Professor Macbride's Activity
An avid collector of material for Iowa's natural history museum, Macbride traveled to the state of Washington in 1912-1913.

Samuel Calvin: A Scientist
An unknown author, also an academician, credits Samuel Calvin with beginning a new epoch in Pleistocene paleontology in North America.

Samuel Calvin: A Teacher
A friend and colleague remembers that Prof. Samuel Calvin believed people learned from the study of nature itself.

Thomas Huston Macbride

Thomas Macbride

On the point of teaching, Macbride held an undeviating faith that fundamentals well taught constituted the heart of education. That is why he poured so much of his effort into his basic work. The fact was widely recognized.

His course in General Botany was among the largest on the campus. Not to take it was reckoned almost a violation of a University tradition.

So deep was his impact on student thought, that even after he was long gone from the campus, some "came to take botany because their parents or grandparents had studied under Thomas Macbride."

Those sitting at his feet were well grounded in the basic facts yet stirred and elevated by their meaning, for the teacher proceeded beyond narrative to interpretation and often to inspiration. Contact between teacher and pupil was not lost even when academic experience was most profound, for in moments of soaring thought, "the whole class went aloft with the master, confident and eager, if not always fully aware of whither they were being borne."

Macbride provided a superb example of a teaching genius whereby understanding was added to fact and knowledge transmuted into wisdom.