Charles F. Cox

It is hard to imagine one quiet unassuming man combining the functions of railway official and financial organizer with such active interest in science and philanthropy as was taken by Charles Finney Cox. He was treasurer of more than sixty corporations for the most part included in the affiliated New York Central lines west of Buffalo. He was also connected with other business enterprises and skillful in resuscitating debilitated companies. His benevolence asserted itself first within the field of his business career when, with Cornelius Vanderbilt II, he organized the railroad branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association. Also from the beginning he was a constructive power in the Charity Organization Society, and showed his financial inventiveness as chairman of the committee which devised the Provident Loan Society. Next he brought his science into use when he became the first chairman of the Committee on the Prevention of Tuberculosis; and finally in connection with his scientific interests he used his sound financial judgment as one of the advocates and founders of the New York Botanical Gardens. The same sound judgment was always at the service of the numerous scientific societies of which he was a member or indeed the president. For he was president of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1908–9, and its representative at the Darwin Centennial in Cambridge; president also of the New York Microscopical Society. The microscopy of plant and animal life was for many years his darling study, but he was also deeply read in the theory of evolution. His collection of Darwiniana was very complete, and he gave to the Botanical Gardens his collection of microscopes illustrating the history of that instrument.

Henry Osborn Taylor
1913 Century Association Yearbook