Reform-minded educator Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977) aroused controversy over his views on liberal education in America. Critical of overspecialization, he fought for a balance between college curriculum and Western intellectual tradition at the University of Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s. Until his retirement in 1974, three years before his death in 1977, Hutchins was chairman of the Board of Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Robert M. Hutchins was born in Brooklyn, New York, Jan. 17, 1899, but grew up in Oberlin, Ohio, where his father was professor of theology at Oberlin College. Hutchins himself entered Oberlin at the age of 16, only to have his academic career interrupted by World War I. He enlisted in the army and served as an ambulance driver in Italy, earning the Italian medal, Croce di Guerra, in 1918. Home once more, he completed his education at Yale University, where he graduated with honors in 1921.

Hutchins was on a...