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Frederick A. P. Barnard was the University's first "chancellor" (the
title was changed from "president" in 1858), and he was perhaps its most
ardent and idealistic proponent. He aspired to make the University the
greatest scientific institution in the world, establishing an ideal that
has challenged and inspired his successors. Born in 1809, he graduated
from Yale in 1828 and began teaching. In 1838 he accepted a position
teaching mathematics and natural philosophy at the University of Alabama,
and in 1854 he accepted a similar position at The University of
Mississippi. Shortly after assuming the presidency in 1856, Barnard
convinced the Legislature to appropriate funds to order the largest
telescope in the world for the University and to construct an
observatory for it on campus. The observatory, which
houses the Center for the Study of Southern Culture (called Barnard
Observatory) was completed, but because of the Civil War the telescope
was diverted to Chicago, where it remains today at Northwestern
University. Barnard, a minister and musician, left Oxford during the
Civil War and became president of Columbia University, where he remained
for 25 years. He is the only University of Mississippi Chancellor to be
elected as an undergraduate to Phi Beta Kappa.
