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OCR for page 200
8
World War ~ and the
Creation of the
J~ati()nal Rese,arcI', Council
WILLIAM HENRY WELCH (1913—1917)
It was George Ellery Hale's opinion, as he wrote Charles D. Walcott a
year before the end of President Remsen's term of office, that
the new President, who should live in Washington or its immediate vicinity,
must be a man of an optimistic and progressive type, committed in advance to
a strong forward policy. The position of Home Secretary is hardly less
important.... EHe should also be] someone in Washington ... and my own
choice would fall upon LArthur L.] Day, as I feel sure that he would possess
the necessary qualifications. If you were elected President, I should like to see
such a man as tHenry F.] Osborn made Vice-President.'
The conservative members in the Academy, joined by "such progres-
sive members as Conklin, Noyes, Osborn, Chittenden, and Day, to
~ George Ellery Hale to Charles D. Walcott, May ~7, ~9~2 (NAS Archives: NAS: Future of
NAS).
200
OCR for page 201
World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council / 20
William Henry Welch, Presi-
dent of the Academy, ~9~3-
~9~7 (From the archives of the
Academy).
mention no others" that Hale spoke for, agreed instead a year later on
a nationally prominent figure from nearby Baltimore.
On the morning of the third day of the semicentennial celebration
in ~9~3, with sixty-three members assembled, Dr. William Henry
Welch, the foremost pathologist in the nation, received a majority of
the votes for President on the formal ballot, and his election was at
once made unanimous. The vote for Vice-President a few minutes
later went for a second time to Charles D. Walcott, Secretary of the
Smithsonian. He asked that the office go to a younger man—both he
and Welch were sixty-three but persuaded by Remsen and Hale, he
accepted, and his election, too, was made unanimous. Arthur Day,
Director of the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution,
was elected Home Secretary, and Hale and Whitman Cross continued
in the offices of Foreign Secretary and Treasurer.2 These were the
men who would lead the Academy during the World War I years that
lay just ahead.
2 "Minutes of the Academy," April ~ 9 ~ 3, pp. ~ 64- ~ 65.
In a rare personal observation in his diaries, Walcott wrote that day: "I was reelected
Vice President although not wishing it. The Academy drifts along without any fixed
policy" (Smithsonian Archives: C. D. Walcott Papers, Walcott Diaries, ~9~3-~927).
OCR for page 202
202 / WILLIAM HENRY WELCH (1913-1917)
Welch was unquestionably the preeminent figure in American
medicine. He had been born into a family of physicians, and, during
his schooling in medicine and chemistry in the early 1870S, his interest
centered on pathology, then largely confined in this country to
lectures. In ~876-1878 he studied pathology in laboratories at Stras-
bourg, Leipzig, and Breslau. Upon his return, Bellevue Hospital
Medical College permitted him to organize a small pathology labora-
tory, the first in the United States, and there he taught and practiced
until ~ 884. He then went to Johns Hopkins, where Dr. John S.
Billings, who was organizing the Hospital and Medical Department,
had recommended him as Professor of Pathology and head of the
new laboratory.
As influential as Welch became in restructuring American pathol-
ogy, he is far better remembered for his staffing of the Hopkins
Medical School. When its first unit, the Hospital, opened in ~889, Sir
William Osler was in medicine, William S. Halsted in surgery, and
Howard A. Kelly in gynecology; and later Franklin P. Mall in
anatomy, William Henry Howell in physiology, and John }. Abel in
pharmacology and chemistry.
Welch was elected to the Academy in ~ 895. In ~ go ~ he was
appointed President of the Board of Scientific Directors of the Rocke-
feller Institute for Medical Research, in ~ 906 a trustee of the
Carnegie Institution of Washington, and three years later Chairman
of its Executive Committee. "That most urbane gentleman and leader
of the medical profession in this country," as A. G. Webster called
him, had been a member of the Council of the Academy for nine
years when he became President in ~9~3.
Welch was a short portly figure but extraordinarily impressive with
his high forehead, whitening mustache, and spade beard. In temper-
ament he was hernial, outgoing, and an inveterate optimist. A lifelong
bachelor, he found time outside his many professional commitments
for a wide range of interests arid, above all, for travel.
He was in Europe in the summer of ~9~4, headed for Carlsbad,
where he planned to rest and take treatment for his gout. Arriving in
Munich, he found the recht gemutlich city he knew well
.
In the midst of a great war excitement.... The streets, restaurants and cafes
are crowded with people; the bands play only national airs, and the air
everywhere echoes with the modest shouts of "Deutschland uber Alles." It is
all quite thrilling, but a general European war is too horrible to contemplate,
and it seems impossible that it will occur.3
~ Simon Flexner and James Thomas Flexner, William Henry Welch and the Heroic Age of
American Medicine (New York: Viking, ~94~), pp. 365-366.
OCR for page 203
World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council / ~o3
Two weeks later "war developments shad] proceeded with such in-
credible rapidity that we found ourselves trapped in Switzerland
without immediate prospect of escape." Only with much difficulty did
he manage to reach England for the trip home, arriving back in
Washington on September 7.4
In the week after Welch reached home, the French and British
forces drawn around Paris met the German armies converging on the
city and, as the days passed, slowly brought the enemy's initial surge to
a halt. It was the beginning of a struggle that marked the passing of an
era.
Government Requests to the Academy
Welch had headed the Academy a full year before his trip abroad,
handling with dispatch two requests from the government before his
departure. In May ~9~3, the Secretary of Agriculture asked the
Academy to recommend a number of names from which a new Chief
of the Weather Bureau might be chosen. Aware of the opportunity
"of establishing an important precedent," as Welch said, and eager for
that scientific post to be removed "from the category of political
appointments," as Robert S. Woodward, chairman of Welch's commit-
tee, wrote in his report, the committee recommended a single name,
Charles F. Marvin, Professor of Meteorology in the Weather Bureau.5
Professor Marvin became the Bureau Chief and held the post for the
next twenty years.
In February ~ 9 ~4 a request from President Woodrow Wilson
arrived, signed with his characteristic complimentary close, "Cordially
and sincerely yours," asking that an Academy member serve with
representatives of the Department of Agriculture and the Smithso-
nian on a special commission to survey the condition of the fur seal
herd in the Pribilof Islands. The President asked the commission to
provide "the fullest possible information respecting the seal herd" on
the Islands, acquired by the purchase of Alaska from Russia in ~867,
Add.
5 "Minutes of the Council," May 2 I, ~9~3, p. 95; "Minutes of the Academy," November
~8, ~9~3, pp. ~72-~75; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1913, p. 23.
Upon Marvin's retirement in ~933, the Academy, through its Science Advisory
Board, recommended his successor, Willis R. Gregg, and, upon the latter's death five
years later, his successor, Frances W. Reichelderfer, as chief and C. G. Rossby as
assistant chief [Science Advisory Board, Report for 1933 -34 (Washington, ~ 934), p. ~ 9;
NAS Archives: NAS: Govt Rels & Sci Adv Com, Subcom on Weather Bureau, ~938-39].
OCR for page 204
204 / WILLIAM HENRY WELCH (1913—1917)
and to recommend a policy for the administration and regulation of
their numbers. The Academy named Harvard zoologist George H.
Parker, who, with Edward A. Preble of the Biological Survey and
Wilfred H. Osgood of the Field Museum of Natural History for the
Smithsonian, left that summer for a stay of five weeks in the Islands.6
A recurring outcry had been raised again over the alleged destruc-
tion of the herd under federal administration, bringing it close to
extinction. The commission's findings denied it. Even though the
ruinous pelagic sealing had been outlawed in ~9~, there was still a
considerable imbalance in the revived herd, now numbering almost
three hundred thousand, but with improved management, according
to the report, it would fully recover in a year or two. Indeed, said the
report, for the welfare of the herd, and with proper selection, there
was good reason to resume some commercial sealing at once. A more
serious problem was the human population, whose condition was by
no means creditable to the government. The Islands represented a
sound investment with good returns, but needed better government
of the natives and qualified appointees for the management of the
seals.7
The commission's judgment was correct. Through continued in-
ternational cooperation and with careful management, the herd
steadily increased until it numbered more than 3 million animals, the
largest and most important fur seal herd in the world.
Shortly after Welch's return from abroad, President Wilson again
called on the Academy, asking for a report on the possibility of
controlling the landslides seriously interfering with the use of the
recently completed Panama Canal.
The French had abandoned an attempt to build the Canal in ~889,
after ten years of effort, defeated by the near futility of trying to
construct a sea-level channel across the mountainous isthmus and by
the toll among the workers in the disease-ridden terrain. In ~904 the
project was taken over by an American task force. In ~907, Lt. Col.
(later Maj. Gen.) George W. Goethals of the U.S. Army Engineers was
appointed to head the task force. With the medical assistance pro-
vided by Lt. Col. (later Brig. Gen. and Surg. Gen. of the Army)
6 NAS Annual Report for ~ 914, pp. ~ 3- ~ 5.
F.or Joseph Henry's interest in the exploration of"Russian America," see Henry to
Louis Agassiz, April 26, ~867; Henry to Hon. W. P. Fessenden, May ~8, ~867; Henry,
"Diary," May 23, ~867 (Joseph Henry Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives).
7 Wilfred H. Osgood, Edward A. Preble, and George H. Parker, The Fur Seals and Other
Life of the Pribilof Islands, Alaska, in 1914 (Washington: Government Printing Office,
~9~5), ~72 pp.
OCR for page 205
World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council / 205
Laborers excavating a ditch through the toe of Cucaracha slide, Panama Canal
(Photograph courtesy the National Archives).
William C. Gorgas, he successfully completed the project. The first
ship crossed the isthmus in August 1914.
In every year since construction had begun along a new course
through the hills of Panama, the sliding of the canal banks had held
up the work, the great slide in Culebra Cut late in ~9~3 delaying the
opening of the 'canal for ten months. The engineers believed the
sliding was mechanical, but its persistence had persuaded some
among them that other forces might be at work, and the Academy was
asked to investigate. The Academy committee of nine, made up
largely of engineers and geologists headed by geologist Charles R.
OCR for page 206
206 / WILLIAM HENRY WELCH (1913—1917)
Van Hise, arrived in the Canal Zone in December 1915. Two months
later, in "an informal forecast" to President Wilson, the committee
reported that
slides may be a considerable . . . maintenance charge upon the Canal for a
number of years . . . and that trouble in the Culebra District may possibly
again close the Canal. Nevertheless, the Committee firmly believes that, after
the present difficulties have been overcome, navigation through the Canal is
not likely to be seriously interrupted. There is absolutely no justification for
the statement that traffic will be repeatedly interrupted during long periods
for years to come.
The final report, prepared by Whitman Cross and H. Fielding Reid,
was submitted to the President in November ~9~.8
Four months before the formal opening of the Panama Canal the
Academy established, through the efforts of its member George F.
Becker, a medal—the only one of its kind at the disposal of the
Academy then or later for "eminence in the application of science to
the public welfare." Made possible by a trust fund set up in the name
of industrialist Marcellus Hartley, the first awards, in April ~9~4,
went to Goethals and Gorgas.9
The Academy, which had sought for four years to establish such an
award, cordially welcomed the fund. As Elihu Thomson's medal
committee explained, technical and scientific inventions usually
earned their own rewards, but there were other applications of
science not so recognized, and pointed to Spencer Baird's establish-
ment in ~87~ of the Fish Commission, which, despite its vast impor-
tance to the nation, would not have entitled him to membership in the
Academy.
In ~9~6 the Public Welfare Medal went for the first time to an
Academy member, Cleveland Abbe, for his inauguration in ~869 of
daily weather reports and his contributions in the service of the Signal
Corps and the Weather Bureau since ~87 I. A second medal that year
went to Gifford Pinchot, the organizer of the conservation movement
and tireless crusader for systematic conservation of the nation's
natural resources.~° In ~9~', the medal was awarded to the Director
The preliminary report appeared in NAS, Proceedings 2:193-207 (April ~5, ~9~6); the
final report, in NAS, Memoirs 18: I-135 (~924).
9 "Minutes of the Academy," November Tog, pp. 39-4~; NAS, Annual Report for 1913,
p. 24; 1914, pp. TO-DO, 27.
a "It was really Pinchot's candidacy that gave rise to this medal," George F. Becker wrote
A. G. Webster, March ~5, ~9~3 (NAS Archives: NAS: Trust Funds: Hartley Fund: Public
Welfare Medal). Pinchot had been nominated three times but never elected to Academy
OCR for page 207
World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council 1 207
of the National Bureau of Standards, Samuel W. Stratton, for his
"services in introducing standards into the practice of technologists."
In that same year Stratton was elected to the Academy.
The election in ~ 9 ~ ~ to the Academy's Physics Section of William F.
Durand, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Leland Stanford
University; John /. Carty, Chief Engineer at American Telephone and
Telegraph; and Henry M. Howe, Professor of Metallurgy at Columbia
University, did little to resolve a long-standing dilemma, namely, a
place in the Academy for the applied sciences. At its founding,
military and naval engineers prominent in the science or art of
engineering had comprised almost a fifth of the incorporators, and
during the Civil War years more engineers were added. But few were
elected thereafter, and their numbers steadily declined. By ~ 9 ~ ~
Henry L. Abbot, who had been elected in 8, was the sole remain-
ing representative of the Corps of Engineers.
Despite the rise of industrial engineering late in the previous
century, rarely had any of its representatives been elected to the
Academy, and the Physics and Engineering Section became some-
thing of a misnomer. The Council, which had been slow to resolve the
problem, was pressed by Hale, who saw the election of industrial
engineers as imperative to his plans for the Academy. In ~9~5 the
Council recommended changing the Section of Physics and Engineer-
ing to physics only, and a year later began planning a separate section
of engineering. With the Engineering Division in the wartime Na-
tional Research Council as something of a precedent, the new section
in the Academy was formally established with nine members in ~9~9.
Its chairman was Henry Abbot.
membership ("Minutes of the Academy," April ~899, p. 576; April ~906, p. ~26; April
Dog, p. 34; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1915, pp. 27-28).
NAS, Annual Report for 1917, p. 20.
For subsequent recipients, see medalists of the National Academy in the Academy's
Annual Reports. See also Paul Brockett, "National Academy of Sciences Medal Awards,"
Sc'~ntif ic Monthly 59:428 (December ~ 944).
~2 Henry L. Abbot to Arthur L. Day, December 28, ~9~2 (Carnegie Institution of
Washington and California Institute of Technology, George Ellery Hale Papers: Microfilm
Edison, ~968, Roll 26, Frames ~89-~9~).
~, "Minutes of the Council," November ~9~5, p. ~68; correspondence in NAS Archives:
NAS: Sections: Engineering; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1916, pp. 23-24, 30; "Minutes of the
Council," December ~ 9, ~ 9 ~ 7, p. 339/4; November 9, ~ 9 ~ 9, p. 474; NAS, Annual Report
for 1919, p. 32.
For a later note on why "many of the most able engineers of the country [would]
never be included in the membership of the Academy," see NRC Office Memorandum
470, February I, ~938 (NAS Archives: E&JR: Reorganization of Division, ~938).
OCR for page 208
208 / WILLIAM HENRY WELCH (~9~3—~9~7)
The war in Europe had pushed everything else into the
background. As the year ~9~4 ended, the German armies and the
French and English forces opposing them stretched in an arc of
improvised trenches from the Belgian coast to the border of Switzer-
land, destined to be fixed there in deadlock for almost four years. The
initial shock and the depression of spirits in this country had been
alleviated by President Wilson's affirmation on August ~8 of a policy
of strict neutrality. As the months passed and the battlefront
stabilized, the first arms orders for resupply of the Allied armies
began to arrive in the United States. Less than a year later American
shipping plying the Atlantic confronted the menace of the recently
developed German U-boat. When in May ~9~5 the British passenger
linerLusitania, carrying a cargo of munitions, was sunk with heavy loss
of lives, including a number of American citizens, the entry of the
United States into the war seemed only a matter of time.
In July ~9~5, George Ellery Hale wired Welch, then on his way to
the Orient, "The Academy is under strong obligation to offer fits]
services to the President in the event of war with . . . Germany," and
asked Welch to learn the opinion of the Academy Council.'4 Welch
continued to temporize after his return home in December, but when
in the following spring the Essex was torpedoed and the Sussex sunk
with the loss of American lives and cargoes, an aroused Hale acted.
Upon his reelection as Foreign Secretary at the meeting on April
~9, ~9~6, Hale obtained Council and Academy assent to seek the
cooperation of the engineering societies "in the work of the academy
for the national welfare." With that, he presented a resolution to the
Council urging
that the President of the Academy be requested to inform the President of the
United States that, in the event of a break in diplomatic relations with any
other country, the Academy desires to place itself at the disposal of the
Government for any services within its scope.
The resolution carried, and, upon its unanimous approval by the
Academy members present, Hale asked "that the Council be empow-
ered to organize the Academy for the purpose of carrying out the
resolution...." Later that day, at another meeting of the Council,
id Telegram, July ~3, ~9~5 (Hale Microfilm, Roll 36, Frame 873); Hale to William H.
Welch, July 3, ~9~5, and Welch to Hale, July ~4, ~9~5 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on
Organizing NRC); Helen Wright, Explorer of the Universe: A Biography of George Ellery Hale
(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., ~966), pp. 286-287.
OCR for page 209
World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council / 209
Edwin G. Conklin requested, and President Welch agreed, to appoint
a committee to wait upon the President.~5
On April z6, ~9~6, Welch, Hale, Walcott, Conklin, and Robert S.
Woodward met with President Wilson at the White House. Hearing
"in a general way methods and directions in which the Academy
might be of service under the circumstances," the President suggested
the formation at once of a committee "to undertake such work as the
Academy might propose," but asked that his oral approval not be
publicized. Upon Hale's appeal to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker,
the President's interdiction was subsequently withdrawn.
Organization and Staffing of the National Research Council
By June Hale and his Committee on the Organization of the Scientific
Resources of the Country for National Service, comprising Conklin,
Simon Flexner, Robert A. Millikan, and Arthur A. Noyes, had a plan
that was to be accomplished through the formation by the Council of
the Academy of
a National Research Council, the purpose of which shall be to bring into
co-operation existing governmental, educational, industrial and other re-
search organizations with the object of encouraging the investigation of
natural phenomena, the increased use of scientific research in the develop-
ment of American industries, the employment of scientific methods in
strengthening the national defense, and such other applications of science as
will promote the national security and welfare.
The members of the National Research Council (NRC) Hale had first
called it the National Research Foundation were to comprise the
"leading American investigators and engineers, representing Army,
Navy, Smithsonian Institution, and various scientific bureaus of the
Government, educational institutions and research endowments, and
the research divisions of industrial and manufacturing establish-
ments."~7 The approval of the plan, when presented to the Academy
~~ Minutes ot the (Jouncil," April ~ 9 ~ 6, p. ~ 75; "Minutes of the Academy," April ~ 9 ~ 6,
pp. 203, 206; "Minutes of the Council," April ~9~6, p. 2 ~ i; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1916,
pp. ~2, 22; correspondence in NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Organizing NRC.
~6 Reported in "Minutes of the Council," June ~ 9 ~ 6, pp. 2 ~ 7-2 20.
~7 "Minutes of the Council,"June ~9~6, pp. 222-227; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1916, p. 32;
Hale, "The National Research Council," Science 44:26~266 (August 25, ~9~6).
(Continued overleap
OCR for page 210
210 / WILLIAM HENRY WELCH (~9~3—~9~)
George Ellery Hale, Chairman of the National Research Council, ~9~6-~9~9, with the
Foucault pendulum in the Great Hall of the Academy games Stokley photograph,
courtesy Science Service).
Council on June ~9, marked the inception of the National Research
Council. ~8
The "explicit purposes" of the Research Council, as carefully
That Hale had in mind the Royal Institution and its relationship with the Royal
Society in planning the Research Council is affirmed in The Autobiography of Robert A.
Millikan (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950), pp. ~32-~34.
's President Welch in his introductory essay to the annual Reportfor 1916—resuming a
OCR for page 231
World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council 1 23 ~
curiosity) in quantities sufficient for dirigibles, and of optical glass,
until then available only from Germany.74
The innovations of World War I were the airplane, the tank, the
machine gun, the weapons carrier, and poison gas, the last of which
Augustus Trowbridge, Princeton physicist, included among
the most important of the applications of pure science which were a wholly
new product of land warfare...: the use of cloud and shell gas, the
extremely brilliant application of chemistry in the construction of gas-masks,
airplane photography, the scientific aids to accuracy in gunnery and bombing
from airplanes, sound-ranging, searchlight and listening devices for anti-
aircraft defense, directional wireless, and camouflage.75
Participating American scientists saw many of these products of
research put into production and in many instances made available to
the forces in the field.
Some of them had great significance for the postwar years. Such,
for example, were the advances made in high-grade optical glass for
military instruments; the impact on the chemical industry of the
large-scale nitrogen-fixation plants designed for the production of
nitric acid; and the new chemistry devised for the Chemical Warfare
Service through the joint research of physical, biological, organic, and
analytical chemists. The brief wartime association of American,
British, and French geographers and geologists; metallurgists; com-
munication and radio engineers; and sanitary engineers had far-
reaching benefits. So, too, did the approach to the problems of food
supply and nutrition, recognized as never before as both national and
world concerns.76
74 Millikan in Yerkes, The New World of Science, pp. 46-48, and The Autobiography of
Robert A. Millikan, pp. ~79-~80; I. Bernard Cohen, "American Physicists at War: From
the First World War to ~g42,"American/ournal of Physics 13:337-338 (~945).
Millikan and the Research Council were plagued by one major frustration. This was
the time spent on a centrifugal gun, the design for which was submitted to the War
Department and turned over to the NRC Divisions of Physics and Engineering late in
~ 9 ~ 7. The gun, proposed by E. L. Rice, was designed to use the engine power of combat
planes to fire a charge of loo half-inch steel balls before recharging for another burst.
Both the engineering of the gun and the negotiations with Rice and the government,
lasting three years, proved beyond resolution (NAS, Annual Reportfor 1918, pp. 78, 99;
NAS Archives: PS: Projects: Centrifugal Gun).
7S Yerkes, The New World of Science, p. 65; D. 1. Kevles, "Flash and Sound in the AEF;
The History of a Technical Service," Military Affairs XXXIII: 37~383 (~969).
76 Harrison E. Howe in Yerkes, The New World of Science, pp. dog 95.; A. A. Noyes, ibid.,
pp. ~30- ~33; Clarence J. West, ibid., pp. ~73- ~74.
OCR for page 232
232 / CHARLES DOOLITTLE WALCOTT (1917 - 1923)
Without precedent in medical experience was the gas war in
France. Begun by German troops in April 1915 to break the deadlock
of trench warfare, the use first of chlorine, then the lethal phosgenes,
and, in July ~9~7, incapacitating mustard gas, all proved exceedingly
effective—but in no instance as decisive as anticipated. Although the
war gases produced far fewer fatalities than other weapons, they
accounted for more than a quarter of the battle casualties among
American forces.77
A Committee on Noxious Gases, set up within the NRC in April
~9~7, supported the Bureau of Mines in its request for appropriations
for research on both the defensive and offensive aspects of gas
warfare. The resulting work, in a laboratory the Bureau established at
American University in Washington, as well as in a number of
universities and medical institutions, was transferred to the newly
created Army Chemical Warfare Service in June ~9~8.78
The high incidence of "war neurosis" and shell shock, of trench
foot and trench mouth, gas gangrene, pneumonia, and, above all,
epidemic and pandemic influenza taxed the medical services in
France as well as the medical research institutions at home. The
estimate that the respiratory diseases accounted for 8z percent of all
Army deaths caused by disease suggested promising directions for
future research.79
A related field of medicine was the application of psychology to war
problems. Viewed at the time with considerable suspicion by the
military, it won acceptance in the Medical Department of the Army
through the intercession of Col. V. C. Vaughan, Col. William Welch,
and Sur. Gen. William C. Gorgas.
A group under Robert M. Yerkes, pioneer in the use of intelligence
tests, began to work out methods of psychological testing that would
be specifically applicable to the armed forces. The group developed
first the famous alpha and beta tests for literates and illiterates and
demonstrated for the first time on a large scale what appeared to be
remarkable differences in intelligence among various army groups.
The Research Council team then went on to consider the psychologi-
77 Frederick F. Russell in Yerkes, The New World of Science, p. 286.
78 NAS Archives: Com on Noxious Gases (later, Com on Gases Used in Warfare);
Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, p. 3zo.
The Chemical Warfare Service administered the Bureau's research work as well as
the Gas Service in France, which was organized on Gen. John I. Pershing's orders in
September ~9 ~ 7.
79 Russell in Yerkes, The New World of Science, pp. 386, Rio; Victor C. Vaughan,
ibid., p. 33~.
OCR for page 233
World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council 1 233
cat problems of aviation. It developed batteries of special aptitude
tests, made studies of problems of vision, of military training and
discipline, of shell shock reeducation, and of methods of influencing
enemy morale.~° Like that in every other divisor of the Research
Council, the work of the psychologists had scarcely more than begun
when the war ended.
The end of the war found American industry with a vastly ex-
panded capacity for production, and American science, as repre-
sented by the Academy-Research Council, with an enormous re-
search program still for the most part in its early stages; and in the
case of basic science, to Hale's dismay, with relatively little even
attempted. However, neither science nor industry had any intention
of losing the momentum that had been generated.
From the beginning, Hale had seen the Research Council not just as
a temporary organization for a national emergency but as the vehicle
for realizing "the future of the National Academy" he had projected
in ~9~3. At the meeting of the Academy committee with Woodrow
Wilson in April ~ 9 ~ 6, the President, he said, had "emphasized the fact
that the chief national advantage of such cooperation and coordina-
tion fas the Research Council proposed] would come after the war,
and that its most lasting effect would be seen in scientific and
industrial progress."
Postwar Plans
The Research Council had been launched less than a year when in
August ~ 9 ~ 7 Hale wrote Millikan, "I am now at work on a plan for the
permanent organization of the Research Council."82 In a statement,
"The Future of the National Research Council," in the Academy's
Annual Report that year, he announced:
The results already accomplished by the National Research Council and the
increasing requests for its assistance seem to leave no doubt as to the need for
a centralizing body of this character.... The organization of the research
80 Yerkes, The New World of Science, pp. 35 ~-354; D. I. Kevles, "Testing the Army's
Intelligence: Psychologists and the Military in World War I," Journal of American
History 55 :565-581 ( ~ 968).
8~ This statement appears in NAS, Annual Reportfor 1917, p. 46. So Hale had said in his
letter to the New York Times in July ~9~6 (NRC, Miscellaneous Papers): "The work of the
research council will . . . relate to public welfare in time of peace even more truly than
to national security in the event of war." Cf. p. 223 in this chapter.
82 Hale to Millikan, August SO, ~9~7 (NAS Archives: EX Com: General).
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234 / CHARLES DOOLITTLE WALCOTT (~9~7—~9~3)
council under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences is undoubt-
edly sound. It provides the necessary connection with the Government and
eliminates all political influence from the appointment of its members.
. . . The wide-spread cooperation already secured and the experience
gained in connection with the war will afford a useful guide for the develop-
ment of a sound and effective plan.
Hale's "Plan for the Promotion of Scientific and Industrial Re-
search by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Re-
search Council," which he was proposing for the postwar period,
emerged in the fall of aged. The fifty-four-page prospectus was first
presented to the trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
from whom he sought the building and endowment the program
would require, then laid before the Council of the Academy at its
meeting, to which Millikan was invited, on December ~9, ~9~7.
It called for a Research Council organized in divisions and staffed
by members of scientific and technical societies, heads of scientific
bureaus of the government, and members at large, all formally
appointed by the Academy to the Research Council. Stressing that the
chief advantage of the wartime cooperation of government, educa-
tional, and industrial research agencies would come after the war, and
that since ~9~4 every Allied nation had created new research organi-
zations similar to the Research Council, Hale described the current
wide-ranging operations of the Research Council and, based on that
experience, the future opportunities of the Academy and Council.
The realization of the opportunities that he described at length would
require an appropriate building and staff, a clearinghouse for scien-
tific and technical information, and support for a projected Interna-
tional Research Council to promote worldwide cooperation in scien-
tific and industrial research.84
Even with the assent of the Council of the Academy, Hale was well
aware that the plan was not enough, that the Research Council
8` NAS, Annual Report for 1917, p. 69.
The clause, "It provides the necessary connection with the Government," was
changed a year later by Hale to read "It would serve a useful purpose to perpetuate the
National Research Council and thus be permanently assured of the cooperation of the
various Departments of the Government" (NAS, Annual Reportfor 1918, p. 4o). And with
the Research Council launched, he wrote, "We shall continue our contacts with the
Government" (NAS, Annual Report for 1919, p. 65).
84 First presented in "Minutes of the Council," November ~9, ~9~7, p. 320, the complete
prospectus appears in "Minutes of the Council," December ~ 9, ~ 9 ~ 7, pp. 339/6, ~ o, 2 7,
passim.
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World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council 1 235
required a stronger foundation than the endorsement of President
Wilson's letter of July ~9~6 and recognition by the Council of Na-
tional Defense.
On March s6, ~9~8, Hale addressed a letter to the White House
requesting the President to "issue an Executive Order, defining and
authorizing the specific duties of the National Research Council, for
the purpose of summarizing and giving added effect to previous
orders and requests underlying the work of the Council." He enclosed
with the letter a suggested draft of the order he sought and docu-
ments supporting his contention that the Research Council was "in
effect a federation of the research agencies of the Nation" and that
there were precedents for it in similar councils abroad.85
In full sympathy with Hale's request, yet mindful of objections of
the Council of National Defense, which he had consulted,86 President
Wilson in reply expressed some concern about "just exactly what it is
that you shave] in mind." At his suggestion Hale accepted revision of
the draft to remove any possible implication that the Research Coun-
cil sought a supervisory role in the work of the scientific bureaus of
the government. And in acknowledgment of the Academy's private
status, he changed the phrase "The National Academy of Sciences
is . . . directed to perpetuate the National Research Council . . ."
to read ". . . requested to perpetuate the National Research
Council...."87
The Executive Order of 1918
.
Accordingly, in the President's Executive Order, dated May ~ I, ~ 9 ~ 8,
the National Academy of Sciences was "requested to perpetuate the
National Research Council," whose functions would be
85 Hale to President Wilson, March 26, ~9~8, and enclosures (copies in NAS Archives:
EXEC: Executive Orders & Directives: EO ~859: NRC).
As Hale explained his action: ". . . as the work of the Research Council progressed, it
became evident that a definite formulation of its objects by the President, and an
expression of his desire that it be perpetuated by the Academy and permanently
assured of the cooperation of the various departments of the Government, would serve
a useful purpose" (NAS, Annual Report for 1918, p. 40).
86 "Minutes of Meeting, CND," April ~ 5, ~ 9 ~ 8 (L/C, Josephus Daniels MSS, Box 45 ~ ),
cited in Daniel l. Kevles, "George Ellery Hale, the First World War, and the Advance-
ment of Science in America," Isis 59:433_434 (Winter ~968); Wright, Explorer of the
Universe, pp. 296-297.
87 Wilson to Hale, April ~ 9, ~ 9 ~ 8, in "Minutes of the Council," April 2 I, ~ 9 ~ 8, pp.
348 - 35~; documents of January—May ~9~8 in NAS Archives: EXEC . . . EO z859: NRC.
(Canned overleaf)
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236 / CHARLES DOOLITTLE WALCOTT (1917—1923)
To stimulate research in the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences,
and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine,
and other useful arts.
To survey the larger possibilities of science, to formulate comprehensive
projects of research, and to develop effective means of utilizing the scientific
and technical resources of the country....
To promote cooperation in research, at home and abroad....
To serve as a means of bringing American and foreign investigators into
active cooperation with the scientific and technical services of the War and
Navy Departments and with those of the civil branches of the Government.
To direct the attention of scientific and technical investigators to the
present importance of military and industrial problems in connection with the
war.... [and]
To gather and collate scientific and technical information at home and
abroad, in cooperation with governmental and other agencies....
The concluding paragraph of the President's Order offered "the
cordial collaboration of the scientific and technical branches of the
Government, both military and civil." Their representatives, upon the
nomination of the Academy, would be designated by the President as
members of the Council "as heretofore, and the heads of the depart-
ments immediately concerned will continue to cooperate in every way
that may be required."
"The Order," Hale wrote President Wilson of the advance copy he
received, "is entirely satisfactory to the National Academy of Sciences
and the National Research Council."89 In the Annual Report that year
he spoke of it "as supplementing . . . the charter of the Academy."
Millikan said that he, Walcott, Noyes, Merriam, Carty, and Dunn helped with the
formulation of the order that made the Research Council "a permanent subcommittee
of the Academy and operating under its congressional charter" (The Autobiography of
Robert A. Millikan, pp. ~84-~85).
88 It was this clause apparently that led Willoughby in Government Organization in War
Time and After (p. 25) to say that as a consequence of the Order, the Research Council
"had its function as an organization for coordinating the scientific work of the
Government more distinctly emphasized." Indeed, in an early draft of the Order this
paragraph had read: "To serve as a correlating and centralizing agency for the research
work of the Government."
89 Hale to Wilson, May lo, ~9~8 (NAS Archives: EXEC . . . EO 2859: NRC); NAS, Annual
Report for 1918, pp. 40-4 ~ .
At the meeting that November, Walcott formally presented the President's Executive
Order to the Academy ("Minutes of the Council," November ~ 7, ~ 9 ~ 8, p. 407). For the
Executive Order, see Appendix F.
It remained unchanged until ~956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower revised
the Order, principally to remove minor anachronisms in its text and to transfer the
designation of government members in the Research Council from the President of the
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World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council / 237
The Carnegie Corporation Grant
Nine days after issuance of the Executive Order, Hale, accompanied
by Carty, Millikan, and Walcott, appeared before the Board of the
Carnegie Corporation to discuss support for the now permanent
Research Council. Although the Board deferred consideration of an
endowment or a building fund, a grant of $~oo,ooo was immediately
made for operating expenses. The President of the Board, Elihu
Root, saw, as Hale did, the coming revolution in industry after the war
and in industrial research the principal means for meeting "the
international competitions of peace." As Root said,
. . . the same power of science which has so amazingly increased the produc-
tive capacity of mankind during the past century will be applied again, and
the prizes of industrial and commercial leadership will fall to the nation which
organizes its scientific forces most effectively.90
Less than a year later, in March ~9~9, the single most significant
event since the founding of the Academy occurred, when the Board
of the Carnegie Corporation voted a gift of $5 million
to be placed at the disposal of the National Academy-of Sciences, for the
purposes of the Academy and the National Research Council....
A part of this sum . . . shall be devoted to the erection of a building suitable
for the needs of the Academy and the Research Council, but the greater part
of the sum . . . shall constitute a permanent endowment in the hands of the
Academy for the purposes of the Research Council.
As a condition precedent to the appropriation . . . for building purposes, a
suitable site shall be provided from other sources.
. . . such portion of the $s,ooo,ooo remaining [after the building is paid for
and ready for use shall be] for the gradual development and permanent
support of the work of the Research Council....9t
United States to the heads of departments (NAS Archives: EXEC . . . EO ~o668: Revision
of EO 2859 re NRC: ~955-~956). For the revised Executive Order, see Appendix F.
90 Secretary, Carnegie Corporation, to Hale, June 7, ~9~8 (NAS Archives: FINANCE:
Funds: Grants: Carnegie Corp of NY: Building & Endowment Fund); NAS, Annual
Report for 1918, pp. 60-6~. See Elihu Root, "Industrial Research and National Wel-
fare," Science 48 :532-534 ( ~ 9 ~ 8).
Millikan described Root in retrospect as "the most potent mind that was behind all
our activity . . . the navigator of the ship" launched by the Academy [Millikan to Lewis
Strauss, May 3, ~945 (NAS Archives: Hewett file 50.82 . . . RBNS); The Autobiography of
Robert A. M~ll~kan, pp. ~34, ~48].
9~ Resolution of March 28, ~9~9, attached to letter, Secretary of the Carnegie Corpora-
tion to President Walcott, June At, ~9~9 (NAS Archives: FINANCE: Funds: Grants:
Carnegie Corp of NY: Building & Endowment Fund).
For a modification of the resolution in ~924, see Chapter lo, pp. 287-288.
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238 / CHARLES DOOLITTLE WALCOTT (1917—1923)
National Research Fellowships
The Rockefeller Foundation was also aware of the pivotal position
science would hold in the postwar order. A letter from George E.
Vincent, President of the Foundation, to Robert A. Millikan on
February 5, 1918, had provided additional impetus for action on the
Executive Order.
Vincent wrote that the establishment and endowment of a research
institute for physics and chemistry, similar to the Rockefeller Institute
for Medical Research, had been suggested to the Foundation to meet
the industrial competition of Europe after the war. Industry could be
relied upon to provide the practical research, but only an endowed
institution could undertake the necessary basic research:
An institution . . . devoted to pure research, unhampered by obligations to
teach and uninfluenced by commercial considerations is needed for leader-
ship in American progress in the physical sciences....
and he asked:
Is the National Research Council, which has been created out of the war
emergency, likely to take permanent form? Is the Federal Government in a
position to create a separate institution on the analogy of certain research
units in the Department of Agriculture and in the Geological Survey? Is the
Bureau of Standards capable of extension into a national research Institu-
tion?92
Millikan was strongly opposed to a centralized research institute
and believed that the long-term benefits would be greater if the funds
were spent for training in existing institutions. This was the proposal
he presented to the group of sixteen scientists that was convened to
consider Vincent's plan. Following considerable discussion, it was
agreed that a program of postdoctoral research fellowships for young
Ph.D.'s was preferable to the "institute" scheme. In addition to the
obvious benefits to the fellows, their presence in the universities
would have an equally salutary effect on the research atmosphere of
the schools.93
In March ~9~9, the Academy and Research Council submitted to
the Rockefeller Foundation a formal proposal for a "project for
92 George F. Vincent to Millikan, February 5, ~9~8 (NAS Archives: FELLOWSHIPS: Re-
search Fellowship Board: Physics & Chemistry: Beginning of Program).
95 M. .1. Rand, "The National Research Fellowships," The Scientific Monthly 73:71-80
(August ~95~).
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World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council / 23g
promoting fundamental research in physics and chemistry in educa-
tional institutions in the United States," which would establish post-
doctoral fellowships supported by foundation funds and awarded by
the Research Council. Vincent's query as to the most appropriate
organization to oversee the program had been effectively answered in
the meantime by the Executive Order.94
On April 9, ~9~9, the Rockefeller Foundation approved an ap-
propriation of $so,ooo for the first year's operations and pledged
$500,000 for fellowships for the first five years. In anticipation, the
Research Council had set up a Research Fellowship Board, headed by
Simon Flexner of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, with
Hale, Millikan, and Noyes among its members, to administer the
funds. The National Research Fellowships, administered by the NRC
over the next thirty years, were possibly the single most enduring and
intrinsically important program to come out of the wartime Research
Council.95
International Research Council
A second far-reaching proposal was made by Hale as Foreign Secre-
tary of the Academy and leader of the six Academy delegates to the
Inter-Allied Conference on International Scientific Organizations in
October ~9~8.96 Since June, when the Royal Society called the Con-
ference, he had been working on a plan that would satisfy the
immediate needs of the Allies for effective cooperation during the
war. Hale hoped it would also serve the postwar needs of the entire
scientific community for a cooperative mechanism to replace the
94 Walcott and Hale to Vincent, March 22, 1919 (NAS Archives: FELLOWSHIPS: Research
Fellowship Board: Physics & Chemistry: Beginning of Program).
95 Rand, "The National Research Fellowships," p. 73.
The question of more and better training of men for research, raised by Noyes and
Stratton at the first meeting of the NRC in September ~9~6, had resulted a month later
in action by the Research Council to persuade colleges and universities to establish
research fellowships with stipends of at least a thousand dollars for training beyond the
doctoral degree [Hale to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, November ~8, ~9~6, p. 8
(NAS Archives: FELLOWSHIPS); The Autobiography of Robert A. MilliMn, pp. ~80-~84,
~89]. On Hale's earlier plan for university-supported fellowships, see NAS, Proceed-
ings 3 :223-227 ( ~ 9 ~ 7).
96 This had been preceded, upon America's entry into the war, by Hale's messages to
the academies of the Allied countries offering Academy-Research Council cooperation
in research for the solution of military or industrial problems ("Minutes of the
Council," April ~ 6, ~ 9 ~ 7, pp. z73-274; NAS, Annual Report for 1917, pp. ~ 8- ~ 9).
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240 / CHARLES DOOLITTLE WALCOTT (1917 - 1923)
German-dominated International Association of Academies, which
had been crippled by the war and the deep animosities generated by
the war and therefore could never be expected to resume its former
functions. Hale's proposal, adopted unanimously, called for the crea-
tion of an International Research Council, a federation of the national
research councils, or similar bodies, of the Allied nations. As hostilities
ended, the membership could be extended "indefinitely" to include
other countries. On November s6, ~9~8, at the second Inter-Allied
Conference in Paris, the International Research Council was provi-
sionally organized, with plans to take over at a later date the work of
the international agencies on solar research, astronomy, and geo-
physics set up before the war.97
Interallied exchange of scientific data during the war was effected
through the Research Information Service, now a major unit of the
NRC, with its scientific attaches in London, Paris, and Rome. Hale saw
that they too would have important functions in his postwar plans:
Properly regarded the wrote], this Information Service may be considered as
the pioneer corps of the Council, surveying the progress of research in
various parts of the world, selecting and reporting upon many activities of
interest and importance, reducing the information thus collected to such a
form as to render it most accessible and useful, and disseminating it to
scientific and technical men and to institutions which can use it to advan-
tage....
It therefore goes without saying that the position of scientific attache at our
principal embassies . . . should undoubtedly be continued in times of
peace . . . [to] serve as the general representative of American scientific and
technical interests in the country to which he may be accredited; attend
scientific meetings and keep in touch with the progress of research, reporting
frequently to Washington; maintain his office as a center for American
scientific and technical men and missions desiring to maintain contact with
the scientific men or institutions of the country; undertake special tasks and
make particular reports on questions submitted by properly accredited indi-
viduals or institutions; and contribute in other ways toward international
cooperation in research.98
97 "Minutes of the Council," December ~9~8, pp. 420-423; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1918,
pp. 50-58; Hale in Yerkes, The New World of Science, pp. 405-4~6; NAS Archives: FR:
IRC: Beginning of Program: ~9~9; Daniel j. Kevles, "'Into Hostile Political Camps':
The Reorganization of International Science in World War I," Isis 62:47-60 (Spring
1971).
For Hale's initial proposal for an "international organization of science and re-
search," see "Minutes of the Council," December ~9~7, pp. 339/35-38; April ~9~8, pp.
353-360.
98 NAS, Annual Report for 1918, pp. 4 I, 42-43.
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World War I and the Creation of the National Research Council 1 24 ~
The government, which had adopted the work of the Research
Information Service during the war and accredited the attaches to
the Allied governments, lost interest in their possibilities after the war,
and the Service's foreign offices were closed. It was not until the
"Berkner Report" in the aftermath of World War II that their
functions were resumed.99
When America entered the war in April ~9~', military strategists
were convinced that the stalemate that had frozen the battleline across
Europe with little change in over two and a half years would continue
through ~9~9, until American aid and arms could shift the balance,
and that the war would end in Ago. By late October ~9~8, however,
the Germans were unable to withstand the pressure of the Allied
forces, increased by hundreds of thousands of fresh American troops.
On November I, the German armies, inflicting high casualties, began
their long-planned Kriegsmarsch, the withdrawal to shorten their front
that would take them to the previously constructed Antwerp-Meuse
line, where they intended to hold through the winter. Ten days later,
in the fifty-second month of the war, as French and American troops
crossed the Meuse, Germany asked for an armistice.~°°
Amid week-long celebrations in the United States, the war pro-
grams of the Academy-Research Council began to wind down. But
not the invincible Hale and his plans for the future. He was a frail
man with an iron spirit, and, as he saw it, the war had prepared the
way for the continuing promotion of research. His vision of the
Research Council, representing the government, the major research
agencies in the country, and the chief national scientific, technical,
and engineering societies joined in the years ahead in a collective
assault on scientific problems, was contagious. "We have only begun a
task of unlimited possibilities," he said.~°~
99 For the "Berkner Report," see Chapter is, pp. so-so I.
"Report of General Pershing," War Department, Annual Report for 1918, p. 82.
01 NAS Annual Reportfor 1918, p. 98
Representative terms from entire chapter:
william henry
