FOWLER, THOMAS (1832–1904), president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, born at Burton-Stather, Lincolnshire, on 1 Sept. 1832, was eldest son of William Henry Fowler, by his wife Mary Anne Welch. His intellectual development owed much in youth to his uncle by marriage, Joseph Fowler of Winterton (son of William Fowler of Winterton [q. v.]), who had married his father's sister. There was no known kinship between the two families of the same name.
After attending the Hull grammar school and the private school of R. Ousby, curate of Kirton-in-Lindsey, he entered as a day-boy, in January 1848, King William's College, Isle of Man, and was promoted to the head-form in August. Among his school-fellows were Dean Farrar [q. v. Suppl. II], Professor Beesly, and the poet Thomas Edward Brown [q. v. Suppl. I], who, although a year and a half Fowler's senior, formed with him a life-long friendship (cf. Letters of T. E. Brown, with memoir by S. T. Irwin, i. 20). In half-holiday walks with Brown, Fowler began to cultivate that eye for beauty in nature which always stimulated his zest for travel. On 31 May 1850 he matriculated at Oxford, aged seventeen, as postmaster of Merton College. Brown was already at Christ Church. In 1852 Fowler obtained a first class in mathematical, and a second class in classical, moderations; and in the final examinations of 1854 a first in classics and a first in mathematics. In the same mathematical first classes was his friend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) [q. v. Suppl. I]; together the two read mathematics privately with Professor Bartholomew Price [q. v.].
As an undergraduate Fowler was in full sympathy with the 'Oxford movement'; but about 1854, when he graduated B.A., he gave up his tractarian opinions and connections, as well as the conservative political views in which he had been brought up, and adopted in permanence liberal, but moderate, opinions in theology and politics. In 1855 he was ordained, and became fellow and tutor, and in 1857 sub-rector of Lincoln College. In 1858 he won the Denyer theological prize for an essay on 'The Doctrine of Predestination according to the Church of England.'
It was during the twenty-six years of his residence in Lincoln College (1855-81) that he made his name as teacher, writer, and man of affairs. As proctor in 1862 he first came into close touch with university business. Thenceforth he took a leading part in it, either as member of Congregation and of the Hebdomadal Council, or as delegate of the Clarendon Press, the Museum, and the Common University Fund. His common sense, disinterestedness, bonhomie, and breadth and clearness of view account for his influence. His opinions on university reform received early direction from Mark Pattison [q. v.], fellow of his college. Fowler gave evidence before the University of Oxford commissioners on 26 Oct, 1877 (Minutes of Evidence taken before the University of Oxford Commissioners, part i. pp. 92-97) on lines which followed Pattison's 'Suggestions on Academical Organisation' (1868). 'I advocate,' he said, 'a transference of the more advanced teaching from the colleges to the university on the grounds that (1) it would tend to create a more learned class of teachers; (2) it would remedy certain gross defects in our present system of education [he refers here to the immaturity of teachers, and the subjection of teachers and taught to examinations]; and (3) it would establish a hierarchy of teachers [cf. his evidence before university commissioners 11 March 1873], the places in which could be determined by literary and educational merit.' In active co-operation with Dean Liddell, J. M. Wilson, Dean Stanley, Jowett, and others. Fowler played an effective part in promoting the important series of reforms which included the establishment of natural science as a subject of serious study in the university, the removal of tests, and the various provisions, financial and other, made by the commissioners of 1877, especially those by which a career at Oxford was opened to men willing to devote themselves to study and teaching.
As a teacher Fowler excelled in the small conversational lecture and especially in the 'private hour,' to which he devoted much time with individual pupils, trying to make them read and think for themselves. One of his earnest pupils at Lincoln was John (afterwards Viscount) Morley. Fowler was public examiner in the final classical school (1864–6, 1869–70, 1873 and 1878–9); and he was select preacher (1872–4). Fowler was professor of logic from 1873 to 1889. He had previously published 'The Elements of Deductive Logic' (1867; 10th edit. 1892) and 'The Elements of Inductive Logic' (1870; 6th edit, 1892), a manual which follows the lines of Mill's 'Logic' with independence and lucidity. While professor. Fowler made his chief contributions to
