A GREAT MASTER

Taranaki Daily News, 10 February 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

A GREAT MASTER

NEW ZEALAND ROMANCE

(By

T.C.L.)

Cambridge is just across the River Charles from Boston and is really part and parcel of the old city, a suburb, however, which is as distinct in its characteristics from Boston City as Cambridge in England is distinct from London. It is quiet and sylvan and aesthetic, as becomes the home of poets and writers like Emerson, Hawthorne, Lowell, Walt Whitman and Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the seat of learning like Harvard University, the Oxford of the United States, and the great technical and research school, the M.I.T. (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology).

The M.I.T. has a special interest and attraction for New Zealanders, for the man who raised it from an unimportant polytechnic institution to the greatest industrial and research school in the world was a New Zealander. Though established in 1860 to “furnish a complete system of industrial education supplementary to the general training of other institutions and fitted to equip its students with every scientific and technical principle applicable to the industrial pursuits of the age,” and for the purpose of “instituting and maintaining a society of arts, a museum of arts, and a school of industrial science, and aiding generally by suitable means the advancement, development and practical application of science in connection with arts, agriculture, manufactures and commerce,” vide its original prospectuses, it was really only in 1909 that the school embarked upon the policy that was to make it famous throughout the world. That year the Board of Governors, or the corporation, as it is called in America, decided to provide modem scientific laboratories and facilities for the prosecution of original research as well as to improve the means for students to acquire a thorough technical training and link up with and make the institution indispensible to the expanding industries and .scientific institutions of the nation. The board recognised the necessity for having at the head of the Institute a first-class man. Money was no object, for the school had considerable endowments and could command more if it were successfully filling its purpose in the scientific and industrial life of the country. And so the board consulted the President of Columbia University, New York. He forwarded the names of two men with long and successful scholastic and teaching careers, in the appointment of either of whom the board would make no mistake. As a postscript he mentioned that he had on his staff as lecturer in mathematics a young man whb had had a brilliant scholastic career in the fields of mathematics and jurisprudence. His name was Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, a New Zealander, and he suggested that if dissatisfied with the other two the board might interview the young antipodean. The board sent at once for Maclaurin, and so impressed with his personality and his brilliant scholastic attainments were the members that they decided to' take a' risk as to his administrative ability and to appoint him President of the Institute. That their judgment was not misplaced soon became apparent. From the day he entered into his duties the school began to evince a new spirit and to advance by leaps and bounds. New work was undertaken, new departments were created, and new buildings became a pressing necessity. The fame of the" school spread, attracting the best and brightest youths not only from the United States but from all over the world until there were, over 40 countries represented by students. It also attracted the finest, teachers the world could supply. - Maclaurin had a vision—it was to make the Institute the greatest of its kind in the world. He did not spare himself; he never thought of time or personal effort. He would sometimes work through the full 24 hours, so absorbed was he in his work and in the task of building up the school. His interest and enthusiasm were as contagious as they were boundless. His board gave him practically a free hand:, it had the fullest confidence in him, and was only too pleased to support him in his policy of extension and development. But at times some of his schemes appeared to be altogether too grandiose. But whatever the scale or the extent of his schemes Maclaurin always seemed able to command the necessary finance from some mysterious source. It was a mystery to the board that was solved only last year, when it came out that the chief benefactor was no other than George Eastman, who backed Maclaurin with his millions and at his death endowed the M.I.T. with the residue of his vast estate.

It is rather interesting to observe here that all through Maclaurin’s regime Eastman’s name figured on the list of annual benefactors for only a few thousand dollars. The school was doing considerable research work in photography, the results of which were highly beneficial to the great Kodak business, as well as to others in the same industry, and there was a considerable feeling of disappointment that the work was not being recognised and supported to a greater extent than it was by the chief beneficiary. Eastman preferred to “hide his light under a bushel,” but the rapid development of the school would not have been possible but for his princely gifts in Maclaurin’s days. After 11 years, Richard Maclaurin died, died practically in the morning of his life, but achieving in the short period of 11 full years what few men could haVe achieved in a lifetime. He had made the institution the greatest technical and research school in the world, and from the date of his death the school, inspired by his ideals and his example and sacrifice, has gone from strength to strength, enjoying the confidence and the financial support of American industry, and becoming an integral part of the industrial and scientific life of America.

Maclaurin’s is a cherished name in the Institute. As you enter the main room a painting of the brilliant New Zealander arrests attention. Below it are the words:

“Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, distinguished in physics, in law, in administration, president of the -Institute, 1909-1920, builder of the new technology.”

His widow still lives on the campus grounds and is fittingly provided for by a grateful school. Dr. Maclaurin was a graduate of and professor of physics in Victoria College, Wellington, and one of a quartette of New Zealand supermen in the realm of university research and scholarship who have made names for themselves throughout the world. Lord Rutherford is to-day the world’s leading physist. Sir William Marris left New Zealand as a young man to establish a name for himself as a classical scholar and uni-

'iiiiiitiuiieiiiiiimiutiiniiimiciiiiiiiiHitmiiitiiuiiiuituiiniu versity administrator and then as an Empire pro-Consul. He was governor of the United provinces of Agra and Oudh, and is now principal of Armstrong College, Newcastle-on-Tyne. Sir Joseph Mellor, a poor Dunedin Hoy, by his scholarship and research in ceramics has enabled Great Britain to keep in the van of pottery and allied industries. He became principal of the Stoke-on-Trent Pottery School, and is now director of the Refractories Research Association of Great Britain.

Maclaurin, Rutherford, Mellor and Marris—what a great quartette! They do honour to an Empire, not merely to the young and small ’ country that bred and developed them.