Talk:John Musser

Yale professors

According to a quick ggl search, there are "John-M.-Musser-Professors of French" and "John-Musser-Professors" in various fields such as Economics and African studies teaching at Yale. I wonder whether it is/was the same person that gave his name (and money) for the chairs, or of the same family at least? --Kolya (talk) 16:35, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Kolya - this is actually a different John Musser. John M. Musser was one of the heirs to the Weyerhaeuser fortune, graduated from Yale in 1930, and was later one of the university's trustees. He left much of his substantial estate in named endowments to Yale, resulting in a great number of chairs such as the John Musser Professor of Economics, the John Musser Professor of French, etc. (The fact that John Musser's [this article] grandson, Charles, ended up teaching at Yale is just a coincidence.) While it's possible there may have been a distant relationship between the two Mussers, their birth dates and places are so removed from each other that it would have been a very distant one; one, perhaps, they might not have even been aware of themselves. Chetsford (talk) 22:22, 14 October 2018 (UTC)