Maxwell Mayhew Upson was a member of the Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 Board of Trustees for over 35 years.

Upson graduated in 1899 from Cornell with a bachelor's degree in engineering. Upson was elected to the Sphinx Head Society as a senior.

He was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal from the Franklin Institute

Franklin Institute

The Franklin Institute is a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and one of the oldest centers of science education and development in the United States, dating to 1824. The Institute also houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.-History:On February 5, 1824, Samuel Vaughn Merrick and...

 in 1940.

At the bequest of his widow, Upson is the namesake of Upson Hall on the Cornell campus. The building originally cost $1,988,083 and was designed by the architects Perkins and Will

Perkins and Will

Perkins+Will was founded in Chicago in 1935 by and ., on the belief that design has the power to transform lives and enhance society...

 of Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

and was finished in 1958. The building houses the Departments of Computer Science and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.