Josiah Meigs (August 21, 1757 – September 4, 1822) was an American academic, journalist, and government official. He was the first acting president of the University of Georgia in Athens, where he implemented the university's first physics curriculum in 1801, and also president of the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences.
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Early life and education
Meigs was the 13th and last child of Jonathan Meigs and Elizabeth Hamlin Meigs. His older brother was Return J. Meigs, Sr., whose son (Josiah's nephew) was Return J. Meigs, Jr., who served as a United States Senator and Governor of Ohio.
After graduating from Yale University in 1778 with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A) degree, Meigs studied law and was a Yale tutor in mathematics, natural philosophy, and astronomy from 1781 to 1784. He was admitted to the bar in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1783, and served as New Haven city clerk from 1784 to 1789. During this period, he and Eleutheros Dana established and published The New Haven Gazette, later known as The New Haven Gazette and The Connecticut, a magazine. In 1788, Meigs published the first American Medical Journal.