Marion L. Brittain

Marion Luther Brittain, Sr. was an American academic administrator and president of the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1922 to 1944. Brittain was born in Georgia and, aside from a brief stint at the University of Chicago for graduate school, spent most of his life serving the educational community there. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Emory College in 1886, Brittain worked his way up the ranks from principal of an Atlanta high school to superintendent of education for the entire state of Georgia.

Marion L. Brittain was born in Wilkes County, Georgia in 1866 to Dr. J. M. Brittain, a Baptist minister, and Ida Callaway, granddaughter of Baptist minister Enoch Callaway. Brittains childhood was spent in a variety of towns and cities throughout the state of Georgia due to his fathers career as a minister. He attended Emory College for his undergraduate studies, graduating in 1886 with the commendation that he was the best student in his department the college had had in ten years. Brittain then spent ten years as an administrator of several high schools in the Atlanta, Georgia area. In 1897, he gained local fame for his erudition after winning a contest held by the Atlanta Constitution in which he was able to identify the missing word from a passage taken from an obscure book on English literature. Brittain left his work as a high school administrator in 1898 to pursue graduate studies at the University of Chicago.

Source: Wikipedia