He was also co-founder of the Russell Trust Association, which administers the business affairs of Yale's Skull and Bones society.

After serving as attaché of the United States legation at St. Petersburg, Russia from 1853 to 1855, he returned to Yale and was active in planning and raising funds for the founding of Sheffield Scientific School.

[7] From 1856 to 1865, Gilman served as librarian of Yale College, and was also concerned with improving the New Haven public school system.

[7] His work there was hampered by the state legislature, and in 1875 Gilman accepted the offer to establish and become first president of Johns Hopkins University.

Before being formally installed as president in 1876, he spent a year studying university organization and selecting an outstanding staff of teachers and scholars.

Among the legendary educators he assembled to teach at Johns Hopkins were classicist Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, mathematician James Joseph Sylvester, historian Herbert Baxter Adams and chemist Ira Remsen.

[8] Gilman's primary interest was in fostering advanced instruction and research, and as president he developed the first American graduate university in the German tradition.

[7] The original academic building on the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University, Gilman Hall, is named in his honor.

[citation needed] On the University of California, Berkeley campus, Gilman Hall, also named in his honor, is the oldest building of the College of Chemistry and a National Historic Chemical Landmark.

Aside from many photographs of Gilman and his contemporaries, the papers include Gilman's correspondence with leading figures of the day, including Charles W. Eliot, Sidney Lanier, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William McKinley, Basil Gildersleeve, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, George Bancroft, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Huxley, Andrew Carnegie, Horace Greeley, Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Henry Ward Beecher, William Osler, W.E.B.