The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
The death of Samuel Allan Lattimore, Ph.D., LL.D., emeritus professor of
chemistry of the University of Rochester, at the age of eighty-five,
marks the passing of a notable educator and social worker. Though born
in the central West of southern ancestry, he spent most of his
professional life in the East. He combined in character the courtesy of
the South, the vigor of the West and the conservatism of the East. He
was a real aristocrat, the kind that makes a true democrat. As a
teacher, and even as a friend, he gave the impression one has in the
Alps of distance without remoteness, of aloofness without coldness.
Dr. Lattimore’s reputation as a scientist was such that in the face of
bitter political opposition, his report recommending the present source
of Rochester’s water supply was accepted. This secured to the citizens
an ideal water system. He was one of the organizers of the Western New
York Institution for Deaf Mutes, of the Mechanics Institute and of the
Reynolds Library, three of the most useful institutions of the city. For
several years he was a member of the city Board of Health, of the Monroe
County committee of mental hygiene of the State Charities Aid
Association, and of the board of visitors for that organization to the
state hospital for the insane. He was a pioneer advocate of cremation on
the ground of its sanitary value, and his body was one of the first to
be reduced to its elements in the crematory just completed by his city.
[Illustration:
PROF. SAMUEL A. LATTIMORE
]
The scholar and the gentleman blended in him so perfectly that we think
of him first as a citizen. The community is as much his debtor as the
university. He had unusual opportunities to make large sums of money as
an expert chemist, but never would lower his professional standards for
commercial gain. One of his most conspicuous early services was a course
of free public lectures on science given to large audiences of working
men for several successive years in Buffalo, Cleveland and Rochester.
Professor Lattimore’s mind was keenly alert to the very end of his
career and kept in touch with all of the movements for social welfare.
Only a few days before his death he was deeply interested in the article
in a recent SURVEY by Samuel Fels on The Policeman. He suggested that it
be reprinted in _The Common Good_ and a copy be sent to every policeman
in the city. His wish has been carried out.[3] He was a fine type of the
new citizen-scholar, with a large and keen sense of the duty which
scholarship owes to the community.
Footnote 3:
The Common Good of Civic and Social Rochester. March, 1913. p. 171.
PAUL MOORE STRAYER.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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