Frank Aydelotte

Franklin Ridgeway Aydelotte (October 16, 1880 – December 17, 1956) was a U.S. educator. He became the first non-Quaker president of Swarthmore College and between 1921 and 1940 redefined the institution. He was active in the Rhodes Scholar program, helped evacuate intellectuals persecuted by the Nazis during the 1930s and served as director of the Institute for Advanced Study during World War II.^[1]

Aydelotte was born in a small town in Sullivan County, Indiana,^[2] the son of William Ephraim Aydelotte and Matilda Brunger Aydelotte, and had at least one sister. He attended Indiana University where he was an English major, a member of the Sigma Nu fraternity, earned a varsity letter in football, played in the exhibition football games at the 1904 Summer Olympics and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1911. In 1907 he married Marie Jeanette Osgood. Their only child was William Osgood Aydelotte.^[3]

After graduation, he became an English professor first at a teaching college in California, Pennsylvania, now called California University of Pennsylvania, then at Vincennes University and Louisville Male High School in Louisville, Kentucky. He became one of the first Rhodes Scholars and studied at Brasenose College, Oxford University. Aydelotte was the American Secretary to the Rhodes Trust from 1918 to 1952, overseeing the American program of the Rhodes Scholarship.^[4] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1923.^[5]

• Frank Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds, Clarendon Press (1913)
• Frank Aydelotte, The Religion of Punch, The Nation, Volume 100, Issue # 2601, (May 6, 1915)
• Frank Aydelotte, The Oxford Stamp and Other Essays and Articles, Oxford University Press (1917)
• Frank Aydelotte, What the Americans Rhodes Scholar gets from Oxford, s.n (1920)
• Lawrence A. Crosby and Frank Aydelotte, Oxford of today: A manual for prospective Rhodes scholars, Oxford University Press (1922)
• Frank Aydelotte, Honors Courses in American Colleges and Universities, National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (1924)
• Frank Aydelotte, Honors Courses at Swarthmore, Columbia (1931)
• Frank Aydelotte, The Educational Program of Swarthmore College, The College (1933)
• Frank Aydelotte, Elizabethan Seamen in Mexico and Ports of the Spanish Main, The American Historical Review, Vol. 48, No. 1. (Oct., 1942), pp. 1–19. URL: JSTOR Stable
• Frank Aydelotte, Breaking the Adademic Lock Step, The Development of Honors Work in American Colleges and Universities, Harper & Brothers (1944)
• Frank Aydelotte, The American Rhodes Scholarships: A Review of the First Forty Years, Princeton University Press (1946)
• Frank Aydelotte, The Vision of Cecil Rhodes, A Review of the First Forty Years of the American Scholarships, Geoffrey Cumberlege (1946)

Aydelotte died in Princeton, New Jersey, on December 17, 1956, after several years of failing health. His papers are held by a library.^[1] His niece (who attended Swarthmore during his tenure), Mary A. R. Marshall became a leader opposing Massive Resistance and an influential delegate in the Virginia General Assembly.