The National Academy of Sciences The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 (1978) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
6. The End of the Nineteenth Century
6. The End of the Nineteenth Century
Pages 134-164
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 134... ...
The Erld (if tile Ni~ete/~ntri Century WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS (187~1882) The single stated function of the Academy, as set down in its Charter: whenever called upon by any department of the Government.
|
From page 135... ...
C Marsh, who became Acting President upon Henry's death, modified but did not drastically change Henry's interpretation.
|
From page 136... ...
, Life and Letters of William Barton Rogers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., ~896)
|
From page 137... ...
The detailed report of the committee was submitted to Congress as a joint report of the Academy and the Board in January ~880.7 At the request of the Board, the Academy committee continued in an advisory capacity for some years; but the Board, beset by conflicts with state and local medical authorities and with the Marine Hospital Service, declined rapidly in ~88~. In April ~886, when four years had passed without a request for its assistance, the Academy committee was discharged.
|
From page 138... ...
Army's Signal Service, who was seeking to advance that science and its application to agriculture and commerce, President Rogers appointed a committee of consulting specialists under Simon Newcomb. The committee made no reports, but provided continuing information and advice to the Army Signal Service until ~884, when a congressional commission disputed the place of meteorology in that Service.
|
From page 139... ...
~ OTHNIEL CHARLES MARSH (1883 - 1895) Following Rogers's death, Marsh again became Acting President of the Academy, serving until the following April, when Wolcott Gibbs was elected to the presidency.
|
From page 140... ...
65, 333. For Simon Newcomb on Marsh, see Newcomb, Reminiscences of an Astronomer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., agog)
|
From page 141... ...
His first contribution was an editorial on an Academy committee headed by Marsh. See Chapter 5, note 72.
|
From page 142... ...
Hubbard, the lawyer and friend of science, founded Science magazine, to report and promote the progress of science.22 In its introductory editorial, Science remarked on the auspicious promise that occasioned its publication. American science might seem overly descriptive or utilitarian by European standards, but its reputation was assured in the names of the original researchers the century had produced, in the work of Louis Agassiz, Benjamin Peirce, Joseph Henry, John William Draper, Robert Hare, Benjamin Silliman, Sr., William C
|
From page 143... ...
A Newton and Simon Newcomb of meteor and planetary orbits, of Henry Draper and S
|
From page 144... ...
C Marsh to appoint a committee to study the organization of the national surveys and signal services in Europe and then "consider the present organization of the Signal Service, Geological Survey, Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department, with a view to secure greater efficiency and economy of administration of the public service."27 Marsh responded by appointing, in July ~884, an Academy Committee on the Signal Service of the Army, the Geological Survey, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department.
|
From page 145... ...
Under its civilian meteorologists Cleveland Abbe and William Ferrel, it had grown as productive in basic research as in forecasting and mapping. The Geological Survey under Powell had expanded its mission to support thriving studies in anthropology and ethnology in conjunction with his Bureau of Ethnology in the Smithsonian, had developed a splendid bibliographical program, and had deployed an ever-growing corps of assistants in geography, topography, hydrology, and conservation.29 The Coast and Geodetic Survey came under the scrutiny of the Allison Commission because of its costly mapping and charting programs, particularly its hydrographic work and the vast trigonometric survey intended to cover the whole of the United States—something Powell, too, was doing for cartographic purposes.
|
From page 146... ...
The committee then called attention to a previous recommendation of the Academy in 1878 that the Coast Survey be transferred to the Department of the Interior and that its work be extended to include topographic land surveys. It recommended that the Weather Bureau be separated from the Signal Service and put under the control of a scientific commission, but did not recommend any immediate change in the work of the Hydrographic Office.30 With these practical considerations out of the way, the committee presented its principal finding: The attention of Congress should also be directed to the fact that the administration of a scientific bureau or department involves greater difficulties than that of a purely business department....
|
From page 147... ...
With the Academy's report in hand, the Allison Commission met on December 4, ~884, and began the hearings, which lasted until the early part of ~886. The most influential witnesses to appear before the Commission were John Wesley Powell,84 defending not only his Geological Survey,; but also the principle of government support of science, and an equally powerful opponent, Alexander Agassiz, who believed that the doctrine of la?
|
From page 148... ...
In the end, however, the Allison Commission's investigation, which ended on January 30, ~886, completely exonerated Powell's Geological Survey and recommended an increase in its appropriation. The legislation recommended by the Commission left the Geological Survey intact, rejected an attempt to transfer the Coast Survey to the Navy Department, resisted Powell's suggestion that all federal science be turned over to the Smithsonian rather than to a department of science, and, by doing nothing about the Signal Service and the Hydrographic Office, "both affirmed the worth of government science and denied the validity of a separate department for it."36 Although the more comprehensive recommendations of the committee of the Academy were not adopted by Congress, several of the proposed changes were made in the next decade and a half.
|
From page 149... ...
I am sorely tempted [Agassiz wrote that September] to give up everything and go to Washington, for to become the chief scientific adviser of the GovernThe Astrophysical Observatory had been projected in Joseph Henry's essay, "On a Physical Laboratory," in Smithsonian Institution, Annual Reportfor 1870, pp.
|
From page 150... ...
Differing with the Academy's report to the Commission and with the "political scientists" in the city, Agassiz not long after resigned from the Academy, declining honorary membership, only to request and be granted it the next year. He was restored to the active list eight years later.42 Debate of an Expanded Role for the Academy The Allison Commission hearings stimulated almost as much controversy as that aroused by the Smithson bequest forty years earlier, much of it aired in Science magazine, in which science had a forum for the first time.
|
From page 151... ...
201, ascribed their absence to "the increase of large scientific organizations in the country, the growth of public opinion relative to scientific matters of more or less practical importance, and the development of the scientific bureaus of the Government." 47 Marsh's reelection was influenced in part by the reaction of the membership to Cope's intemperate attacks on Marsh and Powell in his American Naturalist 22:24~245 (January ~889) , in the pages of the New York Herald that January, and at the Academy meetings, which Cope faithfully attended.
|
From page 152... ...
Comstock from the Academy committee on the Allison Commission as the Secretaries of Navy and War had demanded. As "an independent department of the Government, created by the same power and equal in rank with the [other departments]
|
From page 153... ...
C Mendenhall, head of the Coast and Geodetic Survey and its Office of Weights and Measures, the act of ratification stated that it would be 49 Correspondence in NAS Archives: Committee on Organization of National Surveys and Signal Service.
|
From page 154... ...
A Gould and Wolcott Gibbs declared that in a larger Academy, more like those abroad, classification of members would promote relations among those pursuing kindred researches, enable the Academy to 52 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1881, p.
|
From page 155... ...
The committee continued intermittently active until discharged in ~895, when Wolcott Gibbs succeeded Marsh to the presidency.59 Several of the classification schemes proposed during these years 55 NAS, Proceedings, April 1890, p.
|
From page 156... ...
Between ~863 and ~869 the Class of Mathematics and Physics lost twelve members and the Class of Natural History lost nine. The Council assigned them eight and thirteen vacancies, respectively, increasing the smaller Class of Natural History from 30 percent to 40 percent of the total membership by ~87~.
|
From page 157... ...
His early researches in the platinum metals, published in ~86~, established his reputation; and two years later he went to Harvard as Rumford Professor and head of the Chemistry Laboratory at Lawrence Scientific School, a colleague there of Louis Agassiz, Asa Gray, Jeffries Wyman, Benjamin Peirce, and Josiah P Cooke.
|
From page 158... ...
He pointed out that these subjects were accepted branches of science abroad and should be so considered by the Academy.64 Despite his efforts, however, those fields were not represented in the organizational structure of the Academy until two decades later, and then only in part. The American Forestry Problem In his address, Wolcott Gibbs regretted that the government had not applied to the Academy more frequently in recent years; but as it 64 Address in "Minutes of the Academy," October 30, ~895, pp.
|
From page 159... ...
Congress had, however, neglected to provide for any regulatory mechanisms or for protection against fire and theft.65 A meeting was held in Tune ~895 at the home of botanist Charles Sprague Sargent, Director of Harvard's Arnold Arboretum and author in ~884 of a Report on the Forests of North America. 66 Among those present were Gifford Pinchot, an ardent conservationist with training abroad in forest management, and Wolcott Gibbs.
|
From page 160... ...
All were found in various stages of despoliation or devastation from fire; the pasturage of sheep; illegal and reckless cutting by mining, timbering, and railroad contractors; and wanton destruction by prospectors, squatters, settlers, hunters, and campers.69 On February 22, ~897, President Grover Cleveland, incorporating the text of the preliminary report of the Academy in his proclamation, announced as one of his last acts in office the establishment of thirteen new forest preserves comprising more than 2 ~ million acres. Charles D
|
From page 161... ...
Recognition of the Academy as "High Tribunal" The interest aroused in federal agencies by the Academy's report to the Allison Commission, the debate in the press over the department of science, and the publicity attending the Academy report on American forests and forest policy all focused attention on the Academy as the nation's high tribunal in matters of science. In ~896 that recognition achieved explicit statement.
|
From page 162... ...
7` A letter of an earlier date makes plain that long-standing problem of the Academy. On September ~4, ~887, Home Secretary Asaph Hall wrote to Marsh that he had just come from the Smithsonian, where he found a letter from the Treasury Department addressed to "The National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C., c/o Prof.
|
From page 163... ...
Proposed by the Royal Society the year before to further cooperation in scientific inquiries and enterprises of world scope and concern, the Association had been organized by the congress of academies, eighteen in number, called by the Royal Prussian Academy at Wiesbaden in the fall of ~899.77 The Harvard physiologist Henry Pickering Bowditch, with Simon Newcomb and Ira Remsen, had represented the National Academy at Wiesbaden. At its November meeting a month after the congress, the Academy in assembly formally accepted membership, adding in its notice that it looked forward to the appointment of the first international committees.78 It was a fitting conclusion to Wolcott Gibbs's long years.as member and officer of the Academy.
|
From page 164... ...
164 / WOLCOTT GIBBS (1895—1goo) resignation of the office which I hold, that bodily and mental vigor may replace age and infirmity .
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.