Cornell University Esbaran Amazon Field Laboratory - History

History

Cornell's first president, Andrew Dickson White had little enthusiasm for agricultural education and the Board of Trustees were likewise without much enthusiasm. Agriculture could not be ignored,however, because Ezra Cornell was deeply committed and the provisions of the Morrill Land Grant Act required it. After much difficulty George Chapman Caldwell was recruited in 1867 as Professor of Chemistry(Agricultural Chemistry). The very first professor of what was to become the Cornell University.

The university opened in September,1868 with professor Caldwell, the nominal leader of a group of three professors with interests touching upon agriculture: in addition to Caldwell, there was Albert N. Prentiss professor of botany(with some reference to crops), and Dr.James Law professor of veterinary medicine. The Faculty of Agriculture consisted of this informal group of three and a professor of agriculture of the moment.

The arrival of Isaac P. Roberts, as professor of agriculture, from Michigan, in 1874, finally brought credibility to agriculture at Cornell. During the period 1879-1887 Cornell president Charles Kendall Adams, gradually changed the Trustees seeming hostility toward agriculture.In June 1888 the "informal" departments of agriculture, Isaac Roberts; agricultural chemistry, George Caldwell; botany, Albert Prentiss; entomology,Henry Comstock; and veterinary medicine, James Law were combined to form the Cornell College of Agriculture.

In June 1888 horticulture which had played a minor role in botany until it was discontinued by the trustees in 1880, was reestablished as an independent department of the college upon the recruitment of Liberty Hyde Bailey as professor and department head. Roberts was appointed Director of the college and dean of its faculty while retaining his role as professor of agriculture,heading a department of agriculture within the college of the same name.

Legislation establishing the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell passed the state legislature and was signed by the governor in May, 1904. The legislation passed in spite of 'violent' opposition and intense lobbying led by Chancellor James Roscoe Day of Syracuse University acting for Syracuse and six other universities and colleges in New York.

Established in 1874 as the Department of Agriculture, the department became a college in 1888. In 1904, eminent botanist and horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey, along with New York State farmers, convinced the New York Legislature to financially support the agriculture college at Cornell, a private university that had been established in 1865 as New York's land-grant institution. Thus, it became a statutory college, and changed its name from the New York State College of Agriculture in 1904 to the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in 1971.

In 1898, the State Legislature established a separate New York State College of Forestry at Cornell. However, the school ran into political controversy, and the Governor vetoed its annual appropriation in 1903. In 1910, Liberty Hyde Bailey, the Dean of Cornell's Agriculture College, succeeded in having what remained of the Forestry College transferred to his school. At his request, in 1911, the legislature appropriated $100,000 to construct a building to house the new Forestry Department on the Cornell campus, which Cornell later named Fernow Hall. That Forestry Department continues today as the Department of Natural Resources. In 1927, Cornell established a 1,639-acre (6.63 km2) research forest south of Ithaca, the Arnot Woods.

In 1900, the college began offering a reading course for farm women. In 1907, the Department of Home Economics was created within college. In 1919, the Department of Home Economics became a school within the Agriculture College. Finally, in 1925, the Home Economics department became a separate college, although both colleges continued to work together to provide cooperative extension services.

The World Food Prize has been awarded for the sixth time to a Cornellian. Dr. Andrew Colin McClung, M.S. 1949, was awarded the World Food Prize for helping to transform a large area of Brazil into fertile land. His recommendations regarding key agricultural inputs made this transformation possible.