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OCR for page 317
The Academy
during the
Great Depression
WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (~93 ~—~935)
If Herbert Hoover, an Academy member since ~922, seldom called
for the advice of the Academy or the Research Council while he was
Secretary of Commerce (~9~-~9~8), he ceased to do so altogether
when he became President of the United States in ~9~9. Nevertheless,
the twenties were busy years for the Academy, which received re-
quests for information on peripheral concerns of the federal depart-
ments.
As the initial panic subsided after the stock market crash in October
~9~9, Hoover instituted market and bank reforms and poured funds
into state and federal public works in an effort to shore up the
shattered economy. Suddenly in ~93~ the currencies and markets of
Europe collapsed, and nothing here or elsewhere could stay the
worldwide depression that ensued.
The year that Europe collapsed and this country entered into the
Great Depression, Campbell, then in his seventieth year, was elected
317
OCR for page 318
318 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931—1935)
William Wallace Campbell,
President of the Academy,
~93~-~935 (From the archives
of the Academy).
President of the Academy. He held office through one of the unhap-
piest periods in the administrative history of the Academy.
William Wallace Campbell came of Scottish pioneers who settled in
Ohio in the late eighteenth century. The last of six children. he was
7
born on April ~ I, ~862. He demonstrated all through school a
marked talent for mathematics, and with the encouragement of his
teachers entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in ~88e to
, · . · .
study ClV1 englneerlng.
In his third year at Michigan, he read Simon Newcomb's Popular
Astronomy (~8~8), found a friend in John M. Schaeberle, the Director
of the University Observatory, and discovered his lifework. His read-
ing of James C. Watson's Theoretical Astronomy (~868) inspired him to
make his first calculations of comet orbits.
After graduation, Campbell was Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Colorado for two years. In ~888, when Schaeberle
resigned his position at Ann Arbor to join the staff of the new Lick
Observatory at the University of California, Campbell was invited to
Michigan as an instructor in astronomy. In October ~889, Campbell
wrote Director Edward S. Holden at Lick, asking if he could spend the
time from June to September at the observatory learning about the
OCR for page 319
The Academy during the Great Depression 1 319
instruments and helping in any way he could. He was granted
permission and did so. In November 1890, he applied as a special
student at Lick for the summer of ~89~, and was again accepted.
However, on April 22, ~89~, Holden nominated Campbell as as-
tronomer, and he came to Lick in that capacity.
Campbell appears to have been a compulsive and tireless worker all
his life; and he found his calling at a propitious time, for astronomy in
the decades around the turn of the century was a wonderfully fertile
field for newcomers. His career was launched when the international
interest in the discovery of a brilliant "new" star in ~89~ led him to the
study of the spectra of nebulae. He noted that the spectral lines did
not have the same relative intensity in all parts of a nebula. This
conclusion was hotly disputed by other astronomers, but Campbell
marshaled evidence that compelled its general acceptance.
His assertion in ~894 of the relative scarcity of water-vapor and
oxygen in the Martian atmosphere provoked another controversy,
whose final resolution seetns only now in sight. The debate lasted for
well over a decade, as his continued observations questioned the
long-held beliefs of many able astronomers in the possibility of life on
Mars. In agog he made interesting observations of Polaris, which
suggested it was a multiple system. Later observations have shown
that Polaris is a binary system of which the main component is a
pulsating star.
Campbell's appointment as Director of Lick Observatory on Mount
Hamilton in egos, the year before he was elected to Academy mem-
bership, turned him with reluctance to administrative duties, which
proved no deterrent, however, to the long years he was to spend on
observations of the radial velocities of stars and nebulae. In ~896 he
had begun recording these quantities, fundamental to the calculation
of the scale and structure of our stellar system and of the "universe,"
and finally, with Dr. Joseph H. Moore, assembled and published the
great catalogue, Radial Velocities of Stars, in ~ 928. He considered it the
most important work of his career.
His observations of the gravitational deviation of light, which he
made during an eclipse in 9, first made a definitive verification of
Einstein's prediction of that phenomenon from his general theory of
relativity. It was on Campbell's return from another eclipse expedi-
tion in ~923 that he was met by a delegation of the regents and
offered the presidency of the University of California. While retain-
ing the direction of his Observatory, he guided the University firmly
for the next seven years.
In Ago, in his sixty-eighth year and with failing sight in one
OCR for page 320
320 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931—1935)
ey~he lost it two years later he announced his retirement. Hon-
ored as President Emeritus of the University and Director Emeritus
and Astronomer Emeritus of the Observatory, he retired to his home
on Mount Hamilton. Ten months later he received word that he had
been nominated to succeed Dr. Morgan as President of the Academy,
and was persuaded by his long-time friend, fellow academician, and
colleague at the Observatory, William Hammond Wright, to accept
the office.2 He did so, as his good friend E. B. Wilson said, "after a
long and most distinguished astronomical career more or less isolated
atop Mt. Hamilton," to pilot the Academy through what seemed likely
to be a static period in its affairs.S
Dr. Campbell's close associates in what he called "the higher admin-
istration of the Academy" were E. B. Wilson, managing editor of the
Academy Proceedings since ~9~4 and one keenly aware of the Acad-
emy's intimate history; David White, former Chief Geologist of
the Geological Survey and Vice-President of the Academy; Arthur L.
Day, Director of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institu-
tion of Washington and, in ~933, successor to White as Academy
Vice-President; Fred E. Wright, petrologist in the Carnegie Institu-
tion's Geophysical Laboratory and Home Secretary of the Academy;
and John C. Merriam, President of the Carnegie Institution, White's
predecessor as Vice-President of the Academy, and Chairman of
several of the Academy's standing committees.4
Reorganization of the National Research Council
At the outset of Campbell's presidency, the Academy and the Re-
search Council were, like the nation, reacting to the onset of the
Depression. Funds for the administration of the Academy had always
been inadequate, and those for the Research Council had become so
reduced that plans were being made for curtailment of its operations.5
Contributing to the uncertain state of Council affairs was the sudden
illness and resignation in the winter of ~93~ of Vernon L. Kellogg,
~ William H. Wright, NAS, Biographical Memoirs 25 :3~75 ( ~ 949); Science 71 :50~50
(May ~6, ~93°).
2 Biographical Memoirs, ibid., pp. 5 I, 53.
E. B. Wilson to Frederick Seitz, June Id, ~964 (NAS Archives: ORG: Historical Data).
~ See William W. Campbell to Fred E. Wright, June So, ~933 (NAS Archives: ORG:
NAS: General).
5 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1929-30, pp. 20, 22; 1930-31, p. 2-3.
OCR for page 321
William Henry Howell, Chair-
man of the National Research
Council, ~ 932- ~ 933 (From the
archives of the Academy).
The Academy during the Great Depression / 321
Permanent Secretary of the Research Council since ~9~9 and a key
~ . . .
figure In its operations.
The need to consider reorganization of the Research Council led to
the reactivation, in the early spring of ~932, of its long-dormant
Committee on Policies.6 On April ~9, with Robert A. Millikan presid-
ing, the committee met to reconsider, in the light of almost fifteen
years of activities, the structure and policies of the Research Council.
It appointed a subcommittee to recommend changes in the organiza-
tion that would see it through the next decade.7
6 The committee had last met briefly in April ~928 and found "no formal change in the
structure of the Research Council necessary or desirable" (report in NAS Archives: EX
Bd: Committee on Policies: ~ 9~ 8 ).
For a restatement of the relationship of the Research Council to the Academy at that
time, see "Minutes of Meeting," Committee on Policies, April 24, Age, p. ~7; Merriam
statement in NAS, "Minutes, Exec. Com. Meeting," October 25, ~932, pp. 479-480.
7 NAS, Annual Report for 1931-32, pp. 38-39.
To the normal complement of Millikan, ]. S. Ames, G. K. Burgess, Gano Dunn,
V. Kellogg, and R. Pearl, the committee on that occasion also included Campbell,
I. Bowman, K. T. Compton, S. Flexner, G. E. Hale, W. H. Howell, F. Jewett, F. R. Lillie,
J. C. Merriam, and F. E. Wright (NAS, Annual Report for 1931-32, p. ~56). Others
attending later committee meetings included E. G. Conklin, John Johnston, Max Mason,
OCR for page 322
322 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931—1935)
The committee agreed on the need for the National Research
Council, but felt that it had become overorganized. In seeking the
widest possible representation of national scientific societies, its divi-
sions had grown cumbersome. The size of some divisions, said the
Chairman-elect of the Research Council, Dr. William H. Howell,
approached "the characteristics of a national society itself." The ad-
ministrative apparatus was overstructured, and the Council as a whole
had tended to emphasize organization rather than projects. It was
further hampered by its dependence upon outside donors. Provision
should somehow be made for assured and adequate operating funds;
and more substantial research endowment funds ought to be at its
own disposal.8
Instead of basing its activities largely on the divisional organization,
as it tended to do, the Research Council should be promoting ac-
tivit~es of the widest possible importance to the nation by actively
aiding industry, stimulating greater research efforts in science and
industry, urging more and better research equipment, and encourag-
ing exploration in new fields.9 It ought to promote more education in
science, more training in new scientific techniques, and greater coor-
dination of research activities. The Research Council should be, as
Arthur A. Noyes declared, the "one central unifying national organi-
zation of science."~°
Millikan suggested that with strong direction in the Council it might
be possible to abolish the divisional organization completely and
simply organize around the Chairman and research projects. This,
however, was left to the Policies Subcommittee, appointed to consider
~1. A. Noyes, F. K. Richtmyer, William H. Welch, and A. L. Barrows. (The italicized were
involved in the founding of the Research Council in ~9~6.)
The subcommittee that met on May 26 under Millikan comprised I. Bowman, K. T.
Compton, S. Flexner, W. H. Howell, F. B. Jewett, J. C. Merriam, F. R. Lillie, and F. E.
Wright. The committee, subcommittee, and invited participants in the deliberations
numbered almost fifty and had prepared a 26g-page "Consolidated Report Upon the
Activities of the National Research Council from ~9~9 to ~932," subsequently revised as
"A History of the National Research Council, ~9~8-~933" and published in Science 77
(April-July ~933) and as a volume in the NRC, Reprint and Circular Series (No. bob,
~933). See R. A. Millikan to A. L. Barrows, March 5, ~932 (NAS Archives: ORG: NRC
Reorganization).
Committee on Policies, "Minutes of Meeting," April ~9, ~932, p. I; ibid., "Transcript,"
April 24, ~932, pp. 25, 28, 32 (NAS Archives: ORG: NRC Reorganization).
9 Ibid., "Transcript," April 24, ~932, pp. ~7-~9, 26, 29-3~.
The much-discussed "new fields" referred in almost every instance to "overlapping
projects" and "interrelated research," soon to be better known as "borderland re-
search."
Tibia., "Transcript," April 24, ~932, pp. 20, 26-27.
OCR for page 323
The Academy during the Great Depression / 3 2 3
whether to continue the present organization or streamline it and
whether or not to put "more emphasis upon research projects than
upon science-divisional machinery" and its relations with national
societies. ~~
If Millikan's committee was highly concerned that the Council was
"depressed financially like everyone else," Isaiah Bowman, on the
subcommittee, was more concerned that science was in imminent
danger of becoming the scapegoat for the current plight of the
nation. There was a serious challenge, he said, "from the assumption
of historians, economists and educators that physical scientists
have . . . a smooth-running scheme . . . [and] that the physical
sciences are essentially materialistic and [so] have . . . contributed to
the chaos of the times." He proposed that the Council prepare a
"Charter for Science" that would counter this image and the idea that
science consisted solely of making discoveries for the increase of
material safety or comfort. No charter was produced, however, and
science remained on the defensive throughout the decade.
The report of the subcommittee in May ~932, with its concern for
maintaining close relations with the national societies, recom-
mended no change in the organization of the seven science and
technology divisions, but instead reduction to committee status or
even discontinuance of the Divisions of Foreign Relations, States
Relations, and Educational Relations. It also recommended longer
terms of office for division chairmen and appointment of a full-time
Research Council Chairman at a substantial salary.
An absentee member of the subcommittee, Frank R. Lillie, mailed
in his report. His proposal was designed to promote a greater sense of
unity in the Research Council and foster interdisciplinary or border-
land research, but more immediately to simplify the Council's cum-
bersome structure and adapt it to reduced resources. He recom-
mended consolidating the four divisions of general relations into one
and the seven science divisions into threes Specifically, he proposed
3 Ibid., "Transcript," April 24, ~932, pp. ~3, ~5-~6; "Minutes . . . ," April ~9, ~932, p. 3.
'2 Ibid., "Minutes. . . ," April ~9, p. 2, and "Transcript," April 24, ~932, p. 35; Isaiah
Bowman to William H. Howell, May 9, ~932; Barrows to Subcommittee on Policies,
May 23, ~932 (NAS Archives: ORG: NRC Reorganization).
Bowman's "Charter" was prompted by Charles A. Beard, A Charter for the Social
Sciences in the Schools (New York: Scribner's, ~932), for the American Historical
Association. Bowman was on the AHA commission on direction.
` "Minutes of Meeting of Subcommittee," May 26, ~932.
~4 Frank R. Lillie to Subcommittee on Policies, May 23, ~932 (NAS Archives: ORG: NRC
Reorganization).
OCR for page 324
324 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (~93 ~—~935)
a division of physical sciences merging physical sciences, chemistry
and chemical technology, and geology and geography. A new biologi-
cal sciences division would comprise medical sciences, biology and
agriculture, and anthropology and psychology. A new division of
engineering and technology would combine the Division of Engineer-
ing and Industrial Research and the Research Information Service.
An advisory committee in each of the new divisions, selected by the
principal national societies concerned, was to represent jointly its
subdivisions.
At some variance with the subcommittee recommendations, the
reorganization plans assembled a month later by Howell and Noyes,
with modifications by Millikan, proposed a permanent full-time
Chairman (variously designated as Director, President, Secretary, and
Chairman) with powers and salary comparable to those of a university
president; retention of all divisions, general and scientific; and
three-year appointments for division chairmen, unsalaried in the
general divisions, part-time and salaried in the scientific divisions. A
last-minute letter from George Ellery Hale supported a reduction in
the structure of the Research Council, but strongly urged retention of
all existing divisions and particularly of the support of the national
scientific societies.~5
In April ~ 933, sixteen months after Kellogg's resignation, the
revisions made in the Articles of Organization and Bylaws of the
Research Council left the divisional structure intact and combined the
functions of the Permanent Secretary and the Chairman in the latter's
office. Instead of being elected annually, the Chairman was to hold
office at the pleasure of the Council's Executive Board. The executive
and administrative structures of the Research Council were simplified
and their effectiveness further increased by extension of the term of
division chairmen from one to three years. Finally, the membership of
divisions and committees remained constant, but the total number of
members in the Research Council itself was decreased by a reduction
in the number of members-at-large.
The effect was greater centralization in the administration of
Council affairs and increased interest in projects of larger scope than
had been practicable before. The reorganization greatly enhanced the
status of the Chairman of the National Research Council, a position
previously unsalaried and of brief tenure, but in which now rested the
~5 "Minutes of Meeting," June 2~, ~932, and attached reorganization plans and Hale
letter (NAS Archives: ORG: NRC Reorganization).
'6NAs,AnnualReportfor1932-33, pp.28-2g, ~37-~4~;1933-34, pp.48-4g.
OCR for page 325
Isaiah Bowman, Chairman of
the National Research Council,
~933-~935 (From the archives
of the Academy).
The Academy during the Great Depression / 325
initiative for policymaking and the direction of research projects that
had previously belonged to the Permanent Secretary.~7
Seeking a vigorous executive to head the renascent Research Coun-
cil, Millikan persuaded recently elected Academy member Isaiah
Bowman to accept the nomination. Bowman had been a member of
the wartime Research Council, Director since ~9~5 of the American
Geographical Society, and the country's leading expert in geography.
He was aggressive, highly articulate, and a tireless worker, qualities
reflecting his evangelical background. Some years before, while he
was serving as physiographer for the Justice Department in a bound-
ary case, his somewhat augural testimony was disputed, and he is
alleged to have replied: "I am called a major prophet; my name is
Isaiah."~9
The calling was clear, as Bowman became Chairman on July I,
~933. The nation was now in the depths of the Depression. Although
invested with new aims and energy, the Research Council had again to
7 See Appendix G for the succession of NRC Chairmen.
~8 Millikan to Frank B. Jewett, July ~2, ~946 (NAS Archives: Jewett file 50.7~).
~9 Of many versions of Bowman's retort, this is from Current Biography 1945, p. 66.
OCR for page 326
326 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931 - 1935)
retrench as both its operating and maintenance funds continued to
drop at the rate of more than 15 percent each year.20 And science and
technology were under increasing attack, stigmatized as the source of
the excessive production that had led to runaway inflation and the
collapse of world markets.
Three months after taking office, Bowman had the opportunity to
exercise some of its new prerogatives and to restore confidence in the
estate of science. This opportunity, described in Chapter is, was the
creation and extraordinary adventure of the Research Council's
Science Advisory Board.
Borderland Science
An interested participant in the reorganization of the Research Coun-
cil was Floyd K. Richtmyer, physicist, Dean of the Cornell Graduate
School, and Chairman of the NRC'S Division of Physical Sciences. All
meetings of the Committee on Policies had been greatly concerned
with the promotion of new fields of science, and Richtmyer's division
was then involved in developing two such fields, biochemistry and
biophysics. Notable advances were being made in both fields as a
result of the application of the quantitative methods of physics and
physical chemistry to investigations of biological and medical
phenomena through the use of new microscopic, spectroscopic, and
photometric techniques.
The words "interdiscipline" and "multidiscipline" did not appear in
dictionaries until the Ages, but the crossing of disciplines, as a
potentially valuable tool of science, had been advocated by George
Ellery Hale as early as agog. The theme of a lecture he gave at the
Royal Institution in London that year, on the rewarding results of
applying the methods and principles of one science to the exploration
20 Between ~93~ and ~937, total operating funds disbursed by the Research Council
plummeted from $~,oo4,6~s to $474,284, and general maintenance funds, for the
expenses of the divisions and their committees, salaries, publications, supplies, and
other expenses, from $~66,365 to $90,234 (NAS, Annual Report for 1930-31, pp.
45-46 · 1936-37, p. 39).
2~ The history of biochemistry dates from the late eighteenth century. Biophysics goes
back to the middle of the nineteenth century and the discourses of Antoine Lavoisier
and Claude Bernard on the necessity of applying the exact sciences to the empirical
sciences of life. See P. Lecomte du Nouy's introduction to "Molecular Physics in
Relation to Biology," NRC, Bulletin 69 (May ~929).
OCR for page 327
The Academy during the Great Depression 1 3 2 7
Charles G. Abbot, Floyd K. Richtmyer, Herbert E. Ives, and James McKeen Cattell at
the Academy meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, November 20, ~934 (Photograph courtesy
the Smithsonian Institution).
of another, was one that he elaborated again and again throughout
his career.22
In the spring of ~ 9 ~ 2, Hale had proposed that the Academy foster,
as the scientific societies could not, interest in "subjects lying between
the old-established divisions of science: for example, in physical
chemistry, astrophysics, geophysics, etc.," where recently some of the
greatest advances in science had been made. "Such subjects as physi-
ology and psychology have been transformed," he said, "by the
application of physical and chemical methods," and by encouraging
attention "to papers in departments of science other than their own,
[Academy] members are almost sure to encounter valuable sugges-
tions regarding research methods which can be anolied. directly or in
modified form, in their own field of work."23
~ ~ ,
22 Helen Wright, Explorer of the Universe: A Biography of George Ellery Hale (New York:
E. P. Dutton & Co., ~966), pp. 227, Rio.
An early instance of "the interfiliation of seemingly divergent scientific research," or
interdisciplinary research, was reported in the New York Daily Tribune on October 3 I,
~873, in a note on Academy member Alfred M. Mayer's investigation of "the hum of
the musketo's wing." See also NAS, Biographical Memoirs 8:253-254 (~9~6).
23 G. E. Hale to C. D. Walcott, May ~7, ~9~2 (NAS Archives: NAS: Future of NAS).
The "inter-relations of the fields of science" was a major theme of Hale's National
Academies and the Progress of Research (Lancaster, Pa: New Era Printing Co., n.d.),
reprinted from his Science articles, ~ 9 ~ 3- ~ 9 ~ 5.
OCR for page 336
336 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931 - 1935)
widespread ignorance on the part of physicists and medical re-
searchers of each other's methods, problems, and capabilities.45
Brackett's proposal in ~933 offered renewed hope, and Richtmyer
promptly appointed Williams Chairman of an Advisory Committee
on a Service Institute for Biological Physics. A year later, in June
~934, the Washington Biophysical Laboratory came into being.
A new Research Council Committee on Biophysics, under Lyman I.
Briggs of the National Bureau of Standards, became adviser to the
Laboratory and also constituted its Board of Directors. The Labora-
tory was an innovation of some complexity; it took shape slowly,
sustained by the Research Council and the interest of the Research
Council's new biologist Chairman, Dr. Lillie.46
More than two years passed in planning a program and formulat-
ing policy, during which, in order to emphasize its contemplated
independent status and to attract funds, the Laboratory was renamed
the Washington Biophysical Institute (WBl) and Frederick Brackett
became Director. In February ~937 the Rockefeller Foundation made
a grant to the Research Council of $7s,ooo over a f~ve-year period for
the Institute's planned joint researches with the U.S. Public Health
Service and National Bureau of Standards, beginning with a long-
planned study of the photochemistry of sterols.47 Later in the year,
with a new type of recording spectrometer and two spectrographs, the
original staff of the Institute a sterol chemist and his assistant, a
biophysicist, and an instrument maker set to work in a laboratory
provided at American University and in shop space made available at
the Bureau of Standards. Several months later, the main group
moved into a new industrial hygiene laboratory at the National
Institute of Health in Bethesda.48
45 Richtmyer to Trowbridge, January lo, ~92~ (NAS Archives: PS: Committee on
Physiological Optics); "Conference on Biophysics," February 2~, ~920; Trowbridge to
Horatio B. Williams, December so, ~920 (NAS Archives: PS: Committee on Biophysics).
46 NAS, Annual Report for 1934-35, p. 54; WBE, "Report on Activities . . . ," April 28,
~935; Barrows to Brackett, November 23, ~935; "Program Proposal," n.d. but probably
early summer ~935 (NAS Archives: PS: Board of Directors of WBl).
Members of the ~933 Advisory Committee were Briggs; Detlev W. Bronk, Director of
the University of Pennsylvania's Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics; E. Newton
Harvey, Princeton physiologist; and Kenneth S. Cole, Columbia physiologist.
Members of the committee and Board of Directors (~934-~937) were Briggs;
Richtmyer; Vincent du Vigneaud, Professor of Biochemistry at the George Washington
University School of Medicine; George W. McCoy, Director of the National Institute of
Health; James W. Jobling, Columbia physiologist; and F. S. Brackett, Secretary of the
Board and Director of Research (NAS, Annual Reportfor 1933-34, p. 66).
47 NAS, Annual Report for 1935-36, pp. 48-49; 1936-37, p. 37.
48 Secretary, Rockefeller Foundation, to Hektoen, February z4, ~937 (NAS Archives: PS:
OCR for page 337
The Academy during the Great Depression 1 33 7
With a somewhat larger staff the next year, the Washington
Biophysical Institute expanded the original program of exploratory
research in biophysical problems and development of instruments
and methods in quantitative biology to include a third objective, the
initiation of specific investigations having immediate application to
federal research projects. One proposal contemplated construction of
a mass spectrograph for studies in potential application of some of the
new isotope tracers; others looked to studies for the development of a
large-scale plant for the separation of heavy isotopes and to an
investigation of some of the speculations on uranium fission raised in
the pages of the Physical Review in the autumn of ~939.49
In October ~93' Alexander Hollaender, University of Wisconsin
biophysicist, arrived at the Institute to extend his studies of the effects
of ultraviolet radiation on microorganisms.50 A year after his arrival,
Hollaender went to the National Institute of Health with his project,
in keeping with the announced policy of the Biophysical Institute that
it would initiate or support researches that might not otherwise be
undertaken and, when they had demonstrated their value, turn them
over with their investigators to an established agency.5~ During the
five-year life of the Institute, twelve of its members, invited to study
problems of sterol chemistry, the photodynamic action of sunlight,
new methods of ultraviolet microscopy, radiation measurement, ul-
traviolet emission, and photoisomerization and photochemolysis, left
for permanent positions at the National Institute of Health, the
National Cancer Institute, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of the
Carnegie Institution, and the U.S. Weather Bureau. Even the Bureau
Board of Directors of WBl); memorandum, "History and Explanation of WBI," April 28,
~937 (NAS Archives: PS: Committee on Service Institute for Biophysics: Advisory);
Brackett, "Annual Report of the WBI, ~938-~939," April 7, ~939, p. ~ (NAs Archives:
Division of Physical Sciences Series: INST Assoc: WBl); NAS, Annual Report for 1938-39,
PP ~3, 39-4°.
49 NAS, Annual Report for 193940, pp. 52-53.
50 Hollaender had been working for several years at Wisconsin on this problem without
success under a grant from the Research Council's Committee on the Effects of
Radiation. See NAS, Annual Report for 1928-29, p. 89. . .1936-37, pp. 60-6~; A.
Hollaender and Walter D. Claus, "An Experimental Study of the Problem of Mitogene-
tic Radiation," NRC, Bulletin 100 Duly ~937).
5~ WBI, "Statement of Policy" [November 30, ~935] (NAS Archives: Ps: Committee on
Service Institute: Advisory); "Report of the First Year's Activities of the WBl" [March 4,
~938]; "Annual Report of the WBI, ~938-~939," April 7, ~939, pp. ~-2 (NAS Archives:
Division of Physical Sciences Series: INST Assoc: WBl).
OCR for page 338
338 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931—1935)
of Standards made an acquisition before the program ended, hiring
away George Steinacher, the Institute's prized instrument maker.52
By the spring of 1941, a biophysical nucleus had been established in
the National Institute of Health. Most of the Washington researches
had either been transferred or were nearing completion, and the new
instruments and methods in biophysical research had been proved. In
June 1942, as the original appropriation ran out, the Institute was
formally terminated.53
Engineering and Industracll Research
From its peak of activity in the l920S, when it was one of the most
flourishing elements in the Research Council, the Division of En-
g~neering and Industrial Research came close to dissolution during
the Depression, according to its Chairman Vannevar Bush, Dean of
Engineering and Vice-President of MIT. For a time it seemed to him
only a question of "whether it should be discontinued or reduced to a
mere paper existence."54
With its office in New York it was the only organizational unit of
the Research Council not in Washington the division had continued
after World War I as it had during it, as the principal distributor of
Engineering Foundation funds and administrator of research proj-
ects for its affiliated engineering societies and institutes. It survived a
proposal made in the spring of ~92~ that the Foundation take over
the division from the Council and achieved new vitality when in ~9~3
Maurice Holland came over from the Army Air Service, where he had
been Chief of the Industrial Engineering Branch, to become head of
the division staff in New York with the title of Director.55
In January ~924, the division merged with the Division of Research
Extension with the expressed purpose "to encourage, initiate, or-
ganize and coordinate fundamental and engineering research in the
field of industry and to serve as a clearing house for research
information of service to industry."56
52 "Annual Report of the WBI, ~94~-~942," p. 7.
53 "Annual Report of the WBI, ~g40-~g4~," p. 4; ink., "~g4~-~g42,"p~sim; NAS, Annul
Reportfor 194041, pp. 54-55; 194142, pp. 40-42.
54 Bush report, "The Problem of the Division of Engineering and Industrial Research,"
September 29, ~937, p. ~ (NAS Archives: E&JR: Problem of Division of E&IR).
55 Kellogg to Hale, February 22, ~923 (NAS Archives: ENG: Relations with Engineering
Foundation).
56 See Chapter lo, pp. 29~29 I.
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The Academy during the Great Depression 1 339
By 1930 the division administered some fifty projects through such
long-lived committees as those for Highway Research (since ~9~),
Welding Research ~ ~ 92 ~ ), Electrical Insulation ~ ~ 92 2), Heat Trans-
mission ~ ~ 923), and Industrial Lighting ~ ~ 924~. Recognition of the
importance of scientific research to industrial progress seemed to the
new division Chairman, Elmer A. Sperry, so well established that he
discontinued its further promotion. Instead, he had begun a national
industrial research survey to determine the need and opportunities
for more pure research in industry, and was trying to promote in
trade associations research of particular benefit to the fields they
represented.57 It was not a good time for such a project. In the major
cities of the nation, the reverberations of the stock market crash still
sounded, although its full effects were yet to be felt.
A year later, ~ 93 I, the division asked the industrial research labora-
tories canvassed in its national survey for an estimate of the impact of
"changed economic conditions" on their research. The continuing
survey recorded the first serious downturn in ~93~.58 Elsewhere the
downturn appeared more profound and more ominous.
Between ~9~9 and ~93e, in the wake of the market crash, s,ooo
banks closed their doors and 9 million savings accounts were wiped
out. Eighty-five thousand businesses with liabilities of $4.5 billion
failed. The resulting massive unemployment accelerated, as major
industries slashed their payrolls by almost 40 percent. Wage losses in
the nation amounted to $~6 billion. Against this background the
Great Depression deepened.59
In the search for causes of the profound depression that had settled
across the nation by ~933, the people blamed science and industry,
the faith in science of the Egos, and the national religion they had
made of business and industry. Such rapid technological advances
had been made in industry that the resulting mass production and
overproduction, so they believed, led inevitably to surfeit and eco-
nomic disaster.60
S7 NAs,Annual Reportfor 1928-29, pp. 66-67; 1929-30, pp. 7O-7~; 1931-32, p. 53; "A
History of the National Research Council, ~ 9 ~ 9- ~ 933," NRC, Reprint and Circular Series
106:19 (1933).
58 NAS, Annual Report for 1932-33, pp. 42-43.
59 Dixon Wecter, The Age of the Great Depression, 1929-1941 (New York: Macmillan Co.,
~948), pp- ~7-~8.
For Roosevelt's deep disillusionment with business and industry by ~ 937, see
lames A. Farley, Tim Farley's Story (New York: MacGraw-Hill Book Co., ~948), pp. coy,
cob, and John M. Blum, From the Morgenthau Diaries: Years of Crisis, 1928-1938
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., ~959), p. 390, entry for November 2, ~937.
60 Dexter S. Kimball, Cornell Dean of Engineering, "The Social Effects of Mass Produc-
OCR for page 340
340 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931-1935)
Industry had been slow to recognize the importance of research,
but once convinced, the number of industrial research laboratories
had risen spectacularly, increasing from 297 in 1920 to almost ~,ooo
in ~927, and in the next four years rose to 1,625.6i The promotion of
such laboratories had been a primary interest of the Research Coun-
cil's Division of Engineering and Industrial Research.
In the reorganization of the Research Council in 1933, the unique
structure of the Division of Engineering and Industrial Research was
acknowledged as essential to meeting the need for an especially wide
range of outside relations and for its necessarily extensive promo-
tional and educational activities. That special status was to be con-
tinued "in view also of the possibility that this Division might eventu-
ally become self-supporting on a rather large scale."62
The "possibility" was a plan to reconstruct the division as a central
service bureau for the research laboratories of industry. Still nebu-
lous, and with industry then unable to entertain such a long-range
design, the plan was temporarily shelved. The efforts of the division
were instead temporarily channeled into projects for the Research
Council's Science Advisory Board.
tion," Science 77:~-7 January 6, ~933); William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Pros-
perity, 1914-1932 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ~958), pp. ~87- ~88, 22 I, 245,
258-259, 267
For Frank B. Jewett's defense of science, see his "The Social Effects of Modern
Science," Science 76:23-26 (July 8, ~932).
6~ George Perazich and P. M. Field, Industrial Research and Changing Technology
(Philadelphia: Works Project Administration, logo), p. 7. The data for this eighty-one-
page study came from the six editions of "Industrial Research Laboratories of the
United States," published as NRC Bulletins between ~920 and ~938.
Although industry resisted the panaceas for recovery proposed for it, it continued on
its own to erect research laboratories, until by ~ 938 the WPA study found they
numbered more than ~,750.
Despite temporary retrenchment during the initial "severe business contraction,"
industrial research, almost alone in the industrial structure, obtained increasing funds
as the emphasis in research turned from the lowering of production costs to the
development of new products, greater production efficiency, and, as the laboratories
reported, increase in quality of current products (l~AS, Annual Reportfor 1931-32, p. 53;
1932-33, p. 43)
The NRC division publication in ~932, Malcolm H. Ross (ed.), Profitable Practice in
Industrial Research (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers), designed
for executives contemplating establishment or expansion of research laboratories, was
followed a year later by the widely distributed pamphlet, Holland and Sprargen's
Research in Hard Times (Washington: National Research Council), a report on the
reorientation of research in a time of contraction.
62 "Minutes of Meeting, Subcommittee of the Committee on Policies," May 26, ~932, p.
3 (NAS Archives: ORG: NRG Reorganization).
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The Academy during the Great Depression 1 341
Serving that Board as liaison with the Department of Commerce,
the Division of Engineering and Industrial Research worked with
Commerce on means for stimulating the development of new and
noncompetitive industries, on plans for centralizing railway research,
on means for increasing the safety of ships at sea under conditions of
fog and low visibility, and on a study of the relationship of the patent
system to the growth of new industries.63
By ~ 936, when Vannevar Bush became Chairman of the Division of
Engineering and Industrial Research, the Science Advisory Board
had recently been dissolved, and the division had just three active
committees: Electrical Insulation, Heat Transmission, and the High-
way Research Board. It faced a crisis.
Where a decade earlier the division had been practically alone in its
field, since then, Bush noted in his report of that crisis, the organiza-
tion of research agencies in national engineering societies and trade
associations, the increasing industrial research in the universities, and
the proliferation of commercial testing and consulting laboratories, to
which industry and federal bureaus had access, all but nullified the
division's promotional functions and reduced it to routine administra-
tive activities. Its income had shrunk in half, its ties with the Engineer-
ing Foundation had weakened as that agency had retrenched, and
efforts to obtain support from other foundations for new projects it
proposed had been fruitless.64
A way out of the impasse, and one that would provide long-term
support for the division, eventually came from a suggestion first made
by Maurice Holland in ~g30 and raised again by the division Chair-
man, Dugald C. Jackson, in ~932. The proposal was that the division
sponsor a central organization, supported by industrial research
laboratories, that would keep industry informed of relevant research
and research problems in university and government laboratories and
65 Science Advisory Board, Report, 1933-1934 (Washington, September 20, ~934), pp.
25-26; ibid., 1934-1935 (Washington, September I, ~935), pp. 49-50, 63-64, 32~-
34o; NAS, Annual Report for ~ 934 -35, pp. 47, 58.
Maurice Holland, Director of the New York office, in a "Summary of Analysis of the
Division's Organization and Operations ...," October 5, ~934, p. 5 (NAS Archives:
E&JR: Analysis of Division's Organization and Operations . . .), had reported coopera-
tion between federal bureaus and the division as "sporadic," and its utilization by the
Science Advisory Board "a disappointment." The participation of the division in the
Board the next year was, as it had been, limited to cooperation with the Department of
Commerce.
64 Bush report, "The Problem of the Division
14.
" September 29, ~937, pp. 7, 9-~o,
OCR for page 342
342 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931—1935)
act to promote closer relations among the three groups of labora-
tories.65
When Charles F. Kettering succeeded Jackson as Chairman in
1933, he suggested that the division act as a national clearinghouse to
bridge the gap between the fundamental research in the universities
and the applied research of industrial laboratories. Vannevar Bush
was cool to the idea. He pointed out that there already existed an
effective interchange of information between industry and the uni-
versities through attendance at scientific meetings, the discussion of
technical papers, and the visits of scientists back and forth between
the two types of laboratories. He saw a real opportunity for service,
however, on the part of a national organization such as the Research
Council "to develop a policy and outline procedure by which patents
resulting from university research will be licensed to industries and
the returns therefrom turned back to the universities to further
develop fundamental research."66 He pointed out that "generally
speaking" industry had tended to exploit university research and the
resulting patents and in consequence to dry up the source of funds
for the support of fundamental research in the universities.
Nevertheless, as the fortunes of the division declined, the idea of a
clearinghouse for industrial research gained favor; and when Bush,
persuaded by Jewett and Gano Dunn, took over the division chair in
~936, Holland in New York had already won a number of industrial
firms to a new plan, a "national association of research laboratories,"
operating under the sponsorship of the Division of Engineering and
Industrial Research. Independent, but affiliated with the division, the
association would serve as the connecting medium in the activities of
some sixteen hundred industrial research laboratories and, as Bush
envisioned it, would link that research with government through the
Research Council in the event of a national emergency.67
65 The plight of the division and the idea of a "central clearing house" for the
laboratories appeared in Holland to Barrows, June 5, Age, and attached report,
"Present Status and Future Possibilities of the Division" (NAS Archives: E&JR: Present
Status and Future Possibilities of the Division); "Annual Report of the Division . . Year
ending June 30, ~932," pp. ~2-~3 (NAS Archives: E&JR: Annual Report).
66 Holland, "Brief Report of . . . conference with Vice President Vannevar Bush of
MIT. . . on May 2~,~934 (NAS Archives: E&JR: General).
Holland's suggestion that the division be reorganized as a "national research Council"
for industry and its research laboratories appeared in his "Summary of Analysis . . . ,"
October 5, ~934, pp. 7-8. Kettering's plan is on p. 4.
67 Bush, "The Problem of the Division . . . ," p. ~3; "Minutes of Meeting, Executive
Committee, Division of Engineering," February Al, ~936, p. ~ (NAS Archives).
Memorandum, Holland to Barrows, December ~3, ~935, with his prospectus of
OCR for page 343
The Academy during the Great Depression 1 343
The prospectus Holland prepared in October 193' reviewed the
current operation of industrial research laboratories and their com-
mon problems of organization, staffing, management, and perform-
ance. The proposed national association, initially developed around
the staff of the Research Council's Division of Engineering and
Industrial Research, would provide, for an annual fee, a central
forum and information service to which member laboratories could
turn for advice and counsel. Such an association would provide a
much needed service to industry, said Bush, but would contribute
little to the revitalization of the division that events abroad were
making increasingly necessary.68
By December ~937, it was becoming clear that Germany, Italy, and
Russia were using the Spanish Civil War for the field testing of
modern weapons. Bush urged that the division set about a restructur-
ing that would "hold it ready for extraordinary action in emergency."
It was a wartime organization that he intended; and the first stage was
to be the transfer of its traditional activity, the fostering of industrial
research, to the proposed association. Supported by Frank Jewett,
Howard A. Poillon (President of Research Corporation and Vice-
Chairman of the division), Gano Dunn, and Ludvig Hektoen, Bush
obtained President Lillie's approval to proceed with planning the
association, which Maurice Holland would manage full timed
As admittedly "a somewhat radical step," Bush intended to reconsti-
tute the division membership by bringing in key men in industry,
engineering, and research who would be capable of acting effectively
in a time of emergency, particularly in preparing plans with govern-
ment departments and bureaus for the mobilization of research and
industry. Bush thought that when the association became established,
his division "should quite frankly . . . do practically nothing in time of
peace except keep the organization alive." Much of the current
membership, as members-at-large, would carry on the several cur-
rently active committees, and the New York office would act princi-
pally to maintain the lines of communication vital in an emergency.70
September 3, ~935, for a "National Research Laboratories Association . . . for Indus-
trial Research and Development" under NRC auspices, said it had been worked out with
the help of Jewett and Jackson and discussed thorou~hlv with Bush at MIT (NAS Archives:
E&JR: NRLA: Proposed).
68 Copy of prospectus, p. lo (NAS Archives: E&JR: NRLA: Proposed: ~937); NAS, Annual
Reportfor 1937-38, p. 4o; Bush, "The Problem of the Division . . . ," p. ~2.
69 Bush to Lillie, December 20, ~937, and replies December 24 and 27; Bush to Lillie,
December 3~, ~937 (NAS Archives: E&JR: Reorganization of Division: Proposed).
70Ibid., Bush to Lillie, December 20, ~937.
v ~
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344 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931 - 1935)
Both Millikan, Chairman of the Council's Committee on Policies,
and Max Mason, the California Institute of Technology mathe-
matician who was invited to that committee's deliberations, approved
the objectives of Bush's radical move and felt the Research Council as
a whole should be similarly functional rather than merely representa-
tive, as it had been since its inception. This had been discussed at
length but not accomplished in the reorganization of the Council five
years before; and when apprised of Bush's intentions, President Lillie
confessed that he, too, had become "quite concerned of late with the
idea that the present organization of the Academy and the Council is
not well suited to fad time of stress and emergency, and freor-
ganization] . . . should have serious consideration."7~
The Chairman of the Research Council, Ross G. Harrison, and the
Council's Executive Secretary, Albert Barrows, found "rather ex-
treme" (despite the unique status of Bush's division in the Council) his
proposal to change the division bylaws to permit the selection of its
members by the Academy and Research Council or by the division
itself, independent of the national societies. Acknowledging the high
merit of the basic proposal, Harrison suggested that a limited number
of engineering societies continue to be represented, but that Bush
should recommend appropriate individuals to the society presidents.
To do more would require amendment of the Research Council's
Articles of Organization.72
To accommodate the changes Bush wanted, the administrative
committee of the Research Council subsequently proposed a revision
in the Bylaws even more radical than Bush had contemplated, for it
overturned a policy dating from the establishment of the Research
Council and applied to all the divisions of science and technology.
Where for twenty years the Articles of Organization had said the
divisions "shall consist . . . of representatives of such national societies
as seem essential . . . to the Division," the Article now said that the
divisions "shall consist . . . of such members as may be authorized by
the executive board, which may include representatives of the Gov-
7t Millikan to Barrows, January 2~, ~938; NRC Office Memo 470, February i, ~938;
Lillie to Bush, December 24, ~937 (NAS Archives: E&JR: Reorganization of Division:
Proposed).
As Bush wrote to Ross G. Harrison on February 23, ~938 /(NAS Archives: ibid.), his
problem was allied "with the entire problem of the Council and the Academy."
72 Harrison to Bush, March 9, ~938 (NAS Archives: ibid.); Barrows to Millikan, April ~ I,
~938 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Com on Policies: General).
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The Academy during the Great Depression 1 345
ernment, representatives of national scientific societies. and
members-at-large. "73
The change in the Articles, approved by the Executive Board of the
Research Council in April ~939 and by the Academy that June,
substantially effected Bush's reforms. His reorganized division com-
prised nine members from the national engineering and technical
societies, nine from the engineering section of the Academy, and nine
members-at-large, selected, as Bush said, "to make the research
resources of industry available in the event of emergency needs."74
By then, too, the Holland-Bush industrial research organization
was a going concern. The year before, on February 25, ~ 938, at a meet-
ing held in the division offices in New York, the National Industrial
Research Laboratories Institute "as a last piece of promotional
effort" by the division, said Bush—had been launched under the
Executive Committee of the division for a trial period of two years.75
It was true, as Bush reported, that a "business situation which
appeared immediately after it was launched" the deepest of the
periodic slumps in the uneasy market had delayed it, but by the end
of winter it should be on its feet and either on its way to "an independent
self-supporting basis, or else liquidated."76 He was not a patient man.
The next year showed a substantial increase in the membership,
and the National Industrial Research Laboratories Institute was for-
mally renamed the Industrial Research Institute.77 By ~945 it had
become an independent organization.78
Meanwhile, in January ~g40 Bush turned the division over to his
successor, William L. Batt, President of SKF Industries, but kept in
touch as Vice-Chairman. Four months later he met with President
75 For the change in Article Ill, section ha), see NAS, Annual Reportfor 1937-38, p. ~ 2 I;
1938-39, pp. ~ 2 I-} 22.
74 NAS, Annual Report for 1938-39, p. 4~; Bush to Holland, October 5, ~938, and
Barrows to Administrative Committee, NRC, February a, ~939 (NAS Archives: E&JR:
Reorganization of Division).
75 Bush to Harrison, February 23, ~938; Barrows to Bush, January 24, ~938 (NAS
Archives: ibid.); "Proceedings, Organization Meeting of the IRI," February 25, ~938,
~3~ pp. (NAS Archives: E&JR: IRI: Meetings: Organization Meeting).
76 Bush to Harrison, July ~5 and October 4, ~938 (NAS Archives: E&JR, Reorganization
of Division).
77 In its second year the Institute had twenty-three corporation members; in its sixth
year, fifty-five (NAs,Annual Reportfor 1938-39, p. 4~; 1942~3, p. 39).
78 NAS, Annual Report for 1940-41, pp. 57-58; "Minutes, Executive Committee, E&IR,"
July ~5, ~943; NAs,Ann2`al Reportfor 1943~4, p. 35; resolution, "Dissolution of Formal
Relations between NRC and {RI, n.d. (NAS Archives: E&JR: IM: ~945).
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346 / WILLIAM WALLACE CAMPBELL (1931—1935)
Roosevelt to propose the organization of scientific resources for the
national emergency that the war in Europe had precipitated. In June
~g40 he became head of the President's National Defense Research
Committee (NDRC).
The Division of Engineering and Industrial Research, abolishing
the position of Director, transferred its New York office to Washing-
ton on November I, ~94~, a move that "contributed materially to the
usefulness of the division in connection with the war effort," its "close
contact with the executive offices of the Academy and Research
Council . . . Emore conducive] to promptness and efficiency in meet-
ing situations as they arise." That same month it began organizing the
metallurgical committees for NDRC that were to be a major wartime
activity of the division.79
79 NAS, Annual Report for 1941-42, p. 42; Durand to Barrows, October 24, ~94~ (NAS
Archives: E&JR: Reorganization of Division); correspondenceinE&~R: General: ~94~;
NAS, Annual Report for 1942-43, p. 38.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
william wallace
