NOVEMBER 24, 1899. ] 
Popular interest in the survey gradually 
dwindled, and in the legislature decided 
opposition manifested itself, until in 1841, 
its political enemies succeeded in prevent- 
ing the passing of an appropriation and so 
the survey came to an end. 
It was also in the year 1835 that Rogers 
was chosen to the chair of natural philosophy 
and geology in the University of Virginia. 
Of his career, then President Wiliam lL. 
Brown, of the Agricultural and Mechanical 
College of Alabama is quoted as saying : 
I have seen his lecture hall so crowded with 
young men, eager to hear his eloquent presenta- 
tion of the subject by the professor, whom they 
so greatly admired, that not even standing room 
could be found in the hall. All the aisles would 
be filled, and even the windows crowded from 
the outside with eager listeners. His manner 
of presenting the commonest subject in science— 
clothing his thoughts, as he always did, with a 
marvelous fluency and clearness of expression 
and beauty of diction unsurpassed—caused the 
warmest admiration, and often aroused the ex- 
citable nature of Southern spirit to the exhibi- 
tion of enthusiastic demonstrations of approba- 
tion. 
He resigned his chair in 1853 in order to 
devote more of his time to original investi- 
gation, but the students never forgot him, 
and at the celebration of the semi-centennial 
of the University of Virginia in 1875, he re- 
ceived a perfect ovation. In the language 
of a contemporary Virginia newspaper : 
The old students beheld him the same William 
B. Rogers who thirty-five years before had held 
them spellbound in his class of natural philos- 
ophy ; and as the great orator warmed up, then 
_ men forgot their age; they were again young ; 
and showed their enthusiasm as wildly as when 
in days of yore enraptured by his eloquence, 
they made the lecture room of the university 
ring with their applause.* 
Ever since boyhood it had been his cher- 
ished hope to work some day side by side 
with his brother Henry. Such an oppor- 
* Life and Letters, Vol. II., p. 325. 
SCIENCY. 765 
tunity now presented itself. The younger 
man had settled in Boston some years previ- 
ous, and released from the duties of his 
collegiate work, William B. Rogers, gladly 
sought the congenial atmosphere of the 
northern city where it was possible to devote 
himself to original work. He associated 
himself with the American Academy of Arts 
and Sciences and the Boston Society of 
Natural History, taking an active part in 
the proceedings of both of these learned 
societies, in the latter of which he was in 
close communication with Agassiz, Wyman, 
and Jackson. At first during this period 
his papers dealt with matters of geology and 
paleontology but later he took up work in 
physies. No discussion of these publica- 
tions is here possible, but that they were of 
high character is conceded. Concerning a 
paper discussing the phenomena of smoke 
rings and rotating rings in liquids which 
was published in 1858, Cooke said: ‘In 
this paper Professor Rogers anticipated some 
of the later results of Helmholtz and Sir 
William Thompson.’’* 
The crowning and greatest work of Pro- 
fessor Rogers’ life was the founding of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
That achievement was so important in its 
results, so far-reaching in its prospects, and 
so complete in its details, that it over- 
shadows all else. 
In 1859 [says Walker], Professor Rogers, 
gathering around him a number of the first citi- 
zens of Boston, begun the public discussion of 
a scheme for technical education, to be associ- 
ated on one side, with research and original in- 
vestigation upon the largest scale, and on the 
other, with agencies for the popular diffusion of 
useful knowledge. So entirely unfamiliar to 
the public mind of the day was the idea of 
technological instruction, beyond the simplest 
requirements of civil engineering, that the Leg- 
islature of Massachusetts could not be brought 
to see the full merits of Professor Rogers’ most 
comprehensive and as all now view it thor- 
* Cooke’s Notice of Rogers, p. 433. 
