The National Academy of Sciences The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 (1978) / Chapter Skim
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2. Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
2. Scientists and Scientific Organizations in Mid-Century America
Pages 16-42
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From page 16... ...
, both of which were directly related to the creation of the Academy. The Smithson Bequest The history of the Smithsonian Institution, the first scientific research organization to be established by the federal government is, in fact, so closely linked with that of the National Academy of Sciences, which followed two decades later, that some knowledge of the former is 16
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On June 26, ~829, James Smithson, an English chemist and mineralogist of modest attainments but strong faith in the future of science, died in Genoa, Italy, at the age of sixty-four. Three years earlier he had made a will in which a nephew, Henry James Hungerford, was to be his heir, but in the event the nephew died childless, the whole of his very considerable fortune was to go "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men." The reasons for this quixotic gesture with its far-reaching consequences remain obscure.
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John Quincy Adams, Chairman of the Smithson Bequest Committee of the House, who had been dismayed by this proposal, introduced a bill that would have established an interest-bearing Smithsonian Fund directly within the Treasury. The bill was defeated, however, and the states defaulted on the bonds, so that the funds were essentially frittered away.
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Congress debated such proposals as the construction of a great national library, a normal school for the training of teachers, a farm school, and other "academical institutes of education."7 As signed into law, however, the Smithsonian's enabling act called for a museum of natural history, a chemical laboratory, a library, a gallery of art, and lecture rooms. The accumulated interest of $242,129 was to be used to erect a building for the Institution.
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Bache and Henry Alexander Dallas Bache, great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin and grandson of Alexander l. Dallas, Secretary of the Treasury during Madison's administration, was born in Philadelphia on July ~9, ~806.
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It was probably at the Philosophical Society that Bache first met Joseph Henry; for soon after coming to Princeton in ~83~ as Professor of Natural Philosophy, Henry began visiting the library of the Society, some fifty miles distant, "to post up my knowledge of the current discoveries in science" and to revel in its "upwards of gooo volumes of books on the subject of science."~° Henry, then in his thirty-sixth year, was nine years older than Bache; but with their common interest in terrestrial magnetism the two became fast friends and joint experimenters. That interest seems to have developed independently, but almost simultaneously for them, in the autumn of ~830.~ Besides its usefulness in navigation and meteorology, geomagnetics interested Henry because of its importance in surveying, "since boundaries of all estates were originally fixed and described by 9 Merle M
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Forbes, Professor of Natural Philosophy, Edinburgh University, June 6, ~836 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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Henry to Bache, November 2 and ~6, ~846 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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. by delaying the principles of these experiments for nearly two years I've had the mortification of being anticipated...." Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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76 95., 897 Tog—~ To. 22 John Maclean, Vice-President of the College, to Henry, June ~8, ~832, and reply, June ~8; Maclean to Henry, August a, ~832 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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~40 ff Henry's name was given to the international standard unit of induction on a motion by the French delegate and a second by the British representative at the International Electrical Congress held at Chicago in ~893. 26 Henry to his brother lames, August 2, ~835 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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. `~ Bache, Newport, Rhode Island, to Henry, August 22, ~842 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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Knowledge such as that contemplated by the testator can only be increased by original research, which requires patient thought and laborious and often expensive experiments. There is no civilized country in the world in which less encouragement is given than in our own to original investigation, and consequently no country of the same means has done and is doing so little in this line.
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55 Bache to Henry, December 4, ~846. For the Harvard offer, see Asa Gray to Henry, November 25, ~846 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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. 36 Bache to Henry, December 4, ~846 Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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John Maclean [Henry to Bache, September 7, ~853 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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. funds for particular researches," such as a system of meteorological observations for solving the problem of American storms; explorations in natural history; geological, magnetic, and topographical surveys; new determinations of the weight of the earth, of the velocity of electricity and of light; ethnological researches in the races of man in North America; and the exploration of mounds and other remains of the ancient people of North America.42 To diffuse knowledge, the Institution intended to "publish a series of periodical reports of the progress of the different branches of knowledge; and .
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From page 33... ...
It was a distinction he raised again when he became President of the National Academy of Sciences.46 Growth and Spread of Scientific Societies The impulse to form societies to satisfy "a nation of joiners," as the United States has been called, had been compulsive since colonial days. By the time ground was broken for the Smithsonian, in ~847, almost a hundred academies and societies for the promotion of science dotted the nation, most of them concentrated between Boston and Washington; but a number were located beyond the Appalachians and even one or two across the Mississippi.47 Some by their names proclaimed general philosophical interest in the sciences, or special interest in chemistry or mineralogy, but the overwhelming number were local academies of "natural history" or "natural science." Their proliferation, and the ascendancy of the naturalists, geologists, and explorers had, however, done little, in Henry's view, to raise the status of science or advance its cause.
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James D Forbes, Edinburgh University, typed copy of letter of June 6, ~836 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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A second Baird directory, similarly compiled in ~875, and lettered on its binding "Answers to Circular/Smithsonian Correspondents/Subjects in which Interested," with each questionnaire also asking for information on private collections, comprised almost three times as many names as the first, a large proportion of them physicians, lawyers, editors, teachers, and students. 5~ Henry to Bache, December ~7, ~834, and reply, January 3, ~835 Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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Henry to M De La Rive, November 12, ~84~ Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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Then thirty-nine and a strikingly handsome man who exuded self-confidence and dedication to science, he charmed everyone he met and, as a superb and tireless lecturer and envoy of Old World culture, soon became a nationwide celebrity. Agassiz saw at once the insularity afflicting the efforts of American men of science "owing to their deference towards England." As a consequence, "the scientific work of central Europe reaches them through English channels," he wrote Henri Milne-Edwards, and announced his determination to "render a real service to them and to science, by freeing them from this tutelage, raising them in their own eyes, and drawing them also a little more towards ourselves."56 56 Agassiz to Henri Milne-Edwards, entomologist at the Jardin des Plants, Paris, May 3 I, ~847, in Elizabeth Cary Agassiz (ed.)
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He had won also the friendship of Henry and subsidies from the Smithsonian when his grant from the Prussian monarch gave out.58 Agassiz's almost overnight assimilation into the world of American science, his acceptance as the authority on European professional standards and practices, and his capture of the American public through his lecture tours made him a force previously unknown in the intellectual community. As no one before him, he commanded attention when he deplored not only public indifference to science in America, whose investigators were better known in Europe than at home, but also the tendency of Americans to look to European authority rather than native achievement.
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From page 39... ...
, on the model of the similarly comprehensive and peripatetic British Association. It intended to exert a broader influence than that possible to any of the established societies, and, by periodical and migratory meetings, to promote intercourse between those who are cultivating science in different parts of the United States; to give a stronger and more general impulse, and a more systematic direction to science in our country; and to procure for the labours of scientific men, increased facilities and a wider usefulness.6i 60 Henry to Bache, August 9, ~838 Uoseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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, setting out in prosodic clauses the moral purposes and obligations of men of science, is in "Notes and Other Material" (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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. an institute of which the members belong in 63 Henry to Bache, May 27, ~848; Henry to Francis Markoe, August ~6, ~848 Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives)
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From page 42... ...
Moreover, said Bache, the time was approaching when matters involving standards would be ripe for general settlement throughout the world, and only the recommendations of an authoritative national body similar to those abroad could lead to general and uniform adoption for world use.65 The speech was an extraordinary blueprint for a new National Institute writ large, to utilize, as an immediate source, the membership of the American Association and of its committees that were rendering service to federal agencies. The examples abroad and past experience here clearly demonstrated that the best and, perhaps, only hope for the advancement of science resided in the government, through its support of a permanent scientific council.
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