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Oswald Veblen and the Capitalization of American Mathematics: Raising Money for Research, 1923-1928 Author(S): Loren Butler Feffer Source: Isis, Vol

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Oswald Veblen and the Capitalization of American Mathematics: Raising Money for Research, 1923-1928 Author(S): Loren Butler Feffer Source: Isis, Vol Oswald Veblen and the Capitalization of American Mathematics: Raising Money for Research, 1923-1928 Author(s): Loren Butler Feffer Source: Isis, Vol. 89, No. 3 (Sep., 1998), pp. 474-497 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/237143 . Accessed: 03/05/2011 21:19 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. 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The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis. http://www.jstor.org Oswald Veblen and the Capitalization of American Mathematics Raising Money for Research, 1923-1928 By Loren Butler Feffer* ABSTRACT Between the world wars, all the scientific professions in the United States underwent tremendousgrowth. The wartime experiences of scientific leaders whetted their appetites for the continuationof some kind of concentrated,well-funded research programs. Turning not to governmentbut instead to philanthropy,physicists and chemists worked to parlay theirpostwar prestige into greatersupport for unfetteredresearch. Leaders of the American mathematicalcommunity also wantedto expandtheir base of supportbut found themselves facing unique obstacles. Attempts to raise money to support mathematicalresearch had mixed results. This article discusses primarilythe efforts led by Oswald Veblen in the 1920s to collect funds to supportmathematics through Princeton University and the Amer- ican MathematicalSociety in the context of this climate of expansion for the physical sciences. The mathematicalcommunity in Americahas not yet received the level of careful study historianshave appliedto the physics community;this articlealso attemptsto redress that imbalance. PARTICIPATION IN RESEARCH EFFORTS for the government during World War I gave many scientists a sense of buoyant optimism about the future of science in Amer- ica. Robert Millikan, one of the nation's most prominent physicists and soon to be named a Nobel laureate, spoke for his colleagues when he voiced the hope that the lessons the war taught the American people would now bring such great support for science that in a very few years we shall be in a new place as a scientific nation and shall see men coming from the ends of the earth to catch the inspirationof our leaders and to share in the results which have come from our developmentsin science. If we fail to seize these opportunitiesthen the scepter will pass from us and go to those who are better qualified to wield it. *163 Lloyd Road, Aberdeen,New Jersey 07747. Isis, 1998, 89:474-497 ?D1998 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/98/8903-0004$02.00 474 LOREN BUTLER FEFFER 475 Millikan's vision was quite clear. The decade following war's end was to be a time of expansion for American science and American universities;for the first time, leaders of the scientific communities found themselves within reach of large sums of money that, with proper planning, could be committed to the direct support of research. Wartime research,with its organizationand support,whetted the appetitesfor growth of leaders in Americanphysics, chemistry,and mathematics,and they sought to transformtheir wartime organizationand prestige into access to private capital.' Physicists and chemists enteredpostwar fundraising with a new and distinct advantage, as they could make much of theirimportance to nationalinterests by recallingcontributions to dye synthesis, submarinedetection, and chemical warfare.The RockefellerFoundation was moved to supportphysics and chemistry, first with a programof postdoctoralfellow- ships for the National Research Council initiated in 1919. With this program,the Rocke- feller Foundationbecame the cornerstoneof a constituency physical scientists worked to assemble during the decade of the 1920s.2 But despite the productiverelationships they established with the Rockefeller organization and other philanthropists,another major sector of the scientists' hoped-for constituency-industry-failed to respond with the de- sired enthusiasm to supportunfettered university-based scientific research.The collapse of scientists' largest independentinitiative to raise money, the National Research Fund campaign, was clear demonstrationof the difficulties they had in publicizing their disci- plines to a wide audience. Rhetoricalstrategies trumpeting the utility of science for prog- ress thathad seemed timely in the culturalclimate of 1920s Americafell shortof persuasion when applied to fundraisingamong industrialists.3 Mathematicianshad also joined enthusiasticallyin wartimeprojects. Some, such as Max Mason, collaboratedon efforts staffed by physicists, chemists, or engineers. Otherstaught special courses for soldiers under the auspices of the Students' Army TrainingCorps and other organizations.Probably the most significant mathematicalwork, however, was on problems in ballistics and ordnancecarried out in Washington,D.C., and at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.Led by the Princeton University mathematicianOswald Veblen, this group performedtests and calculatedrange tables for the redesignedartillery Americans took with them to fight in Europe. While this work was probablyas valuable as any done by scientistsfor the war effort, mathematicswas includedin neitherthe rhetoric nor the plans of those who looked to muster supportfor physics and chemistry after the 1 Robert Millikan, "The New Opportunityin Science," Science, 1919, 50:285-297, on p. 297. On American science duringWorld War I see, e.g., Daniel Kevles, The Physicists: A ScientificCommunity in ModernAmerica (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 102-154; and Robert Yerkes, The New World of Science-Its Devel- opmentduring the War (New York: Century, 1920). 2 The literatureon the Rockefeller Foundationis extensive. Recent work directly relevantto understandingits role in the developmentof American scientific communities includes Alexi Assmus, "The Creationof Postdoc- toral Fellowships and the Siting of American Scientific Research,"Minerva, 1993, 31:151-183; Roger Geiger, To Advance Knowledge:The Growthof AmericanResearch Universities,1900-1940 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986); and Robert Kohler, Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Sciences (Chicago: Univ. Chi- cago Press, 1991). On the negotiationsbehind the establishmentof the fellowships see Nathan Reingold, "The Case of the DisappearingLaboratory," in Science, American Style (New Brunswick,N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 224-246. 3 The National Research Fund Campaign,begun in 1925, aimed to raise $2 million from industryto support scientific research.Led by Secretaryof Commerce HerbertHoover along with George Ellery Hale and Robert Millikan, fundraisingefforts continued until 1930. But corporatesupport fell far below expectations, and the fund ultimately collapsed by 1932. The National Research Fund campaign is treatedin detail in Ronald Tobey, The American Ideology of National Science, 1919-1930 (Pittsburgh:Univ. PittsburghPress, 1971). See also Lance E. Davis and Daniel J. Kevles, "The National Research Fund: A Case Study in the IndustrialSupport of Academic Science," Minerva, 1974, 12:213-220; and Kevles, Physicists (cit. n. 1), pp. 185-187. 476 OSWALD VEBLEN AND THE CAPITALIZATIONOF AMERICANMATHEMATICS war. Fellow scientists, such as the psychologist Robert Yerkes, did not mention the math- ematicians' contributionswhen enumeratingwartime achievements, and mathematicswas not among the fields included in the postdoctoralfellowship programunderwritten by the Rockefeller Foundationfor the National Research Council. Despite an ongoing commit- ment to disciplinary autonomy and a dearth of shared research interests or borderland research, mathematiciansaligned themselves with the more publicized fields of physics and chemistryas one importantstrategy in their efforts to secure funds.4 While they failed to constructdependable constituencies of their own to supportinde- pendent institutional initiatives and were reluctant to accept government support, both mathematiciansand scientists had better luck within the context of universitycampaigns. There, willing cadres of donors had only to be persuadedto supportscience and mathe- matics as partof general plans for institutionalexpansion and improvement.An important part of the story of the capitalizationof American mathematicscan be told featuringthe efforts of the PrincetonUniversity mathematician Oswald Veblen.
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