| William Penn Brooks | |
|---|---|
| William P. Brooks, circa 1905. | |
| President of the Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University) | |
| In office 1880 – 1883, 1886 – 1887 |
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| President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College (now the University of Massachusetts Amherst) | |
| In office 1905–1906 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born | November 19, 1851 Scituate, Massachusetts, United States |
| Died | March 8, 1938 (aged 86) Amherst, Massachusetts, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Spouse(s) | Eva Bancroft Hall (1882-1924) Grace L. Holden (1927-1938) |
| Alma mater | Massachusetts Agricultural College |
| Occupation | Agronomist, botanist, professor of agriculture |
| Signature | |
William Penn Brooks (November 19, 1851 – March 8, 1938) was an American agricultural scientist, who worked as a foreign advisor in Meiji period Japan in the colonization project for Hokkaidō, and the eighth president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College.
Brooks was born in Scituate, Massachusetts, United States to Nathaniel Brooks and Rebecca Partridge (Cushing). He was valedictorian of the Massachusetts Agricultural College class of 1875, where he had specialized in agricultural chemistry, and had played a part in founding Phi Sigma Kappa along with six fellow students.
After a year of graduate study, Brooks was hired as a teacher for Sapporo Agricultural College (SAC), in Japan, whose head teacher at that time was Brooks' former professor, William Smith Clark. Brooks arrived in Sapporo in January 1877, shortly after Clark had left the school and only a few months before the Japanese government crushed the Satsuma rebellion, the last opposition to its policy of modernization.
Immediately after his arrival, he began to deliver lectures on agricultural science and took charge of the directorship of the experimental fields. Brooks worked at the Sapporo Agricultural School for twelve years, four of which he served as the college president. Along with his teaching, Brooks made a great number of contributions as an agricultural advisor, identifying profitable crops for the northern Japanese climate and teaching courses in botany and agricultural science. He is credited with the introduction of onions, corn, beans, forage and other plants to Hokkaidō. Brooks stressed both the theoretical and practical in his classes. Students were assigned six hours of field work a week and paid by the hour.
In 1882, Brooks traveled home on leave and married. His wife, Eva Bancroft Hall Brooks returned with him to live in Sapporo until his contract expired in 1888. During this time they had two children, Rachel Bancroft Brooks and Sumner Cushing Brooks.
Brooks returned to the United States in October 1888 after having received the Order of the Rising Sun (4th class) from Emperor Meiji,[1] and accepted a position at Massachusetts Agricultural College, and continued graduate study at the University of Halle in Germany, where he earned his doctorate. He was active in the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station until his retirement in 1921, where he is remembered for introducing Japanese cultivars, including several Japanese varieties of soybean and millet. In 1920, Brooks received an honorary doctorate from the Minister of Education in Japan.
After his wife died (1924) he married Grace L. Holden in 1927 at the age of seventy-six. He died in Amherst, Massachusetts in 1938.[2]