An Appreciation of Professor Twining
By William Watts Folwell
Died in Montreal, Canada, on March 20, 1920, Professor Edward Henry Twining, in his eighty-seventh year.
This announcement will remind a lessening number of alumni of the early years of our University’s activity of the learned teacher and courteous gentlemen who was our first professor of chemistry. From notes furnished by a member of his family, we glean the following brief account of his life.
He was born at Lowell, Massachusetts, October 3, 1833. He studied at and was graduated from Wabash college, Crawfordville, Indiana, where his father was professor, at the age of nineteen. He then became a graduate student at Yale, where both his father and grandfather had been graduated. He specialized in chemistry, but studied theology under Professor Gibbs, and mathematics under Professor Newton. He was reputed the best student of his time in chemistry and became a laboratory assistant. Some years were then passed intermingled by brief teaching engagements.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, while teaching at Galesburg, he entered in the Ninety-Third Illinois Infantry. After a year’s service in the ranks, he was promoted to a captaincy and later detailed to staff duty, principally in New Orleans.
In 1866 he resigned the chair of chemistry in Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, to accept a similar position at the University of Minnesota. After three years of service, he gave up a position for which there was but a beggarly outfit, and accepted the chair of Latin in the University of Missouri, for which his qualifications were superior to those of the average Latin professor of his time. This duty and a later engagement in St. Louis occupied him until 1882, when he became the assistant engineer of the Mississippi River Commission with headquarters in New York City. For this position, his mathematical talent and scientific equipment admirably fitted him, and in this position he spent the remainder of his working years, retiring in 1904.
To encyclopedic knowledge Professor Twining added extraordinary powers of perception and analysis. There was no secret code or puzzle which he could not in time unravel. To these qualities, he added a degree of manual dexterity, rarely possessed by trained artisans. Much of his laboratory outfit was his own manufacture. Still it may be said that his mind dwelt more in the regions of literature and philosophy, on which he was ever ready to discourse with intelligence. In conversation he was surpassingly engaging. In personal character and modesty he was ever above approach. His church connection was Episcopalian.
Mrs. John C. Sweet, Mrs. Arthur A. Law, and Miss Clara D. Lougee, are nieces of Professor Twining.
Folwell appears to have made a few errors in his history, which is understandable considering the years since he worked with Twining. According to his military records, Twining was teaching at Jacksonville, Illinois (hence Illinois College, which at the time had close ties to Yale), rather than Galesburg (Knox College) and Twining served in the 33rd Infantry rather than the 93rd.