Florian Cajori was a major influence on the college from his first years here beginning in 1889. He was at first Professor of Physics, but in 1898, he became Professor of Mathematics and just a few years later he was named Dean of the fledgling engineering school that he had helped create. Cajori was the "head professor" of the mathematics although there was only one other mathematician on the faculty, Frank Loud, who had been at the college since 1877. Loud retired in 1907 and Guy Albright replaced him. Cajori, indeed, was the primary influence in the mathematics curriculum in the first two decades of the century. During this time, the college was enjoying a national reputation while responding to the more local need for trained engineers.

In 1904, the college began requiring students to select a major field of study and all freshman had to take mathematics (algebra, geometry, and trigonometry). American colleges in this period were flirting with the idea of elective courses instead of the rigid classical requirements, and so it was at Colorado College where students studying mathematics chose from these electives:

• Theory of Equations
• History of Mathematics
• Calculus
• Determinants
• Modern Geometry
• Mechanics
• Surveying

Vector analysis, projective geometry, and analytic geometry were added to the list over the next several years. There was also a calculus course designed specifically for students in the new Engineering School. For the major in mathematics, 15 hours of elective courses were required (4 or 5 courses), and the student had to maintain a C grade average.

The mathematics curriculum remained fairly constant up through the time that Cajori left the college in 1918 for a position at the University of California in Berkeley.

*Image (Midnight Cramming) from 1906 Pikes Peak Nugget.