Medical College, from which, in the spring of 1875, I received the (scarcely earned) degree of Doctor of Medicine, though it had not at all been my intention to enter that profession." The following year, in 1876, Jordan taught comparative anatomy at the college. Jordan also holds an honorary PhD awarded to him by Butler University in 1877. He was then accepted into the natural history faculty of Indiana University Bloomington as a professor of zoology in 1879. His teaching included his version of eugenics, which "sought to prevent the decay of the Anglo-Saxon/Nordic race by limiting racial mixing and by preventing the reproduction of those he deemed unfit." Personal life Jordan married Susan Bowen (1845–1885), a biologist and a graduate of Mount Holyoke College (whom he had met at Louis Agassiz's Penikese Island Summer School of Science), in her hometown of Peru, Massachusetts on March 10, 1875. She died at age 39, after 10 years of marriage, following a brief illness. Bowen was six years Jordan's senior. They had three children: the educator Edith Monica (1877–1965), Harold Bowen (1882–1959), and Thora (1884–1886). Jordan later married Jessie Knight (1866–1952) in 1887. At the time of their marriage, two years after his first wife's death, Knight was 21 years old and Jordan was 36. They met while he was serving as president of Indiana University. He and his second wife had three additional children: Knight Starr (1888–1947), Barbara (1891–1900), and Eric Knight (1903–1926). Indiana University presidency In 1885, he was named president of Indiana University and became the nation's youngest university president at only 34 and the first Indiana University president who was not an ordained minister. He improved the university's finances and public image, doubled its enrollment, and instituted an elective system; like Cornell's, it was an early application of the modern liberal arts curriculum. It was through studying blind cave fish that the Indiana zoologist David Starr Jordan rose to prominence. A scientist of great charisma, he would lead IU before being chosen in 1891 as the first president of Stanford University. By my time at IU, however, Jordan was locally best known for quipping that every time he learned the name of a student he forgot the name of a fish. Stanford presidency In March 1891, he was approached by Leland and Jane Stanford, who offered him the presidency of Leland Stanford Junior University, which was about to open in California. Andrew White, the president of Cornell, had been offered the position but instead recommended Jordan to the Stanfords based on an educational philosophy fit with the Stanfords' vision of a nonsectarian co-educational school with a liberal arts curriculum. Jordan quickly accepted the offer, arrived at Stanford in June 1891, and immediately set about recruiting faculty for the university's planned September opening. Pressed for time, he drew heavily on his own acquaintances; most of the 15 founding professors came either from Cornell or Indiana University. That first year at Stanford, Jordan was instrumental in establishing the university's Hopkins Marine Station. He served Stanford as president until 1913 and then chancellor until his retirement in 1916. The university decided not to renew his three-year-term as chancellor in 1916. As the years went on, Jordan became increasingly alienated from the university. While he was chancellor, he was elected president of the National Education Association. Jordan was a member in the Bohemian Club and the University Club in San Francisco. Jordan served as a director of the Sierra Club from 1892 to 1903. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1931. David Starr Jordan House In 1905, he was one of the first professors to build a summer home at the northeast corner of Camino Real and 7th Avenue, on what became known as "Professors' Row" in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. He was good friends with Stanford University professor of entomology Vernon Lyman Kellogg who also lived in Carmel. Eugenics In 1899, Jordan delivered an essay at Stanford on behalf of racial segregation and racial purity. In the essay, Jordan claimed that "For a race of men or a herd of cattle are governed by the same laws of selection." Jordan expressed great fears and phobias for "race degeneration" that would result unless great endeavors were put forwa.... 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