The National Academy of Sciences The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 (1978) / Chapter Skim
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11. The Academy during the Great Depression
11. The Academy during the Great Depression
Pages 317-346
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From page 317... ...
As the initial panic subsided after the stock market crash in October ~9~9, Hoover instituted market and bank reforms and poured funds into state and federal public works in an effort to shore up the shattered economy. Suddenly in ~93~ the currencies and markets of Europe collapsed, and nothing here or elsewhere could stay the worldwide depression that ensued.
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From page 318... ...
He held office through one of the unhappiest periods in the administrative history of the Academy. William Wallace Campbell came of Scottish pioneers who settled in Ohio in the late eighteenth century.
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From page 319... ...
The Academy during the Great Depression 1 319 instruments and helping in any way he could. He was granted permission and did so.
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From page 320... ...
B Wilson, managing editor of the Academy Proceedings since ~9~4 and one keenly aware of the Academy's intimate history; David White, former Chief Geologist of the Geological Survey and Vice-President of the Academy; Arthur L
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G Conklin, John Johnston, Max Mason,
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From page 322... ...
The Research Council should be, as Arthur A Noyes declared, the "one central unifying national organization of science."~° Millikan suggested that with strong direction in the Council it might be possible to abolish the divisional organization completely and simply organize around the Chairman and research projects.
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From page 323... ...
No charter was produced, however, and science remained on the defensive throughout the decade. The report of the subcommittee in May ~932, with its concern for maintaining close relations with the national societies, recommended no change in the organization of the seven science and technology divisions, but instead reduction to committee status or even discontinuance of the Divisions of Foreign Relations, States Relations, and Educational Relations.
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From page 324... ...
with powers and salary comparable to those of a university president; retention of all divisions, general and scientific; and three-year appointments for division chairmen, unsalaried in the general divisions, part-time and salaried in the scientific divisions. A last-minute letter from George Ellery Hale supported a reduction in the structure of the Research Council, but strongly urged retention of all existing divisions and particularly of the support of the national scientific societies.~5 In April ~ 933, sixteen months after Kellogg's resignation, the revisions made in the Articles of Organization and Bylaws of the Research Council left the divisional structure intact and combined the functions of the Permanent Secretary and the Chairman in the latter's office.
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From page 325... ...
. The Academy during the Great Depression / 325 initiative for policymaking and the direction of research projects that had previously belonged to the Permanent Secretary.~7 Seeking a vigorous executive to head the renascent Research Council, Millikan persuaded recently elected Academy member Isaiah Bowman to accept the nomination.
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From page 326... ...
The words "interdiscipline" and "multidiscipline" did not appear in dictionaries until the Ages, but the crossing of disciplines, as a potentially valuable tool of science, had been advocated by George Ellery Hale as early as agog. The theme of a lecture he gave at the Royal Institution in London that year, on the rewarding results of applying the methods and principles of one science to the exploration 20 Between ~93~ and ~937, total operating funds disbursed by the Research Council plummeted from $~,oo4,6~s to $474,284, and general maintenance funds, for the expenses of the divisions and their committees, salaries, publications, supplies, and other expenses, from $~66,365 to $90,234 (NAS, Annual Report for 1930-31, pp.
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From page 327... ...
. of another, was one that he elaborated again and again throughout his career.22 In the spring of ~ 9 ~ 2, Hale had proposed that the Academy foster, as the scientific societies could not, interest in "subjects lying between the old-established divisions of science: for example, in physical chemistry, astrophysics, geophysics, etc.," where recently some of the greatest advances in science had been made.
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From page 328... ...
Thus the American Geophysical Union, organized as a committee of the Research Council in December ~9 ~9, defined the term "geophysics," in its concern with "the figure and physics" of the earth, as the grouping for mutual advancement of geodesy, geological physics, meteorology, terrestrial magnetism, electricity, seismology, tides, and oceanography. Still another grouping appeared in a report in March ~9~9 by Robert S
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3~3. Vice-chairmen of the committee, which comprised twelve subsidiary committees, were the chairmen of the Division of Geology and Geography and of the American Geophysical Union.
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From page 330... ...
Delighted with the promise of his reorganized Council, and its operation of the Science Advisory Board, Bowman prepared a glowing summary account of these developments in bound mimeographed form and also published it in Science.32 He became a crusader for borderland research. It may have been Bowman, then seeking continuation of Rockefeller Foundation support for Biological Abstracts, who wrote on the special importance of that journal: continuing committees back in the '30'S which gave definition and encouragement to this general field" ["Introductory Remarks .
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From page 331... ...
45. Since its founding in ~927, Biological Abstracts had been sponsored by the Division of Biology and Agriculture and its editorial expenses administered by the Research Council with Rockefeller Foundation funds.
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"36 Upon the completion of his two-year term of office, he left Washington to accept the presidency of Johns Hopkins University; and Frank Lillie, President of the Academy, was appointed Chairman of the Research Council, also.37 Borderland research fared well under Lillie's chairmanship, as it did under that of Ludvig Hektoen, Director of the John McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases, who succeeded Lillie in July ~936. That spring the Research Council had set up the first of a series of "interdivisional committees," that on Borderlands in Science, under Thomas S
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From page 333... ...
Haskins, then President and Research Director of the Haskins Laboratories, discussed the developments of the previous decade in biochemistry, biophysics, geochemistry and geophysics, mineralogy, rheology, and geology that had opened new frontiers in industrial research. Haskins defined borderline research as research in a new field awaiting sufficient numbers of well-trained workers, its own journals and textbooks, and sufficient productivity to make it a full discipline.
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From page 334... ...
The Advisory Committee on ExtraSectional Memberships, created in 1933, was no more successful. A possible solution was found in a provision adopted in 1942 for an Advisory Committee on Membership, comprising the Council of the Academy and the chairmen of the sections, with authority to create temporary nominating groups for fields neglected by the sections.42 Washington Biophysical Institute A high point of Research Council efforts to foster borderland research was the establishment of the Washington Biophysical Laboratory (WBL)
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From page 335... ...
Troland.44 During the course of this project, Richtmyer had proposed a broader effort, one he called "a pipe dream" the creation of an "institute of biophysics" to investigate the "application of physical phenomena to medicine." Perhaps unknown to him, a conference on ways in which biophysics might be promoted had been held in February ~geo under the auspices of the Research Council's Divisions of Medical Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Chemistry and Chemical Technology. The conferees, and the Committee on Biophysics appointed in April ~92~ under Columbia University physiologist Horatio B
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From page 336... ...
Lillie.46 More than two years passed in planning a program and formulating policy, during which, in order to emphasize its contemplated independent status and to attract funds, the Laboratory was renamed the Washington Biophysical Institute (WBl) and Frederick Brackett became Director.
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(NAS Archives: Ps: Committee on Service Institute: Advisory) ; "Report of the First Year's Activities of the WBl" [March 4, ~938]
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From page 338... ...
For a time it seemed to him only a question of "whether it should be discontinued or reduced to a mere paper existence."54 With its office in New York it was the only organizational unit of the Research Council not in Washington the division had continued after World War I as it had during it, as the principal distributor of Engineering Foundation funds and administrator of research projects for its affiliated engineering societies and institutes. It survived a proposal made in the spring of ~92~ that the Foundation take over the division from the Council and achieved new vitality when in ~9~3 Maurice Holland came over from the Army Air Service, where he had been Chief of the Industrial Engineering Branch, to become head of the division staff in New York with the title of Director.55 In January ~924, the division merged with the Division of Research Extension with the expressed purpose "to encourage, initiate, organize and coordinate fundamental and engineering research in the field of industry and to serve as a clearing house for research information of service to industry."56 52 "Annual Report of the WBI, ~94~-~942," p.
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From page 339... ...
Such rapid technological advances had been made in industry that the resulting mass production and overproduction, so they believed, led inevitably to surfeit and economic disaster.60 S7 NAs,Annual Reportfor 1928-29, pp.
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Although industry resisted the panaceas for recovery proposed for it, it continued on its own to erect research laboratories, until by ~ 938 the WPA study found they numbered more than ~,750. Despite temporary retrenchment during the initial "severe business contraction," industrial research, almost alone in the industrial structure, obtained increasing funds as the emphasis in research turned from the lowering of production costs to the development of new products, greater production efficiency, and, as the laboratories reported, increase in quality of current products (l~AS, Annual Reportfor 1931-32, p.
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From page 341... ...
Where a decade earlier the division had been practically alone in its field, since then, Bush noted in his report of that crisis, the organization of research agencies in national engineering societies and trade associations, the increasing industrial research in the universities, and the proliferation of commercial testing and consulting laboratories, to which industry and federal bureaus had access, all but nullified the division's promotional functions and reduced it to routine administrative activities. Its income had shrunk in half, its ties with the Engineering Foundation had weakened as that agency had retrenched, and efforts to obtain support from other foundations for new projects it proposed had been fruitless.64 A way out of the impasse, and one that would provide long-term support for the division, eventually came from a suggestion first made by Maurice Holland in ~g30 and raised again by the division Chairman, Dugald C
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From page 342... ...
Nevertheless, as the fortunes of the division declined, the idea of a clearinghouse for industrial research gained favor; and when Bush, persuaded by Jewett and Gano Dunn, took over the division chair in ~936, Holland in New York had already won a number of industrial firms to a new plan, a "national association of research laboratories," operating under the sponsorship of the Division of Engineering and Industrial Research. Independent, but affiliated with the division, the association would serve as the connecting medium in the activities of some sixteen hundred industrial research laboratories and, as Bush envisioned it, would link that research with government through the Research Council in the event of a national emergency.67 65 The plight of the division and the idea of a "central clearing house" for the laboratories appeared in Holland to Barrows, June 5, Age, and attached report, "Present Status and Future Possibilities of the Division" (NAS Archives: E&JR: Present Status and Future Possibilities of the Division)
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From page 343... ...
, Gano Dunn, and Ludvig Hektoen, Bush obtained President Lillie's approval to proceed with planning the association, which Maurice Holland would manage full timed As admittedly "a somewhat radical step," Bush intended to reconstitute the division membership by bringing in key men in industry, engineering, and research who would be capable of acting effectively in a time of emergency, particularly in preparing plans with government departments and bureaus for the mobilization of research and industry. Bush thought that when the association became established, his division "should quite frankly .
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From page 344... ...
Acknowledging the high merit of the basic proposal, Harrison suggested that a limited number of engineering societies continue to be represented, but that Bush should recommend appropriate individuals to the society presidents. To do more would require amendment of the Research Council's Articles of Organization.72 To accommodate the changes Bush wanted, the administrative committee of the Research Council subsequently proposed a revision in the Bylaws even more radical than Bush had contemplated, for it overturned a policy dating from the establishment of the Research Council and applied to all the divisions of science and technology.
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From page 345... ...
The year before, on February 25, ~ 938, at a meeting held in the division offices in New York, the National Industrial Research Laboratories Institute "as a last piece of promotional effort" by the division, said Bush—had been launched under the Executive Committee of the division for a trial period of two years.75 It was true, as Bush reported, that a "business situation which appeared immediately after it was launched" the deepest of the periodic slumps in the uneasy market had delayed it, but by the end of winter it should be on its feet and either on its way to "an independent self-supporting basis, or else liquidated."76 He was not a patient man. The next year showed a substantial increase in the membership, and the National Industrial Research Laboratories Institute was formally renamed the Industrial Research Institute.77 By ~945 it had become an independent organization.78 Meanwhile, in January ~g40 Bush turned the division over to his successor, William L
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From page 346... ...
. The Division of Engineering and Industrial Research, abolishing the position of Director, transferred its New York office to Washington on November I, ~94~, a move that "contributed materially to the usefulness of the division in connection with the war effort," its "close contact with the executive offices of the Academy and Research Council .
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