William Jacob Holland (August 16, 1848 – December 13, 1932) was the eighth Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh (1891–1901) and Director of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. He was an accomplished zoologist and paleontologist, as well as an ordained Presbyterian minister.
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Holland was born August 16, 1848 in Jamaica, West Indies, the son of a minister. He attended Moravian College and Theological Seminary; Amherst College, (A.B., 1869), and Princeton Theological Seminary (1874).
In 1874 he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to become pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church in the city's Oakland neighborhood. At this time Holland was also a trustee of the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham College), where he taught ancient languages. He also was active in the sciences, serving as naturalist for the United States Eclipse Expedition, which in 1887, at the bequest of the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Navy, explored Japan. In 1879 Holland married Carrie T. Moorhead. They had two children.
In 1891 he became chancellor of Pitt, where he taught anatomy and zoology. His 1890s administration is best known for dramatically growing the university (then called the Western University of Pennsylvania). In 1901 his friend Andrew Carnegie hired him as director of the Carnegie Museum, where he remained until retirement in 1922. He died on December 13, 1932.
Holland appears to have been a difficult man to work with. Given to tantrums, he was somewhat of a sycophant towards his betters (including Carnegie), and seemingly condescending when dealing with employees.[1] However, in this he didn't really differ from his colleagues in Chicago or New York (such as H.F. Osborn).[2] Despite maintaining a prime interest in lepidoptery, he did manage to train himself as a competent paleontologist when the directorship of the Carnegie Museum was thrust upon him.
As director of the Carnegie Museums, Holland achieved international renown for supervising the mounting of several casts of the sauropod dinosaur Diplodocus, a donation by Carnegie to natural history museums throughout Europe. His trip to Argentina in 1912 to install a replica of a Diplodocus, at the behest of Carnegie, is told by Holland in his 1913 travel book To the River Plate and Back.[3] The Diplodocus campaign earned him his share of international recognition as well, in the form of a French legion d'honneur and a German knight's cross, among others.[4]
Holland was America's great popularizer of butterflies and moths in the first half of the twentieth century. Holland's The Butterfly Book (1898) and The Moth Book (1903) are both still widely used. Holland donated his private collection exceeding 250,000 specimens to the Carnegie Museum . He supported active collectors worldwide, obtaining major collections from previously uncollected regions between 1890 and 1930 through the efforts of William Doherty, Herbert Huntingdon Smith, H.L. Weber, J. Steinbach, S.M. Klages and many others.
The University of Pittsburgh's Holland Hall at 3990 Fifth Avenue is named in his honor. It is a student residence for 600 upperclass and first-year women students and is part of the Schenley Quadrangle complex. The University Book Center is on the ground floor of Holland Hall.
| Wikisource has the text of a 1921 Collier's Encyclopedia article about William Jacob Holland. |
| Preceded by Milton Goff |
University of Pittsburgh Chancellor 1891 – 1901 |
Succeeded by Samuel McCormick |
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