Edward Asahel Birge was born in Troy, New York, in 1851. He
received his collegiate training at Williams and Harvard and
was made instructor in natural history at the University of
Wisconsin in 1875, professor in 1879, and Dean of the College
of Letters and Science in 1891, which position he has held
down to the present time, except for three years when he
served as Acting President.
No one among all the professors is better known to the
students of the University of Wisconsin than Dean Birge. His
active figure, his firm step, his (now) white hair, which,
when the writer went to school, was but iron-gray, his keen
eye, have all come to be institutional and fundamental at the
University of Wisconsin. No undergraduate who has gone
tremblingly before Dean Birge to get his excuse for being
late to his first class after the Christmas holidays will
need a description of Dean Birge's eye. No one ever thinks of
trying to deceive the Dean.
But withal, nothing could be more unfair than to give the
notion that keenness is the only quality in that eye.
Kindness is there, too, and above all, justice. We who were
undergraduates at Madison, always think of Dean Birge as a
scholar in his chosen line and as a school administrator. It
will be a surprise to many to know of his keen interest in
literature. The writer ventures to say that one will look
some time before he finds, from the pen of the best-trained
specialist in English, a fairer estimate of Milton than the
one here given by this biologist.