Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Mather, Richard Henry

MATHER, Richard Henry, educator, b. in Binghamton, N. Y., 12 Feb., 1835; d. in Amherst, Mass., 17 April, 1890. He graduated at Amherst, was tutor of Greek, assistant professor of that branch, professor of Greek and German in 1864, and professor of Greek and lecturer on sculpture in 1878. He has secured for Amherst college the finest collection of plaster casts in the United States, excepting only the one in Boston, and he has assisted in the growth and development of the college in many other ways. He received the degree of D. D. from Bowdoin in 1879. Although never the pastor of a church, he often supplied the pulpits of New York, Boston, and other cities. He has edited Greek text-books for use in colleges, which have passed through several editions. The principal ones are Herodotus (1872); selections from Thucydides, the “Electra” of Sophocles (1873); abstract of lectures upon sculpture (1882); and the “Prometheus Bound” of Æschylus (1883). He spent the winter of 1887-'8 in Athens in connection with the work of his professorships.