the office of trustee, and of the name of Lowell." Despite this odd restriction (or perhaps because of it), the Institute proved to be an extraordinarily innovative philanthropic force. The first lecture supported by the trust, by Yale geologist Benjamin Silliman, was offered in December 1839. Under its first trustee, the founder's cousin, John Amory Lowell (1798–1881), the Institute flourished. Lowell was both a man of extraordinary financial acumen and a man of high intellect. The list of Lowell Lecturers during his tenure was a veritable pantheon of the most internationally celebrated figures in science, literature, political economy, philosophy, and theology, including Britain's most celebrated geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz, and novelists Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. The lectures were so immensely popular that crowds crushed the windows of the Old Corner Bookstore where the tickets were distributed and certain series had to be repeated by popular demand. See also Lowell family First Families of Boston Lowell Institute Charles Gleyre Notes References Further reading Bode, Carl. (1956) The American Lyceum, New York: Oxford University Press. Dalzell, Robert F. (1987) Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Gelfand, Mark I. (1998) Trustee for a City: Ralph Lowell of Boston, Boston: Northeastern University Press. Lowell, John, Jr. The John Lowell Jr. papers, Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society. Knight Smith, Harriette. (1898) The History of the Lowell Institute, Boston: Lamson and Wolffe. Story, Ronald. (1981) The Forging of an Aristocracy: Harvard and Boston's Upper Class, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Weeks, Edward. (1966) The Lowells and Their Institute, Boston: Little Brown. 1799 births 1836 deaths Harvard College alumni Businesspeople from Boston Philanthropists from Massachusetts 19th-century American philanthropists 19th-century American businesspeople