Wyon, William, 1795-1851

English engraver and medallist.

Ward Nicholas Boylston (1749-1828), a Harvard benefactor, was born Ward Hallowell in Boston on November 22, 1749. In 1770, Boylston changed his name to Ward Nicholas Boylston in honor of his maternal uncle Nicholas Boylston. In the 1770s, Boylston traveled through Europe before settling in London in 1775 as a merchant. He remained in England for twenty-five years before returning to Boston in 1800. In 1800, he funded the Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory on behalf of his uncle Nicholas Boylston, and on June 11, 1800, he donated volumes and plates to Harvard to create the Boylston Medical Library, as well as an annuity to fund a prize for the best dissertation on "Physiological, Medical, and Anatomical subjects." The Boylston Medical Prize offered winners the choice of prize money or a gold medal. Boylston died on January 7, 1828.