William Holding Echols (2 December 1859–25 September 1934), mathematics professor, was born in San Antonio, Texas, and was the son of William Holding Echols, an army officer and recent graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and Mary Beirne Patton Echols. After his father entered the Confederate army, he spent his childhood in and around Huntsville, Alabama, where his maternal grandfather owned a cotton mill and later served as president of a bank. Echols attended the University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee, from 1871 to 1875, and Episcopal High School, in Alexandria, Virginia, from 1875 to 1878. He developed his love for and skills in mathematics particularly at the latter, where they were recognized with a scholarship award. He entered the University of Virginia in 1878 and received both bachelor of science and civil engineering degrees in 1882.

During the next five years, Echols worked for several southern railroads and for two mining companies in Colorado. Back in Albemarle County on 7 September 1885, he married Mary Elizabeth Blakey, daughter of Angus Rucker Blakey, who had represented Madison County in the Convention of 1861. Before she died on 2 June 1894, they had one daughter and four sons, including Oliver Patton Echols, who supervised the development and procurement of aircraft and equipment for the Army Air Forces during World War II.

In 1887 Echols accepted the professorship of applied mathematics at the Missouri School of Mines (later the University of Missouri, Rolla) and served as dean there from 1888 to 1891. He founded a student-edited journal, Scientiae Baccalaureus, A Quarterly Journal of Scientific Research, which published the first English translations of some important papers in non-Euclidean geometry.

In 1891 Echols became adjunct professor of mathematics in the University of Virginia's department of engineering and an editor of the Annals of Mathematics, a scholarly publication founded at the university in 1884. Echols edited the journal until 1899, three years after accepting the professorship of mathematics and becoming head of the university's school of mathematics. With his red hair and tall, athletic frame, Echols cut a distinguished figure and acquired the nickname "Reddy."

Echols gained a place in the university's history on 27 October 1895 when a fire broke out in the annex attached to the Rotunda. Given his engineering background, Echols quickly assessed the situation and endeavored, with the use of dynamite, to detach the Rotunda, which served as the university’s library, from the annex and so to save it from destruction. When the first blast proved unsuccessful, Echols climbed to the Rotunda’s dome and heaved an additional fifty pounds of dynamite directly onto the burning annex. While the ensuing explosion was still insufficient and his attempt to save the Rotunda failed, Echols's actions and the actions of others preserved many of the books as well as Alexander Galt's statue of Thomas Jefferson.

On 15 June 1897 Echols married Elizabeth Mitchell Harrison in her hometown of New York City. They had three sons and two daughters. Echols concentrated on his teaching and produced original, although not seminal, research. For his students, Echols compiled An Elementary Text-book on the Differential and Integral Calculus (1902) and wrote several manuscripts, among them "The Integral Number: An Introduction to Mathematical Analysis" (1903), on topics for which suitable textbooks were not available. His mathematical work, published primarily in the Annals of Mathematics, focused on the theory of real-valued functions. William Holding Echols was the senior member of the faculty when he died of a heart attack in his residence on the University of Virginia Lawn on 25 September 1934. He was buried in the University of Virginia Cemetery. The university later named a dormitory for him and also the Echols Scholars program for gifted undergraduates.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Paul Brandon Barringer, James Mercer Garnett, and Rosewell Page, eds., University of Virginia: Its History, Influence, Equipment and Characteristics (1904), 2:16, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Men of Mark in Virginia (1906–1909), 5:129–133 (with bibliography of scholarly publications to 1909), and Harry Clemons and Edgar Finley Shannon Jr., Notes on the Professors for Whom the University of Virginia Halls and Residence Houses Are Named (1961), 25–28 (portrait facing 25); Philip Alexander Bruce, History of the University of Virginia, 1819–1919 (1921); Marriage Register, Albemarle Co. (1885), Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); New York Times, 16 June 1897; William Holding Echols Papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; BVS Death Certificate, Charlottesville (with birth and death dates); obituaries in Charlottesville Daily Progress and Richmond News Leader, both 26 Sept. 1934, and New York Times, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Washington Post, all 27 Sept. 1934; editorial tributes in Charlottesville Daily Progress and Richmond News Leader, both 27 Sept. 1934, and in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 28 Sept. 1934; memorial in University of Virginia Alumni News 23 (1934): 72.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Karen Hunger Parshall.

How to cite this page:
Karen Hunger Parshall, "William Holding Echols (1859–1934)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2022 (https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.php?b=Echols_William_Holding, accessed [today's date]).

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