AuvcGust 6, 1897.] 
went to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Insti- 
tute of Troy, N. Y., where, after two years’ 
work as student and instructor, he was 
graduated with the degree of civil engineer. 
Immediately thereafter he became con- 
nected with Michigan University, in which 
he served as assistant professor of civil en- 
gineering from 1857 to 1859, as professor of 
physics and engineering from 1859 to 1860 
and as professor of civil engineering from 
1860 to 1872. At the end of the latter 
academic year he resigned his professorship 
in Michigan University to accept the pro- 
fessorship of mathematics and mechanics 
in Stevens Institute of Technology, which 
had been founded the same year. He re- 
mained with this institution until his death, 
holding the professorship of mathematics 
and mechanics until 1885, and from that 
_ year on the professorship of mechanical 
engineering. 
It is an interesting circumstance, which 
in some measure undoubtedly determined 
Professor Wood’s career, that he went to 
Michigan University shortly after President 
Henry Philip Tappan began his remarkable 
educational work in that institution. Tap- 
pan, considering the time in question, was 
a man of very broad and liberal views con- 
cerning educational affairs, and was one of 
the first to introduce in this country the 
German ideas of the functions and adminis- 
tration of a university. He was also one 
of the first of our educators to recognize the 
value of technological studies, and under 
his guidance there was established in Michi- 
gan University as early as 1855 a four 
years’ course in engineering, to the conduct 
of which Professor Wood was called two 
years later. Two other brilliant men of the 
same institution into whose association 
Professor Wood was thrown at this time 
were the distinguished astronomers Francis 
Brunnow and James C. Watson. A more 
stimulating intellectual environment than 
that furnished by these three men could 
SCIENCE. 
205 
not have been found in this country at that 
time. 
From the time he went to Michigan Uni- 
versity, in 1857, to the end of the present 
academic year Professor Wood was actively 
engaged in the work of instruction, rarely 
missing a day from his class-room in forty- 
one years. During the earlier part, espec- 
ially, of this long interval, before the differ- 
entiation of studies now common had been 
attained, he gave instruction in a variety 
of subjects, embracing in fact nearly all 
those of the mathematico-physical sciences 
in the engineering curriculum. He was 
thus brought into intimate contact, and in 
many cases into prolonged association, with 
a large body of students who have borne 
abundant testimony to the exceptional 
value of his instruction and influence by 
the range and efficiency of the work they 
have accomplished. The peculiar merit of 
his teaching lay in his capacity to make 
men think laboriously and enthusiastically 
with their own heads. He was usually 
able to get students to devote willingly to 
his subjects three to five times as much 
labor as they would give to the subjects of 
other instructors. Being also himself a 
man of untiring industry, full of suggestions 
and enquiries, and animated always by a 
robust and transparent love of the truth, 
only the dullest students could fail to make 
creditable progress under his guidance. 
This genius for industry and this capacity 
for self-help are the elements of character 
he succeeded in planting firmly in the long 
list of engineers who had the good fortune 
to come under his instruction. 
Professor Wood was a frequent contribu- 
tor to scientific periodicals, particularly 
those devoted to mathematics and engineer- 
ing. He was alsothe author of several 
text-books widely used-in schools of engi- 
neering. In this work, as in teaching, his 
activity was indefatigable to the last, a re- 
vised and enlarged edition of his important 
