James Morris Whiton

While riding on a train in 1852, Whiton encountered James H. Elkins, then the superintendent of the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad.

[3][4] In the summer after his junior year, Whiton competed in the very first Harvard-Yale Regatta in 1852, rowing from the bow in a boat named the Undine.

Starting in 1859, he began studying Sanskrit with William Dwight Whitney, which ultimately lead to him earning a PhD in classics at Yale in 1861.

[5] Whiton's PhD was among the first of three such degrees in the United States, as Eugene Schuyler and Arthur Williams Wright also earned their PhDs from Yale that year.

[6] The title of his dissertation was "Brevis Vita, Ars Longa," which consisted of six pages of Latin prose in the style of Cicero.