Fred L. Charles 



Fred L. Charles was born at Aurora, Illinois, November 15, 

 1874. His parents were people of more than ordinary intel- 

 ligence, his father being County Superintendent in Kane County, 

 and thus was closely identified with school work. His education 

 was obtained in the graded and high school at Austin, in the 

 Northwestern University, where he graduated, and in the Uni- 

 versity of Chicago where he did post-graduate work. He won 

 literary prizes at Northwestern University and was a member 

 of a local fraternity consisting of highly congenial spirits to 

 whom he became very warmly attached and whose friendship 

 he always retained. He was also pledged to Beta Theta Pi and 

 to Phi Beta Kappa. University life was particularly delightful 

 to him for he had a strong institutional sense, cultivated, doubt- 

 less, by the constant church membership which began when he 

 was a boy of nine and continued through his life. 



He seems early to have inclined strongly to biological work 

 and in order to fit himself more completely for instruction in 

 that department, he spent two summers at the Marine Biological 

 Laboratory at Wood's Hole, Massachusetts. He received the 

 B. S. degree from Northwestern and his M. A. degree from the 

 University of Chicago. 



When a student he aided in his support by private tutoring, 

 at one time having under his charge some of the children of 

 Eugene Field. He became a teacher in the Lake View High 

 School, at Chicago, his subjects being rhetoric and biology. He 

 became interested in the subject of elementary science — Nature 

 Study it is more commonly called now — and gave instruction at 

 local centers established in the city for the instruction of public 

 school teachers. He showed no small degree of skill along 

 those lines, and it was this fondness for the more elementary 

 aspects of scientific work, and his skill in organizing courses, 

 that attracted the attention of the President of the Northern 

 Illinois State Normal School, at DeKalb, and really determined 

 his appointment in that institution. He began his work as Pro- 

 fessor of Biology in September, 1899, and remained there for 

 the succeeding ten years. His work was very successful, inspir- 

 ing in the students a genuine love of nature and awakening a 

 real enthusiasm along all the lines covered by his work. It was 

 not at all unusual for him to be found in the early morning with 

 a group of earnest students exploring the fields and groves in 

 order to get at natural objects under natural conditions. He 

 did most interesting work in the way of original observations 



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