Henry Smith Pritchett

Henry Smith Pritchett had humble beginnings, born in his family’s cottage home on a farm in Fayette, Missouri. He was just a young boy when the American Civil War broke out; at eight years old, Pritchett found himself traveling between enemy lines on an old horse when the grown soldiers couldn’t take the risk. When the war ended, and the United States was in a period of transition and rebuilding, the boy’s father founded the Pritchett Institute in Glasgow, Missouri; Henry Smith would start attending the school at the ripe age of 10 years old. He received an A.B. degree in 1875 but not without some controversy: a letter penned by the elder Pritchett’s cousin reveals one particular incident jeopardizing the younger Prtichett’s graduation: “Dr. Pritchett’s father was a stern disciplinarian and was greatly broken up when his boy--a senior--to graduate on the morrow--joined in putting a wagon on top of the college. Oren Root, brother of Elihu Root, was president of Pritchett Institute at the time and persuaded the old gentleman to allow his boy to graduate.” Perhaps this feat foreshadows a penchant for physics and an advanced scientific understanding!

Graduating from his father’s institution after all, Pritchett journeyed to the Naval Observatory in Washington D.C., where he studied astronomy and mathematics under Professor Asaph Hall (who would discover the moons of Mars during Pritchett’s time at the observatory and whose son also signed the Van Vleck Guestbook). Pritchett’s work included making transit observations of the sun’s, moons’, stars’, and planets’ positions; he also created an invaluable star catalogue. In 1880, he moved back to Glasgow where his father had founded the Morrison Observatory. He measured double stars under the supervision of the observatory’s director--his father. The following year he was invited to be the Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at the University of Washington in St. Louis, a position he would hold for 16 years. His association with the university pushed him all across the world; his observations of pendulums led him to travel to Australia, Java, China, and Japan to collaborate internationally. In 1882 and 1883, Pritchett traveled to New Zealand to observe the transit of Venus, and in 1889, he led a solar eclipse party in California. Several years later, he was elected president of the Academy of Science in St. Louis and a couple years after that, he left for Munich to study under Hugo Seeliger--who is often considered the leading European astronomer of his day. Back in St. Louis, the university was responsible for maintaining an accurate time service for much of the United States: from Cleveland to Cincinnati, from Colorado to New Mexico, and from the US northern border to its southern border; this time service was indispensable to railroad services.

When President McKinley became the President of the United States in 1897, he learned that the US Coast and Geodetic Survey was suffering, so he appointed a committee of engineers to investigate and make recommendations for improvements; the committee advised the president to hire a scientific-minded superintendent, not a politically-minded one, and they recommended Henry Smith Pritchett. The appointee fulfilled his role for several years, reforming the institution and creating the Federal Bureau of Standards. After three years on the job, he was invited to be the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his years at MIT, Pritchett focused on educational reform. Grace Gilmore Avery writes in the Missouri Historical Review, “The six years spent there were busy ones, devoted wholly to the problems of the school and to improvement in its educational and laboratory facilities. Dr. Pritchett left the work [in 1906] feeling keenly the separation from the student body with whom he had most interesting relations.” Pritchett created the Office of the Dean, appointed the first registrar, recorder, and medical advisor. He abolished intercollegiate football and did away with Field Day--a sometimes fatal day of sport at the university. Though MIT saw much improvement, his notorious proposal to merge the university with the Harvard Lawrence School of Science was widely protested by alumni and struck down rather quickly. Even so, this experience must have prepared Pritchett for his next job: first president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, or CFAT. 

Pritchett was a friend of Andrew Carnegie and had advised him to establish the institution in the first place. The former professor, coastal service superintendent, and president of MIT set out to conduct surveys on the quality of American institutions of higher education and also to create a functioning system of distributing pensions. CFAT’s most famous and most influential study is Abraham Flexner’s report of “Medical Education in US and Canada” (1910). Flexner reported on the lack of rigorous standards in medical education and his book-length study contributed to the closing of inadequate medical schools and creating higher standards for admission and graduation. As president of CFAT, Pritchett sought to standardize American higher education especially for medical and legal professions, and the results of Flexner’s report are an exemplar of the institution’s function. Furthermore, to properly fund CFAT’s pension program, Pritchett created the Organized Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association in 1918 (earlier, he had devised a set of standards for eligibility in the program). Additionally, Pritchett served as trustee and acting president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York with Elihu Root (whose father had convinced Pritchett’s father to let the younger Pritchett graduate all those years ago). Together, the grown sons primed the foundation to distribute large institutional grants. Pritchett also served as a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 16 years (1916-1932). In a Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin in memoriam of the trustee, the Board of Trustees affirmed that “In the Museum, as in all the positions he so ably filled, he upheld and promoted the importance of the purposes and functions of the institution as a force for good in the community.” 

In his later years, Pritchett spent his time alternating between New York and Santa Barbara, California, where he eventually retired. Henry Smith Pritchett had a long and varied career, and he always sought to improve the education and maintain the ideals of scientific work and development.