William Barton Rogers

William Barton Rogers (December 7, 1804 – May 30, 1882) was an American geologist, physicist, and the founder and first president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An acclaimed lecturer in the physical sciences, Rogers taught at College of William & Mary (1828–1835) and the University of Virginia (1835–1853). While at the university, he served as Virginia's first state geologist and led the state's first geological survey. After meeting Emma Savage in Boston, he married and moved there in 1853. A proponent of practical observation and scientific reasoning, Rogers believed that a university for the "useful arts" could be essential in an age of industrial progress. In 1861, Rogers secured funding for an "institute of technology" from the Massachusetts legislature. When MIT opened in 1865, Rogers was its first president and physics instructor. Ill health caused him to step away from his duties in 1868, although he stayed active in forming the Institute's curriculum, fundraising, and efforts at coeducation. He returned as MIT's president in 1878, stepped down three years later, and died while giving MIT's 1882 graduation speech. During the time Rogers lived in Virginia, he was a slaveowner, with two slaves in his household in 1840 and six slaves in 1850; one, his cook, was Isabella Gibbons.