The National Academy of Sciences The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 (1978) / Chapter Skim
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7. The Academy Marks Its Semicentennial
7. The Academy Marks Its Semicentennial
Pages 165-199
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From page 165... ...
626-627; NAS, Biographical Memoirs 7 :295; Alfred G Mayor, "Alexander Agassiz," Poplar Science Monthly 77:424 (November Igloo.
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From page 166... ...
Bowditch was mentioned, as was Agassiz, who had "been talked of by the eastern men, and there is no question that if he gave his attention to the duties of the office he would do welled 2 Charles D Walcott to Asaph Hall, November 24, Moo; Walcott to Ira Remsen, February ~9, egos (NAS Archives: NAS: Treasurers: Register Book of Letters, pp.
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From page 167... ...
He was elected to the Academy in ~866 and served as Foreign Secretary from ~880 to ~886 and from ~8gs to 1901.3 As had Wolcott Gibbs before him, Agassiz disapproved of"the Washington influence" in the Academy that was more concerned with promoting science in the government than the relations of the Academy to the government.4 On the other hand, Agassiz was concerned that the Academy was so seldom consulted by the government. But he was not certain he liked Walcott's recent proposal for a committee of five to recommend and incorporate in the annual report to Congress investigations of subjects suggested to the committee by any three or four members of the Academy.5 At a Council meeting on the afternoon of his election, Agassiz recommended instead an executive committee with himself and Home Secretary Arnold Hague as en officio members, "and three members resident in Washington, D.C., to 73-74)
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From page 168... ...
628, 629. A year later, the Council proposed that the Academy should have full and reliable information on the scientific work and needs of the Geological Survey.
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From page 169... ...
McGee, enumerating the century's discoveries in "Fifty Years of American Science," Atlantic Monthly 82 :320 ( ~ 898) , acknowledged that most had been made abroad but they had been "hastened in America." For contrasting views of nineteenth-century American science, see Edward Lurie, "An Interpretation of Science in the Nineteenth Century," f ournal of World History 8:681-706 (~965)
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; Simon Newcomb, "Conditions Which Discourage Scientific Work in America,9' ibid.9 pp. 145-158 (February 1902)
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From page 171... ...
Pritchett, the recently appointed Superintendent of the Coast Survey, began marshalling the forces of industry, the universities, and science that led to the organization of the National Bureau of Standards in the Treasury Department in 1901.16 In the new Bureau the Academy found an ally in its long-time efforts to obtain adoption by this country of the more logical and exact metric system in use abroad. Bache, a member of Henry's Committee on Weights and Measures, had considered it "not a little strange" that the United States accepted decimal coinage without question but rejected the decimal system for weights and measures.~7 United States between ~885 and egos .
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From page 172... ...
After prolonged discussion, the Academy agreed on a resolution offered by Charles Walcott: It approved "the use of the metric system for scientific work; but the question of the practical application of the metric system to the industries of the country .
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From page 173... ...
The first national forest in the Appalachians was not established until ~ 9 ~ 6. Academy Report on the Philippines Of great promise in that period had been a request from President Roosevelt in December egos for the advice and cooperation of the Academy in instituting scientific exploration of the natural resources and natural history of the Philippine Islands, recently acquired from Spain.
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From page 174... ...
The Academy estimated the scientific exploration it proposed could be completed in ten years.23 With the Academy report before it, the Board of Scientific Surveys that Roosevelt appointed in March ~903 under Charles Walcott met in planning sessions on five occasions that spring and drafted a bill for consideration by Congress. No action was taken, and even Roosevelt's special request to Congress two years later to act on that "national work" failed to move the lawmakers.24 The Philippine Commission, set up by McKinley in Moo under Circuit Court Judge William Howard Taft to develop a system of selfgovernment for the Islands, had followed the pattern of scientific bureaus in Washington, establishing that year the Bureau of Forestry and Bureau of Mines, and in ~ go ~ the Bureau of Government Laboratories, Health Bureau, Agricultural Bureau, Ethnological Survey, Weather Bureau, and Bureau of Coast and Geodetic Surveys.
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Nichols, Professor of Physics at Cornell and founder of the Physical Review (~893~. In ~902 the academy elected astronomers George Ellery Hale and W
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C Gilman, October An, egos (Daniel Coit Gilman Papers, Lanier Room, Johns Hopkins University Library)
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Hale and International Cooperation George Ellery Hale, thirty-three years old and the youngest member of the Academy when elected in egos, was destined to effect in it the greatest changes since its inception. Within a year of his election he "Minutes of the Academy," April ~906, p.
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From page 178... ...
Following conferences held in ~ go4 and ~ gob, the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research, proposed by Hale, was established under the Association, with committees appointed to study solar standards of measurement and instrumentation, solar radiation, and the spectra of sunspots.33 In ~908, intent on promoting more links with science abroad, Hale became Chairman of a special Academy Committee on International Cooperation in Research, solely to maintain close ties with the programs of the International Association, review the work of Academy committees in that research, and initiate investigations by Science Monthly and Scientific American "absurdly small circulations" (Smithsonian Institution, National Museum, Annual Report for 1897, Pt.
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From page 179... ...
Since ~89' Ira Remsen had been an officer of the Academy, first as Home Secretary under Wolcott Gibbs, then Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the Academy under Agassiz. He was with little ado elected President at the April meeting in ~go'.
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From page 180... ...
The growth continued even as the great corporations creating that wealth adjusted to the restraining legislation enacted through Roosevelt's reforming zeal, and a crusading press, "the muckrakers," exposed various forms of social, political, and economic corruption. With the acquisition of its "empire" at the turn of the century, the United States now had for the first time an international role in world affairs.
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From page 181... ...
The proliferation and growth of government scientific bureaus and their autonomous tendencies, which had led to the Allison Commission's investigation in ~884-~886, continued in the new century. As conflicts of interest increased, Theodore Roosevelt, on the recommendation of his friend Gifford Pinchot, appointed a White House Committee on Organization of Government Scientific Work in March agog.
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From page 182... ...
Since thin th' Prisidint, like th' rest iv us, has become a viggytaryan."39 As a result of the complaints of contending agencies, Congress inserted in an appropriation bill in May ~ go8 a request to the Academy to report a plan for consolidating not only the chemical and other laboratories but the many survey agencies as well.40 The Committee on Scientific Work under the Government The Committee on the Conduct of Scientific Work under the United States Government, which Remsen appointed under R
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From page 183... ...
On the other hand, the report found little or no correlation of work in allied fields, nor any interrelated planning in any of the scientific work of the government. It proposed that Congress set up a permanent board comprising the heads of the scientific bureaus, two delegates each from the Senate and House, and five to seven scientists not connected with government, to meet at stated intervals "for the consideration of all questions of the inauguration, the continuance, and the interrelations of various branches of governmental scientific work." The board was also to have power to pass on the projects and estimates of the bureaus before submission to their departments, and on the selection of men for the more important positions in the agencies.4~ Once again an Academy proposal seemed to Congress to raise the danger of a centralized scientific authority.42 But this was not the reason why no more was heard of the report.
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From page 184... ...
Davis, and Edwin G Conklin, to cooperate with the National Conservation Commission, presumably to assess the Commission report made to Roosevelt early in December, but concerning which no further Academy record remains.44 The report led to the North American Conservation Conference held in agog and to the planning of a World Conservation Conference; but with the departure of Roosevelt from office and the loss of his exuberant support, the crusade waned and came to an end.45 43 "Minutes of the Council," January ~ gog, p.
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47 George Ellery Hale to Home Secretary Arnold Hague, March 20, ~906 (NAS Archives: NAS: Future of NAS)
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B Goode to jest at the twenty kinds of biologists seeking recognition of their specialties as full disciplines, and he mourned that there were no more zoologists such as Agassiz and Baird, no botanists such as Gray (Smithsonian Institution, National Museum, Annual Reportfor 1897, Pt.
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From page 187... ...
In Moo, the year before his election as President, Agassiz learned that the Washington Academy of Sciences had announced plans to raise $~oo,ooo for a building for its use and that of its affiliates and other local societies, including the members included the mathematician and logician Charles Peirce, the philosopherpsychologists Josiah Royce and William James, medical scientists S Weir Mitchell and William H
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From page 188... ...
Hart Merriam, and with the approval of the Academy, Charles Walcott, Director of the Geological Survey, President of the Washington Academy of Sciences, and Treasurer of the National Academy, became the leading spirit in the enterprise.60 Watched with interest by the Academy, the project came close to fruition in ~9~3 when a bill approved by President Woodrow Wilson granted a tract of land for the erection of a building "between Sixth and Seventh Streets, on the 58 "Minutes of the Academy," April Moo, pp. 59~599; November egos, pp.
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From page 189... ...
At a meeting of the Council that autumn, Home Secretary Arnold Hague, aware that the fiftieth anniversary coincided with the end of the new President's term and that of the incorporators of the Academy only Wolcott Gibbs might still be consulted, recommended that Remsen appoint a committee to consider the scope and cost of a commemorative history.65 6l"George Washington Memorial Building," in H
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"We all feel that it is desirable to prepare and publish this volume.... The plan suggested would be to employ someone who is an expert in such matters and then help him to the extent of our powers." The Academy, he said, did not have the $4,ooo estimated as the cost of the editing and printing, but with the hope that the members would contribute that sum, the committee would continue its work.67 In April ~ 9 ~ I, with the semicentennial just two years away, Remsen appointed additional members to the Home Secretary's committee on the history and designated Edwin G
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, and the conduct of scientific work under the government (~908)
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in half a century, was disappointing. He attributed the dearth to the almost autocratic control by the chiefs of scientific bureaus, singling out True's account of the Philippine scientific surveys as illustrative.
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When the Academy was founded, said Remsen, the government had many engineers, astronomers, and mathematicians in its departments to call on for scientific advice, but few or none in the other branches of science. "But with the multiplication of scientific bureaus supported by the Government, the need of help from the Academy has become less."75 Still, "even as matters now stand, there is ample room for the kind of activity which was in the minds of the founders," that is, the "large questions of a scientific character that present themselves from time to time." However, even that advice was "not always heeded," and he described the.unfortunate experience five years before of the Academy's Committee on the Conduct of the Scientific Work under the Government.76 Later he spoke of the hope for greater recognition of the connection between the government and the Academy, and of the hope that Congress would provide "a proper home .
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From page 194... ...
In this, as in other matters, it is the subtle, the intangible, the spiritual that tells. As for the future, "the work of the Academy will continue; new and younger members will take up the work."77 The anniversary celebration followed the usual order of the annual meeting, except that formal addresses, including one on astronomy by George Ellery Hale and another on international cooperation in research by Arthur Schuster, Secretary of the Royal Society, replaced the reading of scientific papers.78 The special events, a customary feature of the annual meetings, were a reception at the White House on Wednesday afternoon by the new President, Woodrow Wilson; a reception at the Carnegie Institution that evening; a visit for the guests to the scientific bureaus and laboratories of Washington on Thursday morning; and an excursion to Mt.
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From page 195... ...
Although its membership was widely scattered, with only a few living in or near Washington, and weekly or even monthly meetings therefore impossible, the Academy nevertheless occupied a unique position in American science. It alone possessed a national charter; it was, as the sole American member of the International Association of Academies, the link with international science; and it alone was in a position to provide the necessary mechanism "by which the Academy could be brought into touch with the work in science going on all over the country .
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From page 196... ...
. the national representative of the great body of American investigators in science," an Academy responsive to the whole range of science, open to and actively supporting the "inter-relationship" of the sciences and newly recognized disciplines, the industrial sciences, and the humanities, particularly philosophy, archaeology, political science, 8~ George Ellery Hale, "National Academies and the Progress of Research.
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From page 197... ...
On the question of inclusion of the "humanities" in the Academy, sixty-four had no opinion (Carnegie Institution of Washington and California Institute of Technology, George Ellery Hale Papers: Microf lm Edison, ~968, "Summary on the Future of the .
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From page 198... ...
~9; NAS Archives: NAS: Trust Funds: William Ellery Hale Lectures: ~ gob- ~ 9 ~ 3.
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The Academy Marks Its Semicentennial 1 199 membership, soon followed. In January ~9~5 the first issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, under the editorship of Edwin B
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