UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
N A V I G A T I O N D I G I T A L L I B R A R Y
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Repository: UIHistories Project: Book - History of the University (Nevins) [PAGE 294]

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FACULTY FIGURES

275

such a memorial to the writer as should some time be published. The Trustees would have been glad to elect him President had he not forbidden such a move as often as it was suggested; for his capacity for hard administrative labor was united with a certain retirement of disposition. Great gentleness made him loved to an extraordinary degree, and one ofjhis colleagues once remarked: "Dr. Burrill, biologically speaking, you are a monster of goodness." His death in 1916 was the occasion of a remarkable tribute to his character and work. Shattuck, a Yankee of long lineage, who had joined the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment at the outbreak of the Civil "War and who was wounded at Cedar Creek, was for thirty-seven years head of the department of mathematics, and much else besides. At the beginning he also taught military tactics and civil engineering. He long did surveying for the University; and he was business manager and comptroller for many years, a difficult position, which he filled with shrewdness and tact. Above all, he was a teacher, and with a flavor of his own. He told Draper that he would retire from the University when he ceased to instruct in mathematics, and it was difficult for him to devote himself more and more to administration*^ The alumni as a whole must remember him chiefly for the vivacity and keenness with which he taught an exact science. Pillsbury, who was also a New Englander, a war-time graduate of Harvard, began his connection with the University in 1888 as secretary of the Agricultural Experiment^ Station, and m~T89& ^cgg^ r e gM r a r > n e an<* Burrill shouldering many Ininor responsibilities for which Draper could find no time in the subsequent years of rapid growth. He was a man of rare sensitiveness and modesty, and rareTattention to duty; and his unusual memory was