A graduate of the Boston Latin School, Eliot entered Harvard University at age fifteen. Unique experiences in Josiah Cooke's laboratory interested Eliot in laboratory techniques in teaching chemistry. He tutored in mathematics at Harvard in 1854 and four years later became the first assistant professor of mathematics and chemistry. Eliot distinguished himself as a teacher by using the laboratory method in his classroom and giving Harvard's first written examinations instead of the traditional oral tests. Denied tenure at Harvard, he taught chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studied education in Europe, and published two widely read articles on "The New Education" in The Atlantic Monthly in 1869. Partially because of the public regard he earned from these writings, he was selected that year as the twenty-second president of Harvard University, a position he would hold until 1909.

Tenure at Harvard.

During his forty-year tenure at Harvard...