school's first—then only—professor and dean. The Thayer School admitted its first three students to a graduate program in 1871. Also in 1871 at the bequest of his will Thayer Academy in Braintree, Massachusetts was conceived. It opened September 12, 1877. Thayer died on September 7, 1872 at his home in Braintree. He was reinterred at West Point Cemetery in 1877. Thayer's obituary appeared in the New York Times on September 8, 1872. Works Thayer's papers and manuscripts are divided between the U.S. Military Academy Library, West Point, New York, and the Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, New Hampshire. Honours, decorations, awards, and distinctions In 1852 herpetologists Spencer Fullerton Baird and Charles Frédéric Girard of the Smithsonian Institution named a species of lizard in honor of Thayer, Sceloporus thayeri, which was later placed in the synonymy of Sceloporus undulatus hyacinthinus. On April 21, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln nominated Thayer for the award of the honorary grade of brevet brigadier general, United States Army (Regular Army), to rank from May 31, 1863, the day before he retired, for long and faithful service. The U.S. Senate confirmed the award on April 27, 1864. To honor his achievements, in 1958, the Sylvanus Thayer Award was created by the United States Military Academy. He has been honored by the United States Postal Service with a 9¢ Great Americans series postage stamp. Thayer Street, in the Inwood, Manhattan section of New York City, is named after him. The house where Thayer was born in Braintree, Massachusetts is preserved and open to the public. Bibliography Stephen E. Ambrose, Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point (1966) Thomas J. Fleming, West Point: The Men and Times of the United States Military Academy (1969) James L. Morrison, Jr., "The Best School in the World": West Point, the Pre-Civil War Years, 1833-1866 (1986) George S. Pappas, To the Point: The United States Military Academy, 1802-1902 (1993). See also Thayer family Gen. Sylvanus Thayer House Thayer Academy Thayer Public Library Notes References Eiche, John H., and Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. . Hunt, Roger D. and Brown, Jack R. Brevet Brigadier Generals in Blue. Gaithersburg, MD: Olde Soldier Books, Inc., 1990. . Kershner, James William, Sylvanus Thayer – A Biography, Arno Press, New York, 1982, p. 329. Eliot, Major George Fielding, Sylvanus Thayer of West Point, Messner, 1959 Lathem, Edward Connery, editor, The Beginnings