Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
The Graduate Department was created in January 1872 by action of the Governing Boards. The Academic Council was appointed to administer and recommend candidates for the degrees of master of arts, master of science, doctor of philosophy, and doctor of science.
Ernest Northcroft Merrington
Ernest Northcroft Merrington (1876–1953) was born at Newcastle, New South Wales. He studied philosophy at the University of Sydney where he obtained a B.A. with first class honors (1900) and M.A. (1903). He was a medallist in logic and mental philosophy and president of the University Philosophical Society. The Possibility of a Science of Casuistry was published in 1902. That year he was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church.
Merrington was awarded a Woolley Travelling Scholarship. He spent the year 1903–1904 at the University of Edinburgh, then attended Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1904–1905) where he was taught by Professors James, Royce and Munsterberg and obtained his Ph.D in a year. His thesis was published as The Problem of Personality.
On his return to Australia, Merrington was a minister in churches at Marrickville and Kiama and was appointed lecturer in philosophy at the University of Sydney during the sabbatical of Professor Francis Anderson (1909). He was called to the congregation of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Brisbane (1910) and was the founding chairman of Emmanuel College of the University of Queensland (1911). He was a Presbyterian chaplain with the ANZAC forces at Gallipoli (1915). On his return he was a vigorous campaigner for the Yes vote in the conscription referendum and helped to establish the Harvard Club of Australia in 1916. After the defeat of the referendum he re-enlisted as a chaplain and served in France. He was called to the First Church of Otago, Dunedin and became the Master of Knox College, Dunedin in 1929. He died in New Zealand in 1953 and was survived by a son, Harvard Northcroft Merrington.
George Edgar Moore
George Edgar Moore (1882–1947) was born at Panmure, Victoria. He travelled to the United States in about 1902 where he studied at Drake University, Des Moines and graduated A.B. (1911) and A.M. (1912). He obtained the All Iowa Scholarship to Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from where he obtained an A.M. in 1913. In April 1914, he was offered the Chair of Old Testament Theology and Hebrew at the School of Theology, Nanking, China but declined the post. He returned to Victoria in July 1914 where he became preacher in the Middle Brighton Church of Christ. After four years in Australia, G. E. Moore moved to New Zealand, then returned to the United States in 1920 as a minister at Van Wert, Iowa. Soon after he was appointed Professor in the Department of Religion at Eureka College, Illinois where he served for eight years. In 1928 he returned to Australia to become pastor in the Swanston Street Church of Christ, Melbourne. By 1934, he had become a member of the Congregational Church. In 1937 he was appointed minister at Christ Church (Congregational), Launceston. George Edgar Moore died in Hobart in 1947.
Ernest George Moll
Ernest George Moll (1900–1997) was born at Murtoa, Victoria, the son of Carl Otto Moll and Friederike Bertha Paschke. The family moved to Gerogery, New South Wales, where he was educated in the New South Wales public school system. He attended a Lutheran high school, Concordia College, in Adelaide (1913–1918).
Ernest George Moll came to the United States in about 1920 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Lawrence College, Wisconsin in 1922. He obtained his A.M. the following year from Harvard University and then lectured at Colorado College (1923–1925, and again in 1927) where he published his first book of verse Sedge Fire. He then returned to Australia for an extended visit during which he is reported to have collected 3,000 birds that he smuggled out of the country to the United States (he entered the United States from Australia twice in 1926).
In 1928 he was appointed Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oregon and remained at that institution until his retirement in 1966. He published several books of poetry. Cut from Mulga was published by Melbourne University Press and subsidized by the Commonwealth Literary Fund. He lectured on exchange at the Sydney University Teachers’ College in 1939 and 1940.
Leslie Cyril Jauncey
Leslie Cyril Jauncey (1899-1959) was born in Adelaide and orphaned in his teens. He came to the United States in 1920 where he received a B.A from Washington University, St. Louis (1926) and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (1929). He briefly held a professorial appointment in the University of New Mexico before working as a research assistant in business economics at Harvard Business School (1930–1932). His doctoral thesis was developed into a book on Australia’s Government Bank (1933). This was followed by The Story of Conscription in Australia (1935). He led a foot-loose existence travelling the world with his wife and dabbling in radical politics. He died in California (1959).
Hugh Wilson O'Neill
Eric Aroha Rudd
Eric Aroha Rudd (1910–1999) was born in Auckland, New Zealand to Australian parents. He was educated at Norwood High School, the University of Adelaide, and Adelaide Teachers College, graduating with a B.Sc in 1930. He then worked as a geologist with Oil Search Ltd.
He spent the 1934–35 academic year at Harvard receiving an A.M. in geology. On his return he joined Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd (BHP). After serving during World War II in the Royal Australian Engineers (1941–1945) he returned to BHP as Chief Geologist (1946).
In 1949 he was appointed the first Chair of Economic Geology at the University of Adelaide in 1949 and remained in that position until his retirement in 1970, after which he served on the boards of various mining companies.
Arthur Smithies
Arthur Smithies (1907–1981) was born in Hobart, Tasmania, and educated at the Hutchins School. He obtained a law degree at the University of Tasmania (LL.B. 1929) and was named the Tasmanian Rhodes Scholar for 1929. He attended Magdalen College at Oxford where he obtained a B.A. (1932), then came to Harvard on a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship. At Harvard, he received a Ph.D. in economics (1935) and was then a lecturer in economics at the University of Michigan before taking positions with the Bureau of Statistics and then the Commonwealth Treasury in Canberra (1935–1938).
He returned to the United States in 1938 as a professor in economics at the University of Michigan, and joined the Harvard faculty as Professor of Economics in 1949. He served as the Chairman of the Harvard Economics Department from 1950 to 1955 and from 1959 to 1961. He was Master of Kirkland House from 1965 to 1974 where he was known for his annual renditions of “Waltzing Matilda” at the Christmas party and his terrible singing voice. He had been a keen rower since his student days and died of a heart attack at the Cambridge Boat Club after rowing on the Charles.
Hermann David Black
Hermann David Black (1904–1990) was born at Dulwich Hill, Sydney and attended the University of Sydney on a Teachers’ College scholarship where he studied economics (B.Ec. 1927). He taught in the New South Wales public school system before joining the economics faculty at the University of Sydney in 1933. He spent 1936–38 in the United States and Europe on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship. He spent the 1936–37 academic year at Harvard where he was associated with Eliot House. After his retirement from the University of Sydney in 1969 he was elected deputy chancellor and then chancellor.
Francis Gloster Forman
Francis Gloster Forman (1904–1980) was born in Western Australia and educated at the University of Western Australia. He was Government Geologist of Western Australia and president of the Royal Society of Western Australia. He attended Harvard University on a Commonwealth Fund Scholarship (1938–1939). At Harvard, he worked on problems of pre-Cambrian geology with Professor D. H. McLaughlin.
Thomas Walter Mitchell
Thomas Walter Mitchell (1906–1984) was born at Towong Hill on the Upper Murray on the Victorian side of the border with New South Wales. His father, Walter Edward Mitchell, was a wealthy grazier and his mother, Winifred Hatton Dibbs, was a niece of Sir George Dibbs, premier of New South Wales. His father died in 1917 leaving his estate in trust to his widow and two children, with the children gaining control of their distribution at age 25.
T.W. Mitchell was educated at Cranbrook School, Sydney and then at Jesus College, Cambridge University (1925–1930) where he represented Cambridge in lacrosse. He was admitted as a barrister-at-law in the Inner Temple (1931) before returning to the family estate at Towong Hill. He spent 1933–1934 at Tokyo University and also travelled in Manchuria and Russia. In 1935 he married Sybyl Elyne Chauvel, the daughter of General Sir Harry Chauvel. He was an unsuccessful United Australia Party candidate for the Victorian state seat of Benambra in 1935, 1937 and 1940.
He attended Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for a year (1938–1939) where he studied international relations.
As a native of the Snowy Mountains country, he learned to ski as a boy and received further ski-training while a student in Europe. He helped found the Australian National Ski Federation in 1932, was Australian skin-running champion for four years, and represented Australia in international ski competitions. He skied in Australia, New Zealand, England, France, Norway, Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, United States, Switzerland, Chile, and Japan.
Mitchell joined the Second Australian Imperial Force in 1940 and was captured by the Japanese in 1942. As a prisoner of war he was interned at Changi and worked on the Burma Railway. In 1946, he was chosen to write Volume III of the official history of the Second World War. He served as the Country Party member for Benambra in the Victorian Legislative Assembly for thirty years (1947–1976), including a stint as Attorney-General (1950–1952).
John Grenfell Crawford
Sir John Grenfell (Jack) Crawford (1910–1984) was born at Hurstville, Sydney, and educated in the New South Wales public schools and the University of Sydney. He visited the United States on a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship (1938–1940). During his fellowship he spent time at the Brookings Institute, the US Department of Agriculture, and Harvard University, and learnt to drive. Among many other accomplishments he was the founding director of the (Australian) Bureau of Agricultural Economics. He was a professor of economics, Vice-Chancellor, and then Chancellor of the Australian National University.
Maxwell Frank Cooper Day
Maxwell Frank Cooper Day (1915– ) was born at Vaucluse, Sydney. After the death of his father in a car accident (1926) the family moved to live with his grandmother at Wahroonga. He attended Shore Grammar School and the University of Sydney, from where he graduated B.Sc. (1937), and then went to work for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in the Division of Economic Entomology (1938). Soon after, he was assigned to work with Professor Lemuel Roscoe Cleveland of Harvard University who was visiting Australia to study protozoa of the termite gut. Cleveland invited Max to come to Harvard as his personal assistant and to study part-time.
On his voyage to America, Day stopped in South Africa to collect Stolotermes termites for Cleveland. His boat from Liverpool to Boston was crammed with Jewish refugees fleeing Europe and he arrived in Boston a few days after the devastating hurricane of 1938. The receipt of a Lehman Fellowship (1939–1941) eased his financial difficulties. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1941 for a thesis on protozoan symbionts of termite guts. The outbreak of the European war meant he was unable to return to Australia and he accepted a position as instructor in parasitology and cytology at Washington University, Missouri (1941–1942).
At Washington University, he received a phone call from Edward Teece Littlejohn, whom he had known as a boy in Sydney, proposing that Day go to Washington DC to work with Australian War Supplies Procurement. In Washington, he worked first as a Procurement Officer (1942–1944), then as Scientific Liaison Officer for CSIR (1944–1947). He returned to Australia in 1947 to work as a Research Officer in the CSIR Division of Entomology. Among other topics, he worked on the mosquito transmission of myxoma virus. In 1955–1957, he returned to Washington DC to work in the Australian Scientific Liaison Office for CSIRO. From 1966–1976 he was a member of the Executive of the CSIRO, then in 1976 he was appointed the first Chief of the CSIRO Division of Forest Research. He formally retired in 1980 but continued entomological research in Canberra.
[Special thanks to Dr. Maxwell Day for his reminiscences, April 2013]
Edward Teece Littlejohn
Edward Teece Littlejohn (1916– 1993) was born at Darling Point, Sydney. He attended the King’s School, Parramatta and the University of Sydney for a year (1934) before travelling to Europe with his mother, the feminist Emma Littlejohn, with whom he attended the International Women’s Suffrage Congress at Istanbul (1935). He obtained a B.Sc. (Economics) from the University of London (1938) and an A.M. in Government from Harvard (1941). During World War II, he worked with the British Purchasing Commission in New York and the Australian War Supplies Mission in New York and Washington. He acted as Australian Vice Consul in New York (1945–1948). In 1949, he took up an advising position with the Burroughs Adding Machine Company in Detroit. He was appointed Assistant Manager for Public Relations at the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) at New York (1959) then Manager for Public Relations at Humble Oil and Refining in Houston (1961). From 1965 until his retirement in 1981 he worked in executive positions in the Public Affairs department of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.
(See Individual Bio Statements at Left)