WILUAM KEITH BROOKS — CONKIJN 



love of teaching and his methods of instruction ; the latter, we 

 may be sure, largely influenced by his experience at Penikese. 



During the year 1875-76 Brooks was assistant in the museum 

 of the Boston Society of Natural History. This was prac- 

 tically his only experience in museum work. He was not a 

 museum man, being one of the first zoologists in this country 

 to demonstrate in practice that the museum is distinctly in- 

 ferior to the laboratory as a means of teaching and research. 

 Apart from a small teaching collection he undertook to estab- 

 lish no museum at the Johns Hopkins University, and such 

 collections as he had were for use rather than for exhibition. 

 If a student needed for the sake of his research to dissect 

 a museum specimen, he might feel certain that Doctor 

 Brooks would offer no objection. He appeared to be wholly 

 lacking in that reverence for specimens as such, which the 

 typical museum man is supposed to have. Some of his early 

 students who had been trained in the museum methods then 

 prevalent at some of our oldest and largest universities have 

 confessed that 'when they went dredging with Brooks it made 

 their hair stand on end to see the way in which he chucked 

 material overboard.' With him research was the all-important 

 thing, to which collecting and collections were always subor- 

 dinate. The writer remembers that on one occasion he brought 

 a distinguished medical man into the students' laboratory in 

 Baltimore, and after showing him a series of sections of a 

 larval Amblystoma, said to him : "Here is a little piece of glass 

 which you can carry in your vest pocket, and which is worth 

 more to one who wishes a knowledge of anatomy than a whole 

 museum full of specimens." 



On the founding of the Johns Hopkins University in 1876 

 Brooks applied for and obtained one of their twenty famous 

 fellowships, which have done so much to change the character 

 of university work and ideals in this country. Before he en- 

 tered upon his fellowship his abilities as a teacher were recog- 

 nized and he was appointed associate in biology. In 1883 nc 

 was appointed associate professor of morphology, and in 1889 

 professor in that subject. On the retirement of Prof. H. 

 Newell Martin from the headship of the biological department 

 in 1894, Professor Brooks became head of the department and 



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