E. Wilson Lyon

E. Wilson Lyon (1905 – 1989) was a diplomatic historian and served as the 6th President of Pomona College from 1941 to 1969. He studied at the University of Mississippi and Colgate University, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.^[1]

Biography

Elijah Wilson Lyon was born in Heidelberg, Mississippi, in 1904. Lyon had planned on becoming a journalist, but history drew his interest later on in life. Later, Lyon would go on to attend the University of Mississippi. As a result of his great academic rigor, his tenure as senior class president, and editor of the college newspaper, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to St. John's College, Oxford. When he returned to the United States, he became an assistant professor of history at Louisiana Polytechnic Institute, then at Colgate University. He was named head of the history department in 1934 at Colgate.^[2]

Pomona College

In 1941, Lyon was appointed president of Pomona College. He helped shape Pomona as a leading liberal arts institution. Lyon’s presidency was turbulent as it extended from the Second World War to Vietnam. He survived his presidency through the birth of the Civil Rights Movement and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy. At Pomona, students demonstrated protest directed at both institutional and national issues. During his term, the school's endowment rose from $3.5 million to over $22 million and the student body grew from 790 to 1,200.^[3]

References