The Concept of Translatio Studii and Henry Dunster

Though he is given little credit for it, Henry Dunster is one of the most central figures in the concept of translatio studii in world history. Translatio studii is, in part, the concept of transmission of learning from one "world" to the next. Harvard professor George Williams made this point in general about the Puritan fathers of Harvard.* And, among them, what better example could there be of a person who transmitted some of the best of learning from the Old World to the New than what Dunster did at Harvard? Of course, he was not alone in that effort, but, because of his design and implementation of the Harvard curriculum, he is one of the most important symbols of that process among a generation of giants.

* Bernard Bailyn, Glimpses of the Harvard Past (Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 6-7.

Excerpted from A.J. Melnick's, America's Oldest Corporation and First CEO: Harvard and Henry Dunster (Infinity, 2008), Appendix F, p. 198.

Copyright 2009 by A.J. Melnick. All Rights Reserved.