Benjamin Franklin Greene
Benjamin Franklin Greene (1817–1895) was the third senior professor and first director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Early life
[edit]He was born in Lebanon, New Hampshire on October 25, 1817. He graduated from Rensselaer in 1842. He taught mathematics at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland from 1843 to 1846.[1]
Career
[edit]In 1846, he was appointed senior professor at Rensselaer, replacing George Hammell Cook, who served as senior professor since the death of Amos Eaton in 1842.[1] He conducted an extensive study of the technical schools of Europe, such as the École Polytechnique of Paris and the Polytechnisches Institut in Vienna.[2] He wrote an extensive report describing the European schools and the changes he felt were appropriate. He envisioned changing the school from a one-year graduate program to a comprehensive undergraduate program.[3] The plan also including relocation of the school from downtown to a thirty-acre site on a hill.[4] However, the plan was not entirely successful. It was estimated later that his plans would have required between one and two million dollars, which was an enormous amount at the time.[5] For instance, it proposed a school of architecture at a time when there was no such school anywhere in the U.S. However, the school of architecture was not established until 1929.[6] When its new home was completed in 1931, it was named the Greene Building in his honor.
In 1850, he formally became director of Rensselaer.[7] (He used the title as early as 1847[8] but it was not formal until the state legislature created the title in 1850.[9]) In 1851, he changed the name of the school from Rensselaer Institute to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The name was officially changed by state legislation in 1861.[10]
Greene resigned from Rensselaer in 1859 after disagreements with the board of trustees.[11] He then started a competing engineering school, but it failed after three years. He was chief clerk of the U.S. Navy Bureau of Navigation from 1863 to 1873 and then a professor of mathematics in the U.S. Navy.[12]
Personal life
[edit]He married in 1848 but his wife died two years later.[12]
He died in West Lebanon, New Hampshire on November 22, 1895.[13]
References
[edit]- Notes
- ^ a b Ricketts 1934, pp. 91–92.
- ^ Greene 1855, pp. 8–31.
- ^ Greene 1855
- ^ Greene 1855, pp. 81–2.
- ^ Rezneck 1968, p. 94.
- ^ Rezneck 1968, p. 272.
- ^ Ricketts 1934, p. 93.
- ^ Rezneck 1968, p. 79.
- ^ Ricketts 1934, p. 104.
- ^ Ricketts 1934, p. 102.
- ^ Ricketts 1934, p. 107.
- ^ a b Nason 1855, p. 129.
- ^ The New York Times 1895, p. 5.
- Bibliography
- Baker, Ray Palmer (1924), A Chapter in American Education: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1924 (PDF), New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons
- Greene, Benjamin Franklin (1855), The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Its Reorganization in 1849-50, Its Condition at the Present Time, Its Plans and Hopes for the Future (PDF), Troy, NY: D.H. Jones & Co.
- Nason, Henry B. (1855), Biographical Record of the Officers and Graduates of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1886 (PDF), Troy, NY: D.H. Jones & Co.
- Rezneck, Samuel (1968), Education for a Technological Society: A Sesquicentennial History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (PDF), Troy, NY: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Ricketts, Palmer C. (1934), History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1824-1934, Third Edition (PDF), New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
- "Alexandre Dumas Dead", The New York Times, p. 5, November 28, 1895
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