Livingston Farrand

Born in Newark, New Jersey, to Dr. Samuel Ashbel Farrand, headmaster of the historic Newark Academy, and Rachel Louise (Wilson) Farrand, Farrand received an undergraduate degree from Princeton in 1888, and went on to the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he earned his M.D. in 1891.

He attended the Universities of Cambridge and Berlin, studying physiological psychology.

Cornell University

In 1921, he became the fourth president of Cornell University. Under his leadership, Cornell's enrollment and endowment increased rapidly. He also expanded Cornell-in-China with the University of Nanking and in 1931 saw the arrival in Ithaca of students from the Soviet Union. The unified College of Engineering was created as was the College of Home Economics.

In 1929, he declined to intervene on behalf of two students who had been denied residency in the women's dormitories at Sage Hall on the basis of their race. In reply to a letter from the mother of one of these women, he wrote, "... while I have great sympathy for your feeling, I cannot order a change in the procedure of the Dean of Women, under whose jurisdiction the matter falls".

Public health

He became executive secretary of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis in 1905. The organisation's cooperation between medical professionals and laymen was hailed as pioneering and stimulating similar collaborations in other areas of public health.

In 1914 became president of the University of Colorado, and held that position until 1919. From 1912 to 1914, he was treasurer of the American Public Health Association, during the same period editing the American Journal of Public Health.

During World War I he was director in France of the International Health Board, 1917–19. His public health work led to his appointment as chairman of the central committee of the American Red Cross and he worked to fight tuberculosis for the Rockefeller Foundation in France in 1917. His involvement in the latter has been described as the "most important permanent result of the great American effort in France during the World War".