Charles William Eliot
PER
Eliot Charles William Eliot
The biggest result, four years later, was the selection of the next president, the chemist Charles William Eliot, who ushered in large-scale reforms that marked the renaissance in liberal arts education, not just at Harvard but also across the country. Eliot, only 35 at the time of his inauguration, published a two-part series on ''The New Education'' in The Atlantic Monthly, setting forth a national agenda for educational reform. Eliot remained president for 40 years, the longest term in the university's history, and brought Harvard into the first years of the 20th century.