Thomas Messinger Drown

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Thomas Messinger Drown
Thomas Messinger Drown

Thomas Messinger Drown (March 19, 1842 - 1904) was the 4th University President of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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[edit] Background

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1842. He graduated high school in 1859. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1862. He went abroad to Germany study Chemistry in Freiberg, Saxony and mining at the University of Heidelberg. From 1869 to 1870 he was an instructor of metallurgy at Harvard University. In 1872 he was doing research in his private laboratory back in his hometown of Philadelphia where he would hire an assistant John Townsend Baker. Then from 1874 to 1881 he was the chair of Analytical Chemistry at Lafayette College. Baker followed him to Lafayette and later would found the J. T. Baker Chemical Co which is now a part of Tyco Healthcare.

[edit] MIT and the Board of Health Lawrence Experiment Station

He then held a leadership post in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He helped start MIT’s chemical engineering curriculum in the late 1880s. In 1887 he was appointed by the newly formed Massachusetts Board of Health to a landmark study sanitary quality of the state's inland waters. As Consulting Chemist to the Massachusetts State Board of Health was in charge of in the famous Lawrence Experiment Station 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 . This research created famous "normal chlorine" map of Massachusetts that was the first of its kind and had been 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 he 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. He served as its secretary, and editor of its "Transactions" from 1871 till 1884. He was elected their president in 1897.

[edit] Lehigh Presidency

In 1895 he left MIT to become the fourth President of Lehigh University. Lehigh's endowment was predominantly in the stock of the major company of its founder, Asa Packer's Lehigh Valley Railroad. The Panic of 1893 crashed the market, brought the country into depression that lasted years, and nearly brought the university to financial insolvency. Many prominent railroads such as Northern Pacific Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad went into bankruptcy, over 15,000 companies and 500 banks failed. In 1897 President Drown broke the university's ties with the Episcopal Church in order to qualify 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 and biology. New curricula were adopted in metallurgical engineering, geology, and physics. In 1904 Dr. Drown died, effectively ending his term

In 2006, like Dr. Drown, 13th Lehigh President Alice Gast was also appointed from a leadership position at MIT to become President of Lehigh.

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Preceded by
Robert Alexander Lamberton		 President of Lehigh University
1895-1904		 Succeeded by
Henry Sturgis Drinker