Joseph Henry and the National Academy of Sciences by Leonard Carmichael
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Proceedings of the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Volune 58 * Number 1 * July 15, 1967 JOSEPH HENRY AND THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES BY LEONARD CARMICHAEL NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY Presented before the Academy, April £6, 1967, by invitation of the Committee on Arrangements for the Annual Meeting* Sometime next August, out of office buildings all over Washington will come the sturdy scientific staff of the National Academy of Sciences, and what is pleasantly called its creature, the National Research Council, and the young National Academy of Engineering, to take physical possession of the new Joseph Henry Building. Then, at long last, the work of the Academy and the Research Council will be efficiently centralized in one building near the monumental marble headquarters of the Academy itself. So, when I was invited to say something this evening, I thought I would like to talk about one of my personal heroes and one of America's early great scientists and research organizers, Joseph Henry, whose name has so wisely been given to the new George Washington University building that is soon to be occupied by the Academy. It seems especially appropriate to have named this building for Henry. He, more than any other man of the founding generation, made the Academy what it is today. Also, since this new building is leased from George Washington University, it is appropriate to remember that Henry was a distinguished member of the Board of Trustees of Columbian College, the predecessor institution of the modern George Washington University. I remember as a schoolboy studying about Henry in a book by R. A. Millikan and H. G. Gale. I became even more keenly interested in him and his greatness when I became Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. I had not been at the Smithsonian long before I came to recognize that an amazing number of its inter- esting, diversified, and constructive activities somehow had their origin in my first predecessor's original and effective basic plan for the Institution and in his thirty-two years of fruitful administration as Secretary of the Smithsonian. One with the specialized skill in book-naming of Agatha Christie and her ability to build up her reader's suspense might have chosen as my title for this evening: "The Mystery of the Composite Picture" or "Why Herter Painted the Man Who * The author wishes to note that this paper is written in a style intended for oral presentation at the annual dinner of the Academy and as such contains some "side remarks" not appropriate for a formal historical essay. The paper is largely based on published books, with a few references to unpublished papers at the Smithsonian Institution and at the National Academy of Sciences. 1 Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 2 N. A. S. LECTURE: L. CARMICHAEL PROC. N. A. S. Was Not There." On the wall of the great Board Room of the Academy building is a mural proudly showing the signing of its charter by President Lincoln. This excellent painting was done by Albert Herter, a distinguished American muralist of the last generation, and father of former Secretary of State Christian A. Herter. This picture shows President Lincoln in the center; before him is the quill pen he used on March 3, 1863, to sign the Congressional bill creating the Academy. Look twice and you will see a surprisingly Massachusetts aura floating about this picture. In it, besides Lincoln, are Benjamin Peirce, Massachusetts-born astronomer and mathematician; Louis Agassiz, Harvard's distinguished museum builder and student of natural history; Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts; Boston-born Admiral Charles H. Davis, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation of the Navy; and Boston-born B. A. Gould, astronomer of the heavens of the Southern Hemisphere. Also in the picture is Philadelphia-born Alexander Dallas Bache, but even he was a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin who was born in Boston and only moved to Philadelphia when he reached years of discretion. Near the center, with the largest head of all, is a real non-New Englander, the handsome Albany-born Joseph Henry. As I have hinted, this mural has a hidden mystery. Of the founders shown on the canvas, no one more deserves a place there than does Joseph Henry, but in awk- ward fact he was not present when the pictured pen was used. Not until two days after the signing had taken place did Henry learn that the bill to establish the Academy had been passed and that it had been signed into law by his close friend, President Lincoln. The mystery of why Herter included Henry, the man who was not there, is still unsolved. The archives of the Academy have not yet disclosed who ordered the picture or who decided that Henry should be represented in it. But in terms of memorializing the spiritual founders of the Academy, surely Henry richly deserves his central place in the picture. May dull realism never suggest a change! What may be termed the psychological trend that led up to the founding of our Academy had been developing for centuries. It is a law of society that when a nation produces enough real scientists or, as Franklin said, "virtuosi or ingenious men," these men will wish to associate themselves together in some form of organi- zation. Such is the history of the French Academy of Science, the Royal Society, the Prussian Academy, the Russian Academy, Philadelphia's American Philo- sophical Society, and Boston's American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Joseph Henry had a lasting interest in such organizations. He helped found the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1847 on lines similar to its like- named organization in Britain. This association was made up both of professional scientists and of friends of science. Early in his career, Henry began to feel the need of a different sort of national organization, one that would be made up ex- clusively of men who had already won distinction in scientific research. An acad- emy of the latter sort would confer honor upon those elected to it, and also the members of such an academy would be especially able to help the government effec- tively when called upon to do so. Henry's close friend, Bache, in 1851, in an ad- dress as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, had specifically called for such a superorganization of scientific men, preferably under federal sponsorship. Agassiz had also favored such a plan. But when the Civil War developed, Henry decided that his idea and that of Bache and Agassiz for the Downloaded by guest on October 1, 2021 VceL. 58, 1967 N. A. S. LECTURE: L. CARMICHAEL 3 establishment of an academy was inappropriate for such troubled times and must wait for the return of peace. At the start of the Civil War, the Government had no staff to deal with the many scientific or semiiscientific problems that arose in connection with rapid rearma- ment. There was, for example, no agency to evaluate the many proposals of well- meaning or money-hungry inventors who felt that they had developed new weapons or other military devices. Most of such proffered inventions were without value, but the chance that a useful proposal might be neglected made it essential to have professional scrutiny of all war-related inventions that were offered to the country. Henry, as head of the Smithsonian Institution, was asked to study and report on each such invention. He later noted that between 1860 and 1864 several hundred reports, many of which had required extensive experimention in their preparation, had been rendered to the Government. Henry, not surprsingly, felt the need of help in this work and in the positive de- velopment of many new military devices that were required by the Army and Navy. To accomplish all this work he associated himself with an idea proposed by Com- modore Charles H. Davis, later Admiral Davis, to suggest the formation of a per- manent commission to which all subjects of a scientific character on which the Gov- ernment required information could be referred. This commission was appointed by Gideon Wells, Secretary of the Navy. It consisted of Davis, Henry, and Bache. Bache, as already noted, was a great Philadelphian. He had been head of GirardCollege and professor of natural philosophy atthe University of Pennsylvania. His report on education in Europe, written in 1839, provided an enlightened plan for the reorganization not only of Philadelphia's schools and universities, but for all American education. Philadelphia's great and unique Central High School still stands as his monument. He had come to Washington as successor to the distin- guished Swiss-born Ferdinand Rudoph Hassler as head of the Government's first scientific agency, the United States Coast Survey, which since its establishment by President Jefferson had known many tribulations. By the time of the Civil War, the Coast Survey had won an important and accepted place in Washington. It is an interesting footnote to note that Jefferson Davis, later President of the Con- federacy, had been a West Point classmate of Bache. Jefferson Davis was also an influential Regent of the Smithsonian and, in ante bellum days, naturally a close friend of both Bache and Henry. As Secretary of War in President Pierce's ad- ministration, the southern mind of Jefferson Davis had nevertheless ruled against Henry's well-developed proposal that the Army stockpile materials needed to make gunpowder. Henry had asserted in a report at that time that the United States ought not (as was then the case) to be dependent on England for supplies to make gunpowder.