William A. Koelsch Pioneer: The First American Graduate School of Geography Clark University Doctorate in Meteorology' Worcester, Mass. 01610 Abstract has seen as a climate of "disillusionment in the prospects of scientific meteorology that nearly extinguished the profes- This study examines one aspect of the early history of meteorology sion in the United States between 1890 and 1935." as a university discipline in America—the establishment in the late Through much of this period the principal spokesman for 19th century of a program of research and graduate training at The the development of meteorological research and training Johns Hopkins University. The cooperative efforts of Cleveland programs was Cleveland Abbe,2 for 45 years the chief scien- Abbe and other Weather Bureau officials with President Daniel Coit Gilman and Hopkins faculty members resulted, in 1891, in the estab- tific advisor of the U.S. Army's Signal Service and its succes- lishment of the Maryland State Weather Service in association with sor, the Weather Bureau of the Department of Agriculture. the university. Under Hopkins geologist William B. Clark, the As early as 1876, Abbe (Fig. 1) began bombarding university Service became both the focus for research and publication concern- presidents with proposals for a curriculum that would yield ing the meteorology and climatology of the Chesapeake Bay region, and the vehicle for a graduate program, culminating in the award of both baccalaureate and advanced degrees, statements on the the first American doctorate in this field to Oliver L. Fassig in 1899. aims and methods of meteorological research, surveys of developments in the field, and even lists of research topics for Ph.D. candidates and university researchers (Abbe, 1895; 1891). The late 19th century was an exciting period in the develop- ment of the environmental sciences, meteorology not ex- cepted. The 1880s and 1890s in particular saw stirrings of a "professional spirit" among American meteorologists, ex- emplified in such activities as the formation of the short-lived New England Meteorological Society (1884-96) and the co- terminous American Meteorological Journal, the provision of research facilities through the Signal Service's "Study Room" and the private Blue Hill Meteorological Observa- tory (1884), and the transfer of the federal government's weather function from the military to a new civilian Weather Bureau (1891) (Koelsch, 1981; Whitnah, 1961). This drive toward professional status also found expres- sion in attempts to develop programs of research and gradu- ate training in the new and expanding universities of the period. Graduate study in meteorology was undertaken in several institutions under the chaperonage of the depart- ments of either physics or natural history, and their off- shoots, geology and physical geography (Koelsch, 1980a). None of these early efforts resulted in a sustained production of Ph.D.s in meteorology, a development that is probably best traced to the establishment, under the auspices of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronaut- ics, of the meteorological program at the Massachusetts In- stitute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1920s. Still, an exami- FIG. 1. Prof. Cleveland Abbe (courtesy of the Manuscript Division, U.S. Library of Congress). nation of these late 19th century educational experiments, culminating in the first American Ph.D. in meteorology just over 80 years ago, tells us something not only concerning in- 2 Cleveland Abbe (1838-1916) was born in New York City and stitutional strengths and weaknesses, but also about the at- earned his B. A. at the New York Free Academy (now City College) tempt of some meteorologists to overcome what Stone (1958) in 1857. He worked with Benjamin A. Gould on the Coast Survey's longitude studies in Cambridge and on astronomical problems with Otto Struve at the Observatory at Pulkowa. From 1868 to 1871 he was Director of the Cincinnati Observatory, where he developed a 1 Research for this paper was supported partially by a grant from system of storm warnings forecast from the telegraphic reports of the William Libbey Research Fund of the Graduate School of western stations. From 3 January 1871 until 3 August 1916 he was a Geography, Clark University. central figure in the U.S. Weather Service and in American meteor- 0003-0007/81/030362-06S05.50 ology, initially being the only scientist who held a full-time salaried ©1981 American Meteorological Society position as a meteorologist (Humphreys, 1919). 362 Vol. 62, No. 3, March 1981 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 10/02/21 03:13 PM UTC Bulletin American Meteorological Society 363 Abbe was a principal conduit for interpreting meteorolog- ical research taking place in Germany and France to Ameri- cans, a chief stimulus to the research and training program of the Signal Service, begun in 1881 under Gen. William B. Hazen; and publicist for meteorological education as editor of the MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW. After 1884, Abbe was, by courtesy, Professor of Meteorology in the new Corcoran Scientific School of Columbian University in Washington, where he supervised the training of Weather Service person- nel and would-be employees in programs leading to the B.S. degree in meteorology and, after the new School of Graduate Studies was opened in 1893, to the master's degree. Even before geographer Daniel Coit Gilman (Fig. 2) had been inaugurated as president of the yet unopened Johns Hopkins University3 in February 1876, Abbe began pressing him to institute a graduate program in meteorology.4 The fol- lowing year Abbe also discussed with Gilman the possibility of establishing a state weather service in connection with the new university (Fassig, 1899). In 1882 the Signal Service in- stituted a program of cooperation with university physicists at Hopkins and Harvard in the study of atmospheric electric- ity. One of the Service's newly recruited college graduates, Park Morrill, was detached from Abbe's "Study Room" to Prof. Henry A. Rowland's physical laboratory at Hopkins, where he made observations and developed new instrumen- tation for such studies (Mendenhall, 1891). FIG. 2. Pres. Daniel Coit Gilman (courtesy of the Archives, Gen. A. W. Greeley, Hazen's successor as head of the Sig- The Johns Hopkins University). nal Service, periodically came to Baltimore to lecture on cli- mate to the undergraduates. In December 1891, Abbe him- self lectured before the Hopkins Scientific Association, a gist who had joined the university's faculty in 1887. Clark forum before which future university directions were fre- (Fig. 3) was an adherent of the so-called new geology, a com- quently tested, on the topic "On the Possible Relations of a prehensive science of the earth's surface then also termed University to Meteorology" (Abbe, 1892). In 1893 Abbe pub- "physical geography." In addition to his principal work in licly offered his considerable meteorological library to any of paleontology and stratigraphy, during the early 1890s Clark a short list of new universities (including Hopkins) "where taught the required undergraduate physical and historical the auxiliary physical and mathematical sciences are prop- geography course, soon substituting meteorology for the his- erly taught," which would establish a "well-endowed meteor- torical content that historians J. Franklin Jameson and ological institute" (Abbe, 1893). Herbert Baxter Adams had given it earlier. This course pro- The major task of organizing facilities and instruction in vided an enrollment of between 40 and 60 students each year meteorology at Hopkins, however, was the responsibility of to Clark's small department. Prof. William Morris Davis of Dr. William Bullock Clark,5 a Munich-trained paleontolo- Harvard University, then the country's leading physical geo- grapher, was brought in during February 1890 for 10 special lectures on climate, and again the following year for three 3 Two institutional histories of the early university, by French (1946) lectures on physical geography, including one on tornadoes.6 and Hawkins (1960), are drawn upon as background for this study, but are not separately referenced. Professor Hawkins prefaces his in- During 1890-91, primarily through Clark's efforts, the sightful study by affirming that "the documentary material is rich, University became host to two scientific agencies of direct and there is much of significance that is not told here. The role which concern to the new geology. The first of these was the Soil most of the departments played in the development of their disci- Survey of Maryland, carried on from a Hopkins base by plines in America and in the creation of new disciplines is only sug- Prof. Milton Whitney of the Maryland Agricultural College. gested." This brief study may be seen, then, as an extended footnote to Hawkins's book. The second was the Maryland State Weather Service, estab- 4 Manuscript collections used in the preparation of this paper are lished in May 1891 with Professor Clark as Director and Pro- referenced only once each and all germane individual letters in that fessor Whitney as Secretary-Treasurer. By agreement with collection are cited under the reference, as in the Daniel Coit Gilman General Greeley, confirmed later that year by Prof. Mark Papers, Special Collections Department, Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University: Abbe to Gilman, 9 and 13 February 1876 and 21 November 1891; Gilman, Memorandum, 4 November 1891 with additions by W. B. Clark; Clark to Gilman, 27 July and 18 6 Much specific information about programs, courses, special lec- August 1896; and A. W. Greeley to Gilman, 21 December 1888. tures, etc., is drawn from two official university publication series: 5 William Bullock Clark (1860-1917) was born in Brattleboro, Vt., the Annual Report of the President of Johns Hopkins University, from and educated at Amherst College before going to Germany for 1876; and The Johns Hopkins University Circulars, Quarto Series, graduate study.