History of the Office of the MIT President

JAMES MASON CRAFTS, 1839-1917

James Mason Crafts, 1839-1917, S.B., Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University, 1858, was president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1897 to 1900. After graduating from Harvard in 1858 he studied chemistry in Germany, supplemented by four years of additional study in Paris before returning to the U.S. in 1865. Much of his subsequent career was divided between chemical laboratories in the U.S. and the Sorbonne in France.

Crafts was a professor of chemistry at Cornell College (1867-1870) and at MIT (1870-1880 and 1892-1897). In 1890 he became a life member of the MIT Corporation. He was one of the most highly regarded chemists of his era.

Prepared by the Institute Archives, MIT Libraries
October 2004

Photograph courtesy of the MIT Museum

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