---
title: "Sheffield Scientific School"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield_Scientific_School"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:51:10.717906+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

During the 1918-1919 reorganization of the educational structure of Yale University, the three years "select" course at Sheffield Scientific School was eliminated and a four-year course of study for those studying "professional science" and "engineering" was approved, while graduate courses were transferred to the Graduate School, leaving only undergraduate courses taught at Sheffield Scientific School from 1919 to 1945, coexisting with Yale College's science programs. The centennial was celebrated in 1947 with the Silliman lectures given by Ernest O. Lawrence, Linus Pauling, W. M. Stanley and George Wells Beadle.
The first degree of Bachelor of Science was awarded in 1922 to the graduating class of the Sheffield Scientific School. In 1932, the School of Engineering was reestablished and Sheffield Scientific School engineering classes were transferred to the new school. In 1945, the Sheffield Scientific School resumed its original function of graduate level instruction in science. Undergraduate courses for the Bachelor of Science degree were transferred to Yale College, and undergraduate courses for a Bachelor of Science in industrial administration were transferred to the School of Engineering.
This transition occurred gradually, through the influence of "aggressive, powerful alumni" (including Edwin Oviatt, editor of the Yale Alumni Weekly) who "took control out of President Hadley's hands and forced a radical reorganization of Yale". In 1956, the Sheffield Scientific School was terminated as an active school. The Board of Trustees still exists to oversee the Sheffield Scientific School property and meet legal requirements. The school's faculty is defined as teachers of science to graduate students under the Division of Science. Engineering teaching and research is now conducted within the School of Engineering & Applied Science.

== Directors ==
George Jarvis Brush (Professor of Mineralogy) from 1872 to 1898.
Russell Henry Chittenden (Professor of Physiological Chemistry) from 1898 to 1922.
Charles Hyde Warren (Sterling Professor of Geology) from 1922 to 1945.
Edmund Ware Sinnott (Sterling Professor of Botany) from 1945 to 1956.

== Notable faculty ==
Charles Emerson Beecher, paleontologist, member of the governing board
William Henry Brewer, botanist, first chair of agriculture, as well as a graduate from the first class of the school
Daniel Cady Eaton, botanist
Daniel Coit Gilman, geographer, helped plan and raise funds
Richard F. Humphreys (1911–1968), physicist and author, president of Cooper Union
Thomas Lounsbury, American literary historian, professor of English and librarian at Sheff
Chester S. Lyman (1814–1890), industrial mechanics; inventor of surveying and astronomical instruments
William Crosby Marshall (1870-1934), Mechanical engineer, Professor of Machine Design and Descriptive Geometry and author.
Lafayette Mendel, biochemist
Mansfield Merriman (1848–1925), civil engineering; author of "A Treatise on Hydraulics and on the Strength of Materials", 1877
John Pitkin Norton, chemist, faculty member of Yale's department of education in applied science, which gave rise to Sheffield Scientific School.
William Augustus Norton, civil engineer, founding faculty member
John Addison Porter, chemist
Charles Brinckerhoff Richards, engineer chair of Mechanical Engineering from 1884–1909
Benjamin Silliman Jr., chemist, founding faculty member
William Petit Trowbridge (1828–1892), mechanical engineering; published the first cantilever bridge design; Member, National Academy of Science
Addison Emery Verrill, zoologist and geologist
Francis Amasa Walker, economist, third president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
William Dwight Whitney, organized and taught in the department of modern languages; member of the governing board

== Notable alumni ==
Joseph Wright Alsop IV (1876–1953), politician and insurance executive; father of Joseph Alsop
Wilbur Olin Atwater (1844–1907), chemist known for his studies of human nutrition and metabolism
Clifford W. Beers, mental health pioneer
Jules Blankfein, Class of 1921, physician & financier; founder, Physicians' Hospital, New York; uncle of Lloyd Blankfein
William Edward Boeing, aviator
John Vernou Bouvier III, stockbroker and socialite; father of Jackie Kennedy, First Lady
Chester Bowles, American politician
Bradford Brinton, engineer; collector of fine Western art, which eventually resulted in the primary collection of The Brinton Museum
J. Twing Brooks, U. S. congressman
Malcolm Greene Chace (1875–1955), class of 1896. One of the founders of the Yale hockey team, American financier, textile industrialist, and tennis champion
Henry Boardman Conover, ornithologist
Arthur Louis Day, geophysicist and volcanologist
Franklin M. Doolittle (1893–1979), Class of 1915, radio pioneer
Charles Benjamin Dudley, chemist
Isadore Dyer, physician
Lee de Forest, electronics inventor
Francis I. du Pont, chemist
Pete Falsey, Major League baseball player
Joseph W. Frazer, automobile magnate
James Terry Gardiner, surveyor and engineer
Josiah Willard Gibbs, mathematical physicist and physical chemist
T. Keith Glennan, first NASA administrator
Harold L. Green, chain store founder
John Campbell Greenway, American mining and steel executive, General, U.S. Army
Harry Frank Guggenheim, businessman, philanthropist
John Hays Hammond, mining engineer, philanthropist, faculty member. He endowed a program at Sheff in mining and metallurgy and accepted a professorship. He contributed $100,000 for the construction of Hammond Laboratory, which is named for him.
John Hays Hammond Jr., inventor, “father of radio control’’
John Bell Hatcher, paleontologist
Daniel Webster Hering, physicist
Robert J. Huber, Michigan politician, businessman
Tony Hulman (1924) businessman, owner of Indianapolis Motor Speedway 1945–1977
Edward Hopkins Jenkins (1850–1931), agricultural chemist; director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (1900–1923)
Treat Baldwin Johnson, chemist
Clarence King, American geologist and mountaineer
Charles N. Lowrie, American landscape architect
Duane Lyman, architect
Othniel Charles Marsh, paleontologist
Champion Mathewson, metallurgist
Truman Handy Newberry, American businessman and politician
Frederick E. Olmsted, forester
Thomas Wharton Phillips Jr., U. S. Congressman
William S. Reyburn, U.S. Congressman
William North Rice, geologist and theologian
Stanley Pickett Rockwell (1907), metallurgist and co-inventor of the Rockwell hardness test
Pierce Schenck (1878–1930), business executive from Dayton, Ohio
William Thompson Sedgwick, bacteriologist and public health scientist
George B. Selden, lawyer and inventor
Sidney Irving Smith, zoologist
James Graham Phelps Stokes, philanthropist, publicist, and political activist
Zhan Tianyou, Chinese railroad engineer, "father of China's railroad"
Juan Trippe, founder and CEO of Pan American World Airways
Yamakawa Kenjirō, Japanese samurai of Aizu Domain, member of Byakkotai, physicist, member of the House of Peers
Thomas Yawkey, owner of the Boston Red Sox for 44 years

== See also ==
Austin Cornelius Dunham - major early donor

== References ==

== Further reading ==
Cunningham, W. Jack, Engineering at Yale, Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, New Haven, Connecticut, 1992. ISBN 1-878508-06-7
Pinnell, Patrick L., Yale University: The Campus Guide, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1999.
Shimp, Andy, Sheffield Scientific School.
Chittenden, Russell H., History of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, 1846–1922. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1928.
Furniss, Edgar S., The Graduate School of Yale: A Brief History. New Haven, Conn.: Purington Rollins, 1965.
Veysey, Laurence R., The Emergence of the American University. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
Warren, Charles H. The Sheffield Scientific School from 1847 to 1947. In The Centennial of the Sheffield Scientific School. Edited by George Alfred Baitsell. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950.

== External links ==

Yale Engineering through the Centuries