James A. B. Scherer (1870–1944) served as the last President of the Throop Polytechnic Institute from 1908 to 1920 prior to its renaming to the California Institute of Technology in 1921. Before being asked by George Ellery Hale to serve as President of Throop, Scherer was a Lutheran minister, one of the founders of the Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church. He is responsible for the foundations of Caltech and helped bring Arthur Noyes and Robert Millikan to Caltech to complete the driving triumvirate. After Caltech, he served as director of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian (1926–31).