Evan Pugh

Evan Pugh (1828 to 1864) was an agricultural chemist and the first president of the Pennsylvania State University, serving from 1859 until his death. Born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, he grew up on a family farm, served as a blacksmith's apprentice, then educated himself and opened an academy. He travelled to Europe to study chemistry, concentrating on the chemistry of plant nutrition at Leipzig in 1853, and in 1857 began a project on the assimilation of free nitrogen by plants at the Rothamsted laboratory near London. Offered the presidency of the Farmers' High School in Centre County, Pennsylvania, in 1859, he took office in 1860 and built it into a college. He was responsible for securing its designation in 1863 as a land-grant institution under the Morrill Land Grant Act. He died in 1864 and is buried at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.