1873

Howard Russell Butler enters the College of New Jersey’s (now Princeton University) first school of science, seeking a B.S.

Completed in 1874, the John C. Green School of Science was designed by William A. Potter in the High Victorian Gothic style. Joseph Henry, the former Princeton professor and the first director of the Smithsonian Institution, delivered the inaugural address for the School of Science in May 1873. The School was destroyed by fire in 1928.

Butler and his brother rowed on the canal near Princeton, where they saw large canal boats made of steel and powered mechanically. “The difficulty of rowing on the canal, and the impossibilities of having any races on it, made us wish that the adjoining marshland could be cleaned and flooded. This was the first idea of Princeton lake, long afterwards realized in Lake Carnegie.” –Howard Russell Butler

Canal Society of New Jersey.

Butler is appointed assistant to Cyrus Fogg Brackett, professor of physics and founder of the electrical engineering department. About Brackett, Butler would later write, “I owe him more than I can express. He was a great teacher, a brilliant lecturer, imaginative. His course of Physics, illustrated with experiments, accomplished my awakening. He brought to me a new vision of the world and of life. Henceforth, art and science seemed bound together in my thoughts.” –Howard Russell Butler
Marble plaque of Cyrus Fogg Brackett (1833–1915), designed by Joseph Schiller in 1911 and installed in Princeton University’s Frist Student Center (PP80).

For more information about Cyrus Fogg Brackett, see http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/brackett_cyrus_fogg.html

Butler helps organize the student “Nassau Scientific Society.”