Henry Smith Pritchett (April 16, 1857 – August 28, 1939) was an

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astronomer and educator.

Biography

Pritchett was born on April 16, 1857 in

Fayette, Missouri Fayette is a city in and the county seat of Howard County, Missouri, United States. It is part of the Columbia, Missouri Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city's population was 2,803 at the 2020 census. History Fayette was laid out in 1823. Th ...

, the son of Carr Waller Pritchett, Sr., and attended Pritchett College in

Glasgow, Missouri Glasgow is a city on the Missouri River mostly in northwest Howard County and extending into the southeast corner of Chariton County in the U.S. state of Missouri. The population was 1,087 at the 2020 census. The Howard County portion of G ...

, receiving an A.B. in 1875. He then took instruction from Asaph Hall for two years at the

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after which he was made an assistant astronomer. In 1880, he returned to Glasgow to take a position at the Morrison Observatory, where his father Carr Waller Pritchett, Sr. was director. He served as an astronomer on the

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Expedition to New Zealand in 1882. When he returned in 1883, he took an appointment as professor of mathematics and astronomy and director of the observatory at

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in St. Louis. In the early 1890s he studied in Germany, where he earned a PhD from the

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in 1894. He was Superintendent of the

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from 1897 to 1900. Pritchett served as the president of the

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(MIT) from 1900 to 1906. Pritchett was elected a member of the

American Antiquarian Society The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society i ...

in 1902. Pritchett later resigned, though the reasons and timing are unclear. He was president of the

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(CFAT) from 1906 until he retired in 1930. His principal accomplishment while with the CFAT was the institution of a fully funded

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program (the

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, TIAA) in 1918. He also served as the first president of the

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(1907). He had a long involvement with the

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, and served as a trustee for Carnegie Institute of Washington. He died on August 28, 1939 in

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Legacy

Pritchett Lounge, on the second floor of the Walker Memorial building at MIT, is named in his honor.

References

* Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe. ''Private Power for the Public Good: A History of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching''. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983.

External links

NOAA biographyMedical Education in the United States and Canada, Pritchett authored the forward, 1910
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pritchett, Henry Smith 1857 births 1939 deaths American astronomers Presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Washington University in St. Louis faculty Washington University physicists Washington University in St. Louis mathematicians United States Coast and Geodetic Survey personnel People from Fayette, Missouri Members of the American Antiquarian Society Carnegie Endowment for International Peace