Hyde

trenchancy that evoked sharp disagreement but
made the subject the one most discussed at the
gathering. The following year, he attacked Me-
Kinley on his record, yet supported him against
Bryan. Working constructively in other fields,
he promoted church unity by taking the lead
in 1890 in founding the Maine Interdenomina-
tional Commission, the purpose of which was to
bring about combinations of weak rural churches
and prevent the competitive establishment of
new ones. Of this, the first inter-church state
federation, he was president as long as he lived.
Through its success, by his advocacy of church
unity in a series of articles in the Forum (June
1892, March, April 1893, December 1895) '> and
by active cooperation, he contributed important-
ly to the evolution of the Federal Council of the
Churches of Christ in America, a leading ex-
ponent of the federal principle of church union
as against that of organic unity.

As a preacher and lecturer at the leading uni-
versities and colleges of the country, at reli-
gious and educational conferences, and in city
churches and clubs, he was in great demand. In
1904 he was chosen to give the address on "The
College" at the International Congress of Arts
and Sciences held in connection with the Loui-
siana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis (pub-
lished in the Educational Review, December
1904). From 1898 he was trustee of Phillips
Exeter Academy. In 1911 he declined to con-
sider an ad interim appointment to the United
States Senate. In 1915 he became an overseer
of Harvard.

He was everywhere known as Hyde of Bow-
doin. There, at the outset, his youth, intellectual
distinction, athletic vigor, remarkable power as
a teacher, sympathetic comprehension of the col-
lege student, loyalty to the established excel-
lences of the college, and growing public pres-
tige, drew to him the appreciative regard of stu-
dents and faculty alike. In choosing teachers
he always emphasized personality equally with
scholarship, and he maintained continuous har-
mony among them by the freedom and considera-
tion which he accorded to each. Under his wise
administration the college made notable prog-
ress in numbers and equipment. The entrance
requirements were liberalized, the curriculum
was greatly broadened and made largely elec-
tive, though subject to concentration require-
ments in chosen fields, and instruction by con-
ference in small groups was introduced. He had
many calls to other institutions, but he could
never be persuaded that they offered greater op-
portunities for public service.

[Scrap-books in the library of Bowdoin College;

Hyer

Class of 1879 Harvard Coll.; Secretary's Report
(1879-1914); Harvard Grads. Mag.t Sept. 1917; Me-
morial Addresses, Bowdoin ColL Bull, n.s,, no. 79
(1917) ; C. T. Burnett, Hyde of Bowdoin; a Biog. of
William DeWitt Hyde (1931); C. H. Patton and W. T.
Field, Eight 0'Clock Chapel (1927); C. F. Thwing,
Guides, Philosophers and Friends (1927) ; L. C. Hatch,
The Hist, of Bowdoin Coll. (1927) ; Bangor Daily News,
June 30, 1917; N- Y- Times, June 30, 1917.]

C.T.B.

HYER, ROBERT STEWART (Oct. 18,

i86o-May 29, 1929), scientist, university presi-
dent, was born at Oxford, Ga., the eldest of the
four children of William L. Hyer, a locomotive
engineer, and Laura (Stewart) Hyer, a daugh-
ter of a Methodist minister. He was of Hugue-
not and Scotch-Irish ancestry. As his mother
was an invalid, her sister, Miss Ray Stewart,
cared for the boy until 1874, while he attended
school in Atlanta. Then, until 1881, he made his
home at Oxford with an uncle, Joseph S. Stew-
art, whose assistance made possible the com-
pletion of his course at Emory College. He
was graduated with first honors in the class of
1881. He was a reticent youth, had few intimate
friends, and took little interest in college sports
and pastimes. His interest in science appears to
have been awakened by Darwin's On the Origin
of Species, which he considered the greatest sci-
entific work in English. At the age of twenty-
two he became professor of sciences in South-
western University at Georgetown, Tex., a
Methodist institution then nine years old. His
going to Texas may be said to mark the begin-
ning of education in the physical sciences in the
state. A decade after his arrival he began a se-
ries of experiments in the X-ray and ether waves
which promised significant results; but the de-
mands of the presidency, which he reluctantly
added to his professorial duties in 1898, left him
little time for research. A report in the Trans-
actions of the Texas Academy of Science, vol-
ume II (1899), would indicate that his experi-
ments in ether waves antedated those of Mar-
coni. In 1904 he designed the first wireless sta-
tion in Texas, which transmitted messages for
the distance of a mile. He was also a pioneer in
X-ray work in the Southwest

When, at the age of thirty-seven, he became
president of Southwestern, it was without en-
dowment, its enrolment was 425, and its physical
plant wholly inadequate. During his thirteen-
year tenure in the presidency, the number of
students increased to 1,123, n^w buildings were
erected—one of them designed by Hyer, an en-
dowment of $300,000 was obtained, and a med-
ical college was established in Dallas (1903).
After an effort to move the University to North
Texas had failed, Hyer resigned his connection

453