Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), American educator and diplomat, helped found Cornell University and became its first president.

Andrew Dickson White was born in Homer, N.Y., on Nov. 7, 1832. At the age of 17 he entered the Episcopal-oriented Geneva (Hobart) College in western New York, but he disliked it and after a year dropped out and entered Yale. Upon graduating in 1853, he and his friend Daniel Gilman went to Europe. White studied languages and history in Paris and Berlin, and during 1854-1855 he served for 6 months as an attaché to the American minister in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1856 White received his master of arts degree from Yale and then accepted an offer to be professor of history at the nonsectarian University of Michigan. The young, innovative teacher was an immediate success. During his 6 years there he conceived of a new university for central New York that would be shorn...