in Virginia, he was a slaveowner, with two slaves in his household in 1840 and six slaves in 1850; one, his cook, was Isabella Gibbons. In 1849, he married Emma Savage of Boston. In 1853 he resigned from the University of Virginia, moving to Boston for two principal reasons. First, he wanted to increase his participation in scientific circles under the auspices of the Boston Society of Natural History and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in whose proceedings and in the American Journal of Science his papers had been published while at UVa. Second, and more importantly, Rogers wanted to implement his innovative scheme for technical education (which could not be achieved within the structure and institutional focuses of UVa), in which he desired to have associated, on one side, scientific research and investigation on the largest scale and, on the other side, agencies for the popular diffusion of useful knowledge. This project continued to occupy his attention until it culminated in the chartering of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1861), of which he became first president. To raise funds and public awareness of his new Institute, Rogers delivered a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute on "The Application of Science to the Arts" in 1862. In 1861, he was appointed inspector of gas and gas meters for the state of Massachusetts, a post he accepted reluctantly. During his service, he improved the standards of measurement. MIT Presidency For more detail, see History of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An act of the Massachusetts State Legislature incorporated MIT in 1861, and Rogers became its first president in 1862. He served as president of MIT until 1870, when he stood down because of declining health. By necessity, he returned to office in 1878 and continued to 1881, when he was made professor emeritus of physics and geology, which position he had held while he was president. He died after collapsing during a speech at MIT's 1882 commencement exercises. According to legend his last words were "bituminous coal": Other affiliations Rogers was chairman of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists (AAGN; organized 1840) in 1845 and again in 1847, and contributed important memoirs to its Transactions, including observations on the temperature of coal mines in eastern Virginia. In 1847 he also called to order the first meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an