John D. Runkle papers

The collection consists mainly of the professional correspondence of John D. Runkle, a professor of mathematics and the second president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The bulk of the incoming correspondence is from William Barton Rogers, MIT’s founder, and his wife, Emma Savage Rogers, concerning MIT. Other prominent correspondents include Robert H. Richards, Charles W. Eliot, Benjamin Pierce, William R. Ware, Albert F. Hall, and T. Sterry Hunt. Letters from Edward Everett, Chauncey Wright, James Walker, James M. Craft, Edward C. Pickering, J. H. C. Coffin, John Muir, Alfred P. Rockwell, Samuel Kneeland, Gaetano Lanza, John M. Ordway, D. C. Fogg, Simon Newcomb, James Angell, and C. H. Dalton are also included. Most of the letters date from the years 1869 to 1873. In 1871 Runkle accompanied MIT mining students on a trip to Colorado and Utah, and the collection includes several letters he wrote to his wife during the trip.

On the topic of a proposed merger with Harvard, a letter from Harvard president Charles W. Eliot suggesting such a plan to Runkle is in the folder of June 1870 correspondence. Other education issues are topics of correspondence and the collection includes an 1876 report Runkle wrote for the MIT Corporation on the "Russian System of Shop-Work Construction for Engineers and Machinists." In 1858 Runkle founded the short-lived journal, The Mathematical Monthly, and the three published volumes are included. There are some letters to Runkle from his son and brother, as well as a volume with copies of letters Catherine Runkle wrote to her sisters, Lucy and Emily Bird, while she was in Europe with her husband and children, July 20, 1878, to September 5, 1880. The bound volume includes a forward written by John Runkle in 1883 to his two youngest children, who were born after the European trip.