18853 Research and Teaching 



of Zoology made vacant by Gilbert's acceptance of 

 a professorship in Cincinnati. Nansen was then 

 curator of the museum at Bergen, where his ex- 

 cellent work on the anatomy of the Hagfish 

 Myxine had attracted my attention. He had 

 also captured and mounted several elk, stag, rein- 

 deer, and other big beasts of the North. 



Having at first accepted my offer, when the op- 

 portunity afterward came to conduct an exploring 

 trip across Greenland on foot, he asked for his fe- 

 lease though his friends, he wrote, thought him 

 "a fool to do so." The Greenland expedition, 

 nevertheless, led to his successful career as an ex- 

 plorer. He was later appointed professor in the 

 University of Christiania, and subsequently be- 

 came an active factor in the political life of Norway, 

 of which nation he is now one of the most prominent 

 citizens. 



At that time the youngest university president in 

 the country, I had little sympathy with the con- P resldents 

 ventional methods of my contemporaries in similar 

 positions, nearly all of whom were retired clergy- 

 men and ex officio professors of Philosophy. With 

 the exception of Dr. Eliot, originally a chemist, 

 scarcely one of them had had any scientific experi- 

 ence or training. And some degree of contact with 

 objective reality I have ever thought an important 

 element in university administration. Consequently 

 in undertaking administrative duties, I decided not 

 to abandon either research or teaching, as most 

 other university heads had done, and throughout 



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