George W. Atherton

Early life

He was the son of Hiram Atherton (1812–1849) and Almira Gardner. His father died when he was 12 years old and he worked on a farm and in a cotton mill to support his mother. He is a direct descendant of James Atherton, one of the First Settlers of New England; who arrived in Dorchester, Massachusetts in the 1630s.

Education

He attended Topsfield Academy in Massachusetts, followed by Philips Exeter Academy, and graduated from Yale in 1863.

Academic career

Atherton began his teaching career at The Albany Academy in Albany, New York., moving onto the University of Illinois. He then accepted a position as a political science professor at Rutgers University. While at Rutgers, he was initiated as an honorary member of Delta Upsilon fraternity by the Rutgers Chapter. Prior to accepting the position of president at Penn State. There, he was faced with the challenge of transforming the school from an unrecognized agricultural college into a respected land-grant college. During his tenure, the school's graduating class increased from seven in 1882 to 86 in 1906.

His 24-year tenure at Penn State began in 1882. During the early 1900s, Atherton's health began to deteriorate, and he died on July 26, 1906. He was acclaimed as a visionary by Benjamin Gill, the dean of the School of Language and Literature, for seeing "from the first not the college that was, but the college that was to be". While Penn State's reputation was still not outstanding, Atherton had succeeded in rescuing the school from negligence by the state government and converted it into an institution of technical education.

In 1876 he was Chairman of the Republican State Convention in New Jersey. He was subsequently an unsuccessful in his candidacy for U.S. Congress. He also had diplomatic aspirations, and efforts were made to obtain a U.S. diplomatic post in South America. See Guide to the George W. Atherton Papers Archived 2020-03-20 at the Wayback Machine.