James Madison (August 27, 1749 – March 6, 1812) was the first bishop of the Diocese of Virginia of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the eighth president of the College of William and Mary. He held the latter office from 1777 until his death in 1812—a tenure encompassing the American Revolutionary War, the removal of the Virginian capital from Williamsburg to Richmond, the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, the founding of the Episcopal Church, and the first decades of the new republic. As a leader of both Virginia's religious community and its oldest college, he occupied an influential position in the commonwealth, which he used to agitate for an ideology that blended radical Republicanism, Christianity, and the ideals of the Enlightenment. One historian described him as an "American Jacobin."
Madison, a second cousin of President James Madison, was an active and well-known participant in the intellectual and political life of British America and the early United States. A close associate of Thomas Jefferson and correspondent with prominent figures like astronomer David Rittenhouse and Yale College President Ezra Stiles, he oversaw a host of groundbreaking reforms at William & Mary, including the introduction of the United States' first elective system of study (1779), first honor system (1779), first school of modern languages (1779), first school of law (1779), and first school of modern history (1803). He also ordered the construction of an observatory on campus in 1778 that surviving evidence suggests was meant to be a permanent structure before its untimely destruction (likely during the war-time French occupation of the college). According to one historian, Madison's installation "would almost certainly have been the first documented observatory of any kind associated with an American educational institution."
Madison was also an accomplished scholar and teacher in his own right. A graduate of William & Mary (where he was one of the first recipients of the Botetourt Medal), he taught natural history, mathematics, and political economy—he is credited as the first American professor to offer a course of instruction in the latter. His students included James Monroe, Edmund Randolph, Edward Coles, and Winfield Scott. Madison also experimented with magnetism and psychiatric treatment, made sophisticated meteorological and astronomical observations, and conducted archaeological research in the Kanawha Valley. In 1780, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.