538 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



In 1856 — the year now under consideration — Professor Cooke 

 obtained from the College Faculty a really extraordinary concession 

 for the ensuing academic year. He succeeded in introducing into the 

 Junior year a required course on Molecular Physics, the text-book 

 being the first volume of Graham's Elements of Chemistry. When 

 one remembers that the traditional subjects filled well the jirescribed 

 curriculum, it is a marvel that a wholly new subject should have been 

 inserted into the Junior year. Two years later the text-book for 

 Molecular Physics became Cooke's Chemical Physics, — a work which 

 showed the natural leaning of his mind to Physics rather than to 

 Chemistry, and which also showed what importance he attached to 

 exactness and thorough drill in undergraduate work. The book was 

 intended to be used with numerous problems of an arithmetical or 

 algebraic sort. The same year which saw the introduction of the 

 Chemical Physics, namely, 1858-59, saw also an additional chemical 

 elective for Juniors, — in the first term, Crystallography, and in the 

 second term Analytical Chemistry and Dana's Mineralogy, — but in 

 the meantime Boylston Hall had been built. 



I must turn back for a moment to the year 1856. On the 25th 

 of October, 1856, the Corporation voted, " That the President, Dr. 

 Hay ward, and Mr. Lowell, be a Committee to consider and report 

 upon a plan and location for a building for the Anatomical Museum 

 and Chemical Laboratory," and three months later it was voted 

 " That the Committee on the new Anatomical Museum and Labora- 

 tory be authorized to make contracts for the erection of the same 

 whenever the subscriptions for the increase of the Boylston Fund 

 shall amount to $17,000." At the same meeting, "it appearing to 

 this Board that in the new distribution of studies for the present year 

 the proportion assigned to the Erving Professor of Chemistry and 

 Mineralogy has been largely increased, so that the work now required 

 of him equals the average of what is required of the other Professors, 

 therefore, Voted^ That the salary of the Erving Professor of Chemistry 

 and Mineralogy be raised to $2,200, until further order of this Board." 

 This vote, passed only seven years after the election of Mr. Cooke as 

 Erving Professor, established him on terms of perfect equality with 

 the Professors of the traditional subjects in Harvard College ; and he 

 was now only thirty years of age. 



By the 31st of January, 1857, the necessary supplement to th*e 

 Boylston Fund had been raised and the contract made for the erection 

 of the building. On the 20th of May following. Professor Cooke 

 reported to the Corporation on the inception and completion of this 



