Oliver wendell holmes biography summary examples

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He died at his house in Boston on October 7, 1894, just two months after his eighty-fifth birthday. Wendell and Fanny cleaned out the family home in Boston and moved to Washington, D.C. It was his first time in the nation’s capital since his oral argument in 1878. His father, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., was a well-known medical innovator, Harvard anatomy professor, and popular writer.

The Improper Bostonian: Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes supported the candidacy of Harriot Hunt for admission to the Harvard medical school, for which he was criticized by the all-male faculty and student body.

Life joys

Holmes's hobbies included interest in photography and the study of the microscope.

Though personally skeptical of laws that aimed to protect workers and consumers, Justice Holmes, as a believer in judicial restraint, strongly dissented from the Court’s repeated decisions overturning such legislation. His regiment had been decimated and he had seen many close friends die.


Career

With his war years behind him, Wendell returned home and spent the next two years at Harvard Law School.

New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925)

Lochner v. France was considered the medical center of the world.
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Library of Congress

. Of his lecturing style students said, "He enters, and is greeted by a mighty shout and stamp of applause." The other professors requested that Holmes teach the last of the five morning lectures, because they knew he could hold the students' attention even though they were tired.

Holmes's joy in life was evident with his possession of a fast horse and buggy and several rowboats at the ready. Upon his death in 1932, the list exceeded 4,000 books, covering an astonishing range of subjects: ancient history, religion, science, sociology, poetry, economics, novels, even murder mysteries.

oliver wendell holmes biography summary examples

This first time at Harvard was when he began to enjoy writing.

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Sources

  • Special thanks to author and historian Stephen Budiansky for his review, feedback, and additional information. Wendell’s defiance created enough disturbance to prompt the school’s president to send letters home to Dr.

    Holmes on more than one occasion.  

    Wendell’s best friend at Harvard, Pen Hallowell, was from a Philadelphia Quaker family that volunteered its home as a stop on the Underground Railroad. He enjoyed the companionship of college, reflecting in a letter to a friend that “it’s delightful—one night up till one at a fellow’s room, the next cozy in your own.” The academics, however, left something to be desired.

    After barely a year teaching at his alma mater, the Governor appointed him to serve as a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the state’s highest court. Holmes` parallel career in literature began with amateur poetry writing at a young age, which continued through his formal education. This was a new publication and Holmes was an early contributor (one who writes for the magazine or newspaper), publishing "The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table" in the fifth month's copy.

    He believed that the merger was not illegal, or in itself harmful to the economy.