1885-1905

James Oliver (above, right) was Chair from 1874 to his death in 1895. He worked tirelessly to develop scholarlship, graduate study and  research in mathematics at Cornell.  John Tanner  (Cornell class on 1891) taught at Cornell  his entire career after studying for several years in Göttingen. Virgil Snyder, came to Cornell as a graduate syudent in 1890 and went to earn his Ph.D. at Göttingen under Felix Klein while supported by a Cornell Erastus Brook fellowship.  Ernst Ritter was a star German student of Klein. He accepted a professorship at Cornell in 1895 but died at Ellis Island upon arrival in the united state.  As a replacement for both Oliver and Ritter, Cornell hired Snyder who became the pillar of the department for the next forty years.

John I. Hutchinson (1867--1935, Botton left below) earned one of the first Ph.D. from the University of Chicago where he studied under Klein's former student Oscar Bolza. He joined Cornell in 1864. He spoke at the 1924 International Congress of Mathematicians in Toronto.

Agnes Sime Baxter (1870--1917, right) was the last of the seven graduate students including three women who earn their Ph.D.s under James Oliver. She was the Erastus Brooks Fellow in mathematics for the academic year 1894/95 at the end of which she defended her Ph.D., one of the first Canadian women to do so.