Rev William Jacob Holland FRSE LLD (August 16, 1848 – December 13, 1932) was the eighth Chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh (1891–1901) and Director of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. He was an accomplished lepidopterist, zoologist, and paleontologist, as well as an ordained Presbyterian minister.
Life
Holland was born August 16, 1848, in Jamaica, West Indies, the son of Rev Francis R Holland and his wife, Eliza Augusta Wolle.
He spent his early years in Salem, North Carolina, later attending Nazareth Hall, a Moravian boys' school in Pennsylvania, then to Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA (A.B. 1866), followed by Amherst College, (A.B., 1869), and Princeton Theological Seminary (1874). At Amherst, Holland's roommate was a student from Japan, causing Holland to become interested in Japanese and to learn that language well before it was a common pursuit in the United States.
In 1874 he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to become pastor of the Bellefield Presbyterian Church in the city's Oakland neighborhood. At this time Holland was also a trustee of the Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University), where he taught ancient languages. He also was active in the sciences, serving as a naturalist for the United States Eclipse Expedition, which in 1887, at the bequest of the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Navy, explored Japan. In 1879 Holland married Carrie T. Moorhead, a daughter of a wealthy Pittsburgh family. They had three children.
In 1891 he became chancellor of Pitt, where he taught anatomy and zoology. His 1890s administration is best known for dramatically increasing the size and scope of the university (then called the Western University of Pennsylvania). He described many species from West Africa that were collected by the Presbyterian missionary Adolphus Clemens Good. In 1901 his friend Andrew Carnegie hired him as director of the Carnegie Museum, where he remained until retirement in 1922. Holland was then given the title of emeritus Director of the Museum upon his retirement until his death in 1932. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1928.
