Person:David Jordan (5)

DAVID S. JORDAN, LL.D., SEVENTH PRESIDENT OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY. ...

CENSUS: 1900 United States Federal Census
Name: Knight S Jordan
Home in 1900: Leland Stanford Junior University, Santa Clara, California
Age: 11
Estimated birth year: abt 1889
Birthplace: Indiana
Relationship to head-of-house: Son
Father's name: David S
Mother's name: Jessie K
Race: White
Occupation: President of Stanford University
Household Members: Name Age
David S Jordan 49
Jessie K Jordan 33
Edith M Jordan 23
Harold B Jordan 17
Knight S Jordan 11
Barbara Jordan 8
Loretta Barloy 45
S Jack May 22
Sam Lian 37
Source Citation: Year: 1900; Census Place: Leland Stanford Junior University, Santa Clara, California; Roll: T623 111; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 97.

OBITUARY: Memorial Resolution
David Starr Jordan (d. 1931)

In the death of David Starr Jordan Stanford University has lost a great leader, the world of Science a great scholar, and our American democracy a great interpreter. It was he who shaped the policies which gave to Stanford its distinctive character and who guided it through its formative period and through the critical years of its history. To no other, save to the founders alone, does the University owe so much as it owes to him. He was more than scholar and executive; he was the apostle of a high idealism. It would be impossible to measure his influence in promoting a sane attitude toward life among the thousands of students whose lives he touched, or the service which he rendered to the cause of international good will by his steadfast loyalty and devotion to the things which make for peace. To the members of this Council, especially to those who served with him through the early years of Stanford's history, his death brings a deep sense of personal loss. We mourn a trusted and honored leader; we mourn still more a well-loved friend.
Ellwood Cubberley
Frank MacFarland
Augustus Murray

David Starr Jordan (January 19, 1851 – September 19, 1931) was an American ichthyologist, educator, eugenicist, and peace activist. He was president of Indiana University and was the founding president of Stanford University. ...

The Days of a Man, Volume II. By David Starr Jordan
Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York
World Book Company, 1922 - Page 650

On our way back to California we made as usual a brief but enjoyable stop in Chicago at the home of my wife's brother Charles, and another visit of two or three days in Provo (Utah) with our son Knight and his wife, whose wedding had occurred about a year before. This was the result of a romance I had myself in some sense brought about, though quite unwittingly.

Miss Iona, one of the three daughters of Jesse Knight, a prominent and much-beloved citizen of Utah, had been partly prepared for Wellesley College at the Westlake School in Los Angeles directed by Miss Vance and Miss De Laguna, two Stanford graduates. Having later completed the required work under Dr. John C. Swenson, Stanford '98, upon his earnest recommendation she recalled her credentials from the East, applied for admission with us, and started for Palo Alto. As it happened that I was taking the same train from Salt Lake, Mr. William Knight asked me to see his sister safely to her destination---a pleasant duty because of her fine character and attractive manner. Arrived at Stanford, she spent the first night in our home. Then began a wholesome friendship between the two young people which gradually ripened into warmer feeling and led to their marriage in September, 1913. They are now the parents of two charming children, Lee Knight Jordan and Ruth Jordan.

BIOGRAPHY: Born into a farm family of Gainesville, New York, he entered the newly established Cornell University as an undergraduate in 1866, and received a master's degree in 1872; he was an instructor in botany at Cornell beginning in 1870. He then moved to Indianapolis and acquired an MD from Indiana Medical College (1875), after lecturing in 1874 on marine botany at the Anderson summer school of natural history at Penikese Island, Massachusetts, and on botany and ichthyology at the Harvard School of Geology in 1875. He earned Ph.D. from Butler University in 1878, taking up a professorship in science at Indiana University in 1879.

From 1879 through 1881 he was a special agent of the United States census for the marine industries of the Pacific coast, and he also held appointments at various times with United States Fish Commission, beginning in 1877 and extending through 1891.

He was appointed president of Indiana University on January 1, 1885, and then went to Stanford in 1891 to become its first president, later becoming its chancellor in 1913, in order to have more time available for his peace activities (a new trustee by the name of Herbert Hoover helped arrange this). Jordan retired in 1916. He was president of the California Academy of Sciences from 1896 to 1904 and after 1908. He was also president of the World Peace Foundation from 1910 to 1914 and chaired the World Peace Conference in 1915.

Jordan was an extremely prolific writer, with 650 articles and books on ichthyology alone, and 1,400 other works. As of 1881, Jordan had already published about 250 papers on North American ichthyology, also the Manual of the Vertebrates of the Northern United States.

Jordan is somewhat notable in the fields of political science and international relations for his optimistic statements about the future of the world before the outbreak of World War I. According to the book Understanding International Conflicts by Joseph Nye, Jordan incorrectly predicted in 1910 that nations would not go to war in the future because it would cause too much damage to their economies.