The Industrial Relations of Science: Chemical Engineering at MIT, 1900-1939 Author(S): John W

The Industrial Relations of Science: Chemical Engineering at MIT, 1900-1939 Author(s): John W. Servos Source: Isis , Dec., 1980, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 530-549 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/230499

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This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Industrial Relations of Science: Chemical Engineering at MIT,

By John W. Servos*

THE CREATION OF INSTITUTIONS for the direct application of scientific theory and methods to industrial problems has been a prominent aspect of the development of science during the past century. From the 1870s business firms in Germany began to use significant numbers of scientists for more than such limited purposes as quality control; science became essential to the product and process innovation upon which entire industries depended. ' By 1900 in Germany and by 1920 in America, businessmen might turn to several institutions where science could be harnessed to meet their needs. These included industrial research laboratories owned by individual firms or trade associations, private consulting laboratories, such as Arthur D. Little, Inc., and government-sponsored research institutes, such as the Physikalische-Technische Reichsanstalt and the National Bureau of Standards. The university did not remain untouched by the expansion of science-based industry. Indeed, university laboratories came to join the ranks of those institutions that served as sites for the application of science. German firms were pioneers in forging links between industry and university laboratories during the late nineteenth century.2 Similar bonds were created in the United States during the decades following the turn of the century, when many American corporations began directly to subsidize scientific research and training at universities. It is to be expected that the infusion of funds from industry should have elicited a response from academic institutions and their scientists. What was this response? How did industrial patronage affect the evolution of academic science, basic and applied? And how did it influence the goals and values of scientists themselves? This essay analyzes the impact of industrial patronage on the organization and practice of science at one institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Attention will be focused on developments within its programs in chemistry and chemical engineering, since most of the questions evoked by the rapid growth of sponsored research at MIT either found their first expression or were reflected

*Program in the History and Philosophy of Science, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544. This article is a revised version of a paper that was read at the annual meeting of the History of Science Society in October 1978 and at the Johns Hopkins University's Colloquium in the History of Science in May 1979. I wish to thank Professors John J. Beer, Owen Hannaway, Arnold Thackray, and two anonymous referees for Isis for their suggestions. I am also grateful to the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Archives, particularly Miss Deborah A. Cozort. i See John J. Beer, The Emergence of the German Dye Industry, Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, 44 (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1959). 2Ibid.

ISIS, 1980, 71 (No. 259) 531

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The great court of the Cambridge campus of MIT, photographed soon after its completion in 1916: Building 17 from Building 1. Courtesy of MIT Historical Collections.

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 532 JOHN W. SERVOS within these programs. Several factors commend MIT as a useful subject for such a case study. It was an influential innovator in bringing applied research within academic walls, in developing methods for financing it, and later in evolving means of controlling it. MIT was among the first American institutions of higher education to devise a structure for the conduct of industrially sponsored research. Moreover, it developed a reputation for excellence in basic as well as applied science during the first decades of the twentieth century. Hence it serves as an ideal locus for studying how advocates of applied research interacted with proponents of basic research at a time when industry first came to exert a significant influence on academic policies. Finally, the history of MIT involvement with business sponsorship has served as the principal source of evidence for David Noble in his recent analysis of academic relations with industry in the United States.3 This essay is, in part, a response to Noble's conclusions. At the outset, it is important to know something of the history of MIT. Its reputation as an international center of scientific training and research is a product of comparatively recent times. Prior to the beginning of the twentieth century, MIT was an engineering school of good, but primarily local reputation, of modest resources, and few pretensions.4 Until 1916 Boston Tech, as it was then called, occupied a cramped patch of land near the tracks of the Boston and Albany Railroad in Back Bay. At late as 1913-1914 its total annual income was less than that of Smith or Vassar and a mere one-tenth that of Cornell.5 Of research there was little, for although it was not formally excluded as a pursuit by the administration, neither was it officially encouraged. The Tech lacked the resources necessary to provide its faculty with the time, space, and equipment needed to conduct or supervise original research. Although chartered to confer master's and doctor's degrees in 1872, prior to 1900 it had granted only twenty-two of the former and none of the latter.6 Boston Tech existed within the framework within which it had been conceived. It was a school designed to provide a broadly based technical education to undergraduates that would equip them for future careers as engineers and industrial managers. Departments in the basic sciences existed to assist in the preparation of tech- nologists. Yet despite what one observer called the "pinching poverty which keeps its President and his colleagues always anxious," MIT had taken at least one step toward the development of research by the turn of the century: the recruitment of a well-trained and keen-minded group of younger faculty. 7 The chemistry department had been particularly fortunate in this respect. During the 1890s over half a dozen young German-trained chemists took positions in it; during the subsequent decade they were joined by half a dozen more. A. A. Noyes, William H. Walker, William D. Coolidge, Willis R. Whitney, G. N. Lewis, and Warren K. Lewis all taught there

3David F. Noble, America By Design: Science, Technology, and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism (New York: Knopf, 1977). 4There is no satisfactory history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For a narrative account of its early development by a participant see Samuel C. Prescott, When MIT Was "Boston Tech", 1861-1916 (Cambridge, Mass.: The Technology Press, 1954). 5U.S. Department of the Interior, Report of the Commissionerof Education forthe Year Ended June30, 1914 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1915), pp. 253 and 256. Total income of MIT in 1913-1914 was $694,000; of Cornell, $6,790,000; of Smith, $1,005,000; and of Vassar, $1,108,000. 6Prescott, When MIT Was "Boston Tech", p. 185. 7James Phinney Munroe, "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology," New England Magazine, 1902-1903, 33:131-158, on p. 157.

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AT MIT 533 during this period.8 Most had taken undergraduate degrees at MIT, all had studied at German universities. As members of this generation of chemists advanced to positions of authority at MIT, it became increasingly clear that they were divided by two conflicting conceptions of what the Institute and its chemistry department should aspire to become. Some, under the leadership of Arthur Amos Noyes, entertained the ambition of converting MIT from a simple engineering school into a science-based university complete with a graduate school oriented toward basic research. Noyes himself had been an undergraduate at MIT before obtaining a D. Phil. under Wilhelm Ostwald at Leipzig. After advancing to the rank of professor in 1899, Noyes began to lobby vigorously for greater emphasis on training and research in the fundamental sciences. While Noyes and his followers recognized that MIT, as an undergraduate institution, should continue to prepare men for careers in industry, they held that its graduates should possess a training unique for its breadth and versatility. The best way of attaining this end, according to Noyes, was not to teach students the myriad details of engineering practice, but to educate them in the principles of the physical sciences, whenever possible through use of the problem-solving method of which he was a pioneer. "The general principle which should determine the character of our four year course of study," Noyes wrote in 1908,

. is that a liberal education be provided such as will develop character, breadth of view, and high ideals of science, and that the professional education be mainly confined to a thorough training in the principles of the fundamental sciences and in scientific method, specific engineering subjects being included only so far as the remaining time permits and as the minimum requirements of professional practice demand.9

Although MIT graduates with such an education might initially be at a disadvantage after graduation, their superior knowledge of principles and problem-solving ability would quickly allow them to compensate. More than that, such an education would equip them to handle challenges beyond the capacity of those with narrower training:

The engineer is trained to put in application existing methods; and it seems to me that what is wanted of the factory chemist in this country is rather the power of solving new problems and making improvements in processes-a power to be acquired far more by a

8Consult the annual MIT Catalogue for faculty rosters. Full-length biographies exist for Coolidge, Whitney, and G. N. Lewis: John Anderson Miller, Yankee Scientist, William David Coolidge (Schenectady, N.Y.: Mohawk Development Service, 1963); John Broderick, Willis R. Whitney (Albany, N.Y.: Fort Orange Press, 1945): and Arthur Lachman, Borderland of the Unknown: The Life Story of Gilbert Newton Lewis (New York: Pageant Press, 1955). On Noyes see Linus Pauling, "Arthur Amos Noyes," Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 1958, 31:322-346; on Walker, "William H. Walker," National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. A, p. 167; on W. K. Lewis, Warren Kendall Lewis, John Fritz Medalist for 1966, a pamphlet issued following the award of the Fritz Medal at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Philadelphia, December 1965. Other German-trained chemists who joined the MIT staff during these years included Samuel P. Mulliken, Henry Paul Talbot, Augustus H. Gill, F. Jewett Moore, Frank H. Thorpe, Arthur A. Blanchard, and Miles Sherrill. 9A. A. Noyes, "Advanced Courses for Specialization," in Massachusetts Institute of Technology President's Report, January 1908 (Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1908), p. 18. See also Noyes to R. C. Maclaurin, 31 Jan. 1916, in The George Ellery Hale Papers, 1882-1937, ed. Daniel Kevles (Pasadena, Calif.: Carnegie Institution of Washington/California Institute of Technology, 1968; on microfilm), Roll 27; and Noyes to W. H. Walker, 12 May 1916, Folder 555, President's Papers, MIT Archives, Cambridge, Mass. (hereafter referred to as President's Papers).

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good chemical training, which should include a large proportion of research and other work requiring independent thinking. 10

Noyes's postion was grounded in the conviction that advances in applied science and engineering were predicated upon training in the fundamental sciences and experience in basic research. Noyes sought to translate these ideas into action, on both the undergraduate and the graduate level. Through undergraduate courses and textbooks, Noyes and his associates introduced extensive work in thermodynamics and solution theory.11 They promoted stiffer laboratory requirements in the basic sciences and encouraged the administration to put more stress on cultural subjects.12 Moreover, in 1903 Noyes, with the support of several colleagues, alumni, and trustees, persuaded the administration to create a Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry that would be independent of the chemistry department and would devote its facilities and the efforts of a full-time staff to research work in this rapidly developing field. Financed in part by the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in part by MIT, and in part by Noyes himself, this laboratory quickly became a nucleus for the activity of those chemists committed to work in the basic sciences. The first Ph.D.s from MIT completed their doctoral research in this facility. Within a few years, Noyes's laboratory attained an international reputation for being the premier center of research in physical chemistry in America, one known especially for its work on the properties of dilute aqueous solutions. 13 Although Noyes and those who shared his aims won considerable support from colleagues and patrons of MIT, their conception of its future did not go unchal- lenged. Shortly after Noyes opened the doors of his research laboratory, a second faction began to lobby vigorously for a very different vision of that future. Led by William H. Walker of the chemistry department and Arthur D. Little, the well- known engineering consultant and an alumnus, members of this group maintained that MIT should not reject its heritage, but rather should reinvigorate it.14 The Institute was not a university and should not endeavor to compete as such. It was a school of engineering and technology that was, in their view, uniquely situated to take the initiative in training the builders and leaders of industry in twentieth-century America. It could seize that initiative by developing novel and more effective methods for training applied scientists.

"0A. A. Noyes, "Discussion on the Training of Technical Chemists," Science, 1904, 19:572-573, on p. 572. i 'Changes in the curriculum may be followed in the annual MIT Catalogue. On Noyes's textbooks and their influence, see Pauling, "Noyes" (cit. n. 8), pp. 323-324 and 344-345. 12A. A. Noyes, "Instruction in Theoretical Chemistry," Technology Quarterly, 1896, 9:323-325; "The Course of General Studies," Technology Review, 1904, 6:4- 18; "Education in Engineering and Applied Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," Technol. Rev., 1908, 10:83-88; "What the Institute Stands for Today," Technol. Rev., 1909, 11:25-27. "3A. A. Noyes, "The New Research Laboratories at the Institute;" Technol. Rev., 1903, 5:305-307. The organization and research program of the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry forms the subject of Chapter 3 of John Servos, "Physical Chemistry in America, 1890-1933: Origins, Growth, and Definition" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1979). '40n Walker see note 8 above. On Little see F. G. Keyes, "Arthur D. Little," Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1936-1937, 71:513-519; and W. Haynes, "Arthur Dehon Little," in Great Chemists, ed. Eduard Faber (New York: Interscience, 1961), pp. 1191-1202. Although Little held no official position at MIT until 1912, when he became a member of the Visiting Committee in Chemistry, he exercised considerable influence through his close friendship with Walker. Walker had been a partner in Little's consulting firm between 1900 and 1905.

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Unlike Noyes, Walker and his associates did not believe that greater stress on the fundamental sciences was the essential ingredient for shaping useful and creative engineers. Of course, the engineer must be acquainted with the principles of the physical sciences, but Walker felt it would be a mistake to organize the entire curriculum around such studies. As Walker later told Noyes,

You and I have always disagreed on one fundamental proposition:-You contend that it is enough to learn a law or theory of science, and if once learned, the application of this law or theory to the solution of problems of daily practice will care for itself. I contend that when the student has learned a law or theory, that only one half has been done; that it requires a more able mind, more experienced judgment, and more work (if I may use the term) to intelligently apply, for example, Raoult's law to the diverse and complicated conditions under which the chemical engineer must work than it does to learn Raoult's law, staged as it always is in an environment where it is quantitatively valid. . ..

It was only through exposure to problems drawn from industry that the student could learn the uses and limitations of theoretical chemistry. Moreover, it was only through practice with industrial operations and techniques that the student could be prepared to handle the problems of scale arising from production by the ton rather than the test tube, to understand the constraints imposed by material costs, to be sensitive to the potential uses of by-products, and to prepare notes and reports in such a way as to be attractive to businessmen and useful in patent litigation.'6 "Science by itself," Walker told a colleague in the geology department,

produces a very badly deformed man who becomes rounded out into a useful creative being only with great difficulty and large expenditure of time. Despite Noyes and his satellites, nevertheless I still contain [sicl I am in a position to prove that it is a much smaller matter to both teach and learn pure science than it is to intelligently apply this science to the solution of problems as they arise in daily life. . .17

Several innovations in the curriculum flowed from Walker's conception. In 1905 Walker reorganized the somnolent undergraduate program in industrial chemistry. In so doing, he converted it from a potpourri of courses in chemistry and mechanical engineering into a unified program in chemical engineering, based increasingly as time passed on the study of unit operations and the balance book aspects of industrial practice. Although the term "unit operations" was first used by Arthur D. Little in 1915, the idea of organizing instruction around basic operations, such as distillation, filtration, and condensation, had been current among chemical engineers at MIT and some other schools for several years. 18 The great problem in developing a program

15Walker to Noyes, 20 Jan. 1919, Folder 555, President's Papers. See also Walker to Noyes, 14 May 1916 and Walker to R. C. Maclaurin, 16 May 1916, both in Folder 555, President's Papers. 16William H. Walker, "A Laboratory Course in Industrial Chemistry," Technol. Rev., 1904, 6:163-174. 17Walker to C. H. Warren, 9 Jan. 1919, Folder 555, President's Papers. A. D. Little expressed a similar view in "Industrial Research in America," Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, 1913, 5:796, although his language was more temperate. '8Arthur D. Little et al., "Report of the Visiting Committee of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering," 6 Dec. 1915, Folder 1259, President's Papers. See also Alfred H. White, "Chemical Engineering Education," in Twenty-Five Years of Chemical Engineering Progress, ed. Sidney D. Kirkpatrick (Philadelphia: American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1933), pp. 355-356, and M. C. Whitaker, "The New Chemical Engineering Course and Laboratories at Columbia University," Transactions of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1912, 5:150-169, on p. 162. For an example of a course of study organized around unit operations, see William H. Walker, Warren K. Lewis, and William H. McAdams, Principles of Chemical Engineering (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1923).

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 536 JOHN W. SERVOS that emphasized this concept was cost. The machinery and materials used in illustrating basic operations on an industrial scale were expensive and prone to rapid obsolescence. Few universities could afford the necessary expenditures. MIT was among the first schools to overcome this obstacle. In 1916 Walker, together with his younger colleague, Warren K. Lewis, established a School of Chemical Engineering Practice. Basically a cooperative extension program, the School sent faculty members and undergraduates from MIT to select industrial plants where they might engage for part of the school year in the direct contact with production Walker advocated. Equally important, the program gave MIT chemical engineers access to the costly facilities necessary to illustrate fully classroom instruction in unit operations. The School of Chemical Engineering Practice was a notable and widely emulated success. 19 Walker was not oblivious to the call of research. Far from it. He was himself a Gottingen product and an advocate of graduate research work at MIT. But for Walker the research that should hold pride of place at an institute of technology was research on the applications of science. It was in this field that Walker made his most significant contribution to the program. The institutional vehicle for Walker's ideas on applied chemical research was the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry. Organized five years after Noyes's Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry was intended to serve as a clearing house for problems in applied chemistry. Like Noyes's laboratory, it was set up to function as a semi-autonomous division of the chemistry department with its own staff and budget. MIT provided the laboratory with a building and a small annual subsidy, but the bulk of the expenses were to be met with income drawn from research contracts with industrial firms and trade associations. 20 Walker, together with those who collaborated with him in planning this laboratory, most notable among them being Arthur D. Little, believed that this facility would be of benefit to both MIT and American industry. It would benefit MIT by acting as a focus for research work in industrial chemistry and by serving as the foundation for the development of graduate studies in chemical engineering. Moreover, the laboratory would bring the program in chemical engineering before the eyes of industrial managers around the country, with obvious rewards for the school and its graduates.21 The Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry would, it was hoped, benefit industry in two ways. First, its staff would increase the efficiency of large and small firms, and sometimes entire industries, by systematically applying scientific knowledge to problems of applied chemistry large and small. Few American firms had their own research facilities, and few businessmen were as yet convinced that scientists should hold a permanent place in their operations. Companies unwilling to invest the capital necessary to build their own research

19Plans for the School of Chemical Engineering Practice are discussed in Little et al., "Report of the Visiting Committee," 6 Dec. 1915. See also R. T. Haslam, "The School of Chemical Engineering Practice of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 1921, 13:465-466. 20On the creation and history of the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry, see the MIT Executive Committee to Walker, 28 Apr. 1908, Folder 555, President's Papers; Arthur D. Little, "A Laboratory for Public Service," Technol. Rev., 1909, 11:16-24; William H. Walker, "Cooperation in Industrial Re- search: The University," Transactions of the American Electrochemical Society, 1916, 29:30-31; W. K. Lewis to S. W. Stratton, 21 Apr. 1925, Folder 495, President's Papers; and the reports by the director of the laboratory in the annual MIT President's Report. 2' Little, "A Laboratory for Public Service," p. 19.

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AT MIT 537 facilities could find an inexpensive and reliable source of expertise in the staff of the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry.22 Secondly, Walker's laboratory might function as a prototype for similar research institutions of applied science at MIT and other American universities. It might be the first among what Little and Walker hoped would be many new links between industry and American universities and technical schools. Such links were a necessity, according to these chemists, if American industry was to compete with European and especially German firms. The example posed by the rapid growth of the German chemical industry was much on the minds of American scientists and educators during this period, and, as many observers saw it, German progress was due to close cooperation between businessmen and academic scientists.23 The experience of Germany, Walker and Little argued, proved the importance of close ties between the university laboratory and the industrial plant.24 The aims of Noyes and Walker were anything but compatible. Nevertheless, MIT administrators resisted making a choice between the two programs. Richard C. Maclaurin, president during the years of increasing tension, pursued a policy of smothering differences.25 As a former physicist he felt the attraction of Noyes's ideals; as president of MIT he felt the weight of its tradition as an engineering school and the responsibility of ensuring its fiscal prosperity and protecting its graduates. The chairman of the chemistry department, Henry P. Talbot, was in a similar position.26 Prior to 1921 both basic and applied chemistry courses were offered through a single department of chemistry and chemical engineering. Talbot, as head of this department, had'the unenviable task of reconciling two irreconcilables.27 A rapprochement never occurred. Noyes's influence in the chemistry department gradually slipped during the years prior to World War I. It deteriorated further immediately after the war. In part this was due to the popularity of Walker's program in chemical engineering. Whereas during the years 1905-1909 the majority of MIT undergraduates majoring in chemistry took their basic degrees in chemistry, baccalaureates in basic chemistry were outnumbered by better than two to one by baccalaureates in chemical engineering during the subsequent five-year period (see Table 1). The disproportion grew even greater following the war, peaking in the

22Ibid., pp. 18-20. 23See, e.g., Frank A. Vanderlip, "Government Education," Scribner's Magazine, 1905, 37:338-353; Henry S. Pritchett, "A Closer Contact with Industrial Interests," in MIT President's Report, January 1907 (Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1907), p. 21; and Richard C. Maclaurin, "Universities and Industries," J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 1916, 8:59-61, on pp. 60-61. 24Little, "A Laboratory for Public Service," pp. 16-18; Walker, "Cooperation in Industrial Research: The University," p. 30; and W. H. Walker, "The University and Industry," J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 1916, 8:63-65. 25Compare, for example, Maclaurin's statements in "Universities and Industries," pp. 60-61, with his "Report of the President," in MIT President's Report, January 1917 (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1917), p. 17. There is a book-length biography of Maclaurin: Henry G. Pearson, Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (New York: Macmillan, 1937). 26Henry P. Talbot, "Relation of Educational Institutions to the Industries," J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 1920, 12:943-947, on p. 946. On Talbot see James F. Norris, "Henry Paul Talbot," Technol. Rev., 1927, 29:479-480. 27E. Bright Wilson (member of the MIT Administrative Committee) to Edwin S. Webster (member of the MIT Corporation), 21 Apr. 1920, Folder 73, President's Papers. Wilson states that the friction between Noyes and Walker "has worn on Dr. Talbot to such an extent that he is a little over-zealous on the question of separating the departments in the hope that he may have some personal relief." Wilson, together with MIT's treasurer, Everett Morss, resisted the fission of the department of chemistry and chemical engineering because of the expenses involved.

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Table 1. Baccalaureates awarded in chemistry and chemical engineering at MIT by five-year periods, 1885-1934

S.B.s in chemical Years S.B.s in chemistry engineering

1885-1889 38 1890- 1894 50 31 1895-1899 98 49 1900- 1904 78 51 1905-1909 82 65 1910- 1914 50 132 1915-1919 63 187 1920- 1924 52 419 1925-1929 81 238 1930- 1934 71 240

NOTE: Figures taken from data in the annual report of the registrar in the MIT President's Report.

1920-1924 quinquennial when 419 chemical engineers graduated but only 52 chemists. The rapid expansion of the undergraduate program in chemical engineering reflected the rapid expansion of the American chemical industry caused by the elimination of German imports during the war. Enrollments alone were not entirely responsible for this shift in influence. Perhaps even more significant was the support Walker enjoyed among the patrons and trustees of MIT. A transformation was underway during this period in the sources of its capital funds. When Noyes established the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry in 1903, Boston Tech depended largely on the support of men with the names Cabot, Lowell, Peabody, Endicott, and Choate. The old Boston aristocracy held control of the governing Corporation. During the years after 1910, the influence of these families gave way as George Eastman, T. Coleman Du Pont, and Pierre Samuel Du Pont began to take an interest in the school. When MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge in 1916, its new home was built with the dollars of these men. Between 1911 and 1921 the Du Pont family gave MIT over $1.1 million; George Eastman contributed more than $10.5 million. These grants exceeded the entire value of the endowment and plant in 1910 by a factor of three.28 These industrial leaders had confidence in Walker, with good reason. Active as an industrial consultant and once a partner of A. D. Little's, Walker was an organizer and an achiever cut from their mold. Walker and the new patrons of MIT shared the common goal of constructing a more efficient industrial society; they also shared hopes of seeing MIT take a leading role in building it. 29 Noyes's plans for the future of the Institute held little appeal for them. The shift in tone and policy at MIT was apparent to advocates of basic research on the faculty. In 1912 a substantial fraction of the chemistry department's staff and

28 "M.I.T.: Resources-Capital Gifts-Income-Teachers Salaries, 1910-1948," undated memorandum in MIT History Folder, Vannevar Bush Papers, MIT Archives (hereafter referred to as Bush Papers). 29A $300,000 gift from George Eastman made the School of Chemical Engineering Practice possible. R. T. Haslam (Director of the School of Chemical Engineering Practice) to S. W. Stratton, 9 May 1924, Folder 94, President's Papers.

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graduate students migrated to Berkeley in search of better conditions.30 In 1916 Noyes, alarmed to see that the Institute's "science is being more and more subordinated to its engineering work," urged Maclaurin to adopt recommendations which Noyes thought would restore a better balance to its policies. MIT, he argued, should increase funds given to research laboratories and fellowships, link promotions to research accomplishments, and shorten the hours spent on instruction by staff members. He also wished to see greater publicity given to the idea that science courses prepare men for industrial positions no less satisfactorily than engineering courses. Noyes suggested that he might resign if conditions did not improve. Although Maclaurin did not adopt Noyes's proposals, Noyes postponed action until 1919 when, upon returning to MIT after wartime service in Washington, he realized that his influence on its policies had dwindled to insignificance. In March of that year Walker, saying that he was tired of Noyes's obstruction, presented Maclaurin with an ultimatum. Either Noyes "shall surrender control of the teaching of theoretical chemistry, cease to consider himself a member of the Department of Chemistry, but shall confine his activities to research work and the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemisty," or Noyes "shall become an inherent member of the Department of Chemistry upon the same plane and basis as other professors." If neither course of action were to be adopted, Walker would resign. He furthermore suggested that in the event of his resignation, many other members of the chemical engineering staff might follow his lead. The first alternative would require Noyes to sacrifice control of the undergraduate program he had done so much to construct; the second would cost him the autonomy of his Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry. Neither was acceptable to Noyes, and Maclaurin was forced to make a choice. He chose to retain Walker. In early April Maclaurin asked Noyes to withdraw from an active role in the chemistry department. By the end of 1919 Noyes had written his letter of resignation. 32 It appeared that a decision had been made and that MIT would devote its resources to strengthening its program in applied science and engineering. Walker was very much the man of the hour. In January 1920 he was named director of the new Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research, an organization established with the dual purpose of coordinating all industrial research at MIT and of raising matching funds necessary to meet the conditions of a recent gift from George Eastman.33 Under the terms of the Technology Plan, as the work of this Division became known, industrial firms would pay MIT an annual retaining fee; in return they would receive technical advice and consulting services from members of the staff and access to alumni records.34 A strong publicity campaign and aggressive salemanship helped Walker line up over $400,000 worth of contracts for the first year alone. This was a significant sum in relation to the total MIT budget, which in 1920-1921 was less than $1.7 million.35

30Among those who went to the University of California from MIT were G. N. Lewis, William C. Bray, and Merle Randall. 3"Noyes to Maclaurin, 31 Jan. 1916, Hale Papers, Roll 27. 32Walker to Maclaurin, 21 Mar. 1919, Folder 555, President's Papers; Noyes to Maclaurin, 5 Apr. 1919 and 7 Apr. 1919, Hale Papers, Roll 28; Maclaurin to Noyes, 12 Apr. 1919, Folder 149, President's Papers; and Noyes to Hale, 20 Nov. 1919, Hale Papers, Roll 28. 33Maclaurin to Walker, 2 Jan. 1920, Folder 555, President's Papers; Karl T. Compton, "Memorandum of Conversation with Professor Millard regarding the D.I.C. and R.," 23 Sept. 1931, Box 1, Folder 6, Karl T. Compton Papers, MIT Archives (hereafter referred to as Compton Papers). 34William H. Walker, "The Technology Plan," Science, 1920, 51:357-359. 35Everett Morss (treasurer) to members of the MIT Executive Committee, 17 Jan. 1924, Folder 58-2,

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Nor was this the only indication of the growing influence of applied scientists at MIT. When Maclaurin died suddenly early in 1920, Walker was named chairman of the administrative committee charged with overseeing the school until a successor might be found. Moreover, early in 1921 the division between chemists and chemical engineers found formal expression when an autonomous department of chemical engineering was organized. Its first chairman was Warren K. Lewis, Walker's friend and protege.36 Chemical engineering and the other applied sciences boomed at MIT following the end of the war, and as they did so too did the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry (see Table 2). Whereas prior to the war its annual income was roughly comparable to that of Noyes's research facility, never exceeding $10,000 in a single year, after the war industrial contracts were signed in unprecedented number. Thus the laboratory's income jumped from $8,400 in 1916-1917 to $91,000 in 1920-1921, and then to $172,000 in 1926-1927. Funds for basic research in chemistry grew hardly at all. Despite the fiscal prosperity of the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry and other schemes for cooperation between industry and MIT, it was not long before serious problems became manifest. Perhaps the first sign of trouble came in connection with Walker's administration of the Technology Plan. Although this plan enjoyed popularity among trustees and alumni, it encountered strong and enduring opposition within the ranks of the faculty. In some respects the plan was simply too successful. Walker had devoted much attention to lining up industrial sponsors but had exercised little selectivity in choosing research problems and had given little thought to the capacity of MIT for handling large numbers of contracts. Walker, it came to be said by his colleagues on the faculty, administered the plan in a dictatorial fashion. In response to rising faculty protests, the administrative committee voted to end Walker's aggressive sales tactics, and within a few months Walker himself resigned, effective 1 January 1921.37 The Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry encountered similar problems during its years of rapid growth and prosperity. The laboratory was dependent on income from industrial contracts for its existence, and its administrators were reluctant to spurn businessmen coming to them with proposals. Although the laboratory was originally conceived as a site for work on broad research topics of interest to entire industries, relatively few such contracts materialized. More often than not, industrial patrons sought answers to narrowly defined questions. The Vacuum Oil Company wanted a better method of manufacturing oil barrels with the aim of preventing leakage during shipment; the MacLaurin-Jones Company sought

President's Papers. Of course Walker's sales tactics were not the only reasons for the success of the Technology Plan in the early 1920s. Business attitudes toward investment in scientific research and development had altered during and immediately after the war, and an excess profits tax no doubt made contributions to the Tech Plan attractive. 36Elihu Thomson, "Report of the President," MIT President's Report, January 1921, p. 11. Walker served on the administrative committee for only two months; in March 1920 he resigned to give his full attention to the Technology Plan. Soon thereafter Elihu Thomson, a founder of the General Electric Company and member of the MIT Corporation, became acting president. 37E. Bright Wilson to Edwin S. Webster, 4 Apr. 1921, MIT History Folder, Bush Papers: "The faculty was against the Technology Plan, first because no efforts were made to get them sympathetic with it, and second, because it was in the hands of a man who tried to order them about from above." See also Walker to Talbot, 16 July 1920; Walker to the Administrative Committee, 22 July 1920; Walker to the Administrative Committee, 17 Nov. 1920, all in Folder 555, President's Papers.

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Table 2. Income of the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry (RLPC) and Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry (RLAC), 1911-1912 to 1931-1932

Year Income RLPC RLAC

1911-1912 $8,010 $6,358 1912- 1913 8,281 4,624 1913-1914 4,495 3,089 1914-1915 3,086 3,110 1915-1916 3,216 2,122 1916-1917 4,238 8,407 1917-1918 4,150 1,701 1918-1919 6,818 5,150 1919-1920 6,818 37,241 1920-1921 4,441 90,953 1921-1922 1922-1923 26,512* 72,074 1923-1924 24,037* 86,869 1924-1925 28,645* 80,750 1925-1926 26,114* 103,336 1926-1927 25,483* 171,880 1927-1928 25,718* 107,407 1928-1929 29,592* 105,883 1929-1930 32,718* 101,495 1930- 1931 34,857* 77,418 1931-1932 37,441* 55,846

NOTE: Figures drawn from the treasurer's report in the annual MIT President's Report. The budget of the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry was customarily summarized in Schedule R. Income figures for the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry are available in Schedule R until 1920/21; for subsequent years consult Schedules C, C,, and C2. Budget figures were not published for the 1921/22 academic year. Income figures for the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry are marked with an asterisk* for 1922/23 and following years; this denotes an accounting change that artificially inflated the laboratory income for these years by roughly $20,000 to $25,000 per annum by bringing the salaries of the director and senior personnel of the laboratory within its budget. In earlier years these had been paid through chemistry department funds. If this change is discounted and the effect of inflation considered, it is unlikely that the Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry enjoyed any increase in real purchasing power after the war.

improved techniques for waterproofing paper; the Papercan Corporation engaged the Research Laboratory to find better ways of making its paper greaseproof.38 Not all of the work was so mundane. The laboratory also conducted important investigations into the corrosion of iron and steel, the frictional coefficients of fluids other than water, and the processes of gas absorption and extraction. But in these projects of greater significance other problems often arose. Thus when members of the laboratory staff developed a better method for the vaccum distillation of lubricating oils, the sponsor of the project, the Humble Oil Company, refused to allow the laboratory to publish the results of its work, a right laboratory patrons had under the terms of their contracts. When the laboratory discovered a technique for 38Brief accounts of research work underway in the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry are availiable in the director's reports in the annual MIT President's Report. Research publications are listed in the bibliography of publications usually appended to the President's Report.

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 542 JOHN W. SERVOS producing high-quality hydrate of lime from low-quality limestone, the National Lime Association suppressed the report, "because of the influence of the Ohio lime companies" that controlled sources of high-quality limestone. Other examples could be cited.39 Nor were these the only problems of the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry. Administrative difficulties arose because its contracts were signed on a year-by-year basis. The size of the laboratory staff and budget depended on the prevailing economic conditions.40 Moreover, staffing was a problem for other reasons as well. The laboratory could not pay its researchers above the salary scale of the rest of the faculty, yet industries in the 1920s were paying chemical engineers at rates two and three times higher.4' It was difficult to obtain, and even more difficult to retain, men of real ability. The narrowly technical nature of many of its projects and the limitations that sponsors often put on publication made the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry look more and more like a commercial consulting facility and less and less like a division of an educational institution.42 This became increasingly clear to both supporters and critics of the laboratory during the 1920s. Walker's successors as its director, Robert E. Wilson and Robert T. Haslam, and the head of the department of chemical engineering, Warren K. Lewis, repeatedly petitioned the MIT administration for additional subsidies so that greater care could be exercised by selecting research problems.43 "The Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry is proud of its contributions for general research," wrote Haslam in 1924:

On the other hand, . . . six-sevenths of the current expenses of carrying on this research is earned by work done directly for outside concerns.... this work is of necessity carried on under a certain pressure that interferes with the productive capacity of the Department in its contributions to general science. The Department would regret to lose all this outside work, but if the proportion of it could be reduced, the contributions of the Department to the prestige of the Institute and to the development of the profession could be greatly increased. To do this the Department must have a more adequate current income available for general research.44

Lewis (b. 1882), Haslam (b. 1888), and Wilson (b. 1893) were of a different generation than Little (b. 1863) and Walker (b. 1869), both chronologically and intellectually. Walker and Little had been willing to allow industry to determine the priorities of the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry and indeed to subordi- nate the program in chemical engineering to the immediate interests of business. They were willing to do so because they perceived an identity of interests between

39W. K. Lewis to Stratton, 21 Apr. 1925, Folder 495, President's Papers. Lewis cites these and other examples of restrictions on the freedom to publish in an effort to persuade Stratton to increase the subsidy from MIT funds to the Research Laboratory. See also Lewis's earlier memo to Talbot, 11 Jan. 1921, Folder 494, President's Papers. 40Robert E. Wilson and W. K. Lewis to the Administration Committee, 21 Jan. 1921, and Wilson and Lewis to E. Bright Wilson, 21 June 1922, both in Folder 495, President's Papers. 41Sometimes the difference between salaries at MIT and in industry was even greater. In 1928, a senior member of the chemical engineering faculty was offered a position with the Universal Oil Products Company paying a salary six times greater than what he was then earning. W. K. Lewis to Stratton, 25 Sept. 1928, Folder 495, President's Paper. 42E. Bright Wilson to W. K. Lewis, 19 Feb. 1921, Folder 495, President's Papers. Wilson here described the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry as "a commercial laboratory supposedly self-supporting." 43W. K. Lewis to Talbot, 31 Jan. 1921; Lewis to E. Bright Wilson, 31 Mar. 1921; Lewis to Stratton, 4 Mar. 1925; and Lewis to Stratton, 7 June 1926, all in Folder 495, President's Papers. 44R. T. Haslam to Stratton, 9 May 1924, Folder 94, President's Papers.

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Table 3. Leading institutions attended by National Research Fellows in chemistry, 1919-1930

Institution Number of fellows Institution Number of fellows

University of California 19 MIT 8 Harvard 18 Chicago 7 Caltech 16 Yale 6 Berlin 11 Johns Hopkins 5 Princeton 10

NOTE: Figures taken from data available in National Research Council, National Research Fellowships, 1919-1938 (Washington, D.C.: National Research Council, 1938). On the inability of the chemistry department to retain NRC fellows, see F. G. Keyes to Stratton, 9 May 1927, Folder 475, President's Papers. businessmen and applied scientists. Their successors were, to a much greater degree, sensitive to the need for disciplinary independence and eager to follow their own judgments regarding the best opportunities for research. In part this new attitude arose from their experience with the restrictions imposed by sponsors; in part it resulted from the increasingly abstract character of chemical engineering itself. No longer content to prescribe means of improving industrial procedures, chemical engineers now wished to quantify and extend their knowledge of such topics as heat transfer and exchange, high temperature and pressure reactions, and gas absorption. These studies, while growing out of problems encountered in industry, often led investigators far from the realm of immediately practicable technology. Business- men were not always willing to underwrite such research.45 Hence chemical engineers increasingly felt a need for the freedom unrestricted subsidies afforded. In response to their petitions, the new president, Samuel Wesley Stratton, invoked the policy that MIT would supply no funds to special research laboratories over and above the money derived from bequests and endowments specifically intended for such purposes. Stratton was by no means hostile to the concept of applied research. He came to MIT in 1923 following a long tenure as director of the National Bureau of Standards, where he had vigorously promoted cooperative research between government and industry.46 He also appreciated the funds industrial contracts brought and valued the advantages such contracts gave MIT graduates looking for positions. But he was disturbed by growing indications that MIT was losing its reputation as a center of both basic and applied research. Its science departments were losing ground, according to J. McKeen Cattell's surveys of American men of science.47 Between 1919 and 1930 twice as many National Research Fellows in chemistry chose to do their post-graduate work at the California Institute of Technology as at MIT, and of those who did go to Cambridge, none could be persuaded to remain as faculty members (see Table 3). During a period when Princeton, Chicago, Harvard, and Caltech obtained grants from national philan-

4sThe case of William H. McAdams illustrates this point. McAdams joined the MIT staff in 1919 and started a research program on heat transmission. During his first five years his studies were handicapped since they received no industrial support. The chemical engineering department was able to assist his research to the extent of less than $500 a year. McAdams later published a classic text, Heat Trans- mission (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1933), still in use. See W. K. Lewis to Stratton, 21 Apr. 1925, Folder 495, President's Papers. 46A. E. Kennelly, "Samuel Wesley Stratton," Biog. Mem. Nat. Acad. Sci., 1937, 17:253-260. 47J. McKeen Cattell, American Men of Science, A Biographical Directory, 2nd ed. (New York: Science Press, 1910), p. 593; and 4th ed. (New York: Science Press, 1927), p. 1128.

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thropic organizations measured in the millions of dollars for research in the physical sciences, MIT received not a single large gift.48 Its administrators and faculty members both questioned the reasons for this declining prestige. Some believed that too much stress was being given applied research. F. G. Keyes, for example, Talbot's successor as head of the chemistry department, complained to Stratton regarding the policy of assuming that staff members should secure outside employment to augment their salaries. "I venture to suggest," wrote Keyes,

that this policy is bound to become more and more pernicious in its effects on the quality of the Institute staff, particularly those who should devote extra time to scientific research. . . . At the present time, one can easily observe that most of the younger members of the Institute staff are dissipating the most formative portion of their lives in working out in their spare time various small applied science problems for pecuniary reward, instead of devoting themselves to the pursuits of pure science.....

Despite such complaints, however, Stratton and his associates were uncertain as to what corrective actions were necessary and possible. Stratton was initially of the opinion that many problems the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry encountered arose because the staff was obtaining the wrong kinds of sponsors. The predicament of the laboratory, he wrote in 1925,

is partially brought about by the fact that there is a tendency in this Laboratory to take up specific problems for a definite unit of the industry whereby [sic] the modern trend is toward the cooperation of the various units of industry in working out problems of fundamental importance to the industry as a whole. That is to say, problems in which the different units of an industry have joined to finance. Such a problem is almost always one of fundamental scientific importance, and has a further advantage in that the individual units of the industry are not so much apt to buy off men who are working on a problem of general interest. 50

The experience of the laboratory administrators, however, did not justify Stratton's optimism: trade associations were limited in number, and it was sometimes difficult to keep peace among members.51 Later Stratton came to the view that MIT would have to address its problems directly by reforming its policies on industrial research and by directing greater resources to physics and chemistry.52 Securing funds was here the major difficulty. MIT had drawn heavily on its alumni during its move to Cambridge, a large proportion of its past graduates were young, and older alumni

"8Lists of major gifts to MIT appear at the beginning of the treasurer's report in the annual President's Report. The only grant from a philanthropic foundation listed therein during the years 1920-1930 came in 1928/29, a gift of $34,000 from the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation for work in meteorology. On major gifts by the Rockefeller Foundation see Raymond B. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper, 1952), esp. pp. 152-154. For a survey of grants made by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, see Robert M. Lester, A Thirty Year Catalog of Grants (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1942). 49Keyes to Stratton, 12 May 1925, Folder 475, President's Papers. Concern with MIT's declining reputation is also expressed in the following letters: W. K. Lewis to Stratton, 8 Mar. 1924, Folder 495; Keyes to Stratton, 9 May 1927, Folder 475; and Everett Morss to Stratton, 24 Apr. 1928, Folder 58-2; all in President's Papers. 50Stratton to F. B. Fish (member of the MIT Corporation), 9 Nov. 1925, Folder 115, President's Papers. 5"E. B. Millard to Compton, 15 Oct. 1931, MIT Office of the President Subject Files, 1930-1959, Box 15, "Industrial Cooperation and Research, 1931" folder. Millard here describes the long-standing difficulties MIT had in its contracts with trade associations. 52Stratton to Max Mason, 15 June 1929, Folder 84, and Stratton to W. L. Bragg, 1 Apr. 1930, Folder 410, President's Papers.

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AT MIT 545 were more interested in supporting technical work than research in the basic sciences. Near the end of his administration, Stratton turned to the Rockefeller Foundation for assistance in raising a $2.5 million endowment fund for research in chemistry and physics.53 Foundation trustees, however, were reluctant to commit funds to the Institute. As they saw it, MIT was an engineering school of importance primarily to industry, and hence it should look to industry for its support.54 Stratton, with his long record as an advocate of industrial cooperation, was not equipped to convince them otherwise. Nor, as a man in his late sixties, was he prepared to oversee a thorough review of MIT policies on applied research. Serious flaws had appeared during the 1920s in the policy of emphasizing work in the applied sciences and paying for it through schemes with industrial firms; yet little could be done to reverse the policy so long as the leaders of MIT were closely identified with business interests and so long as industry supplied a major portion of MIT's annual revenues. In the 1930s these conditions changed, however, and changed abruptly. In March 1930 the governing Corporation of MIT announced that Karl T. Compton would succeed Stratton as president effective 1 July. The Corporation's selection of this forty-two-year-old physicist from Princeton was intended as a signal of its determination to reform MIT policies. During April, although not yet inaugurated, Compton corresponded and met with Max Mason, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, in hopes of breaking the logjam that had developed in connection with MIT's application for assistance. "I know," Compton wrote,

that your Board is sympathetic with the principle that increase in fundamental knowledge is of basic importance. It is for this reason that I venture to hope for your help particularly at the present time, which is strategic in its opportunity for affecting the development of the Institute. Briefly the situation is this: It is of course known that my selection indicates a wish on the part of the Corporation to emphasize this line of development. Immediate substantial evidence of approval by the Rockefeller Foundation would have a psycholo- gical effect in putting this program on a firm and accepted basis which would be of perhaps even more value than the actual financial support itself.55

MIT, Compton told Mason, was altering its policies. Greater emphasis would be placed on research and instruction in the fundamental sciences, new leadership would be brought into the science departments, and funds would be raised for a new laboratory devoted to research in chemistry and physics; Compton's own appointment manifested the Corporation's "approval of the thesis that the fundamental sciences must be made the backbone of the Institute."56 A vote of confidence from the Rockefeller Foundation would go far toward ensuring that MIT's constituency would not waver in its new commitments.57 Compton's appeal was effective. Later in 1930 the Rockefeller Foundation awarded MIT $170,000 for a fund to support research, and, although worsening economic conditions made it impossible to raise the multi-million dollar research fund Compton envisioned, the MIT Building Fund was tapped to construct a new

53Stratton to Mason, 15 June 1929, Folder 84, President's Papers. 54Stratton to Compton, 14 Apr. 1930, and Compton to members of MIT Executive Committee, 6 Oct. 1930, both in Folder 84, President's Papers. 55Compton to Mason, 7 Apr. 1930, Folder 84, President's Papers. 561bid. 57"Application to the Rockefeller Foundation for Assistance in Securing a Science Research Fund for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," copy attached to Compton's letter to members of the Executive Committee of 6 Oct. 1930.

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$1.2 million research laboratory for physics and chemistry.58 To make certain that these facilities would be directed properly, Compton procured new faculty members for the basic science departments and transferred older professors interested primarily in applications to the applied science departments.59 These actions were elements in Compton's comprehensive program for reordering priorities. Other aspects of the program directly affected the relationship of MIT with industry. Thus, upon assuming office, Compton initiated a survey of sponsored research at MIT and began collecting information and suggestions for improving patent policy and personnel practices. Just as Compton was settling into his new position, it was growing clear that the national economy faced more than a minor business slowdown or economic adjustment. Compton could have found no stronger support for his efforts to reform MIT policies than the effects the depression had on industrial links to the school. The depression underlined in dramatic fashion the dangers inherent in a policy of relying upon industrial patronage for the support of research at educational institutions. What had appeared initially as a natural and mutually beneficial alliance of businessmen and applied scientists revealed itself in the 1930s to be a temporary and unstable partnership. When confronted with a choice between retaining their own employees or subsidizing investigators at educational institutions, businessmen with near unanimity chose the former. Contributions to the support of applied research at MIT and other American educational institutions were marginal expenses to most businesses; when the need to economize became urgent, they were among the first costs to be cut. Those who had depended upon industrial support, at MIT as at other schools, were quick to suffer the consequences.60 The fate of the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry during the depression illustrates this point. By 1931-1932, its income had fallen to one half of what it had been two years earlier (see Table 2). At the beginning of 1934 its staff consisted of two full-time investigators, and there was not enough work to keep them busy. In February 1934, at the suggestion of Warren K. Lewis, the MIT administration decided to terminate the laboratory at the end of the fiscal year.61 Nor did other cooperative ventures between MIT and industry fare much better. The Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research, much vaunted as the active agency for greater industrial cooperation at the beginning of the 1920s, found few takers of its services among business firms in the 1930s. Contracts with industrial corporations totaling $4 million had been signed during the first five years of the Technology Plan. By 1930-31, only $30,000 of contracts were being administered. As the number of industrial contracts supervised by this division grew smaller, and as income from these contracts decreased as a total portion of the annual

58Karl T. Compton, "Report of the President," in MIT President's Report, 1930-1931 (Cambridge, Mass.: Technology Press, 1931), pp. 22-23; and "Report of the President," in MIT President's Report, 1931-1932 (Cambridge, Mass.: Technology Press, 1932), p. 22. 59The physics department was especially affected. In 1930, John C. Slater was brought from Harvard to take charge of the department and George Russell Harrison of Stanford was appointed director of the laboratory. Six professors of physics resigned or were transferred. Compton to F. P. Keppel (President, Carnegie Corporation of New York), 8 Apr. 1931, Box 1, Folder 6, Compton Papers. 60See Lance E. Davis and Daniel J. Kevles, "The National Research Fund: A Case Study in the Industrial Support of Academic Science," Minerva, 1974, 12:207-220, for a valuable discussion of the flaws in one scheme for cooperation between industry and the university scientist as seen from the businessman's point of view. 61"Memorandum of Conferences with Professors Norton and Lewis," 27 Feb. 1934, Bush Papers. During the 1920s, the laboratory staff typically consisted of between twenty and thirty researchers.

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MIT budget, division personnel gave more of their time to the problem of placing their graduates and less to the administration of research contracts.62 The lessons of the depression were not lost on Compton. He acted in several ways during the early 1930s to insure that industrial cooperation at MIT should not again lead to industrial domination. The mission and organization of the Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research were redefined. The new policy on industrial research specifically forbade staff members to accept research work that could be handled by private consulting firms.63 Control of income derived from industrial contracts was taken from the Division of Industrial Cooperation and given to the bursar's office.64 Stiff penalties in the form of added overhead charges were placed on those firms wishing to keep the results of research confidential; the Division of Industrial Cooperation and Research was given the responsibility not only of coordinating, but also of controlling industrial research projects.65 Moreover, Compton instituted a set of guidelines on faculty appointments, promotions, and compensation that put a premium on original research and discouraged excessive consulting work. As Noyes had recommended fifteen years earlier, the administration recognized formally that creativity and productivity in research constituted the principal measure for evaluating faculty members' performance. Consulting work, except when of exceptional significance, did not contribute to prospects for promotion. Indeed, excessive outside work, "pot-boiling" as Compton called it, would militate against advancement: "Over-indulgence in consulting activities, to the detriment of Institute work is intolerable. . . Whatever may have been the situation a generation ago we no longer have need for men who are primarily consultants and who incidentally conduct a class for us. . "66 In order to rectify inequities in compensation between those faculty members who supplemented their salaries through consulting work and those who did not, Compton went so far as to impose a "tax" on consultant's fees. According to this plan, faculty members were required to pay fifty percent of net income received from services rendered to parties outside MIT into a "Professor's Fund." This fund was then distributed to the staff in the form of salaries or their equivalent as recommended by a faculty committee.67 Although the Professor's Fund was suspended in 1934 because of administrative difficulties, it need hardly be said that this plan together with the new promotion policy gave the faculty a clear signal of Compton's intention to de-emphasize consulting work. Nor did Compton retreat from his policy of controlling sponsored research when business conditions began to improve later in the decade. During the mid-1930s a number of lucrative contracts for industrial work were passed up because they did not meet the new standards.68 In outlining his objections to a consulting arrangement

62Compton, "Memorandum of Conversation with Professor Millard regarding the D.I.C. and R.," 23 Sept. 1931, Box 1, Folder 6, Compton Papers. 63Compton to William S. Nutter (vice-president, Goodall Worsted Company), 3 Nov. 1934, Box 1, Folder 14, and C. L. Norton to Compton, 1 Mar. 1937, Box 1, Folder 25; both in Compton Papers. 64Bush to W. G. Whitman (professor of chemical engineering at MIT), 1 May 1935, Bush Papers; "Report of the Advisory Committee of the Division of Industrial Cooperation," 9 Dec. 1939, Box 1, Folder 29, Compton Papers. 65Compton, "Presentation of the Work of the Division to Faculty," 9 Nov. 1932, Box 1, Folder 6, Compton Papers. 66Compton, "Memorandum on Staff Personnel," 9 Dec. 1932, Box 1, Folder 6, Compton Papers. 67Karl T. Compton, "Report of the President," MIT President's Report, 1930-1931, pp. 18-19. 68C. L. Norton to Compton, 1 Mar. 1937, Box 1, Folder 25; Bush to Compton, 18 May 1937, Box 1, Folder 25, Compton Papers.

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 548 JOHN W. SERVOS between a faculty member and the General Electric Company in 1939, Compton restated his position to William D. Coolidge in strong terms: "We want our staff members to be as useful to industry as possible, but we cannot 'sell out' our laboratories or staff to any one company."69 This was a harsh statement indeed to the research director of a firm that had long been one of the principal corporate benefactors of MIT. MIT underwent a transformation under Compton's leadership. Although he did not put an end to all sponsored research and consulting activities, he did place controls on such work; moreover, he laid new stress on the importance of research and training in the basic sciences. In formulating his policies, Compton pursued a goal Noyes had earlier advocated, that of making MIT into a science-based university. Like Noyes, Compton was convinced that research in chemistry and physics undergirded advances in technology. If MIT was ever to be more than a narrow engineering school, it would have to emphasize the fundamental sciences. Compton was able to refashion policies in accordance with this aim. That he was able to do so without significant opposition from latter day William H. Walkers demonstrates the degree to which applied scientists at MIT had become disillusioned with schemes for cooperative research with industrial firms. In a recent book, David Noble has argued that basic and applied scientists at American institutions of higher education, and in particular at MIT, became handmaidens to business interests during the years foll6wing World War I, and that their subservience has since then endured.70 He further maintains that basic and applied scientists at MIT and other American universities and technical schools were both eager to enter this relationship, and that as a result of their common thralldom to corporate interests, the lines dividing basic and applied science have blurred to the point where they are now indistinguishable. A closer examination of the relationships among basic scientists, applied scientists, and industry at MIT reveals a far more complex and interesting story. To be sure, establishments such as the Research Laboratory of Applied Chemistry became prominent features of the institutional terrain at MIT following World War I, and the Institute's applied scientists took a leading role in building them. Walker, Little, and their associates were convinced that American industry required the expertise available at institutions such as MIT. More importantly, they were certain that their own best interests would be served by developing a close partnership with business. Enamored of the funds at the disposal of industry, they envisioned large rewards for the Institute, their profession, and themselves in strengthening business ties. Chemical engineers and other applied scientists did win a precarious hold on MIT policies during the years immediately following World War I. But they won this temporary victory only in the face of strong opposition from advocates of basic research, and shortly after obtaining this victory encountered serious problems in harnessing corporate funds to build the applied science center they sought. By the mid-1920s, restrictions on problem choice and freedom of publication led the leaders of the MIT chemical engineering program to question the assumption that a harmony of interests existed between their aims and those of their corporate patrons. Their doubts were exacerbated by developments within chemical engineering itself. Chemical engineering became a science during the first decades of the twentieth

69Compton to Coolidge, 5 May 1939, Box 1, Folder 29, Compton Papers. 70Noble, America by Design, esp. pp. 110- 166.

This content downloaded from 86.59.13.237 on Fri, 18 Jun 2021 15:41:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AT MIT 549 century. As academic chemical engineers came to define a set of research priorities that differed from those of the industries they served, they increasingly found themselves allied with their erstwhile adversaries in the basic sciences in demanding greater freedom and unrestricted research subsidies. Although they did not wish to abrogate all ties with business, they grew to appreciate the need for greater independence-a need that could be met through the development of alternative sources of financial support. In a sense applied and basic science did converge, but in the process academic applied scientists gradually took on the values of their "purer" but poorer cousins. During the 1920s the problems arising from the close partnership with industry, together with a decline in the standing of MIT as a scientific institution, led Stratton and other administrators to share the faculty's doubts regarding MIT's industrial relations. They found it difficult, however, to extricate the Institute from its intimate identification with business interests. In order to refashion policies, skeptical foundation officials and MIT's own alumni had to be persuaded that reforms were necessary and possible. With the appointment of Karl Compton as president in 1930, MIT gained a vigorous and effective new spokesman who was convinced that change was possible; the disruptive effects of the depression on cooperative ventures with industry made it evident that reform was necessary. The doubts which arose during the prosperous 1920s found full expression in MIT policies during the 1930s, after administrators and scientists alike were disabused of the idea that industrial sponsorship alone could provide a stable and vital basis for applied scientific research in an academic setting.

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