Palmer C. Ricketts

Who was Palmer C. Ricketts?

Palmer Chamberlain Ricketts was the ninth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He served as president for 33 years and oversaw a period of major expansion and development of the university.

He was born in Elkton, Maryland, on January 17, 1856, and was educated privately at Princeton, New Jersey. His was apparently an engineering family, since a brother, Louis H., achieved prominence as a mining engineer and in finance in New Mexico. Ricketts first arrived at RPI in 1871, at only fifteen years of age. During his junior year, he was a member of the editorial board which produced one of the more irreverent volumes of the Transit, the school yearbook. Immediately following his graduation in 1875, Ricketts was appointed as Assistant in Mathematics and Astronomy at RPI. He served as an assistant engineer for the Troy and Boston Railroad Company during the summers of 1876 and 1877, and was later elected a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Ricketts was promoted to Assistant Professor in 1882 and in 1884 became the William H. Hart Professor of Rational & Technical Mechanics, the first endowed chair at the Institute. Between 1881 and 1883 Ricketts obtained patents for the invention of an electromagnetic station indicator and a railway-car electrical circuit coupler, and in later years he was vice-president of the Trojan Car Coupler Company. He did research on testing materials, and in 1885 the English journal, Iron, reprinted an article by Ricketts from Van Nostrand’s Engineering Magazine on "Physical Tests of Malleable Cast Iron, with Ten Tables."