Thomas Sovereign Gates (1873–1948), a United States professor and the first president of the University of Pennsylvania, and (1906–1983), United States Secretary of Defense under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Gates Pass is named after Thomas Gates, a Tucson, Arizona area pioneer, rancher, and saloonkeeper in the nineteenth century. He was born on August 4, 1873 in Hillsboro, Ohio. His parents were Charles Henry Gates and Anna Elizabeth (Wright) Gates. He had two brothers, Wright Gates who became an Episcopal priest and George Washington Gates who died in infancy. His father was a minister for the Methodist Church and later joined the Presbyterian Church. The family moved to Texas when Thomas was a child. In 1890, they returned to Ohio where he attended Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. After graduating from college in 1895, he went to England to study at Cambridge University where he earned a master's degree in 1898. He came back to America and started teaching at Princeton University but left it after only one year to take over his uncle's ranch in Arizona. He stayed in Arizona until 1903 when he returned to teach at Princeton University again. In 1907, he became the president of the university and remained in that position until his death in 1948. He is known for establishing many new programs at Princeton including a graduate school, a medical center, and a laboratory for research and development of atomic energy. He also greatly expanded the size of the university by acquiring land and building many large structures on it.