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OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY. 385

political science, and pure mathematics at Heidelberg, where he stayed for three years, and a semester was spent at the University of Berlin attending lectures on mathematics, physics and politics. He received his A.M. degree from Rochester in 1879 and the first seminar prize in mathematics. In 1884 he resumed his academic work in America as assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Rochester, becoming professor in 1886. His long association with Amherst began in 1891, when he was appointed to the chair of mathematics at that college. In 1898 he shared as acting president in its administration pending the election of a new president, and again in 1906-07 during President Harris' absence abroad. He was dean of the college from 1909 to 1922, and was again acting president while Pres. Meiklejohn was in Europe in 1920-21 and after the latter's resignation in 1923. The trustees then elected him president. Probably no one ever assumed the administrative reins of an educational institution under more trying and difficult conditions. The conditions under which he took office called for a readjustment of the curriculum following the conflict between the trustees and Pres. Meiklejohn over the latter's policies and the replacement of a number of faculty members who had resigned in the midst of it. He substituted new courses and invited outside instructors of distinction to serve as visiting teachers pending permanent appointments to the vacant faculty positions. He sought to make an Amherst position, both in salary and intellectual opportunity, a challenge to its holder's scholarly ambition, to disprove the belief that a small college limited a teacher's scope for development. He ranked a faculty of scholars higher than a theory of education and believed that he quality of education was determined by the ability of its faculty. This attitude toward professional positions was the outstanding feature of Olds' educational policy during a brief but formative and progressive administration uncolored by partisanship over the issues raised by the Meiklejohn controversy. His educational creed was always to "help the young man to think, to help him in a free, unfettered search for new truths and standards" and the record of his brief administration was proof enough that he was steadfastly true to these simple, yet high, ideals. His classroom work was exceptional and constitutes a brilliant chapter in the academic history of the college. During his administration the number of the faculty was increased from 63 to 82, the student enrollment from 561 to 714, and the endowments were increased by $1,336,373. Known by his students by the affectionate appellation of "Georgie," he was a man of extreme modesty, rare humor, generous impulses and broad sympathy. Under his wise and successful administration, the faculty and students were united in a harmonious group committed to the policy of framing an educational program which would combine the experience of the past with practical plans for the needs of the future. He was a member of the American Mathematical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Mathematical Association of America, New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools (president, 1921-22), Phi Beta Kappa society and the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. The University of Rochester (1907), Amherst college (1921) and Wesleyan university (1927) conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. Olds was married June 16, 1886, to Marion Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph D. Leland, of Boston, Mass., and they had four children: Leland; George Daniel, Jr.; Clara Leland, wife of Irving J. Bissell, and Marion Georgiana Olds, wife of (1) George E. Keeler, and (2) Leon De Vel, M.D. He died at Amherst, Mass., May 10, 1931.

BITTER, Karl [Theodore Francis], sculptor, was born in Vienna, Austria, Dec. 6, 1867, son of Karl and Henrietta (Reiter) Bitter. After attending the public schools and gymnasium of his native city, he studied at the art industry school and with Prof. Hellmer at the Kunst academie. He then apprenticed himself to one of the stone carving firms supplying ornamented stone work for the public buildings then in course of construction in Vienna, and was so occupied when he was called to serve in the Austrian army. Although he had been drafted for a three-year period, he fled to Germany at the end of a year, and in Berlin found employment with J. Kaffsack, a sculptor. This experience served to determine more emphatically the direction of his taste. Subsequently, he worked for a time with Prof. Echtermeyer in Brunswick, and in 1889 came to America, settling in New York city. He was employed at once by a firm doing architectural sculpture, and had the further good fortune to be befriended by Richard M. Hunt (q.v.), who game him commissions for sculptural details on the home of C. Vanderbilt, which Hunt was then building. in 1891 Bitter was successful in a competition for the design of the Aston memorial gates, the gift of John Jacob Astor to Trinity Church. About the same time he opened a studio of his own. Working under Hunt on the administration building commanding the court of honor at the Chicago (Columbian) exposition, Bitter produced an elaborate scheme of sculptured decoration depicting "The Elements, Controlled and Uncontrolled," for which he won the admiration of public and architectural critics alike. In the following year, 1894, he executed a pediment in terracotta, fifty feet in length, for the facade of Broad Street station of the Pennsylvania railroad in Philadelphia, and a series of panels for the interior of the station. Thereafter, until the end of the century, he was occupied with the decoration of the Vanderbuilt villa, "Biltmore," in North Carolina; with producing figures representing the White, Negro and Malay races for the St. Paul building in New York, and other figures representing architecture, sculpture, painting and music for the Metropolitan museum of art; with the execution of the bronze statute of Dr. William Pepper for the University of Pennsylvania; and a naval group "The Combat," for the temporary Dewey arch. He was director of sculpture at the Buffalo Pan-American exposition, and in that capacity he not only helped to develop the fundamental plan for the arrangement of buildings and exhibits, ,but superviesed the work of an army of sculptors which, in two years' time, turned out more than 500 individual pieces. Bitter's own contributions were two colossal equestrian statues crowning the pylons of the triumphal causeway of main approach to the exposition. These energetic powerful figures were, in the opinion of St. Gaudens, the finest examples of the sculptor's art at the exposition. He performed a similar task of directorship for the St. Louis world's fair of 1904, to which he contributed a tall shaft ornamented with historic figures and