August 28, 1867–September 12, 1918

BY WILLIAM F. OSGOOD

MAXIME BÔCHER WAS BORN in Boston, August 28, 1867, and died at his home in Cambridge, September 12, 1918. His father, Ferdinand Bôcher, was the first professor of modern languages at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Shortly after Mr. Charles W.Eliot, at that time professor of analytical chemistry and metallurgy in the same institution, became President of Harvard University, Professor Bôcher was called to Cambridge (in 1872) and for three decades was one of the leading teachers in the faculty of Harvard College. He was an enthusiastic collector of books. His library, which was divided after his death, formed the nucleus of the library of the French Department and yielded, furthermore, a welcome accession to the library of the Cercle Français; but its most important part, the valuable Moliére and Montaigne collections, passed intact to the library of Harvard College. It was through the generosity of Mr. James Hazen Hyde, who bought the whole library, that such a disposition of the books became possible.