Professor
Centurion, 1922–1951
Born 2 February 1878 in Ann Arbor, Michigan
Died 1 November 1951 in New York (Manhattan), New York
Buried Lincoln-Noyes Cemetery
, Greensboro, Vermont
Proposed by Frank Jewett Mather Jr. and Charles Scribner
Elected 4 March 1922 at age forty-four
Century Memorial
Christian Gauss graduated from the University of Michigan in 1898. In 1905 he went to Princeton, one of the youngest men in the Woodrow Wilson group, and at thirty-five he was head of the romance language department. In 1925 he was made Dean of Princeton, and he served as that till 1945, when he retired.
He was one of the great “preceptors,” and his influence on the undergraduates was tremendous. He had the confidence of both the students and the faculty. He was interested in everything from foot-ball to nationalism, and he was wonderfully courageous in expressing his views about controversial methods of making peace, about prohibition, about isolationism, and academic freedom. He was a thorough liberal, andan outspoken one, even when it involved unpleasantness which it often does.
He was a small man, physically, with an alert and provoking mind and a vast fund of common-sense. His services to Princeton are beyond reckoning. As a companion he was lively and amusing and exceedingly well-informed, and one tended to forget that he was a very considerable scholar. As the chief disciplinarian of Princeton, he was severe and understanding. When he was wrong he calmly changed his mind; but he was usually right.
George W. Martin
1951/1952 Century Association Yearbook
