Robert Stewart Hyer (October 18, 1860 – May 29, 1929) was an educator and researcher in Texas noted for experimenting with early X-ray and telegraphy equipment. He served as president of Southwestern University before becoming the first president of Southern Methodist University. Hyer Elementary School in University Park, Texas is named in his honor.

Biography

Education

Robert Stewart Hyer was born in Oxford, Georgia in 1860. He attended elementary school in Atlanta before receiving a bachelor's and master's degree at Emory College in 1881 and 1882 where he was a Member of the

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. He later received honorary degrees from Central Methodist University and Baylor University.

Hyer at Southwestern

Hyer followed fellow Emory graduates Claude C. Cody and Morgan Callaway, Jr. to Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas where he served as a physics professor from 1882 to 1911. In 1894, Hyer built and tested a device that transmitted wireless messages from his laboratory to the city jail. (This early work on the wireless telegraph was contemporaneous with and independent of

Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi (; 25 April 187420 July 1937) was an Italians, Italian inventor and electrical engineering, electrical engineer, known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based Wireless telegrap ...

's work in Italy and Nikola Tesla's work in New York). He also experimented with X-ray technology and demonstrated it to scientific and medical conferences across Texas in 1896 and 1897. Hyer became university president in 1897 and oversaw a major construction campaign, the university's move to its current location east of Maple Street, increases in the endowment and student population, and the establishment of a fine arts school and medical college. When the

Methodist Episcopal Church, South The Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MEC, S; also Methodist Episcopal Church South) was the American Methodist denomination resulting from the 19th-century split over the issue of slavery in the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC). Disagreement ...

approached Southwestern with a proposal to relocate the university to Dallas, Texas in the early 1910s, Hyer strongly supported relocating the university, even as trustees and faculty grew hostile to the proposal. When Southwestern rejected relocation, Hyer resigned as president in 1911 and moved to Dallas to work toward establishing a new university.

Founding of Southern Methodist

Serving as one of the founders of Southern Methodist University, Hyer set to work planning the campus, selecting the school colors, and directing the architectural design of the university's first building, Dallas Hall. He served as university president from 1911 until 1920 when he was asked to resign amid financial uncertainties. He continued teaching physics at SMU until his death in 1929. Before his death, Hyer applied for a patent for the "resistograph" he invented to locate oil in West Texas and was elected a member of the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Emory University in recognition of his scientific achievements.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyer, Robert Stewart Southwestern University faculty Presidents of Southern Methodist University Emory University alumni 1860 births 1929 deaths People from Atlanta People from Dallas Southern Methodists