Mark S. Wrighton
Fourteenth Chancellor, 1995 - 2019
Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1949, Wrighton earned his BS degree with honors in chemistry from Florida State University in 1969. He did his graduate work at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) under Professors Harry B. Gray and George S. Hammond, receiving his PhD in 1972. Based on his research accomplishments as a PhD […]
William H. Danforth
Thirteenth Chancellor, 1971-95
When Chancellor Danforth was 12 his grandfather instructed him to literally cut the word “impossible” out of his dictionary. The lesson stuck. He graduated from St. Louis Country Day School and spent a brief time at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, before transferring to Princeton and graduating in 1947. He graduated from Harvard Medical School […]
Thomas H. Eliot
Twelfth Chancellor, 1962-71
He was a fifth cousin to the poet T.S. Eliot and a distant descendent of Washington University co-founder and third chancellor, William Greenleaf Eliot. He was a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. A former congressman from Massachusetts and an ardent supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Eliot helped draft the Social […]
Carl Tolman
Eleventh Chancellor, 1961-62
Serving on the Western Front, he was badly injured, taken prisoner by Germany in 1917, and not repatriated until after the war. When he finally returned home he earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of British Columbia and a master’s degree in science and a PhD in geology, both from Yale. Before […]
Ethan A.H. Shepley
Tenth Chancellor, 1953-61
Born in 1896, he was a third generation Washingtonian, his grandfather having been a member of the corporation during the William Greenleaf Eliot era and his father an 1882 graduate of the law school. He was educated at Smith Academy in St. Louis and a private school in Pennsylvania before entering Yale and earning his […]
Arthur Holly Compton
Ninth Chancellor, 1945-53
Like his older brothers (Karl and Wilson, who would serve as the presidents of MIT and Washington State College, respectively), he attended Wooster College where his father, a Presbyterian minister, was a professor. After earning his bachelor’s degree he went on to Princeton, where he earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees. He began his […]