Ernest DeWitt Burton (February 4, 1856 – May 26, 1925) was an American biblical scholar and president of the University of Chicago.

Biography

Burton was born in Granville, Ohio and graduated from Denison University in 1876. After graduating from Rochester Theological Seminary in 1882, he studied in Germany at Leipzig and Berlin, then taught at seminaries in Rochester and Newton (1882–1892). Burton was then appointed chief of the department of New Testament literature and interpretation at the University of Chicago and in 1897 was named editor of the American Journal of Theology. Burton was president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research in 1906–1907. In 1908 he was appointed head of the Oriental Educational Investigation Commission supported by John D. Rockefeller to reconnoiter the Eastern world as a potential site for the humanitarian projects of the nascent Rockefeller Foundation. The journey lasted for more than a year. He served as the third president of the University of Chicago from 1923 until his death from cancer in 1925.

Publications

Burton notably wrote with Shailer Mathews, Constructive Studies in the Life of Christ (1901) and Principles and Ideals of the Sunday School (1903), and with J. M. P. Smith and G. B. Smith he wrote Biblical Ideas of Atonement (1909).

Works