HOPKINS, EDWARD WASHBURN (1857- ), American Sanskrit scholar, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on the 8th of September 1857. He graduated at Columbia University in 1878, studied at Leipzig, where he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1881, was an instructor at Columbia in 1881-1885, and professor at Bryn Mawr in 1885-1895, and became professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology in Yale University in 1895. He became secretary of the American Oriental Society and editor of its Journal, to which he contributed many valuable papers, especially on numerical and temporal categories in early Sanskrit literature. He wrote Caste in Ancient India (1881); Manu’s Lawbook (1884); Religions of India (1895); The Great Epic of India (1901); and India Old and New (1901).
HOPKINS, ESEK (1718-1802), the first admiral of the United States navy, was born at Scituate, Rhode Island, in 1718. He belonged to one of the most prominent Puritan families of New England. At the age of twenty he went to sea, and rapidly came to the front as a good sailor and skilful trader. Marrying, three years later, into a prosperous family of Newport, and thus increasing his influence in Rhode Island, he became commodore of a fleet of seventeen merchantmen, the movements of which he directed with skill and energy. In war as well as peace, Hopkins was establishing his reputation as one of the leading colonial seamen, for as captain of a privateer he made more than one brilliant and successful venture during the Seven Years’ War. In the interval between voyages, moreover, he was engaged in Rhode Island politics, and rendered efficient support to his brother Stephen against the Ward faction. At the outbreak of the War of Independence, Hopkins was appointed brigadier-general by Rhode Island, was commissioned, December 1775, by the Continental Congress, commander-in-chief of the navy, and in January 1776 hoisted his flag as admiral of the eight converted merchantmen which then constituted the navy of the United States. His first cruise resulted in a great acquisition of material of war and an indecisive fight with H.M.S. “Glasgow.” At first this created great enthusiasm, but criticism soon made itself heard. Hopkins and two of his captains were tried for breach of orders, and, though ably defended by John Adams, were censured by Congress. The commands, nevertheless, were not interfered with, and a prize was soon afterwards named after the admiral by their orders. But the difficulties and mutual distrust continually increased, and in 1777 Congress summarily dismissed Hopkins from his command, on the complaint of some of his officers. Before the order arrived, the admiral had detected the conspiracy against him, and had had the ringleaders tried and degraded by court-martial. But the Congress followed up its order by dismissing him from the navy. For the rest of his life he lived in Rhode Island, playing a prominent part in state politics, and he died at Providence in 1802.
See Edward Field, Life of Esek Hopkins (Providence, 1898); also an article by R. Grieve in the New England Magazine of November 1897.
HOPKINS, MARK (1802-1887), American educationist, great-nephew of the theologian Samuel Hopkins, was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on the 4th of February 1802. He graduated in 1824 at Williams College, where he was a tutor in 1825-1827, and where in 1830, after having graduated in the previous year at the Berkshire Medical College at Pittsfield, he became professor of Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric. In 1833 he was licensed to preach in Congregational churches. He was president of Williams College from 1836 until 1872. He was one of the ablest and most successful of the old type of college president. His volume of lectures on Evidences of Christianity (1846) was long a favourite text-book. Of his other writings, the chief were Lectures on Moral Science (1862), The Law of Love and Love as a Law (1869), An Outline Study of Man (1873), The Scriptural Idea of Man (1883), and Teachings and Counsels (1884). Dr Hopkins took a lifelong interest in Christian missions, and from 1857 until his death was president of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (the American Congregational Mission Board). He died at Williamstown, on the 17th of June 1887. His son, Henry Hopkins (1837-1908), was also from 1903 till his death president of Williams College.
See Franklin Carter’s Mark Hopkins (Boston, 1892), in the “American Religious Leaders” series, and Leverett W. Spring’s Mark Hopkins, Teacher (New York, 1888), being No. 4, vol. i., of the “Monographs of the Industrial Educational Association.”
Mark Hopkins’s brother, Albert Hopkins (1807-1872), was long associated with him at Williams College, where he graduated in 1826 and was successively a tutor (1827-1829), professor of mathematics and natural philosophy (1829-1838), professor of natural philosophy and astronomy (1838-1868) and professor of astronomy (1868-1872). In 1835 he organized and conducted a Natural History Expedition to Nova Scotia, said to have been the first expedition of the kind sent out from any American college, and in 1837, at his suggestion and under his direction, was built at Williams College an astronomical observatory, said to have been the first in the United States built at a college exclusively for purposes of instruction. He died at Williamstown on the 24th of May 1872.
See Albert C. Sewall’s Life of Professor Albert Hopkins (1879).