James Naismith (November 6, 1861 – November 28, 1939)
Naismith was a Canadian-American physician, chaplain, sports coach, and innovator. Naismith invented the game of basketball at age 30 in 1891.
Source: Kansas Historical Society
He developed the original basketball rule book and founded the University of Kansas basketball program. Naismith was able to see basketball adopted as an Olympic demonstration sport in 1904 and as an official event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
Naismith went to school for physical education at Montreal’s McGill University before moving to the United States. In late 1891, he designed the game of basketball while teaching at the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Seven years after inventing basketball, Naismith received his medical degree in Denver in 1898. He eventually arrived at the University of Kansas and became the Kansas Jayhawks’ athletic director and coach. While a coach at Kansas, Naismith coached Phog Allen, who later became the coach at Kansas for 39 seasons, beginning a lengthy and prestigious coaching tree. Despite coaching his final season in 1907, Naismith is still the only coach in Kansas men’s basketball history with a losing record.
