1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Butler, Nicholas Murray

BUTLER, NICHOLAS MURRAY (1862–), American educator, was born at Elizabeth, New Jersey, on the 2nd of April 1862. He graduated at Columbia College in 1882, was a graduate fellow in philosophy there from 1882 to 1884, when he took the degree of Ph.D., and then studied for a year in Paris and Berlin. He was an assistant in philosophy at Columbia in 1885–1886, tutor in 1886–1889, adjunct professor of philosophy, ethics and psychology in 1889–1890, becoming full professor in 1890, and dean of the faculty of philosophy in 1890–1902. From 1887 until 1891 he was the first president of the New York college for the training of teachers (later the Teachers’ College of Columbia University), which he had personally planned and organized. In 1891 he founded and afterwards edited the Educational Review, an influential educational magazine. He soon came to be looked upon as one of the foremost authorities on educational matters in America, and in 1894 was elected president of the National Educational Association. He was also a member of the New Jersey state board of education from 1887 to 1895, and was president of the Paterson (N.J.) board of education in 1892–1893. In 1901 he succeeded Seth Low as president of Columbia University. Besides editing several series of books, including “The Great Educators” and “The Teachers’ Professional Library,” he published The Meaning of Education (1898), a collection of essays; and two series of addresses, True and False Democracy (1907), and The American as he is (1908).