1865-1885

Evans was a graduate of Yale and an acquaintance of Andrew White. He was one of the first two men chosen by White when forming the initial Cornell faculty and played an important role as one f the leader of the faculty at the openning of Cornell. He was suffering from tuberculsis and died 6 year after the Cornell opening in 1874, the same year Ezra Cornell died. 

This image from an early yearbook depicts a two headed mathematics monster representing Lucian Wait (no hat) and George W. Jones. Falling in the  burning inferno is famed Cornell Physics professor William A. Anthony.

Wait was a Harvard graduate and joined the Cornell faculty in 1870.  During Cornell's the first two years (1868-1870) the mathematics faculty consisted of Evans (Chair), Potter (who also served as the universitty medical doctor!), and Eddy who earned the fisrt Cornell Ph.D. in any subject while being Assistant Professor.  Jones and Anthony were Yale graduates and followed each other career's footsteps from  Delaware Literary Institute in Franklin, NY,  to Iowa Agricultural College, to Cornell. Two military men,  W. E. Arnold and W. J. Hamilton,were also teaching mathematics.