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The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 (1978)

Chapter: 9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home

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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"9 The Research Council's Permanent Status and the Academy's New Home." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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The Research Coa~ncil~s Permanent Status and i;he Academics New Home Edwin B. Wilson, for fifty years ~ ~ 9 ~ 5- ~ 964) the editor of the Academy Proceedings and faithful recorder of Academy memoirs, remembered Charles D. Walcott as "a very great scientist and a very great administrator and a very impressive person three characteris- tics one hardly expects to find united in a single person to such an extent." Possessed of an extraordinary capacity for organization, Walcott had separate office arrangements at the Smithsonian for his Academy activities and those of the Institution, and near them his "scientific shop . . . twith] bones lying around and the assistants work- ing on them. It all looked orderly and simple." So, too, Dr. Wilson recalled, was his calm, firm administration of the Academy and governance of the Research Council, whose operations, he felt, "should be given as much independence as possible," confident that each would "do what was expected of it cooperatively without either being in the way of the other." ~ E. B. Wilson to Frederick Seitz, November ~4, ~964 (NAS Archives: ORG: Historical Data). 242

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 243 Of more even temperament than Hale, Walcott was like him in enterprise, in his propensity for advancing the interests of science, and in promoting new scientific institutions. In ~899 he had inspired the founding of the Washington Academy of Sciences. Charles G. Abbot, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian and Home Secretary of the Academy, described him as "a master of tactful accomplishment." Walcott had been instrumental in establishing the Carnegie Institu- tion of Washington (egos); and, in the government, the Reclamation Service (egos), the Forest Service (agog), the Bureau of Mines (igloo, and the National Park Service (~9~5~.2 He prepared and carried through Congress in ~9~4 the third and last amendment to the Charter of the Academy, greatly clarifying Academy financing. A year later he convinced Congress of the importance of creating the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and in ~ 9 ~ 6 he had been Hale's counselor in the establishment of the National Research Council. A later President of the Academy, Frank B. Jewett, once noted that "the three most powerful positions in Washington in the scientific field are those of the Secretary of the Smithsonian, the President of the Carnegie Institution and the President of the Academy." He felt . . that it would be "ideal" if the President of the Academy could "always be one of the first two or always a member long resident in Washing- ton and with a web of established social relationships. We had it once," wrote Hewett, "in Walcott's time."3 For all his characteristically calm mien, Walcott felt the pressures of the hectic years, and the increasing weight of his own. He was in his seventy-f~rst year, and Hale, of much frailer constitution, was fifty- three, when they simultaneously presented their resignations from office to the assembled Academy at the meeting in the spring of ~92 I. Walcott pleaded his twenty-three years' service as Treasurer, member of the Council, Vice-President, and President; Hale, his eleven years as Foreign Secretary. Upon the formal presentation of his letter of resignation, Walcott at once rose from the chair to recommend and nominate Hale as his successor, then left the room. Upon Hale's motion immediately fol- lowing, the membership persuaded Walcott to complete the six-year term to which he had been elected. Hale's own request to resign his 2 Nelson H. Darton, "Charles Doolittle Walcott," Geological Society of America, Bulletin 39 :80-1 16 (~928); Charles G. Abbot, Adventures in the World of Science (Washington: Public Affairs Press, ~958), pp. 95 95.; Abbot to F. R. Lillie, August 25, ~937 (NAS Archives: NAS Members: C. D. Walcott). ~ Frank B. Jewett to Robert Yerkes, May 7, ~947 (NAS Archives: lewett file 5O.7~).

244 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy office was accepted, but he was immediately prevailed upon to assent to another term, with its less burdensome duties, on the Council of the Academy.4 In the last years of Walcott's presidency, the Academy elected almost sixty new members, but few of them were outside the tradi- tional scientific disciplines. The problem of representation of the applied and humanistic sciences in the Academy continually con- fronted the membership. In ~9~9, at Hale's request, Walcott had invited James H. Breasted,5 Professor of Egyptology and Oriental History at the University of Chicago, to a meeting of the Council to present a proposal from the American Oriental Society, That the Council of the National Academy of Sciences consider the feasibility of . . . [selecting ten from a list of fifty or sixty names] in humanistic research [to be submitted by the American Oriental Society] to come together to form a National Academy of Humanistic Research under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences. That this group should represent economics, sociology, history, archaeology, comparative religions, philology, and philosophy, and eventually have a membership of between fifty or sixty members. Walcott had appointed a committee of I. C. Merriam, Hale, and educational psychologist Edward L. Thorndike to consider a plan tor the associate academy and report back to the Council.6 That fall, while the committee deliberated, thirteen prominent learned societies organized the American Council of Learned Societies (ACES), with the support of the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and later the Ford Foundations. Two years later, Walcott, in agreement with Hale on the merit of a broader range of scientists in the . membership, asked Merriam s committee to consider electing -em~- nent investigators in the humanities. Confronted by members of the Academy unwilling "to risk expanding the work of the academy into the field of emotional rather than scientific activity," the committee pondered the inclusion of humanists in the section of anthropology and psychology, or even the forming of a new academy coordinate with the National Academy. Its only firm recommendation had been 4 NAS, Annual Report for 1921, pp. ~ 3- ~ 5; NAS, Biographical Memoirs 21 :213 ( ~ 94 ~ ); "Minutes of the Academy," April 27, ~92~, pp. ~oo-~02; "Minutes of the Council," November ~ 3, ~ 927, p. ~ o7. 5 On the election of James H. Breasted to the Academy, see E. B. Wilson to E. B. Van Vleck, April So, ~923 (NAS Archives: E. B. Wilson Papers). 6"Minutes of the Council," April ~9~4, p. 33; April ~9~6, p. ~75; April ~9~9, pp. 429-43~', 44~442; NAS, Annual Reportf Jr 1919, pp. 28-29; NAS Archives: ORG: National Academy of Humanistic Research: Proposed.

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 245 that the Council "take the initiative in recommending from year to year the several leaders in the field of humanistic research to be voted upon by the Academy as a whole," but it was rarely acted on.7 That same year, ~ 9 ~ 9, as a result of the growing recognition of the interdisciplinary sciences, the Academy again permitted members who were working in "the fields between the sciences" to enroll in more than one section.8 The Academy also established a separate Section of Engineering, to accommodate a number of engineers in the Academy who were affiliated either with the Section of Physics or the Section of Chemistry. Academy members H. L. Abbot, I. l. Carty, G. Dunn, W. F. Durand, I. R. Freeman, H. M. Howe, F. B. Jewett, G. O. Squier, and D. W. Taylor left their sections of previous affiliation to form the new Section of Engineering.9 While the Research Council continued to evolve its peacetime structure and procedures, the Academy received two minor requests from federal agencies, one concerning a weather station near one of the world's most active volcanoes, Hawaii's Kilauea, which came to naught when the volcano erupted. The other related to a claim on Congress by an inventor whose secret underwater radio proved to have many discoverers.~° 7 NAs,AnnualReportfor 1921, pp. so-so; NAS Archives: INST Assoc: American Academy of Arts & Sciences: Conference of Learned Societies Devoted to Humanistic Studies: ~9~9; ~bid., IR: lU: Interallied Academic Union: Proposed: ~9~9. In his twelve years as a member, Breasted found fellow humanists in ethnologist [esse W. Fewkes (elected in ~9~4) and his fellow specialist in Oriental languages, Berthold Lauder ( ~ g30). Archaeologist Al Fred V. Kidder was elected the year after Breasted's death In ~935 In ~ 93 I, E. B. Wilson suggested to the Council of the Academy that it consider either taking "the initiative in the organization of a Social Science Academy" or electing to membership "a few social scientists as it did in earlier days," thereby abrogating the need for such an academy. At its meeting in November ~93~, the Council decided "That it is not advisable at this time to establish a section in the Academy to include the Social Sciences but the names of distinguished men may be recommended to the Council for consideration" [E. B. Wilson to NAS Council, November 9, ~93~, and Minutes of the Council, November ~5, ~93~ (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Social Sc in NAS: Proposed)]. ~ The resolution adopted in ~9~9 overturned the ~9~6 ruling that permitted Academy members to enroll in no more than one section ("Minutes of the Council," April ~9~6, pp. ~75, ~94; "Minutes of the Academy," April ~9~9, pp. 472, 498; "Minutes of the Council," November ~ 9 ~ 9, pp. 488-489). 9"Minutes of the Council," November ~9~9, p. 474; "Minutes of the Academy," November ~ 9 ~ 9, p. 495. ° NAs,AnnualReportfor 1919, pp. ~2-~3, 34-37; "Minutes of the Council," November ~9~9, pp. 485-486; "Minutes of the Academy," November ~9~9, pp. 497-498; April , pp. 24-27.

246 / Permanent Status for the N1RC; New Home for the Academy A third request, late in ~9~, came from a member of Congress seeking the opinion of the Academy on a bill he had introduced in the Senate to fix the metric system within ten years as the single standard for weights and measures. The Academy's long-standing Committee on Weights, Measures, and Coinage, with the concurrence of the membership, reported its approval of the legislation. A century had passed since the introduction of the first legislation to make the metric system the national standard, and the ~9~s effort proved no more successful. It was not until ~959 that even uniform equivalents be- tween the yard and meter and the pound and kilogram were estab- lished, and then without benefit of legislation. Except for an opinion sought by the Speaker of the House in ~9~8 on the mathematical aspects of reapportionment, subsequently printed in the Congressional Record, there were few requests to the Academy until ~ 933, when the Science Advisory Board was or- ganized.~2 Postwar Organization of the Research Council Hale, with Walcott's support, was eager to perpetuate the government- educai~onal-ir~dustr~al research complex that the wartime Research Council had been, and he was as intensely busy after the war as he had been during the twenty months of the conflict. With many of the war- or~ented programs in the first stages of conversion, he had ready a tenta- iive plan for "a permanent scheme of organization for the Council" just seven weeks after the Armistice. The plan was presented at a meeting of the Council of the Academy on December 30, ~9~8, to which John C. Merriam, the Chairman-elect of the Research Council, had been invited. With minor modifications, the reorganization was formally adopted by the Council of the Academy and by its counterpart, the Executive Board of the Research Council, on February ~ I, 1919.~3 The object of the reorganization, said Hale, was to render the ~~ NAS, Annual Report for 1922, pp. 4-6, lo; 1923, p. lo; "Minutes of the Academy," November ~92~, pp. ~7-~22; "Minutes of the Council," April ~922, p. ~25; C. D. Walcott in Science 54:628-629 (December 23, ~92~). ~2 On the apportionmenbt request, see NAS, Annual Reportfor 1928-29, pp. 2~-23, and E. V. Huntington in Science 69:471~73 (May 3, ~929). ~` The "Constitution" of the Research Council submitted to the Academy in late ~9~8 was revised as "Articles of Organization" and adopted on February ~ I, ~9~9 ("Minutes of the Council," December 30, ~9~8, p. 425; January ~5, ~9~9, p. 426; NAS, Annual Report for 1918, pp. 62-63, log- ~ 2). For its initial amendment, see Annual Report for 1919, pp. 33-34, ~ 27- ~ 3°

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy / 247 John Campbell Merriam, Chairman of the National Re- search Council, ~ 9 ~ 8- ~ 9 ~ 9, and Chairman of the National Research Council Executive Board, ~92 ~-~923 (From the archives of the Academy). Research Council "an effective federation of the leading research agencies of the country," its purpose to promote research in the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine, and other useful arts, with the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthen- ing the national defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare, as expressed in the Executive Order of May ~ I, ~ 9 ~ 8. }4 The Research Council had been closely associated with the federal government during the war, but the bond was relaxed in the new organization in June when, as Hale said, the National Research Council passed out from under its more direct rela- tions to the National Government through the Council of National De- fense.... [All is] in the way of a speedy settlement, and we may look forward 4 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1918, pp. 63, log. As Millikan said in his Autobiography (New York: Prentice-HalI, Igloo, p. ~87: "For the first month after the close of the war . . . all of us at lath and L Streets were very busy . . . setting up the expanded organization, not the expanded activities, of the National Research Council for its peacetime job of promoting and stimulating, but definitely itself not doing, scientific work throughout the United States."

24~3 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy to an early conclusion of all our more direct responsibilities to the Govern- ment. Through the Government division, however, as well as through the division of foreign relations . . . we shall continue our contacts with the Government.... '5 Under Acting Chairman John C. Merriam;'6 Secretary Vernon Kellogg; with Vice-Chairmen Charles D. Walcott, Gano Dunn, and Robert A. Millikan; Treasurer Frederick L. Ransome of the Geologi- cal Survey (who as Treasurer of the Academy was ex officio Treasurer of the Research Council); and Assistant Secretary Alfred D. Flinn, also Secretary of the Engineering Foundation in New York, Hale reorganized the Research Council into two divisional groups: Divisions of General Relations Government Relations (C. D. Walcott) Division of Foreign Relations (G. E. Hale) Division of States Relations id. C. Merriam) Division of Educational Relations (V. Kellogg) Division of Research Extension 0. Johnston) Research Information Service (R. M. Yerkes) Divisions of Science and Technology Division of Physical Sciences (C. E. Mendenhall) Division of Engineering (H. M. Howe) Division of Chemistry and Chemical Technology (W. D. Bancroft) ~5 NAS, Annual Report for 1919, pp. 65, 75; A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ~957), pp. 328-329. The severance may have been eased when in the spring of ~ 9 ~ 9 the CAD, under a new Director, was rumored to be planning a Research Board similar in intent to the National Research Council. It did not materialize [Hale to James R. Angell, August ~3, 1919 (NAS Archives: Legal Matters, Opinion re NRC-CND Relationship)]. With the close of fiscal year ~ 9 ~ 8- ~ 9 ~ 9, CND funds from the President's Funds for NRC activities lapsed and the wartime relationship ceased ("Minutes of the Council," November 9, ~9~9, pp. 480-48 I; NAS, Annual Report for 1919, p. 65). 16 As early as May ~9~8, Hale, to conserve his limited strength, had turned over the chairmanship of NRC to Noyes. When Noyes's work called him away in July, Merriam became Acting Chairman, then Chairman, until the appointment in July ~9~9 of James R. Angell, on leave of absence from the University of Chicago. A year later, upon Angell's acceptance of the presidency of the Carnegie Corporation, H. A. Bumstead became Chairman. Following Bumstead's sudden death in December Ago, Walcott assumed the newly created position of Chairman of the Executive Board. See The Autobiography of Robert A. Millikan, pp. ~ 69, ~ 84, ~ 88- ~ 89; NAS Archives: ORG: NRC: Of ricers: Chairmen: Terms: Excerpts from Minutes: ~ 9 ~ 6- ~ 9 ~ 9; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1921, p. ~8. For the succession of NRC Chairmen, see Appendix G.

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 249 Division of Geology and Geography (E. B. Mathews) Division of Medical Sciences (H. A. Christians Division of Biology and Agriculture (C. E. McClung) Division of Anthropology and Psychology (W. V. gingham) The activities of the supporting structure of this organization, oriented around the scientific disciplines, engaged well over 250 people. It came under an Executive Board consisting of the officers of the Research Council, the President and Home Secretary of the Academy, the President of the AAAS, the Chairmen and Vice-Chairmen of the Divisions of Science and Technology, the Chairmen of the Divisions of General Relations, and a number of members-at-large.~7 Such an organization of science and scientists would have been unthinkable before World War I, but the phenomena, new to this nation, of mass mobilization, mass production, and unparalleled technological innovation had also introduced new concepts in the world of science. These included the beginning of large-scale cooperative research, scientific investigation of a new order of mag- nitude, and the rise of the scientist-administrator. The National Research Council became the focal point of the new conception of organized science. Its membership was nominated by approximately forty of the great national scientific societies, independent of federal support or supervision. In the last months of the war, two elements in the Research Council, the Division of Industrial Relations and the Research Information Service, underwent, as Millikan said of the latter, "an evolution of function." Spokesmen for industry were concerned that the Division of Industrial Relations might consider problems of the economics and ~7 The Articles of Organization of the permanent Research Council, as formally adopted by the Council of the Academy on February 1 1, 19~9, appear in NAS, Annual Report for 1918, pp. 109-112; its detailed structure in Annual Report for 1919, pp. 104-127- ~8 ~ames R. Angell in Robert M. Yerkes (ed.), The New World of Science: Its Development during the War (New York: Century Co., 1920), pp. 417-419. "The organization of research" after the war, particularly as exemplified in the Research Council, was the title of at least three articles by Academy members within a year: a much-reprinted one by James R. Angell in Scientific Monthly 11:26-42 (July 1920), one by Henry P. Armsby in Science 51:33-36 (January 9, 1920), and that by William Morton Wheeler in Science 53:53~7 (January 21, 1921). For Academy member Cattell's somewhat uncharitable view of Hale's efforts on behalf of science and the Academy, see "The Organization of Scientific Men," Scientific Monthly 14:568-578 (ague); Nathan Reingold, "National Aspirations and Local Pur- poses," Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 71:235-246 (Fall 1968). See also Chapter 7, note 3 ~ .

2 JO I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy personnel of industry as within its sphere, and particularly that it might conflict with Engineering Division concerns with industrial research. They were reassured only when Industrial Relations was renamed the Research Extension Division and its activities limited to promoting the general interests of the scientific and technical divi- sions of the Research Council in industry. Five years later it was merged with the Engineering Division.~9 The Research Information Service, Hale's "pioneer corps of the Council," was intended "to continue and develop the useful service which it rendered during the war." That service, however, had been radically altered some months before.20 Begun as a vehicle for the exchange of scientific information through diplomatic channels with the counterparts of the Research Council abroad, soon after the war it had become instead a "national center of information concerning American research work and research workers," engaged in prepar- ing a series of comprehensive card catalogs of research laboratories in this country, of current investigations, research personnel, sources of research information, scientific and technical societies, and of data in the foreign reports it received. But as Millikan said later, the "attempt to keep American industrial and research groups informed as to the research personnel of the country and the status of research de- velopments . . . was found so grandiose and difficult an undertaking that it was abandoned after perhaps the fifth year" for a more limited role. Lesser reorganization took place in the other divisions of the Research Council. The Government Relations Division was reor- ganized in agog and shortly after renamed the Division of Federal Relations. Walcott was Chairman of the division during its first eight years. Its membership of forty-one included representatives of bureaus and branches of ten government departments, all designated i9 NAS, Annual Report for 1919, pp. 74-75, 80; 1923-24, p. ~82 and note; James R. Angell in Yerkes, The New World of Science, pp. 427-429; Millikan to I. B. Cohen, n.d., in Cohen's "American Physicists at War," American Journal of Physics 13 :339n (August ~945) 20 NAS, Annual Report for 1918, p. 4 ~ . "The work of the Research Information Service continued without interruption and without important changes until the end of the fiscal year when the foreign service had to be discontinued because no further funds had been provided for it" [NRC, "Report for ~ 9 ~ 8- ~ 9 ~ 9, made to the Council of National Defense," p. ~4 (NAS Archives: ORG: NRC: Reports: Annual Reports to CND)]. 2~ NAS, Annual Report for 1919, pp. 74, 83-85; 1920, pp. 59-63; Angell in Yerkes, The New World of Science, pp. 429-434; Millikan to I. B. Cohen, cited above.

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy / 25 lames Roland Angell, Chair- man of the National Research Council, ~ 9 ~ 9- ~ 92O (Photo- graph courtesy National Broadcasting Company). by the President of the United States upon the recommendation of the President of the Academy, in accordance with the Executive Order.22 Although it made a survey of the scientific bureaus in the government, prepared a report in ~ 92 ~ on a federal policy for research, held annual discussions of problems arising from the nature and scope of government scientific work, and participated in the preparation of several surveys of government research, the Division of Federal Relations in that prosperous decade accomplished little of its promise of ensuring closer relations between science and govern- ment.23 22 NAs,Annual Reportfor ~ 920, pp. 34, 5O-5~, 86-88. 2S "Consolidated Report Upon the Activities of the National Research Council ~9~9 to ~ ~92" (2fi~-na~e mimeograph renort in NAS Archives). on. a-; NAS Archives: ~;7~~ ~—-fir rats lo-—r-- -r - ~ ~ ~ a_ ^~ FEDERAL KelatlOIlS: Meetings: 1919 - 192~; and FEDERAL KelallOIlS: ~eIleral: 1919 - 1939. "This division was to be an advisory body, more or less coordinating the course of science throughout the Federal Government. It is perhaps the closest approach that the United States has ever had to a department of science.... Unfortunately Walcott's attempt to organize this large and unwieldy group was unsuccessful . . . " [Yochelson in NAS, Biographical Memoirs 39 :508 ( ~ 967)]. The Executive Board of the Research Council, finding itself unable to effect any significant degree of cooperation between American science and the highly autono-

252 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy NRC Policy, Procedures, and Relation to the Academy By the end of ~9~9 some eighty committees had been launched, the greatest numbers in the Divisions of Physical Sciences, Engineering, Medical Sciences, and Anthropology and Psychology. To house their administrative activities, the Research Council in mid-year moved to larger quarters at Sixteenth and M Streets and, continuing to expand, made plans for still another move in ~geo.24 These were the last of the temporary quarters, for on March 28, ~9~9, the Carnegie Corpora- tion announced its gift of $5 million to provide a building for the Academy-Research Council and an endowment for the permanent support of the Research Council. The unprecedented responsibilities this endowment laid upon the Academy required an authoritative determination of the precise legal nature of the relationship between the Academy and the Research Council. Hale had said the Research Council was a "committee of the Academy"; Millikan variously called it "a committee," "an adjunct," and "a permanent subcommittee" of the Academy.25 Now, with need for clarification,Walcott, after consulting with the legal counsel of the Academy, presented the question, through President Woodrow Wil- son, to the U.S. Attorney General. Three months later, the Attorney General declared that the National Research Council constitutes an agency of the National Academy of Sciences for the purposes and with the powers expressed in the paper entitled "Organization of the National Research Council," adopted February ~ I, ~9~9. The decision meant that contracts proposed by the Research Coun- - cil became binding upon the Academy only upon Academy approval of them.26 As Academy-Research Council Treasurer Ransome observed, mous government bureaus, or to provide counsel in coordinating the scientific activities of the government, terminated the Division of Federal Relations in ~938 and reas- signed its members to the scientific and technical divisions of the Council (NAS, Annual Report for 1937 - 38, pp. 28 - 29; NAS Archives: FEDERAL Relations: End of Division: ~938-~939). 24 NAS, Annual Report for 1919, p. 75; 1920, pp. 39-40. In ~ 920 the Research Council moved from its Sixteenth Street address (the site of the present National Education Association building) to the Charles Francis Adams house at Seventeenth and Massachusetts Avenue ("Minutes of the Council," November ~5, ~920, p. 53; NAS Archives: REAL Estate: Buildings: NRC: Listing: ~9~6—~9~9). 25 See Chapter 8, pp. 22~-222 and note 87. 26 Memorandum of legal counsel Nathaniel Wilson to Angell, October ~3, ~9~9; Walcott to President Wilson, October ~ 8, ~ 9 ~ 9; Attorney General to President Wilson,

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 253 Henry Andrews Bumstead, Chairman of the National Re- search Council, July- December, ~g20 (Photograph courtesy Sterling Memorial Li- brary, Yale University). At_ ~ _ ~ .-_ following President Walcott's presentation of the legal opinion at a meet- ing of the Council in November ~9~9, the treasurer has interpreted his duties under the decision that the National Research Council is an organic part or department of the National Academy of Sciences, and that there is but one legal entity, the corporation known as the National Academy of Sciences.27 January 27, ~920 (NAS Archives: LEGAL Matters: Opinion re NRC-NAS Relationship: Wilson N & Attorney General: ~g~g-~g2 I); "Minutes of the Council," November ~9~9, p. 48 I; December ~ 9 ~ 9, p. 507. Attorney General's opinion in NAS, Annual Report for 1920, pp. 20-24. The organization adopted in February ~9~9 appears in NAS, Annual Reportfor 1918, pp. 10~12. 27 Ransome in NAS, Annual Report for 1919, pp. ~3 I- ~32. As Vernon Kellogg interpreted the decision in the annual Reportfor 1920 (p. 37) and repeated in 1922 (p. 24): "the National Research Council was recognized as a special agency of the National Academy of Sciences for the accomplishment of certain particular purposes.... But the Council has its own officers and membership and determines, under the general provisions of its founding by the Academy, its own policies and activities." This statement appeared for the last time in the Annual Report for 1931-32, pp. 32-33

254 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy Vernon Lyman Kellogg, Per- manent Secretary of the Na- tional Research Council, ~ Go- ~ 93 ~ (From the archives of the Academy). The Annual Report of the Research Council for ~920, prepared by its Permanent Secretary Vernon Kellogg,28 described the Council as a cooperative organization of the scientific men of America, including also a representation of men of affairs and business men interested in industry and engineering and in the fundamental or "pure" science on which the "applied" science used in these activities depends.... It was '~an organization controlled by its own membership and sup- ported by other than Government aid . . . its essential pur- pose . . . the promotion of research in the physical and biological sciences and the'' encouragement of the application and dissemination of scientific knowledge for the benefit of the Nation."29 28 Kellogg, Chairman of the NRC Division of Agriculture during the war, left Stanford in ~9~9, where he was Professor of Entomology, to serve for more than a decade as Permanent Secretary of the NRC and, at the same time, head of the Division of Educational Relations. The only "permanent secretary" of the Research Council- a title and position apparently borrowed from the Academic des Sciences Kellogg became Secretary Emeritus upon his retirement in ~93 I. The Research Council owed much of its success to his intense and sustained activities on its behalf (NAS, Annual Report for 1931-32, p. 34). 29 NAs,Annual Reportfor 1920, pp. 34-35. Cf. Kellogg in 1925-26, p. 52: "The council is

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 255 Said Kellogg, In further clarification, The council is neither a large operating scientific laboratory nor a repository of large funds to be given away to scattered scientific workers or institutions. It is rather an organization . . . to help bring together scattered work and workers and to assist in coordinating in some measure scientific attack in America on large problems in any and all lines of scientific activity.... [and it in no way intends] to duplicate or in the slightest way interfere with work already under way....~° The Research Council's Committee on General Policy had debated whether "to foster and stimulate scientific research by the accumula- tion of a large endowment," or to act "as an agency for the exercise of the maximum stimulation of research men and research agencies . . . capable of carrying on valuable investigations," and assist them in "seeking special funds from other sources . . . whenever . . . neces- sary," reserving its own resources for its administrative machinery. The committee adopted the latter course. Projects requiring financial support were to be submitted for ap- proval to the chairman of the division proposing them, with a state- ment of the necessary funds and probable sources, and then to a Project Committee of the Research Council, comprising the Chair- man, the Secretary, and Treasurer. The Project Committee might approve, disapprove, or request that a project be held in abeyance. Appeal in the latter instance could be made to the Executive Board of the Research Council at its monthly meeting.32 The principal efforts of the Research Council were to be carried out by the establishment of division committees. Besides its general ad- ministration of that work through its Policy and Project Committees, the Research Council was to seek to promote research in industry where it did not presently exist and to persuade industries with an organization primarily devoted to the promotion and cooperative coordination of scientific research rather than to the actual conduct of research under its direction, although it has not hesitated to assume the responsibility of carrying on a number of important specific projects of investigation." 3° NAs,Annual Reportfor 1920, p. 35, recapitulated in 1922, pp. 22-24; G. E. Hale, "The National Importance of Science and Industrial Research: The Purpose of the National Research Council," NRC, Bulletin 1: 1-7 (October ~ 9 ~ 9). 5~ NAS, Annual Report for 1919, pp. 70, 72. The only other reports of the committee in that decade are in NAS Archives: EX Bd: Committee on Policy, ~923, ~928. 52 NAS Annual Report for 1919, pp. 7 ~ -72. For some of the problems of the Project Committee with exuberant chairmen, see Kellogg to E. W. Moore, May 28, ~92~ (NAS Archives: ORG: Policy).

256 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy research laboratories to support pure science in the universities. The administration of the research fellowships of the Research Council, its publications, preparation of bibliographies and abstracts of scientific literature, its dissemination of information on current research work in the universities and in industry, and similar concerns were to be important adjuncts to its primary efforts.35 The operation of the postwar Research Council was largely under the direction of members of the Academy. They comprised seven of its eight officers, headed twelve of its thirteen divisions, and predom- inated in every executive committee of the divisions. Indeed, many of the Academy members, particularly the younger members, `were officers in four, five, or more elements of the Research Council. By then the membership of the Research Council itself was z87. Its committee members numbered ~,~36, representing the Executive Board and their twenty-one administrative and technical committees, the officers of the thirteen divisions, and the members of well over eighty working committees in the divisions.54 The Carnegie Corpora- tion made possible the great range of committee activities launched in those first years. Prior to its grant of the permanent endowment, it provided $100,000 for operating expenses for fiscal year ~ 9 ~ 8- ~ 9 ~ 9, $~oo,ooo for ~920, $~70,ooo for ~92~, and $~8s,ooo for ~922. A number of smaller amounts were also available from other sources.S5 Activities of the Research Council The most significant sum available to the Research Council was the research fellowship fund in physics and chemistry in the amount of $500,000 that the Rockefeller Foundation appropriated for that purpose on April 9, ~ 9 ~ 9.56 Three years later, in ~ 922, the Rockefeller 33 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1920, p. 36. S4 Data from NAS Archives: ORG: NBC: Members: Geographical Distribution: ~g20- ~92~. For the first complete postwar roster of officers, members, and committees, see NAS, Annual Report for 1919, pp. ~o4-~26. 5 NAS, Annual Report for 1918, pp. 6~-62; 1919, pp. 66-69; 1920, pp. 37-39; 1922, pp. 25-26. In ~g20 the Council of the Academy recommended changing the official year of the Academy from the calendar to the fiscal year recently adopted by the federal govern- ment (NAs,Annnal Report for 1920, p. ~9; 1921, pp. ~-2). The first fiscal annual report did not appear, however, until that for ~923-~924. S6 NAS, Annual Report for 1919, p. 67. Shortly after announcement of the fellowship fund in March ~ 9 ~ 9, Whitman Cross, Academy Treasurer since ~9~, asked to step down; and F. L. Ransome of the

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 257 Foundation and the Rockefeller-endowed General Education Board provided a second fund of $500,000 for fellowships in medicine. By June ~922, with the addition of a $~7,500 grant from interested industrial firms for fellowships in industrial chemistry as applied to agriculture, the Research Council was administering eighteen fellow- ships in physics, twenty-eight in chemistry, and thirteen in medicine.37 Additional fellowships became available a year later. "Perhaps the most outstanding undertaking of the Research Coun- cil during the past year," Vernon Kellogg wrote in ~923, was the establishment of new postdoctoral fellowships in the biological sciences, including zoology, botany, general physiology, anthropolo- gy, and psychology, with a new Rockefeller Foundation grant of $32s,ooo to be expended in the years ~923-~928. Together with the earlier funds for physics and chemistry and those for the medical sciences, the Research Council at that time administered fellowship funds totaling $~,32s,ooo. A year later the Foundation made available an additional sum of $62s,ooo for continued support of the physics and chemistry fellow- ships and for new fellows in mathematics. By ~926 the funds, ad- ministered by three special Research Council boards, amounted to more than $2 million, supporting almost So research fellows. Before the end of the decade their numbers were further increased by fellows in agriculture and forestry. Sixty-two of the early fellows were subsequently elected to the Academy, among them Nobel Prize winners Arthur H. Compton and Ernest 0. Lawrence in physics and Wendell M. Stanley in biology. A decade after the beginning of the program, it was agreed "that had the Council . . . done nothing else but support the scheme of fellow- ships it would have served its purpose entirely." By mid-century, National Research Council fellows were prominent among the scien- tists raising the United States from a third-rate position to world leadership in physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine.38 Geological Survey became the Academy-Research Council Treasurer, assisted by I. Herbert I. Yule, engaged that July as bursar and accountant (Annual Reportfor 1919, pp. 27, ~3~). 37 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1919, pp. 67, ~2~27; 1920, pp. 38, ~o7-~o8, et seq. `8 NAS, Annual Report for 1923-24, pp. 69-70; 1924-25, pp. 59-60; "Minutes," NRC Committee on Policies, April 24, ~932, p. 24 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Reorganization); Myron l. Rand, "The National Research Fellowships," Sciientific American 73:71-80 (August ~ 95 ~ ). For the import of those NRC fellowships, see Stanley Cohen, "The Scientific Estab- lishment and the Transmission of Quantum Mechanics to the United States, ~9~9- ~ 932 ," American Historical Review 76 :442-466 (April ~ 97 ~ ). (Cor~zn?`ed overleap)

258 / Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy By ~924, the eighth year since the establishment of the National Research Council and the fifth since its postwar reorganization, there were ~56 working committees, a number of them maintaining close association with similar committees abroad through the International Research Council.39 A few of the early committees are noted here for the interest of their subject matter, their longevity, or as representa- tive of the work of the Research Council. As early as August ~9~8, three months before the end of the war, the Research Council set up a provisional Committee on Reconstruc- tion Problems under Vernon Kellogg. Its preliminary survey revealed that, as a consequence of the poor usage and exhaustion of resources in the war years, food, transportation, power, forests, and sewage and waste disposal were all in need of immediate investigation on a national scale.40 These basic problems were recurring ones for the Research Council in the years to come. Both Herbert Hoover's Food Administration and Kellogg's report, "The Food Problem," in The New World of Science saw "food supply the basal problem of civilization," leading the Research Council's Division of Biology and Agriculture shortly after its organization in April ~ 9 ~ 9 to set up its Committee on Food and Nutrition to investigate funda- mental problems in those fields. With funds provided by the food industry, the committee supported investigations of the nutrient requirements and growth curves of animals, microbial contamination of packaged foods, and the relation of nutrition to fertility.4~ Much effort also went into planning for a national institute of nutrition for the study of both the physiological aspects of nutrition and the related problems of the economy of food production, distribution, and con- For an accounting of over $6 million expended by the Research Council between ~9~9 and Ago, more than half that sum on fellowship grants, see NAS Archives: FINANCE: Funds: Appropriations for NRC Activities: ~ 9 ~ 7—~ 923, ~ 9 ~ 9—~ 93O, ~ 9 ~ 9— i94} - 59 Memorandum, Kellogg to Dunn, April 4, ~925, p. 7 (NAS Archives: ORG: NRC: Activities: ~9~6-~925: Summary), reported 29~ members in the Research Council with 42 representing the officers, executive board, and division chairmen, the remainder in the eleven divisions. 4° NAS, Annual Report for 1918, pp. 67—68; 1919, p. Cot; NAS Archives: GENERAL Relations: Com on Reconstruction Problems: ~9~8. For the brief conflict of interest with a similar committee in the Council of National Defense, see NAS Archives: GENERAL Relations: Committee on Reconstruction Prob- lems: ~9~8. 4' Vernon Kellogg in Yerkes, The New Workl of Science, pp. 265-276; NAS, Annual Report for 1922, p. 65; 1923, p. 47; 1923-24, p. 93; 1924-25, p. 9~; Science 50:156-157 (August ~9~9).

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 259 gumption. Preemption of the latter field by the creation of a food research institute at Stanford University in ~ 9e I, and the rapid postwar recovery and subsequent years of abundance, made it impos- sible to obtain funds for an institute under the committee's auspices.42 The committee was discharged in ~9~8, only to be reconstituted when the shortages of World War II gave renewed urgency to problems of human nutrition.43 Research in transportation was initiated in the Division of [:ngineer- ing's Committee on Highway Research in ~9~9 to assist in coordinat- ing a program of research begun for the new U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. A year later new committees on the economic theory of highway improvement and on the character and use of road materials led to the organization of the Research Council's Highway Advisory Board. By ~9~5, with five more committee projects activated, all were put under a reorganized Highway Research Board, which continues to the present.44 The year ~925 also saw the Division of Anthropology and Psychology set up a Committee on the Psychology of the Highway under Knight Dunlap; the most memorable of its many studies was an enduring profile of the accident-prone driver.45 Continuing the joint relationship effected during the war, members of the Academy, the Research Council, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science met to participate in a national 42 NAS Archives: B&A: Com on Food & Nutrition: National Institute of Nutrition: Proposed: ~92 I; Science 50:97-100, 242-244 (August-September ~9~9); ibid., 53 :20~210 (March 4, ~ 92 ~ ). In ~928 members of the committee and others privately organized the American Institute of Nutrition for the purpose of publishing a journal, the Journal of Nutrition. See Harriet Hodges, "The American Institute of Nutrition," Beaumont Bugle II: 1, ~5 (Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, August-September 1969). 45 Although the full committee was discharged, its Subcommittee on Animal Nutrition was given committee status and enjoyed a long and illustrious career. See L. C. Norris, History of the Committee on Animal Nutrition of the Agricultural Board (Washington: ~968). For the Food and Nutrition Board appointed during World War II, see Chapter 16, pp. 528-529. ~ NAS, Annual Reportfor 1919, pp. 90-91; 1920, p. 69; 1924-25, pp. 76-77; 1925-26, p. 206; Ideas and Actions: A History of the Highway Research Board, 1920-1970 (Washington: National Academy of Sciences, ~97~), 243 pp. For an earlier study of road materials by a Research Council geologist and a highway engineer, in preparation for heavy-duty road construction along the coast as a national defense project, see NAS, Annual Report for 1917, pp. so, 53, 6~. as NAS,Annual Reportfor 1924-25, pp. 96-97; Motor Vehicle Traffic Conditions in the United States. Pt. VI, The Accident-Prone Driver, With Cong., 3rd sees., House Doc. 462, ~938; NAS Archives: A&P: Committee on Psychology of Highway: Activities: Summary: 1924- 1939.

260 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy conservation movement that arose in the early Ados. The food crises in Europe, which this country had met with massive relief during and after the war, and the prodigal waste of our fuel, mineral, and forest resources in supplying Allied and American armies, had demon- strated as never before the nation's absolute dependence on the products of the land. Impelled by "the direct need for the organiza- tion of systematic studies upon the fundamental principles which should govern the consumption tof natural resources]," the three separate committees on the Conservation of Natural Resources of the Academy, Council, and AAAS, under their joint Chairman John C. Merriam, met in April ~92~ to assist in the formulation of public policy and to coordinate particularly the scientific and educational aspects of the nationwide activities recently initiated. Even though the movement succumbed within two years, as interest waned with the rapid recovery of the economy, the committees and elements of a joint Executive Committee remained in being until the ~g30s.46 Another joint effort with the AAAS was the sponsorship of Science News Service, founded in ~g20 by the California newspaper magnate, Edward W. Scripps, and its publication, Science News Bulletin (later Science News), which first appeared in ~92~, a popular journal of science that the Academy had discussed with the AAAS for almost five years.47 Hale became the Academy representative on the Science News Service board of trustees, D. T. McDougal of the Carnegie Institution for the AAAS, and Millikan (later Noyes) for the Research Council. William E. Ritter, zoologist, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanog- raphy at La Jolla was President and Treasurer of the Service, and Vernon Kellogg its Vice-President. The periodical had two highly effective publicists of science—Edwin E. Slosson, author of Creative Chemistry ~ ~ 9 ~ 9) and recently editor of the Independent, as Director of the Service (~92~-~929), and Watson Davis, engineer-physicist and science editor of a Washington newspaper, as managing editor and later Director (~9~-~9661. Science News Service was launched in Washington, D.C., where the Research Council provided space in its 46NAS, Annual Report for 1920, pp. 20, 30; 1921, pp. ~2-~3, ~9; 1934-35, p. 27. Cf. Henry S. Drinker, "The Need of Conservation of Our Vital and National Resources as Emphasized by the Lessons of the War," Science 49:27-31 (January lo, ~9~9). 47"Minutes of the Council," November ~9~6, p. 242; April ~9~8, pp. 424-425; "Minutes of the Academy," April ~9~9, pp. 432, 473; R. C. Tobey, The AmericanIdeology of National Science: 1919-1930 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, ~97~), pp. 62-95

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 26 ~ rented building and later in the new Academy building. Eventually it moved to quarters of its own.48 The first true ecological study in the Research Council was pro- posed in ~920 by Ellsworth Huntington, Yale geographer, environ- ment~list, and Research Council representative of the five-year-old Ecological Society of America in the Division of Biology and Agricul- ture. In the wake of postwar interest in reconstruction and natural resources, Huntington urged projects for the conservation of natural areas and of pastures and meadows, and a year later "oceanographic studies, and ecological study of the air."49 The latter project, for which support was obtained from industrial and insurance groups, led to his Committee on the Relation between Atmosphere and Man, a joint effort with the Division of Medical Sciences, in a study of the relation of the air in factories to the efficiency of workers. The weather and health statistics it gathered over a five-year period, and the data relating to factory workers' output and atmospheric conditions, were innovative, instructive, and useful, but only a partial answerer Also of ecological concern in postwar reconstruction planning was the Research Council's Committee on Sewage Disposal, "an important field" for research, activated in the Division of Chemistry and Chemi- cal Technology in ~9~9. It sought sponsorship for three years before abandoning its plans as "impractical under existing conditions."5i Concern in ~9z ~ with the menace to health and to aquatic life of the discharge of oil waste in navigable waters, and the health hazard to all life introduced by the use of leaded gasoline for automobiles in ~9~4 48 NAS, Annual Report for 1920, pp. 29-30, 43; 1922, pp. 35-36; Watson Davis, "The Rise of Science Understanding," Science 108:239-246 (September 3, ~948); NAS Archives: INST Assoc: Science Service: ~920-~938. 49 NAS, Annual Report for 1920, p. 77; 1921, p. 48. For preliminary reports on the relation of the air to health, and proposals to coordinate that work with "the other great branch of human ecology" then under investigation by the Committee on Food and Nutrition, see NAS Archives: B&A: Committee on Atmosphere and Man: Investigation of Relation of Air to Health Preliminary Report: ~92~ (including Huntington's draft proposal for a committee on human ecology). Huntington's proposals for studies of pastures and meadows anticipated the Re- search Council's grasslands research in the Ages. See Chapter to, pp. 29~-294. 50 NAS Archives: B&A: Committee on Atmosphere and Man: ~92~-~28. The commit- tee's reports included "Causes of Geographical Variations in the Influenza Epidemic in ~9~8 in U.S. Cities" (~923) and "Weather and Health: Comparison of Daily Mortality in New York City with Mean Temperature, Atmospheric Humidity, and Interdiurnal Changes of Temperature" (1928). For a reconsideration of the problem of the efficiency of workers, see pp. 266-267. at NAS, Annual Report for 1919, p. 95; 1922, p. 57.

262 / Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy met with similar lack of response. Academy proposals to study control of harmful commercial products in interstate commerce were ig- nored.52 An exploratory Committee on Research Methods and Techniques, organized in Go under Columbia physiologist H. B. Williams and continued under Cornell physicist Floyd K. Richtmyer in ~9~3, laid the groundwork for many of the later borderland or interdisciplinary studies in the Research Council. These included the Committee on Borderland Research under Columbia physicist Michael Pupin and the Committee on the Relation between Physics and the Medical Sciences under the Johns Hopkins physicist, Joseph S. Ames. Perhaps the most notable result of the activities of these committees was the organization of the Washington Biophysical Institute in ~937.55 The year ~g20 saw the first public interest in Einstein's theory of relativity and Niels Bohr's theory of the atom. The Research Council established a Committee on Atomic Structure under Harvard physi- cist F. A. Saunders and another on the Quantum Theory under Wisconsin mathematical physicist Max Mason.54 Although the subject of the reports emanating from abroad and from the committees was intelligible only to a small elite, by ~924 it became generally known that the existence of atoms and molecules had been definitely proved, and methods devised for counting and weighing them. Nevertheless, to calm speculation, British physiologist J. B. S. Haldane reassuringly saw no way "to disintegrate or fuse atomic nuclei any more than . . . to make [apparatus] large enough to reach the moon."55 Still, as Millikan 52 "Minutes of the Academy," April ~92~, p. cod; "Minutes of the Council," November ~924, pp. 288, 289, 299; NAS Archives: ORG: Projects Proposed: Study of Safety of Tetraethyl Lead Additives in Gasoline: ~924-~925. 5S NAS, Annual Report for 1920, p. 96; 1923-24, p. 83; 1924-25, p. ~89. For these committees and the Institute, see Chapter ~ I. 54 The numerous studies of the two committees appeared in the Academy Proceedings and the Research CouncilBulletin (~920-~926). For a note on the early atomic research of academician William Draper Harkins, see Science 103 :289n (March 8, ~946), and NAS Archives: Committee on Atomic Fission: Historical Data. See also Henry N. Russell, "Modifying Our Ideas of Nature: The Einstein Theory of Relativity," Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1921, pp. ~97-2 ~ ~ . Einstein, then at the University of Berlin, was elected a foreign associate of the Academy in ~922; Bohr, teaching at the University of Copenhagen, was elected in ~ 925. 55 K. T. Compton, "Recent Discoveries and Theories Relating to the Structure of Matter," Smithsonian Institution, A rental Reportfor 1922, pp. ~ 45- ~ 56 ; Haldane quoted ink. S. Dupre and S. A. Lakoff, Science and the Nation: Policy and Politics (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., ~962), p. 88; Tobey, The American Ideology of National Science, pp. 96- ~ 32.

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 263 said three years later, Einstein's equation "seems now to have the best of experimental credentials," and "the stream of discovery as yet shows no sign of abatement."56 But he agreed with most physicists in the late twenties in saying "There is no appreciable energy available to man through atomic dasintegation."57 The first of several "major committees of eminent men of science [in the Research Council] . . . to organize and develop certain impor- tant research undertakings" was the Committee for Research in Problems of Sex, established in 1922.58 In the face of widespread "ignorance concerning phenomena of sex and reproduction and the prevalence of prejudice against inquiry into sexual phenomena," said the committee, the postwar movements that had prompted the need for the studies were the suffragist campaign, a rising national concern about social and moral problems of sexual behavior, and the new Freudian psychiatry. First proposed to the Division of Anthropology and Psychology, the revolutionary committee found a place in Victor C. Vaughan's Division of Medical Sciences, and support from the Bureau of Social Hygiene and the Rockefeller Foundation. Under the direction of psychologist Robert M. Yerkes, physiologist Walter B. Cannon, zoologist Frank R. Lillie, psychiatrist Thomas W. Salmon, and sociologist Katherine B. Davis, the studies of sex in the first twenty years of the project resulted in many new data and important discoveries in the knowledge of sex and reproduction, among them the discovery of the first of the known estrogens and the primary research into the pituitary hormones. In ~94~, zoologist Alfred C. Kinsey and his associates at Indiana University entered the program. Their much publicized reports on human sexual behavior, published in ~948 and ~953, classified and studied norms in human behavior and demonstrated the validity of scientific methods applied to the study of human sexual activity. Another two thousand papers and two more books were published before the Research Council committee was discharged in ~963.59 56 Millikan, "The Evolution of Twentieth-Century Physics," in Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for l 927, pp. ~ 94, ~ 99. 57 Millikan's italics, in Science 69:484 (May lo, ~9~9). For a later reflection, see "The Progress of Physics from ~848 to ~948," Science 108:233 (September 3, ~948). 58 "Minutes of the Council," November ~ 92 I, pp. ~ o7- ~ o8; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1922, p. 6~; 1923, pp. 34-35 et seq. 59 Sophie D. Aberle and George W. Corner, Twen0-f ve Years of Sex Research: History of the National Research Council Committee for Research in Problems of Sex, 1922-1947 (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., ~953), pp. 8 95., 60, passim; NAS Archives: MED: Committee for Research in Problems of Sex: ~9z ~-~963. See also NAS, Annual Reportfor 1949-50, pp. gong. (Continued overleap

26a~ I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy A second "major committee" in the Research Council arose from the renewed surge of immigration to this country after the war. Set up in October ~922 by anthropologists and psychologists under Robert M. Yerkes, the Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migra- tion, with the later assistance of the Social Science Research Coun- cil,60 sought formulation of the phenomenon of migration as "a world-problem" through studies of its psychological, anthropological, and social and economic characteristics. The committee in its five years of activity initiated twelve large-scale projects designed to de- velop the procedures and tests that would be fundamental to the study of immigration problems and to later social and historical research on the subject. A third committee deemed "major" in that period was one to provide Russian scientists, long isolated by social unrest and revolu- tion, with American scientific books, journals, and papers, published since January ~9~5. Because of the relation of the Council and Academy to the government, the committee was reconstituted on a private basis under Vernon Kellogg shortly after its formation. The committee subsequently sent over twelve tons of publications, through Hoover's American Relief Administration, for distribution to Russian universities and scientific organizations. For the end of Rockefeller support.of the Kinsey group in ~954, see W. B. Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research (New York: Harper & Row, ~972), Chapter XXIII. 60 Similar to the Academy-Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies in its predominantly university membership, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), organized in ~923 and incorporated in December ~924, represented the leading American associations in political science, economics, sociology, statistics, his- tory, anthropology, and psychology. Members of the Academy on its roster included Edwin B. Wilson and Robert S. Woodworth. 61 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1922, p. 69; 1923, pp.34—35,48; 1924—25, p. 94; NAS Archives: A&P: Committee on Scientific Problems of Human Migration: Background Data: ~9~7-~924; NRC, Reprint and Circular Series 58 (October ~924); final report, ibid., 87 (February ~929). Related to the migration committee work was the area of investigation initiated in anthropologist Clark Wissler's Committee on Race Characters. Pursued intermittently from ~92~ to ~926, and later as a Committee on Racial Problems under Minnesota anthropologist Albert E. leeks, in cooperation with the SSRC, it attempted to secure funds for rational investigations in a field that had tended to produce more emotion than scientific research (NAS Archives: A&P: Committee on Race Characters: ~92~- ~926; ibid., A&P: Com on the Study of the American Negro: ~926-~928; A&P: Com- mittee on Racial Problems: 1929-1932; NAS, Annual Report for 1925-26, pp. 92-93). 62 NAS, Annual Report for 1921, p. 13; 1923, p. 35; Science 55:667-668 June 1922); Science 58:339 (November 2, ~923); NAS Archives: INST Assoc: American Committee to Aid Russian Scientists with Scientific Literature: ~92~-~923.

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 263 An earlier project, in ~9~8, to assist in the establishment of a placement service for exiled Russian scientists, apparently failed to get beyond the proposal stage. Only slightly better success attended the committee set up in ~ 92 I, in cooperation with the Royal Society, to aid Russian scientific and literary men threatened with loss of their livelihood. Two years later the Research Council informally participated with happier results in a national committee or- ganized to aid Russian intellectuals exiled in Berlin.63 The committees foreshadowed the emergency committees to aid displaced German scholars in the early Ages and the beginning of the migration of intellectuals from Europe. Although the greater part of the activity of the Research Council was centered in the divisions, the Council's Executive Board adminis- tered certain multidisciplinary programs outside the scope of any one division, such as the NAS-NRC-AAAS Executive Committee on Natural Resources and the committee for the establishment of Science Service. A Committee on Publications supervised Hale's long-planned NRC Bulletin, publishing contributions of Research Council committees outside the scope of other periodicals, and the NRC Reprint and Circular Series, for miscellaneous materials in print for which the Research Council sought wider circulation. Ten numbers of the Bulletin and fourteen of the Reprint appeared the first year.64 Another committee reporting directly to the Executive Board was that on an International Auxiliary Language, set up in response to a proposal at the International Research Council meeting in London in ~9~9 to investigate "the possible outlook of the general problems" of such a language. The war had placed fresh emphasis on the interde- pendence of nations and their need for a single medium for the interchange of ideas. The dream of an artificial world language, dating back to the seventeenth century, gained many adherents in this country and abroad and was pursued under International Research Council auspices, almost to the eve of World War II, before it became apparent that no new Esperanto was likely to achieve acceptance.65 63 NAS Archives: EX Bd: Projects: Proposed: Placement Service for Russian Scientists: ~9~8; ibid., EX Bd: Projects: Co-op with Royal Society Appointments Committee for Russian Scientific & Literary Men: ~9~ I; ibid., INST Assoc: American Committee to Aid Russian Scientists with Scientific Literature: Relief of Russian Intellectuals Exiled in Berlin: ~922-~923. 64 NAS, Annual Report for 1919, pp. 72-73; 1920, pp. 40-42. 65 NAS, Annual Report for 1920, pp. 45-46; A Plan for Obtaining Agreement on an Auxiliary Worm Language, Brussels, ~936 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Committee on International Auxiliary Language: ~920-~936; ibid., INST Assoc: International Auxiliary Language Association: ~924-~936).

266 / Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy Some of the most important early activity in the Research Council began in the Committee to Consider Various Phases of Industrial Research and the Committee on the Present Status of Industrial Research Personnel. The latter committee sponsored a conference in ~92O of representatives of labor organizations, capital, management, engineers, scientists, educators, economists, and sociologists to discuss problems connected with industrial personnel and a possible program on the working conditions necessary for optimum productivity at all levels. One consequence was the organization in ~9~e and incorpora- tion three years later of the Personnel Research Federation under Engineering Foundation and Research Council auspices.66 A potential concern of the Federation was anticipated in ~9~3 when the Research Council's Division of Engineering set up a nineteen- member Committee on Industrial Lighting, with Thomas Edison its Honorary Chairman, Dugald C. Jackson of MET as Chairman, and among the members a representative of the Department of Com- merce, designated by Secretary Hoover, and a representative of the American Federation of Labor. Expecting to document the belief that industrial plants were seri- ously underlighted, the committee sought to determine scientifically the actual relation between work-site illumination and factory-worker efficiency. A controlled experiment was set up at the Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric Company in ~9~5. Two years later, the committee reported its principal finding, "that the influence of il- lumination on the mental attitude of the workers may as strongly affect the ease and speed of production as the direct influence of illumination on vision." Almost from the beginning, and contrary to all expectations, no positive relation could be established between changes in illumination and rate of work production. The extent of unquantifiable variables observed during the investigation ultimately suggested that factory output probably depended as much on the worker's psychological as on his physiological reaction.67 This finding of the committee led the management of the Haw- thorne Works to sponsor further studies carried out between ~92~7 and ~93e to determine the relation, if any, between productivity and environmental factors such as the length of work day, length of the work week, and the effect of rest pauses. The results of the studies, 66 NAS, Annual Report for ~920, pp. 43-44; ~922, pp. 34-35. 67 NAS, Annual Report for 1930 - 31, p. 56; NAS Archives: E&JR: Com on Industrial Lighting: Activities: Summary: ~ 923- ~ 936.

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 267 considered extremely significant in scientific and industrial circles, indicated that satisfactory social interrelationships in group work in industry produced higher levels of productivity than any physical improvement in working conditions.68 The series of reports, known as the Hawthorne Studies, led to a new committee four years later in the Research Council, on Work in Industry, under Harvard chemist Lawrence l. Henderson, to deter- mine better methods of investigating the physiological, psychological, and social effects of working and living conditions of men and women in industrial employment.69 Its final report in ~94~, published as Fatigue of Workers: Its Relation to Industrial Production, besides present- ing a rationale of research, agreed with the earlier finding that "the individual is powerfully motivated by a desire for an intimate and routine relation with his fellow workers," and brought to completion "one of the first exhaustive studies of the social problems of industry in a free society."70 The American Geophysical Union was originally set up in the Research Council under William Bowie of the U.S. Coast and Geo- detic Survey in ~9~9 to represent this country in the International Research Council's International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and also to serve as the Committee on Geophysics for the Research Council. Its active promotion over the years of the distinct yet related sciences of astronomy, geodesy, geology, meteorology, seismology, terrestrial magnetism, terrestrial electricity, tides, and volcanology was to culminate in the programs of the Academy-Research Council during the International Geophysical Year of ~957-58.7~ In an altogether different area was the Research Council's Commit- tee on the Concilium Bibliographicum, set up to obtain support for the work of the organization of that name founded in Zurich in ~895 to prepare a massive index from world scientific literature to all refer- ences of particular use to zoologists, anatomists, physiologists, biologists, and paleontologists. In ~g20 it was in financial peril, and 68 For the Hawthorne research, see F. ]. Roethlisberger and W. J. Dickson, Management and the Worker (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ~939); H. M. Parsons, "What Happened at Hawthorne?" Science 183:922-932 (March 8, ~974). 69 "Committee on Work in Industry, Report of [Initial] Meeting of March 9, ~938," p. 2 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Com on Work in Industry: Meetings: March ~938). 70 Fatigue of Workers, Its Relation to Industrial Production, ~ Committee on Work in Industry of the National Research Council (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corp., ~94~), p. 14; NAS, Annual Report for 1938-39, pp. 30-3 I; 1939~0, pp. 35-36. 7~ NAS, Annual Report for 1920, pp. 4~49, 86; source references in NAS Archives: EX Bd: AGU: Origin & Development of the AGU: ~9~9-~952: ~952.

268 Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy with a third of its subscribers in this country, the Concilium, through an NRC committee under Vernon Kellogg, obtained a five-year grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The sponsorship subsequently lapsed when the Research Council and American biologists, more concerned with abstracts than an index, transferred their support to the initiation of Biological Abstracts, which began publication in ~927.72 A National Research Council Committee for the Publication of Critical Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants, set up in Mao, was reorganized two years later at the request of the International Research Council as the Committee on International Critical Tables of Numerical Data. Edward W. Washburn, a National Bureau of Standards chemist, was editor. The Carnegie Corporation and more than a hundred industrial concerns needing such a work supported the project, which between ~926 and ~g3o produced seven volumes of tables totaling 3,404 pages.73 Another scientific and industrial aid was the serial Annual Tables of Constants and Numerical Data, published under French auspices since Tog. During World War II, the annual Tables were transferred to the United States under the auspices of a Research Council committee that had been established in ~9~ to coordinate American cooperation on the project.74 The Research Council by the late twenties was well established. It still had many problems of operation, cooperation, recognition, and acceptance, but it also had valuable experience that it was willing to share. On the occasion of a conference in ~9~8 with the Social Science Research Council, then in its fifth year, Albert L. Barrows, scholarly full-time Assistant Secretary of the National Research Council, spoke on the "Problems of the National Research Council," including the "working scheme" of its operations.75 72 NAS, Annual Report for 1920, pp. 46-47 et seq.; NAS Archives: B&A Series: PUBS: Concilium Bibliographicum: ~920-~927; ibid., PUBS: Biological Abstracts: Beginning: Summary: ~g~g-~g26; Donald Reddick, "A Grand Master Key to Biological Litera- ture," Science 77:625-626 (June So, ~933); D. H. Wenrich, "A Condensed History of Biological Abstracts," Biological Abstracts and the Literature of Biology (Philadelphia: Biological Abstracts, ~957). 75 NAS, Annual Report for 1920, p. 55 et seq. The project ended with the publication of an index in ~933. A summary of the development of the Tables appears in "International Critical Tables," September ~933 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Editorial Board and Trustees for Publication of International Critical Tables). 74 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1917, pp. 24-25; 1923, p. ~26; 1946~7, p. 58. Long interested in authoritative numerical data, the Academy established in 1957 an Office of Critical Tables to guide other organizations in their production of tables on a continuing basis (NAS, Annual Report for 1957-58, p. 36 et seq. ). 75"Social Science Research Council, Hanover Conference," August-September ~928, pp. 239-275 (NAS Archives: INST Assoc: SSRC: Hanover Conference: Transcript).

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 269 At that time almost seventy-five national scientific and technical societies were cooperating with the Research Council, their represen- tatives forming the nucleus of its huge divisional membership. The principal problems of organization were those connected with obtain- ing officers for the Council and its divisions, while at the same time maintaining continuity of administration. As Barrows said: It was originally felt that the Council should be manned administratively with a full time chairman of the Council, a general secretary, also on full time, and with full time men in the posts of division chairmen. It was soon found, however, that it was quite impossible to obtain the services, even for a year at a time, of men of the type desired for chairman of the Council, and that under the direction of a "non-resident" chairman and with the services of a full time secretary it is not necessary to maintain the office of a full time chairman. Consequently, since ~9~ the chief executive of the Council has been its Permanent Secretary, the function of the chairman becoming of a more general directing natured For the same reason, only a few of the division chairmen were full time, at salaries of approximately six thousand dollars a year. Some came for a semester of residence, but most visited Washington only two or three days each month, to transact business and meet with the Interim Committee.77 In divisions having part-time or nonresident chairmen, executive secretaries, usually younger men, were some- times brought in. Continuity of office routine was "maintained through an excellent corps of stenographic secretaries, most of whom have been in the Council for years." Altogether the Research Council had at the time between forty and fifty full-time employees. For its operation, Barrows said, the Council had approximately $~es,ooo a year in administrative funds, of which $~o,ooo was ear- 76~-, p 243. The operation of the Research Council had been considerably modified from that which Hale had originally projected on the basis of the wartime pattern, when he said: "Each of its divisions meets frequently, and during the intervals between these meetings the work of the divisions is conducted by a chairman, resident in Washington during his term of office, together with a vice chairman and a small executive committee. In addition there are the permanent officers of the council, who devote their whole time to its work and maintain its continuity" (NAS, Annual Report for 1918, p. 63). In partial explanation, see NAS Archives: EX Bd: Com on Policies: ~923. 77"Social Science Research Council, Hanover Conference," pp. 243-246. Established during the war to act between meetings of the Executive Board, the Interim Committee was reorganized in ~9~9 to consist of the Chairman of the Research Council, the Permanent Secretary, the Treasurer, the chairman or acting executive officer of each of the divisions, and the Director of the Research Information Service. See "Minutes of the Interim Committee," November 4, ~9~9, and "Minutes of the Executive Board," February ~ 4, ~ 92 2.

270 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy National Research Council staff in ~923. Left to right, back row: Dan Loomis, Charles L. Wade, Allen Fisher, John Gillick, Marie Blake, (unidentified), Eva Teague, Mary Dalton, Mrs. Breedlove, Ruth Albert, and William Davies. Front row: Miss Wood, Nyla Welpley, Helen Rankin, (unidentified), Mrs. Neva Reynolds, Mrs. Conger, Margaret Light, Marguerite LaDucer, (unidentified), Anna May Stambaugh, Callie Hull, and Honora Burton (From the archives of the Academy). marked for the activation and early support of research projects. "One basic principle has been not to commit the Council to continuous or even long term support of any given project." It was Council policy to keep its funds for the initiation of projects or their support in the early years. With exceptions, most undertakings soon developed and acquired sufficient strength of their own to assume an independent status, with funds from other sources. Each division of the Research Council, said Barrows, was expected to promote some new specific undertaking each year, and it had been found that the best way to initiate a project was to hold conferences to make an estimation of a situation, to define a program of research on a series of related problems, or to assemble a number of researchers on various phases of a problem in order to correlate their efforts. A division enterprise thus determined was submitted to the Council's Project Committee for critical review, to the Interim Committee or the Executive Board of the Council, and then to the Academy's Council for authorization of the acceptance of necessary funds.78 78 "Social Science Research Council, Hanover Conference," pp. 247, 250-253, 256, 259.

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the al cademy 1 2 7 1 This, in general, was the mode of activation and administration of projects. The Academy Acquires a Home The "new epoch in the history of the Academy" contemplated by Hale in his letter to Walcott in 191279 began with the establishment of the National Research Council four years later and culminated in the visible symbol of the imposing marble structure on Constitution Avenue dedicated in the spring of ~924. For more than forty years the Academy had sought secure quarters for its meetings and the keeping of its records, first at the Smithsonian, then in the Library of Congress, and elsewhere; but until the rise of industrial America made possible great philanthropic organizations, it had no prospect of a building of its own.~° As early as ~906, George Ellery Hale, man of vision and prime mover, had projected a building for the Academy. In ~9~3 he had tentative designs prepared for its interior arrangement. A year later, as chairman of an Academy building committee, he reported to the Academy Council his private discussions with Elihu Root, a member of the Board of Trustees of the recently organized Carnegie Corpora- tion, and obtained approval for continuance of the discussions. Walcott's proposed amendment to the Act of Incorporation, passed by Congress in May ~9~4, enabled the Academy to hold real estate; and Hale prepared a second brochure of the Academy (the first had been published in Cool, seeking an endowment for the recently established Proceedings, but principally directing attention to "the greatest need of the Academy," a building in Washington "to serve as its headquarters and permanent home." When the brochure ap- 79 Hale to Walcott, May ~7, ~91:2 (NAS Archives: NAS: Future of NAS). See Chapter 7, pp. i94-~95 80 Hale to Root, December 20, ~9~3 (NAS Archives: NAS: Attempts to Secure Permanent Quarters). 81 Hale to R. S. Woodward, December 29, 1906, and January 2, 1913 (Carnegie Institution of Washington and California Institute of Technology, George Ellery Hale Papers: Microfilm Edition, ~968, Role 38, Frames40s-406; Roll 39, Frames 272-273). The designs later appeared in Science 41 :13-17 (lanuary I, ~9~5). 82"Minutes of the Council," March ~9~4, p. ~96; "Minutes of the Academy,'' April ~ 9 ~ 4, insert pp. ~ 7-25; NAS, Annual Report for 1914, p. 20. 85 "Minutes of the Council," December ~9~4, p. 66; NAS Archives: PUB Rel: Brochures: NAS: Description of Activities, Membership & Financial Needs of NAS: ~9~5. For the activities of Walcott and Hale's Committee on the Collection of Historical

272 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy peered, the war in Europe was four months old, an unpropitious time for its consideration. The war over and the National Research Council established on a permanent basis, Walcott and Hale returned to their plans for a building. In April ~ 9 ~ 9, with funds assured when the Academy acquired the site, the membership authorized the President to pro- ceed. By December, largely through the fund-raising efforts of Robert A. Millikan, the Academy had purchased Square 88, near the new Lincoln Memorial in Potomac Park, for $~8s,o~o.~. The New York architect Bertram G. Goodhue, recommended by Hale and the Commission of Fine Arts, had prepared building plans; and the Carnegie Corporation had authorized a sum of $~,3so,ooo for the building. The remainder of its gift of $s,ooo,ooo was to go for the establishment of an endowment, the income from which was to be used for the maintenance of the Research Council.84 The site purchased by the Academy was bounded on the north by C Street, by Twenty-first and Twenty-second streets on the east and west, and, cutting diagonally across its southern boundary, by Upper Water Street. Shortly after, through Walcott's intercession with Con- gress, Upper Water Street was closed off, making the Academy's land a quadrangle, with the southern boundary B Street, renamed Con- stitution Avenue in ~ 93 ~ .X5 Final plans for the building were completed in April ~9~, and the construction contract was let a year later, the completion date set for September So, ~923. Ground was broken in the first week of July 9, and construction began with the erection of seventy-four concrete piers set on bedrock. The cornerstone ceremonies took place three months later, on October So. Delayed for almost six months by Portraits, Manuscripts, Instruments, etc., begun then and continued for a decade, see "Minutes of the Academy," April ~9 ~4, pp. ~ 7, 40-43; April ~9 ~5, pp. ~ ~8- ~ ~9; NAS, Annual Report for 1915, p. 2 ~ et seq.; Science 41: 12 ( January ~ ~ ~ 9 ~ 5) 84 "Minutes of the Council," April ~9~9, p. 443; December ~9~9, pp. 504-506; "Excerpt from minutes of special meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation held Dec. ~9, ~9~9," attached to J. Bertram to Walcott, January 20, ~920 (NAS Archives: FINANCE: Funds: Grants: Carnegie Corp of NY: Building & Endowment Fund). The ultimate cost of the building, $~,4so,ooo, was met from transfers from the endowment (NAS, Annual Report for 1923 -24, p. 5 ~ ). For Hale's Committee on Building Plans, see NAS, Annual Reportfor 1920, p. 85 et seq., and its successor, Gano Dunn's Building Committee, in annual Reportfor 1923, p. ~ z5 et seq.; also WAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Committee on Building: Joint with NRC: 1919— ~ 923. 85 See "Minutes of the [NAS Council] Executive Committee," March lo, ~93~, p. 332.

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy / 273 Charles Doolittle Walcott, President of the Academy, placing the first cement under the -cornerstone of the Academy building on October So, 1922 (From the archives of the Academy). unavoidable construction difficulties, the building was completed less than a week before the dedication at the annual meeting in ~924.86 Members, guests, and dignitaries arriving for the dedication exer- cises on the morning of April 28 ("a fine spring day," Walcott noted in his diary) came up the broad walk past three inset reflecting pools 86 Acceptance of the plans and blueprints is reported in NAS, Annual Reportfor 1921, p. 21; 1922, p. 2. See also Annual Reportfor 1922, p. xii; Gano Dunn, memorandum to Carnegie Corporation . . . on the Building, May 3~, 1923 (NAS Archives: REAL Estate: Buildings: NAS-NRC). This archival file also has a list of the contents of the box deposited in the cornerstone. For the construction of the building, see annual Reportfor 1922, pp. 26-27; 1923, pp. 26-27. Walcott's much admired "building speech," given at the annual meeting in 1922 and printed in the Annual Report for 1922, pp. xi-xiv, is his only "preface" to an Annual Report.

274 / Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy _~_ ~ The Academy building under construction (From the archives of the Academy).

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 275 The Academy building, completed less than a. week before its dedication, and opened to the public on the following day, April 29, ~924 (From the archives of the Academy). leading to the Academy building, a massive, impressive three-storied structure, centered on the city square.87 The main floor comprised an entrance hall and a central domed auditorium encircled by seven exhibition rooms, the installation of their contents completed just the previous day. Mounted on the dome of the rotunda was Hale's coelostat telescope, which formed on a bronze drum a large image of the sun, capturing the diurnal passage of its sunspots. A sixty-foot Foucault pendulum was suspended from the eye of the dome to demonstrate the diurnal motion of the earth. (The instruments and the surrounding exhibition rooms replaced the research laboratories Hale had originally intended.) A library, reading room, lecture hall, and board room were adjacent to the auditorium. Above the marble fireplace in the board room was Albert Herter's painting depicting (fictionally) Abraham Lincoln with seven of the founders of the Academy Benjamin Peirce, Alexander Dallas Bache, Joseph Henry, Louis Agassiz, Henry Wilson, Charles H. Davis, and Benjamin A. Gould. 87 Gano Dunn, memorandum to Carnegie Corp., May 3~, ~923 (NAS Archives: REAL Estate: Buildings: NAS-NRC). For the resurfacing of the approach to the building and replacement of the pools with panels of grass, see NAS, Annual Reportfor 1950-1951, p. xii. For Walcott's diary, see Smithsonian Institution Archives: C. D. Walcott Papers, Diaries, ~895-~927. 88 For a note on the Herter painting, see Leonard Carmichael, "Joseph Henry and the National Academy of Sciences," NAS, Proceedings 59:1-2 (July ~967). Descriptions of the building appear in NAS, Annual Report for 1923 -24, pp. 4-7; 1924-25, pp. ~ I, 32-34, 55-56; W. K. Harrison, "The Building of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council," Architecture 50:3-7 (October ~9~4); Paul Brockett, "Na-

276 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy Filling the basement area of the building were a two-story stack room for the library, an additional exhibition room, a machine shop for preparing exhibits, storage rooms soon to be occupied by the "several hundred boxes" of records, publications, and books of the Academy brought over from the Smithsonian a large kitchen, and boiler rooms and heating and ventilating apparatus.89 Fifty-seven offices occupied the upper stories of the building, and from their south and west windows the nearby Lincoln Memorial, the Potomac River, and the heights of Arlington were at that time clearly visible. "This building for the National Academy of Sciences and the Na- tional Research Council," Walcott had said at the annual meeting in ~9~2, "is to be the focus of science in America . . . emblematic of all the creative mind" can envision for "a better existence for the future people of the world. . . [to whose] enlightenment and advance- ment . . . it is dedicated." Dr. Albert A. Michelson, the new President of the Academy who presided over the dedication ceremonies, called it "the home of science in America." Of its structure and appoint- ments, a friend later wrote Hale, "the Academy . . . is housed in a manner surpassing that of the Academies of the Old World."90 The dedication ceremonies took place before an assembly of more tional Academy of Sciences," The Open Court 40 :193-203 (April ~ 9~6). The exhibits and scientific instruments are described in Annual Report for 1923-24, pp. 8-~o, 5~; 1924-25, pp. ~ I, 33-34 et seq. The exhibits, visited by 60,ooo people annually, were dismantled and stored in ~94~ and the rooms partitioned to provide wartime office space for the NDRC and later OSRD. See F. E. Wright to Jewett, September 2, ~94~ (Jewett file 50.6); Brockett to John Victory, November ~9, ~94~ (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Committee on Buildings & Grounds: ~94~); NAS,Annual Reportfor 1941-42, p. ~7. A room with several mimeograph machines was later converted to a small print shop and moved in ~967 to larger quarters on Bladensburg Road in Washington. For a more recent description of the Academy building, see the brochure, The Academy Building: A History and Descriptive Guide (Washington: NAS-NRC, ~ 97 ~ ). 89 Walcott noted the "several hundred boxes" in NAS, Annual Reportfor 1922, p. xi. They undoubtedly included "the academy archives" reported in NAS, Annual Reportfor 1910, p. lo, and some portion of the ~4o,ooo volumes brought from storage at the Smithso- nian, mentioned in Annual Report for 1924-25, pp. I-2. For the allocation of space in the building, see Annual Reportfor 1923-24, pp. 38-40. A year later, Paul Brockett, whom Walcott had brought over earlier from the Smithso- nian, was appointed assistant secretary in charge of the building and a member of the building and exhibits committees, positions he held for the next twenty years. 90 NAs,Annnal Reportfor 1922, pp. xiv, ~9; 1923-24, p. I; H. M. Goodwin, MIT physical electrochemist, to Hale, n.d. (Hale Microfilm, Roll ~5, Frames ~362/5). See also Hale, "A National Focus of Science and Research," Scribner's 72:515-530 (November 1922), with its drawings by architect Goodhue, and NRC, Reprint and Circular Series 39 ( ~ 9~ a).

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 277 than six hundred persons, including Academy and Research Council members and their invited guests; members of the Cabinet, the Congress, the Diplomatic Corps; the contributors to the building site; and the officers of the Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Found- ation. Dr. Michelson introduced the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Right Reverend James E. Freeman, who delivered the invoca- tion.9~ The principal address was given by the President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge. The program also included brief speeches by John C. Merriam, Vice-President of the Academy; Vernon Kellogg, the Permanent Secretary of the Research Council; and Gano Dunn, Chairman of the Building Committee. Although George Ellery Hale took no part in the ceremonies, he was twice "presented" to the assem- bly, first by President Michelson, then by Gano Dunn, "as the one man to whom we owe . . . this magnificent memorial to the sciences." As he turned over the building to the President of the Academy, Dunn chose, fittingly, to recite the inscription encircling the dome of the Great Hall, devised by Hale himself and his friend James Breasted: To science, pilot of industry, conqueror of disease, multiplier of the harvest, explorer of the universe, revealer of nature's laws, eternal guide to the truth.92 Following luncheon, Thomas Hunt Morgan, Columbia University experimental zoologist, delivered a lecture on "The Constitution of the Hereditary Material," drawing on his currently much celebrated research on the genetic mechanism of sex determination. Late in the day the Academy ceremoniously assigned Room ~22 to the Engineer- ing Foundation, in appreciation of its assistance in establishing the 9~ In the gathering for the dedication were ~o6 of the Academy's Rio members, including past Presidents Ira Remsen and William Welch, new President A. A. Michel- son, and future Presidents T. H. Morgan, W. W. Campbell, and F. B. [ewett [see lists in NAS Archives: REAL Estate: Buildings: NA0NRC: Dedication: Invitations & Responses: ~924; also Hale to Walcott, January 25, ~924 (ibid., Arrangements: ~923-24)]. 92 Helen Wright, Explorer of the Universe: ~ Biography of George Ellery Hale (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., ~966), p. 3~6; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1923-24, pp. 5~, 53. For the printed program, see NAS Archives: REAL Estate: Buildings: NAS—NRC: Dedication: Program; for the inscription, see Dunn to Hale, May ~7, ~9~3, and Hale to Dunn, June 3, ~923 (Hale Microfilm, Roll 48, Frames 53, 67). The "Charter Book" that Hale planned, like that of the Royal Society, was not realized [Paul Brockett to Hale, December 3~, ~9~3 (Hale Microfilm, Roll 48, Frames 334-345)].

278 / Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy Albert A. Michelson, Charles D. Walcott, Vernon L. Kellogg, President Coolidge, John C. Merriam, Bishop lames E. Freeman, and Gano Dunn at the dedication of the Academy building, April 28, ~924 (Photograph courtesy the Library of Congress). Research Council. After supper, officers and members of the Academy and Research Council held a reception for their guests.93 The event was widely reported in the national press, a number of the papers printing the complete text of President Coolidge's address. Many of the readers had heard the ceremonies broadcast over the radi~still a great novelty, not to say a national crazed WCAP in Washington, WEAF in New York, and WEAR in Providence. Newspaper accounts agreed that the new building was "one of the handsomest in Washington," that its construction, in which "even the stones of the wall. . . twere] artificially made to improve acoustic properties," was a triumph of science. Feature articles later that week described in detail the great show of exhibits in, as one paper called it, the "Miracle Palace in the Capital." A San Francisco paper, possibly influenced by the wire report, captioned its story: "Coolidge Dedi- cates American Museum."94 Perhaps the most gratified member of the assemblage was Dr. Walcott, for whom the years as President of the Academy had probably been more exacting than any since Joseph Henry's time. In 95 The single most complete account of the building from its inception to the dedication ceremonies appears in NAS, Annual Reportfor 1923-24, pp. ~-~2, 38-54, 6445. 94 San Francisco Examiner, April 29, ~924 (NAS Archives: PUB Rel: NewsDaDer Articles on NAS—NRC Building: ~ 9 ~ 9—~ 936). 1 ~

Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy 1 279 The Great Hall of the Academy (From the archives of the Academy). his diary, where he recorded faithfully daily events but rarely an emotion, he made note of his thankfulness that after twenty-five years his official duties in the Academy had ended.95 The connection was by no means severed, however. Though he had recently passed his seventy-fourth birthday, he continued as a Vice-Chairman of the gs Smithsonian Archives: C. D. Walcott Papers, Diaries, ~895-~927, entry for April 27, ~923

280 I Permanent Status for the NRC; New Home for the Academy Research Council, Chairman of its Division of Federal Relations, and a member of two standing committees in the Academy, as well as Secretary of the Smithsonian, until his death three years later. E. B. Wilson commented that there had never before been "a President twho resided] in Washington and shad] really taken care of the affairs of the academy in the way Walcott did."96 His many years in that office were long remembered as a time of serene control amid vast activity, a time of wise administration and of high accomplish- ment. 96 E. B. Wilson to E. G. Conklin, lanuary ~6, ~939 (NAS Archives: E. B. Wilson Papers).

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The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 Get This Book
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Among the oldest and most enduring of American institutions are those that have been devoted to the encouragement of the arts and the sciences. During the nineteenth century, a great many scientific societies came and went, and a few in individual disciplines achieved permanence. But the century also witnessed the founding of three major organizations with broadly interdisciplinary interests: the Smithsonian Institution in 1846; the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, which in 1848 became the American Association for the Promotion (later, Advancement) of Science; and the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.

The founding of the National Academy of Sciences represented a momentous event in the history of science in the United States. Its establishment in the midst of a great civil war was fortuitous, perhaps, and its early existence precarious; and in this it mirrored the state of science at that time. The antecedents of the new organization in American science were the national academies in Great Britain and on the Continent, whose membership included the principal men of science of the realm. The chartering of academies under the auspices of a sovereign lent the prestige and elements of support and permanence the scientists sought, and in return they made their scientific talents and counsel available to the state.

The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 describes the National Academies from inception through the beginning of the space age. The book describes the Academies' work through different periods in history, including the Postbellum years, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II.

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