Honoring Dr. Gilman
The last thing Johns Hopkins trustees wanted to do toward the end of 1910 was to offend the two daughters of their late, beloved first president, Daniel Coit Gilman. But they came close to doing just that.
Corresponding with President Ira Remsen
Ira Remsen, Johns Hopkins president, and professor of chemistry, could be direct and to the point in his correspondence. Take the exchange of letters between him and a PhD alumnus, Lyman C. Newell, professor of chemistry at Boston University.
The Camera Club victory
When Johns Hopkins students decide something needs to be done, usually they find a way to do it, even if that might mean bribing a senior officer of the university.
Consider the case of the Camera Club, a student-run group organized in the mid-1930s. The students enjoyed taking pictures, but they had no place for [...]
Milton Eisenhower, Postdocs and the Society of Scholars
Johns Hopkins University’s eighth president, Milton S. Eisenhower, never professed to be a scholar. His highest earned degree was a bachelor of science in journalism from Kansas State University. But the former president of Kansas State and Penn State universities used to chuckle when he told friends, “I do have 31 honorary degrees, so I guess they ought to count for something.”
Psychology Exam — 1891
Johns Hopkins undergraduate students studying psychology today are likely to be preparing for their spring examinations in that subject, just as students did in 1891.
Preparations for War in 1941
Shortly before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Johns Hopkins administrators and faculty anticipated that the nation would be drawn into war. Letters and memoranda in the Hamburger Archives of the Eisenhower Library indicate how quickly they moved to devise plans to protect the university’s valuable books, journals and significant art objects.
Isabel Hampton, First Superintendent of Nursing
On May 20, 1889, Elisa P. Perkins, former superintendent of Bellevue Training School for Nurses in New York City, sat down at a desk in her home on North Washington Street in Norwich, Conn., and wrote a five-page letter to Daniel Coit Gilman, who had just recently been pressed into service as director of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He also was president of the university.
Health Costs in Baltimore — 1936
It is 1936. You are living in Tokyo and, unexpectedly, you become pregnant. You want to go to the United States to have your baby. What do you do? You ask your husband, a reporter for the Tokyo Advertiser, to write to an old friend and ask him how to make arrangements to have the birth in Baltimore and how much it would cost.
Addressing an ROTC Wartime Emergency
This year’s congressional and presidential approval of bills authorizing more than $160 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes one wonder what Johns Hopkins administrators in July 1942 would have thought about such staggering sums. During that time they were hard-pressed to find a few hundred dollars to purchase wooden rifles for the university’s Reserve Officers Training Corps.
When Johns Hopkins Was Ready for Some Football
When the varsity football team charges from its locker room to play its season opener on Homewood Field this Saturday, they might want to raise their helmets in salute to the Class of 1884, founders of the sport at Johns Hopkins.
Woodrow Wilson, PhD 1886, and the 1912 Democratic Convention
It was a generous gesture — the president of The Johns Hopkins University inviting a distinguished alumnus to share his home when he comes to Baltimore toward the end of June 1912 for an important meeting of political figures.
Presidential Fund Raising
Raising money for Johns Hopkins has always been high on the “to do” list for every president since the university’s first, Daniel Coit Gilman. The need to bring in financial support was especially critical in the 1935-36 academic year.
Searching for Johns Hopkins University Presidents
Searching for a new president, as the Johns Hopkins trustees are doing now, is the board’s most important task, and it never is easy. A look back over the past 60 years confirms that.
In December 1948, President Isaiah Bowman, a distinguished international geographer and adviser to U.S. presidents, retired after leading the university through the Great Depression and World War II.
Mr. Shriver’s Elocution Class
Just over 70 years ago, in January 1938, Alfred Jenkins Shriver (class of 1891) wrote to university President Isaiah Bowman with “some facts about the Elocution course” he had taken 50 years earlier.
President Gilman and the Selection of First Faculty
If Johns Hopkins’ first board of trustees had even the slightest doubt about their new president’s ability to create a university without guidelines from them or the founder, they probably heaved a collective sigh of relief in one of their earliest meetings with Daniel Coit Gilman. He knew that assembling an outstanding faculty was a first priority, and he knew how to do it.
