Timothy Dewight

Timothy Dewight IV (1752-1817) was President of Yale University from 1795 until his death. Dewight was an outspoken critic of vaccinations. Wrote, "If God had decreed from all eternity that a certain person should die of smallpox, it would be a frightful sin to avoid and annul that decree by the trick of vaccination." He was part of the Restoration Movement in America to bring people back to the faith.

He was born May 14, 1752. He matriculated at Yale College at age 13, and received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Princeton University in 1787.

Dewight was cited by the Great humanist Robert G. Ingersoll as an example of current religious bias against science in his famous lecture entitled "The Ghosts" written in 1877.

Dewight died on January 11, 1817.