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Edwin Post, who held the chair of Latin language and literature from 1879 to 1932, the longest continuous period of service as a full professor of anyone teaching at the university before or since, was born in Woodbury, N.J. in 1851. He received an A.B. in 1872 from Dickinson College, which granted him an A.M. in 1875 and honorary degrees of Ph.D. in 1884 and LL.D. in 1927. Before coming to Greencastle he was a teacher and administrator at a private seminary and held a Methodist pastorate in New Jersey. He took two years' leave from DePauw in 1886-88 for advanced study in Berlin and Bonn and became one of the most scholarly members of the faculty. He was awarded one of the first sabbaticals in 1910. He found time during his busy career to publish scholarly articles as well as two books, Latin at Sight and Epigrams of Martial.

His diaries, which he kept from the age of 10 to his mid-30s reveal his scholarly concern and his distaste with the heavy emphasis on the physical expansion of the university in the early DePauw period:

The policy by which the future is to be determined seems to be the "big show policy," big buildings, crowds of matriculates, while scholarship, through tests of work are to be subordinate.

From 1880 to 1896 he was librarian, reorganizing the books saved from the West College fire and personally cataloging them and for the first time establishing regular library hours. Vice president from 1896 to 1903, he was then named the first dean of the college. As professor of Latin he initiated a "seminarium" for advanced students memorialized in a series of annual photographs. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and the social fraternity Phi Kappa Psi, Post was a popular teacher who in 1924 received the first leather medal for service to the university.

He died in Greencastle a few months after his retirement in 1932 at the age of 81, leaving behind him a memorable heritage of scholarship and devotion to teaching.

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