of Michigan faculty and staff portrait
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DIRECTOR 1879-91
Mark Walrod Harrington was born in Sycamore, Illinois on August 18, 1848. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1868, and received a Master’s degree in 1871. After experiences such as being assistant curator of the University of Michigan Museum of Natural Science; astronomer’s assistant for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in Alaska; and professor of astronomy in Peking, China; Harrington served as the director of the Detroit Observatory for 12 years. While director, Harrington concentrated on meteorology, and his assistants J. Martin Schaeberle, and later W. W. Campbell, directed the astronomical research. In 1884, Harrington founded The American Meteorological Journal and was its managing editor until 1892. He obtained new meteorological equipment for the Observatory, began collecting regular data, and issued daily meteorological reports. Harrington left the University of Michigan in 1891 to be the first civilian chief of the newly reorganized United States Weather Bureau, but he was removed in 1895 over concerns with his management. For a short time he served as the President of the University of Washington in Seattle, and he held other positions in the Weather Bureau until he retired in 1899 due to failing physical and mental health. Soon after, he departed from home to attend a dinner and was not seen again for nearly a decade. In 1907, he was placed in a mental institution under the name of “‘John Doe,” where he was discovered by his wife and son a year later. His mental condition improved, though never enough for him to be released from the institution, where he died in 1926.
