The death of Samuel Allan Lattimore, Ph.D., LL.D., emeritus professor of chemistry of the University of Rochester, at the age of eighty-five, marks the passing of a notable educator and social worker. Though born in the central West of southern ancestry, he spent most of his professional life in the East. He combined in character the courtesy of the South, the vigor of the West and the conservatism of the East. He was a real aristocrat, the kind that makes a true democrat. As a teacher, and even as a friend, he gave the impression one has in the Alps of distance without remoteness, of aloofness without coldness.
Dr. Lattimore’s reputation as a scientist was such that in the face of bitter political opposition, his report recommending the present source of Rochester’s water supply was accepted. This secured to the citizens an ideal water system. He was one of the organizers of the Western New York Institution for Deaf Mutes, of the Mechanics Institute and of the Reynolds Library, three of the most useful institutions of the city. For several years he was a member of the city Board of Health, of the Monroe County committee of mental hygiene of the State Charities Aid Association, and of the board of visitors for that organization to the state hospital for the insane. He was a pioneer advocate of cremation on the ground of its sanitary value, and his body was one of the first to be reduced to its elements in the crematory just completed by his city.
PROF. SAMUEL A. LATTIMORE
The scholar and the gentleman blended in him so perfectly that we think of him first as a citizen. The community is as much his debtor as the university. He had unusual opportunities to make large sums of money as an expert chemist, but never would lower his professional standards for commercial gain. One of his most conspicuous early services was a course of free public lectures on science given to large audiences of working men for several successive years in Buffalo, Cleveland and Rochester.
Professor Lattimore’s mind was keenly alert to the very end of his career and kept in touch with all of the movements for social welfare. Only a few days before his death he was deeply interested in the article in a recent Survey by Samuel Fels on The Policeman. He suggested that it be reprinted in The Common Good and a copy be sent to every policeman in the city. His wish has been carried out.[[3]] He was a fine type of the new citizen-scholar, with a large and keen sense of the duty which scholarship owes to the community.
[3]. The Common Good of Civic and Social Rochester. March, 1913. p. 171.
Paul Moore Strayer.