Scherer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JAMES AUGUSTIN BROWN, an American educator, born in Salisbury, N. C., in 1870. He graduated from Roanoke College in 1890. In 1892 he founded the American Lutheran mission in Japan, and from 1892 to 1897 was professor of English at the Imperial Government School at Japan. Returning to the United States he served as pastor in Charleston, S. C., from 1898 to 1904. In the latter year he was elected president of Newberry College, serving until 1908, when he became president of the Throop College of Technology. He was a member of the Council of National Defense during the World War, a member of many economic and learned societies, and carried on important investigaof immigration. He tions on the question o wrote "Four Princes" (1902); (1902); "Japan To-Day" (1904); "What Is Japanese Morality?" (1906); "Cotton as a World Ewing Galloway A VIEW OF SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, SHOWING MAIN STREET, WITH THE WASATCH MOUNTAINS IN THE BACKGROUND Enc. Vol. 8-p. 276 Keystone View Company THE MORMON TEMPLE AND THE TABERNACLE, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH Publishers' Photo Service SANTIAGO DE CUBA, AND A TROPICAL STORM READY TO BREAK British and Colonial Press A VIEW OF ST. JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK, CANADA Colonial Press Service LAYING A GAS BUOY IN THE ST. LAWRENCE RIVER. THE BUOY IS ANCHORED Underwood & Underwood ORE STEAMERS ON THE SAULT STE. MARIE. THEY CARRY IRON ORE BETWEEN MINNESOTA PORTS AND OTHER FORTS OF THE GREAT LAKES Ewing Galloway LAKE WASHINGTON CANAL, WHICH CONNECTS LAKE WASHINGTON WITH THE HARBOR OF SEATTLE Ewing Galloway THE SHEEP HERD ON A RANCH NEAR SILVERTON, COLO. War" (1918).
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 it noted that Scherer had become president of the Throop College of Technology in 1908 — a small Pasadena school that, in the year before the entry appeared, had been renamed the California Institute of Technology. Scherer had in fact stepped down in 1920, and under George Ellery Hale, Arthur Noyes and Robert Millikan the institution he led grew into one of the world's foremost scientific centres, with dozens of Nobel laureates among its faculty and alumni. Scherer himself lived until 1944 and kept writing on Japan, a subject he had known since founding an American Lutheran mission there in 1892; his confident pre-war accounts of Japanese morality and society read very differently after 1941. He is remembered today chiefly as the administrator who steered Throop through its transformation into Caltech.
Written for this edition, 2026.