WILLIAM RUSSEL DUDLEY 



[An address delivered at the services held in the University Chapel of 

 Stanford University, September 10, 1911.] 



By PROFESSOR DOUGLAS HOUGHTON CAMPBELL 



WILLIAM RUSSEL DUDLEY was born in Guilford, Connecticut, in 1849 

 and was one of the earlier students of Cornell University, from 

 which he graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Science in 

 1874. At that time Cornell University had only been opened for a short 

 time, and I fancy the conditions there were in many respects very much 

 like" those of Stanford twenty years ago. The new university at Ithaca 

 had broken away from the traditions of the earlier eastern colleges, and 

 science received far more attention than in most of the other institutions. 

 The opening of the new university with its facilities for scientific work 

 attracted a group of young men who have since attained pre-eminence in 

 their various departments'. Among those who are on our own faculty were 

 Dr. Jordan and Professor Branner, with whom Professor Dudley was asso- 

 ciated on intimate terms. Of Professor Dudley's life as spent at Cornell, 

 Professor Branner has just given us a most sympathetic account. In Dr. 

 Jordan's recent sketch of Professor Dudley in Science, he tells us that for a 

 time he was himself instructor in botany, and that Professor Dudley during 

 the early part of his stay at Cornell came under his instruction. However, 

 it was not long before Dudley himself was acting as instructor even in his 

 undergraduate days, and later became attached to the staff of the university. 

 It is hard for us to realize in these days when every college or 

 university of any pretensions whatever has its department of botany well- 

 equipped and well-manned, that during the '70s the number of profes- 

 sorships of botany in the whole United States probably did not exceed 

 half a dozen. Cornell was one of the first of the universities to establish 

 a distinct chair of botany, and at the time that Professor Dudley entered 

 Cornell the chair was held by Professor Albert Prentiss. While a student 

 at Cornell, Dudley attended the summer session of the famous school at 

 Penikese where Agassiz for the first time instituted a seaside summer 

 school, the model of which has since been repeated in so many places. At 

 Penikese Dudley was associated not only with his fellow students of Cornell 

 but also with a number of other men who laid the foundation of the biological 

 studies which have had such a tremendous influence in the development of 

 science since that time. 



