Daniel Willard Fiske (1831–1904) was an American librarian and scholar, born on November 11, 1831, at Ellisburg, New York.
Fiske studied at Cazenovia Seminary and started his collegiate studies at Hamilton College in 1847. He joined the Psi Upsilon but was suspended for a student prank at the end of his sophomore year. He was educated at Copenhagen and at Uppsala University. Upon his return to the United States, he acted as a General Secretary to the American Geographical Society and edited the Syracuse Daily Journal.
Upon the opening of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Fiske was named University librarian and professor in 1868. He made a reputation as an authority on the Northern European languages, and Icelandic language and culture in particular.
In August 1880, he married Jennie McGraw, at the American Legation in Berlin. McGraw was the daughter of deceased timber magnate John McGraw, and had inherited $2.2 million upon his death in 1877. Their marriage was short, and by September 1881 she had died from tuberculosis. Controversy over her will's bequest to Cornell left him involved in the The Great Will Case.[1][2][3] Following its resolution in May 1890, he spent much of his remaining years in Italy, and collected manuscripts.
His interests included chess: he helped organize the first American Chess Congress in 1857 and wrote the tournament book in 1859, and edited The Chess Monthly from 1857 to 1861 with Paul Morphy. His scholarly volume, Chess In Iceland and in Icelandic Literature (Florence, 1905), was used as source material by H.J.R. Murray for A History of Chess. Another manuscript, Chess Tales and Chess Miscellanies (New York, 1912), also published posthumously, is an anthology covering chess life of the period including articles about Morphy, problems by Sam Loyd, and the history of chess including some fables.
On September 17, 1904 Fiske died at Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He is buried next to his wife Jennie McGraw Fiske in the elaborate crypt of Sage Chapel at Cornell University. After his death he left a large bequest of 32,000 volumes, the Fiske Icelandic Collection, to Cornell.[4]