WHITE, ANDREW DICKSON (1832-1918), American educationalist and diplomat, was born in Homer (N.Y.) on Nov. 7, 1832. He graduated at Yale (A.B.) in 1853, studied at the Sor bonne in 1854, and at the University of Berlin in 1855-56, mean while serving as attaché at the U.S. Legation at St. Petersburg in 1854-55. He was professor of history and English literature in 1857-63, and lecturer on history in 1863-67 at the University of Michigan. He dreamed of a great university with professors in every field, rich libraries and museums and stately build ings, the whole free from denominational control, open to men and women alike. After approaching various men of wealth, his alliance during his State senatorship (1864-67) with Ezra Cornell, who promised to give such an institution a site and $5oo,000 en dowment, enabled him with the addition of the New York land grant, to establish at Ithaca (N.Y.) the present Cornell university, to which as first president and after 1885 as a member of the board of trustees and executive committee he devoted his best energies and much of his wealth. He combined in an unusual degree the
qualities of scholar and man of affairs. He served on the com mission to Santo Domingo, and on the commission on the Vene zuela boundary, as United States minister to Germany in 1879-81 and to Russia in 1892-94, and as ambassador to Germany in 1897-1903. In 1899 he was president of the American delegation at The Hague Peace Conference. Although Dr. White listed nu merous unfinished projects in his Autobiography (1905), his vari ous activities did not prevent him from completing several works. The most outstanding are A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), and Seven Great States men in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1910) . He died at Ithaca (N.Y.) on Nov. 4, 1918. The Cornell school of history and political science appropriately bears his name, and the rich collection of books which he gave the university is housed in a special room in the main library.