William Milligan Sloane


William Milligan Sloane was an American educator and historian.

Career

He graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society, in 1868, and afterward was employed as instructor in classics at the Newell School in Pittsburgh until 1872. From 1872 to 1876 he studied at the universities of Berlin and Leipzig. He studied history under Mommsen and Droysen, and much of the time he worked as private secretary to George Bancroft, United States Minister at Berlin. He received a doctorate from the University of Leipzig, with a dissertation entitled "The Poet Labid: His Life, Times, and Fragmentary Writings," which was published in 1877. The published version of Sloane's dissertation specifically mentions that he studied under Fleischer, Krehl, and :de:Otto Loth|Loth at Leipzig.
Sloane was a professor of Latin and subsequently History at Princeton University, when it was still known as the College of New Jersey. While there, he edited the Princeton Review. He resigned in 1896 to become Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University. Sloane served on the International Olympic Committee from 1894 to 1924. The founder and chairman of the United States Olympic Committee, he escorted the first American Olympic team to 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens.
Professor Sloane was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1911 president of the American Historical Association. His other honors were Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and of the Order of the Polar Star.
He was portrayed in the 1984 NBC Mini-Series, by David Ogden Stiers.

Personal life

Sloane had a son, James Renwick Sloane, who married Isabel Hoyt Sloane. James and Isabel had twin sons, William Milligan and James Ross, born on 16 or 17 January 1921 in Paris, France. William Milligan Sloane married Martha Chamberlin.

Publications

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