Biography
Isaac was born in Poland in 1819 into a Jewish family and educated at the University of Breslau. His father was a rabbi and he trained to be a rabbi himself. However, intellectual discourse with theologians of other faiths made him question his faith and his father disowned him. He was forced to take his mother’s maiden name.
He moved to England in 1842 and made his decision to convert to Christianity, specifically Anglicanism, and later confirmed to the Church of England in Canada. By 1844 he entered the ministry and was sent to the Anglican Diocese of Toronto. He studied for his ordination and, because of his prior education, soon had an appointment to Bishop's University (Bishop's College) in Lennoxville were he was ordained and became a professor of Hebrew and rabbinical literature.
Hellmuth founded the Western University of London, Ontario in 1878, which was later renamed the University of Western Ontario. He was the first principal of Huron University College, the founding college of the University of Western Ontario.
Read more about this topic: Isaac Hellmuth
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)