8 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
Institute, is a post helium plant. I shall not attempt to follow the pro¬ 
gress in the whole country, which is marked by many of the finest en¬ 
gineering schools in the world, but shall confine this preliminary survey 
to what is known under the general term of South. As soon as the 
Southern universities had re-collected their faculties, many introduced 
engineering courses, although some of their courses were simply adjuncts 
to the chairs of mathematics or physics, and received no more attention 
than secondary subjects generally do. 
In 1868 the University of Virginia added to its already first-class schools 
the school of applied mathematics, and Leopold J. Boeck was assigned to 
this school. After a service of six or seven years, Prof. Boeck resigned, 
and his mantle fell upon the most brilliant alumnus the University of 
Virginia had upon her rolls, that most remarkable educator and mathe¬ 
matician, William M. Thornton, the present chairman of the faculty and 
head of the department of engineering. 
Washington and Lee also added engineering courses, in charge of spe¬ 
cial instructors. In 1865, just after the war, Gen. R. E. Lee was elected 
President of Washington College, and the courses of instruction were 
reorganized under his direction, and he is said to have taken special in¬ 
terest in organizing the engineering department. On General Lee’s 
election to the presidency, William Allan was placed in charge of the de¬ 
partment of engineering, and at once brought the course up to the high¬ 
est standard—a standard that has been maintained even to this day by 
such men as Custis Lee, Percy and Humphreys. Virginia, then, can 
claim three institutions that have done much in the line of engineering 
work. It will be noticed that both the University of Virginia and Wash¬ 
ington and Lee have special departments of engineering co-ordinate with 
the law departments. 
Another institution that has done much to bring the center of engineer¬ 
ing education further south is Vanderbilt University, and, if we include 
Missouri in the South, we can add two other institutions, Washington 
University at St. Louis and the State University at Columbia—the former 
of which is one of the leading engineering schools on the American con¬ 
tinent. If to this short list we add the University of Texas, at Austin, 
the list of universities that offer engineering courses will be nearly com¬ 
plete. However, it is well to note that all these universities—Univer¬ 
sity of Virginia, Washington and Lee, Vanderbilt, Washington Univer¬ 
sity, University of Missouri—in fact, all, save the University of Texas, 
have a separate department of engineering, notwithstanding the fact that 
the University of Texas is better equipped for engineering work than any 
one on the list except Washington University at St. Louis. 
If to this list of universities we add several agricultural and mechani- 
