Robert Gordon Sproul (May 22, 1891 – September 10, 1975) was the first system-wide president (1952–1958) of the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of Califor ...

system, and the last president (11th) of the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

, serving from 1930 to 1952.

Background

Robert Gordon Sproul was born on May 22, 1891, in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

, California, to Robert Sproul of Scotland and Sarah Elizabeth Sproul of New England. He is the elder brother of central banker

Allan Sproul Allan Sproul (March 9, 1896 – April 9, 1978) was an American banker. Widely regarded as one of the world's foremost central bankers, he served as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1941 to 1956. Biography He was born on March ...

, who served as chairman of the

New York Federal Reserve The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks of the United States. It is responsible for the Second District of the Federal Reserve System, which encompasses the State of New York, the 12 northern counties of Ne ...

. In 1913, he earned a BS in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, where his classmates included future Supreme Court justice

Earl Warren Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court presided over a major shift in American constitutio ...

Career

In 1913, Sproul started his career briefly as an efficiency engineer in Oakland, California. In 1914, he began a 44-year track by joining the University of California's business office as a cashier and rose to controller, legislative lobbyist, and by 1925 secretary of the regents and vice president of finance and business affairs. In June 1929, Sproul was chosen as the eleventh president of the University of California. He immediately took a leave of absence to study other universities. In a 1930 speech, as president-elect he stated:

The glory of a university is obviously the men who constitute its faculty. It cannot be too often repeated that it is men, and nothing but men, who make education. The reason why the University of California occupies the high position it does throughout the academic world is that there has never been a time when its faculty could not boast of men who were finding their way along rough trails, illuminated only by the spark of genius, to the heights of scholarship. Within a few years after the receipt of its charter from the state, there were to be found in the University a goodly number of men whose reputation is even yet undimmed, such men as
Daniel Coit Gilman Daniel Coit Gilman (; July 6, 1831 – October 13, 1908) was an American educator and academic. Gilman was instrumental in founding the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College, and subsequently served as the second president of the University ...
, later president of
Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...
, Hilgard in agriculture, LeConte in geology, and many others. Nor is the present faculty devoid of men who, in their respective fields, hold high the lamp of learning--Campbell in astronomy, Kofoid in zoology, and G. N. Lewis in chemistry, to pick out a few of the most obvious. In a very real sense, such men are the University of California, and similarly elsewhere, for material development is futile without brains to use and to direct it and personality to irradiate it. Students are getting a gold brick if they go for education to a school where there are no great teachers.

He succeeded in maintaining the University of California school system as a

Land Grant A land grant is a gift of real estate—land or its use privileges—made by a government or other authority as an incentive, means of enabling works, or as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service. Grants ...

institution. In 1936, Sproul added to his roles the job of provost of the

University of California at Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

through 1937. He organized the

California Club Based in Los Angeles, California, the California Club is an by-invitation-only private club established in 1888. According to Los Angeles Times, "The people who ''run'' Los Angeles belong to the Jonathan Club; the people who ''own'' Los Ange ...

that brought all campuses together. In 1944, he started an annual series of all-University faculty conferences. During the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, expansion of facilities stopped. After World War II, he served on the

Committee for the Marshall Plan The Committee for the Marshall Plan, also known as Citizens' Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery, was a short-term organization established to promote passage of the European Recovery Program known as the Marshall Plan – whi ...

. In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, he struggled with student dissent (e.g., over conscriptions) and McCarthy-style accusations from the newspapers controlled by

William Randolph Hearst William Randolph Hearst Sr. (; April 29, 1863 – August 14, 1951) was an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboya ...

about "communist influence" on campuses. Perhaps the biggest controversy during his presidency came in 1949 over a special non-Communist oath required of faculty by the regents of the University of California, known as the "Year of the Oath." Forty professors who refused to sign were let go; a court restored their jobs in 1956. Sproul's outstanding contribution during his 28-year administration was the multiple-campus expansion of the University to meet the demands for higher education in widely separated parts of the state while maintaining one institution governed by one board of regents and one president. He also stopped the establishment of separate local colleges in 1931, 1945, and 1953. California governor

asked his former classmate and fellow 1911 member of the University of California Band, Sproul to place his name in nomination for the office of Vice President of the United States at the 1948

Republican National Convention The Republican National Convention (RNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1856 by the United States Republican Party. They are administered by the Republican National Committee. The goal of the Repu ...

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

. Sproul retired in 1958. He became active in the Save the Redwoods League (after being a member since 1921) and in the East Bay Regional Park District and served on the National Park Advisory Board. From his office as president emeritus, he gave a speech during the 1967

Free Speech Movement The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Be ...

at Berkeley, by which he "contributed one of the few notes of humor in an otherwise grim confrontation." When student demonstrators broke into his office and scattered his papers, he told a reporter, "Nonsense. Nobody messed up my office. It always looks that way."

Personal and death

On September 16, 1916, Sproul married Ida Wittschen. They had three children. Sproul was inspired by predecessor

Benjamin Ide Wheeler Benjamin Ide Wheeler (July 15, 1854– May 2, 1927) was a professor of Greek and comparative philology at Cornell University, writer, and President of the University of California from 1899 to 1919. Life and career Early years Benjamin ...

, who was president when he first began to work for the University of California. Sproul was a member of Abracadabra (now Delta Chi Abracadabra), the

Order of the Golden Bear The Order of the Golden Bear (the Order, OGB) is a prominent honor society at the University of California, Berkeley composed of students, faculty, and alumni committed to serving the University of California. Founded in 1900, the Order serves ...

, and the

Bohemian Club The Bohemian Club is a private club with two locations: a city clubhouse in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, California and the Bohemian Grove, a retreat north of the city in Sonoma County. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journ ...

- he sponsored

Ernest Lawrence Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation fo ...

's membership in 1932. He died age 84 on September 10, 1975, at home in Berkeley, California.

Honors, awards

Honorary degrees: * 1926: LLD from Occidental College * 1930: LLD from University of Southern California * 1930: LLD from University of San Francisco * 1931: LLD from Pomona College * 1932: LLD from University of Oregon * 1935: LLD from University of Nebraska * 1935: LLD from Yale University * 1938: LLD from University of Maine * 1938: LittD from Columbia University * 1940: LLD from University of New Mexico * 1940: LLD from Harvard University * 1943: LLD from Mills College * 1947: LLD from Princeton University * 1949: LLD from Tulane University * 1949: LLD from St. Mary's College * 1958: LLD from University of California at Berkeley * 1958: LHD from the University of California at Los Angeles * 1958: LLD from University of British Columbia * 1958: LLD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute * 1959: LLD from Brigham Young University Foreign honors: * Officier de l'Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur (France) * Knight of the Order of the Iron Crown (Italy) * Royal Order of the North Star - Commander Second Class (Sweden) He was given the Benjamin Ide Wheeler distinguished citizen award by the city of Berkeley, 1933; made an honorary fellow of Stanford University, 1941; and named "Alumnus of the Year" by the California Alumni Association in 1946. (All honors and awards listed come from the University of California History - Digital Archives.)

Legacy

Achievements

At his death, the ''New York Times'' reported that the University of California owed its pre-eminence in science to Sproul, who transformed the school system from "a merely large institution" to "the biggest in the Western world... sprinkled with

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

winners." By the time he left office in 1958, the

, was a distinguished university recognized worldwide for the excellence of its programs and the University of California had a total of eight campuses from Davis to Los Angeles. Its student population had risen from 19,000 to 45,000 students. Its library had quadrupled to four million volumes. Its state support had risen nine times to $75 million.

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

President

James Bryan Conant James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Conant obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard in 1916 ...

and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

President Nicholas Murray Butler said that Sproul was ''the'' university president of their time. The Donahoe Act of 1960, although enacted after his retirement, helped fulfill his vision by integrating all higher education in California.

Buildings

Sproul Hall and Sproul Plaza on the

campus, site of numerous political rallies since the 1930s, are named for him. At the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the Californ ...

campus, there are three residence halls named in his recognition: Sproul Hall, Sproul Landing, and Sproul Cove. Sproul Hall on the

University of California, Riverside The University of California, Riverside (UCR or UC Riverside) is a public land-grant research university in Riverside, California. It is one of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The main campus sits on in a suburban dist ...

campus, home to the Department of Economics and the Graduate School of Education, is named for him. At the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The inst ...

campus, Sproul Hall is the tallest building in Yolo County.

Research

A research vessel used by the

Scripps Institution of Oceanography The Scripps Institution of Oceanography (sometimes referred to as SIO, Scripps Oceanography, or Scripps) in San Diego, California, US founded in 1903, is one of the oldest and largest centers for ocean and Earth science research, public servi ...

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is ...

is named the R/V Robert Gordon Sproul.

References

External links

University of California
Robert Gordon Sproul and the University of California: A Memoir by Agnes Roddy Robb (1976)
USCF
Department of Psychiatry: Remarks by the Honorable Robert Gordon Sproul, President of the University of California, at the Laying of the Cornerstone of the Langley Porter Clinic of the California State Department of Institutions - April 5, 1941 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sproul, Robert Gordon 1891 births 1975 deaths People from San Francisco University of California regents Leaders of the University of California, Berkeley Presidents of the University of California System Educators from California California Republicans University of California, Berkeley alumni 20th-century American academics