Faculty

Russell Thompson was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on December 29, 1898, the son and grandson of physicians, which may account for his undergraduate nickname, "Doc." He attended Reading High School and entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with the class of 1920. As an undergraduate he was a member of Belles Lettres Literary Society and Kappa Sigma fraternity, served as a cabinet officer in the Y.M.C.A., and was editor-in-chief of the 1919/1920 Microcosm.

After graduation he taught Greek at the Williamsport Seminary before going on to study education and psychology at Yale. While there he was director of the Wesley Settlement House of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New Haven between 1926 and 1928 before earning his Ph.D. in 1932.

He returned to his alma mater for the 1928 fall term to teach in his two doctoral subjects. He was soon promoted to associate professor and helped to develop the teaching of psychology and education at the College during the 1930s. In 1941,when Professor Wilbur Norcross died suddenly, Thompson became full professor, the Richard V.C. Watkins Chair of Psychology and Education, and head of the department.

William Trickett was born on June 9, 1840 in the English Midlands town of Leicester. When he was very young his family moved from England to Philadelphia where he lived until he entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1866. Two years later he was awarded his bachelor of arts degree. Upon graduation in 1868, Trickett assumed the role of principal of the Dickinson Grammar School for one year, followed by service for two years as adjunct professor of philosophy at the College. He earned his master's degree from Dickinson in 1871 and, immediately following, left to tour Europe for two years.

Trickett returned to Dickinson, teaching modern languages for a year, but in 1875 he was among the three faculty members whose contracts were not renewed by President James McCauley. Trickett then began to focus his energies on the law, and in 1876 he was admitted to the Cumberland County Bar Association. In 1890 he received an honorary degree in law from DePauw University, and in that same year he was selected to serve as dean of Dickinson Law School. Trickett would retain this position until his death on August 1, 1928. Trickett Hall on the campus of the Dickinson School of Law is named in his honor. He never married.

Henry Vethake was born in British Guiana, in what was then the county of Essequibo, on May 26, 1791 to a family of Westphalian educators. His father, Fredrich Albert von Vethake, taught for a time at Vassar College. Henry arrived in Boston in 1797 and later moved to New York City where he received some of his early education. He graduated from Columbia College in 1808 and in 1813 taught mathematics and geography for a time at his alma mater. He went that same year to a similar position at Queen's College, New Jersey, now Rutgers University. He moved on to Princeton in 1817 for four years, teaching mathematics and chemistry, until he took up the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He also taught chemistry for a time.

Ernest Vuilleumier was born on March 1, 1894 in New York City, New York. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1914 and obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Berne, Switzerland through a 1916 Rosengarten traveling fellowship. While he was there, the United States entered the First World War and Vuilleumier made his way to France to enlist with the 162nd United States Infantry in Bordeaux in 1918; he later served with the Chemical Service. He had begun his teaching career at the Drexel Institute of Technology in Philadelphia before going abroad and he worked as an industrial chemist between 1919 and 1920 after returning.

Francis Warlow was born in Philadelphia the son of A. Judson and Mathilde Warlow on July 29, 1909. He was educated at schools in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Baltimore, Maryland before earning his undergraduate degree at the Johns Hopkins University in 1931 with a major in English and a minor in Geology. For almost ten years after his graduation he was an instructor of English at the Carson Long Military Academy in New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania. He was called up for military service in the Army Air Corps in January, 1941 and became an expert on the production of training films in Hollywood. In 1944, he was given command of the Sixth Combat Camera Unit, Thirteenth Army Air Force taking combat footage of fighter and bomber operations in the Pacific. He ended the war with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Erastus Wentworth was born in Stonington, Connecticut on August 5, 1813. He was educated at local and Congregationalist schools until at eighteen he converted to Methodism at a revival. He attended the Cazenovia Seminary beginning in 1832 and by 1837 had earned an undergraduate degree at Wesleyan University.

He embarked on his teaching career at Gouverneur Wesleyan Seminary in 1838, serving under the young Jesse Truesdell Peck. He followed Peck to his new post as head of the Troy Conference Academy in Poultney, Vermont in 1841. In 1846 Wentworth himself was named to the presidency of McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois. In 1850 he was unanimously elected to the chair of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, replacing Spencer Fullerton Baird who had resigned to accept a position as Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. His old mentor Peck was again involved in this appointment as he was currently serving as the tenth president of Dickinson. Allegheny College had awarded him a doctorate in 1850, and Doctor Wentworth's combination of preaching skills and a witty but gentle sarcasm made him a extremely popular professor among students at the College over the next four years. But in 1854, he resigned his position to lead a Methodist Mission to Foochow in China, taking with him some of the Dickinson graduating class, notably Otis Gibson.

John William Williams was born on September 12, 1880, in Ocean View, Delaware. He was the son of Reverend W. S. H. and Catharine Williams. He attended preparatory school at Wilmington Conference Academy in Dover, Delaware, before entering Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1901 with the class of 1904.

While at Dickinson Williams was a fraternity brother of Phi Kappa Psi, a member of the Sophomore Band, and the Glee Club. He was in Raven’s Claw, and was editor of the Microcosm. Williams also captained the College football team that beat Penn State and Lafayette in 1903. He graduated from Dickinson in 1904.

In the autumn of 1904, Williams enrolled at the University of Virginia to study law. He only remained in Virginia a short time before returning to Dickinson. Williams took a position as the assistant athletic coach to Forrest Craver and later became the head football coach in 1905 and 1906. While coaching at Dickinson, his record was seven wins, eight losses and two games that resulted in a tie. Williams enjoyed his time at Dickinson but his health deteriorated and he was forced to resign in the spring of 1907. He returned to his home state of Delaware that summer.

Herbert Wing, Jr. was born on December 8, 1889 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard University in 1909 and went on to the University of Wisconsin, where he received his Ph. D. in 1915. His career in teaching had already begun by that time, first at the Wilmington High School in Wilmington, Massachusetts in 1909 as an assistant principal, and then at the University of Wisconsin, where from 1910 to 1912 and from 1914 to 1915 he was a student assistant in European history.

Wing came to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1915 as an associate professor of Greek language and literature. In 1920, he became full professor but he had already returned to the teaching of history. While at Dickinson, Wing taught courses in German, Greek, Latin, geography, and all types of history courses. Every freshman entering the College from 1916 to 1946 was required to take Wing's ancient history course and he still is recalled with awe and fondness by generations of alumni. Many, in 2001, still refer to him as "Mr. Three by Five," because of his insistence that students take notes on assigned readings and projected papers on three by five inch index cards.

Henry James Young (friends jokingly put a comma between the middle and last names) was born February 16, 1908, in York, Pennsylvania. His family were comfortably placed; in passing he sometimes mentioned a German maid. Orphaned in his teens, he lived for four years at an orphanage in York before entering Franklin and Marshall College. After a varied career, Young in 1957 joined the history department at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

At Franklin and Marshall, Young majored in history, but he continued his study of the ancient classics he had begun in high school. He was especially fond of Greek, although his command of Latin was such that his marginalia were often in that language. Young also studied German, having some familiarity with it from home, and Italian. He was president of the college's Goethean Literary Society, the subject of his first book.

When he was twenty, a summer research project took Young to the State Library in Harrisburg. The friend who had promised to drive Young back to York never arrived, so, fortified with a bowl of baked beans at the Alva restaurant, Young proceeded to walk home, across the Susquehanna and down the old Susquehanna Trail, arriving at dawn.