Research and Discovery: Landmarks and Pioneers in American Science

Research and Discovery

Research and Discovery Landmarks and Pioneers in American Science

Edited by

Russell Lawson

SHARPE REFERENCE Sharpe Reference is an imprint of M.E. Sharpe, Inc. M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 80 Business Park Drive Armonk, NY 10504 © 2008 by M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holders. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Research and discovery: landmarks and pioneers in American science / Russell Lawson, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7656-8073-0 (hc: alk. paper) 1. Science—United States—History—Encyclopedias. 2. Research—United States—History— Encyclopedias. I. Lawson, Russell. Q127.U6R45 2007 509.73—dc22

2006014012

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Contents Smith, John ..........................................................57 Thoreau, Henry David ..........................................59 Webster, Noah......................................................61 Winthrop, James ..................................................62 Yellowstone National Park....................................62

Topic Finder ........................................................xv Contributors ......................................................xxv Introduction ....................................................xxvii Section 1: Natural History

Documents John Josselyn’s Account of the White Mountains ... 65 Henry David Thoreau’s River Journey ..................65 Timothy Dwight’s Discourse on Religion and Science ......................................................66 Henry Marie Brackenridge’s Journey up the Missouri River ......................................67

Essays America as Image and Reality ................................3 The Search for a Natural History of America ..........6 Natural Theologians of Early America ..................8 The Frontier of Science ........................................12 A–Z Entries Acosta, José de ....................................................15 Beebe, William ....................................................16 Beverley, Robert ..................................................16 Brackenridge, Henry Marie ..................................17 Catesby, Mark ......................................................18 Chapman, John “Johnny Appleseed” ....................20 Colden, Cadwallader ............................................20 Draper, John William ..........................................22 Dudleian Lecture ..................................................23 Dudley, Paul ........................................................23 Dwight, Timothy..................................................24 Ecology ................................................................25 Franklin, Benjamin ..............................................27 Godman, John D. ................................................29 Gyles, John ..........................................................30 Hariot, Thomas ....................................................33 Jefferson, Thomas ................................................34 Josselyn, John ......................................................36 Logan, James ........................................................37 Mather, Cotton ....................................................38 Mather, Increase....................................................40 Muir, John ............................................................41 National Parks......................................................42 Natural Theology ................................................43 Naturalists of New France ....................................45 Naturalists of New Spain ......................................48 New Science ........................................................49 Norwood, Richard ................................................50 Oviedo, Gonzalo ..................................................51 Peale, Titian..........................................................51 Peck, William Dandridge ....................................54 Religion and Science ............................................54 Roosevelt, Theodore..............................................56

Section 2: Geography Essays The First American Science ..................................71 Early American Mountaineering ..........................73 Exploring the Continent ......................................75 A–Z Entries Aldrin, Edwin “Buzz” ..........................................78 American Geographical Society ............................78 Appalachian Mountain Club ................................79 Armstrong, Neil ..................................................80 Belknap, Jeremy ..................................................81 Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784) ........................84 Bonneville, Benjamin Louis Eulalie de ..................86 Byrd, Richard Evelyn............................................87 Champlain, Samuel de ..........................................88 Clark, William......................................................89 Collins, Michael....................................................90 Columbus, Christopher ........................................91 Dablon, Claude ....................................................92 Delisle, Guillaume................................................93 Dunbar-Hunter Expedition (1804–1805) ............94 Ellsworth, Lincoln ................................................95 Frémont, John Charles ..........................................96 Glenn, John ..........................................................97 Gosnold, Bartholomew ........................................99 Hakluyt, Richard..................................................99 Hennepin, Louis ................................................100 Humboldt, Alexander von ..................................101 Lawson, John ......................................................102 Lescarbot, Marc ..................................................103 Lewis, Meriwether ..............................................104

v

vi Contents Lewis and Clark Expedition ................................105 Little, Daniel ......................................................108 Long, Stephen ....................................................109 Morse, Jedidiah ..................................................111 National Geographic Society ..............................112 Peary, Robert ......................................................113 Pike Expeditions (1805–1807)............................114 Powell, John Wesley ..........................................116 Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe ....................................117 Shepard, Alan ....................................................118 Sierra Club..........................................................119 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur ........................................120 Townsend, John Kirk..........................................121 Vizcaíno, Sebastián..............................................122 Walker, Thomas..................................................123 Whipple, Joseph ................................................123 Wilkes, Charles ..................................................125 Wilkes Expedition (1838–1842) ........................125 Documents Zebulon Pike’s Journey up the Mississippi River ............................................128 Ascent of Mount Katahdin..................................128 Lewis and Clark Arrive at the Pacific Ocean ........129 John Kirk Townsend on the Oregon Trail ..........129

Section 3: Botany Essays The Early American Materia Medica ................................................133 The Explorer-Botanists of America......................136 Linnaeus in America ..........................................138 A–Z Entries Baldwin, William ..............................................141 Banister, John ....................................................142 Barton, Benjamin Smith ....................................143 Bartram, John ....................................................144 Bartram, William ..............................................147 Berlandier, Jean Louis ........................................149 Bigelow, Jacob ....................................................151 Bradbury, John ..................................................152 Clayton, John......................................................153 Colden, Jane ......................................................153 Cutler, Manasseh ................................................154 Drummond, Thomas ..........................................156 Dunbar, William ................................................157 Elliott, Stephen ..................................................158 Experimental Gardens ........................................159 Forest Service, U.S. ............................................160 Forestry ..............................................................161

Garden, Alexander ..............................................161 Gray, Asa ............................................................162 Gray Herbarium ................................................164 Harvard Botanical Garden ..................................165 Horticulture ......................................................165 Mitchell, John ....................................................167 More, Thomas ....................................................167 Muhlenberg, Henry ............................................168 Nuttall, Thomas ................................................169 Pickering, Charles ..............................................171 Plants and Photosynthesis ..................................172 Pursh, Frederick..................................................173 Russell, Thomas..................................................174 Say, Thomas ........................................................175 Tuckerman, Edward ............................................176 Documents The Flora of the White Mountains ......................178 Thomas Nuttall’s Description of the Flora of the Western Prairie ....................................178 John Bradbury’s Catalogue of Flora in the Missouri Valley ..............................................179

Section 4: Biology Essays The Biological Sciences in Early America ............185 Paleontology: Challenges to Genesis in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries ............187 Darwin in America ............................................189 The Genetic Revolution......................................191 A–Z Entries Audubon, John James ........................................194 Axelrod, Julius....................................................196 Bigelow, Henry ..................................................197 Biological Warfare ..............................................199 Bloch, Konrad ....................................................200 Burbank, Luther ................................................201 Carson, Rachel ....................................................202 Carver, George Washington ................................203 Conservation Biology ..........................................204 Cope, Edward Drinker ........................................205 Craniometry........................................................206 Creation..............................................................207 DNA ..................................................................209 Entomology ........................................................210 Eugenics ............................................................211 Evolution............................................................213 Genetics..............................................................215 Gould, Stephen Jay ............................................217 Holbrook, John Edwards ....................................220

Contents vii Hubbard, Ruth ..................................................221 Human Anatomy and Physiology ......................221 Human Genome ................................................223 Hyatt, Alpheus ..................................................224 Ichthyology ........................................................225 Just, Ernest Everett ............................................226 Kinsey, Alfred ....................................................226 Kornberg, Arthur ..............................................228 Lederberg, Joshua ..............................................228 Leidy, Joseph ......................................................230 Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole ......231 Marsh, Othniel Charles ......................................232 McClintock, Barbara ..........................................232 Microbiology ......................................................234 Molecular Biology ..............................................234 Morgan, Thomas Hunt ......................................235 National Audubon Society ..................................236 Oceanography ....................................................237 Ornithology........................................................239 Osborn, Henry F. ................................................242 Peterson, Roger Tory ..........................................243 Prescott, Samuel Cate ........................................244 Scopes Trial ........................................................245 Spontaneous Generation......................................246 Sterilization Movement ......................................247 Sutherland, Earl, Jr. ............................................248 Taxonomy ..........................................................249 Tobacco ..............................................................250 Tuskegee Experiment..........................................252 Waksman, Selman Abraham ..............................253 Watson, James ....................................................254 Wildlife Management ........................................256 Wilson, Alexander ..............................................257 Wilson, Edward O. ............................................257 Wistar, Caspar ....................................................259 Woodrow, James ................................................260 Wright, Chauncey ..............................................261 Zoology ..............................................................261 Zoos....................................................................262 Documents John Josselyn’s Description of Seventeenth-Century Fauna ............................265 John Gyles’s Description of the Maine Beaver ............................................................265 Zebulon Pike’s Description of the Prairie Dog ......266 John Kirk Townsend’s Description of the Vulture ..........................................................267 John Holbrook’s Description of the Coluber Constrictor ........................................267

Section 5: Medicine and Health Essays The Colonial American Approach to Medicine ....273 The Revolution in Applied Health......................276 Disease in America..............................................280 A–Z Entries Abortion ............................................................284 AIDS ..................................................................285 Allen, Frederick Madison....................................287 Alzheimer’s Disease ............................................287 American Dental Association ..............................289 American Medical Association ............................290 American School for the Deaf..............................291 Anesthesia ..........................................................292 Antibiotics..........................................................293 Autism ..............................................................294 Autopsy ..............................................................295 Ballard, Martha ..................................................296 Banting, Frederick Grant ....................................297 Barber Surgeons ..................................................298 Bard, John ..........................................................298 Barnard, Christiaan ............................................299 Biggs, Hermann Michael ....................................300 Blackwell, Elizabeth ..........................................301 Bleeding ............................................................302 Bowditch, Henry Ingersoll..................................303 Boylston, Zabdiel................................................304 Cadwalader, Thomas ..........................................306 Cancer and Cancer Research................................307 Chalmers, Lionel ................................................309 Channing, Walter ..............................................310 Chapin, Charles V. ..............................................310 Cooley, Denton ..................................................311 Cushing, Harvey Williams..................................312 DeBakey, Michael E. ..........................................313 Dentistry ............................................................314 DeVries, William C. ..........................................315 Diabetes..............................................................316 Diphtheria ..........................................................317 Douglass, William ..............................................319 Eddy, Mary Baker ..............................................320 Epidemiology ....................................................321 Ether ..................................................................322 Fisher, Joshua......................................................323 Flexner, Abraham................................................323 Flint, Austin ......................................................325 Forensic Medicine ..............................................325

viii Contents Fuller, Samuel ....................................................326 Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins ..............................327 Gene Therapy ....................................................328 Gorgas, William Crawford ..................................328 Green, Horace ....................................................329 Gynecology ........................................................330 Halsted, William ................................................331 Hamilton, Alexander ..........................................331 Harvard Medical School ......................................332 Hayward, George................................................333 Herbal Medicine ................................................334 HMOs ................................................................335 Holistic Medicine ..............................................336 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. ..............................337 Horner, William Edmonds..................................338 Hospitals ............................................................339 Humors and Humoral Theory ............................341 Hygiene..............................................................342 Immunology ......................................................343 Influenza ............................................................344 Influenza Epidemic (1918–1919) ........................344 Inoculation ........................................................346 Itinerant Physicians ............................................347 Jarvik, Robert ....................................................348 Jones, John ........................................................349 Koop, C. Everett ................................................349 Life Expectancy ..................................................350 Lining, John ......................................................351 Long, Crawford ..................................................352 Massachusetts General Hospital ..........................353 Mayo Clinic ........................................................354 Measles ..............................................................356 Medical Education ..............................................357 Midwifery ..........................................................358 Minot, George Richards......................................359 Morton, William ................................................360 National Institutes of Health ..............................361 New England Journal of Medicine ..........................362 Obstetrics ..........................................................362 Osler, William ....................................................364 Penicillin ............................................................364 Pennsylvania Hospital ........................................366 Pesthouse............................................................367 Physick, Philip Syng ..........................................368 Polio ..................................................................369 Public Health ....................................................371 Reed, Walter ......................................................372 Rush, Benjamin ..................................................373 Sabin, Albert ......................................................374 Salk, Jonas ..........................................................375 Sanatorium ........................................................376

Sanger, Margaret ................................................377 Scarlet Fever ......................................................379 Shattuck, George ................................................380 Shumway, Norman ............................................380 Smallpox ............................................................381 Spock, Benjamin ................................................383 Sternberg, George Miller ....................................384 Still, Andrew Taylor............................................385 Surgery ..............................................................386 Taussig, Helen ....................................................388 Tennent, John ....................................................389 Tetanus ..............................................................389 Typhoid Fever ....................................................390 Vaccination ........................................................391 Waterhouse, Benjamin........................................392 Whipple, George H. ..........................................393 Williams, Daniel Hale ........................................394 Wolcott, Erastus Bradley ....................................395 Women’s Health ................................................396 Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman ....................................398 Yellow Fever ......................................................399 Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth ..............................400 Documents The Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 ..........................................................402 Nineteenth-Century Herbal Remedies ................402 The Maintenance of Health at Sea ......................404

Section 6: Geosciences Essays Weather in Early America ..................................409 Reconstructing the Geological Past ....................410 The Revolution in Meteorology ..........................413 A–Z Entries Agassiz, Louis ....................................................416 American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac ............417 Aurora Borealis ..................................................418 Balloons and Ballooning ....................................419 Bathysphere ........................................................420 Bentley, Wilson Alwyn ......................................422 Climatology........................................................422 Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S...........................424 Continental Drift ................................................425 Dana, James Dwight ..........................................426 Dark Day............................................................428 Drake, Edwin L...................................................429 Earthquakes and Seismology ..............................430 Eaton, Amos ......................................................432 Espy, James Pollard ............................................433

Contents ix Geologic Time ....................................................434 Geological Society of America ............................435 Geological Surveys ..............................................435 Geomagnetism....................................................436 Glaciers ..............................................................437 Global Warming ................................................439 Godfrey, Thomas ................................................440 Hitchcock, Edward ............................................441 Hydrology ..........................................................442 Ionosphere ..........................................................443 Maclure, William................................................445 Mariner’s Quadrant ............................................445 Maury, Matthew ................................................446 Mount Washington Observatory ........................448 National Hurricane Center..................................449 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ..............................................450 National Weather Service....................................452 Oil Drilling and Exploration ..............................453 Ozone ................................................................454 Red River Meteorite ..........................................455 Richter, Charles ..................................................456 San Francisco Earthquake (1906) ........................457 Sedimentary Rocks ............................................458 Time Zones ........................................................459 Volcanoes and Vulcanology ................................460 Weather Forecasting ..........................................462 Documents John Josselyn’s Account of the Mineral Wealth of New England ................................464 Thomas Nuttall’s Description of Mississippi Hydrology ......................................................464 Edward Hitchcock’s Pious Geology ....................464

Section 7: Social Sciences Essays Discovering the Human Past: Anthropology in Early America ............................................469 From Modernization to Globalization ................473 Social Sciences ....................................................475 Economics ..........................................................477 A–Z Entries American Indian Science ....................................480 American Indians................................................482 American Sociological Association ......................484 Archeology ........................................................484 Benedict, Ruth ..................................................486 Boas, Franz ........................................................486 Cooley, Charles ..................................................487

Cultural Anthropology ......................................488 Cultural Relativism ............................................489 Dewey, John ......................................................490 Dix, Dorothea Lynde ..........................................491 Ethnology ..........................................................492 Fogel, Robert......................................................493 Hooton, Earnest A. ............................................494 Humanism..........................................................495 Indian Origins ....................................................496 Inkeles, Alex ......................................................497 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences ........498 Kuznets, Simon ..................................................499 Laissez-Faire Economics ......................................499 Malinowski, Bronislaw........................................500 Marxism ............................................................502 Mead, Margaret ..................................................503 Morgan, Lewis ....................................................505 Mumford, Lewis..................................................505 Parsons, Talcott ..................................................507 Physical Anthropology........................................507 Race....................................................................508 Scientific Racism ................................................510 Statistical Package for the Social Sciences ............510 Strachey, William ..............................................511 Sutherland, Edwin Hardin ..................................512 Urbanization ......................................................513 Veblen, Thorstein ..............................................515 Williams, Roger ................................................516 Wirth, Louis ......................................................517 Documents John Gyles’s Description of the Abenaki Indians ..........................................................519 Thomas Nuttall’s Description of the Osage ........519 John Bradbury’s Account of the Songs of French Voyageurs............................................520 John Bradbury on the Beliefs and Customs of North American Indians ............................520 Thomas Jefferson on the Origins of Indians in America......................................................521

Section 8: Behavioral Sciences Essays The Puritan Understanding of Self......................525 The Developing Science of the Mind ..................526 Psychoanalysis in America ..................................529 A–Z Entries American Journal of Psychology ..............................533 American Psychological Association....................533 Beard, George M.................................................534

x Contents Behaviorism........................................................535 Bettelheim, Bruno ..............................................536 Collective Behavior ............................................537 Ego ....................................................................538 Erikson, Erik ......................................................538 Gesell, Arnold ....................................................540 Hall, G. Stanley ..................................................541 Horney, Karen ....................................................542 Id ......................................................................543 Insanity ..............................................................544 IQ ......................................................................545 James, William ..................................................546 Lifton, Robert Jay ..............................................548 Maslow, Abraham ..............................................549 Mead, George Herbert ........................................550 Mental Health ....................................................551 Mitchell, S. Weir ................................................553 Neurasthenia ......................................................554 Neurosis ............................................................555 Pragmatism ........................................................556 Psychiatry ..........................................................557 Rhine, J.B...........................................................558 Rogers, Carl........................................................559 Sheldon, William................................................560 Skinner, B.F. ......................................................561 Sullivan, Harry Stack ..........................................562 Superego ............................................................563 Watson, John B. ................................................564 Documents William James’s Identity Crisis ..........................566 Jonathan Edwards’s Portrait of Christian Guilt ..............................................566 George Beard’s Description of Spiritism ........................................................568

Section 9: Astronomy Essays The New Science and Puritanism........................571 The American Astronomer..................................573 American Women in Astronomy ........................575 A–Z Entries Almanacs ............................................................579 Astrology............................................................579 Big Bang Theory ................................................580 Black Holes ........................................................581 Bond, William....................................................582 Boston Philosophical Society ..............................583 Bowditch, Nathaniel ..........................................583 Cannon, Annie Jump ..........................................584

Clark, Alvan ......................................................585 Comets ..............................................................586 Draper, Henry ....................................................587 Extraterrestrials ..................................................588 Gregorian Calendar ............................................589 Hale, George Ellery ............................................590 Hall, Asaph ........................................................591 Harvard Observatory ..........................................592 Hubble, Edwin Powell........................................593 Hubble Telescope................................................594 Jansky, Karl ........................................................595 Keeler, James ......................................................596 Lowell, Percival ..................................................597 Mitchell, Maria ..................................................598 Moons of Other Planets ......................................599 Mount Wilson Observatory ................................600 Navigation..........................................................601 Newcomb, Simon ..............................................602 Observatories ......................................................603 Palomar Observatory ..........................................604 Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia..................................605 Pickering, Edward ..............................................606 Pluto, Discovery of ............................................607 Poor Richard’s Almanack ......................................608 Ptolemaic System................................................610 Sagan, Carl..........................................................611 Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ....................................................613 Shoemaker, Eugene Merle ..................................614 Sirius B, Discovery of..........................................615 Tombaugh, Clyde ..............................................615 Transit of Planets ................................................617 U.S. Naval Observatory ......................................618 Documents An Eighteenth-Century Astronomical Journal ..........................................................620 Description of Comets from a NineteenthCentury Astronomy Textbook ........................620 Percival Lowell’s Description of Mars ..................621

Section 10: Physics Essays Aristotelian Physics in Colonial America ............625 Newtonian Physics and Early American Science............................................626

Contents xi Benjamin Franklin, American Physicist ........................................................628 A–Z Entries Alvarez, Luis ......................................................630 Anderson, Carl David ........................................630 Bethe, Hans Albrecht ........................................631 Cold Fusion ........................................................632 Compton, Arthur Holly ......................................633 Cyclotron............................................................634 Einstein, Albert ..................................................635 Fermi, Enrico......................................................637 Feynman, Richard ..............................................638 Fission ................................................................639 Fusion ................................................................640 Gell-Mann, Murray ............................................641 Gravity ..............................................................642 Greenwood, Isaac ................................................643 Hollis Professorship ............................................644 Kinnersley, Ebenezer ..........................................645 Lawrence, Ernest ................................................646 Light ..................................................................647 Light, Speed of....................................................648 Magnetism..........................................................650 Mayer, Maria Goeppert ......................................651 Michelson-Morley Experiment ............................651 Millikan, Robert A. ............................................653 Particle Physics ..................................................654 Pauli, Wolfgang..................................................654 Prince, John........................................................655 Principia Mathematica ..........................................656 Quantum Physics................................................657 Rabi, I.I. ............................................................659 Ramsey, Norman ................................................660 Relativity............................................................661 Rittenhouse, David ............................................662 Spectroscopy ......................................................663 Superconductivity ..............................................664 Teller, Edward ....................................................665 Thermodynamics ................................................667 Thompson, Benjamin (Count Rumford)........................................................668 Uncertainty Principle ........................................669 Wheeler, John ....................................................669 Wigner, Eugene ..................................................670 Winthrop, John, IV ............................................670 Documents Count Rumford’s Experiments in Heat ..............672 The Physics of Sound ..........................................674 Nineteenth-Century Understanding of the Forces of Attraction and Caloric......................674

Section 11: Chemistry Essays The American Chemist ......................................679 Eighteenth-Century Chemistry in America......................................................681 The Plastics Revolution ......................................683 A–Z Entries Calvin, Melvin ....................................................686 Carothers, Wallace ..............................................686 Celluloid ............................................................687 Chemical Society of Philadelphia ........................688 Conant, James B. ................................................689 Dow Chemical ....................................................690 Giauque, William ..............................................690 Hall, Lloyd Augustus..........................................692 Inorganic Chemistry ..........................................692 Libby, Willard F. ................................................693 Maclean, John ....................................................694 Nylon ................................................................695 Onsager, Lars ......................................................696 Organic Chemistry..............................................696 Patent Medicine..................................................697 Pauling, Linus ....................................................699 Pharmaceutical Industry ....................................700 Pharmacology ....................................................702 Phlogiston ..........................................................702 Pinkham, Lydia ..................................................703 Priestley, Joseph..................................................704 Radiocarbon Dating............................................706 Remsen, Ira ........................................................707 Seaborg, Glenn T. ..............................................707 Silliman, Benjamin ............................................709 Squibb, Edward R...............................................710 Starkey, George ..................................................711 Urey, Harold Clayton..........................................711 Vulcanization......................................................713 Winthrop, John, Jr. ............................................714 Documents Poison Gas in World War I ................................716 Joseph Priestley’s Observations on the Theory of Oxygen ..........................................716 The Home Chemist ............................................717

Section 12: Mathematics and Computer Science Essays Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry ............721 The Computer Revolution ..................................723 The Internet ......................................................725

xii Contents A–Z Entries Aiken, Howard ..................................................729 American Mathematical Society ..........................730 Apple Computer ................................................731 Applied Mathematics..........................................732 Banneker, Benjamin............................................733 Brownian Motion................................................735 Bush, Vannevar ..................................................736 Calculus..............................................................737 Chaos Theory ......................................................738 Computer Applications ......................................739 Cybernetics ........................................................740 ENIAC ..............................................................740 Farrar, John ........................................................742 Forrester, Jay Wright ..........................................743 Gibbs, Josiah Willard ........................................744 Gorenstein, Daniel..............................................745 Hollerith, Herman..............................................745 Levinson, Norman ..............................................747 Mark I ................................................................748 Microsoft ............................................................749 Number Theory ..................................................750 Peirce, Benjamin ................................................752 Peirce, Charles S. ................................................753 SAGE ................................................................754 Statistics ............................................................755 UNIVAC ............................................................756 von Neumann, John............................................757 Whirlwind..........................................................758 Wiener, Norbert ................................................759 Documents A Nineteenth-Century Calculating Machine..........................................................762 Herman Hollerith’s Electric Tabulating System ..........................................763 Electronic Tabulation of the 1890 Census ..........764

Section 13: Applied Science Essays The American Inventor ......................................767 The Bounty of North America ............................769 Science and the Industrial Revolution ................771 Albert Einstein and Atomic Power......................774 A–Z Entries Agricultural Engineering....................................777 Agricultural Experiment Stations........................778 Agriculture ........................................................779 Agronomy ..........................................................780 American Indian Canoes ....................................781

Apollo, Project....................................................781 Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. ..........................782 Atomic Bomb ....................................................783 Atomic Energy Commission ..............................786 Bell, Alexander Graham......................................787 Boeing ................................................................787 Brooklyn Bridge ................................................790 Clocks and Timepieces ........................................791 Deere, John ........................................................792 Duryea, Charles, and Frank Duryea ....................793 Eastman, George ................................................793 Edison, Thomas Alva ..........................................794 Electricity ..........................................................797 Electron Microscope............................................798 Eliot, Jared ........................................................799 Erie Canal ..........................................................800 Factories ............................................................801 Ford, Henry ........................................................802 Fuller, R. Buckminster........................................804 Gemini, Project ..................................................805 Girdling ............................................................806 Goddard, Robert Hutchings ..............................807 Goodyear, Charles ..............................................809 Gun Manufacturing ............................................810 Hoover Dam ......................................................811 Hydroelectricity..................................................813 Hydrogen Bomb ................................................814 Ironworks, Colonial ............................................814 Kettering, Charles F. ..........................................816 Land, Edwin ......................................................817 Land Grant Universities......................................818 Laser ..................................................................819 Latimer, Lewis Howard ......................................820 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ............820 Lindbergh, Charles A. ........................................821 Manhattan Project ..............................................822 Massachusetts Institute of Technology ................823 McCormick, Cyrus Hall ......................................824 Mercury, Project ................................................825 Mills ..................................................................826 Morse, Samuel F.B. ............................................827 NASA ................................................................827 Nautilus ..............................................................829 Nuclear Energy ..................................................830 Oppenheimer, J. Robert......................................831 Pathfinder, Mars ..................................................832 Photography ......................................................833 Pinckney, Eliza Lucas ..........................................835 Plutonium ..........................................................835 Popular Science Magazine ......................................836 Radio..................................................................837

Contents xiii Satellites ............................................................841 Shipbuilding ......................................................842 Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich......................................844 Singer, Isaac ........................................................845 Slater, Samuel ....................................................846 Space Probes ......................................................847 Space Shuttle ......................................................849 Space Station ......................................................850 Steam Engine......................................................851 Synthetic Rubber ................................................853 Telegraph............................................................853 Telephone ..........................................................854 Television ..........................................................855 Three Mile Island................................................856 Transcontinental Railroad ..................................857 U.S. Mint ..........................................................858 Uranium ............................................................859 von Braun, Wernher............................................860 West, Joseph ......................................................861 Whitney, Eli ......................................................862 Woods, Granville................................................864 Wright, Orville, and Wilbur Wright ..................864 Documents The Telegraph Explained ....................................867 The Science of Agriculture ..................................867 The Lowell Mills ................................................869

Section 14: History and Philosophy of Science Essays History as Science ..............................................873 The Philosophy of Science ..................................875 The Emergence of an American History of Science ..........................................877 The Sociology of Science ....................................879 A–Z Entries Adams, Henry ....................................................882 African American Scientists ................................883 American Academy of Arts and Sciences ............886

American Antiquarian Society ............................887 American Association for the Advancement of Science..................................888 American Historical Association ........................890 American Museum of Natural History ................890 American Philosophical Society ..........................891 Arminianism ......................................................893 Deism ................................................................894 Field Museum of Natural History ......................895 Harvard Museum of Natural History ..................896 Hazard, Ebenezer ................................................897 Hempel, Carl Gustav ..........................................898 Hermeneutics ....................................................899 Kuhn, Thomas S. ................................................900 Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University ......................................................903 Massachusetts Historical Society ........................904 Morison, Samuel Eliot ........................................906 National Academy of Sciences ............................907 National Science Foundation ..............................907 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute..........................908 Royal Society of London......................................909 Sarton, George ....................................................910 Science..................................................................911 Scientific American ................................................911 Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University ..........913 Smithsonian Institution ......................................914 Spelman College ................................................915 Taylor, Frederick ................................................916 Documents America’s First Historical Editor ........................918 The Virgin and the Dynamo ..............................918 America’s First Historical Society........................920

American Nobel Laureates in Science ...............923 Bibliography......................................................931 Index...................................................................I-1

Topic Finder Note: Numbers in parentheses indicate field of study; see the Contents in this volume.

Essay: The Philosophy of Science (14) Essay: Psychoanalysis in America (8) Essay: Reconstructing the Geological Past (6) Essay: The Revolution in Applied Health (5) Essay: The Revolution in Meteorology (6) Essay: Social Sciences (7) Essay: The Sociology of Science (14) Ethnology (7) Eugenics (4) Forensic Medicine (5) Forestry (3) Genetics (4) Geomagnetism (6) Gynecology (5) Herbal Medicine (5) Hermeneutics (14) Holistic Medicine (5) Horticulture (3) Human Anatomy and Physiology (4) Human Genome (4) Hydrology (6) Hygiene (5) Ichthyology (4) Immunology (5) Inorganic Chemistry (11) Medical Education (5) Mental Health (8) Microbiology (4) Midwifery (5) Molecular Biology (4) Navigation (9) Number Theory (12) Obstetrics (5) Oceanography (4) Oil Drilling and Exploration (6) Organic Chemistry (11) Ornithology (4) Particle Physics (10) Pharmacology (11) Photography (13) Physical Anthropology (7) Psychiatry (8) Public Health (5) Quantum Physics (10) Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (9)

Disciplines and Fields of Study Agricultural Engineering (13) Agriculture (13) Agronomy (13) American Indian Science (7) Applied Mathematics (12) Archeology (7) Behaviorism (8) Calculus (12) Cancer and Cancer Research (5) Climatology (6) Conservation Biology (4) Craniometry (4) Cultural Anthropology (7) Cybernetics (12) Dentistry (5) Earthquakes and Seismology (6) Ecology (1) Entomology (4) Epidemiology (5) Essay: The Biological Sciences in Early America (4) Essay: The Colonial American Approach to Medicine (5) Essay: The Developing Science of the Mind (8) Essay: Discovering the Human Past: Anthropology in Early America (7) Essay: The Early American Materia Medica (3) Essay: Economics (7) Essay: Eighteenth-Century Chemistry in America (11) Essay: The Emergence of an American History of Science (14) Essay: Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry (12) Essay: The First American Science (2) Essay: The Genetic Revolution (4) Essay: History as Science (14) Essay: Paleontology: Challenges to Genesis in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (4)

xv

xvi Topic Finder Statistics (12) Surgery (5) Taxonomy (4) Thermodynamics (10) Volcanoes and Vulcanology (6) Weather Forecasting (6) Wildlife Management (4) Women’s Health (5) Zoology (4) Diseases, Disorders, and Physical and Mental Phenomena AIDS (5) Alzheimer’s Disease (5) Autism (5) Cancer and Cancer Research (5) Collective Behavior (8) Diabetes (5) Diphtheria (5) Ego (8) Essay: Disease in America (5) Essay: The Puritan Understanding of Self (8) Human Anatomy and Physiology (4) Humors and Humoral Theory (5) Id (8) Influenza (5) Insanity (8) IQ (8) Measles (5) Mental Health (8) Neurasthenia (8) Neurosis (8) Polio (5) Scarlet Fever (5) Smallpox (5) Superego (8) Tetanus (5) Typhoid Fever (5) Yellow Fever (5) Historical Events, Trends, Periods, and Movements Agriculture (13) Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784) (2) Dark Day (6) Dunbar-Hunter Expedition (1804–1805) (2) Essay: Albert Einstein and Atomic Power (13) Essay: Aristotelian Physics in Colonial America (10)

Essay: The Colonial American Approach to Medicine (5) Essay: The Computer Revolution (12) Essay: Darwin in America (4) Essay: The Developing Science of the Mind (8) Essay: Discovering the Human Past: Anthropology in Early America (7) Essay: Eighteenth-Century Chemistry in America (11) Essay: Exploring the Continent (2) Essay: From Modernization to Globalization (7) Essay: The Frontier of Science (1) Essay: The Genetic Revolution (4) Essay: The Internet (12) Essay: Linnaeus in America (3) Essay: The New Science and Puritanism (9) Essay: Newtonian Physics and Early American Science (10) Essay: The Plastics Revolution (11) Essay: The Puritan Understanding of Self (8) Essay: Reconstructing the Geological Past (6) Essay: Science and the Industrial Revolution (13) Influenza Epidemic (1918–1919) (5) Lewis and Clark Expedition (2) Manhattan Project (13) Michelson-Morley Experiment (10) Patent Medicine (11) Pike Expeditions (1805–1807) (2) Pluto, Discovery of (9) Red River Meteorite (6) San Francisco Earthquake (1906) (6) Scopes Trial (4) Sirius B, Discovery of (9) Sterilization Movement (4) Three Mile Island (13) Tuskegee Experiment (4) Urbanization (7) Wilkes Expedition (1838–1942) (2) Institutions, Organizations, and Publications Agricultural Experiment Stations (13) Almanacs (9) American Academy of Arts and Sciences (14) American Antiquarian Society (14) American Association for the Advancement of Science (14)

Topic Finder xvii American Dental Association (5) American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac (6) American Geographical Society (2) American Historical Association (14) American Journal of Psychology (8) American Mathematical Society (12) American Medical Association (5) American Museum of Natural History (14) American Philosophical Society (14) American Psychological Association (8) American School for the Deaf (5) American Sociological Association (7) Appalachian Mountain Club (2) Apple Computer (12) Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. (13) Atomic Energy Commission (13) Boeing (13) Boston Philosophical Society (9) Chemical Society of Philadelphia (11) Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S. (6) Dow Chemical (11) Dudleian Lecture (1) Essay: The Early American Materia Medica (3) Experimental Gardens (3) Factories (13) Field Museum of Natural History (14) Forest Service, U.S. (3) Geological Society of America (6) Geological Surveys (6) Gray Herbarium (3) Harvard Botanical Garden (3) Harvard Medical School (5) Harvard Museum of Natural History (14) Harvard Observatory (9) HMOs (5) Hollis Professorship (10) Hospitals (5) International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (7) Ironworks, Colonial (13) Land Grant Universities (13) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (13) Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University (14) Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole (4) Massachusetts General Hospital (5) Massachusetts Historical Society (14) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (13)

Mayo Clinic (5) Microsoft (12) Mills (13) Mount Washington Observatory (6) Mount Wilson Observatory (9) NASA (13) National Academy of Sciences (14) National Audubon Society (4) National Geographic Society (2) National Hurricane Center (6) National Institutes of Health (5) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (6) National Parks (1) National Science Foundation (14) National Weather Service (6) New England Journal of Medicine (5) Observatories (9) Palomar Observatory (9) Pennsylvania Hospital (5) Pesthouse (5) Pharmaceutical Industry (11) Poor Richard’s Almanack (9) Popular Science Magazine (13) Principia Mathematica (10) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (14) Royal Society of London (14) Sanatorium (5) Science (14) Scientific American (14) Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (9) Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University (14) Sierra Club (2) Smithsonian Institution (14) Spelman College (14) Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (7) U.S. Mint (13) U.S. Naval Observatory (9) Yellowstone National Park (1) Zoos (4) Natural Phenomena and Features Aurora Borealis (6) Big Bang Theory (9) Black Holes (9) Brownian Motion (12) Comets (9) Continental Drift (6) Creation (4) Dark Day (6)

xviii Topic Finder DNA (4) Earthquakes and Seismology (6) Electricity (13) Essay: The Bounty of North America (13) Essay: Weather in Early America (6) Evolution (4) Fission (10) Fusion (10) Geologic Time (6) Geomagnetism (6) Glaciers (6) Global Warming (6) Gravity (10) Human Anatomy and Physiology (4) Human Genome (4) Ionosphere (6) Life Expectancy (5) Light (10) Light, Speed of (10) Magnetism (10) Moons of Other Planets (9) Ozone (6) Phlogiston (11) Plants and Photosynthesis (3) Plutonium (13) Red River Meteorite (6) Relativity (10) San Francisco Earthquake (1906) (6) Sedimentary Rocks (6) Spontaneous Generation (4) Superconductivity (10) Tobacco (4) Transit of Planets (9) Uranium (13) Volcanoes and Vulcanology (6) Notable Figures: Exploration, Natural History, and Philosophy Acosta, José de (1) Adams, Henry (14) Aldrin, Edwin “Buzz” (2) American Indians (7) Armstrong, Neil (2) Audubon, John James (4) Bartram, John (3) Bartram, William (3) Beebe, William (1) Belknap, Jeremy (2) Berlandier, Jean Louis (3) Beverley, Robert (1) Bigelow, Jacob (3)

Bonneville, Benjamin Louis Eulalie de (2) Brackenridge, Henry Marie (1) Bradbury, John (3) Byrd, Richard Evelyn (2) Catesby, Mark (1) Champlain, Samuel de (2) Chapman, John “Johnny Appleseed” (1) Clark, William (2) Colden, Cadwallader (1) Collins, Michael (2) Columbus, Christopher (2) Cutler, Manasseh (3) Dablon, Claude (2) Delisle, Guillaume (2) Draper, John William (1) Drummond, Thomas (3) Dudley, Paul (1) Dunbar, William (3) Dwight, Timothy (1) Ellsworth, Lincoln (2) Essay: The Explorer-Botanists of America (3) Franklin, Benjamin (1) Frémont, John Charles (2) Glenn, John (2) Godman, John D. (1) Gosnold, Bartholomew (2) Gyles, John (1) Hakluyt, Richard (2) Hariot, Thomas (1) Hazard, Ebenezer (14) Hempel, Carl Gustav (14) Hennepin, Louis (2) Humboldt, Alexander von (2) Jefferson, Thomas (1) Josselyn, John (1) Kuhn, Thomas S. (14) Lawson, John (2) Lescarbot, Marc (2) Lewis, Meriwether (2) Lindbergh, Charles A. (13) Little, Daniel (2) Logan, James (1) Long, Stephen (2) Maclure, William (6) Mather, Cotton (1) Mather, Increase (1) Morison, Samuel Eliot (14) Morse, Jedidiah (2) Muir, John (1) Naturalists of New France (1)

Topic Finder xix Naturalists of New Spain (1) Norwood, Richard (1) Nuttall, Thomas (3) Oviedo, Gonzalo (1) Peale, Titian (1) Peary, Robert (2) Peck, William Dandridge (1) Peterson, Roger Tory (4) Pickering, Charles (3) Powell, John Wesley (2) Pursh, Frederick (3) Roosevelt, Theodore (1) Sarton, George (14) Say, Thomas (3) Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (2) Shepard, Alan (2) Smith, John (1) Stefansson, Vilhjalmur (2) Taylor, Frederick (14) Thoreau, Henry David (1) Townsend, John Kirk (2) Tuckerman, Edward (3) Vizcaíno, Sebastián (2) Walker, Thomas (2) Webster, Noah (1) West, Joseph (13) Whipple, Joseph (2) Wilkes, Charles (2) Winthrop, James (1) Notable Figures: Life Sciences African American Scientists (14) Agassiz, Louis (6) Audubon, John James (4) Axelrod, Julius (4) Baldwin, William (3) Banister, John (3) Barton, Benjamin Smith (3) Bartram, John (3) Bartram, William (3) Berlandier, Jean Louis (3) Bigelow, Henry (4) Bigelow, Jacob (3) Bloch, Konrad (4) Bradbury, John (3) Burbank, Luther (4) Carson, Rachel (4) Carver, George Washington (4) Clayton, John (3) Colden, Jane (3) Cope, Edward Drinker (4)

Cutler, Manasseh (3) Drummond, Thomas (3) Dunbar, William (3) Elliott, Stephen (3) Essay: The Explorer-Botanists of America (3) Essay: Linnaeus in America (3) Garden, Alexander (3) Gould, Stephen Jay (4) Gray, Asa (3) Holbrook, John Edwards (4) Hubbard, Ruth (4) Hyatt, Alpheus (4) Just, Ernest Everett (4) Kinsey, Alfred (4) Kornberg, Arthur (4) Lederberg, Joshua (4) Leidy, Joseph (4) Marsh, Othniel Charles (4) McClintock, Barbara (4) Mitchell, John (3) More, Thomas (3) Morgan, Thomas Hunt (4) Muhlenberg, Henry (3) Nuttall, Thomas (3) Osborn, Henry F. (4) Pauling, Linus (11) Peck, William Dandridge (1) Peterson, Roger Tory (4) Pickering, Charles (3) Prescott, Samuel Cate (4) Pursh, Frederick (3) Russell, Thomas (3) Say, Thomas (3) Sutherland, Earl, Jr. (4) Townsend, John Kirk (2) Tuckerman, Edward (3) Waksman, Selman Abraham (4) Watson, James (4) Wilson, Alexander (4) Wilson, Edward O. (4) Wistar, Caspar (4) Woodrow, James (4) Wright, Chauncey (4) Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman (5) Notable Figures: Medicine and Mental Health African American Scientists (14) Allen, Frederick Madison (5) Ballard, Martha (5) Banting, Frederick Grant (5)

xx Topic Finder Barber Surgeons (5) Bard, John (5) Barnard, Christiaan (5) Bettelheim, Bruno (8) Biggs, Hermann Michael (5) Blackwell, Elizabeth (5) Bowditch, Henry Ingersoll (5) Boylston, Zabdiel (5) Cadwalader, Thomas (5) Chalmers, Lionel (5) Channing, Walter (5) Chapin, Charles V. (5) Cooley, Denton (5) Cushing, Harvey Williams (5) DeBakey, Michael E. (5) DeVries, William C. (5) Douglass, William (5) Eddy, Mary Baker (5) Erikson, Erik (8) Fisher, Joshua (5) Flexner, Abraham (5) Flint, Austin (5) Fuller, Samuel (5) Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins (5) Gorgas, William Crawford (5) Green, Horace (5) Hall, G. Stanley (8) Halsted, William (5) Hamilton, Alexander (5) Hayward, George (5) Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. (5) Horner, William Edmonds (5) Horney, Karen (8) Itinerant Physicians (5) Jarvik, Robert (5) Jones, John (5) Koop, C. Everett (5) Leidy, Joseph (4) Lifton, Robert Jay (8) Lining, John (5) Long, Crawford (5) Minot, George Richards (5) Mitchell, S. Weir (8) Morton, William (5) Osler, William (5) Physick, Philip Syng (5) Reed, Walter (5) Rogers, Carl (8) Rush, Benjamin (5) Sabin, Albert (5)

Salk, Jonas (5) Sanger, Margaret (5) Shattuck, George (5) Shumway, Norman (5) Spock, Benjamin (5) Sternberg, George Miller (5) Still, Andrew Taylor (5) Sullivan, Harry Stack (8) Taussig, Helen (5) Tennent, John (5) Waterhouse, Benjamin (5) Whipple, George H. (5) Williams, Daniel Hale (5) Wolcott, Erastus Bradley (5) Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth (5) Notable Figures: Physical Sciences African American Scientists (14) Agassiz, Louis (6) Alvarez, Luis (10) Anderson, Carl David (10) Banneker, Benjamin (12) Bentley, Wilson Alwyn (6) Bethe, Hans Albrecht (10) Bond, William (9) Bowditch, Nathaniel (9) Calvin, Melvin (11) Cannon, Annie Jump (9) Carothers, Wallace (11) Clark, Alvan (9) Compton, Arthur Holly (10) Conant, James B. (11) Dana, James Dwight (6) Drake, Edwin L. (6) Draper, Henry (9) Eaton, Amos (6) Einstein, Albert (10) Espy, James Pollard (6) Essay: Albert Einstein and Atomic Power (13) Essay: The American Astronomer (9) Essay: The American Chemist (11) Essay: American Women in Astronomy (9) Essay: Benjamin Franklin, American Physicist (10) Essay: Newtonian Physics and Early American Science (10) Fermi, Enrico (10) Feynman, Richard (10) Gell-Mann, Murray (10)

Topic Finder xxi Giauque, William (11) Godfrey, Thomas (6) Greenwood, Isaac (10) Hale, George Ellery (9) Hall, Asaph (9) Hall, Lloyd Augustus (11) Hitchcock, Edward (6) Hubble, Edwin Powell (9) Jansky, Karl (9) Keeler, James (9) Kinnersley, Ebenezer (10) Lawrence, Ernest (10) Libby, Willard F. (11) Lowell, Percival (9) Maclean, John (11) Maclure, William (6) Maury, Matthew (6) Mayer, Maria Goeppert (10) Millikan, Robert A. (10) Mitchell, Maria (9) Newcomb, Simon (9) Onsager, Lars (11) Oppenheimer, Julius Robert (13) Pauli, Wolfgang (10) Pauling, Linus (11) Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia (9) Pickering, Edward (9) Pinkham, Lydia (11) Priestley, Joseph (11) Prince, John (10) Rabi, I.I. (10) Ramsey, Norman (10) Remsen, Ira (11) Richter, Charles (6) Rittenhouse, David (10) Sagan, Carl (9) Seaborg, Glenn T. (11) Shoemaker, Eugene Merle (9) Silliman, Benjamin (11) Squibb, Edward R. (11) Starkey, George (11) Teller, Edward (10) Thompson, Benjamin (Count Rumford) (10) Tombaugh, Clyde (9) Urey, Harold Clayton (11) Wheeler, John (10) Wigner, Eugene (10) Winthrop, John, IV (10) Winthrop, John, Jr. (11)

Notable Figures: Social and Behavioral Sciences Beard, George M. (8) Benedict, Ruth (7) Bettelheim, Bruno (8) Boas, Franz (7) Cooley, Charles (7) Dewey, John (7) Dix, Dorothea Lynde (7) Erikson, Erik (8) Fogel, Robert (7) Gesell, Arnold (8) Hall, G. Stanley (8) Hooton, Earnest A. (7) Horney, Karen (8) Inkeles, Alex (7) James, William (8) Kuznets, Simon (7) Lifton, Robert Jay (8) Malinowski, Bronislaw (7) Maslow, Abraham (8) Mead, George Herbert (8) Mead, Margaret (7) Mitchell, S. Weir (8) Morgan, Lewis (7) Mumford, Lewis (7) Parsons, Talcott (7) Rhine, J.B. (8) Rogers, Carl (8) Sheldon, William (8) Skinner, B.F. (8) Spock, Benjamin (5) Strachey, William (7) Sullivan, Harry Stack (8) Sutherland, Edwin Hardin (7) Veblen, Thorstein (7) Watson, John B. (8) Williams, Roger (7) Wirth, Louis (7) Notable Figures: Technology, Mathematics, and Computers African American Scientists (14) Aiken, Howard (12) Banneker, Benjamin (12) Bell, Alexander Graham (13) Bowditch, Nathaniel (9) Bush, Vannevar (12) Deere, John (13) Duryea, Charles, and Frank Duryea (13)

xxii Topic Finder Eastman, George (13) Edison, Thomas Alva (13) Eliot, Jared (13) Essay: The American Inventor (13) Farrar, John (12) Ford, Henry (13) Forrester, Jay Wright (12) Fuller, R. Buckminster (13) Gibbs, Josiah Willard (12) Goddard, Robert Hutchings (13) Godfrey, Thomas (6) Goodyear, Charles (13) Gorenstein, Daniel (12) Hollerith, Herman (12) Kettering, Charles F. (13) Land, Edwin (13) Latimer, Lewis Howard (13) Levinson, Norman (12) McCormick, Cyrus Hall (13) Morse, Samuel F.B. (13) Peirce, Benjamin (12) Peirce, Charles S. (12) Pinckney, Eliza Lucas (13) Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich (13) Singer, Isaac (13) Slater, Samuel (13) von Braun, Wernher (13) von Neumann, John (12) Whitney, Eli (13) Wiener, Norbert (12) Woods, Granville (13) Wright, Orville, and Wilbur Wright (13) Processes, Techniques, and Treatments Abortion (5) Agriculture (13) Anesthesia (5) Antibiotics (5) Autopsy (5) Behaviorism (8) Biological Warfare (4) Bleeding (5) Cold Fusion (10) Craniometry (4) Essay: Psychoanalysis in America (8) Essay: The Revolution in Applied Health (5) Ether (5) Fission (10) Fusion (10) Gene Therapy (5)

Geological Surveys (6) Girdling (13) Gun Manufacturing (13) Herbal Medicine (5) Holistic Medicine (5) Inoculation (5) Ironworks, Colonial (13) Navigation (9) Oil Drilling and Exploration (6) Penicillin (5) Photography (13) Psychiatry (8) Radiocarbon Dating (11) Shipbuilding (13) Spectroscopy (10) Sterilization Movement (4) Surgery (5) Taxonomy (4) Vaccination (5) Vulcanization (11) Projects, Experiments, and Expeditions Agricultural Experiment Stations (13) Apollo, Project (13) Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784) (2) Brooklyn Bridge (13) Cancer and Cancer Research (5) Dunbar-Hunter Expedition (1804–1805) (2) ENIAC (12) Erie Canal (13) Essay: Early American Mountaineering (2) Essay: The Search for a Natural History of America (1) Experimental Gardens (3) Gemini, Project (13) Hoover Dam (13) Hubble Telescope (9) Human Genome (4) Lewis and Clark Expedition (2) Manhattan Project (13) Mark I (12) Mercury, Project (13) Michelson-Morley Experiment (10) Nautilus (13) Pathfinder, Mars (13) Pike Expeditions (1805–1807) (2) SAGE (12) Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (9) Space Probes (13) Space Shuttle (13) Space Station (13)

Topic Finder xxiii Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (7) Transcontinental Railroad (13) Tuskegee Experiment (4) UNIVAC (12) Whirlwind (12) Wilkes Expedition (1838–1942) (2) Theories, Concepts, and Philosophical Perspectives American Indian Science (7) Arminianism (14) Astrology (9) Behaviorism (8) Big Bang Theory (9) Chaos Theory (12) Cold Fusion (10) Creation (4) Cultural Relativism (7) Deism (14) Ego (8) Essay: America as Image and Reality (1) Essay: Aristotelian Physics in Colonial America (10) Essay: The Developing Science of the Mind (8) Essay: The Emergence of an American History of Science (14) Essay: Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry (12) Essay: From Modernization to Globalization (7) Essay: History as Science (14) Essay: Natural Theologians of Early America (1) Essay: The New Science and Puritanism (9) Essay: Newtonian Physics and Early American Science (10) Essay: The Philosophy of Science (14) Essay: Psychoanalysis in America (8) Essay: The Puritan Understanding of Self (8) Essay: The Sociology of Science (14) Eugenics (4) Evolution (4) Extraterrestrials (9) Geologic Time (6) Global Warming (6) Hermeneutics (14) Holistic Medicine (5) Humanism (7)

Humors and Humoral Theory (5) Id (8) Indian Origins (7) Laissez-Faire Economics (7) Marxism (7) Natural Theology (1) New Science (1) Number Theory (12) Phlogiston (11) Pragmatism (8) Ptolemaic System (9) Race (7) Relativity (10) Religion and Science (1) Scientific Racism (7) Spontaneous Generation (4) Superconductivity (10) Superego (8) Thermodynamics (10) Time Zones (6) Uncertainty Principle (10) Tools, Inventions, and Technological Achievements Almanacs (9) American Indian Canoes (13) Apollo, Project (13) Atomic Bomb (13) Balloons and Ballooning (6) Bathysphere (6) Brooklyn Bridge (13) Celluloid (11) Clocks and Timepieces (13) Computer Applications (12) Cyclotron (10) Electron Microscope (13) ENIAC (12) Erie Canal (13) Essay: Albert Einstein and Atomic Power (13) Essay: The Computer Revolution (12) Essay: The Internet (12) Essay: The Plastics Revolution (11) Gemini, Project (13) Gregorian Calendar (9) Hoover Dam (13) Hubble Telescope (9) Hydroelectricity (13) Hydrogen Bomb (13) Ironworks, Colonial (13) Laser (13) Manhattan Project (13)

xxiv Topic Finder Mariner’s Quadrant (6) Mark I (12) Mercury, Project (13) Nautilus (13) Nuclear Energy (13) Nylon (11) Observatories (9) Pathfinder, Mars (13) Photography (13) Radio (13) SAGE (12) Satellites (13)

Space Probes (13) Space Shuttle (13) Space Station (13) Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (7) Steam Engine (13) Synthetic Rubber (13) Telegraph (13) Telephone (13) Television (13) Transcontinental Railroad (13) UNIVAC (12) Whirlwind (12)

Editor Russell Lawson Bacone College Contributors Matthew C. Aberman Independent Scholar

Ron Davis Western Carolina University

Dave D. Hochstein Wright State University

Jyoti K. Abraham Bacone College

Guillaume de Syon Albright College

Karen Hovde Northern Illinois University

Amy Ackerberg-Hastings Independent Scholar

Charles Delgadillo University of California at Santa Barbara

William Hughes Independent Scholar

James Fargo Balliett Independent Scholar Christopher Bates University of California at Los Angeles Charles Boewe Independent Scholar Eric Boyle University of California at Santa Barbara Kevin Brady Texas Christian University Paul Buckingham Morrisville State College Carl Buckner University of Oklahoma Michael H. Burchett Independent Scholar William E. Burns George Washington University David M. Carletta Michigan State University Santi S. Chanthaphavong Independent Scholar Roger Chapman Palm Beach Atlantic University James Ciment Independent Scholar Alfredo Manuel Coelho UMR MOISA

Andrea Early Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts Richard M. Edwards University of Wisconsin George R. Ehrhardt Independent Scholar Lisa A. Ennis University of Alabama at Birmingham Elizabeth Fairhead Michigan State University

James Hull University of British Columbia, Okanagan John P. Hundley Chicago Public Schools Stephanie Michelle Jackson Baylor University Mary Jarvis West Texas A&M University Wendell G. Johnson Northern Illinois University

Giuseppe M. Fazari Union County College

Jacob Jones University of Maryland University College Europe

Philip Frana University of Central Arkansas

Mark R. Jorgensen University of Minnesota

Judith B. Gerber Independent Scholar

Vickey Kalambakal Independent Scholar

Sharon M. Gillett Texas Tech University

Nicholas Katers Carroll College

Mary F. Grosch Northern Illinois University

Beth A. Kattelman The Ohio State University

Kevin R.C. Gutzman Western Connecticut State University Michael T. Halpern Exponent, Inc. Todd A. Hanson Los Alamos National Laboratory

Christopher Cumo Independent Scholar

Robert Hauptman University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee

Brian Daniels University of Pennsylvania

Oliver Benjamin Hemmerle Mannheim University

xxv

George B. Kauffman California State University Walter H. Keithley Independent Scholar Sean Kelly Texas A&M Neil Kennedy Brock University Martin Kich Wright State University

xxvi Contributors Clara Sue Kidwell University of Oklahoma

Caryn E. Neumann Miami University

William M. Shields University of Maryland

Danny Kind Indian River Community College

Fred Nielsen University of Nebraska

C. Richard King Washington State University

Robin O’Brian Elmira College

Kathleen Simonton University of California at Santa Cruz

Timothy W. Kneeland Nazareth College of Rochester

Mollie Sue Oremland National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution

Robert Karl Koslowsky Independent Scholar

Frank J. Smith Presbyterian Scholars Press Stacy L. Smith Independent Scholar

Robin O’Sullivan University of Texas at Austin

Mark G. Spencer Brock University

Andrew Perry Springfield College

James Steinberg Wright State University

Stephen Peterson Oral Roberts University

Leonard A. Steverson South Georgia College

Alicia S. Long George Washington University

Wade D. Pfau National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies

Gordon Stienburg University of Toronto, Canada

Fabio Lopez-Lazaro University of Calgary

Sean Potter Certified Consulting Meteorologist

David Stiles University of Toronto, Canada

A.M. Mannion University of Reading

R. Dwayne Ramey Independent Scholar

Mark A. Largent Michigan State University Benjamin Lawson University of Iowa David Lonergan Northern Illinois University

Eric Martone Iona College Jennie McClay Western University of Health Sciences Donald J. McGraw Independent Scholar David C. Miank University of Phoenix Paul T. Miller Temple University Patit Paban Mishra Sambalpur University Dragoslav Momcilovic University of Wisconsin–Madison Terry J. Mortensen Independent Scholar Grigoris Mouladoudis School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Greece Steven Napier University of Cincinnati

Sudhansu S. Rath Sambalpur University Steven J. Rauch U.S. Army Signal Center, Fort Gordon, Georgia Maureen T.F. Reitman Exponent, Inc. Heide Rimke University of Winnipeg Phoenix Roberts Independent Scholar Thomas Robertson Worcester Polytechnic Institute David G. Schuster Indiana University–Purdue University Olivia A. Scriven Spelman College

Amy Thompson Austin Peay State University Antonio Thompson Austin Peay State University Lana Thompson Florida Atlantic University Matthew Trudgen Queens University, Canada Glenda Turner Exponent, Inc. Andrew J. Waskey Dalton State College Kimberly Green Weathers University of Maryland University College Emily Wentzell University of Michigan J.G. Whitesides University of Colorado at Boulder

David Sepkoski Oberlin College

Evan Widders University of California at Santa Barbara

Jeff Shantz Kwantlen University College

Charles Williams Clarion University

Introduction F

rom the onset of European exploration and discovery of the New World to the present, America’s history has depended on the processes of science. The uniqueness of the American experience began when European explorers became ad hoc scientists. Perceiving North America as a paradise of mysterious landscapes, plants, animals, and people, they recorded their initial understanding of the terrain, flora, fauna, and inhabitants of this strange new land. During the seventeenth century, the building of communities in the wilderness depended on the practical application of this nascent scientific knowledge. Initially, colonial Americans tried to understand the New World from theoretical and metaphysical perspectives. When the colonists embraced reason and science in the eighteenth century, the acquisition of knowledge led to revolution, independence, and a new experiment in government. Americans in the nineteenth century applied scientific learning to the young nation’s challenges of movement, communication, and production. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the physical, biological, and social sciences were firmly centered in American universities and research institutes, as science became the domain of trained professionals. These adherents to particular methodologies and theories dominated learning, business, industry, government, and education. Science—the systematic acquisition of knowledge according to the tenets of reason, experience, and experiment—has helped define the relationship of humans to each other and to the universe around them. While scientific study is largely an exclusive, esoteric pursuit, American science is at the same time pragmatic. The experiences of settlement, wrestling the means of survival and prosperity from the land, directed American scientists to search for practical rather than metaphysical knowledge. As such, American science has tended to demand of its practitioners the qualities of the natural historian, polymath, pragmatist, and activist.

Before 1900, most scientists in America were amateurs intent on pursuing a favorite hobby that could have important results. Scientific inquiry often required no particular training or credentials. American science has never quite lost its character of the ad hoc scientist taking on the challenges of acquiring and implementing knowledge because of the demands of the moment. The scientific method—responding to a problem with a hypothesis that is confirmed or altered according to experience and experiment—is as much a factor of daily life in America today as it was when the first European settlements took root here 400 years ago. The Native American tribes who preceded and coexisted with European settlers were the mentors of early American scientists. Colonists relied on the American Indians’ knowledge of flora and fauna to understand which materials of the forest were most appropriate for structures and tools. The Indians shared their knowledge of what was and was not edible amid the plenty found in the woodlands along the Atlantic coast as well as information on the uses of the seeds, bark, roots, herbs, and flowers that formed America’s materia medica, or natural pharmacy. Immigrants from Europe used what they learned from the native peoples to inform the assumptions and complement the knowledge that they had inherited from millennia of Old World scientific inquiry. Since the thirteenth century, Europeans had been rediscovering the massive corpus of scientific knowledge developed by the ancient Greeks and Romans. During the Renaissance rediscovery of ancient learning, there was tremendous intellectual excitement among thoughtful Europeans. Thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas embraced the scientific approach of the ancient Greek Aristotle. The Italian poet and humanist Francesco Petrarch rediscovered lost works of the Roman Stoic philosopher Cicero. Philologists such as Lorenzo Valla examined handwritten ancient sources to establish the original words and

xxvii

xxviii Introduction meanings of ancient writers. The medical corpus of antiquity, especially the writings of Hippocrates and Galen, went through critical assessment by anatomists and physiologists such as William Harvey and Andreas Vesalius. Explorers, especially the Portuguese, learned by practical experience the shortcomings of ancient geographers such as Claudius Ptolemy. The geocentric universe of the ancient world also came under scrutiny by astronomers such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler. Philosophers such as René Descartes and Francis Bacon reassessed the assumptions and methods of ancient science. The writings of Aristotle had the greatest hold on European thought and science at the start of the Renaissance, but the great thinkers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries slowly chipped away at the scientific assumptions of the Aristotelian view. Aristotelian logic gradually gave way to the empiricism of Descartes and Bacon. Aristotelian theories of motion fell to the onslaught of the physics of Galileo. And the Aristotelian universe gave way to the Renaissance heliocentric universe. Thus, the inflexible corpus of Aristotelian thought, deadened by years of unquestioning acceptance, was laid to rest during the European Renaissance.

Science and the Discover y of America European explorers tried to understand the New World and its peoples according to ancient assumptions and new ideas informed by the practical experience of the voyages of discovery. The sailors who accompanied Christopher Columbus on his four voyages from 1492 to 1504 learned the hard way that ancient geographic assumptions were erroneous. The real world was much larger than Ptolemy’s three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and two oceans (the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean). Columbus called the native inhabitants of the Bahamas and Caribbean “Indians,” thinking that they occupied the Indies, islands off the coast of Asia. Upon realizing that this was a hitherto unknown land inhabited by hitherto unknown peoples, European thinkers had to reassess what they had learned from ancient sciences and traditions.

The European discovery of America brought about new answers to old questions. The presence of the Indians led Europeans to speculate on their own origins in light of the biblical story of creation. How was America populated, and where did the inhabitants come from? How should Christians interact with these nonChristians of the New World? Questions of good and evil surfaced as well. The unexpected existence of the native peoples and their tribal groups forced Europeans to reconsider: What is a human being? How important are culture and custom in defining a person? What is the impulse behind human behavior? How is morality determined? Traditional systems of thought provided answers, but did they apply to these humans of the New World? The vast array of answers revealed European confusion. Some thought Native Americans were the most noble of humans; others thought that they were the most depraved. Some considered the customs of the native peoples to be the basis of a unique natural morality; others considered them barbaric, since they were unrefined by learning. Some believed that the Native Americans were descendants of Old World peoples, perhaps the Israelites or the Welsh; others guessed the Native Americans might have come from the distant lands of northeast Asia. Still others wondered whether they were the result of a second creation. Modern American social and behavioral science began with Europeans’ perplexity over the nature and origins of the American Indians. The first American science was geography. Although the first European explorers of America were great sailors, they were hardly great geographers. Columbus thought that South America might be paradise and apparently always believed that the Caribbean islands he discovered were located off the coast of Asia. Giovanni Verrazzano, sailing along the eastern coast of North America in the 1520s, believed the continent was just a narrow strip of land. He was intent on finding a passage through the strip, rather than coming to know precisely what this new place was. French explorer Jacques Cartier, who ascended the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes in the 1530s, was similarly dedicated to finding a water passage through the continent as a quick and easy route to Asia and its trade.

Introduction xxix Other explorers had the ability to examine what was in front of them without having their perceptions affected by as many preconceptions. In the first years of the sixteenth century, the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci explored the South American coast of a New World that he clearly realized had nothing to do with Asia. Later that century, Humphrey Gilbert advocated the establishment of English settlements in North America, and not just for treasure-hunting. Richard Hakluyt compiled countless logs and descriptions of voyages of exploration to America and elsewhere in The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (1588–1590). Hakluyt’s Discourse on Western Planting (1584) was a landmark treatise, perceiving America as a place of vast natural resources. Like-minded thinkers and writers included Thomas Hariot, the scientist of the Roanoke Colony, and John White, a skilled artist and ethnographer who painted realistic portraits of Native Americans. In 1590, José de Acosta described the native peoples in The Naturall and Morall Historie of the East and West Indies. John Smith, explorer of the Chesapeake Bay and the New England coast, wrote Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles (1624), a wonderful compilation of geography, cartography, anthropology, and ethnography. For the next 200 years, these disciplines of the social sciences were a priority for American scientists, especially explorers who journeyed inland in search of flora, fauna, peoples, and lands. Notable in this regard were John Josselyn, a seventeenth-century physician who explored the hinterland and mountains of northern New England; Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan monk who explored the region of the Great Lakes and upper Mississippi and wrote a landmark geographic treatise, Description of Louisiana (1683); and Eusebio Kino, another exploring priest who journeyed throughout what is now the southwestern United States. John Bartram’s geographic and botanic treatise Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and Other Matters Worthy of Notice (1751) set the standard for subsequent works of this nature. Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) was an amazing encapsulation of learning about not just Vir-

ginia but the whole of America east of the Mississippi. Traveling west of the Mississippi in the Louisiana Territory, scientists such as Meriwether Lewis and Thomas Nuttall wrote about the lands, products, and peoples of the American West. As the naturalist, geographer, and historian Jeremy Belknap noted in the late eighteenth century, the hard sciences of necessity were delayed during the initial attempts to explore a new land, compile and catalog information on peoples and natural productions, and map rivers, mountains, and other unique topography. Nevertheless, by the end of the seventeenth century, colonial settlements had become sufficiently sophisticated to support the initial attempts to introduce the physical and biological sciences into American communities and institutions of learning. Harvard College took the lead, developing a curriculum based on the new science that was all the rage in Europe. Charles Morton in 1687 penned Compendium of Physics for use by Harvard students. Increase Mather and his son Cotton, in particular, advocated the new theories of Copernicus, Galileo, and Robert Boyle. Cotton Mather, an influential Puritan minister as well as an amateur scientist, wrote The Christian Philosopher in 1721 to mediate between religion and science. Mather and a few other early American scientists also advocated inoculation for smallpox, but in general, medical science lagged behind in America. By the time of the American Revolution, however, physicians such as Benjamin Rush were contributing important advances to medical science.

Pragmatic Approach The American Revolution coincided with an intellectual coming of age in America, an extension of the European Enlightenment. Borrowing ideas from Europeans such as John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Carolus Linnaeus, American scientists put European scientific theories to practical use. The great American practitioner of science in the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin, adapted European theories to American conditions, in the process coming up with some original theories of his own.

xxx Introduction In 1743, Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society for “useful knowledge,” which set the theme for subsequent American science. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the American Philosophical Society was the premier scientific organization in the nation, rivaling even the Royal Society of London. The society sponsored experiments and journeys of exploration, provided a means for scientists to share their observations and discoveries, and published America’s first scientific periodical, Transactions. The work of the American Philosophical Society inspired other organizations with a generic scientific focus, such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Massachusetts Historical Society. By 1800, scientific organizations and institutions—hence the sciences and scientists themselves—were proliferating in America. The modernization of America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought about dramatic changes in the methodology, philosophy, and structure of science. Long the avocation of amateur philosophers, clergy, merchants, and lawyers, science became a professional vocation for an increasing number of people during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The growing number of American scientists was chiefly due to the development of universities, particularly state-supported public universities and land-grant schools that focused not only on teaching but also on research and the extension of knowledge to the larger community. American universities began to grant advanced degrees like their European counterparts. Doctors of philosophy and medicine became the faculty of university departments in the arts and sciences. Professional organizations devoted to communication by means of scholarly journals and conferences emerged in the latter 1800s. By the turn of the twentieth century, the sciences were the realm of professional scholars and academics. Science as a career fueled more extensive research into a greater variety of fields. Inspiration and support increasingly came from private industry, which required educated workers and professionals, as well as from local, state, and federal governments. Industry and government sponsored academic research into esoteric fields ranging from military technology to agri-

cultural techniques, from animal science to pharmaceuticals. American science continued its pragmatic approach as the nation’s scientists made fewer contributions to theory than to applications of theory. University scientists constantly sought to apply the results of their theorems and experiments. Although many of the metaphysical and revolutionary scientific theories came from Europe and such thinkers as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, scientists in the United States adapted theories of naturalism, behavioralism, and materialism to their nation’s unique needs. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the pioneer psychologist and pragmatist William James adapted the ideas of Darwin to the human psyche, arguing that people embrace the worldviews that help them adapt to their environment. In inventing the lightbulb and other modern devices, Thomas Edison applied theories of electricity that were largely European in origin. In the 1940s, the scientists of the Manhattan Project used the theories and experimental results of European physicists and mathematicians to develop the atomic weapon that the United States used against Japan during World War II. Indeed, American scientists have been less often theorists than inventors. Most American contributions to science have been directed toward standards of living, health and medicine, communications, transportation, information, and military technology. Typical examples are the development of the computer and aerospace industries. World War II necessitated the need for rapid decoding devices and the means to accumulate and quickly analyze vast amounts of data. Computer scientists and engineers responded with massive mainframe computers such as ENIAC and Whirlwind. Subsequently American scientists and inventors developed increasingly sophisticated computers to handle every conceivable challenge requiring control of vast amounts of data. Personal computers and the Internet were the products of American computer savvy. At the end of World War II, when the United States emerged as the leading world power, the Soviet Union began developing military technology to surpass and intimidate their chief

Introduction xxxi rival. It was the Soviets who put the first satellite in space—Sputnik in 1957—using an intercontinental ballistic missile as a rocket. Shocked Americans responded with the creation of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs, and a successful manned mission to the moon in 1969. Challenged by the accomplishments of others in applied science, Americans quickly and dramatically rose to the challenge. As seen in the pages that follow, the American impulse to create what works, to make life better than before, to solve practical problems, and to meet the challenge of competitors and enemies alike has been the driving force behind the development of American science.

Landmarks and Pioneers Research and Discovery: Landmarks and Pioneers in American Science is a comprehensive reference work in three volumes. The volumes encompass fourteen major disciplines of American science, each of which begins with a series of essays that provide an overview of historical development and central concepts. These essays are followed by alphabetical entries that provide in-depth information on pioneering figures (scientists, educators, inventors, administrators), prominent institutions (colleges and universities, scientific organizations, professional associations, government agencies), and landmark events (important

occurrences, developments, and phenomena) in the corresponding discipline. Finally, each section includes original documents specific to the discipline being discussed. These features, along with the various images interspersed throughout, highlight what is remarkable, sometimes humorous, or simply interesting in the development of American science. Sources with which to acquire further information—books, periodicals, Web sites, and institutions—are listed at the end of each entry, as well as in a general bibliography. A topic finder and a comprehensive index, both featured in each volume, conclude the work. In a number of cases, the essays that begin a section reveal the evolution of the particular discipline over time. Points of emphasis include the interdisciplinary and interactive nature of scientific activity throughout American history; how science helped to forge viable communities during the colonial period and to sustain a sophisticated society thereafter; and the interaction between American and international scientists during the past five centuries, as well as the contributions of the many scientists who have immigrated to America from countries around the world. Throughout this extensive reference work, the volumes give equal attention to theoretical and applied science; to the physical, biological, social, and behavioral sciences; and to the history and sociology of science. Russell Lawson

Section 1

N AT U R A L H I S TO R Y

ESSAYS America as Image and Reality A

The Atlantic Quest

merican science is the culmination of a millennial search to know what exists and what does not. In America, two completely different mentalities met and mixed. The European approach was informed by the ancient GrecoRoman pursuit of knowledge of the natural world and the rebirth of this pursuit during the Renaissance of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. The Native American approach, by contrast, was formed by a reliance on and identity with the natural environment. Europeans looked on nature as an object of study and control; Native Americans saw nature as a parent on which one’s dependence is unquestionable. The former objective mentality met the latter subjective mentality at the turn of the sixteenth century, and science—the search for knowledge and human identity—has not been the same since. It is no coincidence that the European discovery of America occurred at the end of the fifteenth century. The character and accomplishments of Christopher Columbus have come under much scrutiny in recent years. Many Americans believe that Columbus did not truly “discover” America. How can a person discover a place that has been inhabited for millennia? Besides, Columbus appears not to have realized the significance of his discovery—to have stumbled upon a New World. Nevertheless, Columbus’s four voyages led Europeans to realize the existence of this New World, hitherto unknown to them yet often imagined. He discovered America for the Europeans, a people who had developed a creative and thoughtful civilization based on speculation and inquiry into the nature of the world, human existence, the universe, and God. Columbus’s discovery was at the same time the consequence of and a new beginning for European science.

Many Europeans were not astonished by Columbus’s discovery, having read enough literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans to expect something to exist across the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was the namesake of Atlantis, mythologized among the ancient Greeks as a vast and progressive civilization to the west of Europe and Africa. That such a place might exist intrigued ancient thinkers, whose minds had been fed on Homer’s story in the Odyssey that the netherworld lay on the other side of the Pillars of Heracles, which flanked the Strait of Gibraltar. Plutarch, the Greek essayist, scientist, and biographer, told of the island of Ogygia in the Atlantic. Greeks and Romans were intrigued by stories of explorers, such as Pytheas of Massilia, who claimed to have voyaged during the fourth century B.C.E. to Thule, a distant land northwest of Europe in arctic waters. Carthaginian accounts of voyages along the Atlantic coast north and south, and the discovery of large islands to the west far into the ocean, circulated among Romans at the time of the birth of Christ. Other traditions told of the Isles of the Blessed and the Hesperides lying somewhere in the Atlantic. Added to these stories were the speculations of some geographers, such as Posidonius of Rhodes, that there must be a fourth continent to balance out the other three, which seemed to be bunched too close together on the large, spherical planet. The years between the end of antiquity (ca. 500 C.E.) and the Renaissance (ca. 1300 C.E.) brought forth more fodder to stimulate the European appetite for the marvelous lands to the west. An Irish monk named Brendan is said to have made a voyage during the sixth century from Ireland, discovering paradise along the way. There were stories, too, of the Welsh king Madoc sailing

3

4 Section 1: Essays

Some early European commentators on the New World described native peoples as pure, noble manifestations of an Edenic natural landscape, as in this 1591 depiction of Florida Indians by Flemish engraver Theodore de Bry. Others viewed the natives as savages. (New York Public Library, New York)

Section 1: Essays 5 west to distant lands; these accounts were perhaps a British rendition of the Vinland Sagas of the Norse, the Vikings, who actually did explore the extreme northern parts of America in the eleventh century. The varied stories and myths of the past ended up on quite a few maps that speculated on the mysterious watery region between Europe and Asia. The map of Martin Behaim, for example, published in 1492, showed the islands of Brendan, the Antilles, and other storied places. Erroneous conceptions of American geography did not end with Columbus’s voyages. The map of Giovanni Verrazzano in 1528 showed North America as but a narrow strip of land—a barrier only 50 or a 100 miles wide—separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. European impressions of America extended to Native Americans and their cultures. Europeans were not quite sure what to make of the native peoples. That Columbus christened these people with a name based on lands of southeast Asia, the Indies, reveals the confusion. Where did the Indians come from, and why were they hidden so long from the Europeans? Wildly speculative theories arose of their origin and nature. Some thought the Native Americans had escaped the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Others wondered if perhaps America was the Garden of Eden. The English Renaissance philosopher and Catholic martyr Thomas More placed his imaginary Utopia in the direction of America. Francis Bacon, the English essayist, statesman, and promoter of science, considered the possibilities of a New Atlantis in the same area. The sixteenthcentury French essayist Montaigne wrote “Of Cannibals” to contrast the people of the New World with those of Europe. Montaigne saw Native Americans as reflections of the purity of the American continent.

Images of America The theme of a land of purity, goodness, happiness, and plenty continued to inspire and haunt Europeans and Americans for centuries. Scientists with perhaps more enthusiasm than reason made outlandish claims about the power of the land and its plant life to heal, to enrich, to bring happiness. Europeans reveled in the plenty of America, a never-ending source of pleasure and wealth.

In defense of the credulity of explorers and settlers, it is important to realize that they were often parroting what they learned from the Native Americans, who were subject to their own fertile imaginations about the wonders of the natural environment. In some ways, Native Americans were imprisoned by the conception of natural people living in harmony with the vast land, the resources of which can not run out, the spirit of which will never forsake its children, the native peoples. With time and continuing experience, especially the growing contact between Indians and Europeans, reality began to replace some of the unrealistic speculations about America. A beginning may be found in the writings of John Smith, who journeyed about the James River and Chesapeake Bay from 1607 to 1609 and New England in 1614. Smith was an incredulous, commonsense sort who had a concrete view of America. He realized that all the stories of gold and silver and the expectations of a quick passage through the continent to the Pacific were unfounded. He understood that the wealth of America lay in its natural resources—animal furs, forest products, fish, and so on—that would not fall into anyone’s lap but would have to be wrought from the environment with work and patience. The Indians fascinated Smith, but he had a realistic view of them as being just like the Europeans in their quest to know, control, and live off the land. Yet Smith’s realism was tempered by his astonishment at the beauty of this land and its immense plenty and potential. He agreed with the Indian conception that the land’s plenty was incalculable, like the hair on one’s head. He declared the coast of Maine “a Countrie rather to affright, then delight one. And how to describe a more plaine spectacle of desolation, or more barren, I know not.” Yet the incredible abundance of “good woods, springs, fruits, fish, and foule” as well as the promising fertility of the soil convinced Smith that he observed a garden rather than a desert. He praised the healthy climate and air, declaring that of all the places he had seen, “I would rather live here then any where.” The woods and harbors promised good trade and a fair navy. The only requirement for successful settlements was sturdy, hard-working colonists willing to immigrate to this Eden. “This is onely as God made it, when he created the world.”

6 Section 1: Essays Such were the sentiments of most naturalists when contemplating the mountains, intervales, broad rivers, and sandy coasts of New England. Puritans of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, and New Hampshire agreed with Smith that the land had marked upon it the signature of God. In Boston, the Puritan minister and scientist Cotton Mather observed and analyzed New England with the piety of a clergyman, declaring to skeptics: “there is not a Fly, but what would confute an Atheist.” He saw America as an untouched land of tremendous purity and goodness as was the Creation, the result of God’s benevolence and wisdom. From the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, American thinkers and scientists interpreted natural history according to religious and secular assumptions. Whereas Puritans saw America in ideal terms of God’s redemption and the second coming of Christ, Southerners such as William Byrd saw the agrarian South as a pastoral utopia. The New Hampshire historian and scientist Jeremy Belknap believed that the forest and mountains of New England were “Elder Scripture, wrought by God’s own hands.” In his 1785 Election Sermon, Belknap wrote: “Heaven hath blessed us with a variety of soils. Mountains, vallies, plains and meadows appear in succession to the eye of the traveller; and these are capable of producing every sort of necessary for the support of man and beast. We need be at no loss for staple commodities, if we will but attend to the hints which nature hath given us, and improve the advantages which she hath put into our hands.”

Other Enlightenment thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur believed in a secular millennium in America. Crèvecoeur thought that America could alter a person to create a “new man.” “We are the most perfect society now existing in the world,” he wrote in Letters from an American Farmer (1782). “Here man is free as he ought to be.” Jefferson declared that the virtue of the American farmer set him apart from all others. The Revolutionary War generation of the late eighteenth century believed that the New World was not only geographically separate from the Old World, but morally and spiritually separate, hence superior as well. This view continued into the 1800s, as seen in the writings of Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College, who associated the success of the American government with the benevolence of nature in the nation, as prescribed by God. Theologians of the Second Great Awakening of the 1830s declared that the millennium, that period of a thousand years preparing for the glorious return of Christ, was happening in America. The notion of America as somehow chosen, as reserved for a religious or secular millennium of wonder and progress, as a “city upon a hill,” “the asylum of liberty,” and “the leader of the free world,” has been the product of 500 years of pastoral, religious, and utopian imagery tempered with the reality of the American experience. Russell Lawson

Source Jones, Howard Mumford. O Strange New World: American Culture: The Formative Years. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1982.

The Search for a Natural History of America I

n the early twentieth century, President Theodore Roosevelt, an avid outdoorsman and hunter, realizing that the American frontier was drawing to a close in the face of modernization, set aside millions of acres of land to become national parks. In so doing, he preserved a heritage

that dates back centuries, when men and women of the wilderness lived close to nature and drew a tenuous living from plains and forests. Today’s visitor to a national park can sense what this reliance on nature for life, security, and happiness must have been like.

Section 1: Essays 7 There is a big difference, however, between today’s visitor and most early settlers: The latter possessed a premodern, prescientific mentality that viewed nature subjectively and intuitively and as integral with human life; the modern, scientific mentality, by contrast, separates the self from the object of inquiry. The first Americans with a modern scientific mindset were naturalists who traveled about the continent beginning in the 1500s, studying flora and fauna, collecting specimens, naming genera and species, examining the land for traces of the geologic past, observing the weather and climate, and making notes on topography, particularly the course of rivers and extent of mountain barriers. The search for natural history in America has always been about peregrinations, wanderings, journeys, and explorations. The earliest naturalists in the modern scientific sense were European explorers who came by masted ship across the Atlantic and then, in smaller boats, barks, or pinnaces, paralleled the indentations of America’s eastern coast. Some employed the Indian canoe, the dugout or bark, to ascend rivers in search of information on the nature of the land and its peoples. In the early 1600s, for example, John Smith explored the James River, the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers of Maine. French naturalists such as Louis Hennepin in the 1670s explored the Great Lakes and tributaries in canoes or pirogues, large dugouts with oarlocks and sometimes a mast. In 1804, William Dunbar, the Southern naturalist, ascended the Mississippi, Red, Black, and Ouachita rivers in a large keelboat rowed by a military escort. That same year, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set out on their continental journey in a large keelboat, and Zebulon Pike used a keelboat to ascend the Mississippi in 1805. Thomas Nuttall used a flatboat to descend the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in 1818 and 1819 and a pirogue to ascend the Arkansas River in the latter year. Henry David Thoreau and his brother, John, ascended the Merrimack River in a single-masted boat of their own construction in 1839. Water travel was the most efficient, quickest, and usually least dangerous form of long-distance transportation in early America. In some areas,

however, there were few rivers and no lakes or oceans, which forced the naturalist to travel by horseback, mule, or wagon. Jeremy Belknap and Manasseh Cutler journeyed into the wilderness of the White Mountains in 1784 on horseback. Nuttall also used a horse on some of his journeys into the Louisiana Territory. Yet, like other naturalists of early America, Nuttall wished to take his time to make a proper study of the lands through which he traveled, so he often chose to make his way on foot. Many early nineteenth-century naturalists accompanied military expeditions journeying west near or across the Rocky Mountains. Some of these were botanists such as Thomas Say and Edwin James, who journeyed with the Stephen Harriman Long Expedition in 1820; Nuttall and John Kirk Townsend, who journeyed on the Wyatt Expedition of the 1830s; Thomas Russell, the army physician and amateur botanist stationed at Fort Smith, Arkansas Territory; and Titian Peale, a naturalist and artist who accompanied the Charles Wilkes Expedition during the years 1838–1842. The early American naturalist tended to be a polymath, a jack-of-all-trades: a botanist, geographer, natural philosopher, and natural historian. Benjamin Franklin was of this sort, one who wore many hats—none for very long before donning another. His contemporary, the New Yorker Cadwallader Colden, was a physicist, ethnographer, natural historian, and astronomer. Thomas Jefferson was the ultimate naturalist, one who dabbled (but enough to gain expertise) in so many objects of inquiry as to continue to amaze us. Other naturalists were not so brilliant, talented, or able to juggle a dozen studies at the same time. At the opposite extreme of Jefferson was John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, a wanderer and environmentalist at a time (late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries) when there were few of those. Another early environmentalist and a brilliant student of nature was the writer Henry David Thoreau, who traveled about New England making observations and allowing the natural environment to seep into his senses, generating prose that comes close to describing the indescribable. Thoreau’s writings on nature, such as Walden (1854) and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), continue to inspire modern-day disciples.

8 Section 1: Essays A naturalist of Thoreau’s ilk was John Muir, often called the first modern environmentalist because of his role in helping to establish the U.S. National Park System. Muir was a founder in 1892 of the Sierra Club, an organization dedicated to preserving the natural beauty and resources of the American West. Other, similar organizations followed, such as the Appalachian Mountain Club, which maintains the Appalachian Trail for modern naturalists and promotes responsible stewardship of the land. The Audubon Society, named for the ornithologist John Audubon, is devoted to the study of birds and preservation of their habitats in all parts of the United States, whether country or city. Natural history might be best defined according to the American experience of science. If history is the inquiry into human experience, natural history is the inquiry into natural experience. The experience of nature is not momentary or con-

fined to the present. To examine plants, rivers, mountains, and other such phenomena is to realize the great age of nature, the immensity of time that it has taken for the depth, extent, intricacy, and beauty of natural productions to occur. One cannot look on the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, Mount Washington, the Hudson River, or the rocky Maine coast without thinking of time, the shortness of life, and the sublime vastness that the creation represents. The mountains, valleys, rivers, and plains of America have converted as many people to a belief in God as has organized religion. Natural theology is the partner of natural history. Russell Lawson

Source De Voto, Bernard. The Course of Empire. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952.

Natural Theologians of Early America R

enaissance geographers were astonished by the discovery of the Americas and the Pacific Ocean. Mariners such as Amerigo Vespucci, sailing with Christopher Columbus on his third voyage in 1498, realized that they had stumbled upon a New World with hitherto unknown flora, fauna, and humans. The presence of native peoples elicited many responses from European intellectuals, such as the question of whether or not they were subject to the Fall described in Genesis. If not, they were akin to Adam and Eve before their transgression; if so, they were true savages, having never experienced the pacifying and civilizing agents of Christianity and European society. Sixteenth-century Europeans were so imbued with the theology and stories of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament that they could not help but perceive the New World according to the Judeo-Christian heritage. Hence, some Euro-

peans thought the native peoples were remnants of the lost tribe of Israel. Others believed they were immigrants from Asia but new to the continent, which explained why the “Great Commission,” where Christ told his disciples to spread Christianity to all nations, was never fulfilled, America having been uninhabited at Christ’s time. Not only the inhabitants, but the continent itself, was viewed according to the Christian heritage.

G od’s Chosen Continent Pious Europeans could not believe that God would have kept knowledge of America from them without some plan. But what was the plan? The Puritans who traveled to Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay in the 1620s and 1630s believed that God had set aside the New World for seventeenth-century Christians who would journey there, establish godly communities, and

Section 1: Essays 9 Christianize the native inhabitants. Governor William Bradford’s firsthand account, Of Plymouth Plantation, reveals that the Pilgrims believed providence was directing their every step to America. John Winthrop told his followers that God sent them on an “errand into the wilderness” to erect “a city upon a hill” for all the world’s people, Christian as well as infidel, to look upon and learn from. Alexander Whitaker, an Anglican minister and missionary in early seventeenth-century Virginia, wrote Good News from Virginia (1612) to tell those in England that God’s divine providence was ever present in Virginia. The Indians, said Whitaker, are human and subject to the Fall of man, but they worship Satan and hence it is up to the colonists to convert them to Christ. Such sentiments were echoed by Robert Johnson in Nova Britannia: Offering Most Excellent Fruites by Planting in Virginia (1609). Johnson argued that colonizing Virginia was a holy work, as “it may lead to advance the kingdome of God, by reducing savage people from their blind superstition to the light of religion. . . . We seeke nothing lesse then the cause of God.” Common to all of these proselytizers was the basic assumption that America had a religious purpose. This assumption was the beginning of natural theology in America.

preached in his Discourse on Prayer (1677), “the Beginning of travailing Sorrows even such Things as Evidence that some great Birth is at Hand. And in our Horizon dark Clouds gather space, and the Heavens are covered over with blackness.” If Increase Mather used the conflict with Native Americans to reveal his belief in the irrevocable connection of God to America, his son Cotton looked at the whole of New England Puritan history to arrive at the same conclusion. Cotton Mather ’s historical works, such as the celebrated Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), link the Puritan experience in America with the Hebrew experience of wandering in the wilderness, arriving at the land of Canaan, and having to fight for possession of the land sanctified by God. Puritan New England was the “New Jerusalem.” John Winthrop was the Moses of his people, leading the Puritans to Massachusetts Bay; as governor of the colony, he was the Nehemiah of the Puritans. Cotton Mather was more scientifically inclined than his father. He based his claims on

The Mathers The identification of America with God’s plan reached fruition with Increase and Cotton Mather, father and son Puritan ministers of Boston, Massachusetts. Increase Mather wrote several historical treatises on the founding of New England and the Indian wars of the seventeenth century. His theme was that America is a chosen land for a chosen people. This “land,” Mather declared in A Brief History of the War with the Indians in New England (1676), “the Lord God of our Fathers hath given to us for a rightful possession.” The Puritans, he wrote in A Relation of the Troubles Which Have Hapned in New England (1677), took “Possession of this Land, and gloriously began to erect [God’s] own Kingdom here.” The Indian wars were said to reflect God’s intention of bringing his historical plan of redemption to fruition in America. “We behold,” Mather

The renowned Puritan preacher, man of letters, and scientist Cotton Mather regarded every natural phenomenon as an expression of divine purpose. Thus, he believed, a good Christian should be a natural scientist, seeking to uncover God’s Plan. (Stock Montage/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

10 Section 1: Essays the two principal sources available to the Puritan historian: scripture (the history of humans in relation to God) and nature (natural history as revealing God’s holy works). One of his last books, The Christian Philosopher (1721), intertwines natural and providential history to show that the Christian should be a philosopher, that is, a scientist. In so doing, the scientist and Christian may uncover in the works of God the ongoing signs of divine will and God’s plan for America. According to Cotton Mather, God created the world with incredible thrift: there was nothing superfluous; everything had a divine purpose. Hence, the more the scientist can understand nature, God’s creation, the more he can understand the mind of God. God’s signature is found in every natural phenomenon. Nature is the first or elder scripture, preceding even the Hebrew Bible. It made sense to Increase and Cotton Mather that the Christian develop the skills to investigate this elder scripture. Father and son studied and practiced astronomy and embraced the new science of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. They organized the Philosophical Club in Boston to promote science. Cotton began the study of botany and medicine, eventually becoming expert in the latter, writing numerous treatises and taking the lead in early eighteenthcentury Boston in advocating inoculation against smallpox.

Natural Theologians of the Enlightenment Cotton Mather was a transitional figure in American history. On the one hand, he believed in divine providence and God’s revelation of his truths to humankind; at the same time, Mather advocated the use of reason to discover the truths of nature and to act on that knowledge. This dichotomy was the history of religion and science in eighteenth-century America during the Enlightenment. The religious dichotomy, coming about particularly during and after the Great Awakening, was that of the New Lights and the Old Lights. According to the former, the original errand into the wilderness had been abandoned, God’s will was present in all things, and a return to faith

and reliance on divine revelation was absolutely necessary. The Old Lights embraced reason more than revelation and were less apt to see God’s will in everything; although they believed that America was still a place chosen by God for some great plan, they were not as explicit about what exactly that plan was. Common to both the New Lights and the Old Lights was an interest in elder scripture. Jonathan Edwards, the great New Light theologian, was interested in science, as was the Reverend Thomas Prince, a Boston minister who believed that by studying human and natural history one could discover the mind of God at work in America. The Reverend Charles Chauncy was a leader of the Old Lights, who were willing to accept the truth of miracles when justified and sanctified by reason. An admirer of all three men—Edwards, Prince, and Chauncy—was Jeremy Belknap, a Boston clergyman who combined Old Light and New Light tendencies and who was incredulous about miracle stories but firmly convinced of divine providence.

The Pious Scientist Jeremy Belknap was a true pious scientist. As a youth he attended Old South parish in Boston, where Prince preached and convinced the young Belknap that history was the story of God’s will on Earth. Belknap attended Harvard College and listened intently to the lectures of John Winthrop IV, one of the leading physicists and astronomers of mid-eighteenth-century America. Belknap was a thoroughgoing Calvinist until he lived through the American Revolution, which convinced him that God was of love not wrath and that he chose to save all, not just a select few. Accompanying Belknap’s newfound beliefs in God as love and universal salvation was a determination to discover these two themes in the human and natural past. Belknap combined both into one study in his History of New-Hampshire (1784–1792), volumes 1 and 2 of which provide a narrative of historical, largely political events in New Hampshire, while volume 3 explores the natural history of the state. Belknap organized an expedition to explore the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1784 to seek knowledge of God, nature, and humans. He and fellow clergymen-scientists Manasseh

Section 1: Essays 11 Cutler and Daniel Little journeyed to Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast. They knew that the mountains would confirm their beliefs in elder scripture, that such wilderness could tell a scientist as much about God as the Bible could. As Belknap wrote in 1784, “The book of Nature and the book of Scripture, being works of the same Author, are open to the inspection of all men, and our business is to search them, and learn what we can of them. If it is the business of the philosopher freely to enquire into the works of the Creator, it is equally that of the divine freely to enquire into the word of God.”

The Deists One of Jeremy Belknap’s last scientific works was a theological response to American and European deists (advocates of natural religion) who questioned the factual basis of the New Testament and Hebrew Bible. Belknap’s Dissertation on the Life, Character, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ was particularly directed against Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (1794), in which the author of Common Sense and The Rights of Man took on the “superstition” and fanciful stories, contradicted by human experience and natural law, of the New Testament Gospels. Paine and other deists of the eighteenth century based their ideas on the secular philosophy of Europe and thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as René Descartes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Voltaire, Rousseau, and David Hume. The deists believed in a universe based on natural laws that are constant and unchanging, allowing for a concreteness and precision in the universe as it conforms to the laws of motion. The universe is the product of a rational creator, who set the creation in motion according to a wonderful thrift and ease of movement and grace. The creation is perfect and complete; it includes everything that could possibly exist, nothing of which is extraneous and unnecessary. The perfection of the universe requires from the creator only a passive approach to humans and nature. Why meddle with perfection? Rational humans, the benefactors of a rational creator, have the inherent ability to uncover the laws of nature, to discover the plans and workings of the universe, nature, and humans them-

selves. Such knowledge, the deists held, forms the basis of the human power to reform the world and society, to progress in wealth, technology, knowledge, order, and wisdom in ways hitherto undreamed of. The deist thinker was, in short, naively optimistic. This naiveté was due in part to the astonishment with which Americans of the Revolutionary period and after continued to view their land. Enlightenment thinkers differed from Puritan thinkers only in the religious implications of their shared belief in America’s destiny as a chosen nation—chosen by God to lead others to redemption or chosen by nature to be the asylum of liberty. American thinkers of the late 1700s and early 1800s such as Timothy Dwight, Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, and Thomas Jefferson fervently believed that America was a pastoral paradise of goodness and plenty, a place sanctified by God, the creator, to be the most special among all nations of the world. When Crèvecoeur asked his famous question, “What then is the American, this new man?” his answer of the transforming nature of the continent had a religious implication. In America, one was reborn.

Awakenings Rebirth, indeed, was the theme of the Second Great Awakening during the 1820s and 1830s. Centered in upstate New York, led by clergy such as Samuel Finley, the Second Great Awakening sought redemption among its adherents. Unlike the redemption by means of confession of sin and spiritual rebirth as in the Great Awakening of a century before, the adherents of the Second Great Awakening were reborn to a new future, a millennium of progress countenanced by God, for it was to occur by means of his chosen people in his chosen land, America. An awakening of a different sort, which could occur at any time and any place, was the feeling elicited by the beauty and sublimity of nature. This was Henry David Thoreau’s theme in Walden (1854). Thoreau was a transcendentalist like his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nineteenth-century American philosopher who held that there is a transcendence inherent in nature, which, upon being recognized by intuition, awakens one to truth.

12 Section 1: Essays Thoreau wrote in Walden, “To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. . . . To be awake is to be alive. . . . We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.”

The G ood The sense expressed by Thoreau that America is a place where truth can be found was a recurring theme during the course of the twentieth century and continues today. Popular culture reinforces the notion that the true and good are to found in America. “God bless America,” runs the refrain of a popular song. Another, “America the Beautiful,” proclaims: America, America, God shed His grace on thee, And crowned thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.

Every American schoolchild learns the theme of God’s alliance with America: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” American currency proclaims “In God we trust.” American foreign policy is modeled on the assumption of America the Good. Beginning with the

American Revolution, continuing through the War of 1812, stated in the Monroe Doctrine and the Gettysburg Address, found in Woodrow Wilson’s speeches during World War I and Franklin Roosevelt’s speeches during World War II, and repeated over and over during the Cold War and today in the age of terrorism, is the idea of America the asylum of liberty, the home of the brave, the leader of the free world, the force of good fighting an eternal battle against evil. The Puritan idea of a shining “city upon a hill” is alive and vigorous in twenty-first-century America. Many American scientists work under similar assumptions, and many scientists pledge a subtle allegiance to natural theology. As Albert Einstein stated at about the time he emigrated to America in the early 1930s, the goal of the scientist is “to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we can dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend even an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.” Russell Lawson

Sources Greene, John C. American Science in the Age of Jefferson. Ames: University of Iowa Press, 1984. Lawson, Russell M. The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian’s Dialogue with the Past. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998.

The Frontier of Science E

uropeans who emigrated to North America beginning in the 1600s perceived the continent as an appendage of the Old World but also as a New World that was different, unique, vigorous, pure, and virtuous. Such are the attributes of youth. Part of this assumption was based on the experience of being on the verge of civilization, on the fringes of the wilderness. This is the frontier memorialized by the nineteenth-century American historian Frederick Jackson Turner. The frontier, he observed, is

constantly moving, constantly renewing itself; the frontier does not recognize attributes of civilization such as wealth and social status; the frontier is the great force of democratization; the frontier is a source of new ideas challenging old theories and traditions. According to this logic, science should be ever renewed by the experience of scientists on the frontier. Such clearly seems to be the case when examining the accounts of scientists who journeyed into the wilderness of America, who

Section 1: Essays 13 recorded their experiences and findings, and who returned to civilization armed with new ideas, new species of flora and fauna, a renewed sense of potential and progress, and new impressions of the landscape and geography of America. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark journeyed up the Missouri River in 1804 and returned in 1806 changed men, not mere soldiers and leaders but scientists. The experience of confronting the unknown educates us in the ways of nature. The Great Plains region of the Louisiana Territory during the first decades of the nineteenth century went through changes not only in ownership and jurisdiction but in the movements of peoples in and out. Some were American settlers from the region east of the Mississippi River. Some were Cherokees and Choctaws seeking better hunting grounds. Some were desperadoes fleeing the law. Others were American and French trappers tired of the demands of civilization. Such a trapper was Mr. Lee (first name unknown), who journeyed to Fort Smith around 1810 to pursue the lonesome life of a trapper in what was then called the Missouri Territory. Lee claimed to have ascended the various rivers of the southern Great Plains to near their sources. The rivers were his map into the interior wilderness. When one is on a river, knowing generally where it is headed and where it comes from, there is no need for an actual map drawing; Lee felt his way about by intuition. He sensed time and place by means of vegetation, the direction of the wind, the position of the sun, the descent of falling waters. The concept of being lost—or even knowing where one is—had no meaning for Lee, who was always lost in the sense of precise knowledge of his location. And yet he knew where he was. Lee’s world was one of living off the land and earning a living from the land. He was a trapper and hunter who relied on beaver ponds and sporadic forests for beaver pelts and bear meat or venison. The wealth of the prairie for Lee and the Native American tribes he interacted with were the fur-bearing and meat-bearing animals—beaver, deer, bear, buffalo. In his pursuit of the wealth of the prairie, Lee was usually successful, but sometimes not. Indian tribes were often suspicious of hunters and trappers working the same lands on which a tribe depended. Typically, there was an uneasy

tolerance. Sometimes, however, members of a war or hunting band unsuccessful in their objectives were in no mood for toleration when they came upon a hunter who had the marks of success upon him—food and pelts. On one occasion in 1818, Lee was trapping the Canadian River when a Cherokee hunting party confronted him, stole his belongings, stripped him of his clothes and weapons, and left him naked and alone on the prairie. The true mark of the frontiersman is the ability to survive without tools, weapons, or clothing, like an animal in the wilderness. Lee survived. His life on the frontier gave Lee a knowledge and awareness based on experience and intuition that a scientist relying on observation, reason, and logic would envy. When the scientist Thomas Nuttall hired Lee in the summer of 1819 to take him across the prairie to the Cimarron River, he was putting himself in the hands of a man few would call a scientist, but who, in his ability to sense direction, his intuition of environmental conditions, and his knowledge gained by experience, ecompassed the rudiments of science. Much of the initial acquisition of knowledge in North America was based on journeys into the wilderness during which guides taught scientists how to approach what were to the scientist new landscapes, climates, flora and fauna, and peoples. Lewis and Clark relied on their guides, such as Charbonneau and Sacagawea, in the course of their scientific pursuits. William Dunbar and George Hunter, in their ascent of the Ouachita River in 1804, relied on unnamed guides for much information on the rivers and mountains to the west. The Belknap-Cutler Expedition that ascended Mount Washington in 1784 relied on the experiences and intuitive knowledge of John Evans, a frontiersman who had ascended the mountain in 1774. Jeremy Belknap and Manasseh Cutler relied on Evans for general information about the mountain, the natural and physical environment of which he knew well. Belknap’s History of New-Hampshire (1784, 1791, 1792) owed much to what he learned from Evans. Cutler also used such guides on his 1804 ascent of Mount Washington, during which the guides became lost. Indeed, Evans lost his way on reaching the summit in 1784. More than thirty years later, the frontiersman Lee, guiding Nuttall, also

14 Section 1: Essays got lost. Lee and his predecessors felt their way until they found the path, rather like scientists engaged in hypothetical reasoning as they confront particularly thorny problems for which there is no clear answer. Russell Lawson

Sources Lawson, Russell M. The Land Between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall and the Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. ———. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.

A–Z languages, persuasion rather than coercion, and segregation of native peoples from the corrupting and exploitive influence of secular Spaniards. Although he attempted to ease the process of Spanish acculturation, Acosta’s ultimate purpose was to refashion native life according to European models. In 1586, he traveled to Mexico and remained there almost a year, studying the history and culture of the indigenous peoples while awaiting a ship back to Spain. In Spain, he was drawn into a series of controversies over the future of the Jesuits in that country. He died while serving as rector of the Jesuit college of Salamanca in 1600. Acosta left a number of published works and letters, the most famous of which is Natural and Moral History of the Indies, first published in 1590. In it, he described the natural resources, climate, and plants and animals of Peru and Mexico and provided vivid descriptions of the history and culture of the Aztec and Inca peoples. The History is unique among early works on Spanish America because of its readable prose and its attempt to make sense of the peoples, societies, and environment of Spanish America within the framework of Greek philosophy and Christian theology that formed Renaissance humanism. Thus, the History differs from earlier works in that it does not simply describe the New World but also explains why it was different from the Old World according to Renaissance thought. These attributes ensured the work’s enduring popularity and influence.

A C O S TA , J O S É D E (1540–1600) The life of Spanish missionary and naturalist José de Acosta paralleled the Golden Age of Spain in Europe and America. Born in the economically thriving town of Medina del Campo to a prosperous and devout merchant family— five of six Acosta sons took religious orders, and two of three daughters entered convents—José ran away at the age of twelve to join the newly established Society of Jesus. The Jesuits were founded with the purpose of aggressively evangelizing and purifying the Catholic faith and soon became the primary means by which the Catholic Church fought the spread of Protestantism. Intellectually, they were strongly influenced by Renaissance humanism, and Acosta’s training consisted of long years of studying Latin, Greek, Aristotelian philosophy, and Catholic theology. Many Jesuits, Acosta included, gained great influence as educators, advisers, or confessors of the nobility and monarchs of Catholic Europe, although in Spain their dual loyalty to the Spanish crown and the pope was cause for some uneasiness. Acosta soon attained fame for his skill in Latin and theology, but he desired a more active role in spreading Christianity. After his repeated entreaties, he received word in 1571 that he would be permitted to preach and teach in the Spanish province of Peru. The following year, Acosta arrived in the Spanish capital of Lima, where he would spend much of the next fourteen years. He spent many months touring the province, acquiring considerable knowledge of the peoples, plants, and animals of the region. Perhaps his most memorable accomplishment was the years that he spent converting the 14,000 natives of the town of Juli on the shore of Lake Titicaca to Christianity. There he advocated a relatively gentle—if harsh by modern standards— Christianization, aided by instruction in native

Evan Widders

Sources Acosta, José de. Natural and Moral History of the Indies. Ed. Jane E. Mangan; trans. Frances López-Morillas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Brading, D.A. The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492–1867. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Burgaleta, Claudio M. José de Acosta, S.J. (1540–1600): His Life and Thought. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1999.

15

16 Section 1: Beebe, William

BEEBE, WILLIAM (1877–1962) Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in East Orange, New Jersey, far from the natural world that he would embrace for a lifetime, Charles William Beebe would become one of the most accomplished of America’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century naturalists, as well as an explorer and author. His interests in natural history ran the gamut from sea to land to air. One of the world’s experts on pheasants, Beebe wrote popular books on birds, fishes, and insects, including Galapagos, World’s End (1923), Jungle Days (1925), Beneath Tropic Seas (1928), Half Mile Down (1934), High Jungle (1949), and Unseen Life of New York (1953). An avid childhood visitor to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Beebe had strongly supportive parents. He later caught the attention of museum director Henry Fairfield Osborn, a professor at Columbia University. Beebe studied biology at Columbia but never attained a bachelor’s degree; nevertheless, he developed a relationship with the museum that lasted more than six decades. Beebe’s first job (1899) was as an assistant curator at the newly opened New York Zoological Park’s (Bronx Zoo’s) bird house. He was promoted to full curator by 1902 and married Mary Blair Rice of Virginia that same year. By the time of his marriage, Beebe had already published more than a hundred articles, mostly on birds. Mary, also a naturalist, coauthored his first book, Two Bird Lovers in Mexico (1905). Four years later, the couple set out on a two-year journey visiting exotic places throughout the world in search of pheasant species. They visited twenty-two countries and covered 52,000 miles. Beebe published his four-volume A Monograph of the Pheasants in 1918 and later was named director of the zoo’s Tropical Research Department. Beebe, now divorced, became interested in marine and land explorations, journeying to the Galápagos Islands and elsewhere aboard his research ship, the Arcturus. By 1927, he had authored more than 430 papers and fourteen books

and had married Elswyth Thane Ricker (author of the play Young Mr. Disraeli). She stayed on their farm in Vermont, while he took up deepsea exploration. In 1930, Beebe began exploring ocean depths in a bathysphere designed by Otis Barton, and, in 1932, they descended a record half mile under the surface. By 1944, Beebe had discovered and promoted young Rachel Carson, who went on to write such watershed books as The Sea around Us (1951) and Silent Spring (1962). Beebe retired at age seventyfive in 1952, having written some 821 articles and twenty-four books. He died at his home in Trinidad on June 4, 1962. Donald J. McGraw

Sources Berra, Tim N. William Beebe: An Annotated Bibliography. Hamden, CT: Archon, 1977. Welker, Robert Henry. Natural Man: The Life of William Beebe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975.

B E V E R L E Y, R O B E R T ( C A . 1673–1722) Robert Beverley was a Virginia planter who published a human and natural history of Virginia in 1705, The History and Present State of Virginia, in Four Parts. The four parts comprise a political history, natural history, description of Native American tribes, and assessment of the current state of affairs. Beverley placed himself in the tradition of Walter Raleigh, whose History of the World appeared nearly a century earlier (1614). Beverley also appears to have been influenced by John Locke and in turn to have had a notable influence on Thomas Jefferson; indeed The History and Present State of Virginia reads a lot like Jefferson’s later Notes on the State of Virginia (1781–1782) and presents some of the same arguments that Jefferson would use in the Declaration of Independence. Beverley claimed “unbias’d Reason” and personal experience as the bases of his work. He presented a Whig view of history, emphasizing governance according to reason, a belief in English rights and liberties, the importance of law as the foundation of government, and the evils

Section 1: Brackenridge, Henry Marie 17 of despotism in a free republic. Virginia, to Beverley, was a paradise where freedom was a natural experience. The native peoples lived in a state of nature that allowed for complete happiness, for natural liberty banishes avarice and reveals the truth of the utter simplicity of life. The most effective colonial and royal government, he held, is one that benevolently encourages liberty of thought and action in that state of nature. The Virginia settlers suffered by comparison, in Beverley’s view. Indolence had been the bane of the colony since its beginning in 1607. John Smith knew this and enforced discipline on the lazy colonists at Jamestown. The tendency toward self-indulgence and indolence continued throughout the seventeenth century and to his own time, Beverley argued. The people of Virginia continued to “depend altogether upon the liberality of nature without endeavoring to improve its gifts by art or industry.” The primary source for the arguments and information presented in The History and Present State of Virginia was the author’s own experience. Beverley’s travels throughout the colony informed him of its natural productions and the human response to such plenty. Joining his companions on expeditions to fish, hike, and hunt, Beverley was aware that “their eyes are ravished with the beauties of naked nature.” Virginia, he observed, offers plentiful resources: trees “as vastly big, as I believe the World affords,” a wide variety of fish waiting for the angler’s skill, and the most “Pure and Chrystal Water, than which certainly the World does not afford any more delicious.” Robert Beverley was a transitional figure in the history of American thought. On the one hand, he held traditional views about human depravity and the “noble savage” of North America, and he believed divine providence was at work in Virginia’s history. On the other hand, he partook of the changes in historical methodology that occurred in England and Europe during the preceding two centuries. Beverley’s focus on reason, experience, and the evidence of the senses, especially firsthand observation of natural history, marked him as an early Enlightenment thinker, anticipating Jefferson’s more complete natural history of Virginia and Jeremy

Belknap’s full-scale synthesis of natural and human history in America. Russell Lawson

Sources Beverley, Robert. The History and Present State of Virginia, in Four Parts. London: 1705. Reprint ed., New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971. Fussner, F. Smith. The Historical Revolution. New York: Routledge, 1962.

BR ACKENRIDGE, HENRY MARIE (1786–1871) Henry Marie Brackenridge was an explorer and writer who journeyed up the Missouri River in 1811. Accompanying a team of naturalists, he was among the earliest to enjoy what a later age would call “ecotourism.” He was born in Pittsburgh on May 11, 1786, the son of lawyer Hugh Henry Brackenridge (remembered for his novel Modern Chivalry). His mother, whose name is unknown, survived the birth of her son by only two years. His father, a Princeton graduate, began tutoring him when he was still an infant. At age seven, Brackenridge was sent to a French academy, Ste. Genevieve, in what became Missouri; at the academy, he so thoroughly absorbed French that when he returned to Pittsburgh three years later he had to learn English all over again. Back home, he received a solid grounding in the English, Greek, and Latin classics under the attentive guidance of his father. After a year of reading law in the backwoods office of a lawyer trained by his own father, he was admitted to the bar in 1806. After further legal study in Baltimore, Brackenridge returned to Missouri in 1810 and opened a law office in St. Louis. At first not overburdened with cases, he began publishing essays in the Missouri Gazette on subjects of local interest, including descriptions of American Indian antiquities, geological observations, and comments on flora and fauna. In St. Louis, he met John Bradbury and Thomas Nuttall, the first two professional naturalists to penetrate deep into the trans-Mississippi West after the United States acquired the Louisiana Purchase.

18 Section 1: Brackenridge, Henry Marie In 1811, Brackenridge impulsively joined the party of the fur trader Manuel Lisa to overtake Bradbury and Nuttall, already three months into their journey up the Missouri River with fur traders working for John Jacob Astor. In the Dakotas, Brackenridge shared the adventures of the two naturalists from England and helped adjudicate a dispute between the two rival groups of fur traders. Because of hostile natives, he sometimes stood guard to protect Bradbury, whom he especially admired, while the botanist worked to collect previously unknown plant species. Brackenridge recognized that his own literary education had not fitted him to make scientific discoveries. When he wrote about this period in Views of Louisiana (1814), he confessed: “I have therefore been compelled to content myself with merely admiring the face of nature.” Brackenridge’s subsequent legal career in Louisiana and elsewhere was a distinguished one. Having already mastered the Spanish language, he became an expert on Spanish law in New Orleans and served there as a judge and deputy attorney general. His interest in South America led to his selection to a commission sent by the federal government in 1817 to assess the political situation there. Returning to the United States, he was elected to the state legislature of Maryland and then worked as secretary to the governor of Florida (1821). Finally, he had a brief term in Washington as a Whig congressman from Pennsylvania. Brackenridge spent the last three decades of his life near Pittsburgh on a large estate inherited by his wife, Caroline, whom he had married in 1827. He devoted his final years to writing, including his best-known book, Recollections of Persons and Places in the West (1834). Brackenridge died on January 18, 1871. Charles Boewe

Sources Keller, William F. The Nation’s Advocate: Henry Marie Brackenridge and Young America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1956. McDermott, John Francis. “Henry Marie Brackenridge and His Writings.” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 20:3 (1937): 181–96.

C AT E S B Y, M A R K (1682–1749) Mark Catesby was an artist and writer whose chief contribution was the voluminous Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1729–1747). The youngest son of the magistrate of Sudbury, Suffolk County, in England, Mark Catesby was born on March 24, 1682. He was fourth of five children to survive infancy of lawyer John Catesby and his wife Elizabeth Jekyll. Nothing is known of his youth and education, but he may have been introduced to botany by a maternal uncle; in any event, he early became acquainted with the naturalist John Ray. Having studied local flora and fauna, Catesby had the opportunity in 1712 to experience that of the Virginia colony, where his sister Elizabeth was married to a leading physician in Williamsburg. There, his brother-in-law, William Cocke, introduced Catesby to wealthy planters such as William Byrd II. Byrd, whose own associations included membership in the Royal Society, encouraged Catesby to continue the investigations of Virginia’s natural history left incomplete by the death of John Banister. After seven years away, including a side trip to Jamaica, Catesby returned to London with a portfolio of drawings of plants and animals native to Virginia as well as a collection of live plant specimens. His extensive knowledge of New World flora and fauna led to an offer by the first royal governor of South Carolina of £10 a year to explore the natural products of that colony for the benefit of the Royal Society. Catesby accepted and began work in Charles Town (as Charleston was called in 1722), carrying out explorations that took him into parts of what is now Georgia as well as the Bahamas. On his return to England in 1726, Catesby began working on his major published work, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (in which “Florida” was understood to mean much of present-day Georgia). The book took over twenty years to complete. Unable to afford the cost of high-quality professional engravers, Catesby learned engraving in order to produce the plates himself. Issued

Section 1: Catesby, Mark 19

Mark Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1729–1747) was the first published compendium of North American fauna and flora. Its 220 plates included the Florida blue snake. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

in fascicles beginning in 1729, The Natural History was finally completed in 1747. With the text in both English and French, it comprised two bound volumes containing 220 plates. It illustrated 109 species of birds, 33 amphibians, 46 fishes, 31 insects, 9 quadrupeds, and 171 plants. As each fascicle was completed, it was formally presented to the Royal Society, which elected the author to membership in 1733. Catesby’s was the first attempt to produce a general natural history of a portion of the New World. His aim to present accurate illustrations of both fauna and flora was successful to the extent that Carolus Linnaeus bestowed Latin names on some American animals and plants on the basis of them. However, Catesby’s customary association of animals with plants in the same plate does not make them habitat views. For example, in his well-known Bison ameri-

canus, which shows the animal rubbing a shoulder against a rose acacia tree, the branch of the acacia is out of proportion to both the trunk of the tree and the bison, a distortion required to depict clearly the leaves and seeds of the tree. Still, there is a connection between the tree and the beast; Catesby reports that he never saw a rose acacia tree without buffalo droppings around it. Catesby was sixty-four when he married Elizabeth Rowland in 1747. He died on December 23, 1749, leaving two minor children who probably were Elizabeth’s by an earlier marriage. His only other book, Hortus Britanno-Americanus (1763), was published posthumously. Little more than a pamphlet, it discussed and illustrated eighty-five North American trees and shrubs suitable for the English soil and climate. Charles Boewe

20 Section 1: Catesby, Mark Sources Frick, George Frederick, and Raymond Phineas Stearns. Mark Catesby: The Colonial Audubon. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961. Meyers, Amy, and Margaret Beck Pritchard. Empire’s Nature: Mark Catesby’s New World Vision. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1998. Wilson, David Scofield. In the Presence of Nature. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978.

CHAPMAN, JOHN (“J O H N N Y A P P L E S E E D ”; 1774–1845) Horticulturist and Christian evangelist John Chapman is best known to the contemporary public as the folk figure “Johnny Appleseed,” who roamed the old Northwest Territory planting orchards to feed settlers from the east. Chapman was born in Leominster, Massachusetts, on September 26, 1774, and grew up in the town of Longmeadow in the southern part of the state. Little is known of his life until he emerged in western Pennsylvania in 1797, where he established the first of many apple orchards he planted during his lifetime. Shortly thereafter, Chapman began traveling through Pennsylvania and what would become Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, purchasing, or at times squatting on, land that seemed promising for future settlement. He planted apple seeds, tended the young plants, and resold the land or the trees to incoming settlers. His legendary wanderings were, in part, to keep track of his widely spaced orchards and land. He was an active speculator in land as well as fruit. At some point in his young adulthood, Chapman was converted to the doctrine of the Swedish Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Chapman used part of the earnings from his nurseries to purchase and distribute Swedenborg’s religious tracts, and he used his travels to evangelize. It is possible that his evangelical calling encouraged him to continue his travels beyond the time when the frontier, and its accompanying settlers, had largely passed him by. Chapman’s land speculation and his planting and selling of apple trees along the frontier were not unique by the turn of the nineteenth century.

Land speculation was rife throughout the new states of the Northwest Territory, and the Shakers, a community of Christian utopians, were also selling apple seedlings to settlers heading west. Chapman was unique, however, in his insistence on growing trees only from seeds and rejecting the practice of grafting, which was common by the early 1800s. Grown from seed, apple trees will produce unpredictable, wild offspring. Grafting allows the planter to control the fruit and produce a uniform crop across an entire orchard. Settlers looking to apples as a cash crop would have sought uniformity as valuable in the marketplace. Conversely, seeds were much easier to transport than grafted trees, required less attention to remain productive, and with crosspollination were more likely to produce new varieties resistant to disease and drought. Additionally, many settlers were still at a subsistence level of agriculture. Seedlings were inexpensive and their fruit was useful for cooking, eating, and the making of vinegar and hard cider, still a popular drink in the nineteenth century. An eccentric and ascetic, Chapman had already become a folk legend in the decade before his death near Ft. Wayne, Indiana, on March 10, 1845. Despite extensive land holdings and at least modest financial success, he dressed as a pauper and showed no interest in the increasingly market-driven communities created by the settlers to whom he sold his trees. After his death, the legend gradually replaced the man: Johnny Appleseed became a folk hero, a natureloving pioneer in a burlap bag with a tin pot for a hat, wandering the frontier, scattering apple seeds in his wake. John P. Hundley

Sources Carmony, Donald F. Indiana 1816–1850: The Pioneer Era. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau and Indiana Historical Society, 1998. Price, Robert. Johnny Appleseed: Man and Myth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1954.

C O L D E N , C A D WA L L A D E R (1688–1776) The statesman, ethnographer, physicist, and botanist Cadwallader Colden was born of Scottish

Section 1: Colden, Cadwallader 21 parents on February 7, 1688. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1705 and went on to study medicine in London. Lacking the finances to establish his own practice in Great Britain, he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1710 and began his medical career there. On a brief trip to Scotland in 1715, Colden married Alice Chrystie, with whom he would have eleven children. The couple returned to Philadelphia and eventually moved to New York, where Colden was appointed surveyor general in 1720. He remained active in politics throughout his life, serving as chief adviser to Governor George Clinton (1746–1753) and as lieutenant governor after 1760. One of Colden’s earliest political writings was A History of the Five Indian Nations (1727), an imperialist tract designed to encourage Iroquois allegiance to the British. Colden suggested how Iroquois diplomats could act to protect their interests in the face of steadily encroaching colonial populations. The work also was intended to convince English politicians of the economic and strategic importance of the Iroquois Confederacy. As lieutenant governor, Colden defended royal prerogatives and imperial rule over the American colonies. He believed that the British crown retained the right to tax the colonies as it deemed necessary and supported both the British Stamp Act of 1765 and the Intolerable Acts of 1768. Colden was extremely unpopular among the colonists and was burnt in effigy by New York mobs. Colden’s political appointments gave him the financial wherewithal to undertake scientific endeavors. He was one of the leading scientists of the American colonies and is regarded as one of the first important American botanists. Shortly after 1740, he began examining and classifying plants on his estate at Coldenghham, New York, using Carolus Linnaeus’s binomial method of classification, sorting plants into genera and species based on sexual characteristics (the number of pistils and stamens). Colden was the first American colonist to use Linnaeus’s system, and he provided Linnaeus an account of more than 300 plants, some 200 of which are included in the 1743 edition of Acta Upsaliensi under the heading “Plantae Coldenhamiae.” So important was Colden’s work that

Linnaeus even named a plant genus after him: Coldenia, for an herb in the borage family. Colden’s daughter Jane (1724–1766) was the first American female botanist. Colden taught her how to make ink impressions of leaves on paper to accompany her plant descriptions. Eventually, she produced a volume of 340 drawings, together with information on the medicinal use of certain plants. British botanists, in particular, thought that American flora might yield important new medicines. Although Colden ceased to practice medicine shortly after arriving in the American colonies, he remained active in the field. He was one of the first to recommend a cooling regimen for the treatment of fevers; prior to this time, bloodletting had been the standard treatment. In his essay The Fever Which Prevailed in the City of New York in 1741–42 (1742), Colden contended that the epidemic in that city had been exacerbated by generally dirty conditions and foul air. His 1765 Treatise on Wounds and Fevers was long regarded as a standard authority. In 1771, Colden was instrumental in chartering New York City’s first hospital. Despairing of the lack of professional medical oversight and standards in the colonies, he sought, unsuccessfully, to establish a systemic course of medical instruction. Colden considered his Principles of Action in Matter to be his magnum opus. In this ambitious undertaking, he sought to complete Isaac Newton’s Principia by resolving issues that had been left unexplained. In particular, he thought that Newton did not give a convincing explanation for the theory of gravitational attraction. The first edition of Colden’s work, titled An Explication of the First Causes of the Action in Matter and of the Cause of Gravitation (1745), was the first scientific study of its type to be published in the American colonies. Excerpted in the Monthly Review and the London Magazine, and translated into French and German, Colden’s work was widely criticized by Newton’s adherents. Even sympathetic comment pointed out the failure of Colden’s Principles to improve upon Newtonian physics. Philosophically, Colden was one of America’s first scientific materialists, believing that the physical universe could be explained by material principles. Along with Benjamin Franklin, Colden played an integral role in the reestablishment of the American Philosophical Society in

22 Section 1: Colden, Cadwallader 1769. He regularly corresponded with Benjamin Franklin on matters of botany, medicine, electricity, and printing. Regarding this last subject, he described a process by which permanent printing plates could be produced, known as “stereotype printing.” Colden, however, gained little prominence in American letters, in part, no doubt, because of his loyalist leanings at the start of the American Revolution. In the exercise of his official duties, Colden also alienated many of New York’s most influential families, doubtless contributing to his unpopularity. Shortly after the Battle of Lexington in 1775, Colden left New York City and retired to his estate in rural New York, where he died on September 28, 1776. His papers were published by the New York Historical Society in 1917. Wendell G. Johnson

Sources Hoermann, Alfred R. Cadwallader Colden: A Figure of the American Enlightenment. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002. Lustig, Mary Lou. “Cadwallader Colden.” In American National Biography, vol. 5. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

DRAPER, JOHN WILLIAM (1811–1882) John William Draper was an early pioneer of the daguerreotype (a form of photography), and he won a Rumford Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1875 for his investigations into radiant energy. He published textbooks on chemistry, physiology, and other subjects, but his major publications were historical. His History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875) was one of the first major works interpreting Western intellectual history as a war between science and religion. Draper was born in England on May 5, 1811, to a father and mother who were both converts from Catholicism to Protestantism. Draper and his family emigrated to America in 1832, where he was hired as a professor of chemistry at the University of the City of New York (now New York University) in 1839. He spent his entire career there. Draper was deeply affected by the struggles over Darwinism in England and America, and he

bitterly hated the Catholic Church. History of the Conflict between Religion and Science was a response to Pope Pius IX’s proclamation of the Syllabus of Errors in 1864, condemning rationalism and liberalism, and the First Vatican Council’s promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility in 1870. Draper portrayed Catholicism as the great enemy of science and liberty, pointedly contrasting the many economic and social benefits resulting from science in the nineteenth century with the poverty and backwardness of the churchdominated Middle Ages; he denounced, with colorful rhetoric, the blood on the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. Science, which Draper claimed (erroneously) had never allied itself with civil power, was portrayed as pure and spotless. Draper was not an atheist or materialist. He believed that the existence and immortality of the soul could be proved scientifically. He concentrated his antireligious fire on Catholicism. Antiscience statements and actions by Protestants received comparatively little attention, and Draper claimed that the Reformation, by breaking the Catholic Church’s intellectual monopoly, had significantly contributed to the rise of early modern science. Draper was also one of the first modern scholars to recognize the importance of medieval Islamic science, which he believed had stimulated resistance to church domination of European thought and thus helped initiate Western science. Draper believed that the struggle between science and Catholicism, reason and faith, would soon be fought to the finish. Science would relegate Catholicism to the dustbin of history, he believed, though Protestantism might survive if its theologians were willing to accept a sharply restricted intellectual role. America, because of its separation of church and state and lack of a religious establishment, would play a leading role in this transformation. Draper also wrote a threevolume History of the American Civil War (1867– 1870), the first major history to appear after the conflict, in which he described the North’s victory as a triumph of science. History of the Conflict between Religion and Science was widely reprinted and translated into all the major European languages as well as Polish, Serbian, and others. Draper’s work exerted considerable influence in Europe as well as America. William E. Burns

Section 1: Dudley, Paul 23 Sources Draper, John William. Collected Works of John William Draper. Reprint ed., Temecula, CA: Reprint Services, 1999. White, Edward A. Science and Religion in American Thought: The Impact of Naturalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1952.

DUDLEIAN LECTURE The Dudleian Lecture at Harvard University originated in a bequest given by Paul Dudley, an alumnus, in 1751. A lawyer by profession, Dudley was an amateur scientist and a polymath—a member of the Royal Society of London who was fascinated by the variety of the works of the creator. An inheritor of the teaching of the Massachusetts Puritans as well as an Enlightenment scientist, Dudley sought to combine the two traditions in his own life. In his bequest to Harvard College, Dudley called for an annual lecture that would involve several restricted subjects in a four-year rotation, one of which was “natural religion.” The combination of theology and science was not extraordinary at the time. Indeed, many clergy and many scientists believed that God’s will is present in human and natural history. Thus, the mid-eighteenth-century American mindset held to an apparent contradiction. At the same time of the reliance on reason, science, empiricism, and objectivity of the Enlightenment, with its focus on progress and discovery and its confidence in the acquisition of objective knowledge, there was a competing reliance on faith in God and the value and truth of the Christian holy scriptures—a belief that science required, ironically, a response of piety. Accordingly, the scientist and Puritan Paul Dudley required that a second topic of the Dudleian Lecture involve “revealed religion.” Revelation was not conquered by reason during the Enlightenment; rather, the two were complementary, at least in the mind of Dudley and his contemporaries. A third topic of the lecture, “the corruption of the church of Rome,” was typical for a time when Protestants in America were wary of the “papists” among the Spanish and French who discounted reason when approaching the gospel. The fourth topic of the Dudleian Lecture,

“the validity of the Presbyterian ordination,” was sympathetic to the Calvinist inclinations that went into the founding and growth of Harvard College. The Dudleian Lecture focused on the debate of reason and revelation, Arminianism (a movement beginning in Europe that supported religious belief with reason) and Unitarianism (a belief in the unity rather than the trinity of God) in America. The Dudleian Lecture sponsored such speakers as Ebenezer Gay, the pastor at Hingham, Massachusetts, who in 1759 spoke on “Natural Religion as Distinguished from Revealed.” The Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing in 1819 argued that an American thinker can accept the precepts of reason as well as the reality of the miracles of Jesus. Other famous Dudleian lecturers have included Puritan poet Michael Wigglesworth; Charles Chauncy, Boston pastor and leader of the Old Lights during the Great Awakening; entomologist E.O. Wilson; the historian of Islamic science Seyyed Hossein Nasr; and geographer Charles Conrad Wright, who in 1961 lectured on “Rational Religion in Eighteenth-Century America.” The Dudleian Lecture still brings speakers to Harvard every year to address issues of reason and religion. Russell Lawson

Source Stearns, Raymond P. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

D U D L E Y, P AU L (1675–1751) A jurist, colonial naturalist, and natural theologian—the epitome of the “gentleman scientist” of the Enlightenment—Paul Dudley was the son and grandson of royal colonial governors of Massachusetts. Born in 1675, he graduated from Harvard in 1690 and traveled to England to study law at the Temple in London. Queen Anne commissioned him as the provincial attorney general for Massachusetts Bay Colony (1702–1718), where he was promoted to the bench of the Superior Court in 1718 and became chief justice of Massachusetts

24 Section 1: Dudley, Paul in 1745. He also served Roxbury in the legislature for a number of years. Dudley wrote books, pamphlets, and essays on a variety subjects. The essays focused on the natural history of America with an emphasis on New England and were, for the most part, published in the British Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions (1720–1735, vols. 31, 33, 34, and 39). The titles of some of these essays reflect Dudley’s broad scientific interests: “Method of Making Maple Sugar in New England”; “An Account of the Poisonwood Tree (Rhus Vermix, Lin)”; “Upon the Methods of Discovering Beehives and Wild Honey”; “An Account of the Moose Deer (Cervas Alces, Lin)”; “Account of the Falls of Niagara”; “An Account of the Rattle Snake”; “The Indian Sweating Houses”; “On Some of the Plants of New England, and Remarkable Instances of the Nature and Power of Vegetation”; “On the Natural History of Whales, and the Ambergris Found in Spermaceti Whales”; “Account of the Several Earthquakes Which Have Happened in New England, A.D. 1724”; and “Account of the Locusts in New England.” Dudley made other submissions to the Royal Society, one in the form of a bottle of molasses which, when tasted by the members, was noted as having a “very pleasant cyder flavour.” He also sent the society a “Journal of the Winds and Weather.” Dudley’s essays demonstrate his field experience. For example, his Transactions essay “A Short Account of the Names, Situations, Numbers, etc., of the Five Nations of Indians in Alliance with New York, under the Crown of Great Britain” was based on his experiences with and observations of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca peoples. In 1724, he studied the crossfertilization of corn. His account of Joseph Kellogg’s expedition to the Mississippi was based on court business to the Connecticut Valley, where he met Kellogg and heard of his travels. In 1751, Dudley bequeathed £100 to Harvard College to establish an annual lecture, known as the Dudleian Lecture, to be delivered on one of four subjects treated in succession: natural religion, revealed religion, the corruption of the church of Rome, and the validity of the Presbyterian ordination. He wrote a treatise against the church of Rome as well, The Merchandize of Souls, Being an Exposition of Certain Passages in the Book of Revelation. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Dudley Genealogies and Family Records. Boston, 1848. Labaree, Benjamin W. Colonial Massachusetts: A History. Millwood, NY: Kraus International, 1979. Washburn, Emory. Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts from 1630 to the Revolution in 1775. New York: Da Capo, 1974.

D W I G H T, T I M O T H Y (1752–1817) The Reverend Timothy Dwight was a Congregational clergyman as well as the president of Yale College. Like such other Yale presidents as Ezra Stiles and such alumni as Jedidiah Morse, Dwight was a polymath interested in theology as well as science. An explorer as well, he toured the Northern states, exploring the frontier regions of the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Green Mountains of Vermont, and White Mountains of New Hampshire. His journeys resulted in Travels in New-England and New-York (1821). Dwight was born in 1752 in Northampton, Massachusetts. His grandfather was the theologian Jonathan Edwards. Dwight, intelligent and driven to imitate his grandfather’s accomplishments, went to Yale College, graduating at age seventeen in 1769. He was a tutor at Yale for several years. When the American Revolution began, Dwight served as a chaplain. Returning to Northampton in 1778, he taught school and eventually became pastor to a congregation in Fairfield, Connecticut. Like his grandfather Edwards, Dwight was an evangelical, intellectual minister, a “new light” who refused to go along with the popular liberal theology of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Dwight, like many eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury New England clergy, believed in “elder scripture”: that the natural environment reveals the handwriting of God. God’s creation is based on reason, and humans who partake in reason, logic, and empirical thought are able to understand the precepts of God’s moral and material system, their own motives for proper or improper behavior, and the sanctions for such beliefs and behaviors in a republican system of government.

Section 1: Ecology 25 Dwight merged reason and faith like his grandfather Edwards. He rejected the precepts of the Enlightenment and the focus on material progress and unlimited scientific discovery, assuming that human history is cyclical, because it is based not on the mind so much as morality, and sin will always keep humans from true progress. Russell Lawson

Sources Cherry, Conrad. “Nature and the Republic: The New Haven Theology.” New England Quarterly 51 (December 1978) 4:509–26. Fitzmier, John R. New England’s Moral Legislator: Timothy Dwight, 1752–1817. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Griffith, John. “The Columbiad and Greenfield Hill: History, Poetry, and Ideology in the Late Eighteenth Century.” Early American Literature 10 (1975): 235–50.

E C O LO G Y Ecology is the study of the interactions between organisms and their environments. Organisms are affected by their environments, and their presence and actions in turn affect the environments in which they live. More specifically, ecology is the study of the interactions that determine the distribution and abundance of organisms. It is a broad term, because it represents a multidisciplinary science. Ecology incorporates biological subjects such as genetics, physiology, behavior, and evolution, as well as such other disciplines as chemistry, physics, geology, meteorology, and oceanography.

Study and Applications The environmental factors that affect organisms may be abiotic (pertaining to nonliving things) or biotic (pertaining to living things). Abiotic environmental factors include temperature, light, water, and nutrients. Biotic factors include the other organisms that are part of an individual organism’s environment. For example, an organism may experience changes in its environment as a result of predation by or competition with other organisms.

The goal of ecologists is to determine where organisms are found, how many occur there, and why they occur in relation to the environment and interactions between organisms. There are several ways to study ecology. Descriptive ecologists describe the habitats of the world, or biomes, and the plants, animals, and other organisms within them. Functional ecologists study the responses of organisms to environmental factors; they ask, “How does the system operate?” Evolutionary ecologists study the historical reasons for the adaptations we see in the natural world; they ask, “Why is this ecological solution to a problem favored?” Ecologists can study any of these types of questions theoretically, in the laboratory, or in the field. Some theoretical ecologists employ complex mathematical models to clarify which factors are affecting organisms and the environment, and to predict eventual changes in populations or ecosystems depending on the various biotic and abiotic factors. Theoretical ecologists may not always find support for novel concepts in the laboratory or field, but their ideas may give rise to other hypotheses or discoveries. Likewise, studies in the lab also may not play out in the field; however, field studies are not always feasible. A combination of theoretical, laboratorybased, and field work may provide the most credible and comprehensive source of ecological knowledge. An understanding of ecology requires knowledge of the current system of grouping living things. The smallest unit of study in ecology is usually the individual organism. Organismal ecology is the study of the morphology, physiology, genetics, and behavior of individual organisms in relation to their environment. Organismal ecologists study the structure and form of an organism in relation to survival in its particular environment. They may study how nocturnal organisms find food in the dark or how organisms survive and live in extreme environments such as high altitudes, caves, and deep-sea vents. Groups of individuals of the same species in a specific geographic area are called populations. Population ecology is the study of factors affecting the size and composition of populations in their specific environments. Population ecologists may study the density or number of organisms in a specific area, or the geographic range

26 Section 1: Ecology and dispersal of organisms. They may also study the age structure, sex ratio, or birth and death rates within populations. Communities include all the organisms and populations in a specific geographic area. Community ecology examines the ways in which interactions among organisms affect community structure and organization. Community ecologists may study competition within a species or between species, or predation and parasitism of one species upon another. More broadly, they study the species diversity that exists in particular habitats. They may also study adaptive techniques such as camouflage and warning coloration, or how species within a community recover after wildfires. The broadest grouping within the study of ecology is the ecosystem, which includes communities in the context of their specific environments. Ecosystem-level ecology examines the interactions within and between communities in relation to environmental factors. Ecosystem ecologists may study the energy flow and nutrient cycling within a system. They may also study food chains, or how organisms that decompose dead plants and animals provide a base for the entire system. The study of ecology has a number of applications. The study of how organisms interact with their environments allows evaluation of environmental issues such as conservation and habitat management. For example, ecological studies help determine how many blue crabs can be caught in the Chesapeake Bay in a year, whether a new housing development will destroy the river habitat beside which it is built, and how best to respond to an oil spill in Alaska. Without knowledge of the ecology of mosquitoes, it would be futile to attempt to control the spread of malaria.

Histor y Scientists have recognized and studied facets of ecology for centuries. The fourth-century B.C.E. botanist Theophrastus described relationships between animals and their environment. Ecology, however, is considered a fairly recent scientific discipline. The German botanist Alexander von Humboldt is considered the father of ecology. He studied the relationships between plants and

their climate during expeditions in the early 1800s. With newly published theories on evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace in the mid-1800s, the concept of animals and plants being influenced by their environment became more widely known and accepted. Although the idea of ecological interactions was recognized by the start of the twentieth century, the science of ecology was not yet known by this name. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Austrian geologist Eduard Suess and Russian geologist Vladimir Vernadsky defined a “biosphere” as the conditions that promote life on Earth, including plants, animals, minerals, and chemical cycles. British ecologist Arthur Tansley first used the term “ecosystem” in 1935 to describe the interactive system between living things and their environment. Ecology in America greatly expanded in the twentieth century. Notable Americans in the field included Stephen Forbes, Henry Cowles, Frederic Clements, Edith Clements, and Henry Gleason, all of whom were plant ecologists who studied succession and zone vegetation in plant communities. Ed Rickets, a leader in marine ecology, was fictionalized in several novels by John Steinbeck. William Dwight Billings was a physiological ecologist who studied desert and arctic communities. Garrett Hardin, a controversial figure, wrote The Tragedy of the Commons (1968) about the conflict between individual interests and the “common good.” The first textbook on ecology, Fundamentals of Ecology (1953), was written by Americans Eugene Odum and Howard Odum. This was the only textbook in the field for ten years, and it advanced the idea of ecosystem ecology, or how natural systems interact with one another. Robert MacArthur studied community and population ecology, and advanced the concepts of biogeography and niche partitioning along with E.O. Wilson. Wilson’s work on ecology, evolution, and sociobiology, particularly of ants, has made him perhaps the most well-known American ecologist. Current American ecologists of note include Ruth Patrick, a freshwater ecologist; Douglas Futuyma, an evolutionary ecologist who studies interactions between plant-eating insects and plants; and J. Michael Fay, who has surveyed desert and forest ecology in Africa.

Section 1: Franklin, Benjamin 27 Since the 1950s, ecology has become more widely known and has both influenced and been influenced by social, philosophical, and political issues as well as scientific studies. Ongoing discoveries affect the way ecology is studied. Technological advances can help find, track, and describe organisms and their habitats. Advances in technology can also help scientists predict how changes in the environment, including those caused by humans, will affect the lives of organisms and the structure of communities and ecosystems. Contributions to the understanding of the historical features of the environment can shed light on how different species have evolved and adapted. Evolution and ecology are intricately connected; the interactions between individuals and their environment are dependent upon the history and evolution of specific adaptations, and these interactions in turn affect the direction and extent of future evolutionary change. In addition, ecology explains where different species live and in what abundance. Changes that affect distribution and abundance may lead to an invasive species of plant or animal overcoming native species, or may contribute to speciation or extinction. Mollie Sue Oremland

Sources Begon, Michael, John L. Harper, and Colin R. Townsend. Ecology: Individuals, Population, and Communities. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Science, 1996. Pickett, Steward T.A., Jurek Kolasa, and Clive G. Jones. Ecological Understanding. San Diego, CA: Academic, 1994. Ricklefs, Robert E. Ecology. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1990. Valiela, Ivan. Marine Ecological Processes. New York: SpringerVerlag, 1995.

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN (1706–1790) Benjamin Franklin was eighteenth-century America’s most famous scientist. Modern historians portray him as a many-sided genius, a man of wit and style, and especially as a prominent figure among the nation’s founders. In the eighteenth century, however, Franklin’s reputation as a scientist was even more pronounced, had international currency, and predated his promi-

nence in politics, to which it contributed in no small way. Then as now, Franklin was known for his kite experiment, but that was only one part of his work with thunderstorms, itself only a strand in his general experiments with electricity. His lifelong interest in improvement led to many inventions—among them the Franklin stove and bifocal eyeglasses. Not the least of Franklin’s contributions to eighteenth-century science was his promotion of local, national, and international scientific communities.

Life Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Josiah Franklin and Abiah Folger. He had little formal education, spending only a year at the Boston grammar school—and little of that informed his later work as a scientist. He appears to have come to think about science in a serious way only relatively late in life. As a child, Franklin worked in his father’s tallow and soap factory—a setting not entirely devoid of scientific processes perhaps, but also one he did not remember fondly. An avid reader, Franklin left no trace if science books were read in his youth. Working as a printer in Boston, apprenticed to his brother in 1718, and later in New York, Philadelphia, and London, he showed little sustained interest in science, but he did study arithmetic. At some time in his youth Franklin began a lifelong interest in magic squares and circles, curiosities on which he published later (1767) and on which he fiddled as an old man to pass time at the Constitutional Convention (1787). In London in the 1720s, Franklin met various men of science, including Hans Sloane, later founder of the British Museum, and Henry Pemberton, a popularizer of Isaac Newton. Perhaps it is from that time that Franklin’s interest in Newton’s Optics can be deduced. He returned to Philadelphia in 1726 and, the following year, formed the Junto, a society that met every Friday night for entertaining conversation about useful subjects. In 1729, Franklin began to publish the Pennsylvania Gazette, a newspaper that occasionally carried pieces of scientific interest, such as his 1737 essay on the causes of earthquakes. In 1731, he helped organize the Library

28 Section 1: Franklin, Benjamin Company of Philadelphia, a private subscription library that housed books of science, as well as curiosities such as fossils and, after 1739, an air pump and other scientific glassware. In 1732, Franklin began work on Poor Richard’s Almanack (first published for the year 1733), an important vehicle for disseminating scientific ideas in early America. Compiling the almanac’s contents also may have kindled Franklin’s latent scientific interests, which thereafter he pursued more ardently.

Polymath During the early 1740s, Franklin was involved in a number of projects that involved science in one way or another. When Isaac Greenwood (former Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard College, then recently released for drunkenness) proposed a series of lectures and experiments, Franklin supported the idea and collected subscriptions at the Philadelphia post office. Another project was Franklin’s design of a new kind of woodstove, a project to which he first turned his attention in 1740 and on which he published An Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Place (1744). Franklin’s design, which provided more heat with less wood, was informed by his reading of Newton, as well as works by the French scientists Nicolas Gauger and Jean Théophile Desaguliers. In 1742, he helped raise funds to support John Bartram’s botanical collection. In a similar way, he later helped support Archibald Spencer’s lectures on natural philosophy. In 1743, Franklin turned to storm tracking, a topic that had interested him from his youth and on which he later published, as he did on the related topic of ocean currents. Also in 1743, he published A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge, a document that led to the birth of the American Philosophical Society, the first scientific society established in America; Franklin was the founding secretary. The society brought together colonial men of intellect, many of whom had scientific interests, including Bartram, Thomas Bond, and William Parsons. Franklin also promoted science in America by publishing the scientific works of others, such as Cadwallader Colden’s An

Explication of the First Causes of Motion and Matter (1745).

Elec tricit y In 1745, Franklin’s scientific interests began to focus specifically on the subject of electricity. As his interests narrowed, his scientific contacts widened. Peter Collinson, a member of the Royal Society, had written to Franklin about European experiments with the Leyden jar (an “electric bottle,” or capacitor) and sent him a glass tube and other equipment for making electrical experiments. Franklin, with Thomas Hopkinson, Ebenezer Kinnersley, and Philip Syng, began conducting experiments. These experiments led Franklin to establish more precise language in the emerging study of electricity. Identifying what he called an “electrical fire,” he defined the terms “plus” and “minus” and “positive” and “negative” charges. He worked out a law of the conservation of charge and came to recognize the importance of pointed bodies for attracting and throwing electrical fire. His findings found important application in experiments with the Leyden jar in 1747 and 1748. On his retirement from the printing business in 1748, Franklin could devote more of his time to scientific experiment. By at least the spring of 1749, he had begun to think that lightning was electrical in nature, and it must have been later that year or early in 1750 that the idea of a lightning rod first came to him. He wrote about it to Collinson, who had Franklin’s letter printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine in May 1750. In 1751 in London, Collinson had published Franklin’s work as Experiments and Observations in Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America. Buffon arranged for a French translation, which was published in 1752. Franklin’s scientific reputation rose even higher when sentry-box experiments were conducted following his directions, in France in the spring of 1752, with King Louis XV in attendance. Those experiments proved true Franklin’s conjecture that lightning was electrical. Subsequent editions of Experiments and Observations were enlarged to include descriptions of the new experiments, with illustrations. Franklin had conjectured not only that lightning was electrical, but also that clouds contained

Section 1: Godman, John D. 29 an electrical charge. That knowledge, he proposed, could be “of some use to Mankind.” Franklin’s now-famous kite experiment, as described by his friend Joseph Priestley, was conducted on an overcast day in June 1752. Flying a silk kite on a line of hemp attached to a metal ring, he was able to produce an “electric spark,” proving that clouds carried atmospheric electricity. He had demonstrated that lightning was not an unknowable supernatural force, but one that could be known and controlled. He aimed to popularize his findings and show their usefulness by having them printed in the 1753 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanack as “How to Secure Houses, &c. from LIGHTNING.” Here was dramatic confirmation of the claim by English philosopher Francis Bacon that science is the means by which humans might control nature. On November 30, 1753, Franklin was awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society, to which he was elected a member on May 29, 1756. By 1759, he had been awarded honorary degrees by Harvard, Yale, and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Science was never again to occupy Franklin’s mind as it had in the 1740s and early 1750s. Increasing amounts of time and energy went to politics. He was elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 1751, and his pen was often employed on political subjects, producing such notable pieces as “Rattlesnakes for Felons” (May 9, 1751), “JOIN OR DIE” (May 4, 1754), “A Defense of the American” (May 12, 1759), and The Interest of Great Britain Considered (1760). He produced writings of a similar sort during the 1760s and 1770s. In 1775, Franklin was a delegate to the Continental Congress (1775). He presided over the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention (1776), was asked to help draft the Declaration of Independence (1776), and served as U.S. minister to France (1778–1785), president of Pennsylvania (1785), and delegate to the Constitutional Convention (1787). Amid all his political activities, Franklin occasionally worked on scientific projects of one sort or another and continued to be thought of as a great scientist. Contemporaries celebrated him in prose, portraits, busts, medallions, and trinkets. His reputation was especially high in France, where, in 1773, he was named a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences.

Through the end of his life, Franklin continued to dabble in science. In the early 1760s, he corresponded about experiments concerning the ability of objects of different colors to absorb, at different rates, heat from the sun. He also tinkered with improvements to stoves, working on dampers, for instance, a subject on which he wrote to Jan Ingenhousz, physician to the emperor of Austria. He corresponded with David Rittenhouse about Newton’s theory of light. In France, he served on a committee that investigated Franz Anton Mesmer and animal magnetism in 1784, the same year his failing sight led him to invent bifocals. He continued work on designs for clocks, chemical compositions for fertilizers, and a musical glass harmonica. Benjamin Franklin died on April 17, 1790, in Philadelphia and was interred at Christ Church burial ground. Mark G. Spencer

Sources Cohen, I. Bernard. Benjamin Franklin’s Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Fleming, Thomas. The Man Who Dared the Lightning: A New Look at Benjamin Franklin. New York: William Morrow, 1971. Hindle, Brooke. The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Labaree, Leonard W., et al., eds. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959–. Stearns, Raymond P. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970. Van Doren, Carl. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Viking, 1938.

G O D M A N , J O H N D. (1794–1830) The early American physician, anatomist, and naturalist John Davidson Godman was born on December 20, 1794, in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of a Revolutionary War officer. Orphaned before he was five years old, he grew up in Baltimore under the care of a sister and at age seventeen was apprenticed to a printer in that city. After brief service in the U.S. Navy, Godman began the study of medicine in the office of William N. Luckey in Pennsylvania and continued in the office of John B. Davidge in Baltimore.

30 Section 1: Godman, John D. He received an M.D. in 1818 from the University of Maryland, where he had served as a demonstrator in anatomy during his student days. After failing to establish a successful medical practice in New Holland, Pennsylvania, and disappointed by not getting a professorship in anatomy at the University of Maryland, Godman moved to Philadelphia. There, he attracted favorable attention with his lectures on anatomy and physiology. As a result, Daniel Drake offered him the professorship of surgery and obstetrics at the new Medical College of Ohio. On October 5, 1821, Godman married Angelica Peale, daughter of artist Rembrandt Peale, and the couple left for Cincinnati the same day. The position in Cincinnati proved disappointing. After a single term, Godman resigned, because he could not tolerate the faculty’s squabbling. He did stay on long enough to help establish and edit the initial issues of the Western Quarterly Reporter of Medical, Surgical, and Natural Science, the first trans-Allegheny scientific journal. A year later, he and Angelica were back in Philadelphia, where Godman again tried to set up a medical practice. He gradually became established, heading up the Philadelphia School of Anatomy by 1823 and lecturing on natural history at the recently opened Franklin Institute. Called to the chair of anatomy at Rutgers Medical College in New York City in 1826, he lasted there for only a year before active tuberculosis forced his resignation. Several months in the West Indies failed to alleviate the condition, and he returned to Germantown, Pennsylvania, to devote what remained of his life to literary work. He died there on April 17, 1830. Godman’s lasting reputation lay in his publications. In 1824, he published Anatomical Investigations, giving detailed descriptions of the human muscular structure. His major scientific work, however, was the three-volume American Natural History (1826–1828), the first wholly original book on mammalogy by an American. He was commissioned to write all the natural history entries for the Encyclopedia Americana (1829–1833) but did not live to complete the task. When he was too weak to leave his bed, he published a series of sketches in a weekly magazine, the Friend, recalling observations he had made on walks through the woods and along

riverbanks in Maryland and Pennsylvania. After Godman’s death, these were collected as Rambles of a Naturalist (1833), a small book with a permanent place in American literature. Charles Boewe

Sources Gerstner, Patsy Ann. “Natural History in the Midwest’s Earliest Scientific Journal.” Bulletin of the Cleveland Medical Library 13:3 (1966): 49–53. Morris, Stephanie. “John Davidson Godman (1794–1830): Physician and Naturalist.” Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 4th ser., 41:4 (1974): 295–303.

GYLES, JOHN (1680–1755) As a captive of Abenaki Indians, John Gyles became an acute observer of Native American customs and the fauna and flora of the Maine forest. His Memoirs of Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, &c. in the Captivity of John Gyles, Esq., Commander of the Garrison on St. George’s River (1736) recounts his experiences as an Indian captive. Struggling to survive, Gyles learned the habits, customs, and language of the Abenaki. His Memoirs provides a fascinating anthropological, biological, and geographical account of the people, plants, animals, and landscape of the Penobscot and St. John’s river valleys of Maine.

Captive In August 1689, Abenaki warriors attacked the English fort at Pemmaquid Falls on the coast of Maine and a number of farms in the area, including that of Thomas Gyles, John’s father. John, eight years old, was taken by warriors in a birchbark canoe to Penobscot fort, held by the French. From there, they ascended the Penobscot River to Madawamkee, a native village, and proceeded east to Medoctack Fort on St. John’s River. Gyles noted that the natives parleyed with the soldiers at Pemmaquid fort and kept their promise to let the English abandon the stockade and leave without molestation. The boy experienced firsthand the American Indian custom of turning over a captive to the

Section 1: Gyles, John 31 women of the tribe, who bickered over him in a way that seemed like torture but amounted mostly to humiliation. His Indian master bartered his release with corn and took him up St. John’s River to a village called Medockscenscasis, where he lived on fish, wild grapes, and roots. Winter came and so did privation. There were many days without food. A band of about ten men, women, and children, including Gyles, lived off the land, moving constantly in search of food. A moose kill was a great accomplishment.

Naturalist In his Memoirs, Gyles described a moose: a fine lofty Creature about eight Feet high, with a long Head and Nose like a Horse: with Horns very large and strong (Some of them are above six feet, from the Extremity of one Horn to that of the other) shaped and shed every Year like the Horns of a Deer: likewise their Feet are cloven like Deers Feet. Their hind Legs are long and fore Legs short like a Rabbit. They resemble a Rabbit also in the length of their Ears and shortness of their Tail.

He noted that the female moose “sometimes bring three young ones, at a foaling: they foal but once a Year, and at one Season, viz. When the Trees put out Leaves, for them. There are a sort of Moose that have a Main like a Horse.” Gyles reported that some “naturalists” believed moose to bear an “Unform’d Embryo, and lick their Litter into Shape:—a gross Mistake! I have seen their Foetus of all Sizes, taken out of the Matrix, by the Indians, and they are as much, and as well Shap’d as the Young of any Animal.” Sometimes the wandering band discovered a bear, which lay in its den all winter: if it went in fat at the beginning of winter, it came out fat (as did its cubs), and if went in thin, it came out thin. The Abenaki Indians would feast when a kill was made, then fast until the next kill. Squaws would dance outside the wigwam before the feast saying: “Wegage Oh Nelo Who!” which Gyles translated as “Fat is my eating!” in praise of the feast. Gyles also reported that the natives preserved meat by smoking it. The band kept on the move until winter’s end, when coming to the thawed St. John’s River they “made Canoes of Moose Hides sewing three or

four together, and pitching the Seams with Charcoal beaten and mixt with balsam.” The small band proceeded downriver to Madawescok then to falls called Checanekepeag, then on to the French fort. There, they planted corn, fished, harvested the corn, and stored some of it in pits, before preparing to go upriver for another winter hunt. “When the Corn is in the Milk they gather a large Kettle full and boil it on the Ears until it is pretty hard, and then they take it up and shell it off the Cobb with Clam-Shells, and dry it on Bark in the Sun; and when it’s thro’ly dryed, a Kernel is no bigger than a Pea, and keeps Years—and boil’d again it swells as large, and tastes incomparably sweeter than other Corn.”

Ethnographer During his second year in captivity, Gyles came to know his captors and their customs and habits even more. When, during the winter, his feet became frostbitten, the Native Americans told him to apply a salve of “fir-balsam.” He followed their directions and slowly recovered, losing only the ends of his toes. On another occasion, when a disease spread throughout the tribe causing plague-like sores, Gyles learned from the natives to apply “red Oker” to his sores, which healed. In the spring, the Abenaki fished for salmon and sturgeon and worried about attacks from the most feared tribe of the Northeast, the Mohawk. Also in the spring, Gyles was taken to a wigwam and was abused in revenge for some hurt done to the native peoples by the English. A French Franciscan priest ministered to the Abenakis, telling them to moderate their abuse of captives or God would punish them. Although the Abenaki had ostensibly embraced Catholicism, they sometimes resorted to the habits and traditions of paganism. To encourage the success of a hunt, the shaman, called a powaw by Gyles, made a small hut of skins; inside were hot stones, on which water was poured to generate tremendous steam. The ceremony also was called a powaw. Preparing for war, the Abenaki feasted on dog meat, preserving the head of one dog, which they used as an emblem to signify victory over the enemy. “The Indians imagine that Dog’s Flesh makes them bold and courageous!” Gyles

32 Section 1: Gyles, John wrote. “I have seen an Indian split a Dog’s Head with a Hatchet, and take out the Brains hot, and eat them raw, with the Blood running down his Jaws!” Gyles also wrote about Abenaki customs of mourning, courtship, marriage, and gambling. He described in detail the Indian fire drill, a device for creating a spark using friction. Gyles’s writings include fascinating zoological observations about the animals of the Maine forest. He described a wolverine: a very fierce and mischievous Creature: about the bigness of a middling Dog, having short Legs, broad Feet, & very sharp Claws; and in my Opinion may be reckoned a Species of Cats. They will climb Trees, and wait for Moose and other Creatures who feed below, and when an Opportunity presents jump and strike their Claws in them so taut, that they will hang on them ’till they have gnaw’d the main Nerve of the Neck asunder, & the Creature dies. I have known many Moose kill’d thus. I was once traveling a little way behind several Indians, & heard them Laughing very merrily: when I came to them, they sho’d me the Track of a Moose, and how a Wolverin had climb’d a Tree, and where he had jump’d off upon the Moose; and the Moose had given several large Leaps; and happening to come under a Branch of a Tree, had broke the Wolverin’s hold and tore him off: and by his Track in the Snow, he went off another, with short steps, as if he had been stun’d with the Blow. The Indians who impute such Accidents to the cunning of the Creature, were wonderfully pleased that the Moose should thus out-wit the mischievous Wolverin!

He also gave a sophisticated description of tortoise reproduction: I have observed that sort whose Shell is about fourteen or sixteen Inches wide: in their Coition or Treading they may be heard half a Mile, making a noise like a Woman washing her Linnen with a batting Staff—. They lay their Eggs in the Sand; near some deep still Water, about a Foot beneath the surface of the Sand. They are very curious in covering them with the Sand, so that there is not the least mixture of it amongst them; nor the least rising of Sand on the Beach where they lie: I have often search’d for them with the Indians, by thrusting a Stick into the Sand, about the

Beech at random, and brought up some part of an Egg clinging to it: and uncovering the Place have found near an hundred & fifty in one Nest. Both their Eggs & Flesh are good-Eating when boil’d &c. I have observed a difference as to the length of Time which they are hatching, which is between twenty & thirty Days, some sooner than others: Whether this difference ought to be imputed to the various Quality or Site of the Sand in which they lay (as to it’s cold or heat &c) I leave to the Conjecture of the Virtuosi [scientists].—As soon as they were hatch’d they broke thro’ the Sand, and betook themselves to the Water, as far as I could discover, without any further Care of Help of the Old Ones.

Gyles’s Memoirs include the first published description of Mount Katahdin, the highest peak in Maine. Some Abenakis resided along rivers that descended from this northern extreme of the Appalachian chain. The Indians referred to Katahdin as Teddon, or “the highest.” They held the peak in awe as unable to be ascended by humans because of the spirits that resided on the peak. Gyles did not climb Katahdin, but he did know one Indian warrior who made the attempt. “He lived by the River at the Foot of the Teddon, and in his Wigwam, seeing the top of it thro’ the Hole left in the top of the Wigwam for the passing of Smoke, he was tempted to travel to it: accordingly he set out early on a Summer’s Morning, and laboured hard in ascending the Hill all Day, and the Top seem’d as distant from the Place where he lodged at Night, as from the Wigwam whence he began his Journey.” Assuming that his judgment of the height of the mountain was distorted by “Spirits” that inhabited the peak, he refused to continue the ascent. Gyles also learned of another attempt by three Abenaki men, who climbed “the Teddon three Days and an half, and then began to be strangely disordered & delirious, and when their Imagination was clear, and they could recollect where they were, and had been, they found themselves return’d on Days Journey: how they came down so far, they can’t guess, unless the Genii of the Place convey’d them!” Gyles learned that the Abenaki were well informed of the northeast Appalachian chain. They claimed that the “White Hills at the Head of Penobscot River,” which centered upon Mount

Section 1: Hariot, Thomas 33 Katahdin, were much higher than the “Agiockochook, above Saco” River, the White Mountains of New Hampshire. John Gyles was released after almost nine years in captivity. He subsequently served as an interpreter for the English, negotiating treaties and prisoner exchanges with the French and Abenaki. He also served as an officer in Queen Anne’s War (1703–1713) and Dummer’s War (1722–1725). Although Gyles had no formal education, his experiences made him an acute observer of natural history and phenomena, the record of which is found in his memoirs. Russell Lawson

Sources Gyles, John. Memoirs of Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, &c. in the Captivity of John Gyles, Esq., Commander of the Garrison on St. George’s River. Boston: S. Knesland and T. Green, 1736; reprint ed., New York: Garland, 1977.

H A R I O T, T H O M A S ( C A . 1560–1621) Thomas Hariot’s life was one of science, exploration, and adventure in the Old and New Worlds. Hariot (or Harriot) was born in Oxford, England, about 1560. He was educated at St. Mary’s Hall, an annex of Oriel College, in the University of Oxford, from which he graduated with a B.A. degree in 1580. Thereafter, he joined the staff of the Tudor navigator and explorer Walter Raleigh, a favorite courtier of Queen Elizabeth I and supporter of his cousin Humphrey Gilbert, who promoted the exploration and annexation of North America. Raleigh was knighted in 1584 and granted a patent by the Crown to establish a British settlement in North America. He promptly organized the first of three exploratory expeditions to the Americas, in which Hariot likely participated. Hariot had already established his scientific credentials through his authorship of a text on navigation titled Arcticon, of which no copies exist. He certainly contributed to Raleigh’s planning of the subsequent expedition in 1585–1586 led by Richard Grenville; Raleigh appointed

Hariot as his personal representative and scientific adviser. John White, a landscape painter and mapmaker, also participated.

Voyage to America Hariot used the voyage to America to investigate navigational techniques such as dead reckoning and to assess its advantages and disadvantages over celestial methods. Precisely what happened to Hariot and his companions and what they recorded in the New World is not known for sure. It is known that their objective was to make observations on the native peoples and to record natural phenomena and potentially useful resources such as plants and minerals. The expedition resulted in the first attempt at a British settlement in North America at Roanoke, an island in Croatan Sound off the Atlantic coast of North Carolina. The colony failed because of a lack of supplies, as well as antagonism from the Roanoke Indians. Francis Drake rescued the survivors in the summer of 1586. Raleigh attempted to establish a second colony at Roanoke Island in 1587. Hariot, however, had become involved in Raleigh’s interests in Ireland. During a yearlong stay at the Abbey of Molanna near Youghal, County Waterford, Hariot compiled A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, which was published in 1588. The treatise lacked objectivity because of the need to protect Raleigh’s interests. Hakluyt included it in his 1589 work Principal Navigations, and, in 1589, Theodor De Bry republished it in Latin, English, French, and German editions with plates of White’s drawings.

Polymath Hariot was involved in a number of other endeavors concerned with geography, navigation, astronomy, and physics. He assisted with plans for the defense of Britain against the Spanish Armada in 1588. Hariot also was a notable cartographer, making globes and maps, and working with Gerardus Mercator in creating the Mercator map projection. From 1597, Hariot was a well-financed pensioner with influential patrons such as Raleigh and Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. He

34 Section 1: Hariot, Thomas indulged his passion for science and mathematics, focusing on the laws of motion and experimenting with lenses; he even may have built a proto-telescope. He corresponded with the astronomer Johannes Kepler and made many notable and unique observations of the planets with telescopes whose magnification capacity he advanced. He also dabbled in astrology and alchemy. Hariot succumbed to cancer of the nose caused by tobacco use. He died in London in 1621. A.M. Mannion

Sources Hakluyt, Richard. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation. New York: Penguin Classics, 1972. Hariot, Thomas. A Brief and True Report of a New Found Land of Virginia. Kila, MT: Kessinger, 2004.

JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743–1826) Thomas Jefferson was the great American polymath of the late eighteenth and early nineteen centuries, achieving distinction as a naturalist, geographer, historian, architect, inventor, and political thinker. His Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) was one of the best natural histories of the eighteenth century. Jefferson was born to Peter Jefferson and Jane Randolph Jefferson on April 13, 1743, in Shadwell (now Albemarle) County, Virginia. His father, a cartographer, owned a sprawling plantation on the Virginia frontier. Jefferson attended William and Mary College from 1760 to 1762, then studied law with George Wythe until 1767. He was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1769. Three years later, he married Martha Wayles Skelton, with whom he would have six children. An increasingly active member of the political opposition to British policies in America, Jefferson in 1774 wrote A Summary View of the Rights of British America, a treatise that secured his reputation as a political thinker among American patriots. The following year, he was elected as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, where he teamed with Benjamin Franklin, John

Adams, and Roger Sherman in crafting the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote the initial draft, which was pared down and edited by the other members of the committee. Jefferson became governor of Virginia in 1779, during the American Revolution. In 1784, two years after the death of his wife, Jefferson traveled to France to serve as the U.S. minister. He returned to the United States in 1789 after the Constitution had been ratified and the new government installed. President George Washington asked him to serve as secretary of state, which he did until the end of 1793. Jefferson ran for president as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party in 1796, losing to Federalist John Adams but becoming his vice president. Jefferson ran for president again in 1800 and won, gaining reelection four years later. Among his most notable achievements as president was the 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, after which he arranged scientific expeditions to explore the boundaries of the nation’s new holdings. In 1809, he retired from politics, spending his last years running his plantation, writing, and founding the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, near his estate, Monticello. Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Notes on the State of Virginia During the American Revolution, the French scientist and diplomat Marquis de Barbé-Marbois, visiting Philadelphia as part of the French delegation to the United States, sent queries to various representatives of the thirteen states so as to better understand the natural history of America. Jefferson was the only American to respond, painstakingly answering twenty-three queries at length in French. He sent the manuscript to Marbois in 1782, and the resulting book immediately became popular in France. The English version, Notes on the State of Virginia, appeared in 1784. In this work, Jefferson presented detailed observations on the natural history of Virginia, indeed of America itself. The book covers a broad range of topics, reflecting the diverse interests of its author. In addition to describing the physical landscape and wildlife, it discusses farming and

Section 1: Jefferson, Thomas 35 manufacturing in the region, as well as commerce, society, law, history, demography, and government. One of the main themes of the Notes on the State of Virginia is Jefferson’s response to certain French scientists, such as Count de Buffon, who argued that America must be a newer continent than the Old World and hence must have newer, smaller, and less-developed animal life—indeed that the inhabitants must be underdeveloped as well. Jefferson painstakingly pointed out the errors of this thinking, describing the gifts and talents of Americans such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and David Rittenhouse; the huge animals, such as the mastodon, that have walked the American continent; the vivacity of the American people; and the land’s great natural productions.

Promoter of Science and Scientist Thomas Jefferson was not an explorer in the usual sense of the word—one who journeys into the unknown on a quest of discovery. He was, however, an exceptional promoter of scientific exploration and discovery. He was a longtime member of the American Philosophical Society (APS) and served as its president at the same time that he was serving as president of the United States. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Jefferson marshaled the intellectual and economic forces of the APS and the U.S. government to sponsor several military expeditions to explore, map, and describe the Louisiana Territory, which stretched from Canada to Mexico, from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. The first of these scientific efforts was the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which explored the upper reaches of the Louisiana Territory from 1804 to 1806. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led soldiers, hunters, and guides up the Missouri River to the Continental Divide, then west to the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean. Lewis, the more sophisticated scientist of the two captains, was a friend and neighbor of Jefferson and had served as his private secretary. Clark, with less extensive training, was best at dealing with the Indian tribes they met along the way. The two leaders took turns recording in their journal the

experiences and discoveries of the expedition. They made extensive observations of the native peoples they encountered and made detailed descriptions and drawings of animal and plant life, bringing back specimens where possible. They drew the first reliable maps of the region and laid to rest such theories as the existence of a Northwest Passage, discovering that there is no uninterrupted water route across the continent. At the same time that Lewis and Clark were getting underway, Jefferson persuaded his friend William Dunbar, a planter, botanist, and member of the American Philosophical Society, to explore the southern extremes of the Louisiana Territory. Dunbar, accompanied by Philadelphia chemist George Hunter and about a dozen soldiers, set out from Natchez on the Mississippi and journeyed up the Red River. Discovering that the Spanish would resist an American ascent of the Red River, the Dunbar-Hunter Expedition instead journeyed north up the Black River and then followed the Ouachita River to the Hot Springs of present-day Arkansas. Dunbar kept copious journal notes of all that he witnessed and discovered. In 1805, Jefferson sent a young U.S. Army officer, Zebulon Pike, on a journey to explore the eastern extreme of the Louisiana Territory, the Mississippi River. On that expedition, Pike came close to discovering the river’s source in Wisconsin. The following year, Pike was sent to explore the territory’s southern extreme, this time journeying up the Arkansas River to its source in the Rocky Mountains. Because of Jefferson’s active sponsorship of scientific explorations in the first decade of the nineteenth century, Americans learned a great deal about the trans-Mississippi region. These explorations resulted in increased knowledge about its geography, flora, fauna, native peoples, and natural resources. Not least of Jefferson’s many accomplishments were his own scientific investigations and inventions. Jefferson was an agriculturist who experimented with hundreds of varieties of fruits and vegetables and maintained nurseries on the grounds of his plantation of Monticello. He took copious journal notes of his cultivation and designed a plow that would work on the hilly landscape of his Virginia plantation. Monticello, which Jefferson designed along Italian neoclassical models, included many of his own

36 Section 1: Jefferson, Thomas inventions, such as a Great Clock and mechanical dumb-waiters. He also invented a wheel cipher for coded messages and a spherical sundial.

Political Theorist Jefferson was a great political thinker, a true political scientist of the American age of Enlightenment. The number and depth of his original political treatises are astonishing, including A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774), the Declaration of Independence (1776), An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1779), and his Report of Government for the Western Territories (1784). Jefferson was a liberal political philosopher who fought for equal rights and the fullest liberty possible for humans who organize themselves into a compact to ensure security and happiness. He agreed with the British philosopher John Locke that government is a voluntary association of equals who choose government over anarchy for the sake of enjoying the greater survival and thriving that the group offers over the individual. Even so, Jefferson was troubled by the focus and order of the Constitution, and he believed that the promise of the American Revolution, to inure people to a true sense of freedom, would take multiple generations to accomplish. In a letter to his old friend John Adams in 1818, Jefferson wrote that liberty and freedom must become intuitive among people before they could fully realize the truth of the most famous words he ever wrote: “We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Russell Lawson

Sources Bedini, Silvio A. Thomas Jefferson: Statesman of Science. New York: Macmillan, 1990. Boorstin, Daniel. The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Jefferson, Thomas. The Life and Selected Writings. Ed. Adrienne Koch and William Peden. New York: Modern Library, 1972. Ronda, James P. Thomas Jefferson and the Rocky Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.

J O S S E LY N , J O H N (1608–1675) John Josselyn was an English physician and botanist who visited New England on two separate occasions—in 1638 and from 1663 to 1671— to explore the coast and interior in search of information on remarkable phenomena, particularly regarding the healing properties of American flora. His journeys resulted in two books, New-Englands Rarities Discovered (1672) and An Account of Two Voyages to New-England (1674). Josselyn’s work was a hodgepodge of information, the factual and the fanciful merged into one narrative. He explained ocean tides on the basis of the spirit of God moving across the waters at the creation, as described in Genesis. In March 1667, he claimed that a spear appeared in the sky, pointing west. Sometimes Josselyn’s misperceptions had a painful consequence, as when he thought a wasp nest was a pineapple, discovering the contrary when he bit into it. Josselyn was well read in the literature of ancient science, using the knowledge acquired from reading Pliny the Elder and others to assess the natural phenomena of New England. “Many are of the opinion,” he wrote in An Account of Two Voyages to New-England, “that the greatest enemies of life, consisting of heat and moisture, is cold and dryness, the extremity of cold is more easie to be endured than extremity of heat, the violent sharpness of winter, than the fiery raging of Summer. To conclude, they are both bad, too much heat brings a hot Feaver, too much cold diminisheth the flesh, withers the face, hollowes the eyes, quencheth natural heat, peeleth the hair, and procureth baldness.” Fortunately, Josselyn’s two books, especially New-Englands Rarities Discovered, provide cures for such physical ailments.

New World Materia Medica Josselyn was a practicing physician who lived most of his life in England. Like most early modern physicians, he was an expert on the materia medica of flora and fauna. The New World represented a massive untapped source of pharmaceuticals for use in curing a variety of diseases.

Section 1: Logan, James 37 Josselyn’s brother Henry lived in New England, where he initially worked for the proprietor of Maine, Ferdinando Gorges. Henry, one imagines, invited John to come to New England to see for himself what America had to offer in the way of new medicines and remarkable cures. Henry himself seems to have had some interest in this. His constant interactions with local Algonquin Indians informed him of their medical practices and materia medica, information that he passed along to John. John, in turn, used his medical knowledge to help the sick among the Indians, whom he relied on for much information. In New-Englands Rarities Discovered, for example, he described “the pond frog,” some “as big as a Child of a year old,” the oily skin thereof being a good salve “for Burns and Scaldings, to take out the fire, and heal them, leaving no Scar.” Rattlesnake “Hearts swallowed fresh is a good Antidote against their Venome, and their Liver (the Gall taken out) bruised and applied to their Bitings is a present Remedy.”

G eographer and Explorer John Josselyn also made his mark in the history of American science by means of his journeys and descriptions of the landscape, natural productions, and local customs of New England. Taking his cue from the local colonists, he reported that the mountainous regions of New England were rather like almanacs, giving hints in the direction of the wind, moisture in the air, clouds, sunrises and sunsets, and the weather for the next day or two. “If the white hills” of New Hampshire, he wrote in Two Voyages, “look clear and conspicuous, it is a sign of fair weather; if black and cloudy, of rain; if yellow, it is a certain sign of snow shortly to ensue.” Josselyn was, like other exploring naturalists of early America, intrepid and a bit foolhardy in his quest for knowledge. At some point in the 1660s, for example, he and unknown others journeyed into the White Mountains of central New Hampshire, which even today is a dense wilderness and national forest. When Josselyn made the journey, only a few people had preceded him in forging a trail to the mountains, the dominant peak of which, now known as Mount Washington, rises to 6,288 feet. It is a dangerous mountain notwith-

standing its modest size. Early Americans were understandably in awe of its majesty; local Indians considered the mountain, which they called Agiocochook, the refuge of the spirits of the dead. The indefatigable Josselyn nevertheless ascended to the summit of this imposing peak, where he found an alpine-like environment of isolated wildflowers, stunted trees, and hardy heath from which he began a catalog of healing plants. Josselyn’s description of Mount Washington in New-Englands Rarities Discovered was used by botanists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such as Manasseh Cutler, Jacob Bigelow, and Thomas Nuttall, all of whom would ascend Mount Washington in search of its unique plant specimens—fulfilling the botanical work initiated by John Josselyn. Russell Lawson

Sources Lawson, Russell M. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002. ———. “Science and Medicine.” In American Eras: The Colonial Era, 1600–1754, ed. Jessica Kross, 373–405. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Lindholdt, Paul, ed. John Josselyn, Colonial Traveler: A Critical Edition of Two Voyages to New-England. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988.

LO G A N , J A M E S (1674–1751) James Logan of Philadelphia was an accomplished naturalist and promoter of scientific activities. Born in Ireland, Logan was a supporter of William Penn’s proprietary colony of Pennsylvania; he served as governor from 1736-1738 and was a political and cultural leader of Philadelphia. A wealthy merchant, he had the funds to build one of the largest colonial libraries, which included numerous works on the physical sciences and mathematics. Logan loaned many books to other scientists and otherwise encouraged their scientific activities. For example, he was an early supporter of the botanist John Bartram’s explorations and collection of seeds.

38 Section 1: Logan, James He also sponsored the work of the Philadelphia glazier Thomas Godfrey, who under Logan’s tutelage learned Latin and studied Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Indeed, it was rare to find colonial Americans who had the scientific sophistication to understand the complex concepts and mathematics of Newton’s work. As secretary to Pennsylvania proprietor William Penn, Logan encouraged the great man’s beliefs in the importance of applied science and in natural theology: that God gave humans the proclivity to seek to know his works and the ability to understand God’s unchanging natural laws. Logan was also the chief negotiator with the Native Americans of Pennsylvania. A true polymath, Logan studied the physical sciences, such as optics and astronomy, employing the telescope; he was fascinated by plant biology and performed detailed experiments on fertilization and pollination. He believed in applied science, being one of the early movers behind the establishment of a hospital in Philadelphia (the Pennsylvania Hospital opened a year after his death). Logan left his library to the city of Philadelphia upon his death, forming the basis for the Library Company of Philadelphia. He was honored with publication in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London, and Carolus Linnaeus named a genus after him, Logania. Logan was also the inventor of Pennsylvania’s Conestoga wagon. Russell Lawson

Sources Stearns, Raymond. Science in the British Colonies of North America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970. Tolles, Frederick. Meeting-House and Counting-House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682–1763. New York: W.W. Norton, 1948.

M AT H E R , C O T T O N (1663–1728) Cotton Mather, the son of Increase Mather, was a scientist as well as a clergyman. He was one of the leaders of the movement in early eighteenthcentury Boston to introduce inoculation to combat smallpox, yet he also believed in witches and demons.

Mather was a “Christian philosopher” who believed that science and religion were not incompatible, indeed were closely associated: the clergyman examined nature to discover God; the scientist responded to the wonders of nature with piety.

Life Cotton Mather was born on February 12, 1663, in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony. He graduated from Harvard, earning a B.A. in 1678 at fifteen years of age but interrupted his theological education when it became clear that a speech impediment precluded a career as a minister. He taught school and studied medicine and theology (1678–1685). When he overcame his speech problem, he returned to the study of theology, earning an M.A. in 1681 and being awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow in 1710. His father, Increase Mather, a wellknown Puritan minister and pastor of the Old North Church in Boston, served for a time as the president of Harvard College and personally handed his son his M.A. degree. Upon completing his studies, Mather became the assistant pastor to his father, assuming the position of pastor upon the latter’s death in 1723. As his father before him, Mather was politically and socially active and influential. Boston ministers were the intellectual voices of the city and frequently brought their knowledge and wisdom to bear on colonial political and social issues. Mather’s major published work was the Magnalia Christi Americana (The Great Achievement of Christ in America, 1702), an ecclesiastical history of America from the founding of New England to his own time, or about half a century. His Manuductio ad Ministerium (Directions for a Candidate in the Ministry, 1726) advised those seeking to enter the ministry on how to live godly lives in the Puritan sense and covered such mundane subjects as dating and good behavior. In addition, he espoused the value of intellectual pursuits and the study of theology, along with creative endeavors such as poetry and music.

Scientist Mather lived at the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, and he embraced the Copernican

Section 1: Mather, Cotton 39 cosmology rather than the Ptolemaic cosmology still recognized by his father. He also embraced the New Science associated with such notable figures as Robert Boyle, Galileo Galilei, and René Descartes. Mather incorporated the New Science into his understanding of scripture and believed that the two complemented one another: the laws set in place by God governed the world and were discoverable by humanity. He wrote his enormous, unfinished, and unpublished (in his lifetime) commentary on the Bible, the Biblia Americana, or Scared Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, to establish that the New Science added to and complemented the proper (Puritan) understanding of the Bible and did not challenge or replace it. Mather was awed by the immensity of space, the number and distance of the stars, and the animalcula (microbes) that he observed through the microscope. For him, the complexity of the design proved the existence of the designer. This same thought was reiterated in his Christian Philosopher (1721), as God is seen as the author and sustainer of the wonders of the universe. Mather’s Curiosa Americana (1712–1724) is the record of his experiments and observations on wonders of nature in America and won him membership in the Royal Society of London. This work perhaps more than any other, with the possible exception of his medical tome The Angel of Bethesda (written in 1724 and published posthumously in 1972), demonstrates his interest in science, particularly in the flora and fauna of America. For example, when Mather observed the spontaneous hybridization of corn, he designed one of the first experiments on plant hybridization so that he might better understand this process created by God.

Medicine Mather published his account of the smallpox inoculation controversy in the Royal Society’s Transactions. As a smallpox epidemic swept through Boston in 1721, Mather exhorted the physicians to employ smallpox vaccination prophylactically. Although the medical establishment declined Mather ’s suggestion, he finally convinced the largely self-taught physician and

apothecary Zabdiel Boylston to use inoculations of the virus to prevent the disease and its spread. Mather had come to believe in the efficacy of smallpox inoculations as early as 1706, when a slave, Onesimus, described to Mather how he had been inoculated as a child in Africa. Mather had also heard reports that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, had her son prophylactically inoculated in 1717 and that she continued to advocate prophylactic smallpox inoculation in Europe. Though many physicians, theologians, and others saw Mather’s action as an attempt to contravene God’s judgment on the sinful populace of New England, Mather believed God had provided the answer for dealing with the scourge— that answer being discovered in New England for a time such as this. His father supported him even though Increase himself had preached that epidemics and heavenly signs, such as two comets in 1680 and 1682, portended the possible wrath of God. The Angel of Bethesda, a compendium of contemporary medicine, consisted of sixty topical chapters arranged in no discernable order. In this work, Mather explained the theological purpose behind disease, for he always saw the universe as designed by God for divine purposes. For example, he believed that Native Americans had special knowledge of cures revealed to them by God over many years. God had placed these cures in nature to be discovered at the time they would be needed, just as God had made an ordered universe to be discovered by humanity as appropriate. The work also offers commentary on contemporary European medical theories and countless recipes for folk remedies (including one homeopathic recipe to reduce the pain of childbirth). He speculated on why different people have different skin tones and why smallpox progressed differently in different people. He also suggested dietary changes to treat various diseases, and recommended prayer and fasting for good health. The Angel of Bethesda details Mather’s view of human psychology, sin, and salvation. He theorized that the nishmath chayim (Hebrew for “breath of life”) is the source of disease and the governing force of all of the body’s major biological processes. Mather argued that the body is composed

40 Section 1: Mather, Cotton of spiritual and physical components, with the nishmath chayim being the intermediate pliant nature between the rational (physical) and spiritual natures. Thus, seeking to understand the human body apart from God is doomed to failure. Mather wrote numerous individual articles and pamphlets on the practical application of medicine, such as A Letter about a Good Management under the Distemper of the Measles, at This Time Spreading in the Country (1713). The Christian Philosopher and The Angel of Bethesda both were written to synthesize medical and scientific thought with theology. He supported his conclusions with voluminous scientific observations and experiments spanning the spectrum of current science, from naturalism to biology to cosmology. Mather was a scientist and theologian who sought to discover God’s handiwork through experimentation and observation, yet he believed in an unseen world populated with good and evil spirits, some controllable by witchcraft. His Wonders of the Invisible World (1692) is an account of the trials of several witches in Salem, Massachusetts. Though he cautioned some of the judges in the witchcraft trials to be careful of “spectre evidence” (a victim’s testimony that the accused witch had attacked the victim by appearing as someone known to the victim), Mather did not reject the spectral world. He urged judges to weigh more heavily the confessions of an accused witch. Mather accepted science as a revelation of God that helps humanity to understand the written revelation of scripture. Nature spoke of God, and Mather sought to know as much of God as he could. This theme pervades his 450 published books, tracts, and pamphlets. He died in Boston on February 13, 1728. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Beall, Otto T., Jr., and Richard H. Shryock. Cotton Mather: First Significant Figure in American Medicine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954. Lutz, Norma Jean. Cotton Mather: Clergyman, Author, and Scholar. New York: Chelsea House, 2000. Middlekauff, Robert. The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals 1596–1728. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Silverman, Kenneth. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. New York: Harper and Row, 1984.

M AT H E R , I N C R E A S E (1639–1723) The Boston clergyman Increase Mather was a polymath and the father of scientist Cotton Mather. The father, like the son, embraced science as being consistent with Christianity, even the duty of the clergyman who seeks to know God. At the same time Mather believed in witches and demons and saw American Indians as agents of the Antichrist.

Life Increase Mather was born on June 21, 1639, in Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay Colony. He graduated from Harvard College in 1656 and traveled to Dublin, Ireland, to earn an M.A. in theology in 1658. He returned to Boston in 1662 to become the pastor of the Old North Church. Increase led the church until his death in 1723, at which time his son, Cotton, assumed leadership. A Puritan minister in a colony dominated by religious thought and feeling, Increase Mather was highly active and influential both socially and politically. He failed as the head of a commission sent to England to negotiate a new charter for the colony. He was president of Harvard College (1685–1701), where his son Cotton received a B.A. and M.A., and Increase himself became the recipient of the first honorary doctorate awarded by that institution.

New Science Increase Mather lived on the cusp of the Scientific Revolution but considered much of the New Science to be of no value in understanding the universe, nature, and this world. All that one need know of nature, he believed, could be derived from the word of God. Unlike his son, who embraced the Copernican cosmology, Mather clung to the Ptolemaic view. He would later modify his view of science, seeing some value in it if used to better understand God’s communication with humans through natural phenomena. Mather believed that natural phenomena reflect who God is, what God does, and what God

Section 1: Muir, John 41 expects of humanity. He believed that when thunder rolls across the sky God is speaking. It was the role and responsibility of science to learn God’s language and apply his instructions. A comet streaking through the sky demonstrates God’s control of the universe that he created as well as offering insight into the mind of God. In fact, all of nature speaks of God, sometimes loudly, sometimes softly. Earthquakes, comets, and other natural phenomena are portents of future judgment by God on a sinful people, with epidemics, disease, and natural disasters being manifestations of that judgment. Mather believed that the purpose of science is to reveal the meaning and purpose behind these manifestations and how they might portend the will of God. This argument is the heart of Mather ’s Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684), a compendium of stories demonstrating how divine providence directs and uses natural disasters and supernatural phenomena to communicate with, guide, and protect humanity. The book also defends the existence of witches, apparitions, and demon possessions, a position reiterated in his Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1693), written after the Salem witch trials of 1692. He completed his view of the invisible world with Angelographia or a Discourse Concerning the Nature and Power of the Holy Angels (1696). In November 1680, when a large comet appeared in the sky over New England and remained visible until mid-February, Mather interpreted the phenomenon as a communication from God. In his 1681 sermon Heaven’s Alarm to the World, he asserted that the comet is the visible sign of impending divine judgment and demonstrated how science should be used to rationalize and understand such natural phenomena. He began a rigorous study of contemporary cosmology, and when another comet appeared in 1682, he delivered a sermon entitled The Voice of God in Signal Providences (1682), in which he again argued his position, although less stridently. Increase Mather wrote a biography of his father, which was published in 1670, as his son would for him, in addition to a historical work entitled A History of the War with the Indians (1676). He died in Boston on August 23, 1723. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Hall, Michael G. The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather 1639–1723. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988. Lutz, Norma Jean. Increase Mather: Clergyman and Scholar. New York: Chelsea House, 2001. Middlekauff, Robert. The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals 1596–1728. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Murdock, Kenneth B. Increase Mather: The Foremost American Puritan. New York: Russell and Russell, 1966.

MUIR, JOHN (1838–1914) John Muir, a naturalist, explorer, and influential advocate for the establishment of a U.S. national park system, was born in Dunbar, Scotland, on April 21, 1838. In 1849, at age eleven, he emigrated with his family to Wisconsin, residing first at Fountain Lake and then at Hickory Hill farm near Portage. As a young man, Muir explored the Wisconsin countryside when not working on the family farm. This reawakened his interest in natural history, which had been introduced to him at Dunbar Grammar School. For ten years, he labored on the farm, leaving home in 1860 to exhibit his inventions, including clocks, barometers, and saws, at the Madison State Fair and to enroll at the University of Wisconsin. In 1863, he abandoned his studies and began traveling through the north into Canada, supporting himself with temporary work. Following an eye accident in Indianapolis in 1867, Muir recovered his sight and decided to pursue his interests by traveling the world. He walked a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico and then sailed to Cuba, Panama, and the California coast. From 1868 on, the Sierra Nevada mountain range and Yosemite region of California became his adopted home and his inspiration. His publishing career began in 1872 with articles on Yosemite in the Overland Monthly. He advanced ideas on the glaciations of the Sierra Nevada. After marrying in 1874, Muir was a fruit farmer until 1892. He continued to travel, visiting South America, China, Australia, Africa, Japan, and Europe as well as other parts of Canada and the United States, including Alaska.

42 Section 1: Muir, John 1913 to provide water for an expanding San Francisco. Muir died in Los Angeles on December 24, 1914. Others continued Muir’s efforts long after his death. In 1916, Congress created the National Park Service to manage the growing acreage of protected land. In subsequent decades, the national park concept spread to a number of other countries. Muir’s spiritual but practical and scientific approach to land and land management marked a departure from the traditional approach of subjugating nature for human benefit. He instilled the idea that natural beauty is as much a necessity of life as food and shelter—an idea that continues to inspire the global environment movement today. A.M. Mannion

Source Scottish-born naturalist John Muir, co-founder of the Sierra Club, was the father of the U.S. conservation movement and the National Park System. “In God’s wildness,” he wrote, “lies the hope of the world.” (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–52000)

Among his achievements were the publication of some ten books and more than 300 articles, and his efforts to encourage environmental protection in the mountain areas of the United States by fighting against overgrazing and the abuse of forests. Muir ’s efforts were rewarded with the designation of Yosemite as a national park, protected by the federal government, in 1890. Muir is also recognized as a co-founder and guiding spirit of the Sierra Club, an environmental organization focused on conservation; Muir served as president of the organization from its inception in 1892 until his death in 1914. Meanwhile, President Theodore Roosevelt had read his book Our National Parks (1901), and he visited Muir in Yosemite in 1903. The book and the meeting greatly influenced Roosevelt’s conservation policies, leading to the vast expansion of national park lands. In 1911, Muir embarked on his last long trip, during which he visited South America and Africa. Returning to California the following year, he worked unsuccessfully to prevent the construction of a dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite; the valley was flooded in

Muir, John. Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth; My First Summer in the Sierra; The Mountains of California; Stickeen; Essays. New York: Library of America, 1997.

N AT I O N A L P A R K S The U.S. National Park System is the oldest in the world, dating to the establishment of Yellowstone National Park (in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana) on March 1, 1872. The law creating Yellowstone was signed by President Ulysses S. Grant and contained some of the most familiar language of any law promulgated in American history. According to the legislation, the land was “dedicated and set apart as a public park and pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” The number of protected federal sites grew rapidly over subsequent decades, reaching a total of 388 in 2005. These fall into a total of some twenty different categories, the most notable of which are national parks, national landmarks, national monuments, national historic sites, and national seashores. They are located in all fifty states except Delaware and cover some 84 million acres. The smallest (Kosciuszko National Monument in Pennsylvania) is a mere 0.02 acres; the largest (Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska) covers 13.2 million acres. Total visitation

Section 1: Natural Theology 43 was over 273 million people in 2005. In many years in America’s history, the number of visitors to national parks has exceeded the national population figures. There is no guarantee that all U.S. national parks will remain permanently within the system. Between 1930 and 1994, through divestiture, twenty-three units were transferred out of the National Park System to other agencies or organizations. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., for example, was placed under a board of trustees in 1994. The parklands are managed under the auspices of the National Park Service, which was founded on August 25, 1916, and is a unit of the Department of the Interior. There were already thirty-five sites designated as national parks and monuments prior to 1916 (fourteen national parks and twentyone national monuments); they had been variously managed and patrolled by the U.S. Army (Cavalry) and by other state or federal agencies, often with little success. Hunters and trappers, herds of sheep, and logging activity all created difficulties prior to the establishment of the National Park Service. With some 21,000 permanent and temporary employees, 90,000 volunteers, and an annual budget of just over $2 billion, the National Park Service remains understaffed and underfunded in the opinion of many conservationists. The parklands protect cultural sites (for example, Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado emphasizes the ancient past of America’s native peoples), historical sites (John Muir National Historic Site in California preserves the adult home of one of this country’s primary conservation activists), and scientific sites (Thomas Edison National Historic Site in New Jersey protects the home and laboratory of that inventive genius). The act that established the National Park System was prescient, stating that the nation’s parklands were to remain “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” Donald J. McGraw

Sources Adams, Ansel. Our National Parks. New Haven, CT: Bullfinch, 1992. National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov. Rothman, Hal K., and Sara Dant Ewert, eds. Encyclopedia of American National Parks. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004.

Tilden, Freeman. The National Parks. New York: Random House, 1970.

N AT U R A L T H E O LO G Y “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” So declares King David in Psalm 19 of the Hebrew Bible. Arguing for God’s existence from the “nature” of things—either through generally accepted philosophical principles or the physical world (as opposed to revealed religion, as in scripture)—is the essence of natural theology. Such an approach antedates Christianity and is found in the writings of such classical thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, who posited that evidence points to the existence of the divine. Natural theology, however, does have particular currency in Christianity.

Medieval and Renaissance Natural Theology Saint Anselm, the eleventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, promulgated two basic proofs for the existence of God. In his Monologium, Anselm presented a “cosmological argument” based on the idea of the first cause, the prime mover who sets the universe in motion. In Proslogium sive Fides quoerens intellectum, he offered an “ontological argument”: the very fact that we can conceive of a perfect being indicates necessarily that being’s existence, since perfection implies existence. In the thirteenth century, the preeminent theologian of medieval Catholicism, Thomas Aquinas, offered five points in support of the existence of God: the “existence of motion,” which implies a “prime mover”; the “existence of efficient causality,” which implies “some first efficient cause”; “the existence of something which is necessary and owes its necessity to no cause outside itself ”; the necessity of a morally perfect being; and the necessary existence of “some intelligent being by whom all natural things are ordered to their end” (Summa Theologica 1, Question 2, Article 3). Philosophers of early modern Europe who also advanced ontological arguments include

44 Section 1: Natural Theology René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. In addition, Leibniz developed a cosmological argument, as did John Locke. Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather, Puritan New England pastors, contributed an American perspective to natural theology. Increase Mather discoursed on the appearances of comets in 1680 and 1682 as signs sent by God, while Cotton Mather’s The Christian Philosopher (1721) harmonized Isaac Newton’s new science and divine revelation. The Anglican clergyman William Paley helped to define natural theology in the Enlightenment era. In Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802), he put forth a “teleological argument”—that is, an argument from the design of the universe. Most famously, he argued that even as the complexity of a watch leads inevitably to the conclusion that such a mechanism must have had a designer, the manner in which the universe is put together likewise demands the existence of a grand designer.

Modern Skepticism Not everyone, of course, accepted such arguments. Skeptics included the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume, who sought to smash Paley’s watch analogy. First, Hume denied the similarity between, say, a house (which was definitely created) and the universe. Second, he argued that the very uniqueness of the universe means that one cannot argue analogically from its existence, since there are no other examples by which to draw a conclusion. Third, Hume pointed out that the very inference of a designer implies that the designer does not have to be infinite (therefore, not God); only a finite cause need be postulated to account for a finite effect. Reacting to Hume’s critique, Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), divided the noumenal (spiritual reality) from the phenomenal (physical reality), implying that traditional epistemology could not demonstrate spiritual reality (such as God’s existence)—a position that would undermine traditional evidences for the Christian faith. In the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, with its concept of “survival of the fittest,” also undercut traditional Christian

evidentialism, especially the argument from design.

Natural Theology in America Not every scholar accepted the Darwinian hypothesis. Perhaps the most prominent American scientist of the late nineteenth century, the naturalist Louis Aggasiz, rejected any explanation that did not embrace the notion of design. In Essay on Classification (1851), a work that celebrated the various classifications of animals and their relations to each other, he wrote: The combination in time and space of all these thoughtful conceptions exhibits not only thought, it shows also premeditation, power, wisdom, greatness, prescience, omniscience, providence. In one word, all these facts in their natural connection proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know, adore, and love; and Natural History must in good time become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe.

By the late nineteenth century, however, the Darwinian dagger had driven itself deep into the traditional arguments. Clergy struggled with how to cope with the new reality, in which scientific findings did not support interpretations of nature based on the Bible. Southern Presbyterian theologians such as Robert Lewis Dabney and Francis R. Beattie (originally from Canada) were in the forefront of a more sophisticated approach—one that still relied on “evidences” found in the created order but which maintained that none of those evidences can be properly appreciated by sinful humans (who are spiritually blind), nor apart from the light of divine special revelation (as in scripture).

The Contemporar y Scene Some Christian thinkers, ranging from Karl Barth to Gordon H. Clark, have discounted natural theology. Twentieth-century neo-Calvinists such as the Dutch-American apologist Cornelius Van Til have questioned the value of evidences as an autonomous system independent of scripture, arguing that natural theology is an insufficient

Section 1: Naturalists of New France 45 proof for the existence of God, both because it does not actually prove God’s existence (but merely demonstrates its probability) and because it defends a deity that is not uniquely the God of scripture. Still, despite modern skepticism and the critique by fellow believers, many Christian apologists still rely on Paley’s argument from design to prove God’s existence. Perhaps the best manifestation in the twenty-first century of this apologetic school is found in the Intelligent Design movement and its attack on Darwinian evolution. Philip E. Johnson, emeritus law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is considered to be the creator of the idea of Intelligent Design. His Darwin on Trial (1991) weighed evolution in the balance, according to the rules of logic and evidence, and found it wanting. Intelligent Design proponents such as biochemist Michael J. Behe argue for design according to “irreducible complexity”—the idea that certain structures in nature (particularly at the subcellular level) could not have gone through an evolutionary process, since every part of the particular structure or mechanism would have to be in place simultaneously to perform its necessary function. William A. Dembski, theologian, mathematician, and philosopher, has advanced what he calls “specified complexity”; for Dembski, the presence of highly improbable patterns that carry specific information indicates design, which implies an intelligent designer at work. Frank J. Smith

Sources Anselm. Proslogium; Monologium; An Appendix in Behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2000. Behe, Michael J. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: Free Press, 1996. Dembski, William A. Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Johnson, Philip E. Darwin on Trial. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1991, 1993. Martin, Christopher. Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Roberts, Jon H. Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic Evolution, 1859–1900. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001.

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French navigators, missionaries, naturalists, and cartographers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were highly involved in the exploration and mapping of the North American continent. Concerned with expanding France’s empire, focusing on trade, exploration, and missionary activities, the French became more involved than their British and Dutch counterparts in exploring, mapping, and even settling uncharted regions. French maps of the period are known for their intricate detail, providing information on the regions’ inhabitants and settlements, waterways suitable for trade, fortifications, and viable military routes.

Early Explorations In 1524, the Italian navigator Giovanni Verrazzano led a French expedition to North America in search of a route to the Indies, sailing along the east coast of the continent seeking a passage that would lead him west. King Francis I (r. 1515–1547), eager for New World riches, intensified French exploration of America and supported three voyages by Jacques Cartier (1534, 1535–1536, and 1541–1542). Seeking a Northwest Passage to Asia through America, Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence River. The river ended at a high hill, which Cartier named Mont Real (King’s Mountain); the name and the city founded there ultimately evolved into modernday Montreal. In his journeys, Cartier encountered Native Americans who called the land Canada, which meant “encampment” or “collection of huts” in the indigenous language. Cartier claimed the entire territory for the French king, calling it New France. Francis I appointed Sieur de Roberval lieutenant general in 1541, but the latter’s attempt to establish the first colony in New France was thwarted by Cartier, who founded one first near Cape Rouge in the region of Quebec. Roberval and his colonists later occupied Cartier’s settlement but, after a disastrous winter, returned to France.

46 Section 1: Naturalists of New France

Champlain Samuel de Champlain was instrumental in colonizing, exploring, mapping, and governing Canada. He made a total of twelve trips to North America from 1603 to 1633. After a stint in the French army, Champlain sailed to the Spanish colonies in America on a French trading ship. From 1599 to 1601, he traveled to the West Indies, Mexico, and Panama before returning to France and writing a book about his voyages. His writings describe the riches of Mexico City and proposals for the construction of a canal across Panama. Champlain led his first French expedition to North America in 1603 and mapped the St. Lawrence River. On his return to France, he published an account titled Des Sauvages, with a manuscript map that is regarded as the first easily recognizable depiction of the New England coastline. He also drew accurate maps of individual harbors, including depictions of Indian habitants and cornfields. Such attention to the customs of the region’s inhabitants is typical of Champlain’s cartography, as well as of subsequent French maps. In 1604, Champlain joined an expedition led by Pierre Dugna Sieur de Monts, who settled the region of Acadia (Nova Scotia). Champlain helped found the settlement at St. Croix Island, which, with his assistance, later relocated to Port Royal. In 1605 and 1606, Champlain made two more voyages along the New England coast in search of a better site for settlement. He was one of the first Europeans to write about Niagara Falls and to systematically investigate the eastern coasts of Canada and New England, mapping the Atlantic coast from Cape Breton to the south of Cap Blanc. In 1608, Champlain founded the first permanent settlement in New France, a fur-trading post along the St. Lawrence River called Quebec. In doing so, he also established cordial relations with the nearby Algonquian and Huron tribes. In 1609, he joined with his native allies in an attack against the Iroquois. During the raid, he became the first European to reach what came to be known as Lake Champlain. Champlain’s assistance solidified the relationship between the two tribes and the French, as well as FrancoIroquois hostility. From 1610 to 1624, Champlain

made several trips back to France to secure aid for Quebec, enticing investment for New France by furthering the hope of finding a passage to Asia through America. Champlain also explored Lake Ontario and the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, writing detailed accounts of his voyages and creating more maps of New France. He became the chief government administrator of the colony. In 1628, two years after the outbreak of war between Britain and France, British troops initiated a siege of Quebec, which capitulated in 1629. Three years later, under the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, Quebec was returned to French control. Champlain returned in 1633 and rebuilt the French fortification, where he lived until his death. His map of this period reflects excellent geographical knowledge of New England and regions north and west. The Ottawa River and Lake Ontario are accurately drawn, while the remainder of the Great Lakes are only vaguely represented. The Iroquois and neighboring tribes are depicted in their correct locations. The Adirondack Mountains, Mohawk River, Oswego River, and Lake Oneida all are discernible, and physical features south of New France, including Long Island and Chesapeake Bay, are also shown.

O ther French Expeditions Marc Lescarbot was among the other French explorers who made important discoveries. He performed missionary and construction work around Port Royal in Acadia before returning to France in 1607. Two years later, he published Histoire de la Nouvelle-France describing the voyage. Reprinted in six editions between 1609 and 1618, the book summarized French attempts at colonization in the Americas (including in Florida, Acadia, and Brazil), and it was long considered a reliable primary source, frequently cited in subsequent histories. Étienne Brûlé, while on a mission for Champlain in 1615, became the first European to reach Lake Ontario. Brûlé explored the area along the Susquehanna River, perhaps as far south as Chesapeake Bay. In about 1621, Brûlé may have reached the western shores of Lake Superior and the area along Lake Erie while searching for copper mines.

Section 1: Naturalists of New France 47 Jean Nicolet traveled with Champlain to Canada in 1618, and, two years later, Champlain sent Nicolet to Lake Nipissing, where he traded until 1629. In 1634, Nicolet traveled north on Lake Huron and then west to became the first European to enter Lake Michigan and travel in Wisconsin, adding to French knowledge of North America. Francesco Bressani’s 1657 map, Novae Franciae accurata delineato, presents detailed geographical knowledge derived from Jesuit sources. The map contains a wealth of illustrations depicting Indian society and wildlife. While it depicts Native Americans as barbarians, torturing prisoners, executing Jesuits, and mummifying their dead, it also shows them praying, indicating the influence of Catholicism. Also in the mid-seventeenth century, Sieur des Groseilliers and his brother-in-law Pierre Esprit Radisson were perhaps the first Europeans to explore north and west of the Great Lakes. From 1654 to 1656, Groseilliers traded furs and explored the regions of Michigan and Ontario. Around 1660, he and Radisson explored the areas of Manitoba, Quebec, and Wisconsin. Groseillers was arrested for unlicensed fur trading, prompting his and Radisson’s flight to England in 1665. In 1668, Groseilliers led an English furtrading expedition to Hudson Bay in Canada, resulting in the establishment of the Hudson Bay Company in 1670.

Exploring M issionaries and Colonizers Catholic missionaries played an important role in the exploration of America for France. In 1673, Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary living among the Hurons, joined explorer Louis Joliet on an expedition to find a river route west to the Pacific Ocean. The two discovered the Mississippi River and traveled as far as the Arkansas River. Louis Hennepin was a Flemish explorer and Franciscan friar ordered by his superiors to perform missionary work in Canada. He left for Quebec in 1675 under the leadership of René Robert, Sieur de La Salle. Hennepin frequently explored the vicinity of Quebec in his leisure time. He was an acute observer, and his writings contain detailed and accurate descriptions of the

characteristics, arts, and customs of native peoples. Hennepin accompanied La Salle on an expedition that sailed from the Niagara River in 1679, reached the Detroit River, and sailed through Lake St. Clair and up Lake Huron. They arrived at a location later named St. Ignance by Marquette and then Green Bay. After constructing a fort (St. Joseph) at the end of the river, La Salle and Hennepin reached the Kankakee River and traveled down it to what Hennepin called the Illinois River. The expedition continued through Lake Peoria, where a fort was constructed below the outlet of the lake. Leaving Henri de Tonty in charge of the fort, La Salle departed on foot for Fort Frontenac and Quebec, ordering Hennepin to proceed down the Illinois River and up the Mississippi as far as possible. Hennepin and his men were captured by the Issati, a Sioux tribe, in 1680. He was taken as a prisoner through Minnesota; there, he encountered the famous French explorer Daniel Graysolon Du Lhut, who had been searching the region west of Lake Superior. Du Lhut arranged for Hennepin’s release. After his return to Europe in 1683, Hennepin published Description of Louisiana, New Discoveries Southwest of New France, which included maps of the various regions. The book is regarded as an accurate account of the geography of the region and the customs of its inhabitants. In 1697, Hennepin published New Discoveries of a Very Great Country, in which he claimed to have traversed both the upper and lower Mississippi and to have traced the course of the river to the Gulf of Mexico. Historians, however, have viewed Hennepin’s claims with skepticism. La Salle finished the expedition of Marquette and Joliet by sailing all the way to the mouth of the Mississippi River; along the river he built a chain of trading posts. In 1682, Tonty and La Salle explored the Mississippi River to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. Tonty’s letters and journals are valuable source materials on these explorations. In 1686, Tonty traveled south in an attempt to assist La Salle in founding a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi. After learning of La Salle’s death, Tonty carried out a failed attempt to rescue the survivors of La Salle’s expedition. Thereafter, he continued working to support the establishment of a French colony in Louisiana.

48 Section 1: Naturalists of New France During the seventeenth century, AngloFrench rivalry escalated. Britain and France fought four major wars over a period of seventy years, and the importance of colonies, particularly those in America, increased. Their first military encounter in North America occurred in 1689. A 1693 map attributed to Robert de Villeneuve depicts the strategic importance of the corridor running from Montreal to New York via Lake Champlain and the Hudson River. The map was a piece of French propaganda, claiming that the New York bight was the “Sea of New France” and that Long Island belonged to France. The final blow to France was the French and Indian War, which resulted in the loss of New France to the British. Eric Martone

Sources Crouse, Nellis Maynard. Contributions of the Canadian Jesuits to the Geographical Knowledge of New France, 1632–1675. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Publications, 1924. Eccles, W.J. The Canadian Frontier, 1534–1760. Rev. ed. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1983. Heidenrich, Conrad. Explorations and Mapping of Samuel de Champlain. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1976.

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Beyond the imposition of Spanish institutions and customs on Native American life, Columbus’s voyages in the Caribbean and the explorations and conquests of the Spanish in the Gulf of Mexico and the American Southwest entailed a search to discover the natural history and productions of what would, in time, be christened New Spain. Renaissance scientific assumptions were brought to the frontier of Spanish civilization in North, Central, and South America. Soldiers, adventurers, and missionaries journeyed into an ever expanding wilderness of new peoples, new species of plants and animals, and an astonishing landscape of rivers, deserts, and mountains. Legends and the hope of riches constantly confronted a more sobering reality. The forbidding environments of Baja California, the Mojave Desert, the Rocky Mountains, the swamps of the American South, and the badlands of

Mexico vanquished dreams yet demanded understanding. Spanish naturalists included those with ad hoc as well as formal training. José de Acosta, for example, was a Jesuit priest who spent time in Peru and Mexico and penned a Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590), in which he described the customs and history of the Aztecs and other peoples of Mexico. His approach combined the studies of anthropology, geography, natural history, and human history. Gonzalo Oviedo, who accompanied Columbus to the Caribbean, was a systematic botanist and natural theologian, as revealed in his General and Natural History of the Indies (1535–1549), which provided extensive discussions of New World flora and fauna. Explorers such as Cabeza de Vaca and Hernando de Alarcón journeyed along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico and into the Colorado Valley. De Vaca described his experiences in Relación (1555), an account of his journey from the American South to the Southwest. The conquistador Francisco de Coronado led Spanish soldiers to the Great Plains, particularly present-day Oklahoma and Kansas, in 1541. Coronado was in search of Quivira, the Seven Cities of Gold. Instead he found the July sun, prairie-dog towns, and native villages in an ongoing struggle against the elements to survive. At the same time, Hernando de Soto explored the American South, crossed the Mississippi River, and explored the Ouachita River valley. Several decades later, Juan de Oñate led an expedition from New Spain to the Colorado and Arkansas river valleys. Sebastián Vizcaíno, who kept a diary of his adventures in California from 1602 to 1603, journeyed along the California coast. Vizcaíno’s diary contains fascinating anthropological, cartographical, and geographic information. Vizcaíno discovered the important harbors of southern California and made the first observations of some of the native flora, fauna, and people of the region. Other Spanish explorers sought the peaks of some of America’s highest summits. Diego de Ordaz and Francesco Montaño, for example, ascended the 17,500 foot volcano Popocatepetl in central Mexico. Eusebio Francisco Kino, a Jesuit priest who was a mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer, explored the Gila and Colorado

Section 1: New Science 49 rivers and Baja California in the late 1600s and early 1700s. The naturalists of New Spain, in short, discovered the main geographical features of America, stretching from Peru to California. Explorers penetrated lands never before seen by European scientists, wrote extensive ethnological accounts of the native inhabitants, and collected and catalogued the flora and fauna of America. Through experience, explorers and naturalists replaced myths and legends with concrete information about the peoples, places, and natural history of the New World. Russell Lawson

Sources Burgaleta, Claudio M. José de Acosta, S.J. (1540–1600): His Life and Thought. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1999. Gerbi, Aneonello. Nature in the New World: From Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Trans. Jeremy Moyle. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

NEW SCIENCE In his 1611 poem An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary, the great English metaphysical poet and cleric John Donne wrote: “new philosophy casts all in doubt / the element of fire is quite put out / the earth is lost and no man’s wit / can quite direct him where to look for it.” Donne’s invocation of “new philosophy,” synonymous with “new learning” and “new science,” articulates the broadest connotation of each term, namely the reevaluation of the physical and spiritual place of humans in the universe in the wake of discoveries by astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In a more specific sense, the term “new science” signifies an epistemological shift in scientific method that occurred across Western Europe in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Before that time, Western science was characterized by axiomatic and deductive approaches in a process that consisted primarily of logical deduction from traditionally accepted a priori assumptions. These assumptions, firmly rooted in ancient Greek and Roman

philosophical, aesthetic, and historical authority, were intellectually viable, because they had withstood centuries of critical scrutiny and appropriation. This privileging of the “Ancients” came to be represented by the popular depiction of a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant. The venerable giant represented ancient philosophy and its traditional intellectual superiority. The dwarf represented systems of new philosophy or science that could thrive only because of the contributions of the Ancients. With Renaissance voyages to the New World and the gradual emergence of a spirit of philosophical skepticism, challenges to the intellectual hegemony of the Ancients began to emerge. First codified in the works of individuals such as the English physician William Gilbert in his De Magnete (1600), these challenges stressed an empirically based inductive method that rejected dogmatism and depended on the accumulation of new data. Especially emblematic of this new conception was the thinking of the philosopher Francis Bacon, who, in works such as Advancement of Learning (1605) and Novum Organum (1620), set down the steps of the modern scientific method and set the tone for the subsequent century’s gradual displacement of the Ancients. Bacon believed that knowledge of the natural world could be advanced only through the gradual accumulation of observations over the course of centuries. Once enough data was gathered, he maintained, general principles could be derived through logical induction. Bacon’s inductive method was endorsed by Oliver Cromwell for its apparent utility. In the decade following the Restoration, it was institutionalized in England by the Royal Society of London. Within the society, such figures as Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and Isaac Newton adopted Bacon as an iconographic leader of their scientific epistemology. Their adherence to Bacon’s methodology (with a heavy emphasis on experimentation) came to be popularly called “the new science.” The Royal Society’s adherence to Bacon eventually affirmed the loss of the predominant intellectual status of the Ancients, despite the very best efforts of conservative satirists such as Jonathan Swift. By the time the visionary poet William

50 Section 1: New Science Blake wrote The Book of Urizen (1794), the New Science was commonly recognized as a predominant Western epistemology. Walter H. Keithley

Sources Jones, Richard Foster. Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Rise of the Scientific Movement in Seventeenth Century England. Berkley: University of California Press, 1965. Shapin, Steven. The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

N O R W O O D, R I C H A R D (1590–1675) The surveyor, mathematician, and teacher Richard Norwood spent nearly half his life in the English colony of Bermuda, from which he participated in an emerging Atlantic world of learning and communication. Born in Hertfordshire, England, in 1590, he was apprenticed to a London fishmonger at the age of fifteen. Ships proved more appealing than fish, however, and Norwood learned navigation and mathematics on a coastal trader. Norwood’s maritime experience led him to continental Europe, two voyages in England’s Mediterranean trade, and an appointment as navigation tutor to Henry Mainwaring for the latter ’s voyage to Persia in 1612. When that voyage failed, Norwood constructed and later patented a simple diving bell for recovery of a cannon lost overboard at Lymington, Hampshire. While he was teaching mathematics in London, news of this diving feat brought Norwood an offer from the investors of the Bermuda Company to dive for pearls in that colony in 1613. When no pearls were found, Norwood’s services were applied to the surveying and mapping of the Bermuda islands. Completed over the course of three years and engraved and published in 1622, Norwood’s exacting survey is one of the finest colonial maps of the seventeenth century. In conjunction with this map, he completed the first natural history of the islands. Back in London teaching mathematics, Norwood earned further surveying appointments, notably to the Virginia Company, which led him

briefly to Virginia and the Netherlands. His interest in navigation and survey led to the publication of his Trigonometrie, or, The Doctrine of Triangles (1631) and The Seaman’s Practice (1637), both reprinted in multiple editions. Measuring between London and York, Norwood, who in 1633–1635 calculated the length of the nautical mile within 40 feet, was one of the first to calculate the degree of the meridian with considerable accuracy, and published significant methods for calibrating magnetic compasses. In 1638, Norwood fled religious discrimination in England and returned to Bermuda as schoolmaster, a post he held until 1649. He offered private instruction off and on from that point and substantially contributed to Bermudians’ skill in navigation, a tradition his son Matthew continued with his own publications. Norwood wrote further mathematical works in Bermuda, including Fortification, or, Architecture Military (1639), Norwood’s Epitome (1659), and A Triangular Canon Logarithmicall (1669). A second survey and valuation of the islands completed by Norwood in 1663 became the basis for future Bermudian laws governing boundaries, subdivision, and property assessment. In 1664, Norwood was invited by Henry Oldenburgh, secretary to the Royal Society, to correspond with the society and receive its Transactions. Norwood responded to a variety of inquiries concerning flora and fauna, hurricanes, whaling, and optical instruments, as well as the elements of astronomical and tidal observation important to navigation. The Royal Society was particularly interested in Norwood’s collection of maps held in Bermuda, reputedly one of the finest in English hands. Norwood died in Bermuda in 1675. A wealthy and respected man at his death, Richard Norwood had energetically entered into the Royal Society’s commonwealth of learning from England’s most remote colony. His other son, Andrew, carried on the surveying tradition in Jamaica and Barbados and taught mathematics in Staten Island. Neil Kennedy

Sources Bendall, Sarah. Dictionary of Land Surveyors and Local Map Makers of Great Britain and Ireland, 1530–1850. London: British Library, 1997.

Section 1: Peale, Titian 51 Craven, Wesley F., and Walter B. Hayward, eds. The Journal of Richard Norwood, Surveyor of Bermuda. New York: Bermuda Historical Monuments Trust, 1945.

O V I E D O , G O N Z A LO (1478–1557) The explorer and naturalist Gonzalo Oviedo’s life was intimately connected with that of Christopher Columbus, whom he greatly admired and whose actions he praised repeatedly in his influential works. Oviedo was born in Madrid to an old noble family and spent his teenage years in the prestigious position of page to the Spanish prince and heir-apparent Don Juan. He first met the Italian explorer Columbus at court when he was fourteen years old and then again in the Spanish military camps surrounding the doomed city of Grenada, the last stronghold of Muslim rule in Spain. When Columbus returned from the voyage that joined forever the destinies of Europe and America, Oviedo encountered him at Barcelona. Following the unexpected death of Don Juan, an event that terminated his own employment, Oviedo left Spain and wandered throughout Columbus’s Italian homeland, where he was exposed to the humanist culture of the Italian Renaissance and learned to esteem the study of nature, history, and the literary accomplishments of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Journey to America Oviedo failed to find literary or financial success on his return to Spain, and he decided to follow Columbus and pursue his fortune in the Americas. He was thirty-six years old when he first set foot on the lush, fertile islands of the Caribbean and began to develop the enthusiastic admiration for American nature that characterized the two works for which he is best known: Summary of the Natural History of the Indies (1525) and the mammoth General and Natural History of the Indies (1535–1549). While Oviedo optimistically proposed to record everything pertaining to the history and environment of America, his works are most notable for providing the first descriptions of the

plants and animals of the New World. They are unique among the earliest works on the Americas for their generally accurate and detailed portrayals of the Spanish possessions; they were grounded in his own experiences and relatively reliable eyewitness reports rather than legend and hearsay. Like other Renaissance naturalists, Oviedo was deeply religious, and he studied nature not only out of curiosity but also as a means to obtain insight into God’s works. Oviedo described New World specimens, comparing them to Old World counterparts, noting the particular and unique. It is unfortunate that Oviedo’s greatest influence on subsequent generations was not as a penetrating and original naturalist, but instead as an apologist for the violence of the Spanish conquest of America. Oviedo chose to justify Spain’s claims to sovereignty over the New World by portraying the native inhabitants of America as degenerate savages little suited to civilized life and Christianity and needing strict discipline to encourage them to accept Spanish culture. Although Oviedo was disturbed by the decimation of the native population of the Caribbean islands by disease, warfare, and forced labor at the hands of Spanish settlers, he argued that their misfortune was God’s punishment for their sins. It was an argument that would be used to justify ill treatment of the original inhabitants of America even after direct Spanish rule had ceased. Evan Widders

Sources Brading, D.A. The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State 1492–1867. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Gerbi, Aneonello. Nature in the New World: From Christopher Columbus to Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. Trans. Jeremy Moyle. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985.

PEALE, TITIAN (1799–1885) An artist, zoologist, and explorer of note, Titian Peale was the youngest scion of a large and famous family. Born on November 2, 1799, he grew up amid “great expectations” of future

52 Section 1: Peale, Titian accomplishment. His polymath father, Charles Willson Peale (naturalist, portraitist, paleontologist, inventor, and museum curator), and his artist brothers Rembrandt and Rubens (each of the seven Peale sons bore the name of a renowned artist or scientist) all were nationally recognized figures in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. Titian Peale’s heritage proved to be a determining factor in his decision to choose art and natural science for his lifework. At an early age, he was recruited to paint life-like backgrounds replete with birds for the animal exhibits at his father’s natural history museum in Philadelphia. By his teenage years, he was an accomplished amateur entomologist with a particular predilection for studying the life cycle of butterflies. In 1816, the famed naturalist Thomas Say chose the seventeen-year-old Titian Peale to illustrate the first comprehensive account of the nation’s insects, American Entomology.

In addition to his own abundant talents, Peale was aided significantly in his career path by the family’s manifold connections to government leaders and educated elites on both sides of the Atlantic. His father, for example, helped Titian secure a position as a naturalist with the government-sponsored Stephen Long expedition in 1819–1820, the mission sent to chart the Red River boundary of the Louisiana Territory and to find the Rocky Mountain source of the stream. The Long Expedition, much to the embarrassment of its leader, never did reach the Red River; however, due to the efforts of Peale and his fellow naturalists, the zoologist Thomas Say and the botanist Edwin James, not to mention the considerable geographic and cartographic contributions of Long himself, the journey did greatly augment scientific knowledge of the nation’s western territories. Peale used the expedition not only to make innumerable sketches of wildlife but to fill his notebooks with representations of the many In-

From a distinguished family of early American artists, Titian Peale specialized in illustrations of wildlife he encountered on extended expeditions with other naturalists. Prairie Deer (1823) was based on a sighting during an excursion led by Stephen Long. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Section 1: Peale, Titian 53 dian groups the expedition encountered on its journey; several examples of both would find their way into the illustrated atlas that accompanied publication of the expedition report. In the absence of a national museum, the Peale Museum in Philadelphia became the official repository for the animal and plant specimens collected on the Long journey, just as it had housed and displayed collections from the Lewis and Clark Expedition twenty years before. In 1833, Titian Peale would take over the directorship of the family museum. According to Peale scholar Charlotte M. Porter, “by the middle of the century, [Titian] Peale’s curatorial skills in the areas of preparation and preservation of insects were probably unmatched in this country.” Peale, however, did not let his museum duties keep him away from fieldwork, as evidenced by his bird-collecting trips in the 1820s on behalf of Charles Lucien Bonaparte and his 1831 expedition to Colombia to secure bird and mammal specimens for the museum. The culmination of Peale’s career in the field came with his service as one of the zoologists for the Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842, more commonly referred to as the Wilkes Expedition, after its commander, Charles Wilkes. The Wilkes Expedition was the nation’s first exploratory venture to rival those of Britain and the other seafaring European powers. Though primarily a mission to accurately chart Pacific waters for the benefit of American commercial and military interests—in particular to enhance the nation’s whaling business and China trade, while contending with British influence in the Pacific Basin—the Wilkes mission also carried a retinue of scientists charged with collecting a broad spectrum of ethnological, zoological, oceanographic, and botanical knowledge from the South Pacific. In fact, the size and breadth of the scientific collections made during the Wilkes Expedition, combined with the serendipitous Smithson bequest, proved the deciding factor in compelling Congress in 1846 to finally establish a national museum—the Smithsonian Institution— in Washington, D.C. Peale took part in several of the most important and dangerous adventures of the Wilkes Expedition. He was aboard the Peacock on January 16, 1840, when sailors on that vessel became the first to sight the “Southern” or Antarctic continent,

proving that there was indeed a landmass within the thick belt of ice at the southern extremity of the planet. Peale was also present during some of the expedition’s frequently violent encounters with Polynesian peoples, killing two Fijians himself with long-distance rifle shots. After his return from the Wilkes Expedition, Peale experienced a steady decline in his personal circumstances and scientific standing. In the late 1840s, Peale’s wife and one of his children died suddenly, and financial troubles in 1849 forced him to sell the family museum to showman P. T. Barnum. Peale spent the remainder of his working life as a patent examiner in Washington, but he managed to publish Mammalia and Ornithology in 1848. His ongoing disputes with Wilkes ended in Peale’s dismissal from the expedition’s postvoyage scientific corps. Then, in 1851, a fire at the Library of Congress consumed most of the copies of Peale’s zoological report from the Wilkes enterprise. It remains unclear whether the preservation of those volumes would have led to a significant reappraisal of Peale’s contributions to American science. His artistry and even some of his scientific work have stood the test of time, but like his father before him, Titian Peale had always been more of a self-taught generalist than an academic, and he never did make the transition to the sort of concentrated program of original research and specialization that was quickly becoming the standard for the biological sciences in the nineteenth century. In fact, both father and son had dedicated much of their adult lives to the broadest possible dissemination of scientific knowledge, believing that such a program was most appropriate to a republican society like the United States, particularly if the science was funded through the public purse. Jacob Jones

Sources Crockett, Lawrence J. “On the Trail of John Torrey, #19,” parts 1 and 2. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 118:1, 2 (1991): 78–86, 201–10. Goetzmann, William H. New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. Porter, Charlotte M. “The Lifework of Titian Ramsay Peale.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 129:3 (1985): 300–11.

54 Section 1: Peck, William Dandridge Sources

PECK, WILLIAM DANDRIDGE (1763–1822) William Dandridge Peck was a noted botanist and explorer who ascended Mount Washington in 1804 and served as professor of natural history at Harvard. His father was a naval architect, and Peck was likewise interested in active inquiry and invention. He graduated from Harvard College in 1782, after which he worked in the mercantile world and sought to learn the medical profession, before settling on science as his vocation. During these years, Peck, whose character tended toward reserve and depression, befriended the botanist and physician Manasseh Cutler. The two men shared a love for studying the flora and fauna of New England. Peck was also an expert in entomology, ichthyology, and ornithology, and he amassed extensive collections of specimens of insects, fish, and birds. Harvard created the post of professor of natural history specifically for Peck, who prepared for his work by journeying to Europe on a threeyear excursion of scientific study. He went to Sweden, for example, home of the great Carolus Linnaeus, where he indulged in his passion for botany. Peck served for seventeen years as a professor at Harvard, until his death. Peck journeyed to the White Mountains in 1804, accompanying Cutler and Nathaniel Bowditch. The journey proved challenging for the forty-one-year-old scientist, who had a delicate constitution. Peck thrived nevertheless, bivouacking along the Ellis and Saco rivers, botanizing with Cutler. In fact, Peck succeeded in ascending Mount Washington when several others, including Bowditch and two guides, had to turn back. At the summit, the scientists used a theodolite, an instrument for comparing altitudes on a plane, and took readings of the temperature and barometric pressure to aid in estimating the height of the mountain. The expedition’s estimate of 7,055 feet actually was quite accurate compared to other contemporary attempts, which were generally extravagant in overestimating the height of Mount Washington (today, 6,288 feet) by thousands of feet. Russell Lawson

Cutler, William P., and Julia P. Cutler, eds. Life, Journals, and Correspondence of the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D. 2 vols. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987. Graustein, Jeannette E. “Early Scientists in the White Mountains.” Appalachia 30 (1964): 44–63. Pease, Arthur S. “Notes on the Botanical Exploration of the White Mountains.” Appalachia 14 (1917): 157–78.

RELIGION

AND

SCIENCE

For much of American history, religion and science were regarded as compatible. Theology was known as the “queen of the sciences,” and science was the handmaid of revealed religion. Starting in the nineteenth century, however, the relationship between religion and science came to be characterized by some as “warfare.” The new perception came about as many scientists adopted a speculative approach, in contrast to what had been accepted as the established facts of traditional empirical science. The Protestant Reformers believed in sola scriptura—the idea that the word of God is the only infallible rule for faith and life. To discern God’s will, they approached scripture inductively, attempting to find meaning in the pages of divine writ. Similarly, their evaluation of nature was inductive. From this inductive approach arose empirical science, in which experimentation plays the determinative role in the discovery of natural laws. Perhaps the premier developer of Protestant natural science was Francis Bacon, who in the early seventeenth century posited that two “books”—the Bible and nature—were to be read inductively. The modern historians Robert K. Merton, Herbert Butterfield, Christopher Hill, and Peter Harrison credit Calvinism, especially British Puritanism, with germinating and fostering modern science.

The New Science in America Among American colonists associated with this trend was Cotton Mather, the Puritan preacher in Massachusetts and first American-born member of the Royal Society. Demonstrating his openness to new scientific ideas, Mather urged, contrary to popular opinion, inoculation against

Section 1: Religion and Science 55 smallpox. His 1712 work, Curiosa Americana is a collection of letters to the Royal Society detailing “all New and Rare Occurences of Nature, in these parts of the World.” Following in Mather’s footsteps was Jonathan Edwards in the first half of the eighteenth century. Best known for his 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Edwards was a profound and original thinker. He wrote on such topics as insects, spiders, atoms, light rays, and rainbows. Mather and Edwards accepted the basic inductive approach set forth by Bacon. Scottish Commonsense Realism, a school of thought that celebrated Bacon, likewise trusted in the senses and professed belief in the reality of the physical world. Formulated by Thomas Reid in the late eighteenth century, this view was championed in America through the influence of John Witherspoon, a native Scot who served as president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) from 1768 to 1794. The “realistic” approach also made appeal to that which is “rational.” In the nineteenth century, clergy across a wide theological spectrum demonstrated an extensive interest in science, as part of their belief that science was the handmaid of theology. These “gentlemen theologians” often were the best-educated residents of their towns and villages, and their opinions on matters of science were well respected. But these Protestant clergy were populists— they believed a true inductivism to be anti-elitist. From their perspective, Baconianism was designed to sweep away all kinds of superstitions in the realms of both science and religion, as well as to empower the masses to recognize and repudiate false theories. True science, then, was liberating and helped unshackle the people from tyranny of thought. The new scientific discoveries were coupled with the spread of the gospel, as part and parcel of the hope of a golden age—a millennialism resulting in the betterment of humankind. The two-book approach of Bacon depended on a two-tier system that recognized divine revelation as paramount. By the early nineteenth century, however, the nascent science of geology was ready to declare its independence from scripture. By the 1820s, most geologists adopted an oldEarth approach while still believing in “cata-

strophism,” or the cataclysmic upset of the geologic record, such as the flood in the biblical story of Noah. But Charles Lyell’s masterful threevolume Principles of Geology (1830–1833) propounded a radical uniformity which purportedly explained all of the geological phenomena by means of long-age processes. New discoveries in astronomy undercut the uniqueness of the human home in the cosmos, and the biblical history of Earth was under assault. Biology was the next major field of warfare between the Bible and science when Charles Darwin postulated the theory of evolution. Darwinism undermined the account of creation in Genesis, as well as ideas about the uniqueness of the various species, the uniqueness of humans, the miraculous nature of creation, and the ideal and pristine nature of the world before Adam and Eve’s fall into sin. The vast majority of professing Christians in America in the nineteenth century readily adjusted their views of Genesis to the opinions of the geologists. There were two basic reasons for this: (1) Christianity’s tremendous respect for science; and (2) German higher criticism, which questioned the veracity of scripture. Much of Christendom also adapted to Darwinism, but many evangelicals refused to fit Genesis into an evolutionary mold.

A Different Type of Science The “modern” science exemplified in the new views of astronomy, geology, and biology was a departure from the earlier Baconian inductivism. The new approach placed a heavier emphasis on theoretical explanations of phenomena— deductions that did not necessarily arise from what strict Baconians would regard as legitimate induction. Illustrative of the shift were the views of Asa Gray, a botanist and professor of natural theology at Harvard University. Gray believed that Darwin’s theory of natural selection could be reconciled with natural theology and teleology. He also was willing to accept Darwin’s theory apart from definitive proof. In his 1876 work Darwiniana, he wrote: “of those who agree with us in thinking that Darwin has not established his theory of derivation, many will admit with us that he has rendered a theory of derivation much less improbable than before; that such a theory chimes in with the

56 Section 1: Religion and Science established doctrines of physical science, and is not unlikely to be largely accepted long before it can be proved.” Baconian science had reinforced the idea prominent among American evangelicals that there is a profound difference between theory and fact. Christian fundamentalists clung to the ideals fostered by Bacon and others. Evangelicals did not always agree, however, about how science and religion were related. In 1942, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) was founded, with a more “respectable” approach to religious life than that represented by the “fightin’ fundamentalists.” The year before, evangelicals founded the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), whose Statement of Faith contained the following affirmation: “We accept the divine inspiration, trustworthiness and authority of the Bible in matters of faith and conduct.” However, that statement leaves open the possibility of scriptural error on scientific and historical matters. Conservative Christians, on the other hand, would maintain the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible on all matters, with the resulting primacy of “inscripturated” revelation over natural revelation. In the twenty-first century, most American scientists perform their work apart from religious considerations, while recognizing the need for at least ethical norms on a wide range of fields, from medicine to nuclear physics to psychology. But a revitalized creationism has challenged humanistic science not only philosophically but also in the laboratory.

Pearcey, Nancy R., and Charles B. Thaxton. The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1994.

R O O S E V E LT , T H E O D O R E (1858–1919) Theodore Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president of the United States (1901–1909), was an avid outdoorsman, keen observer of animals, historian, and groundbreaking conservationist. Born on October 27, 1858, to a prominent Dutch family of New York City, Roosevelt was a frail child, suffering from asthma. As a boy, he was fascinated with the natural environment— birds, insects, and other animals. At the age of nine, he wrote a paper titled “The Natural

Frank J. Smith

Sources Bozeman, Theodore Dwight. Protestants in an Age of Science: The Baconian Ideal and Antebellum American Religious Thought. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977. Harrison, Peter. The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Holifield, E. Brooks. The Gentlemen Theologians. Durham: Duke University Press, 1978. Jacob, James R. The Scientific Revolution: Aspirations and Achievements, 1500–1700. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1998. Livingstone, David N., D.G. Hart, and Mark A. Noll, eds. Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective. Religion in America Series. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999.

A passionate outdoorsman, Theodore Roosevelt was America’s first—and perhaps still most influential— conservationist president. His love of nature, which began in boyhood, was reflected in his travels and writings no less than in his public policies. (Underwood and Underwood/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Section 1: Smith, John 57 History of Insects.” At Harvard, from which he graduated in 1880, Roosevelt was vice president of the Natural History Club and the Nuttall Ornithological Club. As president of the United States, Roosevelt often visited his house in western Virginia, where he enjoyed watching the flying squirrels and a variety of birds—mockingbirds, blue grosbeaks, cardinals, summer redbirds, and Carolina wrens, among others. He had a particular passion for hunting game such as quail, rabbit, wild turkey, wolf, and bear, but he could be a patient observer of wildlife, too. On a visit to the United Kingdom in 1910, he made a list of sixty-one types of birds he had seen. Significantly, Roosevelt was the first American politician to work seriously for conservation. By applying Section 24 of the Forest Reserves Act of 1891, which gave the president the power to establish forest reserves, he stopped 235 million acres of timberland from being sold to private parties. A new era of land management was ushered into California’s Yosemite Valley and Arizona’s Grand Canyon region, which came under federal regulation. Roosevelt worked for the National Reclamation Act of 1902, which led to federal construction of dams and the reclamation of desert lands. In 1905 he appointed Gifford Pinchot as head of the U.S. Forest Service. The setting up of Grand Canyon National Park in 1920 was made possible by Roosevelt’s executive order in 1908 protecting 800,000 acres in Arizona from private developers. Also in 1908, the president hosted a grand conservation conference in the White House to devise plans for preserving the country’s natural resources. In 1909, Roosevelt ordered the newly established Reclamation Service to construct irrigation projects under federal administration. The Antiquities Act of the same year gave Roosevelt the power to protect sites of archeological interest in the West, where thieves were stealing relics of the American Indians. The lasting contributions of the environment-friendly and conservation-minded Roosevelt included four game preserves, five national parks, eighteen national monuments, fifty-one wildlife sanctuaries, 150 national forests, and the preservation of Oregon’s Crater Lake and Mesa Verde’s Anasazi ruins.

An author of repute, Roosevelt wrote on foreign policy, history, big game hunting, and conservation. His books include Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail (1888), The Rough Riders (1899), Through the Brazilian Wilderness (1914), and The Winning of the West (1917). In 1906, he was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. After an eventful career, Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919, at Oyster Bay, New York. In 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources McCullough, David. Mornings on Horseback: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. Miller, Nathan. Theodore Roosevelt: A Life. New York: William Morrow, 1992. Roosevelt, Theodore. An Autobiography (1858–1919). New York: Macmillan, 1913.

SMITH, JOHN (1580–1631) The explorer, geographer, and cartographer John Smith was born in Willoughby, Lincolnshire, England, in 1580. He left Lincolnshire in 1596 and traveled to continental Europe, where he spent several years as an adventurer, soldier, and sailor. He received the title “captain” while in combat in Hungary fighting for Christian princes against the Ottoman Turks. After returning to England in 1604, Smith learned of the Virginia Company’s aspiration to colonize Virginia on the basis of a charter from King James I. Investing money in the joint-stock venture and desiring adventure as well, Smith joined a company of 108 potential settlers in three ships that departed England in December 1606 and arrived in April 1607 after a difficult voyage. Smith arrived in chains, charged with mutiny, but on opening a sealed box containing the Virginia Company’s instructions, it was revealed that Smith was to be one of seven members of a ruling council for the colony. This was established in May 1607 on an island (at high tide) in the James River, Virginia. The first permanent English settlement in North America, the colony was named

58 Section 1: Smith, John

The much-mythologized Captain John Smith left detailed narratives and maps that secured his importance as a geographer and natural historian. His Map of Virginia, first published in 1612, includes many place names still in use today. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–116706)

Jamestown in honor of King James I. Conditions were harsh for the settlers, the native peoples they encountered were antagonistic, and deaths from disease and malnutrition were numerous.

Explorer Smith turned explorer at Jamestown, seeking information about the new land, journeying through Virginia and the Chesapeake, observing the flora, fauna, and natural resources. In December 1607, his group was ambushed by Native American hunters. Only Smith survived, due possibly to the intervention of Pocahontas, the eleven-year-old daughter of the Native American chief, Powhatan.

After four weeks in captivity, Smith returned to a Jamestown troubled by conflicts of interest among the council members, disagreements with London over who should lead and the need for supplies, and a scarcity of food. Smith embarked on an exploratory voyage of the Chesapeake Bay area and into the Potomac River, where he mapped the region and kept records of his experiences while his crew searched for gold. Smith noted the variety and abundance of fish and survived injury from a stingray at the mouth of the Rappahannock River, known today as Stingray Point. Smith undertook a second exploratory voyage of Chesapeake Bay in 1608, making important observations of the fish, animals, forest cover,

Section 1: Thoreau, Henry David 59 and clearings for native agriculture. In May 1607, he observed: “by divers small habitations they passed, in 6 daies they arrived at a town called Powhata, consisting of some 12 houses pleasantly seated on a hill; before it 3 fertile Iles, about it many of their cornfields, the place is very pleasant.” Given the abundance of resources, it is surprising that the colonists did not enjoy sufficient food. Despite fraught relations with native peoples, they relied on traded corn. Under difficult political and practical circumstances, Smith became colony leader in 1608, and then president. He successfully adopted a disciplinarian approach, improved defenses, and established successful agriculture. Additional settlers arrived in 1609, but Smith was injured in a gunpowder explosion, which forced him to depart for England in October 1609. Disputes with the Virginia Company precluded Smith’s subsequent return to Virginia, but, in 1614, he returned to North America, to explore the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. He is credited with naming the area New England, with the approval of Prince Charles, son of James I. Thereafter, Smith remained in England until his death on June 21, 1631. His most important work, published in 1624, is The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles. A.M. Mannion

Sources Barbour, Philip. The Three Worlds of Captain John Smith. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964. Smith, John. The Complete Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Philip Barbour. 3 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

T H O R E AU , H E N R Y D AV I D (1817–1862) The naturalist, writer, and transcendentalist thinker Henry David Thoreau was also a surprisingly good scientist. His written works— such as A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), Walden (1854), The Maine Woods (1864), and Cape Cod (1865)—demonstrate his

An inveterate wanderer and observer of nature, essayist Henry David Thoreau wrote meticulous descriptions of the forests, rivers, and mountains of New England and southern Canada before the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

proclivity to observe the minutiae of nature and to understand scientifically the complexities of geography, botany, and zoology. As a scientific wanderer and journalist, Thoreau left behind intricate records of the forests, mountains, and rivers of New England during the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, before the Industrial Revolution irrevocably changed them. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1817, Thoreau was a lifelong New Englander. He attended Harvard College until 1837. Thereafter, he traveled extensively, kept many journals of his observations, wrote essays for publications such as The Dial, and met with likeminded transcendental philosophers, notably Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thoreau also worked in his father ’s pencil factory, taught school for a time, and even worked as a gardener and handyman. His life was, in a sense, dwarfed by his writings.

60 Section 1: Thoreau, Henry David

Maine Woods Thoreau’s journey into the north woods to climb Mount Katahdin in 1846 provided the journalistic and naturalistic fodder for his essay The Maine Woods, published posthumously in 1864. Thoreau was fascinated by natural history: he provided perceptive analysis of the lands and peoples of the Maine woods in an insightful and poetic narrative of New England natural history. He discussed the current state of the local Abenaki Indians, lamenting the lost ardor of the warrior class, and the singular habits and customs of local hunters and “lumberers.” Thoreau was particularly impressed by the fauna of the Maine woods, and he provided fascinating descriptions of the moose that wander the foothills of Mount Katahdin. He discovered that “the wood was chiefly yellow birch, spruce, fir, mountain-ash, or round-wood, as the Maine people call it, and moose-wood.” At the tree line, he wrote, there were ancient black spruce-trees (abies nigra), old as the flood, from two to ten or twelve feet in height, their tops flat and spreading, and their foliage blue, and nipt with cold, as if for centuries they had ceased growing upward against the bleak sky, the solid cold. I walked some good rods erect upon the tops of these trees, which were overgrown with moss and mountain-cranberries. It seemed that in the course of time they had filled up the intervals between the huge rocks, and the cold wind had uniformly levelled all over. Here the principle of vegetation was hard put to it. There was apparently a belt of this kind running quite round the mountain, though, perhaps, nowhere so remarkable as here. Once, slumping through, I looked down ten feet, into a dark and cavernous region, and saw the stem of a spruce, on whose top I stood, as on a mass of coarse basket-work, fully nine inches in diameter at the ground. These holes were bears’ dens, and the bears were even then at home. This was the sort of garden I made my way over, for an eighth of a mile, at the risk, it is true, of treading on some of the plants, not seeing any path through it,—certainly the most treacherous and porous country I ever travelled.

He described the rocky summit as similarly astonishing. I climbed alone over huge rocks, loosely poised, a mile or more, still edging toward the clouds; for though the day was clear elsewhere, the summit was concealed by mist. The mountain seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if some time it had rained rocks, and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides, nowhere fairly at rest, but leaning on each other, all rockingstones, with cavities between, but scarcely any soil or smoother shelf. . . . At length I entered within the skirts of the cloud which seemed forever drifting over the summit, and yet would never be gone, but was generated out of that pure air as fast as it flowed away; and when, a quarter of a mile farther, I reached the summit of the ridge, which those who have seen in clearer weather say is about five miles long, and contains a thousand acres of table-land, I was deep within the hostile ranks of clouds, and all objects were obscured by them.

R iver Journey Thoreau and his brother, John, ascended the Concord and Merrimack rivers of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 1839, which became the basis for A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published in 1849. The book is a tour de force of natural history, philosophy, and poetry. Thoreau was a botanist who collected samples by means of words. His portrait of the Merrimack River is a sophisticated intertwining of natural and human history that describes the source, character, extent, and course of the river; the peoples living along its shores; the economy of the river valley; and the bustle of human activity centered on the river. He described Plum Island, at the mouth of the Merrimack, as a desert of drifting sand, of various colors, blown into graceful curves by the wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed, stretching nine miles parallel to the coast, and, exclusive of the marsh on the inside, rarely more than half a mile wide. . . . The only shrub, the beach plum, which gives the island its name, grows but a few feet high; but this is so abundant that parties of a hundred at once come from the main land and down the

Section 1: Webster, Noah 61 Merrimack in September, and pitch their tents, and gather the plums, which are good to eat raw and to preserve. The graceful and delicate beach pea too grows abundantly amid the sand. . . . The island for its whole length is scolloped into low hills, not more than twenty feet high, by the wind, and excepting a faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as trackless as the Sahara.

Along the Merrimack and at Plum Island, too, Thoreau recalled seeing the “bittern, the genius of the shore,” which was moping along its edge, or stood probing the mud for its food, . . . Or else he ran along over the wet stones like a wrecker in his storm coat, looking out for wrecks of snails and cockles. Now away he goes, with a limping flight, uncertain where he will alight, until a rod of clear sand amid the alders invites his feet; and now our steady approach compels him to seek a new retreat.

Walden At Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts, where Thoreau went to live in 1845, he had many chances to explore and to make concrete the subjective impressions formed from the natural environment. Amid the beautiful transcendent poetry of Thoreau’s Walden are the methodical analyses of the pond, its clarity, depth, rising and falling, freezing and thawing; the woods and inhabitants such as hunters and woodland animals; and matters of personal economy, such as his daily meals of fish, vegetables, and beans, daily repairs to his shack, and daily walks foraging in the forest. Thoreau was too much of the naturalist to approve of the changes to American society wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Yet he was too much the thinker to respond to nature without reason and analysis. Russell Lawson

Source Dassow Walls, Laura. Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Thoreau, Henry David. The Portable Thoreau. Ed. Carl Bode. New York: Penguin, 1976.

WEBSTER, NOAH (1758–1843) The great American lexicographer Noah Webster was born on October 16, 1758, in West Hartford, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale in 1778 and briefly practiced law. In 1782, he moved to Goshen, New York, where he opened an elementary school. Webster was disturbed at the scarcity of books available for teaching reading and spelling. Those that were in print employed the customary British usage and grammar of the day, but Webster believed that American children needed books that incorporated American language, culture, and history. He hoped that a national spelling book would create a uniform American usage. To satisfy that need, he wrote the American Spelling Book, or The Blue-Black Speller (1783), which remained in use for nearly a century and sold more than 70 million copies. In 1785, he produced the American Reader, which was widely employed in American schools until the 1830s, when it was replaced by William McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader. Webster is perhaps best known for his dictionary, which appeared in two volumes in 1828. He devoted nearly twenty-five years to the project, including two years in England doing research. Prior to this time, the most widely used English dictionary was the one compiled by Samuel Johnson, which had appeared in 1755. Johnson’s work contained words primarily of Greek and Latin origin and ignored American expressions entirely. Webster wanted his dictionary to reflect the American experience, including the words for native plants (such as “squash” and “corn”), animals (such as “moose” and “caribou”), and other phenomena. He not only included the Anglo-Saxon origins of words, if they existed, but he also included words (such as “noodle” and “cookie”) introduced into American English by immigrants from various countries. Webster also sought to regularize American English by cleansing it of archaic spellings (substituting “music” for “musick,” and “public” for “publick”) and superfluous letters (“colour” and “honour” became “color” and “honor”). But his

62 Section 1: Webster, Noah main contribution was the philological treatment of the peculiarities of American English, which had previously been ignored. Webster’s work helped regularize American spelling and grammar. Webster was convinced that the United States should be as independent in literature and culture as in politics. He believed that the United States had to protect its literary productions by means of copyright. His efforts contributed to the uniform copyright legislation that was enacted in most of the states and by Congress in 1831. Webster ’s scientific endeavors included A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases (1799), which includes an account of a contagious epidemic of yellow fever, and the four-volume Elements of Useful Knowledge (1802–1812), a survey of American science and history. In 1797, he accompanied historian Jeremy Belknap on a voyage of exploration in search of the Bartholomew Goswold settlement of 1602; they discovered it on the island of Cuttyhunk, west of Martha’s Vineyard off Massachusetts. Webster was working on a revision of his dictionary when he died on May 28, 1843. After his death, the rights to his dictionary were sold to George and Charles Merriam of Worcester, Massachusetts. Its unabridged current form, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, contains approximately 450,000 entries. Wendell G. Johnson

his friends called him) served as librarian of that institution and later as a county judge. Upon the death of his father, who had been the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, Winthrop was considered for, but not offered, the same chair. He nevertheless continued the pursuit of scientific inquiry. With other amateurs, he was a founder of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780 and the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1791. Whenever possible, Winthrop escaped from his daily routines and duties to engage in the adventure of scientific discovery. In 1779, for example, he journeyed in the company of other Harvard scientists (such as Samuel Williams, who had replaced his father as Hollis Professor) to Penobscot Bay to observe the transit of Venus across the disk of the sun. In 1782, he visited neighboring New Hampshire to explore, ascend, and measure Mount Monadnock, estimating it at 3,254 feet (an overestimation of 89 feet). Winthrop’s fascination with history was often enlivened by piety—prophecy and the fulfillment of the divine plan intrigued him—and he was a student of ancient and modern languages. He possessed one of the most extensive library collections of his time, including a host of books on science that he had inherited from his father. Following his death on September 26, 1821, the massive collection was bequeathed to Allegheny College.

Sources

Russell Lawson

Micklethwait, David. Noah Webster and the American Dictionary. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2000. Unger, Harlow G. Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot. New York: John Wiley, 1998.

W I N T H R O P, J A M E S (1752–1821) A librarian, jurist, and scientist, James Winthrop was a fifth-generation Winthrop of Massachusetts, the son of noted physicist John Winthrop IV. He was a warm patriot during the American Revolution and a firm Federalist afterward. Born in 1752, Winthrop graduated from Harvard College in 1769. James (or “Jemmy,” as

Sources Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Series 2, vol. 10. Jeremy Belknap. The History of New-Hampshire. Vol. 3. Boston, 1792.

Y E L LO W S T O N E N AT I O N A L P A R K Yellowstone Park is a nationally protected, 2,221,766 acre (nearly 3,500 square mile) reserve within the borders of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. For the first part of the nineteenth century, Yellowstone had a mythical reputation, as people along the eastern seaboard did not

Section 1: Yellowstone National Park 63 park’s natural beauty, were among the first challenges to this mission and caused the Interior Department to place the park under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army from 1886 to 1918. Conservationists pressed for passage of the Lacy Act (1894), which protected park wildlife. In the meantime, railroads such as the Northern Pacific encouraged Eastern tourists to forego European holidays in favor of exploring Yellowstone. Capitalizing on the region’s unique collection of plants, animals, geysers, hot springs, and petrified trees—the products of combined volcanic, hydrothermal, and glacier activity—park superintendents allowed for the development of a few lodges and roads in order to encourage visitors, who numbered 5,438 in 1895, the first year the park kept count. At the turn of the twentieth century, Yellowstone provided a model of the conservationist ethic that land could be protected from the ravages of logging, mining, and hunting, yet still yield valuable benefits as a source of leisure, scientific study, and national identity. The Grand Geyser in Yellowstone National Park was among the natural wonders that contributed to the park’s mythical reputation among Americans in the early nineteenth century. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-97315)

believe fantastic stories of geysers and petrified trees. Opinions changed in 1870 when Henry Washburn, surveyor general of the Montana territory, led an expedition that stirred interest in the region. This prompted Congress to commission an official survey in 1871, which was headed by geologist Ferdinand Hayden and included artist Thomas Moran and photographer William H. Jackson. Moran’s art, which appeared in Scribner’s magazine, Jackson’s photos, and Hayden’s detailed report awed the public and politicians alike. In 1872, Congress enacted legislation to place Yellowstone under the jurisdiction of the secretary of the interior as the world’s first national park. Since its founding, Yellowstone National Park has stood at the heart of America’s evolving environmental movement. Congress founded Yellowstone to protect the land from sale and settlement and to preserve it as a “pleasure-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” Poachers and vandals, who hunted bison and spoiled the

National Park S er vice President Woodrow Wilson created the National Park Service in 1916 in order to better manage the expanding list of national parks and help transform Yellowstone into one of America’s premier vacation spots. The service built museums and expanded the park’s highway system to serve the ballooning numbers of visitors—over 1.1 million by 1950. Since the 1970s, however, the National Park Service’s philosophy has moved away from using Yellowstone as America’s natural playground and toward preserving its environment for future generations. Fishing became prohibited in parts of the park to save the indigenous cutthroat trout; wolves were reintroduced in the hope of creating a more balanced ecosystem; plans for a gold mine outside park boundaries were stalled for fear of pollution; and snowmobiles—whose emissions during wintertime brought park air pollution to Los Angeles levels—were banned. More changes may be on the horizon in the twenty-first century, as the number of yearly visitors hovers around 3 million. Some politicians, suspicious of environmentalism, attempt to block

64 Section 1: Yellowstone National Park funding for park maintenance, while encouraging the harvest of Yellowstone’s natural resources for economic gain. David Schuster

Sources Barringer, Mark D. Selling Yellowstone: Capitalism and the Construction of Nature. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002. National Park Service. http://www.nps.gov.

DOCUMENTS ward is daunting terrible, being full of rocky Hills, as thick as Mole-hills in a Meadow, and cloathed with infinite thick Woods.

John Josselyn’s Account of the White Mountains

Source: John Josselyn, New-Englands Rarities Discovered (London: Widdowes, 1672).

In his New-Englands Rarities Discovered (1672), John Josselyn recorded a firsthand account of the wilderness mountain country of central New Hampshire. The following is his description of the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Henry David Thoreau’s River Journey

The Country generally is Rocky and Mountanous, and extremely overgrown with wood, yet here and there beautified with large rich Valleys, wherein are Lakes ten, twenty, yea sixty miles in compass, out of which our great Rivers have their Beginnings. Fourscore miles (upon a direct line) to the Northwest of Scarborow, a Ridge of Mountains run Northwest and Northeast an hundred Leagues, known by the name of the White Mountains, upon which lieth Snow all the year, and is a Land-mark twenty miles off at Sea. It is rising ground from the Sea shore to these Hills, and they are inaccessible but by the Gullies which the dissolved Snow hath made; in these Gullies grow Saven bushes, which being taken hold of are a good help to the climbing Discoverer; upon the top of the highest of these Mountains is a large Level or Plain of a days journey over, whereon nothing grows but Moss; at the farther end of this Plain is another Hill called the Sugar-loaf, to outward appearance a rude heap of massi[v]e stones piled one upon another, and you may as you ascend step from one stone to another, as if you were going up a pair of stairs, but winding still about the Hill till you come to the top, which will require half a days time, and yet it is not above a Mile, where there is also a Level of about an Acre of ground, with a pond of clear water in the midst of it; which you may hear run down, but how it ascends is a mystery. From this rocky Hill you may see the whole Country round about; it is far above the lower Clouds, and from hence we beheld a Vapour (like a great Pillar) drawn up by the Sun Beams out of a great Lake or Pond into the Air, where it was formed into a Cloud. The Country beyond these Hills North-

Henry David Thoreau was a supreme botanist, explorer, and natural historian. His many books traced the natural history of New England. His botanical descriptions were exquisite, as seen in the following excerpt from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published in 1849. The narrow-leaved willow (Salix Purshiana) lay along the surface of the water in masses of light green foliage, interspersed with the large white balls of the button-bush. The rose-colored polygonum raised its head proudly above the water on either hand, and flowering at this season and in these localities, in front of dense fields of the white species which skirted the sides of the stream, its little streak of red looked very rare and precious. The pure white blossoms of the arrow-head stood in the shallower parts, and a few cardinals on the margin still proudly surveyed themselves reflected in the water, though the latter, as well as the pickerel-weed, was now nearly out of blossom. The snakehead, Chelone glabra, grew close to the shore, while a kind of coreopsis, turnings its brazen face to the sun, full and rank, and a tall dull red flower, Eupatorium purpureum, or trumpet weed, formed the rear rank of the fluvial array. The bright blue flowers of the soap-wort gentian were sprinkled here and there in the adjacent meadows, like flowers which Proserpine had dropped, and still further in the fields or higher on the bank were seen the purple Gergardia, Virginian rhexia, and drooping neottia or ladies’-tresses; while from the more distant waysides which we occasionally passed, and banks where the sun had lodged, was reflected still a dull yellow beam from the ranks of tansy, now in its prime. . . .

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66 Section 1: Documents The water-willow, Salix Purshiana, when it is of large size and entire, is the most graceful and ethereal of our trees. Its masses of light green foliage, piled one upon another to the height of twenty or thirty feet, seemed to float on the surface of the water, while the slight gray stems and the shore were hardly visible between them. No tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well with still streams. It is even more graceful than the weeping willow, or any pendulous trees, which dip their branches in the stream instead of being buoyed up by it. Its limbs curved outward over the surface as if attracted by it. . . . The bass, Tilia Americana, also called the lime or linden, which was a new tree to us, overhung the water with its broad and rounded leaf, interspersed with clusters of small hard berries now nearly ripe. . . . The inner bark of this genus is the bast, the material of the fisherman’s matting, and the ropes and peasant’s shoes of which the Russians make so much use, and also of nets and a coarse cloth in some places. . . . The ancients are said to have used its bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for a kind of paper called Philyra. They also make bucklers of its wood. . . . Its sap affords sugar, and the honey made from its flowers is said to be preferred to any other. Its leaves are in some countries given to cattle, a kind of chocolate has been made of its fruit, a medicine has been prepared from an infusion of its flowers, and finally, the charcoal made of its wood is greatly valued for gunpowder. Source: Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906).

Timothy Dwight’s Discourse on Religion and Science Timothy Dwight, president of Yale College from 1795 to 1814, journeyed through New York and New England in 1803, during which time he noted descriptions of the landscape, flora, and fauna. In the following two excerpts from his Travels in New-England and New-York (1821), Dwight recorded his observations of the changing autumn foliage at Crawford Notch in the White Mountains and articulated his belief in the “deluge,” the universal flood recounted in the Old Testament book of Genesis.

From this spot the mountains speedily began to open with increased majesty, and in several instances rose to a perpendicular height little less than a mile. The bosom of both ranges was overspread in all the inferior regions by a mixture of evergreens with trees whose leaves are deciduous. The annual foliage had been already changed by the frost. . . . All the leaves of trees which are not evergreens are by the first severe frost changed from their verdure toward the perfection of that color which they are capable of ultimately assuming, through yellow, orange, and red to a pretty deep brown. As the frost affects different trees and the different leaves of the same tree in very different degrees, a vast multitude of tinctures are commonly found on those of a single tree, and always on those of a grove or forest. These colors also in all their varieties are generally full, and in many instances are among the most exquisite which are found in the regions of nature. Different sorts of trees are susceptible of different degrees of this beauty. Among them the maple is pre-eminently distinguished by the prodigious varieties, the finished beauty, and the intense luster of its hues, varying through all the dyes between a rich green and the most perfect crimson, or more definitely the red of the prismatic image. The Notch of the White Mountains [is] a very narrow defile, extending two miles in length between two huge cliffs, apparently rent asunder by some vast convulsion of nature. This convulsion was, in my own view, unquestionably that of the deluge. There are here and throughout New England no eminent proofs of volcanic violence, nor any strong exhibitions of the power of earthquakes. Nor has history recorded an earthquake or volcano in other countries of sufficient efficacy to produce such phenomena of this place. The objects rent asunder are too great; the ruin is too vast and too complete to have been accomplished by these agents. The change appears to have been effectuated when the surface of the earth extensively subsided, when countries and continents assumed a new face, and a general commotion of the elements produced the disruption of some mountains, and merged others beneath the common level of desolation.

Section 1: Documents 67 Nothing less than this will account for the sundering of a long range of great rocks, or rather of vast mountains, or for the existing evidences of the immense force by which the rupture was effected. Source: Timothy Dwight, Travels in New-England and NewYork, vol. II (New Haven, CT, 1821).

Henry Marie Brackenridge’s Journey up the Missouri River Henry Marie Brackenridge was a young naturalist who accompanied fur traders and English botanists up the Missouri River in 1811. The following account, from his journal, describes the landscape of the Missouri River Valley just a few years after Lewis and Clark’s pathbreaking journey. Hitherto the rapidity of our movements, and the continual anxiety which prevailed amongst us, precluded the possibility of making any distant excursions, or of observing the different objects which came under our notice, with the attention I could have wished. These inconveniences were now all passed, and I now promised myself much pleasure in the examination of the country, and of its productions; as well as much information from the society of two scientific men. I had little or no practical knowledge of natural history myself, and thus far we had passed through a district affording little else to excite attention. The surface of the land—its shape—its appearances—was all that I could pretend to note with accuracy, and this only on the immediate borders of the [Missouri] river. We are now twelve hundred miles from the mouth; the last six hundred, with little variation composed of grassy stepp[e]s, with open groves at intervals along the margin of the river, and on the uplands and hollows at a distance from it, a few copses of wood and shrubberies. The hills of no great elevation, scarcely exceeding those on the Ohio, and like that through which this beautiful river holds its course, a region entirely calcareous. The shores of the river are seldom bound by rocks; and where the bluffs or higher banks are precipitous, we seldom see any thing but enormous masses of bare clay, often sixty or an hundred feet in height, which is constantly crumbling

into the river. The limestone, freestone, or sandstone, but rarely shews itself on the river. From this it will be seen, that to the mineralogist, few objects of interest are found. The masses of pumice, and the burnt bluffs in the country of the Poncas, are to be attributed most probably to the burning of coal banks; for it is a well known fact, that such have been known to burn for several years without being extinguished; and why may not the same thing have occurred here. In one place above the Poncas village, the river is bounded on both sides by hills of no great elevation, bare of vegetation, and the earth from the effects of burning, in nearly the whole of this distance, of a dark color, quite hard and heavy, as if containing a portion of iron. Emetites are observed in considerable quantities, from which it is probable that iron ore exists. . . . The day after this fortunate junction, we continued our voyage, but were opposed by a strong wind from the N.E. which, compelled us, after we had proceeded a few miles, to encamp for the remainder of the day. Took my gun, and set off to make an excursion. The country is altogether open, excepting some groves of cotton-wood in the bottom. The upland rises into considerable hills, about one third covered with a very short grass, intermixed with a great variety of plants and flowers, the rest consists of hills of clay, almost bare of every kind of vegetation. On the tops of the higher hills, at some distance from the river, there are masses of granite, of several tons weight, and great quantities of pebbles. In the course of my ramble, I happened on a village of barking squirrels, or prairie dogs, as they have been called. My approach was announced by an incessant barking, or rather chirping, similar to that of a common squirrel, though much louder. The village was situated on the slope of a hill, and appeared to be at least a mile in length; the holes were seldom at a greater distance from each other than twenty or thirty paces. Near each hole, there was a small elevation of earth, of six or eight inches, behind which, the little animal posted himself, and never abandoned it, or ceased the demonstrations of alarm, “insignificantly fierce,” until I approached within a few paces. As I proceeded through the village, they

68 Section 1: Documents disappeared, one after another, before me. There was never more than one at each hole. I had heard that the magpie, the Missouri rattle snake, and the horn frog, were observed to frequent these places; but I did not see any of them, except the magpie. The rattle snake of the prairies is about the same length with the common rattle

snake, but more slender, and the color white and black. Source: Henry Marie Brackenridge, “Journal of a Voyage up the River Missouri,” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 6, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: A.H. Clark, 1905).

Section 2

GEOGRAPHY

ESSAYS The First American Science G

eography was the first American science. The European explorers who arrived in America in the late 1400s and 1500s entered completely unknown waters and set foot on lands hitherto isolated from contact with the Old World cultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Explorers such as the Italians Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colon), John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), Amerigo Vespucci, and Giovanni Verrazzano; the Portuguese such as Ferdinand Magellan; the French such as Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain; and the English such as John Rut, Humphrey Gilbert, Martin Frobisher, Francis Drake, John Davis, John White, Bartholomew Gosnold, and John Smith— all were forced by the demands and dangers of the American climate, landscape, and native peoples to became ad hoc cartographers, naturalists, ethnographers, historians, meteorologists. In short, they were geographers.

unknown islands off the coast of Asia. The idea of a New World, one unknown to the ancients, not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and not visited by the early Christian apostles, was absurd, and he refused to believe it. Columbus was heavily influenced by the Travels of Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant who had lived at the court of the Chinese emperor Kublai Khan and explored China and surrounding countries in the late thirteenth century. Polo described Cathaia (China) and Cipango (Japan) and declared that Cathaia had vast wealth and spices. European voyages of discovery during the fifteenth century were largely the consequence of Polo’s inspiring book. John Cabot, like Columbus a Genoan sailing for a foreign monarch (in this case Henry VII of England), had the same geographic misconceptions as Columbus. Cabot believed, however, that Columbus sailed too far south, that a voyage ought to approach China from northern latitudes. Hence, Cabot outfitted the Matthew, a small vessel that set sail from England in 1497, and made a quick crossing to Labrador, then Newfoundland. Cabot sailed along the coast of Newfoundland but was too excited by his discovery to investigate further. He returned to England with good news, outfitted another expedition, and set sail, never to be heard from again. This trial-and-error approach to American geography continued for many years. Giovanni Verrazzano, an Italian navigator sailing for the French, explored the east coast of the present United States from South Carolina to Maine in 1524. Verrazzano made generally peaceful contact with the Native American tribes and explored specific locales along the coast that seemed to promise what he was really looking for, the Northwest Passage. Verrazzano conceived of North America as a thin strip of land separating the two vast oceans, the Atlantic and

Foundations of American G eography Geography is literally the study of the world. It is one of the earliest sciences developed by humans because of the unavoidable fact that the physical environment shapes human thoughts, feelings, society, and culture. In 1492, on the eve of the exploration of America, European geography was informed largely by ancient traditions of the shape and nature of the world. The story that Columbus proved the world is round is a myth; scientists in 1492 had no doubt that the earth was spherical, based on the teachings of Aristotle, Strabo, Ptolemy, and other ancient geographers. Indeed, Columbus was so dependent on ancient conceptions of geography that he refused to question the ancient three-continent world. Columbus knew that he had discovered hitherto

71

72 Section 2: Essays Pacific. Maps and globes in the wake of his voyage provided a two-dimensional picture of this erroneous conception.

The Nor thwest Passage Verrazzano was seeking the Northwest Passage, a generally imaginary watery strait through North America that could take Europeans through this terra incognita to the plentiful prospects of trade with China. Verrazzano possibly sailed up the Hudson River in pursuit of the illusory passage, as did Henry Hudson several generations later. The Northwest Passage was the impulse behind Cartier’s three voyages up the St. Lawrence River during the 1530s and 1540s. Martin Frobisher ’s voyages along the coast of Canada to the southern extreme of Baffin Island in the 1570s were also in pursuit of the passage. A decade later, John Davis sailed between Baffin Island and Greenland up the Davis Strait approaching Baffin Bay. If Arctic ice and wooden ships had not prevented him, Davis could have found the only strait in North America (beginning at Lancaster Sound) that

connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, even if it is icebound. In 1616, the English explorer William Baffin sailed into Baffin Bay seeking the passage, until he, too, was turned back by Arctic cold. John Smith noted that the colonists at Jamestown, based on information from local Indians, in 1608 ascended the James River to the fall line, took apart their boat, and carried it over a long portage to a spot at which they could enjoy an extensive view to the west, only to find that hills and forests, not blue water, spread out before them. Early maps, such as the one published by John Farrer in 1651, pictured the shores of the Pacific Ocean on the western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains. The Northwest Passage continued to intrigue explorers during the beginnings of colonial settlement and even after the establishment of the United States. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark journeyed up the Missouri River hoping to find it navigable to the continental divide, from which they expected a brief portage to reach descending rivers west to the Pacific. Their discovery of the nonexistence of such a water route was

French explorer Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec, was also a pioneer of cartography. The maps of his twelve North American expeditions, including this one of New France in 1612, charted the Atlantic coast from the Bay of Fundy to Cape Cod. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Section 2: Essays 73 the final act in a drama of recurring attempts during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to determine the extent of North America.

Tracing Inland Water ways Not all early explorers were seeking the Northwest Passage, however; some were attempting to discover the number and extent of rivers flowing into the Atlantic, the nature of the land, the peoples inhabiting the inland forests, and the locations of the best harbors. Smith, for example, had such practical aims. His accounts and maps of America were generally direct and to the point, providing information on native peoples, their strength, customs, economy, and character, as well as detailed descriptions of topography, climate, natural products, and the overall potential of the land for settlement. Champlain likewise was a serious observer of the New England and Canadian coasts and inland waterways, particularly the St. Lawrence Valley and the Great Lakes.

Beginning with Cartier and Champlain, the French proved to be the leaders in exploring, describing, and mapping the interior rivers of North America. Explorers and mapmakers traced the extent and character of the five Great Lakes, of the Mississippi River and its eastern and western tributaries, and of the geographic extremes of the Louisiana Territory, which stretched from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River, north to Canada around the 49th parallel, and south to the Red River. The first narrative descriptions and maps of Louisiana came from French explorers such as Louis Hennepin, whose Description of Louisiana appeared in 1683, and from French mapmakers such as Guillaume de L’Isle in 1718 and Philippe Buache in 1754. Russell Lawson

Source Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Early American Mountaineering M

ountains have long fascinated humans, both as homes of the spiritual and miraculous and as barriers to travel. Several great mountain ranges of the American continents have impeded transportation from east to west, even as they have inspired feelings of awe, fear, and fascination. The molding movements of the earth’s crust gave rise to the vast Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, Andes, and Appalachians, which were further molded by glacial movements over the course of millennia. The north–south extent of American mountain ranges determined the direction of rivers, flowing generally east and west, and likewise dictated the movement of peoples and settlement patterns. Both Native Americans and European immigrants to America were not naturally interested in mountaineering. Superstition and religious awe—beliefs that mountains were the abodes of gods or evil spirits—prevented most mountains

in Europe and America from being ascended except through utter necessity. Exceptions included the Spanish, who sent expeditions to ascend some of the great peaks of Central and South America, such as Popocatépetl (Smoking Mountain), a 17,887 foot volcano in Mexico. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés sent some of his men, led by Diego de Ordaz, to attempt the ascent in 1519, but they were prevented from reaching the summit by cold, ice, and ash. The summit of Popocatépetl would not be reached until 1827. In North America, the first English settlers discovered that the native peoples generally refused to climb Appalachian peaks, fearing the supernatural consequences of such acts of hubris. English settlers usually were too busy trying to build successful communities to engage in such a waste of time as mountaineering without sufficient motivation. If the thrill of mountain climbing to fulfill a personal need or

74 Section 2: Essays for an exhilarating experience was not a good reason, however, the chance of acquiring riches was. The first European explorers of the Atlantic coast saw, as they sailed the waters of Maine and New Hampshire, distant peaks “twinkling,” in John Smith’s words, as if inviting those brave enough to journey inland in search of the reason for the crystal, shining appearance of the distant White Mountains. The European settlers of New England learned from local Indian tribes that the “chrystall hill” (as the explorer Christopher Levett called it) was Agiocochook, the home of spirits, a forbidding place no one should dare ascend. Despite these warnings, the possibility that the crystal might be worth something impelled adventurers and fortune seekers, such as Darby Field in 1642, to journey inland to the White Mountains and ascend the highest peak of the Northeast, Mount Washington, which during colonial times was called the Great Mountain or the Great White Hill. Field, Walter Neal, Thomas Gorges, and Richard Vines ascended the Great Mountain in search of wealth. That nothing notable—not gold, silver, jewels, or other valuables—was found explains why the White Mountains were not penetrated again for another twenty years. This time, in the 1660s, John Josselyn, an English physician, journeyed to the Great Mountain and ascended it in search not of mines and material wealth but of knowledge and herbal specimens useful in healing. Josselyn’s two books, New-Englands Rarities Discovered (1672) and Two Voyages to New-England (1674), describe the landscape, flora, and fauna of the mountains, which he christened a region “daunting terrible.” The seventeenth-century journeys having revealed that there were few riches forthcoming to recompense the danger and effort of the climb, the White Mountains were rarely visited for more than a century. Soldiers climbed the Great Mountain in 1725, and the intrepid Robert Rogers tried but failed around 1760. Governor John Wentworth journeyed into the White Mountains in 1772, and Nicholas Austin ascended Mount Washington in 1776. After the American Revolution, American scientists imbued with a new sense of patriotism ex-

plored most of the major mountains of the Northeast. The Belknap-Cutler Expedition journeyed to Mount Washington in 1784. Charles Turner, Jr., led adventurers and scientists to ascend Mount Katahdin, the highest point in Maine, in 1804. Mount Marcy, the highest in the Adirondacks, was explored around the same time. The southern Appalachian chain was rarely penetrated by the European colonists before the late 1700s. John Lederer reached the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1670, but there is no record of any European colonist penetrating the southern Appalachians until 1730, when John Brickell and others journeyed to the mountains of North Carolina. Governor Thomas Spotwood trekked across the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1739, and Thomas Walker, following Indian traces, reached the Cumberland Gap in 1750. The highest mountain east of the Mississippi, Mount Mitchell in the Great Smoky Mountains, was studied and measured in the 1820s and 1830s by Elisha Mitchell. French explorers, having descended the Mississippi and ascended rivers flowing from the Rocky Mountains, were the first European colonists to reach the foothills of the Rockies. Pierre and Paul Mallet did so in 1739. Englishman Jonathan Carver approached but did not penetrate the “Shining Mountains” in the 1760s. Alexander MacKenzie crossed the Canadian Rockies in 1793 on his way to the Pacific Ocean. Americans Meriwether Lewis and William Clark crossed the Continental Divide in 1805. Soon after, Zebulon Pike ascended the Arkansas River to the southern Rockies. In subsequent years, other explorers crossed the Rockies, coming to know the highest peaks intimately and making the crossing of the Continental Divide a regular occurrence. The mountains, once barriers to movement, settlement, and knowledge, became just one more route by which scientists discovered the rich material secrets of North America. Russell Lawson

Source Goetzmann, William. New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery. New York: Penguin, 1986. Lawson, Russell M. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.

Section 2: Essays 75

Exploring the Continent E

uropean colonists of New Spain adopted a scientific approach when writing about the peoples, landscape, flora, and fauna of the New World. José de Acosta, for example, a Jesuit priest who spent time in Peru and Mexico, penned a Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590) in which he described the customs and history of the Aztecs and other peoples of Mexico. His approach combined the studies of anthropology, geography, natural history, and human history. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, who accompanied Christopher Columbus to the Caribbean, was a systematic botanist and natural theologian, as revealed in his General and Natural History of the Indies (1535–1549). Explorers such as Cabeza de Vaca and Hernando de Alarcón journeyed along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast and into the Colorado Valley. Likewise the conquistador Francisco de Coronado led Spanish soldiers to the Great Plains, particularly present-day Oklahoma and Kansas, in 1541. Coronado was in search of Quivira, the Seven Cities of Gold. He found instead the July sun, prairie-dog towns, and villages of impoverished Indians. Several decades later, Juan de Oñate led an expedition from New Spain to the Colorado and Arkansas river valleys. At the same time, Hernando de Soto journeyed into the American Southeast across the Mississippi and, perhaps, up the Arkansas Valley. Sebastián Vizcaíno, who kept a diary of his adventures in California in 1602–1603, journeyed along the California coast. Vizcaíno’s diary contains fascinating anthropological, cartographic, and geographic information. During the late 1600s, missionary priests such as Eusebio Francisco Kino, who was a mathematician, astronomer, and cartographer, explored the Gila, Colorado, Rio Grande, Sabine, Red, Canadian, and other rivers of the Southwest. The French became just as intrigued with the rivers, plains, and mountains of transAppalachian and trans-Mississippi lands. French explorers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries journeyed up rivers, such as the Arkansas, Red, Canadian, and Platte, that descended from the Rocky Mountains, slowly winding east

across the prairies to the Mississippi River. The French came to trade with the Indians and investigate vague reports that near the sources of these rivers, at the western extreme of Louisiana, were great mines of silver. Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, La Salle, the Mallet brothers, Bénard de La Harpe, Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont, and Louis Hennepin were a few of the many French who journeyed throughout Louisiana, traced the course of rivers, studied the wilderness land and its peoples, and wrote narrative accounts of their expeditions. Other European explorers of America included the Dutch, who controlled New Netherland up to 1664, when the English took control and renamed the colony New York. Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch, explored the Hudson River in 1609. Harmen Van den Bogaert in the 1630s journeyed west from New Amsterdam to the Finger Lakes region, the lands of the Oneida Indians. In 1693, Arnout Viele explored the Ohio River Valley. British colonists also sought to penetrate the vast interior wilderness of America. John Lederer, Thomas Batts, and Robert Fallam reached the Appalachian Mountains in the early 1670s. John Lawson explored the wilderness of North and South Carolina around 1700. Timothy Walker journeyed through the Cumberland Gap in 1750, and Christopher Gist crossed the Appalachian Mountains into Kentucky the following year. A decade later, Daniel Boone led settlers through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. Following the American Revolution of 1775– 1783 and the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803, more lands were opened for American explorers to penetrate. Some of the more significant of these explorer-scientists were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Zebulon Pike, William Dunbar and George Hunter, Peter Custis, and Stephen Long. Explorers such as Lewis and Clark, Pike, and Long entered into a region, the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, that continued to spur legends among local inhabitants of great hidden riches, particularly silver. American trappers of the early nineteenth century, after the United

76 Section 2: Essays

Explorer, geologist, and anthropologist John Wesley Powell launches his second expedition up the Green and Colorado rivers in 1871. This trip produced what his first one there did not: a map, photographs, and scientific descriptions. (Authenticated News/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

States purchased Louisiana in 1803, heard such stories. A few braved the lands of the native tribes, like that of the Osage Indians of the Arkansas River, to engage in the search. Most were content to wonder and dream, and tell others of what they thought they knew. Scientist William Dunbar heard these reports when he arrived at the Hot Springs of Arkansas in 1804. Zebulon Pike heard reports of possible treasure in 1806, when he set off across the Kansas prairie to search along the Arkansas River. Such explorers typically found not silver but vast salt reserves, which on the frontier could be just as valuable. The many English, French, Spanish, and American travelers, explorers, and scientists who journeyed through the Great Plains during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries recorded the beliefs, stories, and legends of the American Indians, rustic immigrants, and frontier people of the region as well as their own observations of its natural beauty, plant life, and animal life. John Bradbury’s Travels recounts his journey up the Missouri River in the immediate

years before the War of 1812. The Missouri, one of the great rivers of the Great Plains, begins in the Rocky Mountains and flows across Montana and through the badlands of North and South Dakota, forming Nebraska’s eastern border and Kansas’s northeastern border before entering Missouri; it ends its long journey just above St. Louis, flowing into the Mississippi. When Bradbury set out in the company of fur traders in 1810, the Missouri River formed the heart of the Missouri Territory, but few whites had explored the region. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had journeyed this way from 1804 to 1806. They had forged relationships with various tribes of the northern Great Plains, such as the Sioux, Mandan, Arikara, Sauk, Fox, and Osage. Unfortunately, Bradbury did not have the benefit of perusing their journals (unlike the modern reader, who can read the Journals of Lewis and Clark in a variety of editions). Thomas Nuttall’s Journal is an account of the lower Great Plains, particularly Oklahoma, in 1819. Nuttall was an experienced scientific explorer who had accompanied Bradbury on his

Section 2: Essays 77 journey. He had explored the Great Lakes and the Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Red rivers. Nuttall sought to be the first botanist to discover the vast variety of flora along the shores of the great rivers of the southern Great Plains: the Red, Canadian, Cimarron, and Arkansas. His accounts of experiences during the summer of 1819 in Oklahoma include much material on local Indian tribes, and on their cultures and beliefs. Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail (1847) is a firsthand account of the adventures of a young Bostonian of delicate health, ambitious to become a great historian. Parkman made it to Wyoming (not Oregon) by way of Kansas and Nebraska. His lively narrative contains much truth and some exaggeration, but all in all it is a good mix of natural history and lore. Crossing the Kansas prairies near the Platte River in 1846, Parkman called the Great Plains “those barren wastes, the haunts of the buffalo and the Indian, where the very shadow of civilization lies a hundred leagues behind him.” Parkman picked up on the earlier remarks of Long and Pike. The former had led a scientific and military expedition across the Plains to the Rocky Mountains and back in 1820, while the latter had crossed Kansas to the Rocky Mountains in 1805–1806; Pike’s Expeditions traces the journeys of explorers and soldiers up the Mississippi River and across the prairies to the Rockies. Long and Pike were impressed by the hardness of the land, as was Parkman years later. Parkman

was amazed at the depth of the mud, the incessant plague of insects, and the lack of fresh game. There were, of course, many explorers of the Rocky Mountain region. Notable were militaryscientific expeditions, such as those led by John Wesley Powell. The one-armed Powell led expeditions down the wild and dangerous Colorado River on two voyages in the late 1860s and early 1870s. In the wake of these journeys, Powell issued various narrative accounts and scientific reports. His classic report, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, appeared in 1875. By the 1890s, when future president Theodore Roosevelt explored, hunted, and wrote about the American West, North America had largely been explored and mapped, its natural productions and landscape recorded in reports, narratives, and journals. The frontier, Frederick Jackson Turner wrote in 1893, was vanishing, and with it, the core of American identity, values, and democracy. Yet there were other regions for Americans still to explore: the extremes of the earth at its poles, the depths of the ocean, and the vastness of space. Russell Lawson

Source Lawson, Russell M. The Land Between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall’s Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.

A–Z mander of the U.S. Air Force Training School at Edwards Air Force Base the following year. His commendations include the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Robert Goddard Trophy, and the Harmon International Trophy. He has been awarded six honorary doctorates. Since his retirement, Aldrin has authored several books, including the autobiographical Return to Earth (1973). He remains active as an advocate for manned space exploration, president of Starcraft Enterprises in Laguna Beach, California, and chair of the National Space Society and a nonprofit foundation, ShareSpace, under a grant from NASA.

ALDRIN, EDWIN (“B U Z Z ”; 1930–) The U.S. astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin was the second person to walk on the moon. The space rendezvous techniques he helped pioneer were later used in all U.S. space missions that called for such maneuvers. Aldrin was born on January 20, 1930, in Montclair, New Jersey. His father was a student of rocket developer Robert Goddard. Aldrin received a B.S. degree in 1951 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating third in his class, and earned a doctorate in astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963. Aldrin earned his U.S. Air Force wings in 1952 and served in the Korean War, flying sixty-six combat missions in F-86 fighter jets and shooting down two Soviet MiG-15 aircraft. He later served as an aerial gunnery instructor at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. In October 1963, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) selected Aldrin as a member of the astronaut corps. After finishing his Ph.D., Aldrin was assigned to the Gemini Target Office at the Air Force Space Systems Division in Los Angeles. Transferred to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, he worked on experiments slated for Gemini space flights. On November 11, 1963, he flew with James Lovell on Gemini 12, the last of the Gemini missions. During the flight, Aldrin set a new record for extravehicular activity (EVA), five and one-half hours outside the spacecraft. Aldrin was selected to be the lunar module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission. On July 20, 1969, he followed Neil Armstrong to the surface of the moon, logging two hours and fifteen minutes of extravehicular activity. All in all, he spent 289 hours and 53 minutes in space, with 7 hours and 52 minutes of EVA. Aldrin resigned from NASA in July 1971 and from the U.S. Air Force and his position as com-

Kathleen Simonton

Sources Aldrin, Edwin E. Return to Earth. New York: Random House, 1973. Aldrin, Edwin E., and Malcolm McConnell. Men from Earth. New York: Bantam, 1989. Armstrong, Neil, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin. First on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. http://www. nasa.gov.

AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY The oldest nationwide geographical organization in the United States, the American Geographical Society was formed in 1851 during an era of intense interest in exploration of the Arctic, which still contained sizable swatches of terra incognita on world maps. A group of men and women initially formed the society in New York City in response to appeals for help by Lady Franklin, whose husband, the English commander John Franklin, disappeared on his third Arctic expedition. Nearly fifty rescue missions were sent out over a period of ten years, before Franklin’s fate was finally ascertained in 1857. The Northwest Passage was discovered as a result of the searches, which

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Section 2: Appalachian Mountain Club 79 revealed that Franklin and his companions had perished after their ships were held up in the ice. The society sponsored polar expeditions, helped train explorers, and published findings. Robert E. Peary led several of these expeditions, one of them while serving as society president, and finally reached the North Pole in 1909. The society was established by businesspeople, including executives and investors in shipping, railroads, banking, telegraph, and oil industries, and public servants, such as governors, military officers, diplomats, and jurists, to produce and disseminate geographical data and analysis. Much of the western United States remained unmapped when the society was founded, but that changed because of the transcontinental railroad, the subject of the very first paper presented before the society. In the early 1850s, the society compiled the most complete map of its day for comparing the five candidate routes for the railway, and it took an interest in selecting a route for the Panama Canal. Three of the society’s presidents, Charles P. Daly, Archer M. Huntington, and Isaiah Bowman, were especially important in establishing the society’s global importance. As president from 1864 until his death in 1899, Daly assisted in the planning and fund-raising for many expeditions. He also expanded the society’s library, which became the largest private geographical research library and map collection in the western hemisphere. The collection was housed in the society’s headquarters in New York City before being transferred to the Golda Meir Library of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in 1978. Archer M. Huntington, the inheritor of great wealth from his stepfather, the railroad industrialist Collis P. Huntington, became president in 1907. Huntington was the society’s most generous financial benefactor. In 1913, he financially supported the hiring of the society’s first fulltime cartographer, William A. Briesemeister, who worked for the society until his retirement in 1964. As president from 1915 to 1935, Isaiah Bowman transformed the society’s Bulletin into a national organ of original research and changed its name to the Geographical Review, today one of the world’s leading scholarly periodicals de-

voted to geography. During World War I, the society housed a government-sponsored program to gather information in preparation for postwar negotiations. After the 1918 armistice, Bowman accompanied President Woodrow Wilson to France and served as his chief territorial adviser. In 1920, Bowman started a project to prepare a 1 to 1,000,000 scale map of Central and South America; completed in 1945, this map became the first comprehensive, detailed map of the continent. The society supported the Association of American Geographers in its formative years, hosting its annual meetings and printing its annals from 1915 through 1922. The society sponsored the Finn Ronne expedition of 1947–1948, the last privately financed expedition to Antarctica, which was shown to be a single continent and not two islands. A pioneer in the use of aerial photography for cartography, the society mapped Africa when the only airplanes were single-engine propeller models. During World War II, the society assisted more than forty U.S. government agencies. Since the 1950s, the American Geographical Society has funded expeditions and field research, presented lectures and conferences, and awarded honors to scholars and explorers in cooperation with government, business, and educational groups. David M. Carletta

Sources Smith, Neil. American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Wright, John Kirtland. Geography in the Making: The American Geographical Society, 1851–1951. New York: American Geographical Society, 1952.

A P PA L A C H I A N M O U N TA I N C L U B The Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) is a conservation and recreation organization based in the eastern United States. It encourages the protection and wise use of mountains, rivers, and trails in the Appalachian region. The club’s hiking centers, trail and rescue crews, and hut system have made it popular with hikers along

80 Section 2: Appalachian Mountain Club the Appalachian Trail, which extends from Georgia to Maine. The AMC has twelve chapters in New England, New York, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. It has grown from a small group of avid mountaineers to a substantial organization with more than 90,000 members.

B eginnings Edward C. Pickering, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded the AMC when he invited fifty fellow Boston academics and White Mountain vacationers to an initial meeting in 1876. A group of men interested in mountain exploration, recreation, and scientific research gathered with Pickering to discuss the formation of a club. At the time, many of New England’s mountains were not only unclimbed but also unnamed. Members of the AMC began organizing group hikes and hand-drawing maps of the White Mountains in New Hampshire. The club named commissioners in natural history, exploration, improvements, art, and topography. In its first year of existence, the AMC also started publishing its journal, Appalachia, which included descriptions of trips to the mountains and essays on physics, geography, and natural history of the region. In 1888, the AMC began constructing huts in the White Mountains. Today, the club maintains eight huts along the Appalachian Trail, roadside lodges and cabins, regional camps, and backcountry campsites throughout the eastern mountain range.

Three Pillars The three pillars of the AMC—its primary goals and core values—are conservation, education, and recreation. AMC conservation programs use research, advocacy, and community outreach to protect the region’s natural and aquatic habitats. Education initiatives include outdoor and environmental education programs for all ages. Recreation opportunities involve trips, lodging, trail maintenance, and outdoor activities. The club has become increasingly involved in environmental activism over the years, fervently opposing projects such as an interstate highway through Fran-

conia Notch, New Hampshire, a dam on the West Branch of Maine’s Penobscot River, and logging in New England’s Northern Forest. The AMC’s research team strives to preserve the Appalachian environment, identify crucial natural resources, and enhance recreation opportunities. The AMC uses modern mapping and technology, offering an interactive mapping service for members. AMC scientists working to reduce air pollution monitor air quality and watersheds in the White Mountains. The AMC promotes the ecological health of rivers and protection of fragile alpine zones, while also encouraging public recreation. The AMC has sparked controversy with its emphasis on the idea that the public should have access to mountain environments for personal enjoyment. Since recreational opportunities sometimes come at the expense of environmental preservation, the AMC strives to use its scientific research to minimize human impact on nature. Debates about overcrowding in the White Mountains began after backpacking experienced a surge in popularity during the 1970s. In the 1990s, the AMC had to issue an extensive Environmental Impact Statement before the U.S. Forest Service would renew its permit for the mountain huts. Robin O’Sullivan

Sources Appalachian Mountain Club. http://www.outdoors.org. Manning, Robert E., ed. Mountain Passages: An Appalachia Anthology. Boston: Appalachian Mountain Club, 1982. Stewart, Chris, and Mike Torrey, eds. A Century of Hospitality in High Places: The Appalachian Mountain Club Hut System 1888–1988. Littleton, NH: Appalachian Mountain Club, 1988.

ARMSTRONG, NEIL (1930– ) Neil A. Armstrong—test pilot, astronaut, and the first person to walk on the moon—was born on August 5, 1930, in Wapakoneta, Ohio. He received a B.S. degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University and an M.A. degree in aeronautical engineering from the University of Southern California.

Section 2: Belknap, Jeremy 81 Armstrong served in Korea with the U.S. Navy as a jet fighter pilot. After leaving the navy, he became a civilian test pilot flying the X-15 rocket plane. He made seven flights in the X-15 between December 1960 and July 1962, reaching a maximum altitude of 207,500 feet and a top speed of 3,989 miles per hour (Mach 5.75). Armstrong joined the National Advisory Commission for Aeronautics, the predecessor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as a test pilot at the Lewis Laboratories in Cincinnati. He later transferred to the high-speed flight station at Edwards Air Force Base, California. He was a project pilot on several high-speed aircraft, eventually piloting some 200 different models of aircraft. He also served on the NASA–U.S. Air Force Dyna-Soar Project for orbital gliders until the project was canceled in 1962. Armstrong was promoted to astronaut status in 1962, and he served as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, launched on March 16, 1966. The mission was highlighted by the first successful rendezvous and docking of two vehicles in space, but it was aborted shortly after docking because of a malfunctioning thruster, and the crew was forced to make an emergency landing. Armstrong also served as commander for the backup crew of the Apollo 8 orbital mission in 1968. On May 6, 1968, he survived a crash of the lunar landing research vehicle during a training mission. In July 1969, Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. On July 20, he took control of the lunar module Eagle and piloted it to a safe landing on the surface of the moon. His first words after setting foot on the lunar surface were, “Houston. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” His next comment was historic: “That’s one small step for man, one giant step for mankind.” Armstrong retired from NASA in 1971 and joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati, where he was professor of aeronautical engineering until 1979. He served on the National Commission on Space from 1985 to 1986, and in the latter year was vice chair of the presidential commission that investigated the crash of the space shuttle Challenger. Armstrong has been awarded several honorary doctorates. His commendations include

the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Robert Goddard Memorial Trophy, the Robert Collier Trophy, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Kathleen Simonton

Sources Armstrong, Neil, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin. First on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970; reprint ed., 2002. Grissom, Virgil. Gemini: A Personal Account of Man’s Venture into Space. New York: Macmillan, 1968. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. http://www. nasa.gov.

B E L K N A P, J E R E M Y (1744–1798) Jeremy Belknap was a leading late eighteenthcentury naturalist, historian, and geographer, best remembered for his three-volume The History of New-Hampshire (1784, 1791, 1792). He was a protégé of the historian and naturalist Thomas Prince and the poet Mather Byles. A native Bostonian and educated at Harvard College, Belknap relocated in 1764 to northern New England, where he became pastor of the First Parish of Dover, New Hampshire. He held this position for twenty years before returning to Boston to serve at the Federal Street Church, where he stayed until his death. Belknap was an amateur scientist who busied himself in botany, mineralogy, cartography, geography, and history. He considered history a science and wrote from an objective viewpoint based on exhaustive examination of the available primary source documents, almost all in manuscript form. At the same time, the pastor believed that God’s providence controls all things, which must temper the historian’s otherwise secular interpretation of past human affairs. Belknap was also typical of his time in assuming that natural history is a valid form of historical inquiry, equal in importance to the examination of human experience. The History of New-Hampshire is, therefore, a combination human and natural history, the former taking up the first two volumes and the latter the final volume.

82 Section 2: Belknap, Jeremy In this work, Belknap examined the natural productions of New Hampshire; the weather, landscape, rivers, mountains, fauna, and flora; and the relationship of nature to New Hampshire’s people, institutions, government, society, and culture. He wrote, for example, on demographics, his analysis depending on tables of births and deaths for those New Hampshire towns in which the local ministers were as conscientious as Belknap in their record-keeping. Based on as many as twenty-seven sources, Belknap estimated that New Hampshire’s population had doubled in nineteen years. The increase, he suggested, was due to low morality and high birthrates, both products of the New Hampshire frontier environment: “Where land is cheap, and the means of subsistence may be acquired in such plenty, and in so short a time as is evidently the case in our new plantations, encouragement is given to early marriage.” Belknap’s The History of New-Hampshire provides an extensive discussion of the flora and fauna of the state. For the former, he enlisted the aid of his friend Manasseh Cutler, who was well versed in the Linnaean system. The chapters on “Forest-trees, and other vegetable productions” and “Native Animals” are systematic and exhaustive, descriptive of distinguishing characteristics and critical of European writers, such as the Count de Buffon, who “content themselves with theorising on subjects, which can be determined only by fact and observation.” In general, Belknap sought in these chapters to illustrate the diversity and potential of New Hampshire plant and animal life. Perhaps Cutler suggested the utility of the bark of the walnut tree, “which is one of the best cathartics in the materia medica. It neither produces gripings, nor leaves the patient costive, and may be made efficacious, without hazard, by increasing the dose.” Belknap waxed long and eloquently on the white pine, describing in detail the methods of felling and delivering to market. Similarly he discussed the maple: “the collecting of sap in late winter and the resulting sugar, which is an agreeable sweet, frequently supplying the place of milk and meat, and affording wholesome and nourishing food for children.” He also noted the “ample store” of peat that “nature hath provided” and included a rebuttal, penned by Cutler, of Belknap’s “doctrine of peat.”

Belknap’s most entertaining discussion was of the beaver, “one of the most useful as well as sagacious animals of our wilderness.” He based his narrative largely on personal observation. Fascinated with the beaver dam, so well built as to sustain human travel long after the beaver’s departure, Belknap declared that “the best human artist could neither mend its position or figure, nor add to its stability.” Much of the third volume reads like a guidebook for scientific travelers. Belknap mapped the state literally and figuratively for those in quest of knowledge. Chapter 1 sets the boundaries of the state, and Chapter 2 details the “Air, Climate, and Seasons” that the scientific traveler will encounter. One reads of the “sudden changes in the weather,” the fascinating “hoar frost,” the remarkable if seldom seen whirlwinds off the New Hampshire coast. Then Belknap told of the mountains and rivers that form a diverse and varied landscape—prime country for scientific exploration. In Chapter 6 he related his own experiences observing the New Hampshire forest, then discussed the symbols of a vanishing wilderness, the new roads cut through the forest. “The air of New-Hampshire,” he wrote, “is generally pure and salubrious. During the winter months, the prevailing wind is from the northwest; which is dry, cold and bracing.” He noted, “A freezing rain is no uncommon spectacle. The trees are sometimes so incrusted with ice that the smaller branches break with its weight. The sun, shining on these incrustations, affords a brilliant entertainment to a curious spectator; but it is of short duration.”

American Plutarch Belknap chose the pen name “American Plutarch” in several biographies published in early national magazines during the 1780s. The name was appropriate for his interests and abilities. Like the Greek biographer Plutarch, Belknap wrote the lives of great individuals, producing in 1794 the first volume of his American Biography, one of the first biographical compendiums for the newly independent states. Belknap’s work was an original contribution as well to the literature of the first explorers of America. His opening Dissertation on possible Phoenician voyages

Section 2: Belknap, Jeremy 83 to America is a well-reasoned response to William Robertson’s contrary views. The Greek Plutarch was also an essayist, author of the multivolume Moralia; his American namesake likewise wrote on a variety of moral, political, and social topics in local magazines and newspapers and in his long, elegant epistles, especially to his friend Ebenezer Hazard of Philadelphia. Belknap penned essays on the original inhabitants of America, where they came from and when; the limitations of U.S. government under the Articles of Confederation; and the theology of universal salvation. In Dissertations on the Life, Character, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1795), a detailed response to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (1795), Belknap tried to use a scientific methodology of source criticism to prove the legitimacy and reasonableness of the accounts of Jesus Christ found in the New Testament.

Scientific Traveler Belknap was also a geographer of note, basing his ruminations, descriptions, and analysis of New England on his many journeys, during which he always kept a diary that included detailed descriptions of the landscape, flora and fauna, and society and culture of a region. Many of these journals formed the basis for discussion in The History of New-Hampshire. In 1774, Belknap traversed the colony of New Hampshire, journeying to the Connecticut River. He traveled to western New York in the company of his friend the Reverend Jedidiah Morse to investigate the Oneida and Mohekunuh Indian tribes. He sailed with another friend, Noah Webster, in 1797 in search of the 1602 Gosnold Colony, which they found on the tiny island of Cuttyhunk. Belknap’s most significant journey was to the White Mountains of New Hampshire during the summer of 1784. He organized an expedition of scientists, clergy, and adventurers who journeyed into the hinterland of New Hampshire to penetrate the mountain wilderness, to ascend the highest mountain of the Northeast, Mount Washington, and to record data on latitude, elevation, temperature, natural productions, weather, and more. The journey formed the basis for the detailed account of the White Mountains in The History of

New-Hampshire, as well as for other articles and letters in which he described the mountains for scientists throughout America. Belknap’s accounts inspired other scientists to journey to the White Mountains, in particular naturalists and botanists such as Timothy Dwight, Jacob Bigelow, and Thomas Nuttall.

Massachusetts Historical Societ y Belknap considered himself one of the “sons of science,” an inheritor and progenitor of knowledge in the cumulative, scientific way. He and other New Englanders organized themselves into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston in 1780, where they were active in the pursuit of facts, natural and historical, with which to understand humanity and nature. Living in Boston in the late 1780s and 1790s, Belknap conceived of a local organization that would focus on human and natural history. This became the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1791. Belknap’s plan for the society, which he circulated to his scientific friends, declared that “Each Member on his admission shall engage to use his utmost endeavors to collect and communicate to the Society, Manuscripts, printed books and pamphlets, historical facts, biographical anecdotes, observations in natural history, specimens of natural and artificial Curiosities, and any other matters which may elucidate the natural, and political history of America from the earliest times to the present day.” The society, Belknap told a friend, was to be “be an active, not a passive, literary body; not to lie waiting, like a bed of oysters, for the tide (of communication) to flow in upon us, but to seek and find, to preserve and communicate literary intelligence, especially in the historical [and scientific] way.” Russell Lawson

Sources Belknap, Jeremy. The History of New-Hampshire. 3 vols. Philadelphia and Boston: 1784, 1791, 1792; rev. ed., Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 1992. Lawson, Russell M. The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian’s Dialogue with the Past. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. ———. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.

84 Section 2: Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784)

B E L K N A P -C U T L E R E X P E D I T I O N (1784) The Belknap-Cutler Expedition of 1784 was the first scientific journey to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The expedition was organized by the Reverend Jeremy Belknap, a leading historian, geographer, and naturalist of northern New England. Also making up the expedition were Manasseh Cutler, a clergyman from Hamilton, Massachusetts, and America’s leading botanist during the 1780s; Daniel Little, a clergyman from Kennebunkport, Maine, who was an ethnographer and naturalist; Joshua Fisher, a physician of Beverly, Massachusetts, and founder of the Massachusetts Medical Society; Joseph Whipple, a colonel in the local militia, naturalist, geographer, and founder of Dartmouth, New Hampshire; and two students from Harvard College attempting to complete a long research assignment. The “pilot” of the journey was frontiersman John Evans of Fryeburg, Maine.

First American Mountaineers One of the earliest scientific objectives in colonial New England was the exploration of the inland wilderness and the discovery of the flora, fauna, and minerals on which the economies and institutions of New England communities could be based. During the 1600s and 1700s, the most daunting yet intriguing wilderness was the northern forest of New Hampshire and Maine, particularly the White Mountains, at the northern end of the vast Appalachian Mountain range. The White Mountains could be seen by residents of coastal communities and by sailors at sea. The mountains shone in the sun, which convinced some early explorers that glistening gems dotted the summits of the highest peaks. The grandest of the summits was what the early settlers called the Great Mountain and the Indians called Agiocochook. Today called Mount Washington, at 6,288 feet, it is not only the highest peak in the northeastern United States but also one of the most dangerous mountains in the world, with terribly strong winds. Indeed, the highest wind

speed ever recorded, 212 miles per hour, occurred on the summit of Mount Washington. Early American scientists, uninterested in stories of gems and silver, saw the Great Mountain as a wilderness domain of fascinating botanic, geologic, and meteorologic information. The Great Mountain, Mount Washington, had been ascended about a dozen times by the end of the American Revolution. John Josselyn had been the first scientist to ascend the mountain, though records of his journey are fragmentary. Mostly, the mountain was climbed by adventurers and soldiers. The most notable mountaineer of the eighteenth century was John Evans, who ascended the Great Mountain twice, in 1774 and 1784—the latter climb at the head of the Belknap-Cutler Expedition. Evans was a frontiersman, hunter, and road-builder, as well as a veteran of war and a former member of Rogers’ Rangers. He was neither a literary man nor a scientist, but he knew more about the topography, flora, and fauna of the White Mountains than any of the scientists on the expedition. He willingly shared his vast knowledge with the scientists, and, in the hands of Jeremy Belknap, this information became the basis of numerous reports on the natural history and geography of the White Mountains. Volume 3 of Belknap’s The History of New-Hampshire, for example, was based in part on information gathered during the BelknapCutler Expedition from his own observations as well as from his conversations with Evans.

Journey into the Wilderness The expedition took place in July 1784. Jeremy Belknap, Manasseh Cutler, and Daniel Little kept separate journals to record their experiences and observations. Belknap and Cutler made precise comments about the natural history of the mountains. Cutler was intrigued by the flora he found along the trail, but especially by the alpine flora he discovered at the summit of Mount Washington. Indeed, Mount Washington hosts a variety of unique species peculiarly adapted to the extremes in temperature and wind of the summit. The geography and weather conditions of the mountains intrigued Belknap. Having long wondered about the cause of the sharp north

Section 2: Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784) 85 winds that descended on New England coastal communities in autumn, winter, and spring, Belknap believed he had discovered the source. Hearing from Evans and others that snow may begin to fall on the highest peaks in September and continue until June, he conjectured: If so vast a quantity of snow lodges and remains on the White Mountains, how many more mountains are there towards the N. W. whose frozen summits give a keenness to the wind? ’Tis not the lakes nor the forests that make the N. W. winds so piercing, but the hoary tops of infinite ranges of mountains, some of which, at the remotest regions, may retain the snow undissolved through the year.

The journey also gave Belknap hints as to the origins of the whiteness of the White Mountains, which had long perplexed observers, who claimed the cause was white rocks, or white moss, or some other unknown white covering. Belknap argued that it was simply the white of the snow, which lay upon the mountain summits ten out of twelve months of the year. Mount Washington is also the source of several of New England’s rivers: the Pemigewasset, Ammonoosuc, Androscoggin, and Saco. How could one peak produce such a quantity of water? Belknap’s observations led him to conclude that “the long green moss on the steep sides of the Mountains serves as a sponge to retain the vapors which are brought by the winds in the form of clouds against these Mountains, and there deposited; it also preserves the rain-water from running off at once, and keeps the springs supplied with a perpetual dripping.” Belknap received much help from Cutler in the description of the White Mountains that appears in The History of New-Hampshire (vol. 3). A botanist, Cutler examined the flora of the Great Mountain during his ascent, concluding there were three zones of vegetation: “the woods” of deciduous and, at higher elevations, coniferous trees; “the bald mossy part,” including trees of stunted growth, or the krummholz; and “the part above vegetation,” rocks of white granite that nevertheless hosted some lichens and heath. The distinction between the zones would guide the work of botanists into the next century. Cutler likened the flora of the Great Mountain

to that of the Alps. He thought that the small stunted spruces of the second zone had been fighting the winds and snows “since the creation.” Cutler hoped to make accurate measurements of the height of the Great Mountain; to this end he brought along thermometers and barometers. His plan was to gauge the temperature and barometric pressure simultaneously at the base and summit. His plan was thwarted, however, by the breakage of half of his equipment, as well as by a dense icy fog at the summit that impeded observation of comparable peaks. On descending to camp the next day, Cutler briefly took compass readings and tried to take an angle from base to summit, thereby estimating the distance. He was frustrated in his attempt to effectively measure the height of the mountain, and his estimate of 9,000 feet above sea level was erroneous. Twenty years passed before he once again was able to journey to the White Mountains in pursuit of his scientific goals. The clergymen Belknap, Cutler, and Little were ecstatic that they could penetrate one of the great mysteries of early New England. Besides the scientific challenge, they felt themselves journeying into a region that was untouched since the creation. These scientists mixed piety with their observations, analysis, and mathematical computations. They knew nature to be “elder scripture,” which to peruse could be a religious experience. As Belknap wrote on seeing the beautiful Crawford Notch of the White Mountains: The most romantic imagination here finds itself surprized and stagnated. Every thing which it had formed an idea of as sublime and beautiful is here realized. Stupendous mountains, hanging rocks, chrystal streams, verdant woods, the cascade above the torrent below, all conspire to amaze, to delight, to soothe, to enrapture; in short, to fill the mind with such ideas as every lover of nature and every devout worshipper of its Author would wish to have.

Russell Lawson

Sources Belknap, Jeremy. The History of New-Hampshire. 3 vols. 1784, 1791, 1792. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 1992.

86 Section 2: Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784) ———. “Tour of the White Mountains.” In Belknap Papers, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 5, vol. 2. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1877. Cutler, William P., and Julia P. Cutler, eds. Life, Journals, and Correspondence of the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D. 2 vols. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987. Lawson, Russell M. The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian’s Dialogue with the Past. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. ———. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.

BONNEVILLE, BENJAMIN LO U I S E U L A L I E D E (1796–1878) A U.S. Army officer and fur trader, Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville was the first person to take wagons through South Pass, the gap in the Rocky Mountains at the southern end of the Wind River Range in Wyoming that was traversed by westward-bound settlers along the Oregon Trail. Bonneville was born near Paris, France, on April 14, 1796. His radical intellectual father fell out of favor with the future Emperor Napoleon I, causing the Bonnevilles to flee to the United States, where the family lived with their friend Thomas Paine in New Rochelle, New York. In 1815, Bonneville graduated as a brevet second lieutenant from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and, for the next five years, served in New England garrisons. He first saw the frontier in 1820 while constructing military roads in Mississippi. The following year, he was sent to Fort Smith in the newly designated Arkansas Territory. He also helped construct and spent many years on duty at Fort Gibson in Oklahoma. In 1830, Bonneville arranged financial backing for a fur-trading and trapping venture with Alfred Seton, a New York City merchant and former employee of the fur magnate John Jacob Astor. Bonneville was granted a furlough from the army to engage in commerce, after his arguing that he would be able to perform valuable reconnaissance among the Native Americans in the Oregon Country, which at the time was under joint occupation by the United States and Britain and largely controlled by the British Hudson’s

Bay Company. Bonneville also provided reports to the War Department that contributed to the geographical and geological knowledge of the West. Bonneville began his three-year Western expedition in May 1832 with more than a hundred American, French, and Native American men and a train of twenty wagons, each drawn by four animals, either horses, oxen, or mules. During the expedition, Bonneville dispatched Joseph Walker across the Sierra Nevada mountains to the Pacific coast. Walker’s party became the first Americans to explore California’s Yosemite Valley. Bonneville failed to compete successfully with the already established American Fur Company, Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and Hudson’s Bay Company, but he returned to the East with an interesting and valuable account of his adventures. After failing to find a publisher for his writings, he sold his manuscript to the renowned American author Washington Irving for $1,000. Irving’s edited and amplified Adventures of Captain Bonneville (1837) secured Bonneville’s place in history. After reinstatement in the U.S. Army, Bonneville worked at various garrisons. He fought for three years in the Second Seminole War (1835–1842), the most costly of the Indian wars in which the United States engaged. He also fought in the Mexican-American War and was with General Winfield Scott when U.S. troops captured Mexico City in September 1847. From 1853 to 1855, Bonneville was posted at the Columbia Barracks next to Fort Vancouver in Oregon, which had become U.S. territory in 1846. From 1856 to 1860, Bonneville commanded the department of New Mexico. During the American Civil War, Bonneville served as superintendent of recruiting in Missouri. He retired as a brevet brigadier general and moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he died on June 12, 1878. Bonneville’s name marks a mountain peak in Wyoming, the great salt flats of Utah, and a dam on the Columbia River that generates hydroelectric power for many inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. David M. Carletta

Sources Lovell, Edith Haroldsen. Benjamin Bonneville: Soldier of the American Frontier. Bountiful, UT: Horizon, 1992.

Section 2: Byrd, Richard Evelyn 87 Todd, Edgeley W. The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West, Digested from His Journal by Washington Irving. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961.

B Y R D , R I C H A R D E V E LY N (1888–1957)

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t the height of his career, Admiral Byrd may have been the most famous person in the United States, eclipsing even Charles A. Lindbergh. He was the first person to fly over both the North Pole (1926) and South Pole (1929), the third to fly across the Atlantic ( just two months after Lindbergh), and the first to be accorded two, then three, New York City ticker-tape parades. The youngest of three sons, Richard Evelyn Byrd was born on October 25, 1888, in Winchester, Virginia, to aristocratic and influential parents

wealthy enough to maintain a staff of servants. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy from 1908 to 1912. Thereafter, he spent many years in the military, rising eventually to the rank of rear admiral, an honor accorded after he had retired. Of the many expeditions in which he participated, none was more important than his first to the Antarctic in 1928–1930, which set the stage for future endeavors. In 1934, during his second Antarctic expedition (1933–1935), he decided to spend six months alone at Advanced Base Camp, which was located 125 miles from Little America. Knowing that rescue would be impossible until the following spring, he spent his time in a ten by fourteen foot underground building, checking and maintaining weather instruments and trying to survive the bitter cold, which often dipped to 60, 70, or even 80-plus degrees below zero. (At 82 below, his eyelashes froze together, and he was unable to see.) When the stove went

America’s most famous twentieth-century explorer, Admiral Richard E. Byrd was given a hero’s welcome upon returning from his first trip to the Antarctic in 1930. His claim of being the first person to fly over the North Pole, in 1926, was later disputed. (Imagno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

88 Section 2: Byrd, Richard Evelyn out at night, the temperature could drop to 40 below indoors, and, in the dead of winter, there was no sunlight. Poisoned by fumes from his stove, generator, and lantern, Byrd became extremely ill and depressed, lost fifty pounds, and almost died. That he managed to survive through many unbearably painful days is a feat similar to Shackleton’s survival after the sinking of the Endurance in 1914–1915. During World War II, Byrd returned to active duty. He later headed up three more Antarctic expeditions, as well as various international organizations. His awards included the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Legion of Merit, and the Medal of Freedom. Byrd died at home in Boston on March 11, 1957, and was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Byrd failed to accomplish all that he attempted, and he may have stirred controversy, but he was a charismatic and courageous adventurer and aviator, an excellent fund-raiser and organizer, a highly respected leader, and a real hero who suffered extreme privation to further scientific exploration in meteorology, radiation, magnetism, seismography, geography, geology, mineralogy, and other disciplines. He produced several large, profusely illustrated books and many articles; the first expedition’s participants are responsible for at least fourteen additional volumes, and scholars have added innumerable book and articles to the list. Robert Hauptman

Sources The Adventurers: Richard Byrd: Alone in Antarctica. Video producer and director Ken Kirby. Café Productions, 1996. Byrd, Richard E. Alone. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1938. ———. To the Pole: The Diary and Notebook of Richard E. Byrd, 1925–1927. Richard Byrd Papers, Ohio State University.

CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL (1567–1635)

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The French explorer and geographer Samuel de Champlain was born in Brouage, Saintonge province, on the west coast of France. Following his military service, Champlain’s first venture into the New World was to the West Indies with

a Spanish expedition. He noted the possibility of a canal across the Panama isthmus, which would materialize 300 years later. Champlain was appointed royal geographer in the French court of King Henry IV, but he was soon off in pursuit of adventure, joining a French fur-trading expedition to North America in 1603. Once there, Champlain entered the St. Lawrence River, sailing as far as the Lachine Rapids near what is today Montreal. The rapids proved impassable, but Champlain charted the river and its tributaries, the St. Maurice and Saguenay rivers, and made allies of the Algonquin Indians. He returned on a second trip in 1604 and explored the coast as far south as Cape Cod, so named by the English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold two years earlier. There, Champlain founded the colony of Acadia (an area including present-day Nova Scotia) based on fur trading. This settlement failed when the fur-trading monopoly was revoked, and the Champlain party returned to France. Champlain joined another French expedition in 1608, which resulted in the founding of Quebec at the point where the St. Lawrence Seaway narrows. Champlain explored westward and became embroiled in disputes involving the Iroquois versus the Algonquin and Huron Indians. In 1611, he founded a trading post that was named Montreal and developed the fur trade through contact with the Indians. Champlain also compiled information on New France that he gathered from his representatives who had been sent to live in Indian communities and from native guides. These efforts enabled the French to acquire more reliable geographical information than their English counterparts. In 1613, Champlain explored the Ottawa River in anticipation of finding a route to a rumored northern sea. Rapids, accidents, and mosquitoes hindered the expedition’s progress. The Rideau River waterfall, near what was to become Ottawa, and Allumette Island were encountered but not a sea. A disappointed Champlain returned to Montreal. Fur trading occupied him until 1615, when he journeyed west to Georgian Bay on the east coast of Lake Huron via the Ottawa and French rivers. Thus, the route for fur traders into the interior was established.

Section 2: Clark, William 89 Champlain’s alliance with the Huron Indians was tested by a joint attack on the Iroquois. Despite French firearms, the allies were routed before reinforcements arrived, mustered by the French interpreter Etienne Brulé. Champlain was wounded, and the defeat disrupted the alliance with the Huron, who declined to shepherd the French back to Montreal. While confined to the lake area in the winter of 1615, Champlain explored the hinterland of Lake Ontario. He returned to Montreal early in 1616 and then traveled to France, where he was given command of the Quebec colony. Upon returning to Quebec, Champlain focused on running and developing the colony rather than on exploration. When the settlement fell to the British in 1629, Champlain was imprisoned and transported to England. He sailed once again to Quebec when it was returned to French rule by treaty in 1633. Champlain died there on Christmas Day, two years later. A.M. Mannion

Sources Morison, Samuel Eliot. Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. Parkman, Francis. The Pioneers of France in the New World. 1865. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

CLARK, WILLIAM (1770–1838) The explorer, naturalist, and statesman William Clark is best known for his exploration of the Louisiana Territory with Meriwether Lewis and the Corps of Discovery in 1804–1806. Clark was born on August 1, 1770, into a Virginia plantation family. He moved with his family to Louisville, Kentucky, when he was in his midteens. He participated in the campaigns against the Native American tribes of the Old Northwest territories in the early 1790s. In 1794, he commanded a group of General “Mad Anthony” Wayne’s forces at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in Ohio, which essentially eliminated the threat posed by the confederation of Native American tribes under the leadership of Tecumseh. Among the soldiers under Clark’s command was a young volunteer named Meriwether Lewis. Two years

later, Clark resigned from the army to manage his family’s sizable landholdings. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Lewis to lead an exploratory expedition across the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, and Lewis asked his former comrade to join him as a co-commander of the expedition. It took Lewis and Clark nearly two and a half years—from May 1804 to September 1806—to follow the Missouri River to its source in the Rocky Mountains, cross the Rockies and the Cascades, follow the Columbia River to its mouth at the Pacific Ocean, and make the return trip to St. Louis. To the great advantage of the expedition, Lewis and Clark proved to have complementary personalities. Clark demonstrated a cool temper in dealing with a series of potentially catastrophic situations. More outgoing than Lewis, he was generally better able to connect with the men under their command without compromising his position of leadership. Balancing Lewis’s more quixotic and conjectural bent, Clark was a pragmatist who drew painstaking maps and detailed visual records of the flora, fauna, and natural features of the landscapes they traversed. To prepare for these tasks, Clark had undertaken an intensive study of cartography, astronomy, and natural science in advance of the expedition’s departure. Long fascinated by Native American cultures, Clark also demonstrated a special gift in negotiating with the native peoples whom the expedition encountered, and he kept extensive records on their living conditions, social customs, and folklore. In acknowledgement of the great success of the expedition, Jefferson awarded Clark 1,600 acres of land in Missouri. Clark went on to serve as brigadier general of the militia for the Louisiana Territory, as surveyor general for the territories of Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois, and later as governor of the Missouri Territory. In addition, from 1822 to his death on September 1, 1838, he served as superintendent of Indian affairs and became a strong advocate for the just treatment of Native Americans. Clark strenuously advocated the continued reliance on a government-controlled “factory” system of trade with Native American tribes, seeing open trade as an invitation to abuses that would lead to hostility between the native peoples and white settlers. When the factory

90 Section 2: Clark, William system was legislatively abolished under pressure from fur traders, Clark instituted a system of “Indian agencies” that provided a continuing channel of communication with members of the tribes, allowing Clark and his agents to address and solve potentially volatile issues. Martin Kich

Sources Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Cutright, Paul Russell. Lewis and Clark, Pioneering Naturalists. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969. Foley, William E. Wilderness Journey: A Life of William Clark. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. Slaughter, Thomas P. Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Steffen, Jerome O. William Clark: Jeffersonian Man on the Frontier. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977.

COLLINS , M ICHAEL (1930– ) Astronaut Michael Collins, one of three crew members on the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission, was born in Rome, Italy, on October 31, 1930. After graduating from Saint Albans School in Washington, D.C., he attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He received his B.S. in 1952 and joined the U.S. Air Force, where he flew F-86 Sabre Jets. He advanced from fighter pilot to test pilot and flew at Edwards Air Force Base, where he applied for the second group of astronauts under selection but was told he lacked experience. He became one of fourteen members chosen (out of 271) in the third round of astronauts in October 1963. He began training the following year. In Houston, Collins’s activities were associated with extravehicular activity (EVA); initially, he helped design and test space suits for the Gemini orbital and Apollo moon missions. Named backup pilot for Gemini 7, he first went into space as pilot on the three-day Gemini 10 mission, launched on July 18, 1966. The flight featured a successful rendezvous and docking with a separately launched Agena target vehicle

and, using the power of the Agena, maneuvering the Gemini spacecraft into another orbit for a rendezvous with a second, passive Agena. Collins’s skillful performance in two EVA maneuvers included the recovery of a micrometeorite detection experiment from the passive Agena. The experience he gained during the two space walks proved extremely important to later missions. On the second walk, Collins encountered difficulty trying to reach the Agena satellite, for neither spaceship had handholds or steps that would have allowed him to anchor himself while retrieving the package. His experience contributed to the design of such holds and to the introduction of underwater training to simulate space walks. Collins served as command module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission, from July 16–24, 1969. In that capacity, he remained on board the command module, Columbia, in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin descended to the surface in the lunar module Eagle. Among the accomplishments of the Apollo 11 mission—aside from landing the first humans on the moon— were the collection of lunar surface samples, the deployment of lunar surface experiments, and an extensive evaluation of the life-supporting pressure suits worn by astronauts. Asked thousands of times about whether he was disappointed remaining in lunar orbit and not landing on the moon, Collins always replied that he was simply happy and honored to have been chosen as one of the three individuals to accomplish the historic mission. He also felt that equal or greater credit should go to Apollo 8 in December 1968, which was the first space mission in which humans left Earth’s orbit. By the time he left the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in January 1970, Collins had completed two missions, logging 266 hours in space, including 1 hour and 27 minutes of EVA. He was the seventeenth American in space and the first astronaut to space walk twice during a single mission. Collins subsequently served as assistant secretary of state for public affairs. He then became director of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., in which capacity he oversaw the construction of its main facility on the Mall.

Section 2: Columbus, Christopher 91 Collins left the museum in 1978 to assume positions in the private sector, and he retired in 1985. He remains an ardent advocate of the space program and favors a manned mission to Mars instead of a return to the moon. Guillaume de Syon

Sources Collins, Michael. Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journey. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974. ———. Liftoff: The Story of America’s Adventure in Space. New York: Grove, 1988. ———. Mission to Mars: An Astronaut’s Vision of Our Future in Space. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990.

CO LU M B U S , C H R I S TO P H E R (1451–1506) The man later acclaimed as the greatest explorer in world history was christened Cristoforo Colon in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Columbus went to sea at an early age, experiencing first the Mediterranean and then the Atlantic. He was a ship’s captain in his early twenties, sailing as far north as the British Isles and south along the coast of West Africa. For a time he lived on the Madeira Islands. During the 1480s, Columbus resided in Portugal, a leading center of nautical science and Renaissance thought, where he taught himself Latin and read the great geographic treatises of the ancients. He studied the Greek geographers Strabo and Ptolemy and the Latin scientist Pliny, as well as the Travels of Marco Polo. From these sources, Columbus developed the “Enterprise of the Indies,” his plan to sail west from Europe and cross the Atlantic Ocean to Asia, said to comprise the Indies (Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines), Cathaia (China), and Cipango (Japan). While in Portugal, Columbus became something of a Renaissance man, well-versed in classical literature, contemporary science, and navigation. Meanwhile, Columbus and his brother Bartholomew traveled to the various courts in Western Europe, seeking royal sponsors for his Enterprise of the Indies. The kings of England, France, Portugal, and Spain all rebuffed Columbus’s appeal for years: he was a foreigner and a

commoner; he demanded too much in wealth, power, and titles; and, they believed, his geography was wrong. Indeed, Columbus relied on sources that underestimated the circumference Earth by 80 degrees (out of 360), and he believed that the distance from Europe to Asia was about 2,500 miles (rather than the actual 10,000). Hence, Columbus’s plan for the great enterprise was based on error. Yet the problem was the sources, not the thinker.

Transatlantic Voyage Columbus’s approach was that of a scientist. On his voyage, he kept a precise daily log that revealed his emphasis on the recollection of experience and the recording of history. Indeed, Columbus repeatedly cited his previous experiences sailing the Atlantic as the bases for his observations and understanding of distance and ship speed. His estimations were the result of an extremely good sense of dead reckoning. Columbus navigated according to the position of the sun on the horizon during the day and according to stars on the horizon at night; he also used a primitive compass. (The twentieth-century historian Samuel Eliot Morison, an experienced sailor, retraced Columbus’s initial voyage and discovered the remarkable accuracy of Columbus’s estimations as well as the precision of his course.) By mid-September 1492, Columbus looked for signs of land, such as land birds and floating branches with vegetation still green. He invoked all of his ornithological and zoological experience to convince himself and the crew that they were close to land. Pelicans, which rarely stray too far from land, lighted on the ship and flew on to the west. A river crab was discovered in floating weeds. A whale was spied, and Columbus thought whales never strayed far from the coast. In fact, the large number of weeds of the Sargasso Sea made it appear that land was nigh. Columbus, knowing that Portuguese sailors often would change their course to follow land birds, did so as well, steering in a southwesterly direction. On October 12, they arrived at an island in the present-day West Indies, which Columbus believed to be Asia.

92 Section 2: Columbus, Christopher

The New World The natives of San Salvador (as Columbus called the island) were unclothed, apparently defenseless, and highly accommodating. Columbus recorded observations of their physiognomy, customs, possessions, and habits. He was fascinated by their canoes, dug out from tree trunks of varying sizes to make boats of surprising swiftness. He attempted to communicate with them to discover the directions to Cipango. Exploring other islands to the west and south, coming eventually to Hispaniola, Columbus continued his accurate and detailed descriptions of the geography, landscape, and seascape; the distinctions among the various tribes; the wonderful variety of fish and flora. “I strayed about among the groves,” Columbus recorded in his journal, “which present the most enchanting sight I ever witnessed, a degree of verdure prevailing that of May in Andalusia, the trees as different from those of our country as day is from night, and the same may be said of the fruit, the weeds, the stones and everything else.” At another island he wrote: This island is the most beautiful that I have yet seen, the trees in great number, flourishing and lofty; the land is higher than the other islands, and exhibits an eminence, which though it cannot be called a mountain, yet adds a beauty to its appearance, and gives an indication of streams of water in the interior. From this part toward the northeast is an extensive bay with many large and thick groves. I wished to anchor there, and land, that I might examine those delightful regions, but found the coast shoal, without a possibility of casting anchor except at a distance from the shore. The wind being favorable, I came to the Cape, which I named Hermoso, where I anchored today. This is so beautiful a place, as well as the neighboring regions, that I know not in which course to proceed first; my eyes are never tired with viewing such delightful verdure, and of a species so new and dissimilar to that of our country, and I have no doubt there are trees and herbs here which would be of great value in Spain, as dyeing materials, medicine, spicery, etc., but I am mortified that I have no acquaintance with them. Upon our arrival here we experienced the most sweet and delightful odor from the flowers or trees of the island.

Columbus made four voyages in all to the New World. He returned from the first in 1493 to the acclaim of Spaniards and the congratulations of the Spanish sovereigns, who outfitted a large flotilla to act on Columbus’s discoveries. The second voyage lasted from 1493 to 1496, during which time Columbus established a colony on Hispaniola at Santo Domingo. During the third voyage, from 1498 to 1500, he sailed along the coast of South America. The fourth voyage, from 1502 to 1504, a desperate attempt to find evidence that the lands and islands were off the coast of Asia, was marked by shipwreck on Jamaica and disease. Columbus’s four voyages were spurred by a drive for gold and power, the jealousy of his rivals, and uncertainty about where he was— Asia or somewhere else, an “other world”— interposed on the wonder and desire to know the unique and unexpected natural and human environment of the New World. While Columbus has come under considerable criticism in modern times—accused of gross inhumanity, murder, enslavement, genocide—the attacks are often ungrounded and distract attention from what made Columbus great: his scientific mentality, his quest to know and discover, and a personality that possessed the will and courage to journey west into the Atlantic, as unknown and terrifying a place as any Europeans ever confronted. Russell Lawson

Sources Columbus, Christopher. First Voyage to America: From the Log of the “Santa Maria.” New York: Dover, 1991. Morison, Samuel Eliot. Christopher Columbus, Mariner. New York: New American Library, 1983. ———. The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

D A B LO N , C L AU D E (1618–1697) Claude Dablon was a French Jesuit missionary active in North America during the seventeenth century. Keenly interested in the geography of the interior regions of North America, he undertook several exploratory journeys in the Great

Section 2: Delisle, Guillaume 93 Lakes region and wrote colorful, detailed descriptions of the natural landscape and the peoples he encountered. Dablon was born in February 1618 in Dieppe, France. He became a novice in the Society of Jesus in Paris in 1639 and was ordained in 1655. Later that year, he left for Canada to perform missionary work, spreading the faith among the Onondaga Iroquois tribes of New York. After his first winter, Dablon requested permission from his superiors in Quebec to establish a colony among the Iroquois; the effort failed, however, and Dablon moved to Quebec in 1658. His diary from this period details his travels, providing a graphic account of the conditions for such journeys and a precise description of the St. Lawrence River from Montreal to Lake Ontario. It also describes the region’s natural resources and customs of its inhabitants. In 1661, Dablon joined Gabrielle Druillettes on an expedition overland to Hudson Bay to establish a mission among the Cree Indians and to attempt to find the Northwest Passage. The expedition proved unsuccessful in both respects, however, and it was soon abandoned. In 1669, Dablon became superior of the Ottawa mission in the Northwest, headquartered at Sault Ste. Marie. In Michigan, Dablon and Claude Allouez established the Mission of the Holy Cross at La Pointe. From his base at Sault Ste. Marie, Dablon oversaw the activities of Allouez and Jacques Marquette. In 1670, Dablon and Allouez undertook an expedition in Wisconsin, exploring Lake Superior and Green Bay. Dablon documented his journey rigorously, providing details of the geography of the region and describing the copper mines and resources of what is now Wisconsin. The information collected on this journey was used to construct a map depicting Lake Superior and parts of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. American geographers refer to this map as the Carte des Jésuites. It was remarkably exact for its time. Dablon served as superior general of the Jesuits in Canada from 1671 to 1680 and from 1686 to 1693. Under his direction, missionary outposts were established among many Canadian and Midwestern tribes, including the Huron, Illinois, Algonquin, and Iroquois. He appointed Marquette to Louis Jolliet’s 1673 expedition to the Mississippi River and edited Marquette’s account of the journey. He also edited Marquette’s

account of his 1674–1675 expedition to the Illinois River. From 1655 to 1672, Dablon worked on the remaining chapters of The Jesuit Relations, a seventy-three-volume library of perspectives on Native North America. His contributions are exceptionally valuable, providing comprehensive descriptions of previously unknown places and people. He wrote the Relations of 1672, the last of those volumes published in the seventeenth century, as well as further, annual reports from 1673 to 1679, which remained unpublished for two centuries. Dablon died in Quebec in May 1697. Eric Martone

Sources Crouse, Nellis Maynard. Contributions of the Canadian Jesuits to the Geographical Knowledge of New France, 1632–1675. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Publications, 1924. Greer, Allan, ed. The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America. London: Macmillan, 2000.

D E L I S L E , G U I L L AU M E (1675–1726)

G

uillaume Delisle was a French geographer and cartographer whose innovations in the latter field led to his reputation as one of the founders of modern mapmaking. Delisle’s maps were distinguished by his scientific approach and attention to topographic detail. Delisle was born in Paris in 1675. He and his brother, Joseph-Nicolas, were interested in science even as young boys. Their father, Claude, studied law and was a cartographer and teacher of geography and history before becoming royal censor. Delisle studied under the great astronomer Jean Dominique Cassini and learned how to fix accurate positions using astronomical observation to reduce errors in determining lines of longitude. Delisle produced nearly 100 maps, leaving unknown areas blank. Mapmakers of the period were uncertain how to incorporate recent astronomical advances, but Delisle realized that new methods of measuring by scale and marking places enhanced the accuracy of cartographic representation. He supplemented his

94 Section 2: Delisle, Guillaume astronomical information by examining the accounts of contemporary explorers and previous maps. Using a fixed method, Delisle worked on mapping each continent and several countries. In disputed areas, he made reference notes, the majority of which were published in the writings of the Académie des Sciences. In addition to his astronomical corrections, Delisle focused on topography and the orthography of the names. His 1700 world map was the most accurate depiction of the globe as allowed by the geographic information of the time. It was the first map to remove the errors of Ptolemy. Delisle’s maps of the Americas contained a number of innovations, including the first naming of Texas, the first correct delineation of the Mississippi River Valley, the first correct longitudes of America, and the inclusion of California as a contiguous landmass rather than an island. His maps of New France, the Carte du Canada ou de la Novelle France (Map of Canada or New France, 1703) and Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi (Map of Louisiana, 1718), were among his best and most influential. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, explorers and geographers perpetuated the belief in a yet-to-be-discovered water passage that would enable easier access between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, providing a direct Northwest Passage to the East Indies. Geographers in the mid-seventeenth century developed the notion of a Western Sea located north of California. Delisle first imagined the Western Sea on a hand-drawn globe made in 1699. In the mideighteenth century, Philippe Buache relied on the findings of Vitus Bering’s voyage to complete the depiction of the Western Sea left unfinished by Delisle. The cartographic myth of a Western Sea ended in 1787 after the explorations of the north Pacific undertaken by the Comte de La Pérouse. Eric Martone

Sources Konvitz, Josef. Cartography in France, 1660–1848: Science, Engineering, and Statecraft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Tooley, R.V. Map Making in France from the Sixteenth Century to the Eighteenth Century. London: Butler and Tanner, 1952.

D U N B A R -H U N T E R E X P E D I T I O N (1804–1805) The Dunbar-Hunter Expedition was, along with the Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, and SparksCustis expeditions, the means by which Americans, in particular President Thomas Jefferson, sought information about the Louisiana Territory, acquired in 1803 from France. William Dunbar was a Southern plantation owner and one of the most accomplished botanists in the South. His fellow member of the American Philosophical Society, President Jefferson, requested that Dunbar journey up the rivers that formed the southern boundary of the Louisiana Territory with Spain. Dunbar, however, was reluctant to ascend the Arkansas because of stories of Native American resistance; although he tried to ascend the Red River, the Spanish government informed the Americans that they would resist such attempts. So Dunbar resolved to travel the Ouachita River to the Hot Springs. Accompanying Dunbar was Dr. George Hunter and about a dozen soldiers. The journey took three months, from October 1804 to January 1805. The explorers ascended the Mississippi to the Red River, by which they reached the Black River, which took them to the Ouachita. The soldiers rowed and hauled a heavy keelboat until they reached rapids on the Ouachita, which forced them to adopt a similarly unwieldy keel-less barge. Along the way, Dunbar communicated with hunters and trappers, who turned out to be surprisingly good sources of information as long as one took with a grain of salt a few of their more outlandish stories. Dunbar learned that many of the Native American tribes who traditionally lived east of the Mississippi were increasingly exploring the open lands of the Louisiana Territory. He learned that west of the Hot Springs was a rough, mountainous land largely uninhabited. He heard as well of the notorious activities of the Osage, Comanche, and Apache tribes. Dunbar made detailed observations of the flora and fauna of the Ouachita Valley. A skilled botanist, he preserved specimens of many flowers and plants hitherto unknown to him. He wrote a detailed journal of his findings. He kept

Section 2: Ellsworth, Lincoln 95 track of water and air temperature, latitude, and the precise course of the river. At the Hot Springs, reputed for their healing qualities, Dunbar tested the properties of the water and observed its effects on soldiers and local inhabitants, coming to the conclusion that there were few if any medicinal qualities to the springs. Yet the soil was fertile, the land well watered, the natural productions extensive, the forests awaiting the axe, and the rivers navigable. Dunbar’s report to Jefferson emphasized the future possibilities of this restrictive region of the Louisiana Territory. Russell Lawson

Source Rowland, Eron, ed. Life, Letters, and Papers of William Dunbar of Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland, and Natchez, Mississippi: Pioneer Scientist of the Southern United States. Jackson: Mississippi Historical Society, 1930.

E L L S WO RT H , L I N CO L N (1880–1951) A polar explorer and adventurer, Lincoln Ellsworth led the first aerial crossings of the Arctic and Antarctic. Sir Hubert Wilkins, a friend and fellow polar explorer, described him as boyish, lovable, yet at the same time “vain, petulant, possessive, and with an enjoyment of notoriety.” He was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 12, 1880. Named William Linn after a maternal uncle, he went by his middle name until elementary school, when he began calling himself Lincoln. Upon the death of his mother when he was eight years old, Ellsworth and his sister were sent to live with their paternal grandmother in rural Ohio, near the town of Hudson. After performing poorly in local schools, Ellsworth was placed in a prep school, where he took five years to finish a four-year program. He was accepted at Yale University’s Sheffield Scientific School but flunked out after one year. Two years at Columbia’s School of Mines were more successful; in 1903, he left without a degree, taking a job with a Canadian transcontinental railroad project. Starting out as an axeman on a surveying team, Ellsworth quickly learned enough to

become an assistant surveyor. For most of the next decade, he worked as a surveyor, engineer, and prospector in western Canada and Alaska, roughing it far from the nearest permanent settlement. It was a way of life he valued deeply. Ellsworth studied navigation, surveying, and astronomy at various times at McGill University, the Royal Geographic Society, and the U.S. Geological Survey, hoping to make a career in exploration. He worked for the U.S. Biological Survey for several years, traveling on a series of biological expeditions for which he was a specimen hunter and camp boss. During World War I, Ellsworth became an ambulance driver in Europe. He left that service to train as a pilot for the French Air Force. His age and general health kept him from flying active missions, however, and he was reassigned. Due to his private means and family ties, Ellsworth was able to arrange financing for several expeditions on which he would not otherwise have been likely to participate. In 1924, he was one of the leaders of an expedition in Peru sponsored by Johns Hopkins University. The following year, along with the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, Ellsworth planned a flight from Spitsbergen, Norway, to Alaska, taking them over the North Pole. The polar flight was the great adventure of Ellsworth’s life. On May 21, 1925, the adventurers and their crews left Norway in two seaplanes, only to be forced down by engine failure on Amundsen’s plane when they were more than 100 miles short of the North Pole. Ellsworth’s plane was damaged beyond repair during the landing. As Ellsworth’s group made their way across the ice to Amundsen’s party, the pilot and mechanic fell through the ice into the polar sea, but Ellsworth was able to rescue them. Repairing Amundsen’s plane and building an ice ramp for takeoff required the combined labor of the entire crew for well over three weeks, a period during which they were out of contact with the outside world. On June 15, they flew to safety. Ellsworth, who had inherited over a million dollars and considerable real estate in the United States and Europe, was able to finance a number of expeditions in subsequent years. In the spring of 1926, Amundsen and Ellsworth set out in the Norge, a dirigible they had purchased from the Italian government, for another polar expedition.

96 Section 2: Ellsworth, Lincoln On May 12, 1926, Ellsworth’s forty-sixth birthday, Ellsworth and Amundsen flew over the North Pole. Many believe they were the first humans to reach it. (Although Richard E. Byrd claimed to have flown over the pole on May 9, later analysis of Byrd’s records cast doubt on the success of his mission.) Ellsworth and Amundsen’s achievement included a visual survey of the polar region from Spitsbergen to Alaska, proving once and for all that there was no land in the high polar region. The U.S. Congress awarded Ellsworth a special gold medal for his two polar flights. During the 1930s, Ellsworth turned his attention to Antarctica. He made repeated efforts to fly across an unexplored section of the continent, from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Ice Shelf, finally achieving his goal in November 1935. Ellsworth claimed more than 300,000 square miles (777,000 square kilometers) of territory for the United States. He named the area James W. Ellsworth Land, after his father. He also named numerous geographic features. In 1939, he traversed the Antarctic continent from the Indian Ocean and claimed another 77,000 square miles (199,000 square kilometers). Ellsworth died in New York City on May 26, 1951, and was buried in the family plot in Hudson, Ohio. Ellsworth’s wealth had made his achievements possible but cast doubt on his personal abilities. He was perceived by some as having purchased his fame. David Lonergan

Sources Herbert, Wally. The Noose of Laurels: Robert E. Peary and the Race to the North Pole. New York: Atheneum, 1989. Malaurie, Jean. Ultima Thule: Explorers and Natives in the Polar North. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003. Rodgers, Eugene. Beyond the Barrier: The Story of Byrd’s First Expedition to Antarctica. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990.

F R É M O N T, J O H N C H A R L E S (1813–1890) John Charles Frémont, known as “the Pathfinder,” traversed more of the American West than any other government-sponsored nineteenth-century explorer.

Soldier, explorer, and politician John C. Frémont—“The Pathfinder”—is shown planting the American flag on what became known as Frémont Peak in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming in 1842. He led major Western expeditions throughout the 1840s. (MPI/Hulton Archive/ Getty Images)

Born in Savannah, Georgia, on January 21, 1813, to a French Canadian father and an upperclass Virginian mother, Frémont attended the College of Charleston. The prominent South Carolina politician Joel R. Poinsett secured his appointment as a mathematics instructor aboard the USS Natchez. Returning home after two years of sailing South American waters, Frémont worked on a railway survey through the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina and on a reconnaissance in Georgia for the government’s removal of the Cherokee. When Poinsett became secretary of war in 1837, he commissioned Frémont as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers and assigned him to assist the world-renowned French geographer Jean-Nicolas Nicollet in surveying the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Among Frémont’s colleagues in the nation’s capital who advocated westward expansion was Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton. Frémont married Benton’s daughter, Jessie, who became his invaluable writing partner. Her father became one of Frémont’s strongest advocates in the U.S. Congress. In 1842, Senator Benton helped arrange for his son-in-law to lead twenty-five men on a four-month journey to the Wind River chain

Section 2: Glenn, John 97 of the Rocky Mountains to survey the region of the nascent Oregon Trail. Frémont’s Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains fascinated the American public. The story of Frémont raising the American flag on what became known as the Frémont Peak (13,745 feet) in Wyoming and the actions of his guide, Christopher “Kit” Carson, would become legendary. In 1843, Frémont set out again with approximately forty men to survey the Columbia River. The final stop on the Oregon Trail for many was Fort Vancouver in the present-day state of Washington. Frémont ventured south after reaching the fort and crossed the snow-covered Sierra Nevada mountain range into Mexican California. After completing the fourteen-month journey, Frémont wrote his Report of the Exploring Expedition to Oregon and California, which further captivated the public and enticed Americans to head west. Frémont’s account attracted the attention of the Mormons, who made Utah their place of residence. When expansionist President James K. Polk took office in 1845, Frémont was sent back to the Pacific coast. In California, Frémont’s sixtyman expedition joined with the Bear Flag Revolt against the Mexican government and claimed California for the United States. In December 1849, the California legislature selected Frémont to be one of the state’s first two U.S. senators. Frémont became the first presidential candidate of the newly formed Republican Party in 1856, but he lost to Democrat James F. Buchanan. Frémont led two privately funded expeditions in 1848 and 1853 into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico in search of a railroad route. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him a major general in the Union Army. He was chosen by President Rutherford B. Hayes to serve as governor of Arizona Territory from 1878 to 1881. Frémont died in New York City on July 13, 1890. David M. Carletta

Sources Jackson, Donald, and Mary Lee Spence, eds. The Expeditions of John Charles Frémont. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970–1984.

Roberts, David. A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Frémont, and the Claiming of the American West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

GLENN, JOHN (1921– )

F

ighter pilot, astronaut, and politician John Glenn was the first American to orbit Earth. Glenn was born on July 18, 1921, in Cambridge, Ohio. The son of a plumber and car salesman, he grew up in the middle-class suburb of New Concord, Ohio. His love of flying was sparked after a ride in an open-cockpit WACO biplane at the age of eight. He attended Muskingum College in New Concord and graduated in 1941 with a B.S. in engineering. In the winter of 1941, Glenn applied for the Civilian Pilot Training Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce. He received his private pilot’s license on July 1 of that year. In 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Glenn enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. When his orders to report were delayed, he visited a U.S. Navy recruiter and was sworn into the navy. Before leaving for the navy’s preflight school at the University of Iowa, he proposed to his high school sweetheart, Anna Margaret Castor, and they were married on April 6, 1943. During World War II, Glenn flew fifty-nine combat missions in Marine Fighter Squadron 218 on the North China Patrol; he also served in Guam. From 1948 to 1950, he was an instructor at the Advanced Flying Training Center at Corpus Christi, Texas. During the Korean War, he flew sixty-three missions in Marine Fighter Squadron 311 and twenty-seven missions as an exchange pilot for the U.S. Air Force in the F-86 Sabre Jet. After Korea, he attended the Test Pilot School at the Naval Air Training Center in Maryland. In 1957, Glenn set a transcontinental speed record from Los Angeles to New York: 3 hours, 23 minutes, and 8 seconds—21 minutes faster than the previous record. It was the first flight in history to average the supersonic speed of 723 miles per hour. On December 17, 1958, the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk,

98 Section 2: Glenn, John

John Glenn, one of the original Mercury astronauts, boards the Friendship 7 space capsule on February 20, 1962, before becoming the first American to orbit Earth. He circled the globe three times in five hours. (NASA/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced plans for the first manned space mission, Project Mercury. Volunteering at once, Glenn was accepted on April 6, 1959, and assigned to the NASA Space Task Group at the Langley Research Center in Virginia. The task group was later moved to Houston and became part of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center in 1962. On February 20, 1962, Glenn flew on the Mercury Atlas-6 spacecraft Friendship 7 on the first manned orbital mission for the United States. The spacecraft completed three Earth orbits, reaching a maximum velocity of 17,500 miles per hour and a maximum altitude of 162 miles. Glenn retired from the Marine Corps with the rank of colonel in 1965 and worked as a business executive until entering politics as a Democratic senator from Ohio in 1974. He returned to space in 1998 aboard the space shut-

tle Discovery. Among the mission’s research projects were the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope and experiments on the aging process. After leaving the Senate in 1999, he founded the John Glenn Institute for Public Service at Ohio State University, which opened in 2005. Glenn has received honorary doctorates from Muskingum College and nine other universities. His commendations include six Distinguished Flying Crosses, the Air Medal with eighteen clusters, the Marine Corps Astronaut Medal, the NASA Service Medal, and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. Kathleen Simonton

Sources Glenn, John. John Glenn: A Memoir. New York: Bantam, 1999. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. http://www. nasa.gov.

Section 2: Hakluyt, Richard 99

G O S N O L D , B A R T H O LO M E W (1572–1607) The English explorer and colonist Bartholomew Gosnold lived a short but eventful life. He was one of the first Europeans to visit the area that would come to be called New England and a leader in the establishment of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. Gosnold was born in 1572 in Otley, Suffolk, England. He undertook two voyages to the New World: the first in 1602, under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton; the second in 1606, under the auspices of the Virginia Company. His role in the first voyage was as commander of the Concord, in which he explored the coast of North America from Maine to Narrangansett Bay. He encountered friendly Native Americans who, boarding the ship from appropriated Basque sailing vessels, provided geographical details of the coast. Gosnold and his company of twenty-three traversed Cape Cod, so named by Gosnold because of the abundant cod stocks that provided sustenance. Gosnold also named the Elizabeth Islands and Martha’s Vineyard, the latter after his deceased daughter. The company disembarked on one of the Elizabeth Islands of Buzzards Bay known as Cuttyhunk, on which they built a fort. The journals of one of the company’s recorders, John Brereton, provide descriptions of this new land: “This island is full of high timbered Oakes, their leaves thrise so broad as ours; Cedars, straight and tall; Beech, Elme, hollie, Walnut trees in abundance.” Assisted by natives, the company harvested white cedar trees and dug for the roots of the sassafras, a native deciduous tree of the laurel family with healing properties. Furs were also traded, though animosity between the English and the Native Americans quickly developed, and the former departed within a month of landing. On the company’s return to England, the cargo of the Concord was requisitioned by Walter Raleigh on the grounds that Gosnold had illegally entered his lands. Gosnold’s voyage thus proved to be financially imprudent, but it is his-

torically significant, because it established an English presence in the New World. Gosnold’s second voyage in 1606 involved three ships and a total company of about 150. Gosnold commanded the God Speed, and the company included John Smith, later appointed one of seven members of the ruling council of Jamestown, the earliest English settlement in North America. The Jamestown colony, named after King James I, was located on a promontory in the James River. The site was chosen after much exploration of the valley and in accordance with instructions from London—instructions given with no knowledge of local conditions. The location’s main advantage was that at high tide it was an island that made it safe from attack by natives; it was also shielded from foul weather. The location was not generally favored by the company, and Gosnold himself objected forcefully; however, their opinion was overridden. Skirmishes with local tribes, inadequate supplies, and health problems were among the tribulations the settlers faced, and Gosnold paid a heavy price: He succumbed to malaria and died in Jamestown on August 22, 1607, barely three months after its founding. Early in 2003, archeologists reported the discovery of a grave at Jamestown Fort that may contain Gosnold’s remains. A.M. Mannion

Source Gookin, Warner F. Bartholomew Gosnold: Discoverer and Planter. North Haven, CT: Archon, 1963.

H A K L U Y T, R I C H A R D (1551–1616) Although he never journeyed to America, the English geographer and clergyman Richard Hakluyt was an influential advocate of New World exploration whose promotional writings and collections of traveler’s accounts ensured him a preeminent role in the settlement of North America and in early American science. His efforts directly influenced the endeavors of Thomas Hariot, Walter Raleigh, Samuel Purchas,

100 Section 2: Hakluyt, Richard John Smith, Bartholomew Gosnold, and many other English explorers and ad hoc scientists of North America. Hakluyt spent his adult life as an Anglican priest in Suffolk, Bristol, and London, engaging in the scientific and historical pursuits that so many clergy of his time found consistent with their calling. He knew many of the great Elizabethan adventurers of the late sixteenth century, including Walter Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert, Martin Frobisher, John Davis, Thomas Hariot, John White, and Francis Drake. His Discourse on Western Planting (1584), written for Queen Elizabeth I, had a major impact on Elizabethan scientific pursuits across the Atlantic. Hakluyt argued that colonies in North America would greatly increase the wealth and power of the realm. Adventurers would have to discover the best places to establish colonies, he wrote, where fresh water, good harbors, defensible fortifications, and plentiful flora and fauna could be utilized. For said reason, scientist Thomas Hariot accompanied the expedition to Roanoke in 1586. His Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia was included in Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation was published in 1588–1590. It is a voluminous collection of accounts by English explorers that provided contemporaries with important firsthand observations on the natural environment and peoples of North America as well as other lands. In addition to Hariot’s Briefe and True Report, Hakluyt included the testimonial of Gerardus Mercator that English voyages helped him to revise the map of the world, which was so influential to Elizabethan geographers. Also appearing in the collection were essays on the elusive Northwest Passage, sought after by the likes of Humphrey Gilbert, Martin Frobisher, and John Davis. Frobisher’s accounts of his second and third voyages in search of the Northwest Passage, for example, included descriptions of the customs of the native Inuit tribes. Humphrey Gilbert’s 1583 voyage provided information on the birds and animals of Newfoundland and other Canadian locales: Upon the land divers sorts of hawks, as falcons, and others by report: partridges most plentiful

larger than ours, grey and white of colour, and rough footed like doves, which our men after one fight did kill with cudgels, they were so fat and unable to fly. Birds some like blackbirds, linnets, canary birds, and other very small. Beast of sundry kinds, red deer, buffaloes or a beast, as it seemeth by the track and foot very large in manner of an ox. Bears, ounces or leopards, some greater and some lesser, wolves, foxes, which to the northward a little further are black, whose fur is esteemed in some countries of Europe very rich. Otters, beavers, martens: and in the opinion of most men that saw it, the general had brought unto him a sable alive. We could not observe the hundredth part of creatures in those uninhabited lands: but these mentioned may induce us to glorify the magnificent God, who hath superabundantly replenished the earth with creatures serving for the use of man.

John Davis’s voyages up the Davis Strait (between Baffin Island and Greenland) during the 1580s provided further information on the Inuits, such as samples of their language, which “they pronounce . . . very hollow, and deep in the throat.” Davis reported on “a fly which is called mosquito, for they did sting grievously.” Davis, like many explorers whose descriptions Hakluyt included in his Principal Navigations, commented on the incredible plenty of fish, particularly cod, found in Atlantic coastal waters. Russell Lawson

Source Hakluyt, Richard. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation. 1588–1590. Reprint ed., ed. Jack Beeching. London: Penguin, 1972.

H E N N E P I N , LO U I S (1640–1701) The Franciscan monk Louis Hennepin was a missionary whose peregrinations took him throughout the Great Lakes region and upper Mississippi River in the latter decades of the seventeenth century. His Description of Louisiana (1683) and A New Discovery of a Vast County in America (1698), which included “A Map of a Large Country Newly discovered in the North

Section 2: Humboldt, Alexander von 101 America situated between New Mexico and the Frozen Sea,” were for many years standard accounts of the Louisiana Territory used by explorers and scientists to negotiate the vast wilderness of America from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Hennepin arrived in America around or after 1675, joining the great French explorer RenéRobert Cavelier de La Salle on journeys to Niagara Falls, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, and Lake Michigan. In 1678, they made their way up the St. Joseph River and then made a short portage to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi. Hennepin joined two voyageurs to reconnoiter the Mississippi. They were stopped by a band of Sioux warriors and forced to journey up the Mississippi with the natives on their way back to the Sioux encampment. Hennepin stayed with the Sioux for four months before he was allowed to depart under the authority of Sieur Du Luth, a French explorer. Hennepin’s experiences turned him into an ad hoc scientist. In Description of Louisiana, he provided a limited assessment of the northern part of the region. He named and described the Falls of St. Anthony. He discussed the various Indian tribes, noting in fairly objective fashion their manners, customs, strengths, and limitations. He was impressed by the Indian women, who were strong and able to endure much more suffering than the typical French male. Hennepin claimed that Sioux women who gave birth during the night would be seen doing their daily round of chores the next day with few ill effects. The Sioux warriors could be brutal, and Hennepin despised their hygiene, but he marveled at their ability to survive in the daunting wilderness. The use of the calumet or peace pipe particularly fascinated Hennepin, who described this Indian custom in depth, noting its significance as a sign of piety, hospitality, and peace. Hennepin believed that the calumet allowed the explorer to travel through Louisiana with some degree of safety. His observations on Niagara Falls were the first published descriptions in American travel literature. Hennepin’s geography of America was significantly erroneous in one key respect: He placed the Mississippi River too far west and imagined the source of the Missouri River near the “Great River of the West,” a nonexistent waterway that

fueled the belief that the portage from the former to the latter was just a few miles—and that hence a Northwest Passage through North America did indeed exist. Explorers for the next century and more attempted to locate Hennepin’s imaginary route. Not until the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–1806 and their discovery of the extent of the Continental Divide and the Rocky Mountains was Hennepin’s theory laid to rest. Russell Lawson

Sources Hennepin, Louis. Description of Louisiana. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938. Lawson, Russell. “Science and Medicine.” In American Eras: The Colonial Era, 1600–1754, ed. Jessica Kross. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

H U M B O L D T, A L E X A N D E R (1769–1859)

VON

Born in Berlin, Germany, to a wealthy aristocratic family on September 14, 1769, Alexander von Humboldt was perhaps the greatest naturalist of the early nineteenth century. His youth was spent traveling throughout Europe, where he acquired an extensive scientific education in subjects as diverse as geology, mining, botany, geophysics, and cartography. In 1790, he was witness to the turbulent early days of the French Revolution in Paris, and it was there that he developed his lifelong dedication to liberal politics and humanitarianism. During his life, he was a consistent critic of slavery, anti-Semitism, and racism. In 1799, Humboldt received permission from the Spanish government to travel throughout the Spanish possessions in the New World, and he left Europe on the scientific expedition to America for which he remains best known. Accompanied by the French botanist Aimé Bonpland, Humboldt spent much of the next five years mapping, measuring, drawing, and collecting plants in the wild mountains, jungles, and deserts of South America and Mexico. In 1804, he traveled from Havana, Cuba, to Philadelphia, then the largest city in the United States. There, he was elected to the American

102 Section 2: Humboldt, Alexander von

German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt made major contributions to such diverse fields as geography, geology, geophysics, climatology, and botany. He visited the United States in 1804 after a five-year expedition to South and Central America. (Library of Congress, LCUSZ62–110637)

Philosophical Society, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, and met with the eminent American doctor Benjamin Rush, with whom he discussed the medical properties of cinchona bark. Humboldt then traveled to the half-constructed city of Washington, D.C., and became an acquaintance of President Thomas Jefferson, who invited Humboldt to stay at his Washington residence. At the request of Jefferson, Humboldt provided the secretary of state and future president James Madison with access to his extensive maps and measurements of Spanish Mexico, which, after the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, shared an undefined and uneasy boundary with the United States. Humboldt returned to Europe in 1804. With the exception of an expedition to Siberia in 1829, he spent the remainder of his life on the Continent, especially in Paris and Berlin. There, he compiled dozens of scientific, historical, literary, and autobiographical works in both German and French, in-

cluding his famous work on Mexico, Political Essay on New Spain (1805–1834), and his popular Cosmos (1845–1862; the fifth volume was published after his death) and Aspects of Nature (1849), which drew heavily on data he had compiled in America. Humboldt’s scientific works are characterized by the use of data from what are now generally conceived of as independent fields of inquiry— such as meteorology, oceanography, geology, economics, linguistics, and ethnology—which he combined in an attempt to encompass the natural and human world in its entirety. While Humboldt never made a great scientific or geographical discovery per se, he provided European and American scientists with a mass of precise data and an example of rigorous scientific inquiry into nature that supplanted the speculative methods of many earlier writers. His evenhanded treatment of American nature, economic wealth, and inhabitants fostered nationalism and was used to justify colonial demands for independence from Spain. Perhaps the greatest praise was bestowed on him by the man who would supplant him as a naturalist, Charles Darwin, who declared Humboldt “the greatest scientific traveler who ever lived.” Evan Widders

Sources Botting, Douglas. Humboldt and the Cosmos. New York: Harper and Row, 1973. von Hagen, Victor. South America Called Them: Explorations of the Great Naturalists: La Condamine, Humboldt, Darwin, and Spruce. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1955.

L AW S O N , J O H N (1674–1711) John Lawson was a botanist and explorer of the Carolinas during the early eighteenth century. There is no reliable information on his early life in England, although his later career implies that he was well educated. By his own account, when Lawson thought about setting out to see the world in 1700, he followed the advice of an acquaintance to visit the Carolina colony in North America. In late August of that year, he arrived at Charles Town in what would one day be the state of South Carolina.

Section 2: Lescarbot, Marc 103 The following December 28, he set out with several companions on a 550 mile (885 km) journey through the interior. Their exploration took them, in the course of eight weeks, up the Santee and Wateree rivers, then northeast to where the village of Hillsborough would be located in present-day North Carolina, and finally back to the coast at Pamlico Sound. Living off the land and accepting the hospitality of friendly natives, Lawson collected the vocabularies of American Indian languages, kept notes on the native peoples’ customs, and recorded detailed observations about the flora and fauna he observed along the way. His natural history notes were accurate, and his accounts of natives were sympathetic. At the conclusion of his trip, Lawson settled on the Pamlico River, where he obtained a land grant and took up the profession of surveying, first to demarcate his own holdings and later to determine those of other settlers. When the town of Bath was incorporated in 1705, it is likely that Lawson laid it out; he moved there and served for a time as clerk of the court and public register. Having become a successful planter and fur trader, he also began corresponding with Sir Hans Sloan in England about Carolina’s natural productions. Sometime during the winter of 1708–1709, Lawson sailed for England, taking with him the manuscript he had completed about Carolina. What little is known of his personal life comes from the will he wrote on the eve of his departure. In it, he left his property to Hannah Smith (probably his common-law wife), his daughter Isabella, and the child Hannah was carrying. Lawson’s only book, A New Voyage to Carolina, was published in London in 1709 and has been reprinted several times since. In London, he met the botanist James Petiver, with whom he corresponded during the short remainder of his life, and also Baron Christoph von Graffenried, a Swiss promoter who was seeking a refuge for Swiss and German peasants from the Palatinate. While in London, Lawson also received a commission from the Lords Proprietors of the colony to survey, along with Edward Moseley, Carolina’s disputed northern boundary with Virginia. Because of this assignment, he was identified on the title page of his book as “John Lawson, Gent. Surveyor-General of North-Carolina.”

That winter, Lawson personally escorted across the Atlantic the first group of Palatine refugees, many of whom did not survive the trip. On a portion of the 18,750 acres of land Graffenried had bought, 1,250 of them from Lawson himself, Lawson laid out the town of New Bern at the confluence of the Trent and Neuse rivers. There, Graffenried joined him with another contingent of settlers the following year. After carrying out the survey of the border, Lawson and Graffenried started up the Neuse in September to explore its headwaters. The Tuscarora Indians, resentful of the ever-growing demand of whites for more land, apprehended them at a place called Catechna. Imprisoned in a hut, Graffenried was not an eyewitness to his friend’s death but survived to tell of Lawson’s slaughter in September 1711 by the Tuscarora. Charles Boewe

Sources Lawson, John. New Voyage to Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984. Paschal, Herbert R., Jr. A History of Colonial Bath. Raleigh, NC: Edwards and Broughton, 1955. Stearns, Raymond P. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

L E S C A R B O T, M A R C (1579–ca. 1630) The cartographer and geographer Marc Lescarbot was born in Vervins, in northern France, in 1579. He began his professional life as a lawyer but, after a series of disappointments, took advantage of a contact with the explorer Jean de Biencourt, Seigneur Poutrincourt, to join an expedition leaving La Rochelle aboard the ship Jonas in 1606. On an earlier voyage, in 1604, Poutrincourt had, with the royal-appointed Sieur de Monts and a company of seventy-nine men, founded a settlement on Saint Croix Island, in Acadia (an area of eastern Canada including Nova Scotia), with the primary aim of fur trading. Although this settlement was abandoned, another settlement was established at Port Royal, in presentday Nova Scotia, and it was here that Lescarbot landed in 1606. Poutrincourt was appointed

104 Section 2: Lescarbot, Marc governor, and efforts were made to encourage community development. Lescarbot established successful agriculture and was left in charge of the colony when Poutrincourt went on exploratory missions with Samuel de Champlain. As a member of the “club of good cheer ” created by Champlain, Lescarbot introduced the first theater to Acadia. In November 1606, his play The Theatre of Neptune was performed in the colony. In 1607, however, the entire company abandoned Port Royal and returned to France. Lescarbot resumed his law career early in 1608 and never returned to the New World. Nevertheless, his brief sojourn in New France was highly productive, leading to the publication of his History of New France (1609). Lescarbot’s writings were not supportive of the powerful Jesuit presence in New France, an attitude for which he was briefly imprisoned. Nevertheless, new editions of his book appeared in 1611 and in 1618. Lescarbot’s History of New France provides a wealth of information on the environment and the people he encountered in Acadia. The Native Americans provided firsthand information that Lescarbot, like his contemporary Champlain, valued and exploited. Lescarbot’s account includes not only personal observations of the voyage and the colony but also anecdotes and narratives on earlier explorations in North and South America and the West Indies. The book covers the voyage of Giovanni Verrazzano, an Italian seafarer with French patronage who explored the mid-Atlantic coast of North America almost a century earlier; the French colonies established in Florida; and the exploits of Nicholas de Villegaignon, a French explorer who established a short-lived French presence in the 1550s in the Bay of Guanabara near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as the French competed unsuccessfully with the Portuguese to colonize the area. The third edition also includes “Les Muses de la Nouvelle-France,” poetry Lescarbot wrote during his stay in Acadia. Lescarbot spent 1612–1614 in Switzerland. Through marriage, he inherited the seigneuries of Wiencourt and St. Audebert, near Amiens, the legal affairs of which occupied most of his time. He practiced law for the rest of his life and maintained an interest in New France and its

development. Lescarbot died sometime around 1630. A.M. Mannion

Sources Lescarbot, Marc. History of New France. 3 vols. Trans. W.L. Grant. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1968. Parkman, Francis. The Pioneers of France in the New World. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

LEWIS, MERIWETHER (1774–1809) Meriwether Lewis, a governor of Louisiana, army officer, naturalist, and explorer, achieved everlasting fame as co-leader of the Corps of Discovery, the U.S. Army unit commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to explore the immense Louisiana Territory, purchased from France in 1803. Along with William Clark, Lewis organized the party and led it from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back. Lewis was born on August 18, 1774, in Piedmont, Virginia. His family’s acquaintance with Thomas Jefferson, a near neighbor, had a profound effect on Lewis’s life. He entered the U.S. Army as a private in the force that President Washington sent to put down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. Lewis, born into a planter’s station, had not decided what he wanted to do in life, but military service suited him. When Jefferson’s became president in 1801, Lewis was appointed as his private secretary. Jefferson decided that Lewis’s manifold talents fitted the young man to undertake an assignment the president had in mind: to locate a water route from St. Louis to the Pacific, taking care along the way to record the leading features of the route. The Corps of Discovery was to set out from St. Louis in May 1803 and would not return until August 1806. Before the expedition departed, Jefferson instructed Lewis to make astronomical observations, chart the route, record the leading topographical features and the types of vegetation and animal life he observed, note the mineral deposits he discovered, describe the weather he encountered, and collect samples of everything the Corps could transport. In addition,

Section 2: Lewis and Clark Expedition 105 Lewis was to make contact with and befriend any native peoples he might encounter and seek to establish trade relations. Lewis acquitted himself spectacularly well. He gathered hundreds of specimens of flora and fauna and wrote meticulous descriptions equal to those of a trained scientist. His detailed and extensive diary, although inexplicably interrupted by long periods without entries, provided invaluable information about the journey. At the same time, Lewis was responsible for leading the men who accompanied him, including Clark, whom he insisted on treating as his equal. As part of the reward for his successful mission, Lewis received a plum appointment from President Jefferson in 1806: governor of Louisiana. Lewis proved a poor public official, however, dallying in the East before even taking up the post, then proving impolitic in situations that required tact and finesse. Three years later, on October 11, 1809, Lewis died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds while traveling to Washington, D.C., on official business. Students of his life have argued ever since about the reasons why. Kevin R.C. Gutzman

Sources Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Cutright, Paul Russell. Lewis and Clark, Pioneering Naturalists. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969. Foley, William E. Wilderness Journey: A Life of William Clark. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. Slaughter, Thomas P. Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

LEWIS

AND

CLARK EXPEDITION

The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804–1806 blazed a path across the American continent that continues to grip the national imagination two centuries later. The expedition provided invaluable scientific, geographic, and cultural information that would empower Americans to successfully expand beyond the Mississippi River. The mission to explore the vast reaches of western North America had more chance of failure than it did of success. Few realize that it was

a U.S. Army expedition, manned by soldiers, led by officers, and conducted according to military rules of discipline, arguably the key to its success. The resources, discipline, and leadership that the U.S. Army provided resulted in the completion of an arduous journey to the Pacific coast and back to St. Louis with the loss of only one man in two years.

Jefferson Inspiration for the expedition originated with President Thomas Jefferson, one of the leading scientific thinkers of his day. Jefferson wished to learn more about the terrain, plant and animal life, and Indian tribes that inhabited the vast unknown lands west of the Mississippi River. On January 18, 1803, he asked Congress to appropriate $2,500 for an expedition to gather data on the geography, peoples, and flora and fauna of the unknown lands to the west. A more important political and economic justification emerged later that spring, when Jefferson finalized the Louisiana Purchase, through which the United States acquired vast territory from France. A new objective was to inform Indians and Europeans in the region about the transfer of ownership to the United States. To ensure the success of the expedition, Jefferson sought to combine the resources and talents of both the military and scientific communities. In an era when the United States was still developing its fledgling national institutions, the army had the available manpower and organization needed to promote federal authority in a way that civilians could not. Jefferson also turned to the army, because soldiers possessed the physical toughness and training to handle the unknown terrain, extreme climate, and potential threats that the expedition might encounter. To lead the expedition, Jefferson chose an army officer, Captain Meriwether Lewis, a native Virginian and ardent political supporter of the president who had served as his personal secretary. Lewis also possessed the requisite leadership abilities, survival skills, and an eye for nature, making him an ideal military naturalist and expedition commander. After Congress approved the funds, Jefferson and Lewis began detailed preparations. Jefferson

106 Section 2: Lewis and Clark Expedition

The expedition journals of Lewis and Clark provided extensive descriptions of the topography, ethnology, flora, and fauna of America’s vast new territory between the Mississippi River and Pacific Ocean. Many species had never been seen before by non-natives. (North Wind Picture Archives)

arranged for some of the nation’s leading scientific minds to instruct Lewis in botany and natural history, medicine and anatomy, geology and fossils, and navigation by the stars. He instructed Lewis to explore and map the rivers carefully, to learn all he could about trade routes and traders of the region, and to study every Indian tribe along the way. Finally, Jefferson directed Lewis to describe the geography of the region and bring back samples of plant and animal life.

Corps of Discover y Through the summer of 1803, Lewis called upon the organizational structure of the U.S. Army to

assist him in moving 3,500 pounds of equipment and supplies from Philadelphia to a staging area in Pittsburgh. Because of the complexity of the mission, Lewis requested an assistant, and fellow Virginian William Clark joined the expedition as co-commander. Clark possessed combat experience, had traveled widely, and was a competent cartographer. Although Clark was officially only a second lieutenant of artillery, Lewis insisted on addressing him as “Captain” and ordered his men to do the same. Lewis and Clark then began concerted efforts to recruit military and civilian volunteer contractors from western army posts along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to join the unit, now officially known as the Corps of Discovery. Among the unit’s fifty men were interpreters, hunters, cooks, boatmen, salt makers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and tailors. The men were promised $15 a month in pay, a bonus of 400 acres of prime land, and further rewards based on their discoveries. Arranging proper river transportation was critical. The boats had to carry all the gear and provisions the expedition needed, yet remain light enough to be carried across unexpected shallows. The keelboat design of the time provided such a capability for transporting cargo along shallow inland waterways while being powered by oars, poles, or a sail, depending on wind conditions. Along with a keelboat, the expedition employed two smaller flat-bottom boats, called pirogues, used by French fur traders. Clark experimented with cross-loading the vessels by distributing the placement of food, equipment, and weapons to minimize the loss of critical items in case any of the craft capsized. For defense, the keelboat was equipped with a small cannon mounted on a swivel at the bow. While at their winter quarters, established at Camp River Dubois a few miles above St. Louis, Lewis and Clark instituted tough discipline to prepare the men for the trials ahead. Clark made sure that the men knew their tasks, and any form of insubordination or misbehavior was dealt with firmly. After more than a year of preparation and planning, the Corps of Discovery began its trek up the Missouri River on May 14, 1804. The

Section 2: Lewis and Clark Expedition 107 expedition generally made good time, as the boats averaged a bit more than 1 mile per hour against the strong Missouri current. Because he was the better boatman, Clark usually stayed on the keelboat, while Lewis walked on shore and made his scientific observations. Occasionally, they would rotate and Lewis would catalog specimens while on the keelboat. The expedition had to overcome every navigational hazard the river offered, as well as deal with a variety of physical ills such as dysentery, injury, fever, snakebite, and toothache. As the expedition traveled north, its members became the first Americans to see a number of remarkable species of animal life, including mule deer, prairie dogs, and antelope. On June 26, 1804, the expedition reached the mouth of the Kansas River near present-day Kansas City, and on July 21, some 600 miles from Camp River Dubois, the expedition reached the mouth of the Platte River.

American Indian Encounters The first of many encounters with Native Americans occurred at Council Bluff on August 3, 1804, when Lewis and Clark, in full dress uniform, met with six chiefs of the Oto and Missouri tribes. The explorers soon established a routine for such meetings, which included a full military review of the soldiers, a formal announcement of U.S. sovereignty over the territory, the exchange of gifts, and a demonstration of military technology by the firing of an air gun, brought specifically to awe the Indians. On August 20, 1804, the unit lost Sergeant Charles Floyd, who died from symptoms indicating peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. The unit’s only fatality, Floyd was buried with full military honors near present-day Sioux City, Iowa. The expedition entered Sioux territory at the end of August, first encountering the friendly Yankton Sioux but then meeting the more aggressive Teton Sioux. In the latter encounter, an inadvertent slight resulted in armed confrontation. Soldiers and Sioux warriors faced each other, and a careless action by an individual on either side might have led to the demise of the expedition. In the end, Lewis, Clark, and

the chiefs were able to peacefully resolve the situation. On October 26, the expedition arrived near the home of the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes near the junction of the Knife and Missouri rivers, 1,600 miles from Camp River Dubois. With a population of nearly 4,400, this was the largest concentration of native peoples on the Missouri River. After holding their introductory council with the usual display of military prowess, Lewis decided to winter among the friendly villages. After two months, the men completed construction of Fort Mandan and integrated themselves with American Indian hunting parties and social events, while providing humanitarian assistance. It was here that they met and hired a French Canadian fur trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, as an interpreter. Charbonneau insisted that his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, and their infant son travel with the expedition. On April 6, 1805, Lewis sent ten men back to St. Louis with the keelboat, loaded with numerous scientific specimens. The remaining forty members of the Corps of Discovery departed the Mandan villages in the pirogues and six dugout canoes to head up the Missouri and seek a passage through the Rocky Mountains. Along the way, Lewis continued to record the abundant plants and wildlife. On April 14, Clark saw his first grizzly bear, and on May 10 the men saw their first moose. Finding large game animals also became important, as the men’s original uniforms began to wear out, and they used deerskins to make moccasins and leggings in imitation of the natives. On August 12, 1805, the expedition reached the source of the Missouri River, and the next day an advance party encountered the Shoshones. At council that evening, Sacagawea was there to interpret, and she recognized the Shoshone chief Cameahwait as her brother. The Shoshone agreed to supply the party with horses and guides for the journey over the rugged Bitterroot Mountains along the Lolo Trail to the country of the Nez Perce Indians. By October, the expedition began its journey down the Clearwater, Snake, and Columbia rivers toward the ocean. On November 7, the soldiers spotted a Pacific inlet near the mouth of the Columbia River. As

108 Section 2: Lewis and Clark Expedition soon as they arrived at the ocean, Lewis and Clark began looking for a site to make winter camp. After exploring the region along the Columbia, they built Fort Clatsop, near present-day Astoria, Oregon, and, on December 23, 1805, the expedition took up winter quarters. Life at Fort Clatsop was challenging, as it rained every day. The men were constantly wet and cold, and their clothes rotted off their backs. Lewis spent much of his time writing in his journal about botanical, ethnological, meteorological, and zoological topics. Clark, meanwhile, completed the first map ever made of the land between North Dakota and the Pacific coast.

Return to St. Louis On March 23, 1806, the Corps of Discovery left Fort Clatsop to return home. Despite heavy spring snow in the Rocky Mountains, they managed about 26 miles per day. On the eastern slopes, Lewis and Clark split their command into four groups to cover unexplored terrain, establish good relations with the Blackfoot Indians, and make contact with British traders and offer them a role in the American-dominated trading system. After a narrow escape from the Blackfeet in which two Indians were killed, Lewis reunited the Corps of Discovery forty days later at the juncture of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers. On August 14, the expedition reached the Mandan villages, where they bid farewell to the Charbonneau family and proceeded down the Missouri River. On September 23, 1806, the expedition arrived at St. Louis to the cheers of crowds lining the riverfront. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was a demonstration of human physical, intellectual, and scientific achievement that covered almost 8,000 miles in two years, four months, and ten days. It strengthened the U.S. claim to the Pacific Northwest and helped open the West to commerce and settlement. Lewis and Clark kept detailed journals and brought back invaluable geographic and scientific data, including 178 new plants and 122 previously unknown species and subspecies of animals. Steven J. Rauch

Sources Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Jackson, Donald. Thomas Jefferson and the Stony Mountains: Exploring the West from Monticello. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. Rhonda, James P. Lewis and Clark Among the Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.

LITTLE, DANIEL (1724–1802) A clergyman, naturalist, and explorer, Daniel Little was a native of Massachusetts who spent most of his life in Maine, ministering to the fishing community at Kennebunkport. He was privately educated and not a great thinker, but on numerous occasions he journeyed to the Penobscot and St. Johns river valleys as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. His dual purpose was to spread the gospel and to study the local Native Americans, learn their language, analyze their customs, and make collections of the natural productions of this region of northern Maine. Little made his mark in particular as a scientific explorer. He was one of the organizers of the Belknap-Cutler Expedition to the White Mountains in 1784, having long desired to penetrate this mountain wilderness. Little kept a journal— a brief account of the geography of the mountains and personal observations made during the ascent of Mount Washington—that is still useful in re-creating the journey. (The manuscript is found at the Brick Store Museum of Kennebunkport, Maine.) Another of Little’s manuscripts (now held at the Massachusetts Historical Society), Minutes of the Progressive Growth, and Maturity of the Most Useful Vegetables at Penobscot, &c., contains his observations about the Penobscot tribe and the fertile soil of the Penobscot Valley. It was one of the first assessments of the natural history of the Penobscot Valley from Penobscot Bay to the American Indian settlement at Oldtown. Little journeyed to the region on numerous occasions from the 1770s until shortly before his death in 1802. He would hold church services

Section 2: Long, Stephen 109 and baptisms in barns for the white settlers, who had rarely seen his ilk. To better instruct the native peoples in the gospel, Little learned the Penobscot dialect. Of the Penobscot, he noted that “the Children of this Tribe [are] numerous. They appear very easy and contented. No signs of Envy, only grateful and Sometimes a little gay.” Elsewhere, he wrote of the natural surroundings: Passing thro corridor adjoining to Penobscot Bay in Month of June I observed a Young Growth of Oaks and maples for Several Acres together which . . . upon Examination found Worms who were just finishing their Harvest. The People say they are hatched from the Eggs of a Caterpillar which are laid on the Smooth Bark of trees in the month of Sept to which they adhere and are hatched by the Heat of the Sun, the May following. They are one Inch in length, of a dark brown Colour. The Leaves of other Trees adjoining and intermixed, remains untouched, in full Verdure.

According to one of Little’s biographers, he “was one of a lively cast of mind. His thoughts sprung and flowed with great quickness; and it was his own observation of himself, that his first thoughts were best; that they were not ordinarily ripened and improved, but rather perplexed, by pondering and deliberation. He had a pregnant invention, a lively fancy, a readiness and fluency of expression, which scarce ever was seen to faulter.” Known among his acquaintances as a polymath, Little was conversant in a variety of disciplines, including natural history, chemistry, and medicine. His curiosity and versatile mind were evident in his interest in the manufacture of steel, about which he contributed a treatise to the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences—even if his efforts in steel production proved abortive. Russell Lawson

Sources Lawson, Russell M. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002. Little, Daniel. Minutes of the Progressive Growth, and Maturity of the Most Useful Vegetables at Penobscot, &c. Belknap Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

LO N G , S T E P H E N (1784–1864) Most often remembered for leading the controversial 1819–1820 Western expedition that came to bear his name, Stephen Harriman Long had a distinguished career as a U.S. Army explorer, surveyor, and topographical engineer. Among many other endeavors of note, he served as consulting engineer for several pioneering railroad companies. This work, in turn, led to his compilation and publication of the Rail Road Manual (1829), the nascent industry’s standard reference guide on the design of gradients and curves. Born into a large New Hampshire family on December 30, 1784, Long graduated from Dartmouth College in 1809. He taught public school until taking a position in 1814 as professor of mathematics at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York, the only institution in early nineteenth-century America offering full professional training in engineering. The academy not only supplied the nation’s armed forces with skilled technicians for the construction of defensive fortifications but it was also the de facto training ground for the nation’s first generation of civil engineers, particularly after Congress in 1824 authorized the use of military officers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for interstate transportation infrastructure projects. Over the succeeding decades, West Point engineers such as Long could be found working on any number of projects across the nation, from river and harbor improvements, to bridge building and surveying for canal and railroad projects. While at the academy, Long served as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and, in 1816, he received a brevet commission as major in the Corps of Topographical Engineers. The following year, he was sent westward to survey strategic locations for defensive works on the upper reaches of the Mississippi River. Despite the recent defeat of England in the War of 1812, Western strong points were deemed necessary as a counterbalance to the continued British influence in the trans-Mississippi West, especially by the Hudson Bay Company of Canada, which competed for the lucrative fur trade.

110 Section 2: Long, Stephen A similar rationale explained the next Western trek in which Major Long figured prominently, the ill-fated Yellowstone Expedition of 1819–1820. Conceived by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, and initially under the command of Colonel Henry Atkinson, the Yellowstone Expedition was expected to make a significant display of American force (the original plan called for more than 1,000 troops) on the Upper Missouri River, thereby warning away the British and their native allies in the region. Frequent delays and sickness in the ranks, however, plagued the expedition from the start, and when a financial panic swept the country in 1819, Congress abruptly cut funding for the enterprise. Endeavoring to salvage something from the debacle, Calhoun ordered Long and a small party of twenty soldiers from the disbanded Yellowstone group to proceed overland from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains. The primary goal was to find the sources of three tributaries of the Missouri—the Arkansas, Platte, and Red rivers—then to descend and chart the Red River (considered the southern boundary of the Louisiana Purchase) on their return voyage. This new Long Expedition was also charged with assessing, both in scientific and in economic terms, the natural resources of the prairie regions through which they passed. The venture included among its ranks the naturalists Thomas Say, Edwin James, and Titian Peale, in addition to the multitalented Long. The expedition never located the headwaters of the three rivers. Indeed, its leader chose to descend the wrong river on the return journey, leaving the strategically important Red River to be charted by later parties. Moreover, many of the expedition’s scientific notes and supplies were lost when three soldiers deserted, never to be heard from again. Nonetheless, enough information remained from the venture to make a sizable contribution to the nation’s scientific knowledge of the Native American populations and the flora and fauna of the short-grass prairies stretching eastward from the Rockies. Long’s able mapmaker, Lieutenant William H. Smith, greatly improved the cartographic representation of the trans-Mississippi West. At the same time, the publications and

commentary produced by the expedition did much to perpetuate the myth that the lands between the Missouri and the Rockies, and extending far to the south, were a “Great American Desert” (a prominent phrase on Smith’s map of the region) unable to support agriculture, grazing, and therefore settlement. In any event, the controversies surrounding the two expeditions did not significantly affect Long’s career. Soon after the end of his Red River venture, the War Department sent him westward again (1823), this time to reconnoiter the natural resources and supplement the meager topographical knowledge of the territories later to comprise the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota. On this journey, Long and his small staff surveyed and marked part of the boundary line with Canada west of the Great Lakes, then proceeded on the return trip to assay the enormous potential of Michigan’s mineral deposits, particularly copper. Still officially an officer, Long spent most of the remaining decades of his career as a consulting engineer for various railroad enterprises. From 1827 to 1830, he worked with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as it attempted to surmount the Allegheny barrier en route to the terminus of its main line at Wheeling on the Ohio River. He then served in a similar capacity in Georgia and Tennessee before moving on to the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, where he worked from 1834 to 1837. Long’s extensive railroad experience provided materials for several treatises on railroad engineering, including the pathbreaking Rail Road Manual. In 1856, Long was called back to active military service to supervise improvements to navigation on the Mississippi. As a consequence, he moved his home to Alton, Illinois, where four of his brothers had already settled. When the U.S. Civil War broke out in 1861, Long was recalled to Washington to serve as commander of the Topographical Engineers with the rank of colonel. Two years later, after his command was merged back into the Corps of Engineers, Long retired from the army. He returned to his home in Alton, where he died on September 4, 1864. Jacob Jones

Section 2: Morse, Jedidiah 111 Sources Benson, Maxine, ed. From Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains: Major Stephen Long’s Expedition, 1819–1820. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1988. Dillon, Richard H. “Stephen Long’s Great American Desert.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 111:2 (1967): 93–108. Nichols, Roger L., and Patrick L. Halley. Stephen Long and American Frontier Exploration. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1980. Schubert, Frank N. Vanguard of Expansion: Army Engineers in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1819–1879. Washington, DC: Army Corps of Engineers, 1980. Shallat, Todd. “Building Waterways, 1802–1861: Science and the United States Army in Early Public Works.” Technology and Culture 31:1 (1990): 18–50. Wood, Richard G. Stephen Harriman Long, 1784–1864: Army Engineer, Explorer, Inventor. Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1966.

MORSE, JEDIDIAH (1761–1826) The Reverend Jedidiah Morse, a native of Connecticut who was educated at Yale College and a Congregational minister, is regarded as the first true geographer in America as well as an ethnographer of note. At the conclusion of the American Revolution, Morse decided to write a geography of America for use in schools. The resulting book, Geography Made Easy (1784), went through many editions, encouraging Morse to pen the more extensive American Geography in 1789, the same year that he became pastor to the First Parish at Charlestown, Massachusetts. He later produced The American Universal Geography (1793), Elements of Geography (1797), and several gazetteers. In all of these works, he relied on information gleaned from his own travels, other published works, and letters from friends to describe the peoples, landscapes, and natural products of the new American republic. Morse’s correspondents, experts in the geography of specific regions, included Jeremy Belknap, Manasseh Cutler, Ebenezer Hazard, Noah Webster, and Christoph Ebeling. Morse was a staunch orthodox Congregational minister who opposed Unitarians and Universalists—liberal Christians who supported

their beliefs in a unified God (rather than a trinitarian God) and universal salvation with new theories that suggested the biblical accounts of the creation of Earth were inaccurate. Morse staunchly defended the theory that Earth’s land formations were the result of the receding waters of the Great Flood as recounted in Genesis. He was indefatigable in his attacks on those who argued that Earth was much older and that land formations were the result of shifts in the planet’s crust and the cooling of volcanic rock. Morse also made his mark in American science with his studies of Native American cultures. A member of the Scots Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, he and his friend the Reverend Jeremy Belknap traveled to upstate New York in 1796 to assess the success or failure of missionary efforts with two desperately poor tribes, the Oneida and Mohekunuh. Belknap and Morse’s report was published in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1798. In it, they combined sensitive analyses of native culture with condemnations of the moral degradation of the tribes. Years later, in 1820, Morse journeyed with his son to the Great Lakes region for a similar purpose. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun had commissioned him to observe the conditions of the region’s native peoples and to report on the progress, or lack thereof, in “civilizing” the American Indians. Morse provided an extensive account of Indian cultures, customs, and demographics in his Report to the Secretary of War of the United States, on Indian Affairs (1822). Called the “father of American geography,” Jedidiah Morse was the first to conduct a systematic study of North America as a unified geographic entity, and he established the foundation of that discipline for future generations. He was also the father of Samuel F.B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph. Russell Lawson

Sources Greene, John C. American Science in the Age of Jefferson. Ames: University of Iowa Press, 1984. Lawson, Russell M. “Jedidiah Morse, Geographer.” In Encyclopedia of New England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.

112 Section 2: National Geographic Society

N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C S O C I E T Y The largest scientific educational organization in the world, the National Geographic Society was founded at a meeting of thirty-three men at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., on January 13, 1888. Responding to an invitation to meet about “the advisability of organizing a society for the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge,” they quickly approved a resolution that a National Geographic Society be organized “on as broad and liberal a basis in regard to qualifications for membership as is consistent with its own well-being and the dignity of the science it represents.” A constitution and plan of organization were drafted, and the society was officially incorporated on January 27, 1888. The headquarters of the society was built at the corner of 16th Street and M Street in Washington in October 1903. In June 1984, an expanded structure was dedicated by President Ronald Reagan. The headquarters includes administrative and corporate offices, a large auditorium, and the Explorers Hall, which showcases current and past expeditions, research, and discoveries sponsored by the organization. The founders of the National Geographic Society included scientists, explorers, inventors, and financiers. They elected as their first president Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a lawyer, financier, and philanthropist with a great interest in science. Hubbard was the father-in-law of inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who became the second president of the society in 1897 upon Hubbard’s death.

National Geographic Magazine Alexander Graham Bell was the force that shaped the National Geographic Society into a source of pride and enthusiasm for those who would join. He was responsible for many decisions that ultimately allowed the society’s magazine, National Geographic, to flourish. The first issue of the magazine was published in October 1888, declaring that the mission of the society was “to increase and diffuse geographic knowledge” and that the magazine was intended as a vehicle for the spread of such knowledge.

National Geographic became a monthly publication in January 1896, but it lagged in sales on the newsstand. Bell thought it should be distributed to members of the society, who would have paid or donated money to become members. In this way, Bell helped enforce the declaration by Gardiner Greene Hubbard that membership was not restricted to professionals but offered to all people who were interested in promoting research and learning about the world. One of the notable consequences of the magazine’s success was the popularization of photojournalism. By virtue of their exotic subjects, early photographs and illustrations were sometimes considered bold—such as the 1896 photograph of a bare-chested Zulu couple. At the time, there were thousands of illustrated magazines in the United States, only a few of which would survive. The subject and use of photographs was a major factor in the success or failure of masscirculation magazines. The quality and subject matter of National Geographic photography evolved in the first years of the twentieth century; by 1908, more than half of the magazine’s pages contained photos. In November 1910, the first hand-tinted illustrations appeared in the magazine, and National Geographic became a driving force in the use and development of color photography. To this day, National Geographic is world renowned for its outstanding photography and photojournalism. Its gold-bordered design remains familiar in households throughout America. Currently, the National Geographic Society is a major publishing company and media giant that produces five regular magazines as well as books, movies, musical CDs, Web sites, and a national television network. It is also the largest seller of globes and maps in the world. The primary purpose of the society, however, remains the financial and logistical support of exploration, research, and education.

Fields of Research The National Geographic Society encourages several fields of study. The Committee for Research and Exploration funds projects in anthropology, archeology, astronomy, biology, geography, geology, oceanography, and paleontology. The Conservation Trust supports re-

Section 2: Peary, Robert 113 search and projects geared toward developing global conservation. These include fieldwork as well as public education programs in areas such as the management and protection of elephants and lions in Africa, preservation of rain forests, and preservation of cultural artifacts in the Middle East. The goal of the Education Foundation is to prepare children to embrace a diverse world, succeed in the global economy, and protect Earth’s resources. Education grants support projects for teachers, nonprofit organizations, and professionals in nontraditional education. The Expeditions Council offers grants for exploration around the world. It also sponsors programs meant to highlight the association between the National Geographic Society and prominent explorers and photojournalists. Countless discoveries have been made with the sponsorship and support of the National Geographic Society. The first grant from the society’s fund was $1,000 to Robert E. Peary for what became the first successful effort to reach the North Pole, which Peary’s expedition accomplished in April 1909. Grants to Hiram Bingham in 1911 funded expeditions resulting in the discovery and excavation of Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas in the mountains of Peru. In 1986, Robert Ballard and a National Geographic Society film crew documented the discovery and examination of the sunken wreckage of the Titanic. Groundbreaking research in every conceivable area has been supported by the society over the years, including such familiar topics as human and primate evolution and societies, by scientists such as Louis Leakey, Jane Goodall, and Diane Fossey. The National Geographic Society has made countless valuable contributions to our knowledge of the world’s people, places, and living things. Alexander Graham Bell once said that the society was founded for the study of “the world and everything in it.” Indeed, the scope of work undertaken by explorers, scientists, writers, and photographers with the support of the society is broad, and purposefully so. So much of Earth remains unexplored and misunderstood that the work of the National Geographic Society is sure to remain plentiful for years to come. Mollie Sue Oremland

Sources Abramson, Howard S. National Geographic: Behind America’s Lens on the World. New York: Crown, 1987. Bryan, C.D.B. The National Geographic Society: 100 Years of Adventure and Discovery. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987. Grosevnor, Gilbert. The National Geographic Society and Its Magazine. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1957. National Geographic Society. http://www.nationalgeographic. com.

P E A R Y, R O B E R T (1856–1920) The American Arctic explorer Robert Edwin Peary is recognized as the first person to reach the North Pole, in 1909. Peary was born on May 6, 1856, in the Allegheny Mountains at Cresson, Pennsylvania. Growing up, he was interested in the study of natural history, especially birds, rocks, and minerals. His first interests in the Arctic were propagated by stories he read as a child about the Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane. After receiving his degree in civil engineering from Bowdoin College in Maine in 1877, Peary went to work as a town surveyor in Fryeburg, Maine. Two years later, he took a job in Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Society. He joined the U.S. Navy Civil Engineering Corps in 1881 as a lieutenant and made a name for himself with his work on tropical assessments. While developing plans for a canal on the Nicaragua Expedition of 1884–1885, Peary began an active interest in Arctic discovery after he came across a pamphlet that highlighted a study on the exploration of interior Greenland. He took leave from the navy and began to prepare for his first expedition with his assistant and confidant Matthew Henson, an African American also working as a civil engineer in the navy corps. Henson would remain by his side all the way to the North Pole and, eventually, at Arlington Cemetery. To prepare for the expedition, they studied and adopted practices of the Eskimos. From 1886 to 1900, Peary led four expeditions to northern Greenland, proving that the North Pole did not lie within its boundaries and that Greenland is an island, not a continent.

114 Section 2: Peary, Robert In 1888, Peary married Josaphine Diebitsch, who shared his passion for travel and adventure. She accompanied him on many of his trips to the Arctic. Their daughter, Marie Ahnighito, was born in 1893 on an expedition in Greenland. After seven failed attempts to reach the North Pole, Peary began his final effort on March 1, 1909, leaving from Cape Columbia on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island, Canada. His crew consisted of twenty-three men, including Henson and four Eskimo escorts. In addition, he had 133 dogs pulling nineteen sleds. By the time they were 130 miles from their destination, the team had diminished to Peary, Henson, and the four Eskimos: Oatah, Egingwah, Seegloo, and

Ookeah. On April 6, 1909, Peary accomplished the goal he had sought for more than two decades: His expedition was the first to reach the North Pole. When the news spread of Peary’s accomplishment, Frederick Cook, a physician on Peary’s previous Arctic trip to Greenland in 1891–1892, contended that he had reached the North Pole a year ahead of Peary. The controversy was eventually resolved when it was revealed that Cook’s evidence was falsified. In 1911, after investigation of the claims, the U.S. Congress officially recognized Peary as the first to reach the North Pole; he was awarded the honor of rear admiral of the U.S. Navy. Peary was diagnosed with anemia in 1917, and it finally took his life on February 2, 1920, in Washington, D.C. He was laid to rest in Arlington Cemetery, where a statue marks his grave. His epitaph was his personal credo, “I shall find a way or make one.” Alicia S. Long

Sources Hobbs, William Herbert. Peary. New York: Macmillan, 1936. Weems, John Edward. Peary: The Explorer and the Man. Cambridge, MA: Riverside, 1967.

PIKE EXPEDITIONS (1805–1807)

Navy engineer Robert E. Peary, who in 1909 led the first expedition to reach the North Pole, began his career as a surveyor and draftsman for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. Eskimo survival techniques contributed to the success of his Arctic mission. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Zebulon Montgomery Pike was a U.S. soldier ordered on two significant exploring expeditions, the first in 1805–1806 up the Mississippi River to near its source, the second in 1806–1807 across Kansas to Colorado up the Arkansas River to its source. Pike was one of several explorers—including Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, William Dunbar, and George Hunter—to explore the Louisiana Purchase, acquired from France in 1803. At the same time that Lewis and Clark were descending the Columbia River toward the Pacific Ocean, Lieutenant Pike was leading a small number of troops and hunters up the Mississippi River to discover the northeastern boundaries of the Louisiana Territory. Pike’s orders called for him to take accurate measurements of latitude, directions, tempera-

Section 2: Pike Expeditions (1805–1807) 115

U.S. Army Lieutenant Zebulon Pike led an 1805 expedition to find the source of the Mississippi River. Ordered west the following year, his team was taken captive after straying into Spanish territory. Pike lost his log of the journey but recounted his adventures in an 1810 book. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

ture, and distances. He was to describe the surrounding flora and fauna, natural features, and native peoples. Pike performed all of these tasks admirably while at the same time trying to negotiate the cold and icy Mississippi during the dead of winter. In early 1806, Pike and his men neared the source of the Mississippi without actually finding it. On returning to St. Louis from his Mississippi expedition, Pike received new orders from his commander, General James Wilkinson: Journey overland, exploring the great rivers of

the southern Louisiana Territory to their source in the Rocky Mountains. Again Pike, promoted to a captain during the journey, carried out his orders with efficiency and courage, undaunted by the rugged Western prairies and mountains. He led his men across Kansas during the summer of 1806, not realizing the extent of his proposed journey and the time it would take. It was autumn before the expedition reached the Arkansas River near the Great Bend in southern Kansas, November when they first spied the distant Rocky Mountains, and December

116 Section 2: Pike Expeditions (1805–1807) when Pike tried unsuccessfully to ascend the highest mountain in the southern Rockies, Pike’s Peak. Like other explorers of the time, Pike found the topography of the Rockies confusing. His assessment of the varying sources of rivers was inaccurate, and he discovered the source of the Arkansas through sheer luck and perseverance. Pike’s expedition descended the frozen Royal Gorge at the end of December, suffering terribly. Resolute, Pike continued to record fascinating descriptions of the topography and climate of this desolate yet awe-inspiring land. Zebulon Pike provided one of the earliest and fullest descriptions of the trans-Mississippi West. His famous comparison of the Western Plains to the Sahara Desert, however, set the tone for decades of negativity regarding the lands of Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado. Pike had a jealous personality, perhaps because of his overwhelming ambition. Some historians claim that Pike and Wilkinson committed treason against the United States by trying to build their own independent domain with the help of the Spanish of Mexico. Yet Pike seems to have been too devoted to the army, and to duty, for such intrigue. He died fighting for his country in the War of 1812.

sional American scientific research program as the director of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology (1879–1902) and the U.S. Geological Survey (1881–1894). Born on March 24, 1834, in Mount Morris, New York, he began life as the son of a pious Methodist farming family. With an interest in the natural world, he taught college without the benefit of a formal degree. Powell, who lost his right arm at the battle of Shiloh in 1862, led three expeditions into the American West. The first, in 1867, was a collecting trip to the high mountain plateaus of Colorado. This expedition was followed by two trips down the Colorado River. Powell invoked his Civil War camaraderie with his former commanding officer, Ulysses S. Grant, to partially fund and outfit an 1869 Grand Canyon expedition. While the 1869 trip resulted in the successful navigation of the Green and Colorado rivers, scientific documentation remained incomplete. With assistance

Russell Lawson

Sources Hollon, W. Eugene. The Lost Pathfinder: Zebulon Montgomery Pike. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1981. Pike, Zebulon. The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike. 3 vols. New York: Harper, 1895; reprint ed., 2 vols., Mineola, NY: Dover, 1985.

POWELL, JOHN WESLEY (1834–1902) A disabled Civil War veteran, naturalist, professor, and government official, John Wesley Powell is popularly known for his two mapping expeditions to the Grand Canyon in 1869 and 1871. His life bridged the transformation of American natural history from an avocational discipline to one that required expert university training. Powell was emblematic of this transition. Ultimately, he became part of an entrenched profes-

Soldier and explorer John Wesley Powell, speaking here with the Paiute chief Tau-gu in southern Utah in 1873, was the first to classify American Indian languages and cultures. (Authenticated News/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Section 2: Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe 117 from Congress, Powell led a second expedition in 1871 that aimed to acquire plant and animal specimens and to survey and map the canyon country. Much of the surveying was completed by Almon Thompson, Powell’s brother-in-law, while Powell spent most of the journey negotiating with Native American tribes and collecting ethnological materials. Powell’s experience with American Indian tribes and exploration of the West made him an ideal director of the Bureau of American Ethnology. As director, Powell led a team of field linguists that compiled the first distributional map of Native American language families in 1891. Powell’s language maps continued to guide research and inquiry in Native American linguistics well into the twentieth century. When Powell also assumed directorship of the U.S. Geological Survey, he arranged for the production of a number of geological studies and meteorological and topographical maps of the West. He also oversaw a shift within his departments from purely utilitarian inquiry to expressly scientific studies. Powell rendered the American West legible and amenable to further investigation. In addition to his scholarly work, Powell contributed to a number of scientific bodies that transformed the study of the social, natural, and physical sciences. He was a founding member of the Cosmos Club and the National Geographic Society and a founder and president of the Anthropological Society of Washington, which published the American Anthropologist. He organized a number of Washington, D.C., scientific societies, including the Biological Society, Chemical Society, Entomological Society, and Geological Society. He also served on the editorial boards of Science and Johnson’s Encyclopedia. Powell was elected a member of the Philosophical Society of Washington in 1874 and became its president in 1883. He became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1880. In 1889, Powell served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Powell concluded his career by writing a series of philosophical tracts on scientific knowledge. Forced by ill health to resign from his position as director of the U.S. Geological Survey in 1894, Powell continued to serve as director of

the Bureau of Ethnology until his death on September 23, 1902, in Haven, Maine. Brian Daniels

Sources Dolnick, Edward. Down the Great Unknown: John Wesley Powell’s 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon. New York: Harper, 2002. Powell, John Wesley. The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons. New York: Penguin, 2003.

S C H O O LC R A F T , H E N R Y R O W E (1793–1864)

T

he first American ethnologist to make rigorous, extensive field studies of Native American societies, Henry Schoolcraft was born on March 28, 1793, near Albany, New York. Educated at Union College and Middlebury College, he followed his father’s profession of glassmaking for more than fifteen years. In 1817–1818, interest in geology dating from his college years led Schoolcraft to undertake an extensive trip to investigate the mineral regions of southern Missouri and Arkansas. His report on the expedition, A View of the Lead Mines of Missouri (1819), gained him a reputation as a professional geologist, with the result that he was invited to accompany Lewis Cass on a 5,000 mile trip to visit Indian tribes in Michigan after Cass was appointed governor of that territory. Schoolcraft reported on this expedition in a Narrative Journal of Travels . . . to the Sources of the Mississippi River (1821)— though they failed to find the mighty river ’s headwaters. All the while publishing technical papers on mining and geological subjects, Schoolcraft came into the profession for which he is remembered today only after his appointment in 1822 as Indian agent for the tribes in the vicinity of Lake Superior. The following year, he married Jane Johnson, the daughter of an Irish fur trader and an Ojibwa woman. Despite being educated in Europe, his wife was deeply knowledgeable about her Native American heritage; she taught her husband the Ojibwa language and excited his interest in Native American folkways. Although Jane died in 1842, Schoolcraft’s profes-

118 Section 2: Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe sional involvement with the native peoples continued for the rest of his life. In 1832, when he again traveled through the upper reaches of the Mississippi to negotiate peace between warring tribes, he correctly identified the river’s source in a body of water he named Lake Itasca, inventing the word “itasca” by extracting the middle six letters from the Latin phrase veritas caput (“true source”). He recounted the journey in Narrative of an Expedition through the Upper Mississippi (1834). As superintendent of Indian affairs for Michigan from 1836 to 1841, Schoolcraft negotiated several important treaties and introduced smallpox vaccination to the inhabitants. Losing that position when the Whigs came to power, he returned East and began issuing a series of studies that included Algic Researches (two volumes, 1839), Oneota (1844–1845), Notes on the Iroquois (1847), and Personal Memories of . . . Thirteen Years with the Indian Tribes (1851). These books are now considered of greater literary than scientific merit, becoming the principal source for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s narrative poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855). Of greater scientific significance were the six folio volumes (with engravings by Seth Eastman) published in 1851–1857 by the federal Office of Indian Affairs, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, to which Schoolcraft was a major contributor. The work is regarded as a monument of American ethnology. After 1857, severe arthritis prevented Schoolcraft from further writing. He died on December 10, 1864. Charles Boewe

Sources Bieder, Robert E. Science Encounters the Indian, 1820–1880: Early Years of American Ethnology. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. Bremer, Richard G. “Henry Rowe Schoolcraft: Explorer in the Mississippi Valley.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 66:1 (1982): 40–59. Clements, William M. “Schoolcraft as Textmaker.” Journal of American Folklore 103 (April–June 1990): 177–92. Zumwalt, Rosemary. “Henry Rowe Schoolcraft—1793– 1846: His Collection of the Oral Narratives of American Indians.” Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 53, 54 (1976): 44–57.

S H E PA R D , A L A N (1923–1998) On May 5, 1961, Alan B. Shepard, Jr., one of the seven original Mercury astronauts, became the first American to fly in space. At the time, the success of his mission seemed all the more important, because, just a few weeks earlier, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had completed the first successful manned space flight. Shepard’s trip in the cramped Freedom 7 space capsule lasted 15 minutes and 28 seconds. The craft ascended to an altitude of 116.5 miles and traveled 309 miles downrange. The brief suborbital mission, carried from launch to recovery on nationwide television, made Shepard America’s first Space Age hero. The son of a retired U.S. Army officer, Shepherd was born on November 18, 1923, in East Derry, New Hampshire. He was raised on a family farm and attended the primary grades in a one-room schoolhouse. After attending the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, he received an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1941. Upon graduating, he served aboard a destroyer in the Pacific theater during the last months of World War II. When the war was over, Shepard was selected for flight training, which he completed at bases in Corpus Christi, Texas, and Pensacola, Florida. He subsequently completed several tours of duty as a fighter pilot on aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere. In 1950, Shepard was selected for the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School, located in Patuxent, Maryland. After completing this training, he became involved in the testing of high-altitude aircraft, in-flight fueling systems, and angled carrier decks. He then served as operations officer for a fighter squadron positioned in the western Pacific and as an instructor at the U.S. Navy Test Pilot School. Next, he was selected to attend the Naval War College, located in Newport, Rhode Island, and afterward was appointed staff officer responsible for the aircraft readiness of the Atlantic fleet. He joined NASA as a Mercury astronaut in 1959. Following his landmark 1961 space flight, Shepard was slated for participation in the

Section 2: Sierra Club 119 Gemini program, but an inner-ear condition that caused problems with his equilibrium grounded him for six years. He served as chief of the astronaut office until the problem was surgically corrected, and he was finally selected to head the Apollo 14 moon mission. After landing on the moon, Shepard further imprinted himself on the American popular imagination by hitting a golf ball across the lunar surface. At age fortyseven, Shepard was then the oldest astronaut in the U.S. space program. After Apollo 14, he was elevated to the rank of rear admiral. In 1974, Shepard retired from both the U.S. Navy and NASA. Establishing himself as a businessman in Houston, he headed the Mercury Seven Foundation, which has provided college scholarships to students majoring in the sciences. Shepard died of leukemia on July 21, 1998. Martin Kich

Sources Caidin, Martin. The Astronauts: The Story of Project Mercury, America’s Man-in-Space Program. New York: Dutton, 1961. Thompson, Neal. Light This Candle: The Life and Times of Alan Shepard, America’s First Spaceman. New York: Crown, 2004. Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979.

SIERR A CLUB The Sierra Club is a grassroots environmental organization founded in 1892 as an alpine club. The legendary environmentalist John Muir was a co-founder and the first president of the Sierra Club, which initially focused on protecting Yosemite National Park and other mountain regions of the Pacific coast. The club was organized as a recreational, educational, and conservationist group. Many of the Sierra Club’s original members were scientists, and they vigorously pursued scientific exploration in the 1890s. Club members explored and mapped the Sierra Nevada mountain range, and the club’s bulletin included scientific papers on natural history, descriptions of excursions, and geographic guides. Joseph LeConte, Sr., a University of California professor of geology

and natural history, was a charter member who published detailed maps of the Sierras. The Sierra Club actively (but unsuccessfully) opposed the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite during the early 1900s. It supported the creation of a National Park Service, which came to pass in 1916. The club was also involved in promoting the establishment of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. The John Muir Trail along the Sierra crest was completed in 1938, after the club successfully won state funds for its construction. The Sierra Club attained national prominence during the mid-twentieth century and helped spearhead national interest in environmentalism. Based in San Francisco, the club expanded steadily; by 1970, it had chapters in every state. Today, the Sierra Club has 700,000 members across the United States. It publishes Sierra, a bimonthly magazine. The Sierra Club lobbies for environmentally responsible legislation at the federal, state, and local levels. Its priorities include ensuring clean water, ending commercial logging on public lands, protecting wetlands, and stopping urban sprawl. The club urges full public disclosure of genetic engineering research and works to strengthen protections for endangered species. It opposes factory farms, urges permanent isolation of nuclear waste, and participates in environmental education programs that teach humans to create a sustainable future. The stated mission of the Sierra Club is to “explore, enjoy and protect the wild places of the earth,” to “practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources,” and to “enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.” The club uses political advocacy and other lawful means to carry out its objectives. It has opposed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, campaigned for stricter air quality standards, and protested global trade that lacks adequate environmental controls. Generally a moderate conservationist organization, the club at times displays radical preservationist tendencies. In the 1990s, the Sierra Club sparked controversy by voting to adopt a policy banning all logging on public lands. On service trips, club volunteers work on trail maintenance and backcountry management

120 Section 2: Sierra Club projects. Local chapters conduct hiking, canoeing, and camping outings. Such recreational events, which have been a component of the Sierra Club since its inception, are meant to introduce people to the wilderness and help them gain appreciation of nature, often inspiring them to fight for environmental preservation. Robin O’Sullivan

Sources Cohen, Michael P. The History of the Sierra Club, 1892–1970. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988. Gilliam, Ann, ed. Voices for the Earth: A Treasury of the Sierra Club Bulletin, 1893–1977. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1979. Sierra Club. http://www.sierraclub.org. Turner, Tom. Sierra Club: 100 Years of Protecting Nature. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991.

S T E FA N S S O N , V I L H J A L M U R (1879–1962) The explorer and Arctic survival expert Vilhjalmur Stefansson was born in Arnes, Manitoba, on November 3, 1879. Christened William Stephenson, he changed his name to Vilhjalmur Stefansson while in college to return to his Icelandic roots. Stefansson’s parents, recent immigrants from Iceland, migrated again shortly after his birth to northeastern North Dakota, near the village of Mountain in Pembina County. As a child, Stefansson was exposed to little formal education. In his teens, he enrolled in the University of North Dakota’s college preparatory program, becoming a regular undergraduate in 1899. Expelled as a troublemaker at the start of his senior year, he obtained a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa within a matter of months by taking examinations for credit. He graduated in 1903. Stefansson was persuaded to attend the Harvard Divinity School, but he transferred to the department of anthropology at the end of his first year. He did not take a degree. Stefansson’s experience of scientific expeditions began in 1905, when he was a member of a small group of geologists and anthropologists who spent the summer in Iceland. The following year, he signed on as anthropologist with the

Anglo-American Polar Expedition, intending to do interdisciplinary research on the Arctic coast of Canada’s Yukon and Northwest Territories. When the others, icebound, did not make it to the agreed-upon rendezvous, Stefansson wintered over with various local Eskimo families, beginning his study of their language and lifeways. In 1907–1908, he prepared for his own tiny Arctic expedition, under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Stefansson lived in the Arctic from 1908 until late 1912, in the coastal regions of Alaska, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories, improving his command of the Eskimo language and survival methods. Stefansson claimed to have encountered what the sensationalist press later dubbed “Blonde Eskimos,” possibly with European ancestry and sporting light-colored eyes and hair. The excitement over his claim (which was never substantiated), combined with his later writings and lecturing, made Stefansson a celebrity. From 1913 until 1918, Stefansson was the leader of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, an endeavor for which the wartime government of the United States would revoke his naturalized citizenship (it was restored during World War II, when he was asked to serve as an Arctic survival consultant). The Canadian expedition was a fiasco almost from the outset, with one research vessel and several lives lost. Stefansson was not an effective leader, remaining out of contact with his increasingly rebellious subordinates for months at a time, while he and two loyal (nonscientist) followers covered vast ranges of territory by dogsled. In the only part of the expedition’s charge to be satisfactorily accomplished, Stefansson was able to report the discovery of three previously unknown islands in the high Arctic, named by him for powerful members of the Canadian government (Borden, Brock, and Meighen). Actual discovery of the three islands, among the last new places found on Earth, is often erroneously attributed to Stefansson, but in each case it was one of his followers who first spied the new land. Stefansson made his living after 1918 primarily as a writer, popular lecturer, and advocate of Arctic development. In an example of the latter, he sunk the profits from his lecturing into a plan to colonize and develop Wrangell Island, north of Siberia; all of his money and four of the five colonists were lost. Ironically, his most popular

Section 2: Townsend, John Kirk 121 book, recounting some of the experiences of the doomed Canadian Arctic Expedition, was entitled The Friendly Arctic (1921). Stefansson worked for the U.S. armed forces during World War II and afterward began the abortive “Encyclopedia Arctica” project for the Office of Naval Research. By this time, he owned probably the world’s largest collection of Arctic books, maps, and manuscripts. In the late 1940s, the U.S. Navy pulled its financial support for the project, probably due to Stefansson’s friendship with Owen Lattimore, identified by Senator Joseph McCarthy as the leading spy for the Soviet Union in North America. Stefansson sold his extensive Artic collection to Dartmouth College and became its curator, while his wife, a former research assistant, found a job as its librarian. The couple were active members of the Dartmouth community until his death there on August 26, 1962. During his lifetime, Stefansson received seven honorary doctorates, was elected president of the Explorers Club, and was awarded gold medals by the American, National, and Royal Geographic Societies. David Lonergan

Sources Hunt, William R. Stef: A Biography of Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1986. Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. Discovery. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

TO W N S E N D, J O H N K I R K (1809–1851) The Western U.S. explorer and ornithologist John Kirk Townsend was born on August 10, 1809, in Philadelphia. His youthful interest in natural science was realized as an adult in his travels, collections of birds and mammals, and practice in dentistry. A member of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, the National Institute for the Promotion of Science, and the American Philosophical Society, Townsend was a respected member of the Philadelphia scientific community. He is best known for two of his writings: Ornithology of the United States (1839) and Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River. Townsend named a

variety of bird and animal species, notably Townsend’s mole and Townsend’s warbler. At the invitation of botanist Thomas Nuttall, Townsend joined Captain Nathaniel Wyeth’s expedition across America to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean in 1834. Fascinated by everything he saw on the journey, Townsend recorded detailed descriptions of geography, climate, flora, fauna, hunters, and Native Americans. He revealed his interest in ornithology time and again with his descriptions of birds, such as his passage on the now-extinct Carolina parakeet: We saw here vast numbers of the beautiful parrot of this country (the Psittacus carolinensis). They flew around us in flocks, keeping a constant and loud screaming, as though they would chide us for invading their territory; and the splendid green and red of their plumage glancing in the sunshine, as they whirled and circled within a few feet of us, had a most magnificent appearance. They seem entirely unsuspicious of danger, and after being fired at, only huddle closer together, as if to obtain protection from each other, and as their companions are falling around them, they curve down their necks, and look at them fluttering upon the ground, as though perfectly at a loss to account for so unusual an occurrence.

Surrounded by hard men and Indians on the prairies, with only Thomas Nuttall as his companion, Townsend yearned for expeditions of a different kind: What valuable and highly interesting accessions to science might not be made by a party, composed exclusively of naturalists, on a journey through this rich and unexplored region! The botanist, the geologist, the mammalogist, the ornithologist, and the entomologist, would find a rich and almost inexhaustible field for the prosecution of their inquiries, and the result of such an expedition would be to add most materially to our knowledge of the wealth and resources of our country, to furnish us with new and important facts relative to its structure, organization, and natural productions, and to complete the fine native collections in our already extensive museums.

Following Wyeth, Townsend and Nuttall crossed the Continental Divide and descended

122 Section 2: Townsend, John Kirk the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver in Washington. There, Townsend served as physician and surgeon for the fort for six months, before taking a ship to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) with Nuttall to botanize the exotic plants of the islands. In 1836, Townsend sailed south to Cape Horn and arrived once again at the eastern coast of the United States. He spent the remainder of his life in Washington, D.C., as a curator of scientific museums and as a dentist. He died on February 6, 1851, of an arsenic overdose. Russell Lawson

Source Townsend, John Kirk. Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978.

V I ZC A Í N O, S E B A S T I Á N (1548–1628) The life of Spanish navigator Sebastián Vizcaíno spanned the period of the most intense Spanish interest in the exploration and exploitation of the Pacific coast of North America and the islands of the Far East. Attempts to discover a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans more convenient than the distant and dangerous Straits of Magellan, thereby facilitating European access to the great wealth of Asia, obsessed the maritime countries of Europe. The explorations of Sebastián Vizcaíno were a direct result of Spanish dreams of easy access to the spices and silks of Asia. Born into the militaristic minor nobility of Spain, the adventurous Vizcaíno first served the crown in the Spanish invasion of Portugal in 1580. Soon thereafter, he followed many of his countrymen in search of wealth and excitement in America. Shortly after his arrival in colonial Mexico, Vizcaíno decided to sail from the Pacific port of Acapulco for the recently conquered city of Manila in the Philippines. He returned to Mexico in 1589, where he married and prospered as a merchant. In 1593, he received permission from the Spanish government to settle and exploit the ru-

mored wealth of Baja California. The expedition was a failure. The combination of harsh terrain, conflict with the native peoples, and mischance forced Vizcaíno and his ships to beat a rapid retreat to Mexico. When further private expeditions seemed doubtful, the Spanish government decided to take an active role in exploring the coast of California. Rumors in Europe of a northern passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, fears that the English, Dutch, or French would discover the passage, and the desire for a northern port to resupply the richly loaded Manila galleons encouraged the Spanish throne to authorize and fund an expedition with Vizcaíno at its head. On May 5, 1601, Vizcaíno’s three small ships left Acapulco for Baja California. The expedition charted the coast of California between Cabo San Lucas and Cape Mendocino in what is now northern California, before storms and sickness forced them to return. Although Vizcaíno failed to find San Francisco Bay, he was the first European to locate the important harbors of Monterey and San Diego, and his relatively accurate charts remained standard references for voyages until the end of the eighteenth century. The diary of the voyage contains one of the first accounts of the peoples, animals, trees, and climate of coastal California, and many of the prominent features of the coast retain the names they received from Vizcaíno. In 1611, Vizcaíno was appointed ambassador to Japan and captain of an expedition to map its coast. Although rising tension caused by Spanish attempts to convert the Japanese to Christianity led to the eventual expulsion of all Spaniards from Japan and undermined his tenure as ambassador, Vizcaíno was able to chart portions of the Japanese coast and undertake an unsuccessful voyage in search of the legendary islands of Gold and Silver off the coast. He returned to Mexico in 1614 and died there a wealthy and respected man, leaving his charts as a legacy to future explorers. Evan Widders

Sources Mathes, W. Michael. Vizcaíno and Spanish Expansion in the Pacific Ocean, 1580–1630. San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1968.

Section 2: Whipple, Joseph 123 Santiago, Diego de. “Diary of Sebastian Vizcaino, 1602– 1603.” In Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542– 1706, ed. Herbert Eugene Bolton. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1946.

WA L K E R , T H O M A S (1715–1794) The explorer and physician Thomas Walker was born into a family of physicians in 1715. He was educated at William and Mary College and trained as a physician and surgeon. During his long life, Walker was also a land speculator, surveyor, statesman, planter, diplomat, and soldier as well as an explorer of note who blazed trails into and across the Appalachian Mountains. He became the guardian of Thomas Jefferson upon the death of Peter Jefferson, Thomas’s father and a family friend. Walker was part of an expedition sent westward in March 1750 by the Loyal Company, a group of land speculators. In 1748, the colony of Virginia had granted 800,000 acres (324,000 hectares) in the Appalachian wilderness to this company of Virginians, contingent upon their development of the land. Six men, Walker among them, set out from Albemarle County and journeyed west through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Along the route, hunters were their guides, taking them along buffalo, deer, and Indian traces through the forests and mountains of western Virginia. Walker, physician and naturalist, cared for the physical ailments of the men and their horses. He also kept a journal of their progress, experiences, and his observations of the natural history of the region. Walker was the first European American to document the geographical feature now known as the Cumberland Gap. Near the Cumberland Gap, Walker wrote: We kept down the creek 2 miles further, where it meets with a large Branch coming from the South West and thence runs through the East Ridge making a very good pass; and a large Buffaloe Road goes from that Fork to the Creek over the west ridge, which we took and found the Ascent and Descent tollerably easie. From this Mountain we rode on four miles to Bear-

grass River. Small Cedar Trees are very plenty on the flat ground nigh the River, and some Barberry trees on the East side of the River. On the Banks is some Beargrass. We kept up the River 2 miles. I found Small pieces of Coal and a great plenty of very yellow flint. The water is the most transparent I ever saw. It is about 70 yds. wide.

Of the Cumberland Gap, which he called the Cave Gap, Walker wrote: “This Gap may be seen at a considerable distance, and there is no other, that I know of, except one about two miles to the North of it which does not appear to be So low as the other. The Mountain on the North Side of the Gap is very Steep and Rocky, but on the South side it is not so.” To negotiate the rivers of this wilderness, the men made birch-bark canoes whenever necessary. On several occasions, they suspended their journey for an afternoon to make moccasins out of deer hide. When Walker ’s horse was bitten by a snake, he “rub’d the wound with Bears oil, and gave him a drench of the same and another of the decoction of Rattle Snake root some time after.” When one of the men, Colby Chew, fell and hurt himself, Walker “Bled and gave him Volatile drops, and he soon recovered.” Of the plenty of the land, Walker wrote: “We killed in the journey 13 Buffaloes, 8 Elks, 53 Bears, 20 Deer, 4 wild Geese, about 150 Turkeys, besides small game. We might have killed three times as much meat, if we had wanted it.” Russell Lawson

Source Burns, David M. Gateway: Dr. Thomas Walker and the Opening of Kentucky. Middlesboro, KY: Bell County Historical Society, 2000.

WHIPPLE, JOSEPH (1737–1816) Joseph Whipple was a naturalist, geographer, and explorer famous for his ascent of Mount Washington in 1784 as part of the Belknap-Cutler Expedition and for his History of Acadie, Penobscot

124 Section 2: Whipple, Joseph Bay and River, with a More Particular Geographical and Statistical View of the District of Maine (1816). The History, which combines two separate treatises, one on the Penobscot region and the other on the whole of Maine, is largely a compilation of the work of other writers. Its limited scope and wandering style restricted its appeal and readership, and today it is virtually forgotten. The strength of the book is its extensive narrative description of the geography of Maine: its rivers, landscape, mountains, and settlements.

Life Joseph Whipple was born in Kittery, Maine, on February 14, 1737, and died in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on January 30, 1816. He spent much of this life in Portsmouth as a mercantile merchant, land speculator, and local statesman. He and his brother William, later a signer of the Declaration of Independence, went to sea as young men and became affluent businessmen in the Piscataqua Valley of New Hampshire. New Hampshire before and after the Revolutionary War had abundant, fertile intervale lands below, contiguous with, and above the White Mountains. In 1773, Whipple purchased the rights to the land of the township of Dartmouth (later Jefferson), north of the White Mountains in the Israel River Valley. The township was a wilderness known only to hunters and Algonquin Indians. Using Indian and hunters’ traces through one of several notches, or passes, Whipple blazed a trail through the White Mountains. He employed servants to work the land, which, he wrote in a 1791 letter to Jeremy Belknap, was “of the best quality, not only for producing in the greatest abundance Grass, Flax, . . . and generally every other article of produce in Common with other parts of the State, but it was also found capable of producing wheat of which from the Luxuriance of the soil it yielded the greatest Crops.” Whipple operated a wilderness tavern for the random traveler and hunter. During the American Revolution, he served as a colonel in the New Hampshire militia, defending his home and other Northern communities from Britishinspired Indian attacks. He later adopted the title of “colonel” among his contemporaries, and he served as collector of customs at Portsmouth under President Washington.

Mountaineer and Scientist Whipple was part of the team of scientists, clergymen, and explorers that ascended the highest peak of the Northeast, Mount Washington, in 1784. As a member of the Belknap-Cutler Expedition, Whipple was a gentleman naturalist who knew more about the White Mountains than most men. At times, he gave the guides of the expedition advice on the correct path through the wilderness. Whipple was intrigued by the relative heights of the many peaks of the Presidential Range of the White Mountains, and he wondered whether Mount Washington was the highest. He shared his speculations with other members of the expedition, such as Jeremy Belknap and Manasseh Cutler, in the years after the journey. Whipple’s “sedate, observant, and critical eye,” Belknap observed in a letter to Cutler, “has been busy about the Mountains ever since . . . and he doubts” that Mount Washington is the highest. Whipple’s interest in mountains was further fueled when he heard of an expedition in 1805 that ascended Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest mountain. The journey was undertaken by Charles Turner, Jr., of Massachusetts. Whipple acquired Turner’s journal and included an excerpt in his History. Based on the 1805 ascent, Whipple erroneously reported the height of Mount Katahdin to be 13,000 feet (3,960 meters). This figure was fantastically overestimated, of course—the actual elevation of Mount Katahdin is barely 5,300 feet (1,600 meters). Whipple was an active communicator with other New England scientists, contributing to the burgeoning natural sciences of America. He corresponded with others about flora, fauna, and history, and he was especially interested in animals such as the moose, the impact of rivers on frontier societies, and the origins of the honeybee in America. Whipple’s chief contribution was to bring together a variety of information on geography, meteorology, botany, and history of the Maine region into one work, the History, and to correspond with others interested in inaugurating a scientific community in America. A 3,298-foot (1,005-meter) peak in the north country of New Hampshire is named in his honor. Russell Lawson

Section 2: Wilkes Expedition (1838–1842) 125 Sources Jordan, Chester E. Colonel Joseph B. Whipple. Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1894. Whipple, Joseph. The History of Acadie, Penobscot Bay and River, with a More Particular Geographical and Statistical View of the District of Maine. Bangor, ME: Peter Edes, 1816.

WILKES, CHARLES (1798–1877) The U.S. Navy officer and explorer Charles Wilkes was known for leading a scientific expedition in 1838–1842 to Antarctica, the western coast of North America, and a number of Pacific islands. Wilkes was born on April 3, 1798, in New York City. In 1818, he joined the U.S. Navy as a midshipman and, eight years later, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. In 1833, after an exploration of Narragansett Bay, Wilkes was named head of the navy’s department of instruments and charts. At the time, the navy was planning a major scientific expedition around the world for the purposes of expanding the nation’s commerce, charting the northwest coast of North America, and protecting Americans in the South Pacific islands. In 1836, Congress granted $300,000 for the expedition, which Wilkes was chosen to command. The United States Exploring Expedition, commonly known as the Wilkes Expedition, consisted of a fleet of six ships, nine scientists, and 346 crew members. The mission was launched from Norfolk, Virginia, on August 18, 1838, and Wilkes quickly promoted himself to captain. Regarded by some as arrogant and contentious, he brought to the mission a strong grounding in hard science and a supreme dedication to his cause. The expedition covered a total of about 87,000 miles, traveling to Antarctica, Australia, Chile, the East Indies, New Zealand, the Philippines, and other locations in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. It explored the area in eastern Antarctica that was christened Wilkes Land. The polar refraction, he reported in January 1840, was like that of a mirage in the desert. In North America, the team explored the Columbia River, Snake

River, and San Francisco Bay. As a result of his explorations, Wilkes proposed that the line of demarcation between Canada and the United States be fixed at 50 degrees, 40 minutes north. In the Pacific, Wilkes and his team explored islands that would be used as American naval bases during World War II. The expedition returned to New York in June 1842, bringing back troves of information pertaining to anthropology, botany, ethnology, and zoology. The following month, Wilkes’s conduct as captain during the expedition was the subject of an investigation by a Naval Court of Inquiry, which found him guilty of punishing six sailors illegally. In addition to writing the five-volume Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (1844), Wilkes edited the mission’s scientific reports over the next three decades. During the U.S. Civil War, he was made a commodore in charge of a squadron in the West Indies. He retired in 1866 as a rear admiral. Wilkes died in Washington State on February 8, 1877. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Philbrick, Nathaniel. Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842. New York: Viking Penguin, 2003. Silverberg, Robert. Stormy Voyager: The Story of Charles Wilkes. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1968. Stanton, William. Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.

WILKES EXPEDITION (1838–1842) The United States Exploring Expedition, also known as the Wilkes Expedition, was the result of a grand design by the U.S. Navy to explore the world. As early as the 1820s, plans had been considered to survey the seas and unknown lands around the globe for the benefit of American commerce and science. On May 18, 1836, Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson authorized a major expedition, and Congress sanctioned $300,000 by passing an amendment to the Naval Appropriations Bill. U.S. Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes was

126 Section 2: Wilkes Expedition (1838–1842)

Two members of the Wilkes Expedition measure the circumference of a giant redwood tree in Oregon in 1840. The federally sponsored four-year journey took scientists to South America, Antarctica, the Pacific islands, and the west coast of North America. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

designated as the leader of the mission, which included a fleet of six ships, nine scientists, and 346 crew members. The six ships were the Vincennes, Peacock, Porpoise, Relief, Sea Gull, and Flying Fish. On board were the famous naturalists Charles Pickering and Titian Peale, geologist James Dwight Dana, philologist Horatio Hale, and botanists William Rich and William Dunlop Brackenridge. Joseph Drayton was to collect the artifacts, and Alfred T. Agate’s task was to illustrate discoveries. The ships sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, on August 18, 1838, on course to circumnavigate the globe, covering 87,000 miles and reaching 200 islands. The expedition explored the Madeira Islands and journeyed to Rio de Janeiro, Tierra del Fuego, Chile, Peru, the Tuamotu Archipelago, Samoa, and New South Wales. In December 1839, it sailed south from Sydney Harbor in Australia, discovering Antarctica. To prove that he had reached Antarctica before a competing French expedition led by Dumont d’Urvilleas, Wilkes fabricated an earlier date of

arrival, January 16, 1840, rather than January 19. The Wilkes Expedition continued on to Hawaii, where they observed the islands’ volcanoes, and proceeded to Fiji, where the crew engaged in skirmishes with the indigenous people. In 1840–1841, Wilkes explored the western coast and inland waterways of the United States, including the Columbia River, Snake River, and San Francisco Bay. Control of ports in the Strait of Juan de Fuca gave the United States a major advantage in Pacific Coast commerce. The expedition also explored the Philippines, Borneo, Singapore, Polynesia, and the Cape of Good Hope, finally reaching New York on June 10, 1842. The Wilkes expedition brought back extensive physical evidence and scientific information pertaining to anthropology, botany, and zoology across the globe. The total collection weighed about 40 tons. Specimens of animal and plant kingdoms, ethnological data, geological information, and archeological remains contributed

Section 2: Wilkes Expedition (1838–1842) 127 immeasurably to the advancement of American science. Institutions such as the U.S. Botanic Garden, National Herbarium, Naval Observatory, and National Museum were established on the wealth of specimens and data from the Wilkes Expedition. The findings were published in no fewer than twenty volumes and eleven atlases. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Chapman, Walker. Antarctic Conquest. New York: BobbsMerrill, 1965. Philbrick, Nathaniel. Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery: The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842. New York: Viking Penguin, 2003. Silverberg, Robert. Stormy Voyager: The Story of Charles Wilkes. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1968. Stanton, William. Great United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.

DOCUMENTS Zebulon Pike’s Journey up the Mississippi River Zebulon Pike, on his 1805–1806 expeditions, showed the precision of his descriptions and measurements in his account of the Falls of St. Anthony on the Mississippi River, as well as in his portrait of the transMississippi West. The following excerpts are from Pike’s Arkansaw Journal. As I ascended the Mississippi, the Falls of St. Anthony did not strike me with that majestic appearance which I had been taught to expect from the descriptions of former travelers. On an actual survey I find the portage to be 260 poles; but when the river is not very low, boats ascending may be put in 31 poles below, at a large cedar tree; this would reduce it to 229 poles. The hill over which the portage is made is 69 feet in ascent, with an elevation at the point of debarkation of 45°. The fall of the water between the place of debarkation and reloading is 58 feet; the perpendicular fall of the shoot is 161/2 feet. The width of the river above the shoot is 627 yards; below, 209. For the form of the shoot, see a rough draught herewith. In high water the appearance is much more sublime, as the great quantity of water then forms a spray, which in clear weather reflects from some positions the colors of the rainbow, and when the sky is overcast covers the falls in gloom and chaotic majesty. Numerous have been the hypotheses formed by various naturalists to account for the vast tract of untimbered country which lies between the waters of the Missouri, Mississippi, and the Western Ocean, from the mouth of the latter river to 48° north latitude. Although not flattering myself to be able to elucidate that which numbers of highly scientific characters have acknowledged to be beyond their depth of research, still I would not think I had done my country justice did I not give birth to what few lights my examination of those internal deserts has enabled me to acquire. In that vast country of which I speak, we find the soil generally dry and sandy, with gravel, and discover that the

moment we approach a stream the land becomes more humid with small timber. I therefore conclude that this country never was timbered; as, from the earliest age the aridity of the soil, having so few water-courses running through it, and they being principally dry in summer, has never afforded moisture sufficient to support the growth of timber. In all timbered land the annual discharge of the leaves, with the continual decay of old trees and branches, creates a manure and moisture, which is preserved from the heat of the sun not being permitted to direct his rays perpendicularly, but only to shed them obliquely through the foliage. But here a barren soil, parched and dried up for eight months in the year, presents neither moisture nor nutrition sufficient to nourish the timber. These vast plains of the western hemisphere may become in time as celebrated as the sandy deserts of Africa; for I saw in my route, in various places, tracts of many leagues where the wind had thrown up the sand in all the fanciful form of the ocean’s rolling wave, and on which not a speck of vegetable matter existed. Source: Zebulon Pike, “Arkansaw Journal,” in The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, vol. II (New York: F.P. Harper, 1895).

Ascent of Mount Katahdin Joseph Whipple’s History of Acadie, Penobscot Bay and River (1816) included the first published account of the 1805 ascent of Mount Katahdin in Maine. Monday, August 13, at 8 o’clock P.M. we left our canoes at the head of boatwaters, in a small stream of clear, cold, spring water, which came directly from the mountain, the main stream of which (as we afterwards found) issued out near the summit, in a large gully. —At five o’clock P.M. we reached the summit. It is the southernmost, and highest, of a cluster of eight or ten mountains, extending from it northeast and north-west; round Ka ¯tâden on the west, south and east sides, is a table land of about four

128

Section 2: Documents 129 miles in extent from the Ka ¯tâden, rising gradually towards it, which compared with the land in the vicinity is of itself mountainous, overlooking all the country except the mountains, yet when viewed from the top of the Ka ¯tâden appears like a plain. —After leaving the table land, we ascended, following a ridge, to gain the summit at the west end, which appeared most easy of access from the head of the table land, which we call the base of the mountain, we ascended as near as we could judge in an elevation, making an angle with the horizon of from 35 to 45 degrees, near two miles. —This mountain is composed of rocks which appear to have been broken or split. —Within half a mile of the summit the trees are only two feet high and of regular shape. —Having attained the summit, we found ourselves on a comparative plain of rocks, with coarse gravel intermixed, and covered with a dead blueish moss, this plain contains about 800 acres. —On the westerly side we found several springs of clear, cold water, of which we drank freely, probably too much, it being an extreme hot day, and the elevation so great, as sensibly to effect respiration; some were taking with vomiting in the course of the night—we judged it to have been impregnated with mineral substances. Having arrived at the highest pitch toward the east end, we found ourselves elevated above any mountains or land within reach of our sight—it was difficult to determine our right ascension, not having instruments, or being otherways prepared to ascertain the height, from this point our view was enchanting; but the atmosphere rather unfavorable; we had a view of all the mountains between Maine and Canada, and sixty-three lakes of various extent. Source: Joseph Whipple, The History of Acadie, Penobscot Bay and River with a More Particular Geographical and Statistical View of the District of Maine (Bangor, ME: Peter Edes, 1816).

Lewis and Clark Arrive at the Pacific Ocean The journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark featured many exciting discoveries, not the least of which was their arrival at the Pacific Ocean in November 1805, as described in their journal.

November 7, 1805 We Set out piloted by an Indian dressed in a Salors dress, to the main Chanel of the river, the tide being in we Should have found much dificuelty in passing into the main Chanel from behind those islands, without a pilot, . . . here we See great numbers of water fowls about those marshey Islands; here the high mountanious Countrey approaches the river on the Lard Side, a high mountn. to the S.W. about 20 miles, the high mountans. Countrey Continue on the Stard Side, about 14 miles below the last village and 18 miles of this day we landed at a village of the Same nation. . . . [I]t contains 7 indifferent houses built in the Same form of those above. . . . [O]pposit to this Village the high mountaneous Countrey leave the river on the Lard Side below which the river widens into a kind of Bay & is Crouded with low Islands Subject to be covered by the tides— [W]e proceeded on about 12 miles below the Village under a high mountaneous Countrey on the Stard. Side. Shore boald and rockey and Encamped under a high hill on the Stard. Side opposit to a rock Situated half a mile from the Shore, about 50 feet high and 20 Diamieter, we with dificuelty found a place Clear of the tide and Sufficiently large to lie on and the only place we could get was on round Stones on which we lay our mats . . . rain Continud. moderately all day . . . Great joy in camp we are in View of the Ocian, this great Pacific Octean which we been So long anxious to See. And the roreing or noise made by the waves brakeing on the rockey Shores (as I Suppose) may be heard distinctly. Source: “The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,” November 7, 1805, http://explorion.net.

John Kirk Townsend on the Oregon Trail John Kirk Townsend was a young naturalist from Harvard College who joined his friend Nathaniel Wyett and his mentor Thomas Nuttall on a journey from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Columbia River in 1834. The native tribes fascinated Townsend, who provided some memorable descriptions in his Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, published in 1839.

130 Section 2: Documents Each man was furnished with a good blanket, and some had an under dress of calico, but the greater number were entirely naked to the waist. The faces and bodies of the men were, almost without an exception, fantastically painted, the predominant color being deep red, with occasionally a few stripes of dull clay white around the eyes and mouth. I observed one whose body was smeared with light colored clay, interspersed with black streaks. . . . The chief of the band . . . was a large dignified looking man, of perhaps fifty-five years of age, distinguished from the rest, by his richer habiliments, a more profuse display of trinkets in his ears, (which were cut and gashed in a frightful manner to receive them,) and above all, by a huge necklace made of the claws of the grizzly bear. The squaws, of whom there were about twenty, were dressed very much like the men, and at a little distance could scarcely be distinguished from them. On the trail in 1834, John Kirk Townsend witnessed two American hunters in pursuit of buffalo: Away went the buffalo, and away went the men, hard as they could dash; now the hunters gained

upon him, and pressed him hard; again the enormous creature had the advantage, plunging with all his might, his terrific horns often ploughing up the earth as he spurned it under him. Sometimes he would double, and rush so near the horses as almost to gore them with his horns, and in an instant would be off in a tangent, and throw his pursuers from the track. At length the poor animal came to bay, and made some unequivocal demonstrations of combat; raising and tossing his head furiously, and tearing up the ground with his feet. At this moment a shot was fired. The victim trembled like an aspen, and fell to his knees, but recovering himself in an instant, started again as fast as before. Again the determined hunters dashed after him, but the poor bull was nearly exhausted, he proceeded but a short distance and stopped again. The hunters approached, rode slowly by him, and shot two balls through his body with the most perfect coolness and precision. Source: John Kirk Townsend, “Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River,” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 21, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: A.H. Clark, 1905).

Section 3

B OTA N Y

ESSAYS The Early American Materia Medica E

arly European American scientists, particularly botanists and physicians, referred to the products of nature used in human health as materia medica (literally, “materials of medicine”). The materia medica they discovered in the New World would become, in time, the basis for the modern pharmaceutical industry. Early botanists were the forerunners of today’s pharmacists.

Materia Medica of the Nor theast The earliest Europeans to reach the eastern shores of North America quickly realized that the Abenaki, Algonquian, and other native peoples knew what flowers, seeds, roots, bark, and animal parts were useful as antidotes, analgesics, and remedies for a variety of physical and mental ailments. The English physician John Josselyn, who journeyed to New England twice during the seventeenth century, learned from the Native Americans about the use of rattlesnake heart (dried and powdered) to counter the snake’s venom. Kidney stones, a common malady among the elite in early modern Europe, could be combated with the stone found within the stomach of the codfish, ground and drunk with wine. Wine mixed with the dung of the wolf was useful for treating indigestion. John Gyles, while a captive of the Abenaki of the Penobscot Valley, learned that fir balsam (Pinus balsamea) was good for treating frostbite. Manasseh Cutler, a botanist and physician, learned that the bark of the walnut tree (Juglans) “is one of the best cathartics in the materia medica. It neither produces gripings, nor leaves the patient costive, and may be made efficacious, without hazard, by increasing the dose. Its operation is kind and safe, even in the most delicate constitutions. It is an excellent family medicine, is well adapted to hospitals, navies and armies. It was much used by the military physicians, in the late

war; and it may become a valuable article of exportation. It is said to be one of the best antidotes against the bite of the rattle-snake.” Cutler’s friend, Jeremy Belknap, reported on the Native American and European American materia medica of New Hampshire in his threevolume History of New-Hampshire (1784–1792). “The bark of the white elm” (Ulmus americana), he wrote, “is used medicinally for the gravel” (kidney stones). “The “leaves and bark” of the white ash (Fraxinus excelsior) “are an antidote to the venom of the rattle-snake.” The shrub witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) was also an important part of the Native American materia medica. Early European American botanists created herb gardens for experimental purposes but also to provide a pharmacopoeia, an ongoing source of medicinal herbs for making salves, analgesics, antidotes, purgatives, and ingredients for other remedies. One such herbal garden has been recreated at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Strawbery Banke was an early settlement along the southern shores of the Piscataqua River that became a mercantile and shipbuilding center; renamed Portsmouth, it had a population of about 4,000 by 1700. The herbal garden at Strawbery Banke includes plants used during the colonial period for medicinal purposes, such as wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), used as a tea and to treat respiratory illnesses; butterfly weed (Asclepius tuberosa), thought to be a remedy for pleurisy; and hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis), of ancient Mediterranean origin, used as a purgative.

Materia Medica of the Great Plains As settlers crossed the Mississippi during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they learned

133

134 Section 3: Essays

The Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, site of a settlement dating to 1623, includes an herb garden with a variety of plants used for medicinal purposes during the colonial period. (Courtesy of Rebecca Johnson)

from Native American tribes traditional forms of medicine, much of which became an important part of the folk science of the Great Plains. Antidotes, analgesics, poultices, salves, and other such remedies were made from an amazing diversity of flowers, leaves, berries, roots, bark, and twigs of American plants. Many of these folk remedies have become a part of modern holistic medicine. Sacagawea, the wife of the French trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, gave birth to their son in February 1805 at a Mandan Indian village in North Dakota. Meriwether Lewis, who was present at the birth, watched as René Jessaume, a Frenchman who served as interpreter between the Mandan Indians and the white men, administered to Sacagawea’s needs. The labor was long, difficult, and painful. Jessaume used an old recipe to hasten the labor: he crushed two rattles of a rattlesnake’s tail, mixed it with water, and gave it to Sacagawea. Lewis was incredulous, but he had to

admit later that she gave birth within ten minutes of swallowing the concoction. The Plains Indians were no different from other people in wishing for good health and long life. As animists and pantheists, Native Americans believed that the spirit world was all about them, if unseen. They tried to encourage good spirits and repel the evil ones that could bring woe to the tribe or to individuals by scaring away game and bringing about sickness. The shaman or medicine man stood at the ready to repel evil spirits and their effects on the physical and mental health of the body and mind. The shaman carried a leather bag filled with materia medica, the pharmaceutical needs of the tribe. The botanist John Bradbury had a chance to inspect the inside of a shaman’s materia medica bag and discovered “a considerable quantity of the down of reedmace [Typha latifolia], which I understood was used in cases of burns or scalds:

Section 3: Essays 135 there was also a quantity of a species of artemisia [wormwood], common on the prairies, and known to the hunters by the name of hyssop.” Artemisia, which is not, in fact, the same as hyssop, nevertheless has some of the same qualities of assisting with gastrointestinal and asthmatic complaints. The shaman also had in his pouch “some roots of rudbeckia purpurea,” a species of coneflower used to treat sour stomach, intestinal worms, sores, burns, and snakebite. The Indian pharmacy was contained in the forest and plains; anyone could be a pharmacist. The bark of the eastern burning bush tree (Euonymus atropurpureus) was a sovereign purgative. For the young child with a cough, the mother might administer a tea made with the bark of the black cherry. The slippery elm was also good in this regard, as well as for sore throats and inflammations. Colonists and Native Americans alike used it as a poultice for wounds, sores, and swellings. Also salutary was the oil of the bitternut hickory for rheumatism and other joint pain. All parts of the sassafras (Sassafras albidum) were long thought to be a remedy for practically every ailment—it purified the blood and gave a zest to the lethargic, helped the old with arthritis and the young with asthma. Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) leaf tea was also good for asthma, as well as for flatulence and worms. Thoroughwort (Eupatorium perfoliatum) was colloquially called “boneset,” because a tea made of the leaves cured sickness that attacked someone all the way to the bones. Boneset was used for fever, influenza, malaria, and the “ague.” Pawnee Indians of the Great Plains placed a mixture of wild indigo (Baptisia tinctoria) root and buffalo fat on a child’s stomach to reduce an upset. The flowers of St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum) helped a child or adult suffering from anxiety or depression. Agrimony (Agrimonia parviflora) tea was an Indian cure-all used to treat diarrhea, gout, jaundice, incontinence, sore throat, and fever.

Materia Medica of the R io Grande Jean Louis Berlandier discovered on his 1828 journey through what is now southern Texas that the woods and prairies abounded with the

Texas mountain laurel, or mescal bean (Sophora secundiflora), which was an important part of the religious life and materia medica of the Southern Plains Indians. Berlandier learned from the natives that the pulverized seeds of the laurel, which are hard and bright red in autumn, “sprinkled on the head will destroy lice.” Some tribes used a concoction of the seeds and water to treat eye and ear diseases. Tribes such as the Comanche, Caddo, Tawakoni, and Tawehash used the laurel, which Berlandier called the frijolilla, in the “first fruits ceremony,” held when the first plant blossoms of late winter herald the coming of spring and the renewal of life. Botanists of Berlandier’s time knew the Texas mountain laurel as one of many plants whose seeds or leaves, when boiled in water and ingested, were a powerful purgative. Nineteenthcentury medical practice often called for a purging of the system to combat the ill effects of the ague brought on by malaria. The materia medica of the region also included the sweet bay (Magnolia virginiana), made into a leaf tea to alleviate the symptoms of various ailments ranging from a cold to malaria. The berries of the eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) were made into a tea that was useful to treat bronchitis and rheumatism. The inner bark of the ubiquitous cottonwood (Populus deltoides) was a useful analgesic for those suffering from aches and pains. Also common was the red mulberry (Morus rubra), the roots of which were used to treat the effects of dysentery and worms. The graceful black willow (Salix nigra) provided diversion for the eyes of the weary traveler, a useful bark tea that treated a variety of ailments, and leaves that when poulticed served to treat cuts and blisters. Russell Lawson

Sources Belknap, Jeremy. The History of New-Hampshire. Vol 3. Boston: 1792. Berlandier, Jean Louis. The Indians of Texas in 1830. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1969. Bradbury, John. Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811. London, UK: 1819. Lawson, Russell M. The Land Between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall’s Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Russell, Howard. Indian New England before the Mayflower. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980.

136 Section 3: Essays

The Explorer-Botanists of America T

he initial explorations of the eastern coasts, rivers, and forests of North America by European mariners and early colonists revealed to them a cornucopia of new genera and species of fauna and flora. Because early modern Europeans relied so heavily on the materia medica of physicians, apothecaries, and chirurgeons (surgeons) for cures and potions to alleviate pain and reduce symptoms, the unknown flora of America was particularly interesting. One of the earliest sciences in America was, therefore, botany. More often than not, the early botanists could not engage in intellectual pursuits from the armchair but had to take to the trail and become their own field guides, in search of the vast and unique natural productions of America. The first English colonists in America, at Jamestown, sought knowledge of plants not only for food and medicine but also to discover what crops might be planted on a commercial scale for trade, and to learn what plants were unique to America. To this end, one of the first activities of colonial scientists was the establishment of experimental gardens to test plant growth in different conditions and soils and to harvest seeds for distribution and sale. For such purposes Lawrence Bohun, a physician at Jamestown in 1610, established an experimental garden. Joseph West created an experimental garden on the Ashley River in South Carolina in 1669 to test the soil for its suitability to cotton, ginger, indigo, olives, and sugar. Dr. William Houstoun experimented with growing fruit trees, coffee, cocoa, bamboo, and tea at a garden at Savannah, Georgia, established around 1733. The forests and mountains of northern New England attracted explorers right from the start in the early 1600s. John Josselyn, for example, an English physician, journeyed to New Hampshire in 1638 and again during the 1660s. On the latter trip, he journeyed into the White Mountains and climbed Mount Washington. He recorded his experiences and findings in two books, New-Englands Rarities Discovered (1672) and Two Voyages to New-England (1674). Josselyn collected plant specimens as he journeyed, later experimenting with them to determine their ef-

ficacy for various pains and illnesses. He also relied on the reports of colonial housewives and Native Americans as to what herbs worked for what illness. Sometimes his evidence was accurate and reasonable. At other times his description of the medicinal qualities of flora was based on superstition, clearly not the result of experiment and observation.

The Bar trams By the mid-1700s, botany had become the science of choice in America—and for obvious reasons: the colonies hosted hundreds of plants unfamiliar to European scientists. Europeans and Americans published numerous accounts of American flora during these years. John Lawson, an explorer-naturalist who journeyed throughout the South in the early 1700s and was put to death by the Tuscarora Indians on his final journey, published several accounts of South Carolina flora, the last being A History of Carolina (1714). Mark Catesby published a beautifully illustrated Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1729–1747). Johannes Gronovius’s Flora Virginica (1739–1743) included the work of John Clayton, a botanist active in the exploration of the middle colonies as well as the Appalachian Mountains. John Bartram surpassed them all. The greatest botanist of mid-eighteenthcentury America, Bartram journeyed thousands of miles throughout America, collecting specimens and seeds, which he sold to European botanists interested in establishing American gardens in Europe. He made his living off of such seed collecting and sales. Bartram worked out of Philadelphia, where he had a well-developed experimental garden. He corresponded with members of the Royal Society of London, such as Peter Collinson, and studied Latin so he could properly name and publish the genera and species that he discovered. The great botanist Carolus Linnaeas referred to Bartram as a superb “natural botanist.” On some of his later journeys, John took along his son William, teaching him techniques

Section 3: Essays 137 of collecting and the nomenclature of plants. William Bartram eventually succeeded his father as one of the great botanists of the late eighteenth century, publishing Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida in 1791.

B otanists and the New Nation The American Revolution led to a patriotic response among scientists, particularly botanists, who believed that the growing republic depended on knowledge of the flora and fauna of North America. The New England botanist Manasseh Cutler wrote his friend and fellow scientist Jeremy Belknap in 1785: May we not wonder that so much labor and expense should have been bestowed in examining almost every petty island in the seas, and yet so extensive a part of this continent as lies between the latitudes of 40 and 50, exceedingly diversified in soil and surface, should remain at this day unexplored? It reflects no great honor, I think, upon us, that, after all our pretentions to science, and the actual progress we have made, natural history should have been so totally neglected. Natural productions ought to be the first object of attention with an infant country.

Cutler acted on his patriotic inclinations in two journeys to the White Mountains of central New Hampshire, the first in 1784 as part of a scientific expedition organized by Jeremy Belknap, the second in 1804 as the leader of a scientific expedition involving botanists like himself. Cutler was the first botanist to twice ascend the highest mountain of the Northeast, Mount Washington. Cutler’s contemporaries included, besides William Bartram, the botanist and professor Benjamin Smith Barton and the plantation owner and slaveholder William Dunbar. Barton was the nephew of David Rittenhouse, a leading scientist of the American Revolution. He earned his M.D. from the University of Edinburgh, practiced medicine in Philadelphia, and then became a professor at the College of Philadelphia. Barton published Elements of Botany in 1803. He was not much of an explorer, more a promoter of journeys taken by others, notably Frederick Pursh and Thomas Nuttall.

Dunbar, of Louisiana, was more of an explorer. He was commissioned by Thomas Jefferson in 1804 to explore the Red River Valley but ended up journeying up the Black and Ouachita rivers of Louisiana and Arkansas to the Hot Springs. Along the way, he made natural observations of the southeastern part of the Louisiana Territory, collected botanical specimens, and sent a report on the natural history and flora of the Ouachita Valley to President Jefferson. Besides Americans, English explorers also were interested in the untapped botanical resources of the Louisiana Territory. John Bradbury and Nuttall, for example, traveled extensively along the Missouri, Mississippi, and Arkansas rivers. Bradbury arrived in America in 1809 as the agent of Liverpool scientists seeking specimens and seeds of American flora. Bradbury met Thomas Jefferson, who recommended that the botanist proceed to St. Louis. There, Bradbury chanced to meet members of the Pacific Fur Company preparing to journey up the Missouri River. Bradbury joined them and botanized along the Missouri as far north as the Mandan Indian village of North Dakota. He joined fur trader Manuel Lisa on his return journey to St. Louis and remained in America while he waited out the War of 1812. Bradbury’s Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811, published in 1817, is a fascinating account of an English botanist’s journey in the Louisiana Territory. At St. Louis in 1810, by coincidence, Bradbury met Thomas Nuttall, also an English botanist, who planned to join the fur traders up the Missouri as well. The two men shared the journey for a time, but Bradbury departed from the upper Missouri before Nuttall, who chose to stay in the region of the Mandan village and botanize. Nuttall was a singular character, driven by science, obsessed with botany, and fearless in his quest to explore all of America. Indeed, he almost accomplished his goal. Nuttall made numerous journeys in quest of botanical information and specimens. He not only journeyed up the Missouri but traveled across the South, explored the regions of the Great Lakes, and descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the Arkansas River. In the spring and summer of 1819, Nuttall traveled the Arkansas Territory, exploring the

138 Section 3: Essays Red, Verdigris, Grand, Cimarron, and Arkansas rivers, in the process almost dying from severe privation and illness. After returning to Philadelphia, he published A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory during the Year 1819. Nuttall returned to the trans-Mississippi West again in 1834, joined by John Kirk Townsend, a young ornithologist from Cambridge. An object of fascination to botanists, Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, continued to draw scientists throughout the 1800s to explore its summit. The first scientists who ascended what was then known as Agiocochook characterized the view from its peak as “daunting terrible.” Notable exploring botanists were William Dandridge Peck, George Shattuck, Jacob

Bigelow, Francis Boott, William Oakes, Ezekiel Holmes, and Edward Tuckerman. Nuttall explored Mount Washington in 1824; Henry David Thoreau also explored the region in the 1820s. The White Mountains, and the alpine summit of Mount Washington in particular, continue to draw botanists and interested others today. Russell Lawson

Sources Lawson, Russell M. The Land Between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall’s Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. ———. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002, 2004.

Linnaeus in America A

lthough the great eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus never set foot in North America, his impact on the continent’s scientists was nonetheless immense. Even during Linnaeus’s lifetime, he could count among his followers most of the preeminent American naturalists of his day, including the plant explorers and commercial nurserymen William and John Bartram of Philadelphia, Alexander Garden of South Carolina ( for whom the gardenia was named), and, somewhat later, the scientist and politician Thomas Jefferson. Linnaeus might not have attained the stature he achieved without the aid of his many American admirers, who not only popularized the Linnaean system of plant and animal classification but provided the Swedish naturalist with innumerable New World specimens to fit into his new taxonomy. That taxonomic organization has undergone several revisions since Linnaeus’s death, but some of the central elements of its structure—in particular, the hierarchical classification of living things and the binomial genus and species method of classification— remain the standard for the biological sciences even today.

B otanist Linnaeus was trained as a physician, a profession that required extensive botanical knowledge in the eighteenth century, as doctors had to know how to formulate medicines from plants as well as other substances. Indeed, botany was Linnaeus’s first love, and, when he returned to Sweden in 1738 after completing his medical degree in Holland, he took a professorship in medicine at the University of Uppsala. This allowed him ample time for botanical study, not to mention access to the university’s botanical garden. Over the succeeding decades, Linnaeus would not only fill that garden with plant species from around the world, but he would arrange the plants using his own hierarchical and binomial system of classification. That system was first expounded in his Systema Naturae (1735) and greatly expanded in Species Plantarum (1753) and the tenth edition of Systema (1758). These works remain the baseline texts for plant and animal nomenclature to the present day. Linnaeus was not the first natural scientist to use binomial designations or to organize plants into “classes” and “orders” based on physical similarities. He was, however, the first to apply

Section 3: Essays 139 one system to every known plant, animal, and mineral and to base the classification of plants on the sexual organs of the flowers. Yet, by his own admission, noting the number and relative height of pistils and stamens was a very artificial method to apply to the diversity of the “vegetable kingdom.” By the early nineteenth century, botanists such as the French Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu had expanded on the Linnaean system by adopting a more “natural” classification system, one that took into account numerous morphological comparisons in addition to flowers. But the simplicity of the Linnaean binomial system (earlier classification schemes were often contradictory, or they included long strings of confusing adjectival descriptors) and the comprehensiveness of his classification efforts—based on a continually expanding collection from most of the known world—firmly established the dominance of the Linnaean approach. In fact, its very universality

North American followers of eighteenth-century Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus helped standardize his new system of plant and animal taxonomy and contributed a myriad of New World specimens to the classification list. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

became one of the Linnaean system’s most attractive elements, as naturalists around the world could now communicate in a shared language of science, thus “uniting all nations under one language in Natural History,” as Thomas Jefferson put it in 1814.

The Linnaean System in America The Linnaean system became particularly popular in America, where distance from European herbaria made direct comparison with “specimen types” (the mounted plant pieces from which official identifications were determined) impractical. The system was simple enough that reasonably skilled naturalists observing field specimens could count and measure pistils and stamens, and thus determine the broad class or order to which a plant belonged according to the Linnaean structure. Then, if they happened to have access to one of the numerous editions of Systema Naturae or Species Plantarum, they could make an even more precise identification, perhaps realizing in the process that they had located an entirely new species. The later editions of Linnaeus’s basic texts included more than 2,000 species (both plants and animals) indigenous to the United States, many named after their American collectors. Needless to say, the prospect of being thus recognized by the foremost European plant scientist of the age did much to encourage the popularity of the Linnaean system in America, particularly in an era when American science and scientists were not always accorded such respect from British and Continental “savants.” The relationship was reciprocal, however, as Linnaeus relied on a worldwide network of naturalists, many of them American, to build his collections and fill out his massive catalogs. Linnaeus eventually named and classified more than 8,500 plant species alone. Even the earliest editions of Linnaeus’s works included innumerable New World plants, and such American “exotics” as the flowering magnolias were all the rage in the seventeenth-century estate gardens of Holland and Britain, where Linnaeus visited and studied in the 1730s. Once settled in Uppsala, Linnaeus continued to collect North American plants and forge

140 Section 3: Essays connections with the most prominent American naturalists of the century, such as Alexander Garden of South Carolina, John Clayton of Virginia, John Bartram of Philadelphia, and Cadwallader Colden of New York, whose daughter Jane was also an accomplished naturalist. Linnaeus also had access to the collections brought back to Europe by the frequent voyages of exploration mounted to the backcountry of North America in the eighteenth century, including the two-year expedition of Linnaeus’s own student, Peter Kalm. However, even supporters of Linnaean classification found many of its elements artificial, and resistance to and revisions of his taxonomic system began in earnest before his death in 1778. Botanists realized, for example, that the Linnaean system of sexual classification was too rigid to easily accommodate newly discovered species, let alone genera. Thus, Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu’s classification based on seed leaves (monocotyledons or dicotyledons) rather than on flowers proved a popular improvement on the Linnaean system in the early nineteenth century. An even greater challenge to Linnaean taxonomy—and indeed to almost every area of the natural sciences—came with the spread of Darwinian theory. Like many an Enlightenmentera naturalist, Linnaeus had seen his collection and classification efforts as, at least in part, an exercise in “natural philosophy.” For natural philosophers, science was not an end in itself but a method by which the structure of creation itself— “the Great Chain of Being,” as they often connoted it—might be revealed in all of its precision and glory. They intended to do for the natural world what Isaac Newton had achieved for the physical with his Principia (1687): show that the universe of living things was tied together in an orderly system, just like the heavenly bodies. But Darwin’s theories of evolution and descent, resting on the premise that all living things evolved over long spans of time through a purely materialistic and unguided process of variation and selection, directly challenged the notion of a creator’s design for nature.

Darwin’s emphasis on the relation between species change and the environment also fundamentally altered the research agenda in the life sciences. In botany, for example, the traditional emphasis on collection and classification, often by amateurs, gave way to the regime of the “new” botany, which focused on the dynamic processes of plants as they relate to their environments— transpiration, photosynthesis, but also changing morphology—and on laboratory experimentation carried out by university-trained professionals. This research resulted in a new taxonomic system reflecting the “phylogenetic” relationship of plants, wherein, as historian Peter Bowler notes, “the degrees of similarity used to classify species depend upon how recently they shared a common ancestor.” Comparative structures such as those of Linnaeus or Jussieu would still be used, as they are now, but in a greatly expanded and more dynamic form. Neither the “new” botany, nor subsequent revolutions in the natural sciences coming from genetics, entirely displaced the Linnaean classification model, which still provides a useful shorthand for both professional and amateur scientists. As a testament to the historic and continuing influence of Linnaeus on modern botany, the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia planned a special “Linnaeus and America” exhibit in 2007 to commemorate the tercentenary of his birth. Jacob Jones

Sources Denny, Margaret. “Linnaeus and His Disciple in Carolina: Alexander Garden.” Isis 38: (1948): 161–74. Morton, A.G. History of Botanical Science. London: Academic Press, 1981. Overfield, Richard A. “Charles E. Bessey: The Impact of the ‘New’ Botany on American Agriculture, 1880–1910.” Technology and Culture 16:2 (April 1975): 162–81. Regis, Pamela. Describing Early America: Bartram, Jefferson, Crèvecoeur, and the Rhetoric of Natural History. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992. Rydberg, P.A. “Linnaeus and American Botany.” Science, new ser., 26 (655): 65–71. White, Richard. “Discovering Nature in North America.” The Journal of American History 79:3 (December 1992): 874–91.

A–Z in April 1807. He set up his practice in Wilmington, Delaware, where he married Hannah Webster.

BALDWIN, WILLIAM (1779–1819) The physician and botanist William Baldwin was one of the first to examine the plant life of the American Southeast, as well as parts of the West Indies and Latin America. He accompanied Stephen Long on his 1819 expedition to discover the headwaters of the Missouri River but died within a few months of setting out.

Physician William Baldwin was born on March 29, 1779, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, to Quaker minister Thomas Baldwin and his wife, Elizabeth. Selfeducated, he worked as a teacher for a year and then, wishing to pursue a career in medicine, apprenticed himself to Dr. William A. Todd in Downingtown. In the winter of 1802–1803, Baldwin attended the course of medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. It was there that he met his lifelong friend William Darlington, a fellow medical student, and nursed Darlington through a protracted illness. After he returned to his studies with Todd in Downingtown, he met Dr. Moses Marshall, who interested Baldwin in botany and introduced him to the botanic garden of his uncle, Humphrey Marshall. In 1805, Baldwin signed on as ship’s doctor on a merchant vessel bound for Canton, China, a trip that gave him material for the thesis required as part of his M.D. training at the University of Pennsylvania. After his return in 1806, he attended the lectures of Benjamin Smith Barton at the university, wrote and published his thesis A Short Practical Narrative of the Diseases Which Prevailed among the American Seamen, at Wampoa in China; in the Year 1805; with Some Account of Diseases Which Appeared among the Crew of the Ship New-Jersey, on the Passage from Thence, to Philadelphia (1807), and was awarded his medical degree

B otanical Explorations Baldwin began studying plants in the vicinity of Wilmington and, in 1811, started a professional correspondence with Henry Muhlenberg in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, whose dream it was to coordinate the efforts of botanists throughout the country and cooperatively produce a descriptive account of the nation’s flora. Later the same year, Baldwin moved his family to Georgia, believing its milder climate would be beneficial to his deteriorating health. During the next six years, despite the debilitating effects of what apparently was tuberculosis, he traveled widely throughout Georgia, its sea islands, South Carolina, and eastern Florida, collecting plants and meeting fellow investigators such as Stephen Elliott and the brothers John and Louis LeConte. Having served as surgeon for a gunboat flotilla during the War of 1812, Baldwin was given a similar appointment in 1817 on the U.S. frigate Congress, sent to evaluate the political situation in South America. During the trip, he was able to collect more exotic flora and make comparisons with the flora of North America, much as he had done on an earlier trip to Bermuda. Through such travels, he became one of the most widely experienced botanists of his time. The capstone of his botanical explorations should have been the expedition led by Major Stephen Long up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains. Baldwin’s friends Darlington and the LeContes lobbied to get him appointed surgeon and botanist to the Long Expedition, hoping the trip might help restore his health. Departing in March 1819, the group, which also included naturalists Titian Peale and Thomas Say, was troubled from the start. Their light-draft steamboat, specially constructed in Pittsburgh, broke down continually, as did Baldwin’s health. He became so weak that he seldom could leave the boat, so

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142 Section 3: Baldwin, William the other naturalists collected plants for him. At Franklin, Missouri, he was too ill to continue and was left at the home of John J. Lowry, where he died on August 31, 1819. His gravesite later was washed away by the Missouri River. Of American botanists, Baldwin was one of the most knowledgeable but least published; he published only two short papers on his discoveries. His herbarium of plant specimens eventually came into the possession of mycologist ( fungus expert) Lewis David von Schweinitz, and his unpublished memoranda went to botanist and writer John Torrey, both of whom made good use of the material. Charles Boewe

Sources Baldwin, William. Reliquiae Baldwinianae: Selections from the Correspondence of the Late William Baldwin with Occasional Notes, and a Short Biographical Memoir. Comp. William Darlington. Philadelphia: Kimber and Sharpless, 1843; reprint ed., New York: Hafner, 1969. Harshberger, John W. The Botanists of Philadelphia and Their Works. Philadelphia: T.C. Davis and Sons, 1899; reprint ed., Mansfield Center, CT: Martino, 1999.

BANISTER, JOHN ( C A . 1654–1692) John Banister stood prominently among the initial group of naturalists and explorers endeavoring to systematically describe and classify the flora and fauna of colonial North America and the Caribbean. His fourteen years of work in Virginia made Banister, according to the modern botanist Eugene Rudolph, the “first resident, university trained, North American naturalist who sent his collections and comments to fellow British correspondents” from Virginia. Much of his work, however, was expropriated by others after Banister’s early death, and thus his reputation was, in part, eclipsed by the succeeding generation of famed naturalists-explorers, including such luminaries as Mark Catesby, John Clayton, and John Bartram. Born in Gloucestershire, England, around 1654, Banister earned an M.A. from Oxford in 1674. He served as a chaplain of the university’s Magdalene College while continuing to pursue

his natural history studies. He focused, in particular, on a collection of plant material that had been brought over decades before from the York River area of colonial Virginia. In 1678, Banister moved to Virginia, officially to serve as an Anglican minister, but he seemed to find the colony’s plants and animals at least as compelling as the tending of souls. Over the next fourteen years—until he was accidentally shot and killed in 1692 while doing fieldwork near the Roanoke River—Banister was a tireless collector of botanical and entomological specimens and observations from the Virginia countryside. Although it is sometimes difficult to establish who first recorded species types (the herbarium specimens to which subsequent finds are compared) in the pre-Linnaean age, Banister’s chief biographer, Joseph Ewan, claims that “twothirds to three-quarters of the plants described by Banister from Virginia were new” to European science. Many of the North American exotics that graced Bishop of London Henry Compton’s famous gardens at Fulham were undoubtedly introduced by Banister, as Compton had long been the younger minister’s patron. Banister, in fact, was one of the first of what would become a long succession of naturalists—both Anglo-European and native colonials—who collected and disseminated American ornamentals at the behest of wealthy Britons in an era when interest in science and extensive pleasure grounds were quickly becoming determinants of genteel social status on both sides of the Atlantic. Banister was also a pioneer in the close study of New World insects and mollusks. He wrote several papers on these subjects as well as on botany for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the preeminent scientific journal and organization in seventeenth-century England. In 1688, he published a detailed inventory of Virginia plants—“Catalogus plantarum in Virginia observatum”—for the great English naturalist John Ray’s Historia Plantarum. He was planning to assemble a full-scale natural history of Virginia when he met his untimely end at the age of thirty-eight. Banister was a talented illustrator and writer, and his natural history would most likely have put him on a par with better-known near contemporaries such as Clayton, Catesby, and

Section 3: Barton, Benjamin Smith 143 Bartram. John Ray certainly believed as much, as he wrote of his colleague, “surely no one who has set foot in the New World is equal to, or even second to him in his knowledge of all the pertinent scientific literature, or who has all his abilities.” Jacob Jones

Sources Ewan, Joseph. “Who Conquered the New World? Or Four Centuries of Exploration in an Indehiscent Capsule.” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 78:1 (1991): 57–64. Ewan, Joseph, and Nesta Dunn Ewan. John Banister and His Natural History of Virginia, 1678–1692. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970. Jarvis, P.J. “North American Plants and Horticultural Innovation in England, 1550–1770.” Geographical Review 63:4 (October 1973): 477–99. Jellison, Richard. “Review of Joseph and Nesta Ewan, John Banister and His Natural History of Virginia, 1678–1692.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 28:4 (October 1971): 685–6. Rudolph, Emanuel D. “Review of Joseph and Nesta Ewan, John Banister and His Natural History of Virginia, 1678–1692.” The Quarterly Review of Biology 46:4 (December 1971): 408–9.

BARTON, BENJAMIN SMITH (1766–1815) Benjamin Smith Barton was one of the premier botanists of early nineteenth-century America. Born on February 10, 1766, he was seventh of eight children and the fifth son of Episcopal rector Thomas Barton and his wife, Esther Rittenhouse, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Barton’s mother, a sister of astronomer David Rittenhouse, died when he was only eight years old. His father died when he was fourteen, the age at which he entered the academy at York and his education came under the supervision of his eldest brother, William. He was eighteen when he began medical study at the College of Philadelphia. The following year, Barton accompanied his uncle, David Rittenhouse, and others on their survey of the western boundary of Pennsylvania. His notes on that summer adventure reveal his keen interest in the animals, plants, geology, and native peoples they encountered.

Physician and Naturalist Barton continued his medical education at the University of Edinburgh during the next two years, then he went to Germany for a year. Thereafter, he claimed having an M.D. from the University of Göttingen, though no record of it has ever been found. He returned to the United States in 1789 as a professor at the College of Philadelphia, which two years later became the University of Pennsylvania; he taught there for the rest of his life. To Barton’s initial appointment in natural history and botany was added materia medica, and, following the death of Benjamin Rush in 1813, he took over his responsibilities in the theory and practice of medicine. Barton was connected with the Pennsylvania Hospital and was a fellow of the College of Physicians. For the last six years of his life, he was president of the Philadelphia Medical Society. But his medical practice never was extensive. His greatest influence came through his students, for nearly every young man who had any interest in natural history among those studying in Philadelphia became part of the Barton circle. His influence was extended even farther through the Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal, which he founded in 1804 and edited during the three volumes of its existence. Elected president of the short-lived Philadelphia Linnaean Society, Barton delivered before it in 1807 “A Discourse on Some of the Principal Desiderata in Natural History,” in which he outlined an ambitious research program for American naturalists. Under the heading of zoology, he included study of the habits of mammals and birds, touched on the neglected fields of ichthyology, entomology, and helminthology (the study of parasitic worms), and advocated research on the physical history of mankind, which should include the investigation of American Indian mounds and the collection of vocabularies of Indian languages. For the field of botany, he asked for specialized monographs on the different genera of flowering plants, greater attention to cryptogamic plants (those that reproduce by spores and do not produce flowers or seeds), and the gathering of information, especially from Indians, about the medicinal and food values of indigenous plants. He noted under geology and

144 Section 3: Barton, Benjamin Smith mineralogy that almost everything remained to be done in mapping strata and identifying minerals. And under meteorology, he urged that changes in the climate be studied by assembling all records of the weather that had been made since the colonies were settled. Most of these were areas where Barton either had made a beginning or intended to make one. Barton’s problem was that, with so many interests, he never had time to attend to all of them and seldom completed any of the projects he started. American Indian languages and antiquities remained a lifelong interest. His most substantial work in this area was New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America (1798), in which he concluded that a comparison of vocabularies proved that Indians in North America and peoples of eastern Asia had a common origin. His zoological studies mostly were articles of modest length and substance, covering such topics as the species of dogs kept by Native American tribes, Rocky Mountain sheep, the American elk, the North American alligator, and the hotly debated issue of the “Fascinating Faculty Which Has Been Ascribed to the Rattle-Snake.” His Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania (1799) never got beyond Part 1, in which he reported on the migration of birds and correlated their arrival with the change in mean temperature and the annual progress of vegetation. After surveying the extensive literature that had accumulated on the subject of the honeybee, he argued in an article that the honeybee was not native to North America but had been introduced from Europe.

B otanist In addition to a few taxonomic papers and a pamphlet on materia medica that grew in length as it passed through three editions, Barton’s major literary work was his Elements of Botany (1803), widely recognized as the first textbook on the subject written by an American. To compile it, he collected his own reference herbarium, obtaining plant specimens geographically beyond his reach by subsidizing the travels of Frederick Pursh as far south as North Carolina and as far north as Vermont, and later the travels of Thomas Nuttall to the west through the Great Lakes and up the Missouri River.

Barton had married Mary Pennington in 1797, by whom he had two children. He was never physically robust and was troubled by gout throughout his adult life. In the spring of 1815, he visited France, believing the sea voyage would be beneficial to his health. He was even more ill when he returned in November, however, and died on December 19, 1815, in Philadelphia. Only three days earlier, he had dictated his last scientific paper, “Discovery of the Genus Bartonia.” Pursh and Nuttall each dedicated a different plant genus to their patron. Charles Boewe

Sources Ewan, Joseph, and Nesta Dunn Ewan. Benjamin Smith Barton, Naturalist and Physician in Jeffersonian America. St. Louis: Missouri Botanical Garden Press, 2007. Graustein, Jeannette E. “The Eminent Benjamin Smith Barton.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 85:4 (1961): 423–38. Pennell, Francis W. “Benjamin Smith Barton as Naturalist.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 86:1 (1942): 108–22.

BARTRAM, JOHN (1699–1777) John Bartram, known as the father of American botany, was the first American to make a living by collecting and selling seeds. A fourth-generation Quaker, Bartram was born on May 23, 1699, on his father ’s farm near Darby, Pennsylvania. Self-taught, he became interested in botany while still a boy. The wealthy Quaker merchant James Logan introduced Bartram to the scientific study of plants by giving him the first three botanical books he had ever seen and by teaching him the rudiments of Linnaean classification. Another wealthy Quaker merchant, Peter Collinson of London, inspired Bartram to become what Linnaeus himself called “the world’s greatest natural botanist.” Bartram and Collinson never met, but their surviving letters show the warm friendship that developed between them during Bartram’s long life. Bartram began making his living as a farmer on land he inherited from an uncle. In 1728,

Section 3: Bartram, John 145 hands, Bartram was ready to take on Collinson’s assignments.

B otanical Journeys

America’s first practitioner of scientific botany, Pennsylvania Quaker John Bartram collected, studied, and exchanged countless plant species. He also conducted what are believed to be the first experiments in hybridization. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–68176)

however, resolved to spend his life breeding, collecting, and distributing plants rather than merely growing them for consumption, he sold the farm and bought 102 acres on the west bank of the Schuylkill River in Kingsessing township, now part of Philadelphia. In about 1730, he began planting there the eight-acre plot he set aside as a botanical garden—the first in the American colonies. George Washington, one of its many distinguished visitors, thought the garden was not tastefully arranged, but its purpose was pragmatic: raising plants so their seeds, bulbs, and cuttings could be distributed elsewhere. The plants were arranged in straight rows and located to take advantage of the various soils found in the sloping plot. Since Philadelphia is located where two climate zones meet (hardiness zones 6 and 7), Bartram’s Garden turned out to be an ideal place to naturalize plants brought up from the South. With the remainder of his acreage devoted to subsistence farming and with a dwelling largely built by his own

In 1736, Bartram’s first expedition in search of new plants started from his home and followed the Schuylkill River to its source. He traveled in Delaware the following year, and in Virginia along the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1738. It probably was in 1740 that he explored the flora of New Jersey. In 1742, he investigated the Catskills, and he traveled farther into New York State and other parts of Pennsylvania in 1743–1744. The last excursion was in the company of the Native American interpreter Conrad Weiser and the mapmaker Lewis Evans, who were sent by the government of Pennsylvania to settle a quarrel between the Iroquois and the colony of Virginia. It resulted in one of Bartram’s few publications, Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and Other Matters Worthy of Notice (1751), of the country traversed in their itinerary, which went as far north as Lake Ontario. Most of his journeys were taken alone, however, because Bartram knew few others who shared his interest in plant life. The trips usually were made in autumn, in order for him to obtain ripe seeds and bulbs suitable for transplanting. Meanwhile, Bartram’s son William was exhibiting a taste for nature and a talent for drawing. At age fourteen, he became his father’s companion on the collecting expeditions. Together, they visited the Catskills in 1753 and Connecticut in 1755. They made an extensive trip to South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in 1765–1766, resulting in the pamphlet A Journal Kept by John Bartram of Philadelphia . . . upon a Journey from St. Augustine up the River St. John’s, with Explanatory Notes (1766). Somewhere in Georgia, father and son discovered the Franklin tree (Franklinia alatamaha), last seen growing wild in 1803. All living specimens of this popular ornamental shrub known today have descended from the plants propagated by the Bartrams in Kingsessing. In addition to plants, both father and son were interested in the fauna, minerals, and other artifacts of nature found in the regions they explored. John also collected

146 Section 3: Bartram, John such materials for European correspondents when requested to do so.

Royal B otanist Bartram was able to absent himself from the farm for these long trips because his large family (he and his wife Ann had nine children) could attend to the work while he was away. Bartram also employed a number of loyal African American workers whom he had freed from slavery. They were paid a decent wage and ate at the same table with the family. Even then, Bartram’s wide-ranging travel would have been impossible without the financial backing of Collinson, who returned English plants—especially fruit trees and ornamentals— in exchange for the seeds, cuttings, and bulbs Bartram shipped to him. He also solicited subscriptions from English gardeners for boxes of American seeds. By 1764, Bartram’s annual shipment amounted to twenty-two boxes, each selling for more than £5. Through the intervention of Collinson, Bartram was appointed royal botanist by King George III in 1765 and awarded an annual pension of £50. The Bartram-Collinson transatlantic correspondence worked to Bartram’s advantage at both ends. Through Collinson he became a correspondent of such luminaries of the European scientific world as Linnaeus and his patron, the Queen of Sweden, as well as Jan Frederik (Johannes) Gronovius in Leiden, Johann Jakob Dillen at Oxford, and Philip Miller, whose Chelsea garden was an English counterpart of Bartram’s. Also, Bartram’s growing fame and the recommendation of Linnaeus put him in touch with the few colonial Americans having kindred interests, among whom were John Clayton in Virginia, Cadwallader Colden in New York, and Alexander Garden in South Carolina. Benjamin Franklin, whose scientific expertise lay elsewhere but who was interested in everything, was one of the many visitors who sought out Bartram in his garden. Simple farmer that he professed to be, Bartram became a founding member of Franklin’s American Philosophical Society. And the connection benefited the next generation as well, for Collinson passed on to another wealthy Quaker friend, Dr. John Fothergill, some of William’s drawings. Fothergill was so impressed

with the boy’s talent that he later financed William’s own extensive travels. Through the Bartram-Collinson correspondence, it is possible to get some idea of how Bartram’s collecting zeal enriched European, and especially English, horticulture. Trees such as the sugar maple and shrubs such as the witch hazel came to grace the English countryside as a result of Bartram’s annual shipments. Nor did he neglect novelties; English gardeners learned about the skunk cabbage and Venus flytrap because of specimens he dispatched. It has been estimated that the plants of American origin cultivated in England doubled in number during John Bartram’s active years. Since the garden continued in the hands of the Bartram family until the middle of the nineteenth century, it is difficult to assign specific credit to John or to each of his successors, but at its height the garden was propagating more than 4,000 species, which were spread throughout the Western world. Even though Linnaeus considered Bartram a natural botanist and Fothergill called him a natural genius, the key word in both instances is natural. All botanists pretending to any professional status assembled herbaria of dried plants as reference material; Bartram did not. He was neither interested in nor capable of analyzing, classifying, describing, and naming the new species he came across—the kind of work done by all the systematic botanists of his age. When his specimens reached England, that job was performed by the likes of Daniel Solander, a pupil of Linnaeus whom Collinson had persuaded to come to London. Throughout his career, Bartram remained an inspired plant-hunter, nurseryman, and seedsman. John Bartram died on September 22, 1777, at his home on the Schuylkill River. His son William, who shared so many of his father’s interests in nature, had shown repeatedly that he had no head for business, so management of the garden went to his brother John, Jr. But William, who never married, stayed on at the garden. After the death of John, Jr., in 1812, management passed to his daughter, Ann Carr. With William’s professional help, Bartram’s Garden became the nation’s leading nursery during the period Ann and her husband Robert Carr managed it. Ann’s stepson, John Bartram Carr, was the last family

Section 3: Bartram, William 147 member to be involved. After private ownership by a Philadelphia industrialist for a time, the garden was acquired by the city of Philadelphia in 1891 and made part of the city’s park system. Today, the forty-five acre site is a National Historic Landmark. Charles Boewe

Sources Bartram, John. The Correspondence of John Bartram, 1734– 1777. Ed. Edmund Berkeley and Dorothy Smith Berkeley. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992. Berkeley, Edmund, and Dorothy Smith Berkeley. The Life and Travels of John Bartram: From Lake Ontario to the River St. John. Tallahassee: University Presses of Florida, 1982. Earnest, Ernest. John and William Bartram, Botanists and Explorers, 1699–1777, 1739–1823. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1940. Hoffmann, Nancy, and John C. Van Horne, eds. John Bartram, King’s Botanist: A Tercentennial Reappraisal. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society. Vol. 249. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2003. Slaughter, Thomas The Natures of John and William Bartram. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

BARTRAM, WILLIAM (1739–1823) William Bartram was one of America’s pioneering naturalists and an incisive chronicler of Native American culture in the Southeast during the colonial period. The son of John Bartram, a prominent colonial botanist, he is probably best known for his book Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws (1791), which detailed his fouryear journey through settled and frontier southeastern North America. A member of the early American Enlightenment movement, William Bartram is celebrated as a natural history writer, artist, ethnographer, botanist, and zoologist.

Life Born on April 9, 1739, William Bartram spent his early years at his father ’s farm and botanical garden (recognized as the first in North America) on the banks of the Schuylkill River

near Philadelphia. Raised in a liberal, freethinking Quaker household, he received a classical education at the Philadelphia Academy under the tutelage of Charles Thomson, future secretary of the Continental Congress. He showed an early interest in natural history and by age fourteen had developed a considerable talent for sketching plants and animals. John Bartram was concerned that his son would never profit from his drawings or botanical interests and encouraged him to pursue a career in medicine or to learn printing from family friend Benjamin Franklin. Neither endeavor held interest for William. Bartram chose instead to apprentice with a merchant in Philadelphia from 1756 to 1757 and use his free time to illustrate plants and animals. His father sent many of William’s drawings to his London friend and agent Peter Collinson, a merchant and wool draper, who circulated them among his influential correspondents. Among these were the Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus, Dutch botanist Johannes Gronovius, London physician John Fothergill, botanical artist C.D. Ehret, and zoologist George Edwards. Edwards later published Bartram’s drawings of birds in his Gleanings of Natural History (3 volumes, 1758–1764), while Collinson published two of Bartram’s drawings of turtles in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1758. Bartram left Philadelphia in 1761 for Cape Fear, North Carolina, where he opened a store at Ashwood, a plantation owned by his uncle, William Bartram, a prosperous merchant, planter, and member of North Carolina’s General Assembly. The younger Bartram struggled as a merchant at Cape Fear; within four years, his business failed.

Journey in G eorgia and Florida In 1765, John Bartram was appointed botanist to King George III and charged with leading an expedition to East Florida to collect plants and reconnoiter French and Spanish lands ceded to the British at the close of the French and Indian War. Aware of William’s recent business failure, he traveled to Cape Fear and asked his son to serve as assistant, artist, and companion for the yearlong expedition through portions of presentday Georgia and Florida. Although William

148 Section 3: Bartram, William Bartram produced few drawings on the expedition, the experience provided him with the training and qualifications for his later hallmark journey through the Southeast. Moreover, the Bartrams were introduced to numerous members of the Southern elite, from governors to traders, connections that would prove useful in William’s later journey. It was during the East Florida expedition that the Bartrams discovered a small tree in McIntosh County, Georgia, whose survival would be linked to them for posterity: Franklinia alatamaha, or the Franklin tree. Named for Benjamin Franklin, the species grew only along a short stretch of the Altamaha River. Fortunately, William collected seeds of the tree for cultivation in the family’s botanical garden, as the Franklin tree was not seen again in the wild after 1803. Every Franklin tree alive today is descended from Bartram’s original collection. On completion of the East Florida expedition in 1766, William Bartram stayed in Florida. He petitioned the East Florida Council for a land warrant of 500 acres near the mouth of Six Mile Creek north of Picolata, and the warrant was granted in February 1766. Bartram tried farming as a livelihood, growing indigo and rice, but a combination of mismanagement, poorly suited land, and rebellious slaves caused his East Florida endeavor to fail. He retreated to St. Augustine, where he found employment with a team of surveyors under William De Brahm, surveyor general for Florida, charged with exploring and charting lands below the Mosquito River near present-day New Smyrna. The team was shipwrecked sometime after leaving St. Augustine, and Bartram was not heard from until late April 1767, when word of his survival reached Philadelphia. He returned there later that year. From 1767 to 1770, Bartram worked briefly as a farmhand and resumed his career as a merchant. In 1768, he was elected as a corresponding member of the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, which merged the following year with the American Philosophical Society. In 1768, Peter Collinson, just before his death, secured commissions for Bartram to draw mollusks for the Duchess of Portland and mollusks and turtles for Dr. John Fothergill, who would later become Bartram’s primary patron.

B otanist and Explorer Business complications, perhaps impending bankruptcy, caused Bartram to leave Philadelphia and return to his uncle’s plantation at Cape Fear, where he completed a number of drawings for Fothergill and tried to collect on past debts. In 1772, he received a proposal from Fothergill for an expedition to Florida to promote “the discovery of rare and useful productions of nature, chiefly in the vegetable kingdom.” Bartram was to be paid £50 annually, plus expenses and compensation for drawings. In October 1772, Bartram received detailed instructions for collecting and shipping plant specimens and for sketching plants and animals from Fothergill; they constituted the earliest known set of instructions for an American biological expedition. Bartram returned to Philadelphia in late 1772 or early 1773 to make preparations for the expedition. In March 1773, he sailed from Philadelphia to Charleston, South Carolina, to begin the journey through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. He did not return to Philadelphia until January 1777, after four years and thousands of miles of travel. Bartram’s written legacy to the scientific understanding of the biological and cultural diversity of the Southeast is his book Travels (1791), based in part on his journals and reports to Fothergill. The first comprehensive study of the region, Travels was received coolly in the United States by scientists who deemed the account too personal. The book was held in high acclaim in Europe, however, where Bartram’s exotic depictions of nature inspired the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In Travels, Bartram described more than 350 plant and animal species, of which 150 were new to science. Besides Franklinia, he was the authority for twelve other plant and animal species encountered during his journey, including some hallmark species of the Southeast region: Ogeechee lime (Nyssa ogeche), oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia), royal palm (Roystonea elata), Florida sandhill crane (Grus canadensis pratensis), and gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus). As he waited fourteen years to publish his observations in Travels, other botanists, such as Thomas Nuttall and André

Section 3: Berlandier, Jean Louis 149 Michaux, were credited for naming several species first discovered by Bartram. Among the most enthralling facets of Travels are the vivid pictures that Bartram painted of colonial southeastern landscapes, particularly the immense forests and savannas of Georgia. “Continuing some time through these shady groves, the scene opens, and discloses to view the most magnificent forest I have ever seen,” Bartram wrote, adding, “many of the black oaks measured eight, nine, ten, and eleven feet diameter five feet above the ground.” According to Bartram, these trees “ascend perfectly straight, with a gradual taper, forty or fifty feet to the limbs,” and he noted that his group made “seven miles progress through this forest of gigantic black oaks.” In Florida, he wrote, “I came to the open forests, consisting of exceedingly tall straight Pines (Pinus Palustris) that stood at considerable distance from each other.” Through the pines, Bartram observed “an almost unlimited plain of grassy savannas” that extended “as far as the eye could see.” Bartram was also a keen observer of Native American culture, and he provided valuable ethnological commentary on the various southeastern tribes he met and lived with. A peaceable Quaker having no personal interest in their land, he was openly welcomed by most Native American tribes he encountered. The Seminoles named him “Puc Puggy” or “Flower Hunter.” Bartram noted the influence of Native Americans on the southeastern environment and provided early evidence of the existence and extent of a cultural landscape molded by their actions. “We then passed over large rich savannas or natural meadows, and frequently old Indian settlements, now deserted and overgrown with forests,” he wrote. He described traveling several miles “over meadows and green fields” and “verdant swelling knolls, profusely productive of flowers and fragrant strawberries, their rich juice dying my horses feet and ancles [ankles]. . . . These swelling hills, the prolific beds on which the towering mountains repose, seem to have been the common situations of the towns of the ancients,” he wrote, noting the “level rich vale and meadows” that formed their “planting grounds.” Bartram did not stray far from Philadelphia in his later years. He received many distinguished visitors at his home, including American presi-

dents and foreign and American botanists, while caring for plants in the botanical garden. He died there on the morning of July 22, 1823, at age eighty-five. Charles Williams

Sources Bartram, William. Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the Extensive Territories of the Muscogulges, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Choctaws. New York: Penguin, 1988. Cashin, Edward J. William Bartram and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000. Harper, Francis, ed. The Travels of William Bartram, Naturalist Edition. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. Oeland, G. “William Bartram: A Naturalist’s Vision of Frontier America.” National Geographic (March 2001): 104–23. Sanders, Brad. Guide to William Bartram’s Travels: Following the Trail of America’s First Great Naturalist. Athens, GA: Fevertree, 2002. Slaughter, Thomas P. The Natures of John and William Bartram. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. Waselkov, Gregory A., and Kathryn E. Holland Braund, eds. William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

B E R L A N D I E R , J E A N LO U I S (1805–1851) In a series of expeditions in Mexico in the 1820s and 1830s—along the Rio Grande, in southern Texas, up the Guadeloupe River, and in and about northern Mexico—the botanist Jean Louis Berlandier collected thousands of floral specimens, wrote detailed botanical accounts, and kept journals of his findings and adventures. Berlandier was born in France but educated in Geneva under the tutelage of A.P. de Candolle, the famous Swiss botanist. Candolle and other Swiss botanists arranged for the young man to journey to Mexico in 1826. There Berlandier became a member of the government’s Boundary Commission, which had been given the task of discovering Mexico’s northern border with the United States. The uncertainty of the border between Mexico, which gained its independence from Spain in 1821, and the United States, was a consequence of the uncertainty of the Louisiana Purchase of

150 Section 3: Berlandier, Jean Louis 1803, and what lands Louisiana encompassed. The dispute between Spain and the United States was temporarily reconciled by means of the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, which allowed the United States to purchase Florida and set the boundary between Spanish and American territory at the Sabine and Red rivers. Mexican independence put into question these boundaries, which the 1828 Boundary Commission expedition hoped to answer. Berlandier served as botanist on the expedition, keeping a journal of experiences and observations and preserving floral samples of the Rio Grande, Guadeloupe, and Brazos river valleys. He eventually settled in Matamoras, at the mouth of the Rio Grande, where he married and had a family, practiced medicine, and ran a pharmaceutical business. The Rio Grande Valley was an area contested by America and Mexico as well as the Comanche, Apache, Choctaw, Cherokee, Tonkawa, Tawakoni, and other Native American tribes. Berlandier interacted with and came to know the customs of the various tribes, eventually writing Indigenes Nomades des Etats Internes d’Orient et d’ Occident des territories du Nouveau Mexique et des deux Californies, or The Indians of Texas, in 1830. His skills as an artist and anthropologist came together in beautiful watercolors of Indian men and women wearing their customary dress and involved in typical activities. The book is a rich ethnography of the Plains Indians written by a sensitive observer of human and natural history. The flora and fauna of the region, watered by the Rio Grande, Nueces, Colorado, Guadeloupe, Colorado, and Brazos rivers, were captured by Berlandier’s descriptive pen, careful study, and patience in collecting and preserving. Berlandier was largely self-taught as a naturalist. On his various journeys in northern Mexico and southern Texas, he combined the talents of the geoscientist, anthropologist, historian, artist, zoologist, and botanist. He recorded meteorological phenomena such as tides, wind direction and speed, temperature, and barometric pressure. He observed, recorded, and collected specimens, and sometimes he painted fauna such as amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals as well as flora such as wildflowers and trees. The Texas turtle is named for him (Gopherus berlandien), as is a species of flax (Linum berlandieri) and a species of

ash, Berlandier ash (Fraxinus berlandieriana), found in Texas.

Across the R io Grande The Boundary Commission of which Berlandier was a member was, in fact, a scientific expedition. General José Manuel Rafael Simeon de Mier y Terán, who led the expedition, was a mathematician and surveyor. Two of his officers were physicians, and the mineralogist Raphael Chavell accompanied the group as well. Wagons driven with care contained scientific instruments to determine latitude, elevation, and direction, and to preserve images and specimens. In early February 1828, the explorers arrived at Laredo on the Rio Grande. Wildflowers were already beginning to bloom, even though the environs were dry and sparing. From Laredo, they moved north to San Antonio, where Berlandier spent a fortnight botanizing before they moved northeast toward the Sabine River, crossing the Guadeloupe, Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity rivers along the way. Spring rains brought rising waters and lowland mud that slowed the expedition to a crawl. Worse, the mosquitoes thrived in the wet, humid environment and plagued the men unmercifully. Berlandier and others became ill with the fever and chills of malaria. At Trinity River, the botanist was forced to turn back. He spent the summer recovering first at San Antonio then at Matamoras, returning to San Antonio in the fall, healthy once again and ready for more adventure.

The Guadeloupe and O ther Explorations At San Antonio, Berlandier got to know José Francisco Ruiz, an army officer who had spent some years living with the Comanche Indians of Texas. Fascinated, Berlandier used Ruiz as his source of investigation into this and other Indian tribes of southern Texas. He accepted Ruiz’s invitation to join him, some soldiers, and several hundred Comanches on a hunting expedition up the Guadeloupe River in the late fall of 1828. Berlandier used the opportunity to botanize and to study Indian culture and customs. Years later, he published (along with Raphael Chavell)

Section 3: Bigelow, Jacob 151 Diario de viaje de la Comisión de Límites (1850), an account of his Guadeloupe journey and the Boundary Commission expedition as a whole. After his trip up the Guadeloupe, Berlandier joined an expedition voyaging from Goliad near the mouth of the San Antonio River to New Orleans during the spring months of 1829. He returned to Matamoras that summer, where he would make his home. Berlandier organized his collection of botanic specimens and sent them to Candolle, who was angry about their poor quality and branded Berlandier a sloppy, inaccurate botanist. Undeterred, Berlandier used his base at Matamoras for continuing botanical journeys in northern Mexico, specifically to Nuevo Leon, Brazos de Santiago, and Tamaulipas in 1830 and 1831. He made another botanical excursion across the Rio Grande into Texas in 1834. Berlandier employed his botanical knowledge in building a thriving medical practice and pharmaceutical business at Matamoras. His journeys were made in part to acquire additional material for his growing materia medica. When the U.S. annexation of Texas led to war between the United States and Mexico, U.S. troops invaded in 1846, and Berlandier kept a journal of the occupation of Matamoras. He operated the war hospital to treat the wounded and served as an intermediary between the Americans and Mexicans. Berlandier survived the war but died in 1851 trying to cross a swollen river on horseback. Russell Lawson

Sources Berlandier, Jean Louis. The Indians of Texas in 1830. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969. Geiser, Samuel Wood. Naturalists of the Frontier. Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1937.

B I G E LO W , J A C O B (1786–1879) Jacob Bigelow, a student of the physician and naturalist Benjamin Smith Barton, was a longtime professor at Harvard College and a practicing physician for more than half a century. He believed in a holistic view that the best prevention of disease is living a wholesome life,

and he believed that a disease must run its course under the watchful, sometimes passive, eye of the physician. He published the threevolume American Medical Botany (1817–1820), based in part on his exploration of the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1816. His fascinating record of that trip, “Some Account of the White Mountains of New Hampshire,” was published in the New-England Journal of Medicine and Surgery. Bigelow journeyed with the botanist Francis Boott as well as other Massachusetts notables such as Lemuel Shaw, Francis Calley Gray, and Nathaniel Tucker. The botanists approached the mountains from the Connecticut River to the west, having earlier the same summer climbed Mount Monadnock in southern New Hampshire and Mount Ascutney in eastern Vermont. Passing through the Western (Crawford) Notch of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, they descended the Saco River and then followed the Ellis River north to near its source at the Eastern (Pinkham) Notch. They ascended Mount Washington paralleling Cutler’s River, named for the famous New England botanist Manasseh Cutler. Bigelow and his group measured the barometric pressure and temperature at the summit, later comparing their readings to others made at the same time at Cambridge. Their estimate of the mountain’s height, 6,225 feet, was astonishingly close to its actual 6,288 feet. Bigelow’s Lawn, near the summit of Mount Washington, commemorates the scientist’s ascent. Bigelow made a list of the flora he observed on the summit, indicating when the plants flowered, and he compared it with a list of plants provided by Francis Boott. Bigelow followed Cutler ’s theory of the three zones of vegetation on the mountain and understood how unique was the alpine environment he studied. Russell Lawson

Sources Bigelow, Jacob. “Some Account of the White Mountains of New Hampshire.” The New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery V (October 1816): 321–38. Graustein, Jeannette E. “Early Scientists in the White Mountains.” Appalachia 30 (1964): 44–63. Pease, Arthur S. “Notes on the Botanical Exploration of the White Mountains.” Appalachia 14 (1917): 157–78.

152 Section 3: Bradbury, John

B R A D B U R Y, J O H N (1768–1823) The English explorer and botanist John Bradbury was born near Stalybridge, England, on August 20, 1768, into an impoverished family. He left school at an early age to help support his sister and three brothers by working in a cotton mill. Having learned French on his own, he started a night school for other ambitious young men like himself, where he taught what he had learned about natural history, especially botany. Bradbury was fortunate in making influential friends. Sir Joseph Banks and other naturalists, impressed by his native talent, elected him to membership in the Linnaean Society of London. He met other powerful patrons when he began doing landscape gardening for wealthy industrialists. But there never was enough money to go around. He and his wife, Elizabeth, eventually had eight children. In hope of additional support for his growing family, Bradbury proposed a three-year expedition in Louisiana to collect natural history specimens for the Liverpool Museum. The Lancashire mill owners who underwrote his trip in 1809 were mostly interested in obtaining a reliable source of cotton for their factories and exotic plants for their gardens; enriching the museum was at best a secondary interest. Bradbury promised first to explore Kentucky, then to set up a nursery in New Orleans to propagate a stock of American plants suitable for England. The mill owners grudgingly agreed to give him £100 a year for his expedition, and he left for America. A house guest at Monticello for several weeks, Bradbury was encouraged by Thomas Jefferson to believe that André Michaux had sufficiently covered Kentucky but that the vast area drained by the Missouri River needed to be explored by a professional botanist. Accordingly, on his trip down the Ohio River, in his eagerness to reach St. Louis, Bradbury passed over Kentucky, despite his promise to his beneficiaries. In St. Louis, he laid out his proposed garden and offered to collect over the winter and ship to England bales of buffalo wool—by no means the fiber the Lancashire mill owners had in mind.

Meanwhile the Englishman Thomas Nuttall, a protégé of Benjamin Smith Barton, also had reached St. Louis, intending to explore the botanical riches of the Missouri River Valley. In the spring of 1811, Nuttall and Bradbury attached themselves to a group going up the Missouri with the ultimate goal of reaching the Pacific coast and setting up a fur trading station for John Jacob Astor’s firm. Later, Henry Marie Brackenridge, a friend of Bradbury from St. Louis, overtook and accompanied the botanists. Collecting living plants as they went, Bradbury got as far north as Mercer County, North Dakota, then returned downstream with Brackenridge. Bradbury needed to get his collection transplanted; Nuttall, who was collecting specimens for dry preservation in his herbarium, stayed on another four months. Brackenridge later published a short account of the trip on the Missouri River in his Views of Louisiana (1814); Bradbury’s parallel, but longer, account was embedded in his Travels in the Interior of America (1817), his only book-length publication. Back in St. Louis, Bradbury transplanted 4,000 to 5,000 living plants, but four-fifths of them died from lack of attention when Bradbury fell ill. Meanwhile, his sponsors were so dissatisfied with their returns that they withheld payment. Bradbury was forced to seek other employment. The following year, he managed to dispatch a shipment of plants to England before being trapped in America by the War of 1812. It is not known how he supported himself during this period. It was not until 1816 that Bradbury returned to England, where he published his book the following year. There, he learned that all the new species among his plants already had been described, named, and published by Frederick Pursh in 1814, thus depriving him of credit for their discovery. Bradbury later returned to the United States with his wife and some of their younger children. He finished out his life in Middletown, Kentucky, living in obscurity and working in a textile mill. He died on March 16, 1823. Charles Boewe

Sources Boewe, Charles. “John Bradbury (1768–1823), Kentucky’s Forgotten Naturalist.” Filson Club History Quarterly 74:3 (2000): 221–49.

Section 3: Colden, Jane 153 Rickett, H.W. “John Bradbury’s Exploration in Missouri Territory.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 94:1 (1950): 59–89. True, Rodney H. “A Sketch of the Life of John Bradbury, Including His Unpublished Correspondence with Thomas Jefferson.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 68 (1929): 133–50.

C L AY T O N , J O H N (1694–1773) The colonial botanist John Clayton was born in England in 1694. In about 1705, his father settled in Virginia, where he was secretary to the lieutenant governor and later became attorney general of the colony. After completing his education in England, John Clayton joined his father in Virginia and, in 1720, was appointed clerk of the Gloucester county court, a position he held for fifty-three years. In 1723, Clayton married Elizabeth Whiting. They and their five sons and three daughters, attended by slaves, lived on a 450-acre plantation near the Piankatank River; there Clayton raised cattle and grew tobacco. During his seven years in Virginia, Mark Catesby met Clayton and recommended him to J.F. Gronovius as a plant collector. By 1735, Clayton was sending plants for identification to Gronovius in Amsterdam, where they came under the scrutiny of Carolus Linnaeus and other professional botanists. Using John Ray’s morphological system of classification, Clayton followed up his specimens with “A Catalogue of Plants, Fruits, and Trees Native to Virginia,” which made satisfactory generic distinctions. With some assistance from Linnaeus, Gronovius added the identification of species to Clayton’s lists and published the catalog of about 900 species as the two-part Flora Virginica (1739 and 1743). Although Gronovius got most of the credit for the book, it confirmed Clayton’s standing as a serious botanist and brought him a wider circle of correspondents, including Alexander Garden in Charleston and John Bartram in Philadelphia, as well as British members of the Royal Society, who sometimes inserted his observations in their Philosophical Transactions. One of Clayton’s English correspondents, Peter Collinson, encouraged Gronovius to issue a

second edition of the Flora, but Gronovius long procrastinated. Undertaking the task himself, Clayton prepared an enlarged and improved text that he transmitted to Collinson along with specimens of the plants involved. Collinson arranged to have illustrative plates made by Georg Ehret, Britain’s most eminent botanical artist. Before Clayton’s manuscript could be published, however, Laurans, the son of Gronovius, issued a second edition of his father ’s work that, unknown to both Collinson and Clayton, he had been working on for some time. Published in Leiden in 1762, this is the edition on which the fame of Flora Virginica rests. Although not illustrated as Clayton’s version would have been, this edition makes full use of the Linnaean system of classification and is said to be the first important inventory of the plants of British North America. Clayton’s manuscript has since been lost. With Gronovius’s name on all editions of the Flora Virginica, Clayton received little credit, but recognition of the professional quality of his work did bring other distinctions. Linnaeus named for him the plant genus Claytonia, a member of the purslane family. An early member of the American Philosophical Society, Clayton was honored with the presidency of the Philosophical Society for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge in Virginia when it was organized in the spring of 1773. His health failed soon afterward, and he died at his home in Gloucester County late in December of that year. Charles Boewe

Sources Berkeley, Edmund, and Dorothy Smith Berkeley. John Clayton: Pioneer of American Botany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963. Zirkle, Conway. “John Clayton and Our Colonial Botany.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 67 (July 1959): 284–94.

COLDEN , JANE (1724–1766) Jane Colden is widely recognized as the first woman botanist in America. Working with her father, she collected, classified, and created detailed

154 Section 3: Colden, Jane descriptions and drawings of many plants native to New York. The daughter of Cadwallader and Alice Christy Colden, she was born in New York City on March 27, 1724. Her father, a Scottish-born physician and botanist, moved with his wife first to Philadelphia and then to New York, seeking the good life in the American colonies. When Jane was very young, the family moved to a 3,000 acre tract in Orange County, New York, that came to be known as Coldingham, where the six Colden children were raised. Jane Colden was a voracious reader and loved gardening. Between her love of the gardens, the books at her disposal in her father’s science library, and the encouragement and contacts of her father, she developed an intense interest in plants. As both father and daughter began collecting plants on the estate, he began classifying the plants by the Linnaean system, and he taught her how to classify as well. Both father and daughter also corresponded with a number of eminent botanists, including Carolus Linnaeus of Sweden, John Bartram of Philadelphia, Peter Kalm of Sweden, and Alexander Garden of South Carolina. Jane Colden was an accurate observer. In addition to describing many plants, she made ink drawings of each one. She also learned as much as she could about the plants and their medicinal properties. Not only did Colden describe and draw plants already known, but she also discovered and drew some new ones—among them Hypericum virginicum, which she initially named gardenia (now called Marsh St. Johnswort), after Alexander Garden. A collection of Colden’s plant descriptions and drawings appears in a manuscript titled “Flora Nov.-Eboracensis, or Flora of New York.” The work, now housed at the British Museum, contains 340 figures and 341 descriptions. The drawings are merely sketches, but the descriptions are precise and detailed. In 1963, the Garden Club of Orange and Dutchess Counties, New York, published Botanic Manuscript of Jane Colden, 1724–1766, edited by H.W. Rickett and E.C. Hall, which contains descriptions of fifty-seven flora of New York. In 1759, at the age of thirty-five, Colden married William Farquhar, a physician trained in

Scotland. They lived in New York City. After marrying, Colden rarely practiced botany. She died in childbirth on March 10, 1766. Mary Jarvis

Sources Biermann, Carol A., and Louise S. Grinstein. “Despite the Odds: Women Biologists Who Succeed.” American Biology Teacher 56 (1994): 468–75. Bonta, Marcia Myers. Women in the Field: America’s Pioneering Women Naturalists. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991. Smith, Beatrice Scheer. “Jane Colden (1724–1766) and Her Botanic Manuscript.” American Journal of Botany 75 (1988): 1090–96.

CUTLER, MANASSEH (1742–1823) Manasseh Cutler was a New England polymath who studied medicine, astronomy, and geography but is most famous for his work in botany. He was also a Congregational minister, merchant, lawyer, patriot, land speculator, and a member of the U.S. Congress for Massachusetts. Like many clergy of his time, Cutler was interested in a broad range of intellectual endeavors. A native of Connecticut and graduate of Yale College, Cutler married Mary Balch in 1766. The young couple resided at Martha’s Vineyard while Cutler practiced law and ran his motherin-law’s business. From 1768 to 1770, Cutler studied theology under his father-in-law, then accepted the call of the First Parish of Ipswich Hamlet (now Hamilton), Massachusetts. As a clergyman, Cutler felt it his duty to inquire into a variety of scientific subjects, to explore the ubiquitous handwriting of the “author of nature.” He observed the heavens, sighting comets, studying eclipses and the aurora borealis, and observing Jupiter’s moons. In 1769, at Martha’s Vineyard, he studied the transit of Venus across the surface of the sun. In addition, he held it his duty as an American to collect as much information as he could on the natural productions of the land, knowledge of which was essential to the proper development of the United States.

Section 3: Cutler, Manasseh 155

Naturalist Cutler’s experience as a chaplain to Massachusetts troops during the American Revolution encouraged his interest in medicine, which in turn led to a growing fascination with America’s flora. During the war, he inoculated scores of people for smallpox. In 1780, he wrote, the only solid foundation for advances in the real knowledge of nature, whose wonderful and secret operations are so involved and intricate, so far out of the reach of our senses, must be by a regular series of experiments. . . . Such experiments as are within our power, and careful attention to the state of the atmosphere, and the various circumstances of vegetation in plants and trees, may be found useful.

In 1781, Cutler assigned himself the task of studying the “trees and plants” of America in such detail as “to furnish materials for a Natural History of the Country, in which we are, at present, very deficient.” He was an original member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, contributing papers on botany and astronomy. He also became involved in local medical societies and Linnaean societies. Jeremy Belknap nominated him to the American Philosophical Society in 1784, largely because of Cutler ’s skill at natural history exhibited during the BelknapCutler Expedition to the White Mountains in July 1784.

Ascents of Mount Washington Manasseh Cutler was the first scientist to ascend Mount Washington twice. The mountain represented terra incognita more than any other phenomenon to early Americans living in the Northeast. It stands at only 6,288 feet, but its summit is an arctic environment and its winds are notoriously strong. Cutler ascended the mountain in 1784 as one of the leaders of the Belknap-Cutler Expedition, and he returned twenty years later in the company of botanists and scientists from Massachusetts. Cutler’s goal in helping to organize the 1784 expedition was to gain a complete understanding of the flora of the White Mountains, particu-

larly Mount Washington, and to ascertain the mountain’s height to see how it ranked with respect to other mountains of the world. Scientists at the time considered the Andes of South America to be the highest range; it was assumed that Mount Washington was the highest peak in North America. To accomplish his task, Cutler brought on the journey two barometers and two thermometers, the plan being to set up one pair at the base and the other at the summit, then record their respective differences at the same time. Relative barometric pressure adjusting for temperature was a common approach to ascertaining altitude. Unfortunately, the bumps and grinds of the journey broke one of each instrument; Cutler was forced to measure the barometric pressure and temperature at the base, then wait for hours until he ascended to the summit to perform the measurements there. Once he returned from the summit, he also took a measurement at the base and used the summit as a point from which to form a triangle to calculate the angles, hence the height. On returning to his parsonage, Cutler discovered that he had mislaid many of his notes. He calculated the height of Mount Washington to be about 9,000 feet, but he knew this was merely an estimate. He was able to preserve some of his botanical notes from the ascent, in which he defined the three zones of vegetation that became the model for later botanists: the first zone of deciduous giving way to coniferous trees as the elevation increased; the second zone of stunted evergreens, krummholz, small hardy bushes, moss, and heath; and the third zone above the line of vegetation at the summit. Having lost many of his notes and knowing that his barometric readings were inaccurate, Cutler yearned for a chance to return to Mount Washington to complete his scientific objectives. For several years, he planned such an excursion, but other matters got in the way. Cutler was involved in land speculation in Ohio and spent much time lobbying Congress for a grant of land to the Ohio Company, of which he was a part. His political involvement eventually led him to run for a seat in the House of Representatives. After serving two terms, Cutler was ready in

156 Section 3: Cutler, Manasseh 1804—at age sixty—for another attempt at Mount Washington. Cutler’s second journey to the White Mountains took place at the end of July 1804. Accompanying the botanist was William Dandridge Peck, a naturalist, botanist, and professor of natural history at Harvard; the mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch; and several other adventurers and scientists. Despite his age, Cutler reached the summit, whereas many of his companions failed. Peck and Cutler collected a variety of specimens, but Peck lost half of his on the descent through a treacherous gully. Cutler was well-prepared to make precise observations to determine the height of the mountain. As he recorded in his journal: the barometer was a tube in which the mercury had been boiled to exclude the air, and then hermetically sealed. On removing the seal and cork, it required about an inch of mercury to fill it. Having filled the tube, I immersed the end in a vessel of mercury, and erected and confined the tube, placing the thermometer close to it, and left them to get the true temperature of the air. In this position they remained about two hours, but I repeatedly took the range of both—barometer, 23.24 inches; thermometer, 53 degrees. By the theolodite we were elevated several degrees above all the other pinnacles of the mountain. The distant horizon smoky, no clouds about the mountain, but the sun, for most of the time, was partially obscured by thin clouds at a great height above us.

Although Bowditch was unable to reach the summit, he later examined Cutler’s measurements and calculated the height of the mountain at 7,055 feet, the most accurate measurement to that time. Russell Lawson

Sources Cutler, Manasseh. Life, Journals, and Correspondence of the Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D., ed. William P. Cutler and Julia P. Cutler. Cincinnati, OH: R. Clarke, 1888; Athens: Ohio University Press, 1987. Graustein, Jeannette E. “Early Scientists in the White Mountains.” Appalachia 30 (1964): 44–63. Lawson, Russell M. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.

D R U M M O N D, T H O M A S (1790–1835) Thomas Drummond was a native of Scotland who traveled to America on several occasions to search for botanical specimens. As a young man and aspiring botanist, he journeyed to Canada in 1825 and participated in the Second Overland Expedition organized by John Franklin. He journeyed to the United States in 1831, descending the Ohio River to the Mississippi, which he then followed to St. Louis. He traveled to Texas in 1833, where he spent several months accumulating hundreds of specimens of flora and fauna.

S econd O verland Expedition Drummond joined John Franklin’s Second Overland Expedition as an assistant to the physician and botanist John Richardson. In February 1825, the scientists arrived from England at New York, from which they journeyed to the Great Lakes, and from Lake Superior up the Rainy River to Lake Winnipeg, where they began their journey on the Saskatchewan River. While the other members of the expedition went north, Drummond proceeded west, accompanying Hudson’s Bay Company trappers on their journey up the Saskatchewan River to the Rocky Mountains. He traveled in a large birchbark canoe paddled by trappers. The route upstream was sufficiently slow that he was able to spend a fair amount of time walking on shore, collecting floral specimens. They departed the Saskatchewan for the Athabaska River in October. Difficult travel on horseback along the river valley into the higher elevations of Alberta was extremely fatiguing, yet Drummond was amazed by all he saw. Drummond separated from the Hudson’s Bay trappers and stayed at an encampment where he was looked after by an Iroquois guide named Baptiste. He spent a remarkable, dangerous winter in the Canadian Rockies along the Athabaska and Berland rivers. Part of the time, Baptiste hunted while Drummond stayed alone in a “brushwood tent” he had built for himself. Descending from the Rockies in the spring of

Section 3: Dunbar, William 157 1826, Drummond confronted a grizzly bear protecting her young. His gun misfired, and he was about to be mauled when some of the Canadian voyageurs arrived in the nick of time to save him. Drummond botanized in the Rockies and foothills during the spring and summer months. In the fall, he joined a Scotsman named McDonald journeying east toward Edmonton. They descended the Athabaska River in late autumn, experiencing grave difficulties with the arrival of December. After much suffering, they eventually reached Fort Assiniboine. In the spring of 1827, not yet finished with danger and privation, Drummond accompanied a Native American guide up the Saskatchewan River to rendezvous with Franklin and Richardson. They lost the trail, however, and had to trudge through a snowstorm, living off the animals Drummond had collected for zoological purposes. Killing and eating a skunk gave them sufficient food to reach the rendezvous point. During the summer of 1827, Drummond botanized along the South Saskatchewan River near Saskatoon. The party journeyed to Hudson’s Bay in late summer, setting sail for Liverpool.

Texas For the next several years, Drummond was busy working in Belfast with the Botanical Garden and publishing two volumes of his Musci Americani, a definitive work on North American mosses. He returned to America in 1830, journeying down the National Highway to Wheeling, West Virginia, then down the Ohio River and up the Mississippi to St. Louis. He explored the Mississippi Valley from St. Louis to New Orleans, collecting specimens of flora and fauna. Hearing of Jean Louis Berlandier’s successful botanizing in Mexican-controlled Texas, Drummond journeyed to Texas and spent twenty months in the general vicinity of the Brazos Valley. The people of the region at this time, such as at San Felipe and Velasco, were enduring a deadly outbreak of cholera as well as saturating rains and the most devastating freshets and floods in memory. Arriving at the Brazos Valley, Drummond became ill with cholera but survived. Despite his illness, he was able to collect, as he wrote in a letter to his patron William Hooker,

“about a hundred species of plants, and as many specimens of birds, consisting of about sixty species, some snakes, and several land-shells.” Drummond also endured a shortage of weapons, clothing, food, and other supplies while exploring the Brazos. Part of this was because of what locals called the Overflow of 1833, when the river flooded the surrounding valley to an unprecedented degree. At San Felipe, the colony founded by Stephen Austin, Drummond counted 320 floral species that he had collected in the region, notwithstanding the flood. His next excursion was up Texas’s Colorado River, during which he collected 150 more species of plants. After spending the winter and spring of 1834 at Galveston Bay, Drummond again ascended the Brazos to San Felipe. He wished to journey west to the mountains of New Mexico, but illness prevented him from doing so. He thereupon journeyed to New Orleans and then to Havana, where he died in March 1835. His life and work are commemorated in Mount Drummond and Drummond’s Glacier in the Canadian Rockies; the Drummond false pennyroyal (Hedeoma drummondii), a wildflower native to North Dakota; Drummond’s rock cress (Arabis drummondii); yellow mountain avens (Dryas drummondii); and Drummond’s phlox (Phlox drummondii). Russell Lawson

Source Geiser, Samuel Wood. Naturalists of the Frontier. Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1937.

DUNBAR, WILLIAM (1749–1810) The Southern naturalist, botanist, and explorer William Dunbar was born in 1749 in Scotland, the son of a nobleman. He was well educated, first in Glasgow and later in London. Dunbar crossed the Atlantic in 1771, bringing trade goods valued at a thousand pounds. At Fort Pitt, he began trading with American Indians for the furs of the region. Within two years, he had accumulated enough capital to enter into

158 Section 3: Dunbar, William a partnership with John Ross, a Scottish merchant from Philadelphia. Dunbar and his new partner traveled down the river system to what was then called West Florida, and they established a plantation near present-day Baton Rouge. The plantation’s early financial success was dissipated by a slave insurrection in 1775 and by attacks both by British and Spanish soldiers during the American Revolution. Nevertheless, in 1792, Dunbar and Ross were able to acquire another plantation near Natchez, which they named the Forest. There, by means of his knowledge of scientific agriculture, Dunbar grew rich cultivating cotton and indigo, and he bought out his partner. Dunbar’s improvements in agricultural tools and the cotton gin brought him local renown, which, along with his wealth, led to a number of important positions in the Spanish colonial government, culminating in his appointment as surveyor general for West Florida. In 1798, as a member of its boundary commission, he met the U.S. commissioner, mathematician, and surveyor Andrew Ellicott, who brought him to the attention of Thomas Jefferson. The commission’s survey reset the boundaries between the United States and Spanish America, which left Dunbar’s plantation in American territory; he thus became an American citizen. Thereafter, Dunbar’s interests focused increasingly on scientific pursuits. He imported scientific books and instruments from England. On his plantation, he set up a laboratory equipped with chemical apparatus, microscopes, and an “electrical machine.” He also outfitted an observatory with various astronomical instruments, including a reflecting telescope. He published his observations on lunar rainbows and the data he collected observing a solar eclipse in 1806. When President Jefferson sought to learn more about the territory obtained in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, he arranged to have its southern boundary explored by Dunbar and George Hunter, a chemist and druggist from Philadelphia. The Dunbar-Hunter Expedition was originally expected to explore the entire region drained by the Arkansas and Red rivers, but because of resistance from the Osage Indians and Spanish officials, it had to be abridged to a shorter itinerary. Completed in January 1805, the threemonth expedition up the Red and the Ouachita

rivers as far as Hot Springs furnished a competent preliminary natural history survey of the Ouachita Mountains. It was especially noteworthy for Dunbar’s chemical and microscopic analysis of the water of the Hot Springs of Arkansas. After his election to the American Philosophical Society in 1800, Dunbar contributed a dozen articles to its Transactions; he continued publishing scientific observations for the rest of his life on meteorology, astronomy, plants, animals, and fossil bones. He also published ethnological accounts of American Indian tribes he had encountered. Notable among these was his explanation of how Indians speaking mutually unintelligible languages could communicate by using common symbolic signs. William Dunbar never claimed his father’s estate and title in Scotland. He died at his plantation on October 16, 1810. Charles Boewe

Sources DeRosier, Arthur H., Jr. William Dunbar, Scientific Pioneer of the Old Southwest. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Riley, Franklin L. “Sir William Dunbar—The Pioneer Scientist of Mississippi.” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 2 (1899): 85–111. Rowland, Eron, ed. Life, Letters, and Papers of William Dunbar of Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland, and Natchez, Mississippi: Pioneer Scientist of the Southern United States. Jackson: Mississippi Historical Society, 1930.

E L L I O T T, S T E P H E N (1771–1830) Known today primarily as a botanist, in his own time Stephen Elliott was a planter, legislator, professor, banker, editor, and, above all, founder of a variety of educational and scholarly institutions in Charleston, South Carolina. The third son of a successful merchant, Elliott was born on November 11, 1771, in Beaufort, South Carolina. Orphaned at the age of seven, he grew up in the home of an older brother, who saw to his education and sent him to Yale College, where he graduated in 1791. From then on, Elliott managed his large agricultural holdings in both South Carolina and Georgia. In 1796, he married Esther Habersham of Georgia. They had twelve children.

Section 3: Experimental Gardens 159 In 1794, Elliott was elected to the lower house of the South Carolina legislature, where he served until 1800; from 1808 to 1812, he served in the state’s senate. As a legislator, he drafted laws creating the state’s public school system and its state bank. Elected first president of the bank, a post he held until his death, he moved his family in 1812 from their plantation to Charleston; thereafter, he was identified with the cultural life of that city. He helped found the Literary and Philosophical Society of South Carolina (serving as its president from 1814 to 1830), the South Carolina Academy of Fine Arts, and the Medical College of Charleston, where he was professor of natural history. Additionally, he was president of the Charleston Library Society and a trustee of Beaufort College, South Carolina College, and the College of Charleston. In 1828, he and Hugh Swinton Legaré founded, and he edited, the quarterly Southern Review, in which seventeen of Elliott’s articles appeared on a variety of subjects. One of them, in the August 1829 issue, was a thirty-page review of A.P. de Candolle’s Prodromus that summarizes the development of systems of classification in natural science. While living on his plantation, Elliott had taken an amateur naturalist’s interest in plants, minerals, mollusks, birds, and insects. After an 1808 visit to Henry Muhlenberg in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he began to focus his attention on botany, contributing to Muhlenberg’s proposal for a national botanical survey that would be compiled piecemeal by many workers in their respective locations. As a gift for Muhlenberg, he took along a flowering specimen of the Ericaceae family (heaths) that grew in Burke County, Georgia; Muhlenberg named it Elliottia racemosa. For his modestly titled A Sketch of the Botany of South-Carolina and Georgia, issued in thirteen parts between 1816 and 1824, then bound into two volumes, Elliott first surveyed the scattered previous publications on Southern botany. Then, in addition to his own collecting work in the field, he called on a wide circle of friends in South Carolina and Georgia to add to the holdings of his herbarium. The outcome in his published book was more than 1,300 pages of plant descriptions written in parallel columns in En-

glish and Latin. Among these were more than 150 species of plants described for the first time. This impressive work was Elliott’s monument. He died on March 28, 1830, in Charleston. Charles Boewe

Sources Gee, Wilson. “South Carolina Botanists: Biography and Bibliography.” Bulletin of the University of South Carolina 72 (1918): 35–37. Hoch, J.H. “Stephen Elliott.” Annals of Medical History, n.s. 7 (1935): 164–68. Ravenel, H.W. “Some North American Botanists. VII. Stephen Elliott.” The Botanical Gazette 8:7 (1883): 249–53. Rogers, George A., and R. Frank Saunders, Jr. “Stephen Elliott: Early Botanist of Coastal Georgia.” In Swamp Water and Wiregrass: Historical Sketches of Coastal Georgia. Mercer, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984.

E X P E R I M E N TA L G A R D E N S The natural environment of North America presented European immigrants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with an untold variety of floral species. The New World possessed an abundance of plants that could be used as building materials, for food, and for medicine. Determining the efficacy of particular plants demanded exploring botanists who were willing to acquire seeds that could be planted in the controlled environment of colonial gardens. Many of the great early American botanists had private gardens or helped to maintain public gardens to perform experiments to determine what plants grew best in what soil and under what climatic conditions. The first colonial experimental garden was maintained by Lawrence Bohun, a London Company physician who worked at Jamestown in the first years of settlement. He collected native plant specimens, cultivated them, and tested their medicinal value. Like many early seventeenth-century colonial scientists, Bohun believed in the medical efficacy of sassafras. Joseph West created an experimental garden in the 1660s, soon after the founding of the colony of South Carolina; he planted cotton, ginger, indigo, olives, and sugar cane to see what soil was best and what season was most efficacious

160 Section 3: Experimental Gardens for planting. In the colony of Georgia, a public experimental garden was established at Savannah. The overseer, Dr. William Houstoun, experimented on various fruit-bearing trees, as well as the coffee, cocoa, and tea trees. Other botanists had private gardens in which they performed botanical experiments. Among them was John Bartram, who had a wellmaintained garden in what is now part of Philadelphia. Many Southern planters, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, considered themselves scientific agriculturalists, spending much time and energy on experimenting with different crops. The English botanist Thomas Nuttall maintained the Harvard Botanical Garden. And an outstanding example of the colonial garden, in this case an herb garden, is found at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Russell Lawson

Sources Daniels, George H. Science in American Society: A Social History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

F O R E S T S E R V I C E , U.S. The U.S. Forest Service, a federal agency in the Department of Agriculture, was established by Congress in 1905 to manage America’s forest lands and ensure the ongoing availability of quality water and timber for the nation’s benefit. During the westward expansion of the 1800s, the federal government obtained large quantities of land, greatly expanding the public domain. The first systematic withdrawal of lands to be set aside as national forests was made possible by the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, which authorized the president to reserve “public lands, wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth, whether of commercial value or not.” Opposition in Congress to the magnitude of withdrawals resulted in the Organic Act of 1897, which introduced the concept of multiple uses, that is, protecting forests while securing favorable water flows and furnishing a supply of timber.

Multiple use was legislated and mandated by the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act of 1960, which directed the secretary of agriculture “to develop and administer the renewable surface resources of the national forests for multiple use and sustained yield of the several products and services obtained from them.” The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976 replaced the Organic Act and mandated that multiple-use management remain the standard for land and resource management of Forest Service lands. In addition, and often in conflict with clear-cutting guidance, federal regulations to implement NFMA required that viable populations of all desirable vertebrate species be protected through planning. Multiple use by today’s standards means managing resources such as water, forage, wildlife, wood, and recreation under the best combination of uses to benefit the people while ensuring the productivity of the land and protecting the quality of the environment. National forests in the United States today encompass 193 million acres of land, an area roughly equivalent in size to Texas; there are a total of 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands. The Forest Service is responsible for protecting and managing natural resources on National Forest System lands; researching all aspects of forestry, range land management, and forest resource use; providing community assistance and cooperation with state and local governments, forest industries, and private landowners to help manage and protect nonfederal forest and associated range watershed lands to improve conditions in rural areas; achieving and supporting an effective workforce that reflects the full range of diversity of the American people; and formulating policy and coordinating U.S. support for the protection and sound management of the world’s forest resources. The Forest Service manages the land under its domain by dividing responsibilities among four levels of national offices. The Ranger District consists of more than 600 individual districts, varying in size from 50,000 acres to more than 1 million. National Forests are composed of several ranger districts and subdivided into nine numbered regions. The regions are broad geographic areas, usually including several states. The Washington Office, the fourth level, oversees the other

Section 3: Garden, Alexander 161 three levels of offices and is monitored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Stephanie Michelle Jackson

Sources Steen, Harold K. The U.S. Forest Service: A History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. U.S. Forest Service. http://www.fs.fed.us.

FORESTRY Forestry is the management of forest and woodland for the commercial production of timber, recreation, and wildlife preservation. Management is varied, including planning the plantinggrowing-cutting cycle, protecting against pests and diseases, preventing or managing fire, and providing and monitoring recreation facilities such as visitor centers, campsites, and trails. Forest management is important in primary forests that have been little altered by human activity and in forests that have been exploited substantially for their timber. In the latter, reforestation—the planting of trees on cleared but once-forested land—may be part of the management plan. Similarly, afforestation—the planting of trees on previously nonforested land—is also managed. The major forest types in the United States are evergreen needleleaf, deciduous broadleaf, and sclerophyllous dry. Each can be subdivided into smaller units dominated by associations of species. In the needleleaf forests of the central and southern Rockies, Douglas fir and ponderosa pine dominate the lower slopes; lodgepole pine is important in upper montane areas; Engelmann spruce occurs above 3,000 meters (9,000 feet); and populations of giant sequoia and bristlecone pine enjoy localized distributions. Some 72 percent of U.S. forest lands are privately owned, while the remaining 28 percent are owned by the government. These, along with publicly owned grasslands, amount to 77.3 million hectares and are managed by the U.S. Forest Service, an agency of the Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture’s Division of Forestry was founded in 1881. The first timber land reserve was designated in 1891, and, in

1901, Gifford Pinchot was appointed forester to the division, renamed the Bureau of Forestry. This became the U.S. Forest Service in 1905, with responsibility for forest reserves—redesignated national forests in 1907—and charged with experimentation and research. The Forest Products Laboratory was established in 1910. The allotment of federal money allowed the purchase of forest land and the creation of research stations throughout the United States, especially in watershed areas. This recognized the significance of watershed management in relation to water supply. Forests were also transferred to the Department of the Interior for designation as national parks, major recreational assets today. Pinchot, who is credited with starting the conservation movement in the United States, and his successors encouraged cooperation between state and private forestry, concentrating on conservation through the provision of education, information, technical advice, and forest protection from pests, disease, and fire. Government policies have encouraged and enforced conservation on private lands in various ways to ensure a plentiful and sustainable supply of wood and to limit reliance on imports. Sometimes the outcome has been controversial, as conflicts have arisen between landowners, conservation groups, and the government. Overall, however, there has been a net increase of forest cover in the last two decades, a momentum necessary to guarantee the wood supply but also as a means of absorbing the increasing volumes of carbon in the atmosphere that result from the consumption of fossil fuels. A.M. Mannion

Sources Steen, Harold K. The U.S. Forest Service: A History. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. U.S. Forest Service. http://www.fs.fed.us.

GARDEN, ALEXANDER (1730–1791) Alexander Garden was a leading colonial botanist, naturalist, collector, and fellow of the Royal Society of London.

162 Section 3: Garden, Alexander Born sometime in 1730 in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Garden was the son of a clergyman. Soon after receiving his M.D. from Marischal College in Aberdeen, he emigrated to South Carolina, where he practiced for two years in Prince William Parish. In 1754, he traveled north in the hope of improving his health, and, in New York, he met Cadwallader Colden, who introduced him to the botanical publications of Carolus Linnaeus. In Philadelphia, he met John Bartram. Both men encouraged Garden’s interest in botany. On his return to the South, he moved to Charleston, where he soon built up a large and profitable practice. Garden married Elizabeth Peronneau in 1755, with whom he had three children. In Charleston, Garden began exchanging letters with the British naturalist John Ellis, who encouraged him to write to Linnaeus in Sweden. In addition to these two correspondents, he soon was exchanging observations with his friends Colden and Bartram as well as with John Clayton in Virginia, Thomas Pennant and Peter Collinson in England, and L.T. Gronovius in Holland. Membership in such a circle of accomplished naturalists helped to offset the isolation he found in Charleston, where, he wrote, “there is scarce one here who knows a cabbage-stock from a common dock.” To these naturalist friends he sent specimens of plants, fishes, amphibians, and reptiles along with copious notes on their habitat and location. In the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh’s Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary (1771), Garden published the results of his experiments on the medicinal properties of a plant called the Indian pink (Spigelia marilandica). Made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1773, he published “An Account of the Gymnotus Electricus, or Electrical Eel” in its Philosophical Transactions (1775). As was customary for colonial investigators of the time, most of his natural history discoveries were made known indirectly through European correspondents. As a result, although he often was involved in the discovery of new species published by others, he ranks chiefly as a collector in the history of science. Some confusion attends the naming of the beautiful flowering plant that bears his name. It is true that Jane Colden, Cadwallader Colden’s daughter, sent Garden an American plant that,

when he described it in a letter to a friend in Edinburgh, was published there as the genus Gardenia. However, the plant we know by that name today had been brought to England from the Cape of Good Hope in 1754; it was known only as the “Cape jasmine” until John Ellis, in consultation with Linnaeus, described and published it in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions in 1760 with an illustration by Georg Ehret. The generic name Gardenia given there to honor the South Carolina collector was confirmed in the 1762 edition of Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum. A Loyalist at the time of the American Revolution, Garden never forgave his son, also named Alexander, for serving as a major in the Continental Army. In 1782, Garden fled to London, where he died on April 15, 1791. Charles Boewe

Sources Berkeley, Edmund, and Dorothy Smith Berkeley. Dr. Alexander Garden of Charles Town. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969. Denny, Margaret. “Linnaeus and His Disciple in Carolina: Alexander Garden.” Isis 38 (1948): 161–74. ———. “Naming the Gardenia.” Scientific Monthly 67:1 (1948): 17–22.

G R AY, A S A (1810–1888) Asa Gray, a botanist and leading nineteenthcentury American Darwinist, was born in Sauquoit, New York, on November 11, 1810. He attended Clinton Grammar School in Clinton, New York, between 1823 and 1825, after which he entered Fairfield Academy; in 1826, he matriculated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the Western District of the State of New York. In addition to the curriculum in medicine, Gray took courses in mineralogy and botany. He received an M.D. in 1831 but quit the practice of medicine the next year to devote himself to botany. The decision at first meant penury, but Gray scraped together a meager income from teaching at Utica (New York) Gymnasium and offering a summer course at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.

Section 3: Gray, Asa 163

Longtime Harvard professor Asa Gray, benefactor and namesake of that university’s Gray Herbarium, was America’s preeminent botanist of the nineteenth century and a leading advocate of Darwinism. (Courtesy of South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia)

Gray resolved to write his way out of poverty. While a medical student, he had read a botany textbook and decided to write one of his own. Throughout his life, Gray wrestled with the tension between being a popularizer or a specialist in botany. That Gray succeeded as both underscores the range of his talent. The first fruit of his labor was the textbook Elements of Botany (1836). He then turned to taxonomy, between 1838 and 1843 publishing with his mentor John Torrey the first volumes of the Flora of North America, and as sole author in 1847 the Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. Gray published a steady stream of articles and reviews in the American Journal of Science. In all, he published more than 350 books, articles, biographical sketches, and reviews.

Gray’s work benefited from plant specimens that collectors who traveled to the west sent him to catalog in his monographs and articles. He augmented these finds with collecting expeditions of his own. Gray became librarian of the New York Lyceum of Natural History in 1836. That year Jeremiah N. Reynolds, a confidant of President Andrew Jackson and an adventurer, appointed Gray botanist of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, the nation’s first venture to the South Pacific. Gray, however, weary of delays and political infighting, resigned in 1838 before the expedition set sail. Instead he became professor of botany—the first chair of botany at a U.S. university—at the new University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. At the request of the board of regents, Gray spent 1838 and 1839 in Europe buying books for the library, visiting herbaria, and forming friendships with Europe’s leading botanists and naturalists. Back in the United States, he found the University of Michigan in financial trouble and, without ever having taught there, he resigned in 1842 to become Fisher Professor of Natural History and Curator of the Botanic Garden at Harvard University. In 1851, on a second trip to Europe, Gray met Charles Darwin. The two became friends and correspondents. In 1857, Darwin outlined the mechanism of natural selection in a letter to Gray. Once an opponent of the theory of evolution, Gray now became a defender. In 1858, he saw in the similarities between the flora of the eastern United States and of Japan evidence that the two had descended from a single lineage. In 1860, Gray reviewed Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in the American Journal of Science, and, in 1876, he collected his own essays on evolution in a volume titled Darwinia. In these essays, Gray asserted that science is neither theistic nor atheistic; instead, he contended, religion and science are separate spheres of inquiry. Unlike Thomas Henry Huxley, a famous defender of Darwinism who had abandoned Christianity, Gray believed that Christian views of creation and evolution could coexist. In 1873, Gray retired from Harvard, Congress appointed him regent of the Smithsonian Institution, and the Royal Society of London elected him a fellow. In November 1887, Gray

164 Section 3: Gray, Asa lost movement in one arm, a condition that baffled his physicians. His health deteriorated rapidly, and he died in Cambridge on January 30, 1888. Christopher Cumo

Sources Dupree, A. Hunter. Asa Gray: American Botanist, Friend of Darwin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959, 1988. Fry, C. George. Congregationalists and Evolution: Asa Gray and Louis Agassiz. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989.

G R AY H E R B A R I U M Growing out of the private collections of botanist Asa Gray in the nineteenth century, the Gray Herbarium today contains nearly 2 million specimens of dried plants. Although it represents a large cross section of the world’s flora, the collection, in keeping with Asa Gray’s own interests, is particularly strong in North American species, including those of Mexico and the West Indies. In his earlier association with John Torrey, Gray began the practice of using type specimens in classifying North American plants. Specimens collected for this purpose, along with Gray’s professional library, moved with him when he was appointed Fisher Professor of Natural History at Harvard in 1842. The professor, his plant specimens, and his books were accommodated in a house within the university’s botanic garden, of which Gray was also the director. Two decades later, when a wealthy Bostonian financed the construction of a fireproof building adjoining the garden house, Gray’s herbarium and library were moved into it and presented to the university as a gift. Gray was not a field botanist but a teacher whose students sent specimens, even from the American West, to the herbarium. Publications stemming from the study of these plants, including their technical classification and geographical distribution, brought Gray recognition as America’s leading botanical expert. The herbarium and the botanical library were essential tools for such work. As Gray declared in 1865 to

the Cambridge Scientific Club, “the Herbarium is the Liber veritas of the Botanist—the only certain record of species.” Associates of Gray at Harvard specialized in related botanical areas. Among them were Charles Sprague Sargent, first director of the Arnold Arboretum; William Gilson Farlow, who founded the Farlow Reference Library and Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany; and George Lincoln Goodale, director of the Botanical Museum, which had been founded by Gray in 1858. Until the 1950s, the collections of all these related institutions were housed at widely separated locations. In 1954, a new building on Divinity Avenue in Cambridge near both the Farlow Herbarium and the Botanical Museum brought together the libraries and herbaria of the Gray Herbarium and the Arnold Arboretum, as well as the library and several specialized herbaria of the Botanical Museum. This complex included the Paleobotanical Collection of fossil plants, founded by Louis Agassiz and housed after 1900 at the Botanical Museum, as well as the Bailey-Wetmore Collection of wood specimens and microscope slides of wood, which is housed in the herbarium building. Among other treasures is the small herbarium assembled by Henry David Thoreau. Probably of greatest interest to nonspecialists is the Botanical Museum’s “Glass Flowers” collection, long a popular tourist destination in Cambridge. This collection includes more that 3,000 realistically colored glass models of life-size plants and enlarged plant parts, representing more than 840 species. Of special importance to the history of science is the Historic Letter File of the Gray Herbarium. Consisting primarily of letters addressed to Asa Gray, these documents include manuscripts from the hands of several of the scientific luminaries of Gray’s time, including George Engelmann (more than 500 letters), John Torrey (some 300 letters), and 100 or more letters each from George Bentham, William Darlington, Charles Darwin, Joseph Henry, Joseph Dalton Hooker, William Jackson Hooker, Charles Christopher Parry, Charles Wilkins Short, William S. Sullivant, Edward Tuckerman, and Charles Wright. In recent years, a collection of letters from Henry Muhlenberg to Stephen Elliott was added. Charles Boewe

Section 3: Horticulture 165 Sources Dupree, A. Hunter. Asa Gray, 1810–1888. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. Stafleu, Frans A., and Joseph Lanjouw. Index Herbariorum. Utrecht, Netherlands: International Bureau for Plant Taxonomy and Nomenclature, 1952 and continuous updates. Warnement, Judith A. “Harvard’s Botanists and Their Libraries.” Taxon 46:4 (November 1997): 649–60.

H A R VA R D B O TA N I C A L G A R D E N The Harvard Botanical Garden originated in 1899 when merchant Edwin Atkins gave $2,500 to Harvard University to put together a comprehensive list of publications and resources on sugar production in Cuba and to sponsor a fellowship in economic botany whose recipient was expected to conduct research and improve sugar production at a plantation in Cienfuegos, Cuba. The plantation developed many agricultural advances in the production of sugarcane, with additional research focusing on sugar plant diseases, pests, and tropical food crops. Harvard professors George L. Goodale and Oakes Ames visited the plantation and persuaded Atkins to work with Harvard to research tropical plants, particularly to develop a hybrid sugarcane species. In 1901, Atkins hired the famous Harvard horticulturist Robert M. Grey to begin the development and construction of what became the Harvard Botanical Station for Tropical Research and Sugar Cane Investigation. Grey also built a garden on the grounds that contained tropical plants and fruit trees from all over the world. In 1919, Atkins set up an incremental endowment that exceeded $100,000, and, in 1924, the Harvard Biological Laboratory was added to the research station to research tropical botany under the direction of Thomas Barbour. Atkins died in 1926, but his family continued to donate proceeds to the project. During World War II, the U.S. government funded research through Harvard University to conduct experiments with rubber trees. By the 1950s, Harvard was regularly using the garden in Cuba for summer courses in tropical botany, and the facility also became a popular tourist destination. Due to the revolution led by Fidel

Castro and heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba, Harvard had to relinquish control of the garden. Operations were curtailed in 1959 and Harvard’s financial support ended in September 1961. Thereafter, the Cuban government took over the facility, and it has managed the garden ever since. The former Harvard Botanical Garden, known today as the Cienfuegos Botanical Garden, is located on the outskirts of Cienfuegos, Cuba, at the Pepito Tey sugar mill. Its collection is still regarded as one of the best of its kind. The garden contains palms, orchids, bamboos, and myriad other tropical plants. All in all, it is home to more than 2,000 tropical plant species from all over the world. Steven Napier

Sources Barbour, Thomas, and Helen M. Robinson. “Forty Years of Soledad.” Scientific Monthly 51:2 (1940): 140–46. East, E.M. “The Harvard Botanical Garden in Cuba.” Science 59:1533 (1924): 433–34. Hazen, Dan. “The Cienfuegos Botanical Garden: A NeoTropical ‘Garden of Eden’ Evolves over Centuries.” DRCLAS News (Fall 1998): 6–8. Hubbard, F. Tracy, and Alfred Rehder. Nomenclatorial Notes on Plants Growing in the Botanical Garden of the Atkins Institution of the Arnold Arboretum at Soledad, Cienfuegos, Cuba. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936.

H O R T I C U LT U R E Horticulture is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, and ornamental plants in gardens, orchards, greenhouses, and nurseries. It incorporates aspects of such basic sciences as agriculture, botany, biology, chemistry, and physiology into an applied science that involves crop production, plant propagation, plant breeding, plant physiology, and biochemistry. Horticulture began emerging as a formal scientific discipline in the eighteenth century with the creation of agricultural and horticultural societies that grew out of the Enlightenment focus on applied knowledge. Philadelphia botanist John Bartram, a colonial horticulturalist who developed one of the finest experimental gardens in the colonies, was appointed royal botanist by King George III in

166 Section 3: Horticulture 1765. Bartram traveled throughout the American colonies searching for seeds and plants to bring to his garden and to document the native flora of the New World. He published the first book of American plants, Arboretum Americanum (The American Grove) in 1775, and he introduced many native plants into cultivation. Nineteenth-century American horticulturists included Bernard McMahon, who published The American Gardener’s Calendar in 1806, a comprehensive gardening book that eventually went through eleven editions. The book provided contemporary gardeners with month-bymonth instructions on planting, pruning, and soil preparation for the kitchen garden, fruit garden, orchard, and nursery. Luther Burbank, the most famous American plant breeder, introduced many cultivars of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and grasses. His many works, such as How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man (1921), demonstrate the inheritance of special characteristics in plants. American horticultural and agricultural research particularly benefited from the establishment of land-grant colleges and state-supported research emphasizing agricultural arts in 1862. The trend culminated in the Hatch Act of 1879, which established federal aid to the states for agricultural experiment stations. As a result of such research, horticulture was recognized as a branch of the natural sciences in the United States in the early 1900s. When the Society for Horticultural Science was founded in 1903, its purpose was “more fully to establish horticulture on a scientific basis.” The first president, Liberty Hyde Bailey, saw the value of combining horticulture and botany at a time when horticulture was considered an ornamental art rather than a science. Bailey incorporated laboratory work into the horticulture curriculum. He also wrote the influential The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (1914), a six-volume work that was revised three times in the twentieth century. In 1922, the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) was established by combining three existing horticultural groups, the original Society for Horticultural Science (which had been renamed the American Horticultural Society), the National Horticultural Society, and the American Horticultural Council.

Liberty Hyde Bailey systematized the study of horticulture and trained the next generation of agricultural scientists at Cornell University. His voluminous writings include The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture (1914). (George Silk/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Throughout the twentieth century, horticultural research in America resulted in the development of new methods in areas such as plant genetics and breeding, biotechnology, developmental physiology, and chemical growth regulators. Horticultural science also has revealed the value of environmentally friendly methods such as integrated pest management and organic gardening and farming. Judith B. Gerber

Sources Bailey, Liberty H. The Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. 1900. New York: Macmillan, 2000. Hedrick, U.P. A History of Horticulture in the United States to 1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950. Thacker, Christopher. The History of Gardens. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.

Section 3: More, Thomas 167

MITCHELL, JOHN (1711–1768) The colonial American taxonomist John Mitchell was born on April 13, 1711, in Lancaster County, Virginia. As a boy, he was sent to Scotland by his prosperous family for higher education not available locally. Little is known about his life before he returned to Virginia about 1731, by which time he was called a “Doctor of Physic.” He may have obtained a medical degree on the Continent but not at the University of Edinburgh, though it is known that he did study medicine there. On his return to Tidewater Virginia, Mitchell practiced medicine in Urbanna and became friends with fellow botanist John Clayton in nearby Gloucester County. Soon, he was corresponding with a wide circle of natural history enthusiasts both in Europe and the American colonies for whom he collected plant specimens in the wild. He grew other plants in his own “physic garden,” which supplied the apothecary he maintained as an adjunct to his medical practice. Attempting to improve on the taxonomic system of John Ray, Mitchell published in the journal of the Leopoldina in Nuremberg a work called Dissertatio brevis de principiis botanicorum et zoologorum (1748) to explain his own classification system. This first American study of taxonomy distinguished species of both plants and animals in terms of their ability to produce fertile offspring. Studying this attribute of animals had led Mitchell to observe the habits of a pair of caged opossums for two years and finally to dissect them to describe their anatomical structure. Since marsupials were unknown in Europe, the opossum’s manner of reproduction and the way it nurtures its young were of great interest to the savants of the Royal Society. They published Mitchell’s observations in their Philosophical Transactions (1742, 1745) and further welcomed his speculations about the pigmentation in different human skin colors (1744). Though never published, his study of the varieties of pine trees growing in Virginia also was in response to interests of the Royal Society. Having contracted malaria, which a trip to Philadelphia in 1744 did nothing to abate,

Mitchell sold his property and moved to England in 1746. His wife Helen, also ill at the time of their departure, accompanied him, but nothing beyond her name is known; nor do records reveal any children from their union. In England, Mitchell was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1748; the same year, he read to that body a lengthy dissertation on the production and use of potash. He helped to develop the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and published two anonymous books regarding Britain’s relationships in the New World. His Present State of Great Britain and North America (1767) advocated greater transatlantic cooperation; his Contest in America between Great Britain and France (1757) was an appendage to his map of North America (1755). The work of nearly five years, Mitchell’s 1755 map has been his most enduring accomplishment. First used to support British territorial claims after the American Revolution to delimit the boundaries of the new nation, it continues to be an important historical reference. John Mitchell died in England on February 29, 1768. Charles Boewe

Sources Berkeley, Edmund, and Dorothy Smith Berkeley. Dr. John Mitchell: The Man Who Made the Map of North America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974. Hornberger, Theodore. “The Scientific Ideas of John Mitchell.” Huntington Library Quarterly 10 (1947): 277–96. Parrish, Susan Scott. “The Female Opossum and the Nature of the New World.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54:3 (1997): 475–514.

MORE, THOMAS (1640?–1730?) Thomas More’s career has afforded comic relief to the otherwise serious business of finding, identifying, classifying, and publishing the flora and fauna of colonial America. It is not known for certain when or where he was born, nor where or when he died. His Royal Society patrons derisively referred to him either as the “Pilgrim Philosopher” or the “Pilgrim Botanist.” In 1704, they

168 Section 3: More, Thomas were amused by his “Tables for Reducing Nature under Several Heads,” which, according to one who saw the demonstration, accounted for “the whole creation from an Angell to an Attome.” Nevertheless, a few members of the society were willing to subscribe modest sums to collect the work of the Pilgrim Botanist, though they never invested as much in him as in Mark Catesby. To the extent that More’s work is remembered at all, it is in contrast to that of Catesby, for in 1722, the same year that Catesby landed in Charles Town (now Charleston) to continue his exploration of the South, More landed in Boston to begin exploring New England. Typically, he got to New England too late in the year “to perform any great matters,” as one of his sponsors put it. The region had just experienced an extraordinarily hot, dry summer, with the result that More’s first shipment of specimens to England did not amount to much: It consisted of plants already well known, and the parcel was made worse by More’s blunder of packing seaweed on top of the plants. His accompanying descriptive text was of little scientific value, but his irascibility, erratic spelling, and quaint confusion of genders make it amusing to read today. For instance, writing of a milky “silk plant”—probably milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)—he groused about “those dark Angels in hoopt pettycoats who will surely find out some Scandalous use for his beautiful silk to adorn their butterfly cloaths withal” and cautioned his sixty-three-year-old correspondent to “take care you be not deluded by one of them now in your old age.” When he was not collecting specimens or hobnobbing with the five Mohawk chiefs he had met when they visited England in 1710, More busied himself finding fault with his New England colonial hosts. As a consequence, he learned that “here they bite like sharks”; no wonder, for he had taken it upon himself to advise the secretary of state back home that the General Court of Massachusetts was permitting timber to be cut for domestic use that rightfully ought to go to the Royal Navy. The “Ship of this Government has sprung so many leaks,” he wrote, that “a Master Carpenter ought to stop ’em,” and, as might be expected, “I as your mate have made good pluggs for you to drive in.” Having dispatched another paltry shipment of common plants and having outworn his wel-

come, the Pilgrim Botanist returned to England in the winter of 1723–1724. Thereafter, he dropped from sight. A decade later, when it was rumored that he might have returned to New England, Zabdiel Boylston, a Bostonian fellow of the Royal Society, made a diligent inquiry about More and inserted queries in the newspapers, only to have to report: “we have heard nothing of him.” All that can be said to demarcate Thomas More’s place in history, finally, is that he flourished during the first two decades of the eighteenth century. Charles Boewe

Sources Frick, George Frederick, and Raymond Phineas Stearns. “Appendix: Thomas More and His Expedition to New England.” In Mark Catesby: The Colonial Audubon, by Frick and Stearns. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

MUHLENBERG, HENRY (1753–1815) Lutheran minister and botanist Henry Muhlenberg (or Gotthilf Henry Ernest Muhlenberg) was born on November 17, 1753, in Trappe, Pennsylvania. He attended a local school until the age of nine, when he was sent with his two older brothers to Halle, in Saxony, for a traditional European education. He learned Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and, during his one year at the University of Halle, he focused his studies on theology and ecclesiastical history. It is more than likely that he became acquainted with the famous botanical garden at the university. Returning home in 1770, Muhlenberg was ordained in Reading Pennsylvania, and served as assistant to his father, a patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America. A decade later, he was called to Holy Trinity Church in Lancaster, where he served as pastor until his death. Late in life, he also served as first principal of Franklin College (later to become Franklin and Marshall College). Muhlenberg married Mary Catherine Hall in 1774; they had eight children. Devoted to the patriot cause during the Revolutionary War, he

Section 3: Nuttall, Thomas 169 was forced to take refuge in Trappe to escape the British army. It was there that he took up botany as an avocation. Self-taught, he turned to European botanists for help when the war was over, and he returned home, sending them his plants for identification and receiving European plant specimens in exchange. As a result, most of his discoveries of new plants were published by Europeans. Muhlenberg had little desire for fame and was content to make anonymous contributions to the increasing data of botanical science. Muhlenberg corresponded and exchanged specimens with nearly everyone in the United States with a knowledge of botany. His resulting herbarium (now at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia) was the earliest professional collection by a native-born American. The effort suggested to him that if every botanist thoroughly explored his own vicinity and published the results, they could quickly produce a cooperative botanical census of the entire country. Muhlenberg worked so slowly and meticulously that he published nothing until 1793. What he published then was the kind of census he had advocated, the brief “Index florae Lancastriensis” printed in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Six years later, it was followed by a supplement. The only other botanical publication by Muhlenberg that appeared during his lifetime was his Catalogus plantarum Americae Septentrionalis (1813), the kind of national census that cooperation had failed to produce. Neither of these publications gave descriptions of the plants named. Moreover, it took four years to print the 122 pages of the Catalogus. An enlarged edition was issued after Muhlenberg’s death, as was his Descriptio uberior plantarum graminum et plantarum Calamarium Americae Septentrionalis (1817), prepared by his friend Zaccheus Collins and his son F.A. Muhlenberg. Few botanists have written so much but published so little. Muhlenberg left a two-volume bound manuscript titled “Descriptio uberior plantarum Lancastriensium,” which was announced for posthumous publication but never appeared. His painstakingly compiled manuscript notebooks contain observations on natural history recorded from 1785 to the year of his death. Muhlenberg died at the home of his daughter on May 23, 1815. He left behind an estimated

6,000 pages of descriptive botany, which remain unpublished, primarily because they are written in a minuscule hand in English, Latin, and an obsolete form of German. Charles Boewe

Sources Merrill, E.D., and Shiu-ying Hu. “Work and Publications of Henry Muhlenberg.” Bartonia 25 (1949): 1–66. Smith, C. Earle, Jr., “Henry Muhlenberg—Botanical Pioneer.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106:5 (1962): 443–60. Wallace, Paul A. The Muhlenbergs of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950.

N U T TA L L , T H O M A S (1786–1859) Thomas Nuttall was one of the great explorerbotanists of early nineteenth-century America. The eldest of the three children and the only son of James and Margaret Hardacre Nuttall, he was born on January 5, 1786, in a village in Yorkshire, England. He was only twelve when his father died, and the family experienced great hardship. At age fourteen, he was apprenticed to his uncle Jonas in Liverpool to learn the printer’s trade, during which time he advanced his education through wide reading, language study, museum visits, and public lectures. In his spare time, Nuttall also cultivated a small garden and explored the botanical riches and geological curiosities of the region surrounding Liverpool. His uncle hoped he would succeed him in business, but after seven years’ apprenticeship, Nuttall was determined to explore the natural history of the New World, believing he could support himself there as a printer.

Early Expeditions Nuttall reached Philadelphia in the spring of 1808, and he soon made the acquaintance of Benjamin Smith Barton, professor of botany, natural history, and materia medica at the University of Pennsylvania. Through Barton’s academic tutelage, and with practical training at Bartram’s Garden under the guidance of the aged William Bartram, Nuttall quickly perfected

170 Section 3: Nuttall, Thomas

A Journal of Travels into Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819 is one of several historic field accounts by the botanistexplorer Thomas Nuttall. This plate depicts the plant and animal life in eastern Oklahoma. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

his botanical skills. Barton, who hoped to write a general account of the botany of the United States, planned to make Nuttall his field collector, for which the earlier travels of Bartram served as an example. Nuttall embraced the opportunity, since printing jobs had proved none too plentiful and never very lucrative. After early botanical collecting trips throughout the Delaware Valley, Nuttall explored the Carolinas and later traveled as far south as Florida and as far north as the White Mountains of New Hampshire. His first lengthy expedition, in 1809–1811, took him up the Missouri River as far as the Mandan Indian villages in present-day North Dakota, part of it in the company of John Bradbury and Henry Marie Brackenridge. Just getting to the jumping-off point was an adventure in itself, for Barton had sent Nuttall on a roundabout course that led him to the Great Lakes to get to St. Louis. Despite their shared English nationality, Nuttall and Bradbury were rivals. Both were aware that they were the first to explore the flora of the Louisiana Purchase with any degree of professional skill, although Meriwether Lewis already had brought back some specimens.

With the War of 1812 looming, Nuttall prudently returned to England with the plants he had collected. Back in Liverpool, he found uncle Jonas had prospered so well that he now owned land and a commodious Georgian house called Nutgrove Hall. During the three years Nuttall remained in England, he made Nutgrove Hall his base of operations but was often in London, where, in 1813, he was elected to membership in the Linnaean Society—a sign that his stature as a naturalist was becoming recognized.

Western Journeys Nuttall returned to Philadelphia as soon as he could after the conclusion of the war. Following the death of his patron Barton in 1815, Nuttall felt free to publish his Louisiana discoveries. He set off in 1816 on a pedestrian excursion to collect additional specimens that took him as far west as Kentucky and as far south as South Carolina. The outcome was his book The Genera of North American Plants (1818), for which it is believed he set some of the type himself. The book is considered the first comprehensive study of

Section 3: Pickering, Charles 171 American plants, and it established Nuttall’s standing as a botanist. Having been elected to membership of the new Academy of Natural Sciences and the venerable American Philosophical Society ( four members of which now subsidized his work), Nuttall set off on his next major expedition, a two-year (1818–1820) trip along the Arkansas and Red rivers as far as present-day Oklahoma. At the urging of friends on his return, he published A Journal of Travels into Arkansas Territory (1821), a book of wide-ranging natural history, including valuable comments on the Native American tribes he encountered. In 1822, Nuttall’s professional standing was confirmed when he was appointed curator of the botanic garden and lecturer in natural history at Harvard University, where he remained for eleven years, living in one room of the Garden House, a residence within the botanic garden. At Harvard, Nuttall lectured on botany, mineralogy, and zoology. He published Introduction to Systematic and Physiological Botany (1827) as a textbook. Next, he took up a project to produce an inexpensive book about American birds, for which he read all the extant literature, studied preserved bird skins in Philadelphia, and drew on his own field experience. After five years, the first volume of Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada was issued in 1832; the second volume appeared in 1834. Though not published until 1842, his North American Sylva was a three-volume appendix to a work of the same title by François André Michaux published in 1819.

ington Irving’s Astoria (1836). He had become America’s most traveled naturalist of his time and among the best known. Nuttall’s last years in America were spent working on his collections and assisting others with his specialized knowledge; he published no more books. Having inherited the Nutgrove estate in 1842 from his uncle, who had initially frowned on his nephew’s penchant for exploring the New World, Nuttall returned to England to live there. The bequest required that he be in residence at Nutgrove Hall for nine months of each year for the remainder of his life. He spent his days cultivating exotic plants, though he did return to America for three-month furloughs in 1847 and 1848. Thomas Nuttall never married. He died at Nutgrove on September 10, 1859.

Wyatt Expedition

Charles Pickering, a botanist, physician, and member of the Wilkes Expedition, was born on November 10, 1805, in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. His parents were Laurena and Timothy Pickering; his grandfather was Colonel Thomas Pickering, a soldier in the American Revolution; and his nephews were the wellknown astronomers Edward Charles Pickering and William Henry Pickering. His father, a Harvard graduate, died when Pickering was two years old, and he was raised by his mother and grandfather. Pickering was attracted to the natural sciences from childhood, and he explored the White

Nuttall resigned from Harvard in 1834 to join the second overland Wyatt Expedition to the western coast of North America. At last, he was able not only to cross the Rocky Mountains, but from the mouth of the Columbia River he sailed to explore the Hawaiian Islands. After returning to California, he traveled on the Alert around Cape Horn to Boston—with the result that he appears as “Old Curious” in Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years before the Mast (1840). His earlier trip up the Missouri had led to his appearance, under his own name, in Wash-

Charles Boewe

Sources Beidleman, Richard G. “Some Biographical Sidelights on Thomas Nuttall, 1786–1859.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 104:1 (1960): 86–100. Graustein, Jeannette E. Thomas Nuttall, Naturalist: Explorations in America, 1808–1841. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. Lawson, Russell M. The Land Between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall’s Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Pennell, Francis W. “Travels and Scientific Collections of Thomas Nuttall.” Bartonia 18 (1936): 1–51.

PICKERING, CHARLES (1805–1878)

172 Section 3: Pickering, Charles Mountains of New Hampshire many times during his youth. He received an M.D. from Harvard in 1826 and, the next year, began medical practice in Philadelphia. He was also an active member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, contributing to the botany and zoology committees and serving as librarian (1833) and curator (1833–1837). Pickering joined the United States Exploring Expedition (the Wilkes Expedition, headed by Charles Wilkes) in 1838. The expedition had a fleet of six ships, 346 sailors, and nine scientists, including Pickering. The team left Norfolk in 1838 and explored the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Antarctica, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, the western coast of North America, the Philippines, and the East Indies, reaching New York in 1842. Pickering kept a journal in which he made observations about the variety of peoples throughout the globe and the distribution of plant and animal life. His analysis made up part of the ninth and fifteenth volumes of the Wilkes Expedition report. In 1843, Pickering was appointed superintendent of collections and publications relating to the Wilkes Expedition, but he resigned shortly thereafter and went on a voyage to Africa and India. He later settled in Boston, where he established a medical practice and married Sarah Stoddard Hammond. Pickering’s publications contain a wealth of information about anthropology, botany, and zoology and were valuable contributions to American science. He wrote two books about his experiences, observations, and research during the Wilkes Expedition: Races of Men and Their Geographical Distribution (1848) and The Geographical Distribution of Animals and Plants (1854). In 1876, Pickering published Plants in Their Wild State. His magnum opus, The Chronological History of Plants: Man’s Record of His Own Existence Illustrated through Their Names, Uses, and Companionship (1879), was published posthumously by his wife Sarah. Charles Pickering died on March 17, 1878. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Philbrick, Nathaniel. Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery—The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842. New York: Viking Penguin, 2003.

Silverberg, Robert. Stormy Voyager: The Story of Charles Wilkes. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1968.

PLANTS

AND

P H OTO S Y N T H E S I S

Plants are eukaryotes, meaning that the cell nucleus is confined by a membrane, has organelles or internal structures relating to cell function, and contains DNA in chromosomes. They are organisms belonging to the Plantae, one of five kingdoms to which all living organisms belong. When many species of plants grow in close proximity, they produce a distinct community or ecosystem, such as a woodland or a grassland. At the global scale, distinct plant communities are known as biomes—such as the tropical forest, savanna, tundra, and boreal forest. In the United States, the major biomes are coniferous and deciduous forest, grassland, desert, wetland, and alpine communities. Individual species have tolerances in terms of water, temperature range, nutrients, and degree of shade. Thus, such communities or ecosystems are dynamic; as conditions alter, the species mix alters. Pioneering work on this dynamic process of plant succession was undertaken in the early 1900s by Frederick Clements, a community ecologist whose field research was funded by the Carnegie Institute of Washington, D.C., and who collaborated with Victor E. Shelford, the first president of the American Ecological Society. Clements modelled his approach on that of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist-taxonomist. Clements argued that a vegetation community functioned as a unit that developed progressively through intermediate stages to a climax or mature community. Dissenters from Clements’s views include Henry A. Gleason, head curator of the New York Botanical Garden, who, in 1926, published an alternative theory referred to as the “individualistic concept of the plant association.” This embraced the idea that change occurs as plant species, rather than communities, react to internal or external stimuli. Other notable American contributors to plant ecology include Eugene Odum, who pioneered the concept of the system/ecosystem, and Robert H. Whittaker, whose research highlighted interactions within communities and ecosystems.

Section 3: Pursh, Frederick 173 Plants play a fundamental role in circulating chemical elements between Earth’s crust and the atmosphere. Photosynthesis is vital for this process, known as biogeochemical cycling. It involves the manufacture of carbohydrates from water, carbon dioxide, and solar energy. Six molecules of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are combined using energy from the sun with six molecules of water absorbed by plant roots from the soil. The product is one molecule of carbohydrate in the form of a simple sugar and six molecules of oxygen. This process takes place inside the leaf cells of the plant, where there are structures known as chloroplasts. These contain chlorophyll, a green pigment with the capacity to absorb light energy and convert it to chemical energy. The sugars so produced can then be used by the plant to make other compounds that are vital for survival and reproduction—for example, amino acids, proteins, enzymes, and cellulose. These compounds are also a source of energy for the plant’s metabolic processes such as respiration. Photosynthesis comprises two processes known as the light and dark reactions. The light reaction involves the capture of solar energy by the chlorophyll, whose energy level is raised, causing instability. To regain stability the energy is released as heat or as fluorescence, which is a low-energy light, or it can be transferred to another molecule. This photosynthetic electron transport produces adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a high-energy substance, and nicotine adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH). Both are essential for the second reaction, which involves fixing the carbon dioxide as the carbohydrate is formed. This dark, complex reaction is known as the Calvin-Benson cycle. The discovery of this process was made by Melvin Calvin and his team at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1946–1953. Calvin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961. Photosynthesis is important, because it results in a food-energy source. Thus, plants are self-feeding, or autotrophic. And they support organisms that cannot manufacture food—or heterotrophs, including humans. Consequently, plants are the linchpin of ecosystems and agricultural systems, provide the mechanism for the entry of solar energy into the living world, and are vital components of the carbon cycle.

Photosynthesis also results in a wide range of substances other than food that are used by humans, such as wood, cotton, flax, biomass fuels, medicines, and perfumes. The release of oxygen in photosynthesis also ensures that the atmosphere remains oxygen rich, a vital requirement for all organisms that respire. The global plant cover is constantly changing because of natural phenomena and human activities such as agriculture, logging, mining, and urbanization. Especially in the last 500 years, human activity has been responsible for major alteration. In the United States, widespread alteration followed European colonization. Although the exploitation of North American woodlands by colonists greatly aided the settlers and gave rise to thriving lumber industries that remain important today, logging resulted in extensive loss of forestlands, and large-scale cattle ranching altered the nation’s vast prairie grasslands. According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, there are 19,473 vascular plants (spermatophytes) in the United States today, of which 4,036 are endemic and 4,669 (24 percent) are threatened. A.M. Mannion

Sources Groombridge, Brian, and Martin D. Jenkins. World Atlas of Biodiversity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Smith, Robert Leo, and Thomas M. Smith. Ecology and Field Biology. 6th ed. San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings, 2001.

PURSH, FREDERICK (1774–1820) Frederick Pursh was a gifted and controversial botanist, horticulturist, and explorer, as well as an early writer on American plant life. Pursh was born Friedrich Traugott Pursch on February 4, 1774, in Grossenhain, Saxony, Germany. An older brother arranged for his instruction in Dresden by the royal court gardener, Johann Heinrich Seidel, which led to his appointment to the staff of the Royal Botanic Garden there. Because of his interest in exotic plants, Pursh accepted an offer to visit America

174 Section 3: Pursh, Frederick in 1799, where he expected to stay only a few years. Always dependent on the patronage of wealthy sponsors, he was the only botanist active in North America at the time who had professional training in the science. The earliest of his known American patrons was William Hamilton, who employed him from 1803 to 1805 to supervise the gardens on his Philadelphia “Woodlands” estate, where the Lombardy poplar, ginkgo tree, and other plants had been introduced and attempts were made to grow tea. At Hamilton’s estate, Pursh met many of the naturalists who visited or lived in Philadelphia. One of them, Benjamin Smith Barton, engaged him as a traveling plant collector for the comprehensive flora of North America that Barton planned to write but never managed to produce. Nevertheless, the assignment subsidized Pursh’s collecting expeditions as far south as North Carolina and as far north as Vermont. His familiarity with North American flora was further enhanced by his work with Barton on classifying plants brought back by Lewis and Clark from their expedition to the Pacific Northwest in 1806. When this project faltered as a result of Lewis’s death in 1809, Pursh went to work for David Hosack, who was establishing the Elgin Botanic Garden in Manhattan. Because of declining health, Pursh traveled to the West Indies in the winter of 1810–1811. After botanizing on five of the islands, he returned to the United States the next fall. He sailed from New York City to England with his notes and collections in 1811. In England, at the Boynton garden of the wealthy eccentric Aylmer Bourke Lambert, Pursh labored for two years over his own specimens and others obtained by Lambert, including plants collected far up the Missouri River by the Englishman John Bradbury, who remained trapped in America by the War of 1812. Earlier collections made in America by such explorers as Mark Catesby also were available to Pursh. From this effort came Pursh’s major contribution, the two-volume Flora Americae Septentrionalis (1814), the first attempt at a complete flora for all of North America above Mexico. Knowing his book was deficient on Canada’s plants, Pursh accepted an assignment in 1816 to survey the flora in Manitoba’s Red River Valley,

where the fifth earl of Selkirk hoped to establish a colony. When this colonial venture failed, Pursh stayed on in Canada, continuing to collect and growing ever more impoverished. His Canadian collections were destroyed by fire in the winter of 1818–1819. He died on July 11, 1820, in Montreal, where he was buried at the expense of friends. Charles Boewe

Sources Ewan, Joseph. “Frederick Pursh, 1774–1820, and His Botanical Associates.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 96:5 (1952): 599–628. Pennell, Francis W. “Botanical Collectors of the Philadelphia Local Area.” Bartonia 21 (1940–1941): 38–57.

RUSSELL, THOMAS (1793–1819) A pioneer physician on the American frontier at Fort Smith in Arkansas Territory, Thomas Russell was a native of Salem, Massachusetts. He matriculated at Brown University, after which he studied medicine at the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) under Benjamin Smith Barton and Caspar Wistar. After earning his M.D. in 1814, he joined the U.S. Army and was assigned to Fort Smith as post surgeon in 1818. The fort, an outpost in the western wilderness, represented the limits of American power in the Arkansas Territory, once part of the Louisiana Territory. The commander of the post was Major William Bradford. The botanist Thomas Nuttall, arriving at Fort Smith after a long journey up the Arkansas River during the spring of 1819, was delighted to find the physician Russell. The two men instantly became friends, sharing interests that distinguished them from the soldiers, hunters, voyageurs, and American Indians that otherwise inhabited the Arkansas Territory. Like Nuttall, Russell was a protégé of Barton and an avid botanist. He delighted in taking Nuttall on long walks and rides through the surrounding forests and prairies. The two men found on their botanical walks, to Nuttall’s delight, wild indigo (Baptisia leucophaea), blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium anceps), and larkspur (Delphinium).

Section 3: Say, Thomas 175 Nuttall continued on his journey up the Arkansas River in July, not returning to Fort Smith until the end of September. In the meantime, a yellow fever epidemic struck the garrison and surrounding settlements, and Russell succumbed to the fever. Nuttall eulogized the young physician by commemorating him with the flower Monarda russeliana and the following epitaph recorded in his Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory (1821): Relentless death, whose ever-withering hand delights to pluck the fairest flowers, added, in the fleeting space of a few short days, another early trophy to his mortal garland; and Russel, the only hope of a fond and widowed mother, the last of his name and family, now sleeps obscurely in unhallowed earth! Gentle Reader, forgive this tribute of sympathy to the recollection of one, whom fully to know was surely to esteem, as a gentleman, an accomplished scholar, and a sincere admirer of the simple beauties of the field of nature.

lost money as a pharmacist, and he did not inherit much from his father, who left the bulk of his wealth to his second wife, who outlived her stepson. After helping establish the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1812, Say lived on its premises for a while. With the financial assistance of William Maclure, a geologist, explorer, and sponsor of scientific explorations to the west, Say became one of the most all-around naturalists of his time. He contributed to the academy’s Journal forty-one articles on entomology, conchology, paleontology, mammalia, reptilia, and crustacea. His efforts in descriptive taxonomy are represented in the books American Entomology (3 volumes, 1817—1828) and American Conchology (6 volumes, 1830–1834). While living in Philadelphia, Say held the unsalaried position of curator of the American Philosophical Society (1821–1827) and contributed a number of articles to its publication, Transactions. He published descriptive papers on entomology

Russell Lawson

Sources Graustein, Jeannette E. Thomas Nuttall, Naturalist: Explorations in America, 1808–1841. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967. Lawson, Russell M. The Land Between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall’s Ascent of the Arkansas in 1819. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Nuttall, Thomas. A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1999.

S AY, T H O M A S (1787–1834) The botanist, entomologist, zoologist, and explorer Thomas Say was born on June 27, 1787, the second of four children of Benjamin Say and his first wife, Ann Bonsall, granddaughter of the botanist John Bartram. His father, a wealthy physician, put Thomas at age twelve in a severe Quaker boarding school, where the boy lasted only three years. Thereafter, Thomas learned pharmacy with his father and otherwise educated himself by attending lectures on medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. With little sense for business, he

A self-taught naturalist, Thomas Say of Philadelphia is regarded as the founder of descriptive entomology in America. As the zoologist with expeditions led by Stephen Long and others, he also provided the first descriptions of a number of animal and bird species. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–42280)

176 Section 3: Say, Thomas elsewhere as well, including in New York’s Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History. In 1822, he was appointed a professor of natural history including geology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he lectured only when he felt like it, since the position carried no salary. In 1818, Say traveled in Georgia and Florida with Maclure and fellow naturalists Titian Peale and George Ord. He was the zoologist on the expedition to the Rocky Mountains led by Stephen Long in 1819. Say accompanied Long again in 1823 on a journey exploring the sources of the Minnesota River. During this journey, Say collected botanical specimens that became the basis for the extensive botanical appendix to the published narrative account. He also studied Native American languages, then hardly known, on these trips. In 1825, Say was a leading member of the “Boatload of Knowledge” that Maclure sent down the Ohio River to make Robert Owen’s New Harmony community a western outpost of science and culture in backwoods Indiana. He also accompanied Maclure to Mexico, where the latter went in 1827 for his health. Say then returned to New Harmony and acted as Maclure’s agent. In New Harmony, in addition to his scientific work and his often fruitless efforts to mediate quarrels among the quick-tempered intellectuals, Say managed the colony’s printing, which included editing its newspaper, the Disseminator of Useful Knowledge, where essays by his patron Maclure often appeared. Say married Lucy Way Sistaire in 1827; they had no children. Lucy shared her husband’s scientific interests; she learned engraving to illustrate his books and hand-colored their illustrations. Following Say’s death on October 10, 1834, she saw to it that some of his unpublished manuscripts were printed posthumously. It was fitting that after his death the Academy of Natural Sciences made her a life member. Charles Boewe

Sources Gerstner, Patsy Ann. “The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1812–1850.” In The Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War, ed. Alexandra Oleson and Sanborn C. Brown. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

Keating, William H. Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter’s River . . . performed in the year 1823. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: Carey, 1824. Stroud, Patricia Tyson. Thomas Say: New World Naturalist. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Weiss, Harry B., and Grace M. Ziegler. Thomas Say: Early American Naturalist. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1931.

T U C K E R M A N , E D WA R D (1817–1886) The noted botanist and lichenologist Edward Tuckerman was born on December 7, 1817, the son of a merchant said to be one of the richest men in Boston. Tuckerman never lacked resources to undertake what interested him. After graduating from the Boston Latin School, he entered Union College at Schenectady, New York, as a sophomore and obtained his A.B. in classical studies. While in Schenectady, he became professionally interested in botany. Tuckerman continued studying various branches of natural history on his own while he worked to achieve a law degree at Harvard, which he received in 1839. Not satisfied with these distinctions and having taken a second A.B. at Harvard in a single year, he remained in Cambridge another two years to complete the Harvard Divinity School’s prescribed program. Later, both Union and Harvard granted him master’s degrees. Unrelated to the scientific publications for which he is remembered today were more than fifty articles he published in religious periodicals during these years. Tuckerman began botanizing in 1837 in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where, during the next twenty years, he became an authority on the native lichens. He left for Europe in 1841 to visit fellow botanists, and he studied for a time at the University of Uppsala in Sweden with Elias Fries, the leading lichenologist of the time. Thereafter, Tuckerman’s taxonomic work on lichens never deviated from Fries’s teachings. Unlike today’s understanding of lichens as composite, symbiotic organisms consisting of a fungus that hosts either algae or cyanobacteria (or both) to obtain its food, Tuckerman viewed lichens as a distinct group of simple plants.

Section 3: Tuckerman, Edward 177 Before returning to the United States in 1842, he happened to attend an auction in London where a collection of American plant specimens was being sold. Among these were dried plants collected by Lewis and Clark on their transcontinental trek and taken to England a generation earlier. Recognizing the historic value of the collection, Tuckerman bought it and returned it to America. In 1854, Tuckerman married Sara Eliza Sigourney Cushing, daughter of a business associate of his father. The couple moved to Amherst, Massachusetts, where he was a professor of oriental history and, later, professor of botany at Amherst College. Although he studied the angiosperm genera Carex (sedges) and Potamogeton (pondweeds) throughout his career, Tuckerman earned his reputation with the lichens—a form of plant life then ignored by most American botanists. In all, he published thirty-seven books and articles on lichens, beginning with Enumeration of North American Lichens (1845), followed by Synopsis of

the Lichens of the Northern United States and British North America (1847), and culminating in Genera Lichenum: An Arrangement of North American Lichens (1872), considered his greatest work. Tuckerman began by studying the lichens he had collected in the White Mountains. As his fame grew, other specimens were sent to him from farther afield, including those collected by government surveys in the West and those brought back by the Wilkes Expedition from the South Pacific. Most of the approximately 350 new species first described by him are still recognized under the names he gave them. Tuckerman died on March 15, 1886, in Amherst, leaving no progeny. Charles Boewe

Sources Gray, Asa. “Memorial of Edward Tuckerman.” American Journal of Science 32 (July 1886): 1–7. Reid, Anna M.M. “Edward Tuckerman (1817–1886), Pioneer American Lichenologist—The Early Years.” Mycotaxon 16 (1986): 3–16.

DOCUMENTS The Flora of the White Mountains The following is botanist Manasseh Cutler’s description of the flora found on Mount Washington, as he observed on his journey to the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1784. At the base of the summit of Mount Washington, the limits of vegetation may with propriety be fixed. There are indeed, on some of the rocks, even to their apices scattered specks of a mossy appearance; but I conceive them to be extraneous substances, accidentally adhering to the rocks, for I could not discover, with my botanical microscope, any part of that plant regularly formed. The limits of vegetation at the base of this summit, are as well defined as that between the woods and the bald or mossy part. So striking is the appearance, that at a considerable distance, the mind is impressed with an idea, that vegetation extends no farther than a line, as well defined as the penumbra and shadow, in a lunar eclipse. The stones I have by me, from the summit, have not the smallest appearance of moss upon them. There is evidently the appearance of three zones—1, the woods—2, the bald mossy part— 3, the part above vegetation. The same appearance has been observed on the Alps, and all other high mountains. I recollect no grass on the plain. The spaces between the rocks in the second zone, and on the plain, are filled with spruce and fir, which, perhaps, have been growing ever since the creation, and yet many of them have not attained a greater height than three or four inches, but their spreading tops are so thick and strong, as to support the weight of a man, without yielding in the smallest degree. The snows and winds keeping the surface even with the general surface of the rocks. In many places, on the sides, we could get glades of this growth, some rods in extent, when we could, by sitting down on our feet, slide the whole length. The tops of the growth of wood were so thick and firm, as to bear us currently, a considerable distance, before we arrived at the utmost boundaries, which were

almost as well defined as the water on the shore of a pond. The tops of the wood, had the appearance of having been shorn off, exhibiting a smooth surface, from their upper limits, to a great distance down the mountain. Source: Jeremy Belknap, The History of New-Hampshire, vol. 3. (Boston: Belknap and Young, 1792; rev. ed., Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 1992).

Thomas Nuttall’s Description of the Flora of the Western Prairie Thomas Nuttall journeyed into the Arkansas Territory in 1819, exploring the Canadian, Arkansas, Cimarron, and Red rivers. The following excerpt, from his Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory, provides a description of a region of America that was largely untouched by humankind at the time. The singular appearance of these vast meadows, now so profusely decorated with flowers, as seen from a distance, can scarcely be described. Several large circumscribed tracts were perfectly gilded with millions of the flowers of Rudbeckia amplexicaulis, bordered by other irregular snow-white fields of a new species of Coriandrum. The principal grasses which prevail are Kœleria cristata of Europe, Phalaris canariensis (Canary birdseed), Tripsacum dactyloides, which is most greedily sought after by the horses, Elymus vagrancies (sometimes sought after by the horses, Elymus virginicus (sometimes called wild rye), a new Rotbolia, one or two species of Stipa and Aristida, with the Agrostis arachnoides of Mr. Elliott, and two species of Atheropogan. The common Milfoil, and sorrel (Rumex ascetocella), are as prevalent, at least the former, as in Europe. In these plains there also grew a large species of Centaurea, scarcely distinct from C. austriaca; and along the margin of all the rivulets we met with abundance of the Bowwood (Maclura aurantiaca), here familiarly employed as a yellow dye, very similar to fustic. . . . The general character of this country is that of prairie, with scattered trees and interspersed clumps. On the summits of the ridges, the timber

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Section 3: Documents 179 is generally red cedar ( juniperus virginiana), on the prairie, post oak (quercus obtusiloba), black jack (quercus nigra), black walnut ( juglans nigra), and shell bark hickory ( juglans squamosa). The alluvion of the rivers contains a greater variety, of which the principal are—cotton wood (populus angulosa), sycamore (platanus occidentalis), overcup oak (quercus macrocarpa), nettle tree, or hackberry (celtis crassifolia), hoop ash (celtis occidentalis), honey locust (gleditsia triacanthos), black locust (robinia pseudacacia), coffee tree (guilandina dioica), peccan ( juglans olivceformis), and many of the trees common in the states east of the Alleghanies. The soil is generally excellent, being for the most part black loam, and is tilled without much trouble. The climate is very fine: the spring commences about the middle of March in the neighbourhood of St. Louis, at which time the willow (salix), the elm (ulmus Americana), and maples (acer rubrum and saccharinum) are in flower. The spring rains usually occur in May, after which month the weather continues fine, almost without interruption, until September, when rain again occurs about the equinox, after which it remains again fine serene weather until near Christmas, when the winter commences. About the beginning or middle of October the Indian summer begins, which is immediately known by the change that takes place in the atmosphere, as it now becomes hazy, or what they term smoky. This gives to the sun a red appearance, and takes away the glare of light, so that all the day, except a few hours about noon, it may be looked at with the naked eye without pain: the air is perfectly quiescent and all is stillness, as if nature, after her exertions during the summer, was now at rest. The winters are sharp, but it may be remarked that less snow falls, and they are much more moderate on the west than on the east side of the Alleghanies in similar latitudes. The wild productions of the Missouri Territory, such as fruits, nuts, and berries, are numerous: of these the summer grape (vitis cestivalis) appears to be the most valuable, as the French have made a considerable quantity of wine from it by collecting the wild fruit. This species grows in abundance on the prairies, and produces a profusion of fine bunches. The winter grape (vitis vulpinum) is remarkable for the large size of its vine, which climbs to the tops of the highest trees, and takes

such full possession of their tops, that after the fall of the leaf, the tree to which it has attached itself seems to be loaded with fruit. The vine at the bottom is commonly six or eight inches in diameter. I measured one near the Mirramac River, that was thirty-seven inches in circumference near the ground, after which it divided into three branches, each branch taking possession of a tree. The fruit is very good after the frosts have commenced. Another fruit found here is the persimon (dyospyros virginiana), which in appearance resembles a plum, excepting that the permanent calyx of the flower remains. It is so astringent until ameliorated by the frosts, that on being eaten, it draws up the mouth, and when swallowed, contracts the throat in such a manner as to cause a sensation similar to that of choking. The papaw (anona triloba) is found in plenty on the alluvion of the rivers. The fruit is of the magnitude and shape of a middling sized cucumber, and grows in clusters of three, four, or five together: when ripe the pulp is of the consistence of a custard, and is very agreeable to some palates; but the hogs will not touch them. Strawberries are in vast abundance on the prairies, and are very fine. The pecan, or Illinois nut, is a kind of walnut, but very different from all the other species, both in the form and texture of its shell, which is so thin as to be cracked between the teeth with the greatest ease. It is of an oblong form, and from that circumstance the tree which produces it has obtained the name of juglans olivcejormis. There are several other species of hickory and walnut, which yield nuts in great abundance. These, together with acorns from the various species of oak, furnish abundance of food for hogs. Source: Thomas Nuttall, “Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819,” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 13, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: A.H. Clark, 1905).

John Bradbury’s Catalogue of Flora in the Missouri Valley Botanist John Bradbury, in Appendix 6 of his Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811, provided a “Catalogue of Some of the Most Rare or Valuable Plants Discovered in the Neighbourhood of St. Louis and on the Missouri.”

180 Section 3: Documents Leersia Lenticularis, Woods, American Bottom, St. Louis. Aristida Pallens, Hills on the Merrimac. Stipa Juncea, Prairies, Aricaras to the Mandans. ——— Membranacea, Fort Mandan. Probably not a Stipa. Aira Brevifolia, Great Prairie. Festuca Spicata, common on the Missouri. Cynosurus secundus, Mississippi Bluffs. Hordeum Jubatum, valleys near the Aricaras. Allionia Ovata ——— Linearis, ——— Hirsuta, bluffs near the Aricara village. Plantago Lagopus, alluvion of the Missouri, common. ———Elongata, near the Maha village. Eleagnus Argentea, bluffs near the Mandan nation. Hippophae Argentea, Mahas, Platte, Ottoes, Missouri. Pulmonaria Sibirica, high up the Merrimac river. ——— Lanceolata, opposite the Aricara village. Batschia Canescens, prairie about St. Louis. ——— Gmelini, American Bottom, Illinois. ——— Longiflora, first occurs near the mouth of the Platte, on ascending the Missouri. Onosmodium Molle, about St. Louis. Dodecatheon Meadia, prairie behind St. Louis. Phacelia Fimbriata, at Point L’Abbadie, on the Missouri, with white flowers. Cynoglossum Glomeratum, Big Bend, Missouri. Solanum Heterandrum, about the Aricara village. Ribes Aureum, Little Cedar Island, Missouri. Salsola Depressa, on the Missouri, near the mouth of Knife River. Hydrocotyle Ambigua, rocks on the Mississippi, near Herculaneum. Selinum acaule, on the alluvion of the Missouri, from the river Naduet to the Mahas. Seseli Divaricatum, Missouri Bluffs, at the mouth of the L’eau qui Court. Linum Lewisii, on Cannon-ball river. ——— Rigidum, on the Missouri bluffs, common. Yucca Angustifolia, Missouri bluffs, opposite the mouth of Papillon Creek. Lilium Catesboeia, prairie about St. Louis. ——— Umbellatum, bluffs near the Mandan village. Rumex Venosus, Big Bend, Missouri. Gaura Coccinea,

——— Oenothera Albicaulis, bluffs Aricara village. ——— Macrocarpa, near St. Louis. Eriogonum Pauciflorum, ——— Sericeum, near the Minateree villages on the Missouri, both growing together. Cactus Viviparus, Missouri bluffs, above the Poncar village. Bartonia Ornata, ——— Nuda, on the bluffs above Knife River. Geum Triflorum, head waters Blackbird Creek. Potentilla Arguta, bluffs above the Aricara village. Ranunculus Multifidus, in stagnant pools near the Sepulchre bluffs. Stachys Foeniculum, Missouri bluffs. Capraria Multifida, American Bottom, Illinois. Martynia Proboscidea, St. Louis. Penstemon Erianthera, common on the bluffs from the Big Bend to the Aricara village. ——— Angustifolia, near the Minataree village. ——— Glabra, alluvion of the Missouri, above the Big Bend. Castilleja Sessilliflora, Upper Louisiana. Myagrum Argenteum, on limestone rocks, Missouri. Erysimum Lanceolatum, or, Cheiranthus Erysimoides, a connecting link between Erysimum and Cheiranthus, used as medicine by the Aricaras. Cleome Pinnata, on the prairies between the Aricaras and Mandans. Cristaria Coccinea, on the bluffs of the Missouri, above the L’eau qui Court. Hebiscus Militarts, ——— Manihot, American Bottom, Illinois. Ervum Multiflorum, opposite the Sepulchre bluffs, Missouri. Viccia Stipulacca, Upper Louisiana. Lathyrus Decaphyllus, sand alluvion of the Missouri, above the Big Bend. Lupinus Pusillus, bluffs near Little Cedar Island. Amorpha Fruticosa, common on the Missouri and Mississippi. ——— Mycrophytla, abundant near the Aricara village. ——— Canescens, on the prairie four miles west of St. Louis. Astragalus Racemosus, ——— Tryphyllus, ——— Carnosus, on the bluffs opposite the mouth of Papillon Creek, and at the Aricara villages. Dalea Aurea, on the prairies six miles below the L’eau qui Court.

Section 3: Documents 181 ——— Laxiflora, Aricara village. Psoralea Cuspidata, on the bluffs near the Chienne river. ——— Longifolia, near the Sepulchre bluffs. Probably not a Psoralea. ——— Elliptica, sand hills near the Big Bend. ——— Esculenta, bluffs near the mouth of Negro Fork, Merrimac river. ——— Tenuiflora, sand hills, Big Bend. Cytisus Rhombifolius, at the mouth of Chienne river, and on arid places near the Aricara village. Sonchus Pulchellus, banks of the Missouri, common. Troximum Cuspidatum, common on the prairies between the Mahas and Mandans. Eupatorium Altissimum, Missouri and Mississippi, common. Oxytropis Lambertii, on the bluffs from the Maha village to the Poncars. Artemisia Dracunculus, ——— Cana, ——— Campestris, ——— Santonica, common on the Missouri.

Arnica fulgens, prairie from the Aricaras to the Mandans. Cineraria Integrifolia, common on the Missouri. Erigeron Hirsutum, Aricara village. ——— Divaricatum, common on the Missouri. Senecio Pauperculus, prairie below the L’eau qui Court. Aster Argenteus, prairie behind St. Louis, abundant. Amellus Villosus, ——— Spinulosus, common on the bluffs of the Missouri. Galardia Acaulis, on the Missouri near the Aricara village. Probably a Chaptalia. Rudbeckia Columnaris, bluffs above the Aricara village. Most probably not a Rudbeckia, and ought to form a new genus. Iva Axillarls, about Chienne river. Chelianthes Dealbata and Vestita, Manitou rocks on the Missouri. Source: John Bradbury, “Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811,” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 5, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: A.H. Clark, 1905).

Section 4

B I O LO G Y

ESSAYS The Biological Sciences in Early America T

he idea of “biological science” was unknown in early America. The term “biology” was not coined until the early part of the nineteenth century; it refers to the scientific study of life and the structures and properties of living organisms, both plant (botany) and animal (zoology). The first society committed to the study of “biology” in America was the Philadelphia Biological Society (1857). It was composed of physicians and naturalists who sought common ground, but the organization soon died. Thus, it was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century that the idea of biology as a scientific discipline took root. The biological sciences in early America primarily related to the practical needs of the economy and survival and were more oriented to the collection of specimens and observation than to experimentation, cataloging, and classification. Even in Europe during this period, the biological sciences involved primarily medicine and agronomy, with botany and zoology just emerging from their roots in the agricultural economy. Carolus Linnaeus, for example, did not introduce his taxonomy for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms until 1735. Although Europe was not that far ahead of early America in experimentation with and the understanding of the structures, properties, functions, growth, origins, evolution, and distributions of living organisms, there was a differential in knowledge and expertise. The European advantage can be traced to a number of factors, perhaps the most important of which was the availability of an advanced education in science. Those who wanted to be physicians, for example, had to take their education in Europe. Harvard College, the first institution of higher learning in America, was not founded until 1636. Students attending Harvard in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries studied a science curriculum that included physics,

astronomy, mathematics, and botany; the life sciences curriculum was later extended to include botany, zoology, comparative anatomy, and physiology. As late as 1780, there were only eight colleges actively teaching any science in America: Harvard, the College of William and Mary ( founded 1693), Yale College ( founded 1701), the College of New Jersey ( founded 1746, later Princeton), the College of Philadelphia ( founded 1746, later the University of Pennsylvania), King’s College (1754, later Columbia), Rhode Island College ( founded 1764, later Brown), and Dartmouth ( founded 1769). Many more European universities actively taught the sciences, and their proximity to one another made the exchange of information and discoveries easier. Additionally, there were few libraries and few scientific instruments available in early America. Economic and cultural foundations further contributed to the differential. For one thing, the New World was still being explored. There were homesteads to build, economies and businesses to create and manage, precious metals and resources to exploit. The harsh economic truth was that there were few opportunities for professional scientists, especially in the life sciences. The study of biology in early America was secondary to one’s vocation as a physician, lawyer, government official, merchant, explorer, trader, soldier, or farmer. Exploration for economic gain and discovery drove European interest in the New World before and during the colonial period. Early Americans valued the life sciences more for the potential economic benefits than for the knowledge itself. Understanding breeding and zoology increased the quality and number of animals. Understanding botany helped to identify crops that might be marketable, plants that might have medicinal value, or the best methods for increasing crop yields. Thomas Hariot,

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186 Section 4: Essays for example, experimented with growing barley, oats, and peas at the Roanoke Colony. The primary focus of biological scientists was on the discovery of new resources and marketable commodities. Naturalists throughout the colonies compiled lists of flora and fauna and collected specimens. Many of these specimens, alive or preserved, were sent to Europe for study and classification because of the lack of facilities and expertise in America. Some commercially viable products were sent to Europe both to pay for the current exploration and to ensure future funding based on realized and potential profits from newly discovered or yet-to-be discovered products. The exploding volume of plant species unknown to European botanists became so great that the existing botanical classification systems could not absorb the knowledge. Linnaeus, who had his own collector in America, Peter Kalm, responded to this classification crisis by developing a binomial nomenclature and creating his now famous taxonomy. A number of individuals made notable contributions to the biological sciences as they were understood in early America. John Winthrop, Jr., a governor of Connecticut, was a farmer, physician, naturalist, and charter member of the Royal Society of London ( founded 1660). Winthrop submitted a number of natural history papers and specimens to the Royal Society, which, in turn, requested that he write a civil and natural history of New England. Cotton Mather, a Boston Puritan pastor, theologian, and scientist who sought to discover and understand God’s handiwork through experimentation and observation, was the first member ( fellow) of the Royal Society who had been born in America. This honor was largely based on Curiosa Americana (1712–1724), a collection of eighty-two letters detailing his observations and theories in biology, ornithology, zoology, entomology, geology, anthropology, medicine, astronomy, meteorology, and mathematics. In this work, he recorded the first observation of the spontaneous hybridization of corn and detailed the first known experiments on plant hybridization in America. He reported as well on the nesting habits of pigeons, the medical practices of Native Americans, and the medicinal uses of the rattlesnake’s gall bladder.

Paul Dudley was a jurist, naturalist, natural theologian, and fellow of the Royal Society whose many essays in the Society’s Transactions (published 1720–1735) focused on the natural history of America, with an emphasis on New England. His varied subjects included the making of maple syrup, methods of discovering beehives and wild honey, and the cross-fertilization (hybridization) of corn, as well as the rattlesnake, the locust, the natural history of whales, the poisonwood tree, and various plants of New England. From its beginning, the Royal Society promoted scientific investigation, observation, and experimentation in America by funding and seeking reports and specimen submissions on such topics as tobacco, rice, coffee, olives, vines, hemp, silkworms, and medicinal springs and plants. John Bannister’s studies, specimens, descriptions, and sketches of mollusks, fossils, insects, and plants in Virginia were funded by the Royal Society. Naturalist Mark Catesby was a founder of American ornithology. His observations while traveling from Virginia to Florida between 1712 and 1726 led him to conclude that birds migrate south during the winter for the warmth and plentiful food supply. His ornithological observations, theories, sketches, and specimens were sent to the Royal Society. Catesby’s Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, which appeared serially between 1729 and 1747, contained hand-colored engravings and descriptions of 109 North American bird species. He also collected seeds, nuts, berries, roots, whole plants, mosses, shells, insects, birds, mammals, reptiles such as snakes, fish, amphibia, and Native American curios. Catesby’s Natural History was the first non-Linnaean description and illustration of the plant and animal species in North America. John Bartram, a Pennsylvania farmer, naturalist, and specimen collector, traveled with his son William along the eastern seaboard from Florida to New York and as far west as Ohio. His scientific endeavors were supported by his farming and by forwarding seeds in return for patronage. He created America’s first botanical garden (in Philadelphia, 1728) and was the king’s botanist (appointed 1765). Although cataloging and classification seem to have held no interest for Bartram and Catesby,

Section 4: Essays 187 other Americans, such as John Clayton and Cadwallader Colden, adopted the Linnaean taxonomy and applied it to their studies. Colden was a former New York City government official who began his study of botany on his estate in Orange County, New Jersey, in 1727. In 1742, he became the first person to apply the Linnaean taxonomy in America. Colden also studied the relationship of blood and disease. Jane Colden Farquhar, the daughter of Cadwallader Colden, was an accomplished Linnaean taxonomist and botanist in her own right. Other women contributed to the blossoming life science knowledge in early America, including Martha Laurens Ramsay (agronomy), Martha Daniell Logan (horticulture), and Eliza Lucas Pinckney (agronomy). The Revolutionary War brought the challenge of self-sufficiency. A sustaining and exportoriented agricultural industry had to be developed. Expertise, such as Pinckney’s knowledge of indigo dye, was highly valued, and the

need for an indigenous educational system that could facilitate American agronomy and industry was recognized. With the end of the colonial era and the rise of the republic, the principles of science and ongoing innovation continued to permeate the American agricultural industry. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Bedini, Silvio A. Thinkers and Tinkers: Early American Men of Science. New York: Scribner’s, 1975. Friedenberg, Zachary B. The Doctor in Colonial America. Danbury, CT: Rutledge, 1998. Hindle, Brooke, ed. Early American Science. New York: Science History, 1976. ———. The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Singer, Charles. A History of Biology to About the Year 1900: A General Introduction to the Study of Living Things. History of Science and Technology Reprint Series. Reprint ed., Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

Paleontology: Challenges to Genesis in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries P

aleontology is the study of fossils and how they were formed during Earth’s geologic periods, the relationship between the living plants and animals those fossils represent, and the connection to present-day plants and animals. The word derives from paleo ( from the Greek palai, meaning “old,” “ancient”) and onta (meaning “existing things”) and came into the English language in 1838. The first scientists to introduce the concept of paleontology were met with resistance, because it challenged religious beliefs about creation. According to the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, God created the heavens and Earth, living creatures, and humankind over the space of six days. The Hebrew Bible and New Testament detail the genealogy proceeding from the first couple, Adam and Eve, to Abraham, King David, and his descendants, ending with Jesus of Nazareth.

Based on this chronology, many hypothesized about the age of Earth. The assumption among theologians and scientists until the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was that the creation of the world occurred several thousand years before the birth of Christ. The seventeenth-century Irish bishop James Ussher estimated that Earth was created on October 26, 4004 B.C.E. This limited understanding of the human and natural past was based, in part, on a conception of being that was accepted throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. The concept of a “chain of being” explained life according to a static hierarchy of changelessness over time. The creator, it was posited, made all life forms; nothing was lacking; nothing could ever become extinct. The creation, in short, was perfect, plentiful, and constant.

188 Section 4: Essays

Origins in the Enlightenment European thinkers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries who relied on reason over revelation and empiricism over pure faith began to challenge the idea of the chain of being. The French naturalist Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, for example, was the first scientist to hypothesize a process of evolution, or change over time, among living beings. A botanist at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, Lamarck challenged the belief advanced by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire that organisms are passively altered by their environment. Instead, Lamarck wrote, changes in the environment cause active changes in the needs and behavior of organisms. Behavioral changes lead to changes in how the body is used. After several generations, any parts or organs that are not used disappear or diminish; those that are used most continue to develop. The First Law of Lamarck (1801) addressed the use or disuse of structures and how organs are either enlarged, reduced, rendered vestigial, or made to disappear completely. Lamarck believed that such changes are inherited, and that organisms evolve from simple to more complex forms. Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert Cuvier, a contemporary of Lamarck, disagreed with his theories on the basis of the fossil record. Cuvier noted that some older fossils were more complex than newer ones. He also opposed theories about evolution, arguing that species were not capable of change. Putting a new twist on the chain of being, Cuvier argued that extinction occurs because of environmental upheavals— such as the great flood described in the Bible. After each catastrophe, he maintained, a new creation takes place. Cuvier ’s contribution to paleontology was his description and analysis of fossilized remains that were millions of years old. The nineteenth-century English geologist Charles Lyell was the first scientist to state unequivocally that the biblical narrative of Earth’s creation is more fiction than fact. He observed that the deposition of sand required to form sedimentary rocks required a geologic process lasting millions rather than thousands of years. The variety of fossils in sedimentary rocks challenged the theory of simultaneous and spontaneous genera-

tion. Lyell expanded the theory of uniformitarianism suggested by the Scotch geologist James Hutton in the late eighteenth century. According to this view, the present is the key to the past: the same natural forces affect the earth at all times and places. These forces include erosion, sediment deposition, volcanic action, earthquakes, changes in the weather, and floods.

American Paleontology Meanwhile, eighteenth-century American scientists and members of the American Philosophical Society such as Thomas Jefferson, Charles Willson Peale, and Benjamin Smith Barton sought evidence of giant creatures, such as the woolly mammoth, in America. Disbelieving in the possibility of extinction in a perfect creation and still beholden to the idea of a chain of being, American scientists were unprepared to engage in the science of paleontology until the nineteenth century. One of the first amateur paleontologists, the physician Joseph Leidy, studied fossils; in 1847, he presented a paper on a fossilized horse to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Leidy’s reputation as a paleontologist was such that he attracted the interest of geologists, collectors, and fossil hunters, who would bring or send their treasures to him for identification. Edward Drinker Cope came to Leidy’s lectures in Philadelphia and was appointed curator of the comparative vertebrate collections at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Cope collected a vast number of vertebrate fossils, which persuaded him of the truth of Lamarckian evolution as well as a creation that was the product of intelligent design. Cope also theorized that, as animals evolve, their physical statures expand. One of Cope’s colleagues was Alpheus Hyatt, a zoologist and paleontologist who was also a Lamarckian and who advocated the theory that, during the course of evolution, the younger the group or species, the more variation and change. Hyatt was a student of Louis Agassiz. Louis Agassiz was the preeminent nineteenthcentury American paleontologist, and he was opposed to Darwin’s theory of evolution. A follower of Cuvier, he supported the theory that catastrophes in natural history lead to extinction and a new creation, and he believed that a glacial age was the most recent such catastrophe.

Section 4: Essays 189 Despite the opposition of Agassiz and other contemporary paleontologists, Darwin’s ideas of natural selection and adaptation to the environment took hold in America during the late nineteenth century. This development set the stage for an explosion of paleontological research by American scientists in the twentieth century. Lana Thompson

Sources Dixon, D., et al. Atlas of Life on Earth: The Earth, Its Landscapes, and Lifeforms. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2001. Fortey, Richard A. Fossils: The Key to the Past. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Holy Bible. Pilgrim Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1952. Lanham, Url. The Bone Hunters. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.

Darwin in America T

he publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species in 1859 caused a sensation in Victorian England. All 1,250 copies sold out the first day. Within a decade, the book was into a fifth edition. Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection attracted considerable interest in the American scientific community. The eminent Harvard botanist Asa Gray received his copy of The Origin only a few weeks after its publication; as acting senior editor of the American Journal of Science and Arts, which, at the time, was the nation’s leading scientific periodical, Gray decided to review the book himself. Recognizing that Darwin’s theory was unable to explain a number of important questions, including how variations arise within a species, Gray nevertheless drew sharp distinctions between the explanatory power of evolution through natural selection versus creation by divine will. Shortly after the appearance of Gray’s review, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences held a series of special meetings in the spring of 1860 to debate the new theory. The meetings only led to both sides sharpening their arguments.

Creation vs. Evolution In the July 1860 issue of the American Journal of Science and Arts, the Harvard geologist Louis Agassiz, one of America’s most famous scientists, attacked Darwin’s work as unscientific in its methods, untrue in its facts, and downright mischievous. For Agassiz and his allies, by rejecting the idea that the world and its phenomena are the result of original and continuous interven-

tion by a divine being, Darwin had forsaken his claim to scientific respectability. Scientists, particularly naturalists, they argued, had to observe the world within a religious framework. Science was not about constructing explanatory theories; it was merely the organization of “facts” into a descriptive body of knowledge. Agassiz also asserted that the fossil record does not support Darwin’s theory, because there are no intermediary forms of a species from different geological periods. However, the majority of naturalists, whatever misgivings they may have had regarding a particular weakness in or aspects of Darwin’s theory, would increasingly view the world in a Darwinian framework. The discovery of new fossil deposits in the western United States in the early 1870s—especially fossilized birds with teeth and other reptilian characteristics—strengthened the case for evolution and even led Agassiz to moderate his stance. The vice president for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, O.C. Marsh, declared in August 1877 that to doubt evolution was to doubt science itself. By the beginning of the twentieth century, as the scientific community in general subscribed to an organic theory of evolution, Darwin prevailed. Many proponents of evolution, like Gray, sought to reconcile Darwin’s theory with divine creation. The religious response to The Origin of Species was not absent, but it also was not overwhelming. Opponents of evolution took comfort in the fact that Darwin had essentially ignored the place of humans in the world. The publication of Darwin’s The Descent of Man in

190 Section 4: Essays 1871, however, shattered the illusion that humanity was somehow above evolution. In What Is Darwinism, the Princeton professor of systematic theology, Charles Hodge, equated support of evolution with the denial of God. More typical were theologians like George Wright, whose work calmed the fears of intellectuals who perceived evolution as a challenge to religious orthodoxy. During the Gilded Age, Darwin’s theory was set back by a revival of ideas of Lamarck, such as evolution did not involve random genetic mutations. But the most famous example of hostility to the concept of evolution was the Scopes trial of 1925 in Tennessee.

The Scopes Trial Motivated by the publication of The Fundamentals (1905–1915), a series that established the tenets of Christian fundamentalism, and fueled by a supposed link between German militarism and Social Darwinism, opponents of evolution pursued

their campaign with a renewed vigor. The dramatic expansion of the American education system also meant that the teaching of evolution was not some far-off threat. In Tennessee, between 1910 and 1925, the number of children enrolled in school increased fivefold. The anti-evolution campaign reached a climax when Tennessee high school teacher John Scopes was tried for violating the state’s Butler Act, which made it illegal to teach evolution in public schools. The trial, held in the town of Dayton, pitted the anti-evolutionist William Jennings Bryan against the famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow. Following Darrow’s closing arguments, in which he urged the jury to convict his client, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. The verdict was later overturned on a technicality. In spite of the widespread media scorn generated by the Scopes trial, the campaign to outlaw the teaching of evolution quickly spread nationwide, as did opposition to the anti-evolution movement. Despite the passage of anti-evolution legislation in a number of states and localized efforts to prevent the teaching of Darwin’s theory, Christian fundamentalists refrained from challenging the scientific validity of evolution in a court of law. The merging of Darwin’s theory with Mendelian genetics into the “New Synthesis” or Neo-Darwinism in the 1930s and 1940s rendered such a strategy all but impossible. The battle over the teaching of evolution was not abandoned, however. The focus simply shifted from legislation to the use of commercial pressure in forcing publishers to either downplay or eliminate discussions of evolution in their textbooks.

Continuing Challenges

A contemporary political cartoon characterizes the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial—in which a Tennessee schoolteacher was prosecuted for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution—as an attempt to stop progress. (Library of Congress, CD 1–Pease, no. 1)

Beginning in the late 1960s, supporters of evolution used the courts to overturn anti-evolution laws of the 1920s on constitutional grounds. By the 1970s, the success of the U.S. space program and improvements in the public education system made it appear as if America had reclaimed its status as a scientific nation. Creationists, however, were able to take advantage of the continued scientific illiteracy of large portions of the American public to renew their assault on the teaching of evolution. They

Section 4: Essays 191 argued that students should receive a “balanced treatment” of all major theories of the origin of life and that “creationist science” should be taught alongside evolution. After failures in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Colorado, antievolutionists found that Tennessee remained receptive to their ideas. In March 1973, Tennessee Senate Bill 394—the Genesis Act—was introduced and quickly made its way into law. The legislation required that the biblical account of creation be taught at the same time as scientific evolution. Like the legislation of the 1920s, the Genesis Act was ruled unconstitutional. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, driven, in part, by yet another setback, the creationist movement was again undergoing a metamorphosis. Convinced that the teaching of evolution underlay what they considered the increasingly secular humanistic characteristics of American society, creationists emerged as an important factor in the larger conservative evangelical movement. Despite increased media attention, however, the equal-time movement failed. The legal challenge over Louisiana’s 1981 “balanced treatment” law eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices ruled, in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), that the law violated First Amendment provisions regarding the separation of church and state.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Edwards, the presence of Darwin and evolutionary theory in American classrooms remains a contentious issue. Opponents of evolution maintained a low profile through the late 1980s and early 1990s, but they reemerged in the mid-1990s with the theory of “intelligent design.” Proponents of this theory argue that a supreme being created the complexities of the universe and the miracle of life on Earth; they claim that the Darwinian model is not sophisticated enough to explain the complexity of living organisms. Despite ongoing opposition, it seems unlikely that evolutionary theory will ever be permanently banished from America’s secondary school classrooms. Two years after the Kansas Board of Education voted to drop evolution from its science requirements in 1999, a newly elected board reversed the decision. But challenges to teaching evolutionary theory continue. Sean Kelly

Sources Ruse, Michael. The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Debates. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Webb, George E. The Evolution Controversy in America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. Zetterberg, J. Peter, ed. Evolution Versus Creationism: The Public Education Controversy. Phoenix, AZ: Oryz, 1983.

The Genetic Revolution U

ntil the 1940s, despite decades of research, geneticists still discussed the process of inheritance in the abstract and considered genes the units of inheritance. It was only in 1944 that the American research team of Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty, and Colin Macleod identified deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as the principal agent of heredity. In a letter to Nature, nine years later, James Watson and Francis Crick identified the molecular structure of nucleic acids and suggested that their findings could also explain gene replication. During the intervening years, the field of bacterial genetics had undergone a rapid devel-

opment. Following Avery’s discovery of transformation, Joshua Lederberg and Norton Zinder identified conjugation and transduction as the other two principal mechanisms of gene transfer. Along with the rapid growth rates of bacteria, the ability to introduce foreign DNA into bacteria and then isolate these rare variants proved essential to the development of molecular genetics. By the 1970s, geneticists had developed the knowledge and techniques to alter genes in vitro (outside the body) and to insert them into almost any organism. Out of this basic research a genetic revolution arose. Genetic engineering now affects virtually

192 Section 4: Essays every field of biological and medical research, and the biotechnology industry seeks to commercialize the research. Although still in its infancy, the genetic revolution has already had a profound effect on agriculture, law enforcement, and medicine. Ongoing developments in genetic engineering promise even greater benefits, but the genetic revolution has also generated anxiety over its potential environmental impact and raised a number of ethical questions.

G enetic Engineering Humans have been selectively breeding crops and animals since the advent of civilization. With recombinant DNA technology, however, artificial genes or genes from different biological kingdoms can be used to impart new properties to agricultural crops. In the case of the tomato, whose vine-ripened fruit tastes better than fruit picked green but has a far shorter shelf life, scientists at the now defunct biotechnology company Calgene inserted an “antisense” copy of the gene responsible for the weakening of the cell wall. By doing this, they were able to interfere with the normal expression of the PG (polygluconase) enzyme and thereby create tomatoes that remained firm longer yet could be allowed to ripen on the vine. In 1994, the Flavr Savr tomato became the first genetically modified food to be approved for public consumption by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Because of adverse publicity, however, the Flavr Savr would be pulled from the market three years later. Similarly, in May 2004, the Monsanto Company bowed to public pressure and abandoned its plans to market wheat that had been genetically modified to make it resistant to the herbicide Roundup. But numerous types of genetically modified crops, including canola, corn, soybeans, squash, papaya, and cotton, are being cultivated around the world. Genetic engineering in the area of animal husbandry has tended to focus on boosting milk production through the introduction of new genes or the application of bacterially grown bovine hormones. The hope that domesticated animals will serve as “biological factories” to produce drugs or rare proteins remains unfulfilled. Law enforcement has also been transformed by the genetic revolution. In 1984, the British ge-

neticist Alec Jeffreys discovered discrete sections of DNA within the human genome that differ to such an extent that they constitute a genetic fingerprint. Except for identical twins or clones, no two individuals have an identical genetic code. DNA fingerprinting quickly found a variety of uses in the legal system, including the identification or elimination of suspects in criminal cases, the identification of human remains, and the establishment of paternity. The technology is also being applied to nonhuman species, for example in investigating animal poaching. Nevertheless, the genetic revolution has had its most dramatic impact in the fields of biology and medicine. Evolutionary biologists use molecular genetics to further their understanding of how and when species diverged from their common ancestors. The link between genetics and disease was established early in the twentieth century. Before the advent of the Human Genome Project, however, linking a gene to a particular disease was a laborious process and frequently required either an isolated genetic population or a large family affected with the disease. Although identifying the specific gene responsible for Huntington’s disease, for example, took nine years, developing a genetic test for the disease occurred far more rapidly. Phenylketonuria (PKU) is one of the few diseases for which molecular genetics has led to a treatment strategy—the avoidance of foods rich in the amino acid phenylalanine. It is hoped that “gene therapy” will eventually allow a number of genetic diseases to be cured with simple injections, thereby bypassing the risks, pain, and potential complications of organ or tissue transplant. To date, the most common approach to gene therapy has been to remove somatic cells from the patient—gene therapy in germ line cells is currently considered too difficult and potentially risky—then introduce the correct gene via a retroviral vector and inject the cells back into the patient. With the exception of a handful of successful experimental cases, the promise of gene therapy remains unfulfilled, though it is widely expected to become a standard tool of clinicians in the coming decades.

Issues of Concern The genetic revolution has not been without its critics. Europeans, fearing the creation of

Section 4: Essays 193 “Frankenfoods,” have been particularly vocal in their opposition to genetically modified consumables. In addition to genuine issues of food safety, the genetic modification of organisms has also raised ecological questions. In the case of genetically modified bacteria, wide sections of the public erroneously fear that their release into the environment could lead to the emergence of pathogens. Such fears, however, are not simply the by-product of scientific illiteracy. Many of the pioneers of recombinant bacteria not only underestimated the difficulty of converting a harmless bacterium into a pathogen but also exaggerated the potential danger of their research. They also underestimated the frequency of DNA transfer in the bacterial world. Still, the possibility does exist that a new gene could lead to new properties that pose a risk to human or animal health. A prime example of this would be the insertion of insect-toxin genes into agricultural crops. The other potential environmental effect of genetically modified organisms is the disruption of existing biotic communities through interaction with native species. Critics of salmon farms, for example, have tried to prevent the introduction into coastal net-pen facilities of fish that have been genetically engineered to mature faster, arguing that should such fish escape, they could displace wild salmon and lead to the extinction of the species. Given the complexity of most ecosystems, it is all but impossible to predict with any degree of certainty what impact the widespread release of genetically modified organisms might have. Controversy also arises from the ethical implications of the genetic revolution. The price of doing innovative research involves laboratory practices that some consider reprehensible—for example, the use of embryonic stem cells. Cells that are removed from a blastocyst, which is an early stage of a human embryo, destroys the embryo. But these cells are pluripotent, that is, they can be developed into a vast number of human cells. Hence, they are important in research to find cures for disease. Although genetic tests are available for an increasing number of hereditary diseases, the decision to undergo testing—whether as an in-

dividual or as prospective parents—can be very difficult. If a prenatal checkup reveals that a fetus has cystic fibrosis, for example, are the parents right in aborting the fetus or in allowing the birth of a child who will be seriously ill for its entire life? Adults with a family history of genetic disease may or may not want to know what their future holds. The choice is even more agonizing in countries that do not have national health care systems, since a positive result can lead to the loss of health insurance or the inability to qualify for it. All major religious, governmental, and public policy organizations now agree that gene therapy is ethically acceptable for the treatment of disease. But many people are uncomfortable with the idea of “designer babies.” The prospect of arbitrary cosmetic engineering raises concern over the revival of the eugenics movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Still, the prospective benefits of the genetic revolution should not be dismissed because of past abuses of research protocol or social policy. Nor, on the other hand, should the promise of genetic engineering be embraced unquestioningly, as the concerns over safety and environmental impact are both genuine and far reaching. Sean Kelly

Sources Davis, Bernard, ed. The Genetic Revolution: Scientific Prospects and Public Perceptions. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Dixon, Dougal, et al. Atlas of Life on Earth: The Earth, Its Landscapes, and Lifeforms. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2001. Drlica, Karl. Double-Edged Sword: The Promise and Risks of the Genetic Revolution. Reading, MA: Helix, 1994. Fortney, Richard A. Fossils: The Key to the Past. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. Lanham, Url. The Bone Hunters: The Heroic Age of Paleontology in the American West. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Ruse, Michael. The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Debates. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Webb, George E. The Evolution Controversy in America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. Zetterberg, J. Peter, ed. Evolution versus Creationism: The Public Education Controversy. Phoenix, AZ: Oryz, 1983.

A–Z equivocal as other parts of the background Audubon likely concocted later in life to add depth to his biography.

AU D U B O N , J O H N J A M E S (1785–1851) The Franco-American ornithologist and bird painter John James Audubon was born on April 28, 1785, at Les Cayes Plantation in Santo Domingo (now Haiti) to Jeanne Rabin, the Creole mistress of Captain Jean Audubon. She died a few months after the birth. The French captain had resided on the island for the previous six years and had grown rich as a planter, merchant, and slave dealer. Four years later, the boy was taken to France with his younger half-sister and was formally adopted by Captain Audubon and his wife. In 1800, when the boy was baptized, his name was formalized as Jean Jacques Fougère Audubon. His adoptive mother saw to it that he was instructed in dancing, music, and fencing but neglected his more formal schooling, with the result that he never was easy about writing in French. She also may have enabled him to study drawing in Paris for a few months in the atelier of neoclassical master Jacques-Louis David. Swept up in the popular interest in nature associated with the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Audubon began making drawings of French birds. But when his father recognized his lack of discipline, he placed Audubon in the Rochefortsur-Mer Naval Academy for a year; that was the last of his formal education. In 1804, Audubon took up a life of leisure near Philadelphia, at Mill Grove, an estate his father had owned for some time. There, in satin pumps and silk knee breeches, the young man rambled over the countryside with dog and gun, began observing American birds, and became engaged to Lucy Bakewell, the daughter of an English family on a neighboring estate. Having quarreled with his father’s agent, who also was his American guardian, he borrowed money from his fiancée’s uncle to pay his passage back to France. On his return there, he may have served in the French navy, but this is as

Along the Ohio R iver Audubon was on his own when he returned to the United States in 1806 with Ferdinand Rozier, the son of one of his father’s associates. After several false starts, the two bought a stock of goods and went west to seek their fortune as storekeepers in Louisville, Kentucky. In the spring of 1808, Audubon returned to Philadelphia, married Lucy, and took her back to Louisville with him. Deciding they had too much competition in the rapidly growing city, the partners moved their enterprise farther down the Ohio River in 1810 to Henderson, Kentucky. There, Rozier minded the store while Audubon roamed the woods and streams. After the business failed and the partnership was dissolved, Audubon dabbled in several other ventures, one of which got him so deeply in debt that he was jailed in 1819. This disaster ended his business attempts, and for a time he made crayon portraits of people for $5 each. Then, in the winter of 1819–1820, Audubon moved his family back upriver to Cincinnati, where his artistic talents and natural history interests came together in a job as taxidermist at the recently founded Western Museum. Alexander Wilson, America’s leading ornithologist, had visited Audubon at his store and showed him some of his bird pictures. Wilson’s birds were mostly in static poses, many crammed together on a single page, their purpose being descriptive in a scientific rather than artistic sense. Perhaps it was his work at the museum of mounting specimens in realistic poses against painted background habitats that caused Audubon to believe he could do better than Wilson. Impulsively leaving his Cincinnati job in October 1820, Audubon and his family journeyed down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, where he worked at whatever jobs he

194

Section 4: Audubon, John James 195

John James Audubon was not the first to depict the birds of America, but his technique of painting freshly killed specimens, looking alive in their natural habitats, contributed amply to the fledgling field of American ornithology. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

could find—including painting street signs. Lucy, now separated from him, worked as a governess on a plantation to feed herself and their two sons, their two daughters having died in infancy.

Ar tist Once he had collected enough bird pictures, including those made on the trip to Louisiana, Audubon set out in 1824 to find a publisher. He failed in Philadelphia, though while there he learned from Thomas Sully something about painting in oils and was advised by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, another ornithology enthusiast, that he would do well to seek publication in Europe. After another year in Louisiana teaching music and drawing, Audubon journeyed to Liverpool, where he found his first subscribers. In

Edinburgh, he was so well received that he was elected to the Edinburgh Royal Society and found his first publisher, William Lizars, who gave up, however, after producing ten plates. In 1827, Audubon tried his luck in London, where, dressed in buckskins and with flowing, uncut hair, the “American frontiersman” became a celebrity. After the king agreed to subscribe to his book, other wealthy individuals and institutions followed. He acquired the services of the talented engraver Robert Havell, Jr., who labored the following eleven years on plates for Birds of America. The book appeared in parts in double elephant folio size. From 1829 to 1839, Audubon made three roundtrip Atlantic crossings and traversed much of Europe, garnering sales for his book both there and in the United States. Institutions and wealthy collectors were the only buyers of the four oversize volumes (1827–1838), containing 435 hand-colored plates depicting 1,065 North American birds of 497 species. In 1840–1844, Audubon published a seven-volume octavo edition that more people could afford. This edition became the most successful book in natural history published up to that time, and it made Audubon’s fortune. In 1842, the proceeds from this book alone enabled him to build a house in Manhattan in a section of Washington Heights still called Audubon Park. To supplement the pictures in Birds of America, Audubon produced an equally popular Ornithological Biography in five volumes (1831–1839), for which he had the assistance of the talented Scottish naturalist William MacGillvray. His other major work was Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (3 volumes of plates, New York, 1845–1848; and 3 volumes of text, New York, 1846–1854) for which he was assisted by his two sons, Victor Gifford Audubon and John Woodhouse Audubon, as well as by his sons’ father-inlaw, John Bachman. By this time, Audubon’s eyesight was growing dim and his mind was beginning to wander. He had traveled as far north as Labrador and as far south as Florida in pursuit of bird specimens, and his last tour took him as far west as the Dakotas seeking images for the Viviparous Quadrupeds. He died in New York on January 27, 1851. Audubon has retained his standing as America’s best-known naturalist, perhaps not always

196 Section 4: Audubon, John James for the right reasons. The Audubon Society is a leading advocate of conservation, yet the man himself slaughtered mounds of birds, some in the interest of science, many more wantonly for sport. Few artists are impressed by his technical skills, and ornithologists find his scientific knowledge inadequate. In the course of killing so many birds for study, he was bound to come across a few unclassified species, but he lacked the knowledge to classify them correctly. Although he was an innovator in picturing the birds life size, he probably did so because of the difficulty of reducing their bulk and still retaining perspective. Many of the realistic habitats against which his birds are displayed were painted by his assistants.

Scientific Humanist Audubon’s appeal, both in the pictures and the accompanying prose, is more humanistic than scientific. Though awkward when writing French, he was superb when writing English—a circumstance that owed something to the assistance of MacGillvray and probably more to the editorial skills of his wife Lucy. Even though his birds are sometimes forced into positions ornithologists say are anatomically impossible, the poses nevertheless present the birds dramatically. For instance, the diagonal composition of his famous turkey cock has the dramatic thrust of David’s equally famous equestrian portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps. Audubon also was a superb painter of texture; he painted feathers and fur that ask to be touched. But he was weak in his depiction of space; his pictures often seem to have two planes: the foreground plane containing the animals depicted, and the background habitat scene as another plane. Perhaps what has endeared his birds most to people not concerned with scientific exactitude is that they are remarkably like ourselves. In his picture of four mockingbirds, the rattlesnake coiled around a nest was scoffed at by contemporary naturalists, who said rattlesnakes do not climb trees (they do); but the power of the picture comes from the humanlike expression of terror on the faces of the birds. Innocent birds and villainous snakes make for good drama. In another picture, a female brown thrasher is in the clutches of a hissing captor, while her heroic

mate rushes to the rescue. In other pictures, Carolina parakeets (now extinct) tumble about like athletic clowns, and ruby-throated hummingbirds perform a graceful quadrille, much like that practiced by young Audubon in France. Often the Ornithological Biography reveals the artist’s opinion of a bird’s “personality,” like that of the “audacious” purple martin. Paging through the pictures with human attributes in mind, one discovers the quarrelsome red-tailed hawk, the wise great gray owl, the imperial bald eagle, the adorable house wrens, and the inquisitive goldfinches. Finally, despite Audubon’s shortcomings as a professional ornithologist, his curiosity led him to experiment on such matters as whether birds of prey seek their food by sight or by smell, and he was the first to study the migratory habits of birds by banding them. He has been given credit for being the first to observe twenty-three species and twelve subspecies of American birds. Surely, he has had more influence than anyone else on the popularity of “birding” among nature lovers. Charles Boewe

Sources Audubon, John James. The Audubon Reader. Ed. Richard Rhodes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Boehme, Sarah E. John James Audubon in the West: The Last Expedition: Mammals of North America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. Herrick, Francis Hobart. Audubon the Naturalist: A History of His Life and Time. 2 vols. New York: Appleton, 1917; 2nd ed., 1938. Mengel, Robert M. “How Good Are Audubon’s Bird Pictures in the Light of Modern Ornithology?” Scientific American 216:5 (1967): 155–59. Streshinsky, Shirley. Audubon: Life and Art in the American Wilderness. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998.

A X E L R O D, J U L I U S (1912–2004) American biochemist Julius Axelrod did groundbreaking research on chemical neurotransmission in the brain. His discoveries helped explain how nerve cells communicate and affect human behavior. He also helped identify acetaminophen as a painkiller, and his work set the stage for the development of a number of new antidepressant

Section 4: Bigelow, Henry 197 pharmaceutical drugs, including Zoloft and Prozac. A Nobel laureate, Axelrod was a towering figure in the emerging field of biomedicine in the twentieth century. The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, Axelrod was born in New York City on May 30, 1912. He grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, attended Seward Park High School, and demonstrated a strong interest in science classes as a teenager. He earned a B.S. in biology from City College of New York in 1933 and served as a laboratory assistant at the New York University Medical School until 1935. Axelrod sought entry into medical school but, due to modest grades and limited access for Jewish students, he was rejected every time. From 1935 to 1946, Axelrod worked as a chemist at the Industrial Hygiene Laboratory of the New York Health Department. At some time during his tenure, his left eye was damaged by an ammonia explosion in the laboratory. He would have to wear an eye patch for the rest of his life. During this time, Axelrod also attended night classes at New York University. His thesis was on enzyme breakdown in malignant cancer tumor tissues; he received an M.S. in chemistry in 1941. Axelrod went on to work at several institutions, including the Goldwater Memorial Hospital on Roosevelt Island off Manhattan (1946–1949) and the National Heart Institute, part of the rapidly expanding National Institutes of Health (NIH), in Bethesda, Maryland (1949–1953). Realizing that a doctorate was a prerequisite for advanced science research and professional acknowledgment, he took a leave of absence from his job to earn a Ph.D. from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in 1954. After receiving his doctorate, Axelrod returned to the NIH. He served as head of the pharmacology section at the Laboratory of Clinical Science in Maryland until his retirement in 1984. Axelrod’s early laboratory work in the 1940s explored the function of analgesics, or painkillers. His focus was alternatives to aspirin. Such drugs at the time caused a blood condition in some users called methemoglobinemia: elevated levels of methemoglobin, which resulted in a reduced oxygen-carrying capacity. Axelrod determined that acetanilide, the main ingredient in these painkillers, was responsible for the condition, and

he devised a substitute, acetaminophen (paracetamol), later sold commercially as Tylenol. His main area of interest, however, was the nervous system. The relationship of biochemical processes to human behavior and learning became the focus of his research beginning in the mid-1950s. Between 1956 and 1958, he explored the biochemistry of neurotransmitters in the brain, proving that chemical compounds called catecholamines—including epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline)—do not stop working after being released into nerve synapses. Instead, Axelrod found, these neurotransmitters are reused by the nerve ending and put into use again, a process called “reuptake.” Because the mental state of a person can be affected by preventing or stimulating the neurotransmitters, Axelrod’s research enabled pharmaceutical companies to develop a new and more effective class of antidepressants called selective serotonin uptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, including Prozac. In 1970, Axelrod shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the impact on behavior of chemicals secreted by nerve endings in the brain. Axelrod was an honorary guest researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health during the 1980s and 1990s. He died on December 29, 2004, in Rockville, Maryland. James Fargo Balliett and Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Axelrod, Julius. Philosophy of Medicine and Science. Washington, DC: Institute of History of Medicine and Medical Research, 1972. Kanigel, Robert. Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty. New York: Macmillan, 1986. Nobel Lectures. Physiology or Medicine 1963–1970. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1972. Squire, Larry R., ed. The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography. Vol. 1. St. Louis, MO: Academic Press, 1998.

B I G E LO W , H E N R Y (1879–1967) An oceanographer, researcher, professor of zoology at Harvard University, and founder of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, Henry Bryant Bigelow developed a

198 Section 4: Bigelow, Henry modern approach to oceanography that focused on the ecosystem as a whole and its interdisciplinary components. Bigelow was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 3, 1879. At the age of eleven, he was enrolled at the Milton Academy, a boarding school just outside the city. He graduated at sixteen and spent the following winter at the Boston Natural History Museum, where he worked under Alpheus Hyatt while studying biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taking German lessons. He graduated from Harvard University cum laude in 1901. Bigelow began his career researching jellyfishes of the eastern tropical Pacific while working under Alexander Agassiz, director of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Bigelow recognized Agassiz as his most influential mentor and would continue to credit him throughout his lifetime. The research was published as two volumes in the Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1909 and 1911, earning Bigelow recognition as one of the leaders in marine biological research. In 1912, the Scottish oceanographer John Murray proposed to Bigelow a project to survey the Gulf of Maine, which extends from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. Granted use of the U.S. Commission of Fisheries schooner Grampus for his surveying, Bigelow spent the next four years recording temperature and salinity and making plankton tows in the offshore waters of the Gulf of Maine. Eventually, he extended his collecting along the continental shelf and into Canadian waters off the coast of Halifax and Nova Scotia. His research was a success and expanded to include two other Commission of Fisheries steamers, the Halcyon and Albatross. Sampling continued until 1928, for a total of 350 stations and 10,116 net tows. Thanks to Bigelow, the Gulf of Maine became the most well-known oceanographic area surveyed by a single agency. His findings were published in Fishes of the Gulf of Maine ( first edition 1925, with co-author William Welsh; second edition 1953, with coauthor William C. Schroeder). The first edition contained a complete guide to the ecology and identification of 178 fish species, for which Bigelow was

later elected into the National Academy of Sciences. In 1927, Bigelow wrote a report on the extent of U.S involvement in ocean studies for the Oceanography Committee of the National Academy of Sciences. He received a $2.5 million grant and $50,000 a year for a ten-year project to establish an institution of oceanography at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. It is known today as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Bigelow was director at Woods Hole for ten years while also teaching and researching at Harvard. During this time, land was donated by the Marine Biological Laboratory build a laboratory building, and the research vessel Atlantis was constructed. Awarded numerous honorary degrees and awards, Bigelow remains best known for two books, Fishes of the Gulf of Maine (1925 and revised) and Fishes of the Western North Atlantic (1948 and revised, another collaboration with Schroeder). He died on December 11, 1967, at his home in Concord, Massachusetts. In 1970, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated the large open bay in the Gulf of Maine between Cape Ann and Cape Small as Bigelow Bight. Today, a large central laboratory building at the Woods Hole campus also bears his name, as does the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, a marine research institution in West Boothbay Harbor, Maine. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration honored Bigelow by building a ship in his name. The Henry B. Bigelow was the first replacement for the historic series of Albatross research vessels that for decades surveyed the Gulf of Maine, the Georges Bank, and the continental shelf and slope from southern New England to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Alicia S. Long

Sources Bigelow, Henry B. Memories of a Long and Active Life. Cambridge, MA: Cosmos, 1964. ———. Oceanography: Its Scope, Problems, and Economic Importance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931. Collette, Bruce B., and Grace Klein-MacPhee, eds. Bigelow and Schroeder’s Fishes of the Gulf of Maine. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2002. Dobbs, David. The Great Gulf: Fishermen, Scientists, and the Struggle to Revive the World’s Greatest Fishery. Washington, DC: Island, 2000.

Section 4: Biological Warfare 199

B I O LO G I C A L W A R FA R E Biological weapons are those used to infect people, animals, or crops with toxic living organisms that cause death or damage as they multiply and spread. The infection is usually transmitted to others through airborne contagion, direct physical contact, or other forms of exposure, expanding the radius of sickness and death. The number of potential biological agents used for warfare is vast. One of the most notorious agents is anthrax (Bacillus anthracis), a bacterium that is spread to the lungs, skin, or digestive system by means of spores. Another is ricin, which is made from the waste from processing castor beans and can be spread by means of powder or pellets. Tularemia (Francisella tularensis), a bacterium that causes pneumonia, can be spread by aerosol spray. Smallpox, the variola virus, once the great plague of premodern cities, has become a new terrorist threat, one

that the majority of Americans have not been vaccinated against. Another disease that has caused terror among humans worldwide is the plague (Yersinia pestis), which could be spread to an unsuspecting and unprotected population by means of aerosol spray. Biological weapons, like chemical weapons, have roots in ancient, medieval, and early modern warfare. One of the more common early forms of biological warfare was to foul the enemy’s water or food supply, such as contaminating wells. A particularly damaging weapon during prolonged military sieges was infection, which spread from improperly disposed carcasses in an overcrowded populace. The prospect of an epidemic could force the surrender of cities and forts, but the threat of disease was feared by defender and attacker alike. Early instances of biological warfare in the United States include the distribution of smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans by British and colonial soldiers during Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763.

U.S. Marines with the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF) decontaminate the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C., after traces of the poisonous anthrax bacterium were detected in October 2001. (Greg Mathieson/Mai/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

200 Section 4: Biological Warfare In the twentieth century, the United States and other major world powers began secretly to develop biological weapons for use in World War II, but none actually resorted to biological warfare. The use of chemical weapons by the United States during the Vietnam War led to pressure that forced President Richard M. Nixon to declare that U.S. armed forces would not resort to biological weapons, a policy that still stands. During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union feared that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons would undermine the bipolar system and the concept of nuclear deterrence. In April 1972, the international Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention was signed in London for the purpose of preventing the spread of chemical and biological weapons to other countries. The multinational accord went into effect in 1975 and, by the year 2000, claimed nearly 170 signatories. Even so, a wide range of biological agents are produced by countries worldwide. The fear of biological warfare has continued even after the Cold War. Proliferation has not only increased globally, but technology also has allowed for ever greater expansion of and control over biological agents. Advanced delivery systems give major Western democracies and emerging nations advantages in the use of biological weapons. Terrorist organizations have also benefited from the relative ease of creation of biological weapons and the reduced risk of transporting these deadly agents. The 1984 botulism attack in Oregon by members of the Rajneeshees cult and the attacks by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in the 1990s in Tokyo demonstrate how easily a nation’s safety is jeopardized by terrorist groups willing to use chemical and biological weapons. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent appearance of envelopes containing anthrax in the U.S. mail system (a crime yet to be solved), the international community and U.S. homeland security apparatuses have faced the threat of groups such as al-Qaeda finding the means to deliver deadly biological weapons with devastating effect. Antonio Thompson

Sources Hersh, Seymour. Chemical and Biological Warfare. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968. Wright, Susan, ed. Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

B LO C H , K O N R A D (1912–2000) A Nobel laureate, Konrad Emil Bloch made significant contributions to the understanding of the mechanism of cholesterol, which is found in organ tissues. Born on January 21, 1912, in Neisse, Upper Silesia, Germany (now Nysa, Poland), Bloch studied at the technical high school in Munich. In the early 1930s, he developed an interest in organic chemistry. After obtaining his degree in chemistry, he left Munich for Davos, Switzerland, to work at the Schweizerische Forschungsinstitut. Researching the bacilli that cause tuberculosis, Bloch became interested in biochemistry. In 1936, he relocated to the United States and worked in the department of biological chemistry at Yale Medical School for two years. After getting his doctorate in biochemistry from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York, Bloch taught at that institution from 1939 to 1946. He became an American citizen in 1944. In 1946, he joined the University of Chicago, and he became a professor there in 1948. He was chosen as a Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow in 1953 and moved to Harvard the following year as Higgins Professor of Biochemistry. He became chair of the department fourteen years later and remained at Harvard until his retirement in 1982. Bloch’s years at Columbia University were devoted to research on the biological synthesis of cholesterol, specifically the cholesterol level in atherosclerosis, the buildup of plaque in the arteries. The environment at the Biochemistry Department of Chicago University under the headship of E.A. Evans was conducive to serious research, and Bloch carried on experiments in cholesterol and biosynthesis. He also worked on glutathione, which is made up of amino acids

Section 4: Burbank, Luther 201 that help reduce oxidative stress, thereby fighting a variety of diseases caused by the presence of highly active molecules, or free radicals, in the bloodstream. The work of Swiss scientists on the relationship between terpene and sterol influenced him greatly in conducting laboratory experiments at Harvard. Bloch continued research on terpene and sterol complex molecules and their relation to cholesterol. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1964, sharing it with Feodor Lynen, for the discovery of the synthesis of cholesterol with fatty acids in the physical and chemical changes of an organism. Bloch was also the recipient of the Fritzsche Award of the American Chemical Society; the Distinguished Service Award of the School of Medicine, University of Chicago; Ohio State University’s William Lloyd Evans Award; and honorary doctorates from universities in Brazil, Germany, and Uruguay. Bloch died of heart failure on October 15, 2000, in Burlington, Massachusetts. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Bloch, Konrad. Blondes in Venetian Paintings, the Nine-Banded Armadillo, and Other Essays in Biochemistry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Nobel Lectures. Physiology or Medicine 1963–1970. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1972.

BURBANK, LUTHER (1849–1926) A pioneer of modern plant breeding, Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts, on March 7, 1849. His farm-bred enthusiasm for nature was encouraged by an uncle, one of the curators at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, and by the museum director, naturalist Louis Agassiz, then a professor at Harvard. At the age of nineteen, Burbank read Charles Darwin’s The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868), which became the inspiration for his life’s work. At twenty-one, Burbank purchased his first farm, near Lunenberg, Massachusetts. There, in 1871, he developed the Burbank potato, now commonly known as the Idaho. Samples of this blight-

resistant variety were sent to Ireland to aid in that country’s recovery following the 1840–1860 potato famine. Today, the Burbank potato remains the most popular variety among American farmers. In 1875, Burbank sold the rights to his potato ( for $150) and purchased a 4 acre home and garden in Santa Rosa, California. He later added Gold Ridge Farm, a 15 acre experimental farm near Sebastopol. The crossbreeding and hybridization experiments at these two laboratories would ultimately involve millions of plants. Burbank’s success was made possible by careful, unhurried experimentation. During his fifty years in California, he developed more than 800 new varieties of fruits, grains, vegetables, and ornamental plants, including over 100 types of plums and a cactus with no spines. At times, he was working on as many as 3,000 projects simultaneously. Burbank’s eight-volume How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man, published in 1921, pointed out that there were no incentives for plant breeders to spend the time and resources necessary to develop new varieties. Breeders were given no control over their creations and, therefore, received little or no financial reward. Burbank’s work inspired Congress to pass the Plant Patent Act of 1930, guaranteeing to plant breeders the same protections of federal law enjoyed by other inventors. In an interview months before his death, Burbank made his famous and much misunderstood statement, “I am an infidel.” He subsequently explained, “I do not believe what has been served to me to believe. I am a doubter, a questioner, a skeptic.” He described his personal religion as “justice, love, truth, peace, and harmony; a serene unity with science and the laws of the universe.” Although his views on evolution and religion were well known, this interview came just months after the controversial 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial,” and Burbank became a lightning rod for anti-evolutionist criticism, receiving hundreds of letters of complaint. He attempted to answer each one personally, believing that serious, polite dialogue was the most potent weapon against intolerance. Luther Burbank died on April 11, 1926. Among his honors are sixteen plant patents, posthumous induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (1986), and the Luther Burbank Award,

202 Section 4: Burbank, Luther created by the American Horticultural Society to honor extraordinary achievement in plant breeding. Phoenix Roberts

Sources Burbank, Luther. The Life and Work of Luther Burbank. Columbia, MO: Athena University Press, 2004. ———. Luther Burbank: His Methods and Discoveries and Their Practical Application. 12 vols. Ed. John Whitson, Robert John, and Henry Smith Williams. New York: Luther Burbank Society, 1914. Burbank-Beeson, Emma, Effie Young Slusser, and Mary Belle Williams. Stories of Luther Burbank and His Plant School. 1920. Park Forest, IL: University Press of the Pacific, 2002.

C ARSON, R ACHEL (1907–1964) Rachel Carson, a biologist, zoologist, ecologist, and author, is best known for her groundbreaking book Silent Spring (1962), a shocking narrative of how DDT and other poisons endanger the environment. She was born on May 27, 1907, in Springdale, Pennsylvania. Her mother was a teacher; her father sold real estate and insurance and worked for a utility company. As a child, mentored by her mother, Carson loved nature, particularly birds, and she spent a great deal of time outdoors. She also liked to write about her experiences and was first published at age ten, when she contributed a story to the St. Nicholas Literary Magazine for Children. Carson began her academic career in 1925 at Pennsylvania College for Women as an English major, but in her third year she realized that her love of living things could be better studied scientifically and changed to zoology. She graduated magna cum laude in 1929 and that summer was accepted at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory to study marine biology as a beginning investigator. In the fall, she entered a master’s program at Johns Hopkins University in zoology; she earned her degree in 1932. The death of her father and subsequent loss of her older sister created such a great hardship on her mother that Carson was obligated to help support her. Unable to pursue a Ph.D., she be-

Even before the publication of Silent Spring (1962), a founding text of the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson—trained as a marine biologist—was a widely read author of books on ocean life. (Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

gan to teach zoology at the University of Maryland and served part-time as an aide at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, where she wrote scripts for a radio series called Romance Under the Waters. She also supplemented her income with natural history feature articles for the Baltimore Sun. After fifteen years, Carson was promoted to editor-in-chief of all publications of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In that capacity, she initiated a series of pieces on ecology called “Conservation in Action,” the groundwork for her seminal studies. Although her major contributions were factfilled, nonfiction articles on conservation and natural resources, she was able to craft words from the scientific style into a more literary genre. In 1937, the Atlantic Monthly magazine published her article “Undersea,” which she later expanded into a book, Under the Sea-Wind (1941). Another book ten years later, The Sea Around Us (1951), gained her international prominence as an authoritative marine biologist as well as an eloquent and persuasive writer. Appealing to the

Section 4: Carver, George Washington 203 average citizen and scientist alike, it became a best-seller and won a National Book Award. Carson resigned from government employment in 1952 and moved to Maine, where she continued to write about the ocean, penning another best-seller, The Edge of the Sea (1955). She opposed the unethical treatment of animals in experimental research and fought to protect the biotic world from scientific experimentation with chemicals to eradicate agricultural pests. Although Carson had been interested in environmental pollution twenty-five years earlier, she did not act on it until prompted by a friend who commented on the death of birds after mosquito spraying. Carson began a campaign to put a stop to the irresponsible use of pesticides such as DDT. Silent Spring (1962) was the culmination of this crusade. Predictably, the book caused an uproar from the agrichemical industry. Carson was attacked as a hysterical woman and a bad scientist. President John F. Kennedy, however, saw the value of Carson’s work and directed the government to conduct independent research, which resulted in the federal government initiating a series of regulatory controls, including laws forbidding the use of DDT. Carson died of breast cancer on April 14, 1964, less than two years after the publication of Silent Spring. Lana Thompson

Sources Brooks, Paul. Rachel Carson: The Writer at Work. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1998. Lear, Linda. Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature. New York: Owl, 1998. Marco, Gino J., Robert M. Hollingworth, and William Durham, eds. Silent Spring Revisited. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1986.

C A R V E R , G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N (1864–1943) The agricultural scientist George Washington Carver, the younger of two sons of enslaved African Americans, was born on a farm owned by the Carver family near Diamond Grove, Missouri. Before he was a year old, his father, who was

enslaved on a farm nearby, was killed in an accident, and his mother was kidnapped by raiders. Carver was a frail child and therefore not forced to work in the fields. He showed a keen interest in nature and experimented with plants as a young boy. From the age of ten, yearning for an education, Carver would traverse the countryside of Missouri and Kansas to attend school while working odd jobs. Eventually, he graduated from Minneapolis High School in Kansas and applied to Highland University. He received an acceptance letter and scholarship, but both were rescinded when university officials discovered Carver was African American. In 1887, Carver was admitted to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, where he gained a reputation for his artistic talent, painting in particular. (One of his paintings would win honorable mention at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.) His passion was agriculture, however, and, after two years at Simpson, he transferred to Iowa State College to study horticulture. By 1894, Carver had not only earned his undergraduate degree but was offered a faculty position as well. While he taught, Carver studied for a master’s degree in botany, which he gained in 1896. Subsequently, Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, implored Carver to join the school as director of agriculture. Beginning with only a crude laboratory and 20 acres of land, Carver transformed Tuskegee into a world-famous institution for work in the agricultural sciences. Carver is famous for his work on improving soil conditions, instituting effective crop rotations, and finding multiple uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and pecans. He would eventually produce more than 300 products from the peanut alone, including facial cream, ink, cooking oil, soap, and cheese. He developed some 115 products from the sweet potato and more than 75 products from the pecan. Respected and acknowledged as both a brilliant scientist and pioneer in agricultural innovation, George Washington Carver was sought out by Henry Ford, offered a high-paying job at state-of-the-art laboratories by Thomas Edison, and invited to speak before the U.S. Congress. Carver, a man of quiet dignity, elected to remain at Tuskegee to continue his work.

204 Section 4: Carver, George Washington

Born to slave parents in Missouri near the end of the Civil War, George Washington Carver joined the Tuskegee Institute in 1896. During his forty-seven years there, he became one of America’s most prominent and innovative agricultural scientists. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

During his lifetime, Carver would receive multiple awards and distinctions, including election to the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers, and Commerce of Britain in 1916, the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP in 1923, and the Theodore Roosevelt Medal for distinguished research in agricultural chemistry in 1939. The International Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians named him Man of the Year in 1940. Carver died on the campus of the Tuskegee Institute on June 15, 1943. Paul T. Miller

Source Carver, George Washington. George Washington Carver: In His Own Words. Ed. and intro. Gary R. Kremer. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991.

C O N S E R VAT I O N B I O LO G Y Conservation biology is a relatively new science developed in response to alarming losses in biodiversity worldwide. Biodiversity involves the

variety of living organisms existing in diverse habitats and ecosystems. The complex array of species and their genetic diversity is the product of millions of years of evolution and adaptation. Extremely diverse regions of the world such as the tropics contain the majority of the world’s land species, many of which are yet to be identified. Even in simpler habitats, interactions among species and the environment can be complex and often fragile; many are not well understood. Combining aspects of ecology, genetics, biogeography, economics, sociology, and other fields, conservation biology is aimed at preserving the complex processes and interactions that occur in natural habitats. During the nineteenth century, the practice of conservation was concerned mainly with preserving species of economic or recreational importance. Game species for hunting and fishing and timber or other resources for extraction were the primary focuses of most conservation efforts. The concept of “multiple use” championed by early foresters such as Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the U.S. Forest Service, promoted the idea that natural resources could serve the needs of people while also providing for nature. Other influential writers of the nineteenth century, such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, focused more on the preservation of unspoiled wilderness. By the early twentieth century, it was becoming clear that neither multiple use nor complete preservation were realistic in all cases. Preservation did not take into account the presence of humans and the need for resources, while multiple use failed to consider the importance of often lesser-known species and their habitats. The most influential writings of this time came from Aldo Leopold with the publication of his essays in A Sand County Almanac (1949). Leopold was educated in the traditional ideas of multiple use, but he came to realize that proper functioning of natural ecosystems depended on a multitude of unseen relationships and evolutionary forces. Leopold’s concept of “evolutionary land ethic,” an important breakthrough in the early conservation movement, promoted the idea of stewardship and represented a compromise between the extremes of pure preservation and pure utilitarianism. Passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 was a landmark event,

Section 4: Cope, Edward Drinker 205 mandating the protection not only of endangered species but also of the ecosystems on which they depend. Conservation biology as a science became popular in the 1980s with a focus on protecting biodiversity as a whole, including lesser-known species. The publication of Michael Soulé and Brian Wilcox’s Conservation Biology: An Evolutionary Perspective in 1980 helped popularize the science of conservation biology. In 1985, the Society for Conservation Biology was formed and the scientific journal Conservation Biology began publication. And such popular works as Edward O. Wilson’s Diversity of Life (1992) helped increase public awareness and appreciation for biodiversity. Today, the field of conservation biology is guided by three major principles: (1) evolution is responsible for the vast array of life forms on Earth; (2) natural systems are dynamic, and conservation must consider processes as opposed to a static view of nature in order to maintain biodiversity; and (3) humans are a part of natural systems, and the effects of humans must be considered in conservation planning. Ron Davis

Sources Groom, Martha J., Gary K. Meffe, and Ronald Carrol, eds. Principles of Conservation Biology. 3rd ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005. Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Ballantine, 1970. Wilson, Edward O. Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.

C O P E , E D WA R D D R I N K E R (1840–1897) The zoologist and paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope was born on July 28, 1840, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to wealthy Quaker parents. His father was a retired farmer, and the family lived on an eight-acre estate; his mother died when he was three. Cope’s interest in natural science, documentation, and classification was apparent from the age of six, when he wrote an illustrated journal of a boat trip to Boston. By the time he was eight, he had documented his visit to the

Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences with descriptions of the skeletal remains of birds, fossil fish, and lizards. Cope was educated at home by tutors until the age of nine, when his father enrolled him in a Quaker day school. Three years later, he was sent to a Quaker boarding school in Westtown, near Philadelphia. After graduating at the age of fifteen, he worked under his father’s supervision for five years, frustrated that he was not learning enough about science but tucking away bits of information whenever he could. At the age of nineteen, Cope went to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., to study with Spencer F. Baird, an expert in reptiles, birds, and fish. In 1859, he wrote a paper on two species of lizards. Returning to Philadelphia, he enrolled in a course taught by the eminent paleontologist and anatomist Joseph Leidy at the University of Pennsylvania. During the day, Cope worked at the Academy of Natural Sciences under Leidy’s tutelage. He became a member of the academy and was appointed curator in 1865. Meanwhile, he became a professor of comparative zoology and botany at Haverford College, a Quaker institution in Philadelphia, teaching there from 1864 to 1867. Later, he taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Cope spent several years during the 1870s in the West, specifically Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and New Mexico, on expeditions of discovery. He identified hundreds of new species and found the fossil remains of extinct mammals from the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. On his journeys, Cope crossed paths with another fossil hunter, Othniel Marsh, a Yale professor. For years, they competed vigorously for fossils and fame. Cope’s Rule, named for the scientist, is the theory that animals tend to increase in size during the evolutionary process, as exemplified by the tenfold increase in size from eohippus to horse. Opponents of the theory point out that other forces and natural laws suggest the opposite, exemplified by the decrease in size from saber-toothed tiger to domestic cat. Cope was a neo-Lamarckian and a critic of Charles Darwin, arguing that species develop traits during their lifetimes that can be transmitted genetically to their offspring. Darwin,

206 Section 4: Cope, Edward Drinker however, asserted that change through time is a function of natural selection, that those species best adapted to the environment survive. Cope’s last expedition was to South Dakota in 1894. He died in his study three years later, on April 12, 1897. Lana Thompson

Sources Bowler, Peter J. “Edward Drinker Cope and the Changing Structure of Evolutionary Theory.” Isis 68 (1977): 249–65. Lanham, Url. The Bone Hunters. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. Polly, Paul. “Cope’s Rule.” Science 282:5386 (1998): 47.

CRANIOMETRY Craniometry is the measurement of the size, volume, shape, and other characteristics of the skull. The term is usually applied to the assessment of skulls of deceased individuals, but it is also used interchangeably with “cephalometry,” or the cranial measurement of living subjects. In the past, craniometry was often used to classify groups of people by race, intelligence, or aptitude to further political or economic agendas. Such classifications were based on the flawed assumption that skull size and shape correlate with brain size and therefore with intelligence and behavior. Craniometry was popularized in the United States during the nineteenth century by Samuel George Morton, a Philadelphia physician and natural historian. Morton developed a method of filling empty skulls with seeds to determine their volume. Using his large collection

of skulls as evidence, he claimed that there were significant differences in cranial volume between races, with Western Europeans and Anglo-Americans having the largest volumes, followed by Native Americans and then African Americans. The table below presents a summary of Morton’s results from his 1849 article “Observations on the Size of the Brain in Various Races and Families of Man,” published in Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Morton further claimed that differences in skull volume indicated differences in intelligence, an observation used in support of slavery. Later reexamination of Morton’s data indicated that his methods were flawed and his results erroneous; in addition to other problems, he included or excluded subgroups of skulls for different races, thereby biasing the results. Cranial capacity has not been shown to differ by race in a consistent manner. The nineteenth-century French anthropologist and surgeon Paul Broca was another proponent of craniometry as a tool for identifying race, intelligence, and character. Broca claimed that his “cephalic index,” quantifying the ratio of a skull’s breadth to its length, demonstrated that “Nordic” and “Aryan” people were superior to “short-headed” races. The German-American anthropologist Franz Boas, however, showed that the cephalic index varied substantially among individuals with similar ancestries and thus could not be used to classify individuals by race. Craniometry is currently used in the field of forensic anthropology. While there is no evidence that cranial size, shape, or characteristics determine or reflect an individual’s intelligence

Summary of Skull Capacity by Race Race Caucasian Mongolian Malay American Ethiopian

Number of Skulls 52 10 18 147 29

Internal Capacity (cubic inches) Mean Largest Smallest 87 83 81 82 78

109 93 89 100 94

75 69 64 60 65

Section 4: Creation 207 or behavior, cranial measurements can be used to predict an individual’s gender and racial or ethnic background. This can be useful in efforts to identify anonymous human remains. Phrenology, a related field, posits that bumps and irregularities on the surface of the skull reflect a person’s character and personality. The field was founded by the German physician Franz Joseph Gall in the late eighteenth century, although the term was invented by a student of his, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. In the United States, the brothers Lorenzo and Orson Fowler established the Phrenological Institute in New York City and became well known as “practical phrenologists.” The Fowlers conducted readings of the heads of many nineteenth-century celebrities, including Horace Greeley, Mark Twain (an ardent skeptic), Clara Barton, Brigham Young, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Walt Whitman (whose first book of poetry was published by the Fowlers). Like craniometry and cephalometry, phrenology was based on the belief that the characteristics of an individual’s skull were correlated with that individual’s personality, traits, and behaviors. This belief has no scientific justification. However, phrenology also proposed that different parts of the brain were associated with different functions. This concept was not well accepted in the nineteenth century, but it is now well documented. Michael T. Halpern

Sources Albertson, Karla Klein. “Phrenology in the Nineteenth Century.” Early American Life 26:3 (1995): 52–55, 66. Dayton, Leigh. “Return of the Skulls.” New Scientist 173:2331 (2002): 34–37. Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.

C R E AT I O N Throughout history, various cultures and religions have preserved stories about the creation of the world. Some scholars attribute this plethora of creation accounts to a shared, superstitious desire to explain the mysteries of the universe. Other scholars believe that the com-

mon notion of a creation indicates the reality of that event. Many Christians believe that the Bible offers a unique and historically straightforward account as to how the creation of the world occurred. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the doctrine is that God, in creating the heavens and Earth out of nothing (ex nihilo), made a world that was perfect. Implicit in this doctrine is the belief that God is totally separate from his creation. In contrast, pantheism and some other belief systems blur the distinction between the creator and the creation. And, while Judeo-Christianity traditionally affirmed belief in the account in Genesis 1–2 as being accurate, the interpretation of these passages has not been uniform.

How Long Is a Day? The first major interpretive question about the creation story in Genesis arose over the “days” of creation. Are they literal days, or figurative? Until the nineteenth century, most Christians scholars believed that “day” (Hebrew yom) in Genesis 1 means a twenty-four-hour period. By the early 1800s, however, the claims of geology caused many to change their view in an attempt to reconcile scripture and science. The commonest adjustment was to consider “day” as being a long age—millions of years. Also popular was the “gap theory,” which posited a long period of time between days one and two in the Genesis 1 account. This view allowed adherence to literal “days” while also providing for an ancient Earth. These variant views were first popularized in Europe but quickly made their way across the Atlantic. By the middle of the nineteenth century, most American Protestant clergy—evangelicals as well as liberals—had accepted one or the other of these explanations to accommodate geological findings. In the twentieth century, two other interpretations came into vogue. The “framework hypothesis” maintains that the Genesis 1 account is a literary device—a poetic figure—designed to convey theological truth about God and creation. In this theory, the days reflect topics rather than time intervals. In contrast, the “analogical day” view says that Genesis refers to “God’s workdays,” analogous to human workdays but

208 Section 4: Creation not of the same length. Proponents of this view believe that arguments about the duration of a day in the Genesis account are irrelevant. Championing these new views were professors and theologians from conservative Presbyterian denominations. These included Meredith Kline, whose seminal article in 1958 set forth the “framework” view, and C. John “Jack” Collins, whose “analogical day” perspective came to light in the 1990s.

Evolution In the nineteenth century, the Darwinian theory of evolution challenged the biblical account of the creation of plants, animals, and humans. Many liberal clergy, already questioning biblical inerrancy and inspiration, abandoned any defense of the accuracy of Genesis 1–2. Many evangelicals sought to accommodate science via “theistic evolution”—a belief that God used evolutionary processes in creation. Not everyone was convinced. Princeton Seminary professor Charles Hodge attacked the new view with his 1874 book What Is Darwinism? But he was in the minority among Northern Presbyterians. In the South, a significant number of Protestants—Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians—continued to differ with Darwin. The Southern Presbyterian Church, led by theologians Robert Lewis Dabney and John Lafayette Girardeau, ousted James Woodrow from his seminary professorship because of his evolutionary views. After the Scopes “Monkey” Trial in 1925, however, Darwinism reigned largely unchallenged in America’s classrooms.

Creation Science and Intelligent Design In the 1960s, a few scientists began challenging the assumptions of much of modern science with regard to creation. Foremost among them were Henry Morris and Duane Gish, who helped found the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) in California in 1970. The pioneering research organization in the field was the Creation Research Society (CRS), founded in Michigan in 1963. Throughout the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, “creation science” at-

tracted increasing numbers of scientists in many fields, who aimed at scientifically discrediting evolutionary and old-Earth models. Another major organization promoting creation science is Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis. More recently, the concept of “intelligent design” has been attracting popular support. Seattle’s Discovery Institute has been a prime mover in this endeavor. Phillip E. Johnson’s Darwin on Trial (1991) and Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box (1996) have attempted to poke holes in the reigning scientific paradigm. More and more academics and a large percentage of the American population, encouraged by prominent politicians such as President George W. Bush and Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, maintain that the complexity of the natural order could not have just happened but must reflect a plan imposed from outside. The philosophical battlefield has included public schools and universities. Supporters of the intelligent design theory have garnered victories in places such as Kansas, where the Board of Education in 2005 approved new educational standards that include the following guidelines: The view that living things in all the major kingdoms are modified descendants of a common ancestor (described in the pattern of a branching tree) has been challenged in recent years by: i. Discrepancies in the molecular evidence (e.g., differences in relatedness inferred from sequence studies of different proteins) previously thought to support that view. ii. A fossil record that shows sudden bursts of increased complexity (the Cambrian Explosion), long periods of stasis and the absence of abundant transitional forms rather than gradual increases in complexity, and iii. Studies that show animals follow different rather than identical early stages of embryological development.

Although not specifically endorsing the intelligent design theory, the board did eliminate from the definition of science that it is “a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena,” thereby opening the door for supernatural explanations of the world. Meanwhile, in conservative branches of the Christian church, in a movement fueled by concern over increased secularization in public schools and American culture, there

Section 4: DNA 209 has been a renewed emphasis on Genesis as being historically reliable and scientifically accurate. Frank J. Smith

Sources Kline, Meredith. “Genesis.” In New Bible Commentary Revised. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970. Livingstone, David N. Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987. Morris, Henry M. History of Modern Creationism. 2nd ed. Santee, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1993. Presbyterian Church in America. “Report of the Creation Study Committee.” Minutes of the Twenty-eighth General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, 119–212. Atlanta: Presbyterian Church in America, 2000.

DNA The activities of a living cell are controlled by its nucleus, which provides instructions for cell growth, metabolism, and reproduction. These instructions come in a molecule called DNA— deoxyribonucleic acid—a type of nucleic acid that contains the genetic code for life. DNA not only stores genetic information but also replicates and transmits this information when the organism reproduces. DNA is a long molecule, consisting of compact units called chromosomes. The discovery of DNA structure has had an enormous influence not only on medical science but on society as a whole. The history of DNA begins with Austrian monk Gregor Mendel through his experiments with pea plants in the 1860s. These experiments led him to propose that invisible, internal units of information account for an organism’s observable traits, and these “factors”—which later became known as genes—are passed from one generation to the next. DNA was first isolated in 1869 by a Swiss biologist, Friedrich Miescher, who called it “nuclein.” Between 1935 and 1953, scientists were able to show a link between heritable traits and DNA, but they did not yet understand how DNA stored and passed on such heritable traits. The structure of DNA and the mechanism by which genetic information is passed on to the next generation remained the single greatest unanswered question in biology until 1953.

Chemical studies conducted by Erwin Chargaff in 1950 and Rosalind Franklin in 1951 established that DNA was a polymer of nucleotide subunits comprising a sugar (deoxyribose), phosphate, and one of four different bases—the purines, adenine (A) and guanine (G), together with the pyrimidines, thymine (T) and cytosine (C). Experiments conducted by Chargaff at Columbia University revealed that the four bases may occur in varying proportions in the DNA of different organisms, but the number of A residues always equals the number of T residues, and the number of G residues always equals that of the C residues. The comprehensive X-ray diffraction studies of Franklin and Maurice Wilkins at King’s College in England yielded a characteristic diffraction pattern, indicating the DNA molecule was made up of two separate strands. In 1953, James Watson, an American geneticist, and Francis Crick, a British physicist, working at the University of Cambridge in England, were able to build a three-dimensional model of DNA that incorporated all of these elements. Their model consisted of two helical chains of DNA coiled around the same axis to form a double helix. In the double helix, the two strands run in opposite directions and are complementary, being matched by the hydrogen bonds of A-T and G-C base pairs. This complementary pairing of the bases ensures that, when DNA replicates, an exact duplicate of the parental genetic information is made. The polymerization of a new complementary strand takes place using each of the old strands as a template. For their outstanding work in discovering the double helical structure of DNA, Watson and Crick shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Maurice Wilkins. Unfortunately, Rosalind Franklin, whose work contributed greatly to this key discovery, had died. In the years that followed, scientists continued to discover additional information about DNA and its role in genetics. The informational content of DNA, the genetic code, was found to reside in the sequence in which the purines and pyrimidine deoxyribonucleotides are arranged. The exact sequence of these 3 billion nucleotides defines the uniqueness of each individual. In 1972, Paul Berg used restriction enzymes to cut and splice DNA, creating the first strand of recombinant DNA. By this time, scientists

210 Section 4: DNA had begun to commercialize their knowledge of DNA. In 1976, for example, the first genetic engineering company, Genetech, began developing medicines using information about genes and how they work. This was followed, in 1980, by a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing genetically modified organisms to be patented. The first genetically engineered insulin was produced by the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company in 1982. DNA fingerprinting was coined by Alec Jeffreys in 1989 and subsequently used in paternity, immigration, and murder cases. The Human Genome Project was launched as an international effort in 1990 to map all human genes with a goal to find cures for human diseases. By the year 2000, scientists announced that the first draft of the entire human genome had been completed. Bacteria were the first organisms to be genetically engineered and used for replicating and altering genes that are subsequently introduced into plants or animals. Recombinant DNA and DNA cloning are the two most important techniques used by scientists to alter the genomes of organisms. Recombinant DNA contains DNA from two or more different sources, such as a human cell and a bacterial cell. The recombinant DNA is cloned—that is, identical copies are made—by incorporating it into a host cell and passing it on to subsequent generations. In the field of biomedicine, this technology has helped scientists better understand the molecular basis of disease, produce human proteins such as insulin and growth hormones for therapy, and predict the risk of developing such diseases as cancer. Gene therapy in humans has the potential to treat diseases by inserting functional genes in the place of nonfunctional genes. Thus, knowledge of DNA structure and the human genome has contributed to a genetic engineering revolution in the twenty-first century. This ongoing revolution has prompted the scientific community to call this the “biology century.” Jyoti K. Abraham

Sources Lodish, Harvey, Arnold Berk, and S. Lawrence Zipursky. Molecular Cell Biology. 4th ed. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1999.

Murray, Robert K., and Daryl K. Granner. Harper’s Biochemistry. 25th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

E N T O M O LO G Y The discovery of the New World opened to the Europeans who settled it a new land for, among other things, the study of insects, or entomology. Amateur naturalists—physicians, clergy, lawyers, and others—collected and classified insects in their off hours. Natural theology motivated some of these individuals to study insects with the aim of cataloging the vastness of creation. Collectors moved west after the Revolutionary War, sending specimens for identification to the curators of collections in Eastern cities. They, in turn, sent the insects they could not identify to the curators of large collections in Europe. The more ambitious entomologists chafed under this arrangement, preferring instead to establish entomology in America as its own science rather than as an underling of European study. Independence required institutional support, and this came in the second half of the nineteenth century as Congress created the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and as individual states founded land-grant universities and agricultural experiment stations. Yet American entomologists were not completely free to pursue research as they saw fit. As was true of American science at large, entomology had a practical orientation, particularly at the USDA, land-grant universities, and experiment stations, where farmers demanded that entomologists work specifically to protect crops. Before the 1870s, entomologists could do little more than recommend agricultural practices, such as plowing crop residues underground to prevent insects from overwintering in them. The manufacture of lead and arsenic insecticides in the 1870s not only armed entomologists with a new weapon against insects but also gave them a new identity as applied chemists rather than naturalists. Their job now was to teach farmers to use insecticides in the right amount and at the proper intervals. USDA entomologists Charles Riley and Leland Howard challenged the alliance between entomology and chemistry in the late nineteenth

Section 4: Eugenics 211 century. They put entomology in an ecological context, stressing that insects do not multiply unchecked in nature; predators limit their number. The best control against insects, therefore, was not to inundate the environment with chemicals but to build up the population of predators. They did just that in California, in 1888, introducing the vedalia beetle into citrus groves to prey on the cottony-cushion scale. This success polarized entomologists into two camps, one advocating biological control of insects and the other advocating chemical control. This divide nearly disappeared in the 1940s, when the success of the insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) returned most entomologists to the fold of chemistry. The most forceful advocates of DDT began to speak not of mere control of harmful insects but of their eradication. The rhetoric of eradication underscored that entomology had gained unprecedented power over nature. As in the 1880s, the Division of Entomology at the USDA reacted against the reliance on chemicals to control insects. In 1954 and 1955, USDA entomologist Edward Knipling introduced sterile males of the screwworm on the Caribbean island of Curaçao. The eradication of the screwworm there confirmed the degree to which entomologists could control insects, though it did not insulate Knipling from criticism. His critics within the USDA understood that the use of sterile males might lower the population of insects, but only for a brief interval, as insects would restore the population by migrating to the area of low population. At the same time, critics emerged from outside the ranks of entomology with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962, which tarnished the prestige of entomology. The proponents of chemical control suffered the sharpest rebuke. Yet chemical control remained indispensable against insects. The use of insecticides against the corn leaf aphid in the Ohio valley in the 1960s helped to contain what might have been an epidemic of Maize Dwarf Mosaic Virus, a virus carried by the aphid. Without abandoning chemical control of insects, some entomologists since the 1970s have advocated Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as a way of managing the use of insecticides. IPM relies on mathematical models to predict the

increase in the number of insects, starting from a hypothetically small population at the beginning of spring. Only when the population of insects has reached a threshold do farmers spray their crops with insecticides. The use of mathematical models in IPM aligned entomology with the method of population genetics, which, among other uses, also employs mathematical models to predict the size of populations of insects and other organisms. From its early emphasis on chemistry, entomology has forged a link with biology. Christopher Cumo

Sources Palladino, Paolo. Entomology, Ecology, and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America, 1885–1985. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Harwood Academic, 1996. Smith, Edward H. The Entomological Society of America: The First Hundred Years, 1889–1989. Lanham, MD: Entomological Society of America, 1989.

EUGENICS The eugenics movement, which was broadly popular in America in the early and midtwentieth century, sought to improve the overall genetic quality of citizens through the control of reproduction. Eugenicists believed that certain social and medical problems, including immorality, criminality, low intelligence, and drug abuse, had a biological basis and therefore could be solved by reducing the number of people who carried the biological weaknesses that caused them. The term “eugenics” was coined by the British scientist Francis Galton in 1883 and literally meant “well born.” Americans showed little interest in eugenics until about 1900, when the rediscovery of Mendel’s work on heredity and the invention of the vasectomy combined with the increasingly popular Progressive movement to increase American support for interventionist approaches to improving the nation’s gene pool. Throughout much of the twentieth century, American biologists and social scientists were on the vanguard of the international eugenics movement, which had counterparts in nearly every industrialized and many industrializing countries. Eugenics was

212 Section 4: Eugenics popular from the 1910s through the 1940s but was vilified in the latter half of the century, as it was increasingly connected to racism, classism, and abuse of individual civil liberties. The first formal American eugenics organization was formed as part of the American Breeders Association in 1903. Dedicated to research on heredity and the promotion of plant and animal breeding, the American Breeders Association responded to the growing interest in eugenics by promoting both research into human heredity and education about eugenics. In 1910, Charles Benedict Davenport, a biologist and head of the Carnegie Institution’s Station for Experimental Evolution in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, created the Eugenics Record Office, a private organization that would promote eugenics research and education. Davenport hired Harry Laughlin to run the organization, which was funded by philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefeller Foundation. Laughlin quickly established himself as the most prominent American eugenicist by organizing and funding research and education on all aspects of eugenics. He was especially prominent in attempts to limit immigration into the United States during the 1920s and to encourage states to adopt compulsory sterilization laws from the 1910s through the 1930s. By the mid-1920s, there were several prominent scientific journals devoted to eugenics, as well as a national organization, the American Eugenics Society, and regional eugenics organizations in many states. To improve the overall genetic quality of the nation, eugenicists offered two types of initiatives: positive eugenics and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics encouraged “fit citizens” to have more children, but “fitness” tended to be based on middle- and upper-class status. Declaring that the country’s highest-quality citizens were in danger of being swamped by unfit but sexually active lower-class Americans, eugenicists advocated sex education programs, coeducation, and public lectures to encourage healthy and fit couples to have more children. Prominent among positive eugenics initiatives were the “fitter family” and “better baby” contests held at state fairs throughout the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s. In these events, “eugenics experts” judged the physical, social, and intellectual qualities of indi-

viduals and families and awarded medals to the fittest. Positive eugenics initiatives in the 1960s and 1970s came in the form of “genius sperm banks,” which preserved sperm from notable scientists, scholars, and athletes. Negative eugenics initiatives focused on discouraging supposedly low-quality individuals from having children. Targets included the feebleminded, or citizens who lacked the mental capacity to control their body and behaviors, who were also generally poor. The feebleminded included people with diminished mental capacities, felons, epileptics, and those convicted of sex crimes such as rape, child molestation, sodomy, and “crimes against nature,” a broad category of activities associated with homosexuality. Efforts to discourage the feebleminded from reproducing ranged from sex education and birth control—neither of which eugenicists generally considered effective, because the feebleminded were incapable of either learning or selfdiscipline—to voluntary and involuntary sterilization, miscegenation laws, and incarceration. No prominent American eugenicists called for execution of the feebleminded; instead, they emphasized the value of segregation or eugenic sterilization to keep “low-quality” citizens from passing their qualities on to the next generation. Compulsory sterilization laws were adopted by two-thirds of American states, and at least 60,000 Americans were involuntarily sterilized as a result of such legislation. The targets of compulsory sterilization were generally patients in state-run mental institutions and prisoners convicted of sex crimes. Midwestern and Western states were the most active in sterilizing (California alone accounted for nearly one in every five compulsory sterilizations); the Southern states carried out few sterilizations. The states’ authority to sterilize “unfit” citizens was supported by the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell, a case in which three generations of women in one family were ordered sterilized. Most compulsory sterilizations in the first decades of the sterilization laws were conducted on white citizens, but Native American and African American women increasingly became targets of sterilization in the 1950s and 1960s. By the late 1960s, compulsory sterilization laws came under attack by civil rights groups, especially women’s rights and disability rights advocates.

Section 4: Evolution 213 By the 1970s, most American biologists abandoned the idea of increasing the quality of the gene pool by controlling human heredity and breeding. Compulsory sterilizations appear to have ended in most states by the mid-1980s. Mark A. Largent

food and, according to Lamarck, pass their elongated necks to their offspring. Now discredited, Lamarck’s theory remained influential well into the twentieth century and long after the popularization of Darwinism.

Dar winism

Sources Carlson, Elof Axel. The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001. Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Reilly, Philip. The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

E VO LU T I O N Evolution is the theoretical foundation of modern biology. Contemporary evolutionary theory is a synthesis of the Darwinian theory of natural selection, which states that all life evolved from a common ancestor through a process of descent with modification, and Mendelian genetics, which describes the mechanisms for inheritance and descent. The modern synthesis links all biological disciplines in a framework capable of unifying heredity, embryology, development, speciation, population genetics, and molecular biology. Interest in the origins of life and the relationships between organisms dates to antiquity. In the fourth century B.C.E., the Greek philosopher Aristotle classified animals according to observable characteristics, such as whether the animal possesses wings or lays eggs. A millennium later, Christian philosophers arranged animal species into a “Great Chain of Being,” with humans at the pinnacle. After the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, naturalists began detailed examinations of the skeletons and embryos of related species and proposed numerous theories to explain the observed similarities. In the early nineteenth century, French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck put forward the first scientific evolutionary theory, arguing that characteristics acquired during an organism’s lifetime are inherited. For example, giraffes stretch their necks to obtain

The publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859) sparked debate on both sides of the Atlantic. The book was a synthesis of ideas from earlier thinkers as well as his own fieldwork. From the French physicist Pierre Laplace, Darwin adopted the nebular hypothesis; from the French naturalist Georges Buffon, an extended chronology of Earth; and from the British economist Thomas Malthus, the competition for resources. Relying on extensive natural fieldwork ( from his voyage around the world on the HMS Beagle) for empirical support, Darwin concluded that in the competition for limited resources, advantageous variations within species would be passed on to the next generation. Thus, nature “selects” the modifications that potentially result in new species. In the case of giraffes, Darwin argued that individuals from an earlier, related species that were born with long necks would have a greater chance of surviving and reproducing, increasing the total percentage of long-necked animals until eventually a new species—the giraffe—arose. In addition, Darwin proposed that sexual selection is responsible for traits only indirectly related to reproductive success. For example, in many bird species, females select mates based on characteristics such as brightly colored feathers; thus, over time, males with these traits will reproduce more than their less colorful brethren, ultimately changing the genotype of the species. Darwin’s somewhat vague ideas about heredity, based on abstract “gemmules,” slowed acceptance of his theories, although most scientists and intellectuals soon recognized some form of natural selection. Darwinism also influenced philosophy, social policy, and Christian theology. The English philosopher Herbert Spencer reduced Darwinism to the phrase “survival of the fittest,” arguing that

214 Section 4: Evolution “lesser” races and societies would either be “civilized” or replaced by more dominant races. Based on an interpretation of nature as unbridled competition, Social Darwinism promoted cutthroat individualism, laissez-faire capitalism, and monopolistic business practices in the late nineteenth century. Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, agreed with Spencer and proposed eugenics programs to breed superior men and women. Some countries passed laws promoting the forced sterilization of people ruled unfit for reproduction. The idea of descent with modification implied an evolutionary link between humans and lower animals—a point made explicit in Darwin’s The Descent of Man (1871). This and other aspects of evolutionary theory sparked substantial philosophical, psychological, and theological debate. For many Christians, Darwinism implied a random universe, removing certainty, because mutations and adaptations were seen as unpredictable and without higher purpose. The divide seemed impassable, leading to a split between “modernists” and “fundamentalists.” Modernists “Christianized” evolution, positing a theistic and progressive interpretation that permitted God, either as an “actor” or as “nature,” to regain the position of primary force in the universe. Fundamentalists believed in the omniscient and omnipotent God, whose creation of life was hardly random. In Great Britain, scientists and others with an interest in the topic founded the journal Nature to help disseminate an understanding of the theory of evolution. Meanwhile, the first science magazine for the public, Popular Science Monthly, was launched in 1872 in the United States.

Mendelian G enetics The rediscovery of Mendelian genetics in the early twentieth century provided the impetus for scientific studies of inheritance and population genetics. Chromosome maps and mutation studies confirmed the material basis of inheritance, while molecular biologists studied the atomic structures of fundamental organic molecules. In addition, geneticists turned to the study of genetic variation and distribution within populations. The American geneticist Sewall Wright carried out statistical studies of populations, chart-

ing mutation rates, reproductive success, and the distribution of traits. Wright concluded that some genetic changes were random, suggesting the term “genetic drift” to highlight changes due to environmental disruptions. Ernst Mayr, a German American biologist, added the idea of “founder populations” to describe the original group of individuals whose genetic variation would eventually result in a new species. Theodosius (Feodosy) Dobzhansky, a Ukrainian American geneticist, emphasized that evolution was merely adaptive, not progressive; traits successful in one environment may not convey an advantage in another. Throughout this critical period, American institutions and laboratories were at the forefront of evolutionary biology. These included such facilities as the Biological Laboratory and the Carnegie Department for Experimental Evolution in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, and Hermann Muller’s “Drosophila Group” at the University of Texas at Austin. By mid-century, researchers outlined the mechanisms by which natural selection operated within populations to preserve traits and create new species, providing the basis for the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory.

The Modern Synthesis The modern synthesis of Darwinism and Mendelian genetics redefined evolution. Although the contemporary theory maintains Darwin’s original claim that all life is descended from a common ancestor, a process now known as “macroevolution,” much has been added. The field of phylogeny illustrates descent through the evolutionary tree, in which various branches represent different families of organisms. Speciation, the development of new species, occurs as a result of geographical isolation, which allows a beneficial genetic mutation to multiply within a given population until the isolated species can no longer interbreed with related species. For example, humans (Homo sapiens) evolved from the great ape family through a series of intermediate hominid forms until about 250,000 years ago, when we acquired our current physical makeup. These evolutionary changes may occur relatively rapidly. In the early 1970s, evolutionary

Section 4: Genetics 215 biologists Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which suggests that species may remain unchanged for millions of years only to undergo relatively rapid evolution. Other species may undergo rapid extinction as a result of dramatic environmental disruption, such as the mass extinction of the dinosaurs approximately 65 million years ago. The process of “microevolution,” or the inheritance of traits within a population, is also now well understood. Advances in contemporary genetics and molecular biology have conclusively demonstrated the mechanisms of genetic inheritance. Many biological fields provide evidence for evolution. The fossil record, while not complete, shows the gradual development of numerous species. For example, obvious morphological similarities between the contemporary horse and its ancestors strongly support the idea of evolution. The existence of vestigial structures (such as the tailbone in humans) and the remarkable similarities in embryonic development across species provide additional evidence of common descent. Molecular biology has also revealed the conservative nature of evolution; most species share the vast majority of their genetic makeup. Indeed, the genetic differences between two species provide a “molecular clock” capable of determining the distance of the species from their common ancestor. Additionally, nucleotide sequences code for the same proteins throughout the animal kingdom, demonstrating the fundamental molecular relationship among living organisms. Although evolution remains controversial in some segments of society, the theory is widely accepted within the scientific community. From evolutionary psychology to molecular biology, scientists studying living organisms do so within the framework provided by evolution. Yet evolutionary theory is not complete. Questions remain, for example, over mechanisms of speciation and the precise nature of the gene. Molecular biologists regard genes as nucleotide sequences that code for specific proteins; population geneticists consider genes markers for characteristic traits within a specific population. As evolutionary sciences progress, researchers hope to link physical and mental traits, such as

coloration or behavior, to the underlying physical structures of the organism and its genotype. It is perhaps appropriate that the understanding of evolution is continually evolving. J.G. Whitesides

Sources Bowler, Peter J. Evolution: The History of an Idea. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Gould, Stephen Jay. The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1982. Wilson, Edward O. The Diversity of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

GENETICS Genetics, the science of heredity, encompasses a number of interrelated fields, including cytology, biochemistry, evolutionary theory, and molecular biology. The mechanisms of heredity remained an enigma until the twentieth century, when technological advances aided the investigation of basic biological molecules and processes. By mid-century, genetic research unified the biological sciences by demonstrating that all living organisms share the same basic genetic materials, paving the way for the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory and biology. Today, genetic science influences nearly every area of society, from agriculture and medicine to philosophy, art, and law enforcement.

Discover y of DNA The history of modern genetics dates to the nineteenth century, when the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel published studies of plant hybridization. Mendel suggested that organisms inherit two “factors,” one from each parent, and that the dominant factor determines a specific trait of the organism, such as coloration. Mendel’s work, which included laws on the recombination of inherited traits, went largely unnoticed until the turn of the century. Following the rediscovery of Mendel’s research in 1900, the American biologist Walter Sutton and the German Theodore Boveri proposed that chromosomes—cellular structures

216 Section 4: Genetics containing deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)—are involved in the inheritance of traits. The chromosome theory helped explain sexual reproduction, or meiosis: Gametes (sex cells, either egg or sperm), containing only half the normal number of chromosomes, combine during fertilization, producing a new cell with the full set of chromosomes necessary for a new organism. Work with chromosomes proceeded rapidly. By 1910, American biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan demonstrated the existence of sex-linked genetic traits, such as white eyes in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), in research capable of tying a trait to a particular location on a specific chromosome. Chromosome maps, population studies, and radiation, which Morgan demonstrated was capable of causing genetic mutation, were among the early tools in genetic research, as numerous scientists raced to unlock the secrets of heredity. The 1940s and 1950s witnessed a number of critical successes. Using techniques borrowed from physics, such as X-ray diffraction analysis, molecular biologists studied the molecular composition of DNA. After experiments with mutated bread mold, American biologist George Wells Beadle and American biochemist Edward Lawrie Tatum proposed the “one gene, one enzyme” theory, arguing that a single gene was responsible for synthesizing a single chemical enzyme. By the mid-1940s, Canadian geneticist Oswald Avery demonstrated that DNA was the primary heredity material by transforming bacteria through the introduction of foreign DNA. Avery’s work was validated in 1952, when American geneticists Alfred D. Hershey and Martha Chase used a bacteriophage (bacterial virus) to infect host bacteria, demonstrating that it was the virus’s DNA, not the previously suggested class of proteins, which was responsible for replication. The molecular mechanisms for replication were revealed the following year, when American biochemist James Watson and British biophysicist Francis Crick determined the molecular structure of DNA. Watson and Crick’s famous “double helix” model answered many of the questions of cell development. Structurally, the DNA molecule resembles a spiral ladder, with the sides composed of alternating sequences of sugar and phosphate molecules, while the “rungs” are made of pairs of

nitrogenous bases, specifically adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). Together, a base, a sugar, and a phosphate make up a nucleotide. Held together by hydrogen bonds, bases pair up according to a simple rule: A always combines with T, and C always combines with G. Therefore, a single strand of DNA provides the blueprint for its complementary and opposing strand. In cell division (mitosis), the DNA strands “unwind” and a copy is made of each strand (DNA replication). This creates two identical DNA molecules so that the new cell contains its complete genetic complement. In addition, DNA controls the creation of amino acids and proteins, the basic building blocks of organisms. Through a process known as transcription, the DNA molecule creates a single strand of messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid), in which thymine is replaced with uracil (U). Carried outside the nucleus, the messenger RNA (mRNA) strand attaches itself to a ribosome, which translates the “message” and produces the appropriate protein. This process was conclusively demonstrated by American molecular biologists Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl in the late 1950s, leading to formation of the central dogma of their field: DNA is transcribed into mRNA and then translated, or expressed, as one of the many proteins that compose an organism. The final piece of the molecular puzzle was added in 1961, when researchers concluded that codons, groups of three nucleotides, were responsible for the creation of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). Thus, the genetic code contains sixty-four basic triplets that together determine the development of all biological structures. Genetics soon became more of an applied science. The advent of recombinant DNA engineering, in which genetic material is removed from one organism and spliced into another, stimulated the development of industrial biotechnology in the 1970s. The first transgenic commercial product, the Eli Lily company’s bacterially produced human insulin, went to market in 1982. Most American diabetics now use genetically engineered insulin, and hundreds of transgenic proteins and medicines are currently in production. Animals play a pivotal role in this partnership between genetics and contemporary medicine: Harvard University patented the “oncomouse,” a

Section 4: Gould, Stephen Jay 217 strain of mice engineered for use in cancer research, in 1988. Genetic engineering has also had a tremendous impact on agriculture; substantial percentages of American soybeans, corn, and other produce are genetically engineered to resist herbicides and frost, or to maintain freshness. However, concern over potential biohazards has led to increased regulation and an “organic” food industry.

Human G enetics The promises and perils of genetic engineering are most apparent in human genetics. The Human Genome Project, an international research effort launched in 1990 to sequence the human genome, produced its first complete draft in 2000. To date, both genetic screening for inherited diseases and human gene therapy have been moderately successful. The National Institutes of Health undertook the first sanctioned human gene therapy in 1990, when a patient with severe combined immune deficiency had cells removed, genetically altered, and then replaced. Researchers are now conducting additional trials for hypercholesterolemia, cystic fibrosis, Gaucher’s disease, AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, and others. Genetic “fingerprinting” has become essential for establishing paternity and to identify suspects in law enforcement. Yet the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly in 1997 ignited fierce debate over the sanctity of life, free will, and individuality—a debate that only intensified following the development of human embryonic stem cell research a few years later. Today, fears over genetic discrimination or genetically engineered “designer children” exist alongside hopes that genetic science will unlock the mysteries of life and provide better medicines, crops, and law enforcement.

Sarkar, Sahotra. Genetics and Reductionism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Sturtevant, A.H. A History of Genetics. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001.

G O U L D , S T E P H E N J AY (1941–2002) Paleontologist, essayist, and science historian Stephen Jay Gould was one of the most widely recognized American scientists of the late twentieth century and perhaps the foremost spokesperson for evolutionary theory of his generation. Born on September 10, 1941, Gould was raised in Queens, New York, where he developed lifelong passions for science, natural history, and baseball, all of which later surfaced in his writings. He attended Antioch College in Ohio for his B.A. and Columbia University in New York for his Ph.D., which he received in 1967. He then spent his entire professional career at Harvard,

J.G. Whitesides

Sources Caulfield, Timothy A., and Bryn Williams-Jones, eds. The Commercialization of Genetic Research: Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues. New York: Kluwer, 1999. Olby, Robert. The Path to the Double Helix. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974; reprint ed., New York: Dover, 1994.

Harvard paleontologist and best-selling author Stephen Jay Gould advanced a modification of Darwinian theory called “punctuated equilibria”—the idea that evolutionary change takes place in relatively rapid bursts rather than at a slow, steady pace. (Steve Liss/Time & Life Pictures/ Getty Images)

218 Section 4: Gould, Stephen Jay eventually as Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology. Gould was the recipient of numerous awards for his popular and professional work, was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and won a MacArthur “genius” grant in 1981. His career began with a series of modest studies of Caribbean land snails, but he quickly achieved prominence for his willingness to answer the big, controversial questions in evolutionary science. During the course of his career, he devoted great energy both to defending evolutionary theory from outside attack (particularly by religious creationists), as well as challenging what he considered “Darwinian orthodoxy” from within. In addition to numerous important contributions to scientific literature, Gould wrote more than two dozen books (many of which were best-sellers) and hundreds of articles for popular magazines and newspapers. In the mid-1960s, when Gould received his Ph.D., evolutionary theory was becoming increasingly dominated by biologists who extrapolated evolution’s history by studying living organisms. Gould believed, however, that paleontology— and particularly the analysis of the existing fossil record—could shed unique light on evolutionary development. This was a controversial position to take: Since Darwin’s day, the incompleteness of the fossil record was considered a handicap for interpreting the history of life on Earth, and paleontologists, who spent most of their time digging up fossils and preparing specimens, were often treated as second-class citizens by their colleagues in the physical and biological sciences. One of Gould’s primary goals, and one of his lasting achievements, was to raise the discipline of paleontology to the high table of evolutionary science.

Punc tuated Equilibria The classic Darwinian evolutionary model assumes that species change very gradually over vast amounts of time (tens of millions of years or more), developing in response to equally slow and gradual changes in environment that produce adaptations, which ultimately lead to the appearance of new species. A central assumption is that this is a constant, inexorable process, and that the tempo of evolution is unchanging.

The driving force in Darwinian evolution is the mechanism of natural selection, which presses individual organisms to compete with one another and their environments, rewards beneficial adaptations, and punishes less successful species with extinction. That the fossil record was incomplete—with its intermittent gaps and jumps, and its notorious absence of transitional “missing link” species—was of no concern to evolutionists, who contended that it was simply the result of an imperfectly preserved record. Beginning with the unorthodox intuition that the fossil record was in fact a much more accurate record of the history of life than had been previously assumed, Gould, along with fellow paleontologist Niles Eldredge, proposed a radical revision of this standard narrative of evolution in a 1972 article titled “Punctuated Equilibrium: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism.” They argued that the pattern of evolutionary history was composed of fits and starts, consisting of long periods of evolutionary stasis—or “equilibria”— punctuated by shorter periods of rapid speciation. This theory presented some significant revisions of Darwinian evolutionary theory. By suggesting that species can act as independent units in natural selection, Gould and Eldredge upset the orthodox Darwinian assumption that natural selection can bring about adaptive advantages only in single organisms. The theory of punctuated equilibria proposed that entire species have life spans—with a birth, a long, stable period of existence, and a death—followed, in many cases, by “offspring” species. This theory was based on work done by twentieth-century scientific luminaries such as

Section 4: Gould, Stephen Jay 219 the biologists Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky and the paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson—but it attracted immediate attention for Gould (who became its spokesperson) and caused immediate controversy. The theory effectively undercut the traditional understanding of the tempo of evolution by seeing phyletic gradualism as “very rare and too slow, in any case, to produce the major events of evolution,” as Gould and Eldredge wrote. According to many evolutionary biologists, this was tantamount to heresy: Darwinian evolution required a slow, steady state over which natural selection could operate for the accumulation of adaptations in individuals to gradually produce sufficient variations to cause speciation. If species remained stable and unchanged for millions of years, only to suddenly branch off as new species or disappear completely, as Gould proposed, then what mechanism could account for this pattern?

Ex tinc tions, Spandrels, and Adaptation An additional outcome of Gould’s emphasis on “punctuation” in the tempo of evolution was the rehabilitation of extinction—particularly catastrophic, mass extinctions such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs—as a legitimate causal explanation for evolutionary development. Darwin had been troubled by the effect that cataclysms might have on the gradual, steady-state equilibrium of natural selection, since catastrophic (and perhaps extraterrestrial) events would not obey the general laws that guided the gentle accumulation of variations required for natural selection. What was the point of millions of years of steady adaptation to a particular environment if that environment could be radically altered—thus producing entirely new criteria for survival—in a geologic instant? Gould did not shy away from the problem. In his weekly column for Natural History magazine and in articles for other scientific journals, he fleshed out his theory of punctuated evolution. Perhaps as importantly, he also promoted the work of other scientists who were working on analysis of the fossil record and extinction using sophisticated computer-modeling techniques.

Gould’s grand revision of Darwinian theory included a challenge to three central tenets of the modern evolutionary synthesis. First, he attacked the notion, promoted by geneticists such as Richard Dawkins, that selection operates primarily at the genetic level in individual organisms. Gould accepted that gene selection is a factor in evolution but argued that other levels—species selection, for example—were more important. Second, he challenged the strictly functionalist principle of adaptation held by many evolutionary theorists. Strict Darwinian natural selection assumes that every adaptation is a blind response to environmental conditions that produce, in theory, random responses. Gould modified this notion by suggesting that internal constraints, such as developmental pathways encoded by genes or guided by behaviors, can prevent certain kinds of modifications in individual organisms—in other words, organisms can resist some of the force of selection. He also proposed, along with Richard Lewontin, that not all features of organisms are the result of adaptations. Gould employed an analogy to “spandrels,” a kind of leftover space created in the construction of domed arches in medieval cathedrals. Gould argued that certain evolutionary features are spandrels, or accidental products of some other combination of adaptations. An example is the evolution of bird feathers, whose original function was to radiate heat; only later were feathers adapted to aid flight. Third, he continued to combat the idea of gradual and uniform tempo and mode in evolution. Gould promoted current theories of mass extinction that relied on extraterrestrial mechanisms (such as asteroid or comet impacts). Periodic mass extinctions were one possible avenue for introducing punctuation into the fossil record, and in Gould’s eyes they had an additional benefit: they undercut the notion that evolution is progressive, either in a metaphysical sense or in a steady climb toward greater complexity. If life’s history is punctuated by upheavals that disturb the steady tick of natural selection, there is little basis for believing that the guiding hand of natural law will produce better or more complex forms than the ones that preceded them. The theory of punctuated equilibrium has had serious challenges since its publication, but Gould’s insistence on revising our understanding

220 Section 4: Gould, Stephen Jay of the tempo and mode of evolution has found great acceptance. For the first time since the early nineteenth century, extinction is considered a legitimate causal agent in evolutionary biology. More importantly—thanks, in part, to computer and mathematical techniques Gould promoted in the 1970s—paleontology is regarded as an important discipline in the dialogue of evolutionary science. No individual in the twentieth century did more to bring paleontology into the public eye. Like the great evolutionary popularizer of Darwin’s day, T.H. Huxley, Gould will be long remembered for the inventiveness of his approach and the forcefulness of his arguments. David Sepkoski

Sources Gould, Stephen Jay. Ever Since Darwin. New York: W.W. Norton, 1977. ———. I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History. New York: Harmony, 2002. ———. The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983. ———. Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. ———. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. ———. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

H O L B R O O K , J O H N E D WA R D S (1794–1871) A founder of American herpetology, John Edwards Holbrook was born in Beaufort, South Carolina, to Silas Holbrook, a teacher, and Mary Edwards. After the death of his father in 1800, Holbrook went to live with his uncle, Daniel Holbrook, in Wrentham, Massachusetts. He attended a local academy and also had a tutor. After receiving his baccalaureate degree from Brown University in 1815, Holbrook entered medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, earning his M.D. in 1818. Deciding to travel in Europe, he went first to Great Britain and Ireland, where he spent time collecting botanical and mineral samples, visiting hospitals, and attending lectures at the University of Edinburgh. From Great Britain he traveled to Italy,

Germany, and France, where he became friends with a number of prominent scientists and naturalists. Holbrook returned to the United States in 1822, settling in Charleston, South Carolina, where he started a medical practice. In 1824, Holbrook joined the faculty of the newly established Medical College of South Carolina as a professor of anatomy. In 1834, he left the Medical College of South Carolina to join the faculty of the Medical College of the State of South Carolina. Holbrook married Harriott Pickney Rutledge in 1827, and the couple moved to her plantation outside of Charleston. A successful doctor and professor, Holbrook is best remembered for his work with reptiles and amphibians. He was the first to create a comprehensive work on American herpetology. The four-volume set, North American Herpetology, was published between 1836 and 1840, earning him international recognition. The second edition, which included a fifth volume, was published in 1842. The work contained original illustrations and twenty-five new taxa. In 1847 and 1848, Holbrook published parts one and two of his Southern Ichthyology: A Description of the Fishes Inhabiting the Waters of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. As he continued to work on the project, however, he narrowed the scope to just South Carolina and called the tenpart work Ichthyology of South Carolina. The completed series was not published until 1860. Holbrook retired from the Medical College in 1860 and served on the South Carolina examining board for surgeons during the Civil War. Much of his library and papers were lost during the war, and his wife died in 1863. The couple had no children. After the war, Holbrook went into semi-retirement. He lived with his halfsister in Massachusetts until his death on September 8, 1871. Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Furman, Annabelle W. “Founders of the Medical College of the State of South Carolina: John Edwards Holbrook.” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 31:1 (1943): 35–39. Gill, Theodore. Biographical Memoir of John Edwards Holbrook, 1794–1871. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1905.

Section 4: Human Anatomy and Physiology 221

H U B B A R D, R U T H (1924–1991) The biologist and Harvard professor Ruth Hubbard was born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of physicians. As Jews, the Hubbards were forced to flee in 1938, escaping only a few months before the Nazi takeover. The family emigrated from Austria to the United States and settled in the Boston area. Initially intending to become a doctor like her parents, Hubbard entered Harvard’s Radcliffe College and studied biology. She was drawn to research science and, after graduating from Radcliffe in 1945, entered Harvard’s Ph.D. program in biology. As a doctoral student, she joined the laboratory of George Wald, a vision researcher and future Nobel laureate (1967) whom she would later marry and with whom she would have two children. In her doctoral research on the biochemistry of vision, Hubbard described the relationship of two enzymes essential for vision, retinal and retinol. She received her doctorate in 1950. After academic fellowships in London and Copenhagen, Hubbard returned to Wald’s lab at Harvard in 1953, where she led scientific teams in pathbreaking physiological and biochemical studies of vision. By 1955, the researchers had made a key discovery: one specific biochemical, the 11-cis isomer, was the precursor to all visual pigments. Hubbard then led studies that culminated in the discovery that the process of vision is based on the effect of light on 11-cis retinal. In 1967, Hubbard won the Paul Karrer Medal for her work with Wald on vision. While Hubbard had made pivotal contributions to the biochemical study of vision, her research interests shifted in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Influenced by the outcry against the Vietnam War and the growing women’s movement, she turned a critical eye on science itself and began to critique the field of biology from a feminist perspective. In 1974, Hubbard became the first woman biologist granted tenure at Harvard; the security of her position and her impeccable scientific credentials enabled her to voice these unorthodox critiques of the scientific community.

Hubbard spent the rest of her career demonstrating and critiquing the ways that the study of biology, particularly women’s biology, had been politicized and served to support social and material inequality. Writing for both academic and popular audiences, she argued that the biological and social realms are co-dependent, that scientists’ conceptions of reality often serve their own social interests, and that seemingly factual biological traits assigned to women, such as a primary orientation to reproduction, are employed to maintain gender inequality. Hubbard also critiqued scientific ideas of race and sexuality, the social uses of concepts in genetics, and the negative consequences of the search for genetic bases of personal traits. Hubbard became a professor emerita of Harvard in 1990. She died in London on March 17, 1991, and was posthumously awarded the American Institute of Biological Sciences Distinguished Service Award in 1992. Emily Wentzell

Sources Hubbard, Ruth. The Politics of Women’s Biology. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990. ———. Profitable Promises: Essays on Women, Science, and Health. Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1994.

H U M A N A N AT O M Y A N D P H Y S I O LO G Y Human anatomy, the study of the position and function of all parts and organs of the human body, was not seriously studied in America until the mid-eighteenth century. American physiologists, studying the systems of the human body, did not make major contributions to the field until the late nineteenth century and especially the twentieth century. The first course in anatomy in early America was taught by Thomas Cadwallader at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia beginning in 1745. Cadwallader’s instruction did not include cadavers. At the same time in New York, two physicians, John Bard and Peter Middleton, performed the first dissection and gave lectures on anatomy.

222 Section 4: Human Anatomy and Physiology When the University of Pennsylvania established the first medical school in America in 1765, William Shippen, Jr., who had studied in London, taught anatomy and dissection using cadavers. Many colonials were outraged, accusing Shippen of grave robbing. A contemporary Philadelphia surgeon and anatomist, Abraham Chovet, used wax models to free students from “the disagreeable sight of putrid human corpses.” In revolutionary Boston, John Warren, the chair of anatomy at Harvard, had to give one lecture on anatomy in secret because of the prejudice against his dissection of cadavers. Anatomy was a popular subject with colonial Americans, and many anatomists gave instructional lectures. One of the first, providing both instruction and entertainment, was performed by Thomas Wood in 1752 in New York. His advertisement declared that no person can be qualified to practice either medicine or surgery without first learning about osteology (the study of bones) or myology (the study of muscles). The price of admission to his lectures and demonstrations was £6, £3 at the time of registration and £3 when the course was half completed. If there was enough interest, the advertisement promised, the next course would be in angiology, neurology, and surgery. The leading early nineteenth-century anatomist in America was Caspar Wistar of the University of Pennsylvania. In his classes, Wistar incorporated both models and casts with real bones. Each medical student worked and studied with a complete skeleton of disarticulated bones. Wistar began collecting autopsy specimens, which soon grew into the legendary anatomical collection that formed the nucleus of the famous Wistar Museum in Philadelphia. William Edmonds Horner, who learned anatomy while treating victims of the War of 1812, was given the responsibility for the Wistar anatomical collection and added so much to it that the name was changed to the Wistar-Horner Institute. Joseph Leidy, another University of Pennsylvania anatomist, published the groundbreaking Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy in 1861 and Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion in multiple volumes. The study of the systems of the human body— nervous, respiratory, digestive, endocrine, reproductive, circulatory, musculoskeletal, and

psychological—requires less hands-on observation than the study of anatomy and more experimentation, some of which requires sophisticated methods and technology. The expansion of the American university system in the late nineteenth century, particularly the rise of research universities and the maturation of medical schools, enabled American scientists to take the lead in the field of physiology. The first important American physiologist was Henry Pickering Bowditch, who established a laboratory at Harvard University and founded the American Physiological Society. Bowditch’s specialty was neurology. The Cornell University physiologist and anatomist Burt Wilder made important contributions to the understanding of the brain, particularly neurology, in the late 1800s. In the early twentieth century, developments in physiology were led by Walter Bradford Cannon, who identified homeostasis, the dynamic equilibrium in human metabolism, and George Whipple, whose work in the digestive system included the discovery of a disorder that was given the name Whipple’s disease. In the mid-twentieth century, George Minot’s work on the circulatory system led to the discovery of pernicious anemia. Minot won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934. Philip Hench and Edward Kendell won the prize in 1950 for work on hormones. Arthur Kornberg and James Watson won the prize in different years for their respective work in DNA. Konrad Bloch in 1964 won the prize for his work in cholesterol. In 1970, Julius Axelrod was honored for his discoveries in nerve transmissions. The large number of American Nobel laureates in physiology is a tribute to the significant work of scientists in a variety of related fields, such as genetics, pathology, neurology, endocrinology, cell functions, and virology. Lana Thompson and Russell Lawson

Sources Lassek, Arthur M. Human Dissection: Its Drama and Struggle. Springfield, MA: Charles C. Thomas, 1958. Nobel Lectures. Physiology or Medicine 1942–1962. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1964. Richardson, Ruth. Death, Dissection, and the Destitute. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987. Sappol, Michael. A Traffic of Dead Bodies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Section 4: Human Genome 223

HUMAN GENOME The term “human genome” refers to the complete DNA blueprint of the human species and to the complete set of DNA contained within a specific individual. Although humans, regardless of race or ethnicity, share the vast majority of their genetic makeup, each individual’s genome is unique, much like an individual fingerprint. Indeed, genetic variation differs as much within populations as between populations; the genetic differences between two Europeans are as great as those between a European and an African or Asian. Not surprisingly, understanding the genome’s structure, variation, and influence on human development has been a central concern of researchers for decades.

Chromosomes Human beings inherit a set of chromosomes from each parent, and the human genome consists of twenty-three pairs of chromosomes—forty-six in all. Abnormal chromosomal reproduction often leads to complications, as in the case of Down’s syndrome, which results from the inheritance of forty-seven chromosomes. Two chromosomes are “sex” chromosomes. If both of these are “X” chromosomes, the child is female; if one is a “Y” chromosome, the child is male. Scientists originally believed that the “Y” chromosome, which is significantly smaller than the “X” chromosome, contained few genes and was of little significance; however, new research has linked the “Y” to male fertility. Chromosomes vary greatly in size and number of genes. Each chromosome contains deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) tightly packed within a protective protein shell. Scientists have concluded that the average length of DNA contained within a single human cell spans over two yards. The Human Genome Project, established in 1990, represents the culmination of a century of gene mapping and genomic research. Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, the project relies on cuttingedge technology to map the estimated 3 billion base pairs in the human genome. In partnership

In 2000, geneticists announced completion of the first draft of the entire human genome—the sequence of nucleotides (structural units of DNA) and location of all genes on their respective chromosomes. The map was expected to be a major boon to medical research. (JeanChristian Bourcart/Liaison Agency/Getty Images)

with other international organizations, the project produced its first draft of a composite human genome in 2000 and a more detailed version in 2003. Scientists now estimate that the human genome contains approximately 30,000 proteincoding genes, over 80 percent of which correlate to those in the common field mouse. Our knowledge of the dramatic changes and complexity of chromosomes lends credence to evolutionary theory and helps researchers construct the genetic archeology of the human species.

Proteomics One current focus of human genome study is proteomics, a field in which researchers try to link the production of specific proteins to specific genes. Although the complexity of the task is daunting—the human genome may direct the production of more than 100,000 proteins— understanding the control and synthesis of proteins is essential to understanding disease and developing appropriate therapies or drugs.

224 Section 4: Human Genome The National Institutes of Health, however, cancelled the Human Genome Diversity project, which sought to gather genetic materials from various populations, over fears of genetic databases and racial typing or profiling. Many legal scholars worry that insurance companies could deny coverage to those with a genetic predisposition for a particular illness or that genetic databases could be used unethically. Like most elements of genetic science, the understanding of the human genome carries both great promise and great responsibility for future generations. J.G. Whitesides

Sources Caulfield, Timothy A., and Bryn Williams-Jones, eds. The Commercialization of Genetic Research: Ethical, Legal, and Policy Issues. New York: Kluwer, 1999. Matt, Ridley. Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

H YAT T , A L P H E U S (1838–1902) The paleontologist and marine biologist Alpheus Hyatt was a neo-Lamarckian who researched cephalopods such as squids and other sea creatures. He was born on April 5, 1838, in Washington, D.C., to a wealthy Baltimore merchant and his wife. Hyatt began his college career at Yale but, after a year, journeyed to Italy to study marine fossils with the great Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz. Upon his return to the United States, he entered the Lawrence Science School at Harvard, earning a B.S. in 1862. With the Civil War raging, Hyatt joined the 47th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry as a captain. At war’s end, Hyatt settled in Salem, Massachusetts, where he became curator of the Essex Institute in 1867. Also that year, he married Ardella Beebe and established both the Peabody Academy of the Sciences and the journal American Naturalist with three of his former classmates. The American Naturalist was the first biology journal in the United States and remains in publication to the present day. Hyatt served as the journal’s first editor from 1867 to 1871.

In 1879, Hyatt moved to Boston to serve as a custodian for the Boston Society of Natural History. In 1881, he assumed the role of curator for the organization. While at the Boston Society, he founded a program teaching science to schoolteachers. He also taught zoology and paleontology at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1870 to 1888, and Boston University, from 1877 to 1902. Meanwhile, he conducted his own research at Harvard, spending the summers researching marine life along the New England coast. Assisted by the Women’s Educational Society of Boston, he created a laboratory in Annisquam, Massachusetts, on Cape Ann. The lab was later moved to Woods Hole, on Cape Cod, and developed into the Marine Biological Laboratory. He also served as a paleontologist to the U.S. Geological Survey from 1889 to 1902. Hyatt’s research and publications focused on cephalopods, sponges, bryozoans, mollusks, brachiopods, echinoids, and trilobites from an evolutionary standpoint. He emphasized parallelism between embryology, pertaining to the individual development of an organism, and phylogeny, the historical development of a group of like organisms. He took his theories even further by proposing the idea of “racial old age.” According to this theory, lineages, or groups similar to tribes, have periods of youth with more variation, maturity with little variation, and senescence ending with extinction. Hyatt also argued that evolutionary changes occur because of an organism’s use or disuse of body parts, with the acquired characteristics passed on to offspring. Along with Edward D. Cope and Alpheus S. Packard, Hyatt formed the core of the American school of neo-Lamarckianism, based on the work and evolutionary theories of French scientist JeanBaptiste Lamarck. Hyatt continued to research, publish, and teach, until he died unexpectedly of heart disease in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 15, 1902. Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Brooks, William Keith. Biographical Memoir of Alpheus Hyatt, 1838–1902. Washington, DC: Judd and Detweiler, 1908.

Section 4: Ichthyology 225 Hyatt, Alpheus. Phylogeny of an Acquired Characteristic. Ed. Stephen J. Gould. Manchester, NH: Ayer, 1980.

I C H T H YO LO G Y Ichthyology, the study of fishes (the various species of fish), encompasses work in a variety of other scientific disciplines. Ichthyologists study fish taxonomy; anatomy and physiology; diet, habitat, and other aspects of ecology; genetics and evolutionary history; and behavior. Broadly defined, fishes are vertebrates that live in water and generally have gills, scales, and fins; other common characteristics are a brain case, a two-chambered heart, and a gas-filled swim bladder to help regulate buoyancy. Most fishes are torpedo-shaped to streamline movement in water. A major difference among fishes is mode of reproduction. Many fishes reproduce by way of eggs hatched externally, but most sharks and rays reproduce through live birth. Ichthyology is a broad subject precisely because of the diversity of fishes. The more than 24,600 known living species make up half of the 48,000 living species of vertebrates. There are 85 species of jawless hagfishes and lampreys in the superclass Agnatha. There are 850 species of cartilaginous fishes, including sharks, skates, rays, and chimaeras, in the class Chondrichthyes. Most fishes are bony fishes in the class Osteichthyes. Of these, the majority are called “teleosts,” or modern bony fishes. Teleosts encompass most of the fish species with which we are familiar, including eels, salmon, catfish, tuna, flounder, and colorful reef fishes. The great diversity of fishes exists because fishes have adapted to a multitude of habitats. Fishes can be found in nearly every aquatic environment, from freshwater rivers and lakes, to expanses of the ocean, to extreme environments of the frozen Arctic and hot vents in the deep sea. Freshwater is home to 41 percent of fish species, while 58 percent live in seawater and 1 percent move between the two. Although nearly half of the world’s fish species live in freshwater, all bodies of freshwater combined comprise only 0.0093% of all the water on Earth. Isolation of freshwater bodies, among other factors, has pro-

duced a relatively high diversity of fishes in freshwater as compared to those found in seawater. Ichthyology has its roots in the work of Carolus Linnaeus, the eighteenth-century taxonomist who invented a system for scientifically naming organisms. Linnaeus based his ichthyological classifications on the work of Swedish scientist Peter Artedi, who is considered the “father of ichthyology.” The founding father of American ichthyology was David Starr Jordan, who, along with co-workers such as B.W. Evermann, produced publications that form the basis of the present knowledge of North American fishes. Jordan studied especially southern fishes during the last few decades of the nineteenth century. Jordan was inspired by Spencer Baird of the U.S. Fish Commission, which was established at Woods Hole in the 1870s. Scholars such as Jordan and Baird realized the numerous applications for ichthyology. Fisheries provide a crucial source of food and employment for people all over the world. In order to help regulate what species can be caught and in what numbers, ichthyologists determine how many fishes exist, where they can be found, what they eat, how they are affected by humans and the environment, and what impact might be made on fish populations by construction, pollution, overfishing, and introduction of new species. Fishes are also the source of economically important aquarium industries and sport fisheries. Our knowledge of fishes is far from complete. As the world changes, so do the many fish species—ensuring indefinite work for ichthyologists. Mollie Sue Oremland

Sources Helfman, Gene S., Bruce B. Collette, and Douglas E. Facey. The Diversity of Fishes. Malden, MA: Blackwell Science, 2000. Lagler, Karl F., John E. Bardach, Robert R. Miller, and Dora R. May Passino. Ichthyology. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977. Moyle, Peter B., and Joseph J. Cech, Jr. Fishes: An Introduction to Ichthyology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988. Norman, J.R., and P.H. Greenwood. A History of Fishes. New York: Halstead, 1975. Thoney, D.A., Paul V. Loiselle, and Neil Schlager, eds. Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia. Vol. 4, Fishes. Detroit: Gale, 2003.

226 Section 4: Just, Ernest Everett

J U S T, E R N E S T E V E R E T T (1883–1941) The African American biologist Ernest Everett Just was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on August 14, 1883, to Mary Matthews Just, a teacher, and Charles Frazier Just, a carpenter. Educated at an industrial school run by his mother, he demonstrated precocious learning ability. At the age of thirteen, he enrolled in a teacher’s college in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and graduated at the age of sixteen. After attending college preparatory school at Kimball Hall Academy in New Hampshire, he continued his education at Dartmouth College, majoring in biology first and then zoology, with minors in Greek and history. The only African American in his class, he was named the Rufus Choate scholar for two years and graduated magna cum laude in 1907. Because racial prejudice was widespread in the early twentieth century, Just’s professional choices were limited even though he had won special honors in botany, history, and sociology. In 1907, he was hired at Howard University to teach rhetoric and English; he later switched to zoology and was appointed head of the department in 1912; he also taught in the medical school and was chair of the Physiology Department. Beginning in 1909, he worked during the summer as a research assistant for Frank Rattray Lillie, the second director of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. In 1915, the NAACP awarded Just the first Spingarn Medal for his accomplishments as a pure scientist; the following year he received a Ph.D. in experimental embryology from the University of Chicago. His thesis, Studies of Fertilization in Platynereis megalops, was on the mechanics of fertilization. Just’s main interests were fertilization, experimental parthenogenesis (eggs that do not require fertilization), hydration, cell division, dehydration in living cells, and the carcinogenic effect of ultraviolet radiation on chromosomes. Sickle-cell anemia profoundly affected African Americans, and Just believed that his efforts to learn about healthy cells and their alteration contributed to understanding the pathology of that disorder as well as of cancer.

Just wrote two books: Basic Methods for Experiments on Eggs of Marine Mammals (1922) and The Biology of the Cell Surface (1930). He also edited two journals, wrote more than fifty articles, and collaborated on the Japanese journal Cytologia. From 1920 to 1931, he worked in a grant program, the Julius Rosenwald Fellowship in Biology of the National Research Council in Berlin at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, with Max Hartmann. In Italy, he worked at marine biological laboratories in Naples and Sicily and lectured in Padua at the Eleventh International Congress of Zoologists. He felt more comfortable in Europe than America, because, there, he did not experience racial prejudice, and he traveled throughout France, Italy, and Germany on research tours. When Just became ill with pancreatic cancer, he returned to the United States to live with his sister in Washington, D.C., where he died on October 27, 1941. In 1997, the U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor. Lana Thompson

Sources Just, Ernest Everett. Basic Methods for Experiments in Eggs of Marine Animals. Philadelphia: Blakiston’s, 1922. ———. Biology of the Cell Surface. Philadelphia: Blakiston’s, 1930. Manning, Kenneth R. Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

K I N S E Y, A L F R E D (1894–1956) The groundbreaking human sex researcher Alfred Charles Kinsey was born on June 23, 1894, in Hoboken, New Jersey. He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, graduating magna cum laude in 1916 with a B.S. in biology and psychology. He received his Sc.D. in biology from Harvard University in September 1919 and went to Indiana University as an assistant professor of zoology in August 1920. Kinsey established a solid academic reputation for his biology tests and his research in taxonomy and evolution, especially with his studies of gall wasps. By 1937, American Men of Science listed him as one of their “starred” scientists.

Section 4: Kinsey, Alfred 227 but it also challenged the Victorian principles of his time. His book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, revolutionized the field, creating new paradigms for research. Both his supporters and critics credited him with drawing awareness to the body’s response to erotic stimuli and for stating publicly that sex is natural and not an act that one should be ashamed of. His Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, published in 1953, is seen by many individuals in women’s rights groups, as well as gay and lesbian groups, as a book of liberation. For the first time, women’s sexuality and homosexuality were not treated as an abomination.

Questions About Research

Indiana University zoologist Alfred Kinsey conducted and published large-scale empirical studies of human sexual behavior in the 1940s and 1950s. His work both revolutionized the field and scandalized the general public. (Arthur Siegel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

S exual B ehavior It was in a field outside the study of gall wasps that Kinsey gained lasting fame. Having tired of insects, he started to research the sexual behavior of humans when asked by Indiana University to take over coordination of a new marriage and family course in 1938. Soon, Kinsey began gathering case histories of sexual behavior. In 1940, the university’s president gave Kinsey a choice to continue either with the marriage course or with his sexuality research project. Kinsey chose to continue with his research and disassociated it from the university. In 1947, he founded the Institute for Sex Research in Bloomington to study human sexuality. Seeking more control over his own research, Kinsey moved his research center off campus and sought outside funding. The Rockefeller Foundation funded his sex research until 1954. Kinsey’s investigations of human sexuality not only gained him fame, notoriety, fans, and critics

Kinsey’s critics challenge not only his findings but also his ethics. Kinsey was determined to make the study of sex a science and in large part was successful, but Judith Reisman, one of the first to question publicly the ethical issues involved with the research, explores an area of Kinsey’s research long overlooked—the sexuality of children, as covered in chapter 5 of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Reisman claims that in order for Kinsey to have conducted the research necessary to write that chapter, he would have had to allow or collaborate in acts of pedophilia ( for example, “actual observations” of “climax” were made on 206 males between the age of five months and fourteen years). Kinsey’s results were also questioned because he used adult subjects who were prison inmates convicted of sexual crimes, sex offenders, or male prostitutes. Kinsey never stated an exact number of those he interviewed for his research or if they were of “questionable” character, making it difficult for statisticians to calculate the probability of error due to oversampling from deviant populations. Stephanie Michelle Jackson

Sources Gathorne-Hardy, Jonathan. Sex, The Measure of All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Kinsey, Alfred, et al. New Introduction to Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Kinsey Institute. http://www.indiana.edu/~Kinsey.

228 Section 4: Kinsey, Alfred Reisman, Judith, and Edward W. Eichel. Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People. Lafayette, LA: Huntington House, 1993.

Society of Biological Chemistry, received several honorary degrees, and won both the National Medal of Science (1979) and the Cosmos Club Award (1995). He died on October 26, 2007. Patit Paban Mishra and Sudhansu S. Rath

KO R N B E R G , A R T H U R (1918–2007) Arthur Kornberg, the co-recipient of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on DNA, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 3, 1918, to Joseph and Lena Kornberg. He was educated at the City College of New York, graduating in 1937, and at the University of Rochester, where he earned an M.D. in 1941. From 1942, he was affiliated with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, as a research scientist, continuing until 1953 as chief of enzyme and metabolism research. From 1953 to 1959, he was a professor in the department of microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Thereafter, he was a professor in the department of biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine; he became professor emeritus in 1988. Kornberg’s research focused on coenzyme synthesis and the functioning of the cell. His task was to isolate and purify the enzymes. He collaborated with Severo Ochoa of New York University College of Medicine in identifying the enzyme responsible for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) replication, and they successfully isolated the DNA polymerase I. For this pathbreaking work on the biological synthesis of DNA, Kornberg and Ochoa shared a Nobel Prize. During the 1960s, Kornberg was able to replicate DNA in vitro, producing a live virus in a test tube. In the 1990s, he turned his attention to phosphate polymers found in cells. His research into the metabolism of poly P revealed its response to stress and the activities of microorganisms in causing disease. Kornberg’s publications included DNA Synthesis (1974), DNA Replication (1980), For the Love of Enzymes: The Odyssey of a Biochemist (1989), and The Golden Helix: Inside Biotech Venture (1995). He was a member of the Policy and Scientific Advisory Boards of DNAX Research Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, which he established. He served as president of the American

Sources Echols, Harrison, and Carol A. Gross, eds. Operators and Promoters: The Story of Molecular Biology and Its Creators. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Kornberg, Arthur. For the Love of Enzymes: The Odyssey of a Biochemist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. ———. The Golden Helix: Inside Biotech Ventures. Dulles, VA: University Science Books, 1995. Nobel Lectures. Physiology or Medicine 1942–1962. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1964.

LEDERBERG , JOSHUA (1925– ) Microbiologist and geneticist Joshua Lederberg’s experiments in the 1940s and 1950s laid the foundation for contemporary advances in bioengineering. Specifically, Lederberg did groundbreaking work on gene recombination and viral transduction, and he helped create several new scientific fields: genetic engineering, exobiology (the study of life in space), and artificial intelligence in medicine (AIM). In 1958, when he was thirty-three, Lederberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria.” Born in Montclair, New Jersey, on May 23, 1925, Lederberg was the son of Rabbi Zwi and Esther Lederberg, who had immigrated from Israel. He started down the path of scientific discovery at the age of seven. In a letter written in elementary school, he noted, “I would like to be a scientisttist [sic] of mathemmatics [sic] like Einstein. I would study science and discover a few theories in science.” Growing up in New York City, Lederberg thrived in the public school system, including Stuyvesant High School, known for its strong science programs. In his teens, Lederberg was fascinated with Paul de Kruif’s highly readable Microbe Hunters (1926), which included heroic accounts of the

Section 4: Lederberg, Joshua 229 conquest of bacterial disease. Inspired by the great scientists of his time and before, Lederberg was determined to develop countermeasures in the war on cancer and neurological disease. He studied zoology at Columbia University, completing his undergraduate degree in 1944, and then pursued medical training at Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. While in medical school, Lederberg read of Oswald Avery’s remarkable discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in the bacteria that cause pneumonia. Lederberg began experimenting with the transmission of genes between bacterial cells and, in collaboration with Edward Tatum and George Beadle, showed how genetic material is passed from cell to cell by conjugation (gene recombination). Lederberg received a doctoral degree at Yale University in 1947 for his work in bacterial genetics. He continued to conduct significant research in the 1950s as a professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin. With the assistance of his colleague Norton D. Zinder, he discovered that viruses have the ability to move slices of genetic material from cell to cell. This process, called viral transduction, would become an important tool in genetic engineering experiments.

S earch for Ex traterrestrial Life By the late 1950s, Lederberg became interested in exobiological research, particularly the possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth. The launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957, followed by the space race of succeeding decades, helped fuel speculation about extraterrestrial life. Lederberg’s primary goal was to protect extraterrestrial forms of life and planet surfaces from contamination by space probes, but he also hoped that the study of alien organisms would lead to confirmation or rejection of the hypothesis that the basic building blocks of life are the same everywhere in the universe. Lederberg has been an opponent of the militarization of space science, advocating peaceful projects that would advance America’s open, free society. He has been vocal in his criticism of government-sponsored biological weapons research, bioterrorism, and human behaviors that result in the spread of disease.

In 1965, he joined computer scientist Edward Feigenbaum, chemist Carl Djerassi, and a team of researchers at Stanford University to develop a science package for the unmanned 1975 Viking mission to Mars. The result of this collaboration was Dendral ( from the Greek word for “tree”), arguably the first computer system to mimic the reasoning abilities of an expert chemist. Dendral automated the chromatographic analysis of complex organic compounds to be harvested from the surface of Mars. The system worked by bombarding surface samples with a burst of electrons, producing a visible spectrum that could be matched to the known spectra of chemicals found on Earth. Matching the spectra required reference to a large database of knowledge about chemical compounds. Dendral became an important adjunct to organic chemistry beyond the Viking mission, as it helped advance both theoretical science and organic chemistry.

Early Biotechnology Developments In subsequent decades, Lederberg took on a number of administrative and advisory scientific roles. He worked with researchers at both Syntex and Cetus, early biotech companies founded in 1964 and 1971, respectively. Lederberg served as the administrative head of SUMEX-AIM (Stanford University Medical Experimental Computer for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine), a national computational resource service for multidisciplinary research founded in 1973 (it was replaced by GENEBANK and other online scientific communities in 1992). He also served as president of Rockefeller University for more than a decade, beginning in 1978. Lederberg has continued to be widely consulted on such subjects as biological warfare, the threat of bioterrorism, new and reemerging infectious diseases, Gulf War syndrome, and euphenics (manipulation of the environment to improve human genetics). His research activities at Rockefeller, where he serves as a Sackler Foundation scholar and professor emeritus of molecular genetics and informatics, focuses on the interactions of gene functionality and mutagenesis in bacteria. James Fargo Balliett and Philip Frana

230 Section 4: Lederberg, Joshua Sources Lederberg, Joshua. “Genetic Recombination in Bacteria: A Discovery Account.” Annual Review of Genetics 21 (1987): 23–46. ———. Papers, 1904–2002. Manuscript collection 552. National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, Bethesda, MD. Lenoir, Timothy. “Shaping Biomedicine as an Information Science.” In Proceedings of the 1998 Conference on the History and Heritage of Science Information Systems, ed. Mary Ellen Bowden, Trudi Bellardo Hahn, and Robert V. Williams. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 1999. Wolfe, Audra J. “Germs in Space: Joshua Lederberg, Exobiology, and the Public Imagination, 1958–1964.” Isis 93 (2002): 183–205.

L E I DY, J O S E P H (1823–1891) Joseph Leidy was one of the last great scientists of the nineteenth century, when natural history and comparative anatomy were an essential part of medical education. A Philadelphia native, he was an important figure in the city’s medical and scientific community for much of his life. Born on September 9, 1823, he spent his early years in a private Methodist academy, where the classics were stressed; however, he was more interested in drawing the plants and biological specimens he collected. His father withdrew him from the school with the idea that he would have an ordinary rather than a cultured life, perhaps as a sign painter. Fortunately, his aunt recognized his talents and encouraged him to pursue an academic career, which led to his decision to study medicine. In 1844, Leidy received his M.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania. His interest in small living creatures was still evident, and, the next year, he published papers on fossil shells and the anatomy of the snail. He retained his artistic talent and, as a lecturer, impressed his students when, for example, he rapidly sketched the entire neuroanatomy of the human brain on the blackboard. The first edition of his Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy was published in 1861 with superbly drawn micro- and macroscopic illustrations.

Like William Horner and Caspar Wistar, Leidy worked in chemistry before practicing medicine, but he soon found teaching medical students more suited to his personality. He became a demonstrator of anatomy at Franklin Medical College. In 1848, he traveled to Europe with Horner. After his return, he lectured on physiology in the Medical Institute. When Horner retired, Leidy was named as his replacement and later succeeded him in his chair of anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1864, Leidy married Anna Harden, and shortly thereafter they adopted an orphaned girl. During the American Civil War, Leidy performed more than sixty autopsies and later published his findings in Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870–1888). From 1870 to 1885, he taught natural history at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and, in 1881, he was unanimously elected president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. In 1880, he received the Walker prize of $1,000 from the Boston Society of Natural History, a huge amount for that time, and he was awarded the Lyell Medal by the Geological Society of London in 1884. That same year, he became director of the department of biology at the University of Pennsylvania and, the following year, was elected president of the Wagner Free Institute of Science. Leidy believed that the confusing nomenclature of nineteenth-century anatomy could be simplified; in the second edition of his textbook, he attempted to use only one term per structure, with the more esoteric and colloquial banished to footnotes. He is perhaps the last anatomist whose reach was as large as his grasp, because knowledge was becoming so specialized that few could retain so much information in many fields. As a fitting gesture for a true academic, he performed the autopsy on his mentor, Horner. Lana Thompson

Sources De Schweinitz, G.E. Joseph Leidy Commemorative Meeting. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. 75, 1923. Warren, Leonard. Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Section 4: Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole 231

M A R I N E B I O LO G I C A L L A B O R AT O R Y AT W O O D S H O L E For more than a century, scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, have been making groundbreaking discoveries that carry global implications. Researchers have come to understand how clear-cutting tropical rain forests in Brazil can impact local plant growth a world away, how damaged nerve cells heal, and how a type of protein figures prominently in a cascade of events that regulate how human cells—including cancer cells—multiply. In 1888, the Marine Biological Laboratory was chartered in Woods Hole by the Women’s Educational Association and the Boston Society of Natural History as an independent institution for teaching and research in basic biology. Its goal was to use marine organisms as models to unlock the secrets of life and disease. Why marine organisms? Because their relatively simple systems make them good models for exploring fundamental biological processes common to all life forms, including humans. Over the years, the laboratory’s research has laid the foundations for some of the most important medical advances of the modern era. Studies of sea urchins have uncovered information about fertility, research on the sea slug has shed light on learning and memory, and experiments using sponges have provided some answers about human immunity. Research also has improved the world’s understanding of diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer. To date, fifty-one Nobel laureates—including Tim Hunt, James Watson, Barbara McClintock, Andrew Huxley, and Alan Hodgkin—have conducted groundbreaking research, taught, or taken courses at the Woods Hole facility. The Marine Biological Laboratory is the oldest private marine laboratory in the western hemisphere. Biologists from around the globe arrive each summer to conduct research and work together, free from the distractions of university affairs. Scientists are drawn to this scientific community that allows them to launch into research almost immediately upon arrival. Here, scientists collaborate across institutional and disciplinary lines to open up new lines of inquiry and to

teach the men and women who will eventually take up where they leave off. The laboratory offers highly competitive, postgraduate summer courses that are internationally famous among scientists, who send their most promising young students to what has become known as a “boot camp for biologists.” The summer research and education programs attract more than 1,000 advanced students and investigators from more than 200 institutions, making the facility the largest biomedical laboratory of its kind. Virtually every major research university and medical school in the country has scientists trained at the Marine Biological Laboratory. The laboratory’s largest year-round operation is the Ecosystems Center, where scientists explore the biology, chemistry, and geology of the planet’s ecosystems. Ecosystems researchers travel around the world to study temperate forests and tropical pastures, New England estuaries and Arctic tundra. Their goal is to understand, and someday predict, how ecosystems respond to changes caused by natural forces and human activity. In recent years, the laboratory has been expanding and strengthening its resident research efforts in many fields, including molecular evolution, cell biology, and neurobiology. One of the newest residential programs is the study of global infectious diseases. Scientists working on this problem are using modern molecular biology to learn more about this globally important class of diseases. The proximity to both the warm Gulf Stream and the cool waters off the Labrador Current makes the Woods Hole location ideal for the types of biological research performed at the laboratory. The waters of Nantucket Sound, Vineyard Sound, and Buzzard’s Bay feature an unusually abundant variety of both warm- and cold-water species of research organisms, all within an easy boat ride of the laboratory’s collectors. The rich history and traditions of the Marine Biological Laboratory, added to ongoing diverse summer programs and extensive research activities, make Woods Hole a continuing world leader in the biological sciences. Andrea Early

232 Section 4: Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole Sources Lillie, Frank R. The Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. Maienschein, Jane. 100 Years Exploring Life, 1888–1988: The Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1989. Marine Biological Laboratory. http://www.mbl.edu. Marine Biological Laboratory Communications Office. MBL Tour Video. Woods Hole, MA, 1999. ———. 2004 Guide to Research and Education. Woods Hole, MA, 2004.

M A R S H , OT H N I E L C H A R L E S (1831–1899) The American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh discovered and named hundreds of fossil vertebrates in the American West. He was born to Caleb Marsh, a farmer, and Mary Gaines Peabody in Lockport, New York, on October 29, 1831. After his mother died in 1834, the young Marsh lived with his aunt, Mary Marsh, until his father remarried in 1839. Back in Lockport, where he was expected to help his father with work on the farm, Marsh became interested in nature and started collecting specimens. The Erie Canal excavation area proved especially abundant in fossils. In the mid-1840s, Marsh met field paleontologist Ezekiel Jewett, who taught him a systematic way of collecting and cataloging fossils. Fortunately for Marsh, his mother’s family was wealthy; his uncle, George Peabody, was an extremely successful merchant and philanthropist. In the early 1850s, Marsh received a settlement from property that had been set aside for him in a trust. Marsh used the money to attend prep school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. With plans to attend college, he studied the classics, mineralogy, astronomy, and geology, graduating as valedictorian from Andover in 1856. With the financial support of his uncle, Marsh was able to enter Yale, where his enthusiasm and interest in science continued to grow as he worked with some of the college’s most notable faculty members. He graduated eighth in his class in 1860 and spent two years at Yale’s Sheffield Science School doing postgraduate work. In 1866, Marsh convinced his uncle to donate funds to Yale for an endowed chair in paleontol-

ogy and a museum of natural history. Marsh benefited directly from his uncle’s generosity, becoming the university’s first chair of paleontology, a position he held until his death; he also acted as one of the museum’s first curators. He served as the U.S. Geological Survey’s first vertebrate paleontologist from 1882 to 1892 and as president of the National Academy of Science from 1883 to 1895. During his career, Marsh published more than 300 papers and named more than 500 new species of fossil animals, even though he spent relatively little time in the field. He is perhaps most remembered for his feud with fellow paleontologist Edward Cope, which is believed to have started when Marsh paid some of Cope’s diggers to ship their finds to him instead of Cope. For twenty years, competing at a furious pace to outdo one another, they discovered and named more than 130 dinosaur species. Among Marsh’s greatest finds were the stegosaurus and triceratops. Marsh was also one of the earliest supporters of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. His work with birds and horses provided evidence to help answer evolutionary questions. Among his notable achievements is tracing the phylogeny of the horse. For his contributions to the field, he received the Cuvier Prize in 1897, the highest award given to paleontologists. Marsh died at his home in New Haven, Connecticut, on March 18, 1899. He never married. Marsh left his collections and estate to Yale and the National Academy of the Sciences. Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Marsh, Othniel Charles. The Life and Scientific Work of Othniel Charles Marsh. New York: Arno, 1980. Wallace, David Rains. The Bonehunters’ Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Greatest Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

MCCLINTOCK , BARBAR A (1902–1992) The geneticist and Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on June 16, 1902, the third of four children. She

Section 4: McClintock, Barbara 233 lived for a time with an aunt while her father established a medical practice; to attend school, she rejoined her family in Brooklyn, New York, where they had moved in 1908. By her own account, McClintock was a curious and independent child who liked to read and learn about many subjects. Her parents noticed early on that she was happy to spend time by herself. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she focused on the sciences, pursuing a major in botany. In 1921, she took an undergraduate course in genetics and shifted her focus to that field. Her professor, recognizing her interest, invited her to take his graduate-level course in genetics. After receiving her undergraduate degree in botany (1923), McClintock remained at Cornell for her M.S. (1925) and Ph.D. (1927), also in botany. Her work focused on the new science of genetics applied to maize, or corn, and she broke new ground almost immediately. While scientists were well aware of chromosomes and their role in genetic change, McClintock developed a new technique for staining chromosomes that allowed research to proceed more rapidly. After that initial work, she identified the ten chromosomes that make up the maize genome and then extended this work to the discovery of traits linked to groups of genes on the maize chromosome. McClintock took a position in 1941 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and she continued to conduct research into the genetics of maize. Many of her discoveries are drawn from that work. In 1944, she established that genes move around on chromosomes, a process called “genetic transposition.” McClintock’s discovery revealed that some genes, later termed “transposons,” do not remain fixed on the chromosome but move to other points in a process called “crossing over.” This discovery flew in the face of the accepted understanding of genetics and was initially ignored; however, further research showed that McClintock’s description of transposition was indeed accurate. After retiring from Cold Spring Harbor in 1967, McClintock continued conducting research for a number of years. During this time, she received a host of awards, including the National Medal of Science in 1971 and the first MacArthur

Cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock, who studied chromosomal change in maize reproduction, was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for her discovery of mobile genetic elements.” (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Foundation’s Genius Grant in 1981. In 1983, nearly thirty-five years after her initial research on transposition, McClintock was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, becoming the first woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in that category. She died on September 2, 1992, at age ninety. Robin O’Brian

Sources Comfort, Nathaniel C. The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock’s Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Federoff, Nina, and David Botstein. The Dynamic Genome: Barbara McClintock’s Ideas in the Century of Genetics. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1992. Keller, Evelyn Fox. A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1983. McClintock, Barbara. The Discovery and Characterization of Transposable Elements: The Collected Papers of Barbara McClintock. New York: Garland, 1987.

234 Section 4: Microbiology

M I C R O B I O LO G Y Microbiology is the study of microorganisms (organisms too small to see with the naked eye) and their effects on animal and plant life. The origins of microbiology occurred with the discoveries of European scientists such as Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Robert Hooke, Louis Pasteur, and Robert Koch. American microbiologists first achieved success when public health departments and labs were formed to help tackle outbreaks of tuberculosis, typhoid, and malaria. By 1894, the New York State Department of Health had created and distributed a kit for using a throat culture to diagnose diphtheria. Advances were also made under the direction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as microbiologists discovered and isolated the cause of swine flu and Texas cattle fever. American microbiologists also investigated the role of bacteria in soil fertility and plant diseases such as rusts and blights. The field of microbiology began to grow, and courses in microbiology became common for undergraduate as well as graduate students. By the turn of the twentieth century, American scientists were conducting original research in medical microbiology and making significant discoveries. Walter Reed and his assistant James Carroll, for instance, in 1900 proved that yellow fever was carried by mosquitoes. Bacteriologist Simon Flexner in 1899 discovered a strain of dysentery and in 1907 developed a serum to treat meningitis. The main focus for American microbiologists, however, remained in the arena of public health. Researchers began to look to bacteriological methods of finding people infected with a disease, including those who were carriers but had no symptoms themselves. The most famous example of a “healthy carrier” was the 1907 case of Typhoid Mary. Mary Mallon, an Irish immigrant, had contracted a mild case of typhoid fever and was never cured. She worked as a cook until she was detained by the New York City Health Department and diagnosed with typhoid. Public health agencies also advocated manda-

tory vaccinations for schoolchildren. Other advances supported by these agencies included water treatment, pasteurization of milk, and an inspection process for canneries. During the Great Depression and World War II, developments in microbiology continued to advance as scientists worked on developing treatment methods such as chemotherapy and antibiotics. Microbiologists continued to improve vaccines to control a number of infectious diseases. One of the most dramatic examples of the impact of vaccine research was the successful development by Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin of polio vaccines, which effectively eradicated that disease in America. Scientists have continued to make important discoveries in microbiology, including the transmission of genetic information to other cells, the use of microbes to enhance food production, the use of microbes as biological weapons, and the development of vaccines and antibiotics for a number of diseases. Microbiologists also continue to work on developing treatments and preventatives for emerging infectious diseases. Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Clark, Paul F. Pioneer Microbiologists of America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1961. Kass, Edward H. “History of the Specialty of Infectious Diseases in the United States.” Annals of Internal Medicine 106 (1987): 745–56.

M O L E C U L A R B I O LO G Y Molecular biology is the study of fundamental biological processes and structures at the atomic level. Although the field is indebted to the biological reductionism of the nineteenth century, which sought to reduce all biological processes to chemistry and physics, contemporary molecular biology is often seen as the product of the twentieth-century fusion of biochemistry and genetics. Inherently interdisciplinary, the field relies on technologies and ideas borrowed from physics to study and manipulate organic compounds and genetic materials.

Section 4: Morgan, Thomas Hunt 235

Impac t of Modern Physics The history of molecular biology dates to the mid-nineteenth century, when biochemists focused on the role of chemical reactions in metabolism and the importance of cellular enzymes. During the twentieth century, American biologists began applying more sophisticated technologies—for example, biochemist Linus Pauling at Cal Tech used X-ray diffraction analysis to study biological molecules and processes. Adopted from the physics community, diffraction analysis crystallizes a biological molecule so that its structure remains stable and then uses X-rays to penetrate the structure. The resulting diffraction patterns reveal the atomic structure of the molecule in question. By the 1930s, molecular biologists had determined the structure of tobacco mosaic virus, as well as the abnormal hemoglobin responsible for sickle-cell anemia, the first recognized “molecular” disease—again based on Pauling’s work. A further stimulus came in the form of physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s What Is Life? (1944), which reimagined genes and biological molecules as carriers of information capable of telling cells when to turn on or off the production of proteins and enzymes. The culmination of this work came in 1953, when American biologist James Watson and English biophysicist Francis Crick used X-ray diffraction analysis to reveal the double-helix structure of DNA, a model that also explained how the genes relay information to cells and progeny. A series of technical advances have contributed to the recent expansion of the field. In the early 1970s, molecular biologists developed recombinant DNA techniques, which use enzymes to transfer gene sequences from one organism to another. Over a decade later, American biochemist Kary Mullis invented the polymerase chain reaction. The process uses polymerase, an enzyme responsible for regulating DNA formation and repairs, to instigate a chain reaction wherein the enzyme copies a specific section of DNA at an exponential rate. Using this technique, a researcher can produce essentially unlimited quantities of target DNA sequences for experimentation. Such laboratory advances were aided by the tremendous leaps in microprocessing power in

the 1980s. This increased capability allowed researchers to “transduce” the genome, that is, sequence genomic information and manipulate the data to reveal unforeseen patterns and relationships. Today, molecular biology is an integral component of contemporary genetics, cytology, and biochemistry. It provides the basic tools for genetic engineering, genetic sequencing, and genetic therapies. J.G. Whitesides

Sources Morange, Michael. A History of Molecular Biology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Serafini, Anthony. Linus Pauling: A Man and His Science. New York: Paragon House, 1989.

MORGAN, THOMAS HUNT (1866–1945) Initially skeptical of the Mendelian revolution sweeping the life sciences at the turn of the twentieth century, the American zoologist and geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan overcame his own doubts in a series of famous experiments with the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) at Columbia University in the 1910s. Morgan’s “fly room” research conclusively proved the chromosomal theory of heredity and ultimately earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933. He was the first geneticist to be so honored. Born on September 25, 1866, in Lexington, Kentucky, Morgan displayed a proclivity for the natural sciences early in life. Before the age of ten, he had built a collection of birds’ eggs and fossils from wanderings in the Kentucky and Maryland countryside—good practice for his summer field survey work during student years at the State College (later University) of Kentucky in the 1880s. In 1886, Morgan began graduate studies at Johns Hopkins, where he developed his legendary expertise in laboratory research (in particular with his studies of earthworm regeneration) and augmented his growing interest in marine zoology. This led to his Ph.D. thesis on the embryology of sea spiders (1890), summer research

236 Section 4: Morgan, Thomas Hunt at the Woods Hole Marine Laboratory on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and postdoctoral fellowships for study in the Caribbean and at the Naples Zoological Station in Italy. After a decade of teaching and research at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, Morgan was named professor of experimental zoology at Columbia University in 1904. He continued his embryological and regeneration studies there until 1908, when he began his pathbreaking research program in genetics. Morgan’s initial research program at Columbia focused on the natural selection of mutations. He used fruit flies because of their rapidly breeding populations and their manageable number of chromosome pairs ( four), not to mention the fact that they were easy to secure and could be fed on low-cost overripe bananas. In 1910, Morgan noticed that one of the male fruit flies, unlike its red-eyed relatives, somehow had developed white eyes. He proved that the mutant trait had been transmitted through a sex-linked gene, whose location he mapped on a specific chromosome—both firsts in cytology. Subsequent experiments showed such linkages for other fly characteristics. Over the next decade, Morgan and his Columbia research team established many of the core concepts of modern genetics in addition to linkage: crossing over, coupling, chromosomal mapping, and nondisjunction. In 1915, many of these findings were consolidated in the standard textbook of early twentieth-century genetics, The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity, by Thomas Hunt Morgan and student colleagues A.H. Sturtevant, Calvin B. Bridges, and Hermann Joseph Muller. In 1928, Morgan left Columbia to head a new division of biology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. A number of former students followed him there, and Morgan recruited many more high-caliber scientists, making Caltech a leading center for genetics, physiology, and evolutionary biology. Proximity to the Pacific Ocean also allowed Morgan to return to his original interest in marine embryology. The last book in his prodigious publication list was Embryology and Genetics (1934). He died in Pasadena on December 4, 1945. Jacob Jones

Sources Allen, Garland E. Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979. ———. “Thomas Hunt Morgan and the Problem of Sex Determination, 1903–1910.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 110:1 (1966): 48–57. Fisher, R.A., and G.R. de Beer. “Thomas Hunt Morgan, 1866–1945.” Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 5:15 (1947): 451–66. Shine, Ian, and Sylvia Wrobel. Thomas Hunt Morgan: Pioneer of Genetics. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976.

N AT I O N A L A U D U B O N S O C I E T Y The National Audubon Society was founded in the 1880s as a bird conservation organization. At a time when it was considered fashionable to put the plumage of dead birds on ladies’ hats, the society campaigned to stop avian slaughter and raise awareness of wild birds.

Origins The National Audubon Society was named after the ornithologist and bird artist John James Audubon, best known for his seminal collection of life-size prints, Birds of America (1840–1844). One of the founders of the organization, George Bird Grinnell, had been tutored by Audubon’s widow, Lucy. Like Audubon, Grinnell was a hunter who became a leader in the campaign to halt the widespread destruction of wild birds during the late nineteenth century. The passenger pigeon and Carolina parakeet, for example, were approaching extinction, market hunters were shooting shorebirds for sport or food in numbers that increasingly threatened their existence, and the millinery trade exploited colorful birds for the American fashion industry. Most states had only weak laws to protect birds. In 1886, Grinnell wrote an editorial for Forest and Stream magazine in which he proposed “the formation of an Association for the protection of wild birds and their eggs, which shall be called the Audubon Society.” The initial goals of the organization were to prevent the unnecessary killing of wild birds, the destruction of nests and eggs, and the wearing of feathers as ornaments or fashion trim. The

Section 4: Oceanography 237 society quickly attracted supporters, including Henry Ward Beecher and John Greenleaf Whittier, and, by 1887, it had garnered a membership of 39,000. Operations were suspended the following year, but the organization was revived in 1896 by a group of New England women who opposed the display of egret feathers and other bird plumage in hats. The reformist women called their new organization the Massachusetts Audubon Society and elected the well-known ornithologist William Brewster as their president. The new Audubon Society recruited members and lobbied for legislation that would protect endangered birds. Audubon societies began to form in other states.

Pearson, Thomas Gilbert. Adventures in Bird Protection. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1937.

OCEANOGRAPHY Oceanography is the study of the ocean, including coastal and estuarine systems that are inseparable from the ocean basins. This study incorporates topics in physics, chemistry, zoology, ecology, hydrology, geology, mathematics, technology, and engineering. Oceanographers collaborate extensively with one another and professionals in other fields.

Branches Reorganization The National Association of Audubon Societies was officially established in 1905, with ornithologist T. Gilbert Pearson as secretary. Pearson went on to become president of the national association, which stimulated interest in bird protection throughout the world. In the decades since, the National Audubon Society has become a prominent grassroots environmental organization, with 510 chapters throughout the Americas. Its mission is “to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity.” The Audubon Society today maintains nature centers, organizes scientific and educational programs, and advocates on behalf of bird habitats. It runs approximately 100 Audubon Sanctuaries, encompassing more than 150,000 acres, as refuges for birds and wildlife. The sanctuaries also sponsor field trips, guided tours, and environmental education. The national society has approximately 600,000 members and publishes Audubon magazine. Robin O’Sullivan

Sources Graham, Frank, Jr. The Audubon Ark: A History of the National Audubon Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. National Audubon Society. http://www.audubon.org/nas. Orr, Oliver H. Saving American Birds: T. Gilbert Pearson and the Founding of the Audubon Movement. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1992.

Oceanography comprises four main subdisciplines: biological, physical, geological, and chemical. Biological oceanographers study marine organisms in their environments. Biological oceanography encompasses the biology and ecology of organisms from viruses to plankton to marine mammals. While marine biologists study simply the ocean’s organisms, biological oceanographers are interested in the characteristics and processes of marine organisms in relation to their environment. To determine how organisms exist within and are influenced by their environment, biological oceanographers must incorporate aspects of biochemistry, genetics, physiology, behavior, population dynamics, and community ecology. They propose and test hypotheses; collect data at sea, in the lab, or from remote sensors; and interpret the results in such a way that contributes to existing knowledge and theory. Fisheries assessment is a major application of biological oceanography; biological oceanographers provide vital information about populations of commercially important species and offer advice and guidelines to regulatory agencies, including the federal government. Physical oceanographers study the properties and movement of ocean water. Their goal is to understand how, where, and why water moves, and the consequences of such movement. They study physical properties, including water temperature, density, pressure, and salinity; physical

238 Section 4: Oceanography processes such as currents and water mixing; and factors affecting the ocean, such as wind, air temperature, tides, and interaction with land masses. Topics in physical oceanography include the nature of ocean currents, waves, and tides; circulation on global and local scales; water mixing and turbulence; and ocean heat fluxes and climate change. Physical oceanography is fundamentally integrated with fluid mechanics, applied physics, and mathematics to describe and model the natural phenomena of ocean water. Physical oceanographers construct complex computer models and laboratory models of fluid dynamics. Their work is increasingly advanced, often relying on the use of remote-sensing satellites and real-time computerized buoys that are left at sea for long periods of time and can provide up-to-date information about ocean water composition and movement. Geological oceanographers study the geological composition, formations, and history of the seafloor. They study the makeup of the ocean floor, the origin and transport of sediments, and how sediments are affected by the environment. They examine sediment composition and fossils in the seafloor to learn more about historical climate and animal and plant life. They help piece together information about how ocean basins are formed; how tectonic plates separate and collide, leading to volcanoes and earthquakes; and how continents are formed. Topics in geological oceanography include plate tectonics, volcanology, seismology, ocean drilling, and coastal geology. The processes that affect the geology of the ocean take place over time scales ranging from hours to millions of years. Therefore, geological oceanography is studied through a combination of direct observation and experimentation, paleontological examination and carbon dating, and computer modeling. Chemical oceanographers study the chemical composition of seawater and the processes that supply, remove, and change that chemistry. They investigate how the organic and inorganic, and dissolved and particulate matter in the ocean is affected by interactions with organisms, the atmosphere, and sediments. Topics in chemical oceanography include distribution of chemical compounds, gases, and minerals in seawater; organic chemistry of seawater and

sediments; mixing of chemical components of seawater; and the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles. Since the sea is affected by and in turn affects the atmosphere, atmospheric chemistry is considered a related subdiscipline of chemical oceanography. Atmospheric chemistry is the study of the chemistry of the marine atmosphere. Topics in atmospheric chemistry include aerosols, meteorology, and atmospheric transport and pollution.

Histor y The beginnings of the scientific study of the ocean in America occurred during the nineteenth century. Matthew Maury was an early leader in physical oceanography; his work in the mid-nineteenth century provided one of the first maps of the ocean floor (of the North Atlantic). The voyage of Great Britain’s HMS Challenger in 1872–1876 was the first major expedition to study the sea. Parts of the North Atlantic and America’s eastern coast were studied on this around-the-world voyage. The expedition’s report, published in 1885, encouraged interest in sea research, but permanent institutions were needed to carry out the objectives it recommended. One such institution in the United States was the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, founded by New England oceanographer Henry Bigelow in 1930. Under Bigelow’s leadership, the institute employed the Atlantis, a research vessel that had a functioning oceanographic laboratory on board. The naval engagements of World War II resulted in increasing public interest in the sea, hence in ocean research. Economic and environmental concerns in subsequent decades also helped to raise awareness of the need for a better understanding of the ocean. Oceanography as a scientific discipline has seen stunning growth since the last decades of the twentieth century, and technological advances are revolutionizing the field. Pictures of the ocean from space report ocean currents and temperatures. Satellite monitoring provides information about global weather and climate, as well as the impact of environmental problems such as global warming, declines in fisheries, and harmful algal blooms.

Section 4: Ornithology 239

Applications The findings of oceanographers have myriad practical applications. Biological oceanographers devise sustainable aquaculture practices for raising fish and shellfish virtually independent of marine populations. Physical oceanographers provide information about ocean currents and circulation used to develop plans for preventing and controlling coastal erosion. Geological oceanographers determine the feasibility and impacts of oil and gas exploration in the ocean. Chemical oceanographers study the impact of pollutants through their interactions with seawater, marine life, sediments, and the atmosphere. Oceanography has become an inherently multidisciplinary science. For example, oceanographers from each subdiscipline contribute to understanding environmental issues such as climate change associated with elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels. Possible solutions such as stimulating biological production by adding iron to certain areas of the ocean and pumping carbon dioxide deep beneath the ocean floor require knowledge and input from all four areas of oceanography. The example of climate change illustrates that our knowledge of the historical, present, and potential future aspects of the ocean is growing continually. As Earth’s population discovers new ways to use the ocean, whether for food, medicine, transportation, energy, or waste disposal, oceanographers will play an important role in increasing knowledge about the impact of these activities on the ocean and its ability to sustain them.

O R N I T H O LO G Y Ornithology ( from the Greek ornis, meaning “bird”) is the scientific study of birds. Although it belongs to a branch of zoology, ornithology extends into multiple scientific fields, including taxonomy, evolution, anatomy and physiology, ecology, and ethology. Birds are vertebrates with feathers and constitute the class Aves. There are currently more than 9,600 known species of birds in the world. They occupy every habitat, from ice-filled tundra to baking deserts. Their habits and evolution provide fascinating material for scientific examination, from their behavior (some migrate up to 12,000 miles) to communication (some species have twenty distinct calls, each with its own meaning).

Mollie Sue Oremland

Sources Bigelow, Henry B. Oceanography: Its Scope, Problems, and Economic Importance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931. Duxbury, Alison B., Alyn C. Duxbury, and Keith A. Sverdrup. Fundamentals of Oceanography. New York: McGrawHill, 2001. Harrison, Paul J., and Timothy R. Parsons. Fisheries Oceanography: An Integrative Approach to Fisheries Ecology and Management. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Science, 2000. Miller, Charles B. Biological Oceanography. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Science, 2004.

The ivory-billed woodpecker—depicted here by John James Audubon in Birds of America (1840–1844)—was not seen in sixty years and was thought to be extinct, until a reported sighting in Arkansas in 2005. (Library of Congress, LC-USZC4–882)

240 Section 4: Ornithology The diversity of birds is a result of adaptation and evolution over millions of years. It is likely that birds evolved from bipedal reptiles, since birds and reptiles share many similar anatomical features, such as nucleated red blood cells, one occipital condyle on the back of the skull, and one middle ear bone. Archaeopteryx lithographica was one example that lived 150 million years ago. It was a crow-sized, toothed, bipedal reptile that had feathers and a furcula (wishbone). An important figure in the history of ornithology in America is Alexander Wilson, who immigrated from Scotland in 1794 and spent nearly two decades roaming the countryside, collecting and cataloging species in nine detailed volumes, The Natural History of Birds in the United States (1808–1814). His observations and taxonomic work have stood the test of time as the field has grown. A second and far better known founding figure in American ornithology is John James Audubon. While Wilson sought to use scientific definitions to explain his experience, Audubon used paint and watercolors on canvas or paper. Formally trained as an artist in France, Audubon spent four decades making life-sized paintings of what he saw (and shot, as was the practice then, for his personal collection). His fivevolume Ornithological Biography: An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States (1831–1839) contains stunningly accurate details and life-like images that proved the richness of wildlife in the fledgling nation. Audubon later published Birds of America (1844), which established him as a leader in the field in terms of scientific knowledge, collection, and imaging.

Classifying and Identifying Birds Among the activities of birds that ornithologists study are mating, nesting, rearing young, feeding, flight, navigation, migration, and communication. The American Ornithologists Union, which oversees the standards for identifying birds, has developed a checklist to classify the nearly 800 species of birds that reside, for at least the summer months, in the United States. The birds are then divided into family groups and then subgroups that share certain characteristics, such as beak size and use, plumage, habitat, and calls.

The development of ornithology over 150 years has shown that birds are remarkably able to adapt to their environment or move to a more suitable one. Individual species reveal coloration patterns that help them blend into the surroundings; wing structures suited to the mode of transport (swimming or flying), speed of flight needed ( fast or slow), and type of flight (gliding, soaring, diving, hovering); and bill structures that correspond to food sources and easy access. Field observation of birds grew greatly in the eighteenth century, and the practice thrives today among professionals and amateurs. In 1934, Roger Tory Peterson published A Field Guide to the Birds, the first modern field guide; he is also known for his Peterson Field Guide series. The novice birder can now select from a number of authoritative field guides for bird identification. David Allen Sibley, born in 1962 in New York, is the author and illustrator of The Sibley Guide to Birds (2000), considered by many the most comprehensive guide for North American field identification. Sibley’s guide illustrates alternate or juvenile plumages of birds, whereas many field guides focus primarily on adult plumage. Bird banding, first performed in the early nineteenth century, is an important means to gain information on average lifespan, disease transmission, and patterns of movement in bird populations. Ornithological research is conducted at universities and museums such as the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The National Audubon Society is a network of communitybased nature centers and chapters, scientific and educational programs, and advocacy groups that engages millions of people of all ages in the conservation of birds.

Environmental Fac tors Environmental changes can be recognized by deaths or failure to reproduce in bird populations, as demonstrated in Rachel Carson’s landmark account in Silent Spring (1962). In the past, heavy use of chemical pesticides and excessive hunting have led to dramatic declines in North American bird populations. One prominent example is the bald eagle. Because eagles are at the top of the food chain, they

Section 4: Ornithology 241 become an irreplaceable indicator for measuring the health of the ecological system. Bald eagles suffered severe population decline from the pesticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane), which caused thinning of their eggshells. The bald eagle was listed as an “endangered” species in 1978. It was not until 1995 that the population recovered enough for the species’ status to be upgraded to “threatened.” The U.S. ban on DDT in 1972 and on the use of lead shot in 1991 aided in the bald eagles’ recovery. Today, America’s national bird is protected under the Endangered Species Act, the Bald Eagle Protection Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. While the bald eagle represents one success story, other bird species have become extinct under extreme pressures of habitat loss, feather harvesting, and competition by nonnative species. In recent years, spotted owl numbers have been declining in the Pacific Northwest, despite curbs on the logging industry to help protect the habitat of this species. The continued decline in the number of spotted owls also has been linked to competition with the barred owl, which is migrating westward from its original territory. In April 2005, the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to be extinct due to logging in the bottomland forests of North America, was reportedly spotted in Arkansas wetlands. This report prompted a movement to protect habitats from human development in an old-growth wetlands area. In 2006, however, skepticism about the reported sightings emerged, as some experts questioned the available evidence and no new sightings were reported.

first elucidated by Hans Krebs in 1932 and furthered by Albert Szent-Gyorgyi in 1935, based on studies of pigeon breast muscle. Birds have been carriers in the spread of disease, such as avian influenza A (H5N1), commonly known as “bird flu,” seen in an epidemic that began in December 2003 among chickens and jumped species to humans in Asia. More than twenty-two humans, primarily children and poultry workers, died from bird flu. Millions of chickens in Southeast Asia and China were destroyed to curb spread of the disease, resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue due to ravaged poultry stocks and foreign import bans. As the outbreaks still continued, U.S. and international health departments set up surveillance systems to diagnose and prevent the spread of avian influenza A should it appear in the United States and other countries. Another disease that has infected birds and humans is West Nile virus, which flares up in the summer in North America and continues into the fall, carried chiefly by birds and mosquitoes. A West Nile epidemic began in New York in 1999 and spread steadily westward, reaching California in 2003. The virus is transmitted from infected birds to humans via mosquitoes, resulting in severe illness in roughly one in 150 people who are infected. More than 500 deaths had been reported by 2006, primarily in elderly and immuno-compromised hosts. Surprisingly, West Nile virus counts seem to reach a peak two years after the virus reaches a destination and then decline to significantly lower levels.

Birds in America Birds and Health Studies of bird physiology have greatly contributed to modern medicine. In 1908, Danish scientist Wilhelm Ellermann discovered that there was a link between viruses and cancer by studying avian leukemia. By 1911, American researcher Peyton Rous, working at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, found a viral pathology for sarcoma in chickens. The next year, Polish biochemist Casimir Funk discovered how important B vitamins are and their role in nutrition from his studies of chickens and their nutrient deficiencies. The Krebs Cycle, a metabolic process that converts nutrients to energy in living beings, was

Birds have long been cherished and mimicked in human society. They have been the subjects of countless examples of art, literature, and scientific study. Some birds have become symbols of inspiration, peace, war, and sports teams. Many species have been kept as household pets, and others, such as swans and peacocks, have been cultivated for their ornamental nature. And bird song has inspired American jazz and popular music. Pheasants, ducks, geese, doves, and other species have been hunted for sport. Native Americans wore feathers as badges of honor, nineteenth-century Hawaiians made elaborate capes and mosaics from feathers, and early

242 Section 4: Ornithology twentieth-century ladies used egret feathers to adorn their hats. Goose down is still used today for warmth by many Americans. Chicken, geese, ducks, turkeys, and, more recently, ostrich and emu have been domesticated for food. The American Poultry Association, the oldest association of livestock breeders in the United States (it was founded in 1873), reports that there are at least thirty-seven different breeds of chickens for food and twenty-four ornamental breeds. James Fargo Balliett and Jennie McClay

Sources Audubon, John J. Birds of America. Washington, DC: National Audubon Society, 2005. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1962. Chatterjee, Sankar. The Rise of Birds: 225 Million Years of Evolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Ehrlich, Paul. The Birder’s Handbook: A Field Guide to the Natural History of North American Birds. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. Gill, Frank B. Ornithology. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1995. Peterson, Roger Tory. A Field Guide to the Birds. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1934. Walters, Michael. A Concise History of Ornithology. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Sibley, David. The Sibley Guide to Birds. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.

O S B O R N , H E N R Y F. (1857–1935) The zoologist and paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn was born on August 8, 1857, in Fairfield, Connecticut. His father was a railroad magnate who wanted him to join the business but ultimately supported Osborn’s pursuit of science by funding his education and scientific projects. In 1877, Osborn received an A.B. and in 1881 a Sc.D. in zoology from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). He remained at the college as an assistant professor, teaching physiological psychology and comparative anatomy. His early research focused on embryology and neuroanatomy, but, by 1885, he had drifted away from these fields and toward vertebrate paleontology.

At first, Osborn accepted the Lamarckian position that organisms evolve by inheriting new traits their parents had developed in the course of adapting to the environment. By the early 1890s, however, he rejected this position in favor of the view that the environment does not change the germplasm passed from generation to generation. Osborn ascribed changes in the germplasm to the action of a physical principle, what one might call a “guiding energy” that made evolution a progressive process. This belief led him to reject Charles Darwin’s view that natural selection imparts no direction to evolution. Osborn did not separate science from his religious beliefs and regarded the progressive character of evolution as a manifestation of the order and regularity of God’s creation. In 1891, Osborn left the College of New Jersey for Columbia University, where he established a biology department. The move to New York City allowed Osborn, through his father, to strengthen his ties to such prominent figures as J. Pierpont Morgan, Theodore Roosevelt, and members of other philanthropic families who could finance his research. At Columbia, Osborn taught vertebrate morphology and paleontology, and, from 1892 to 1896, he served as the first dean of the faculty of pure sciences. In 1891, the year he joined Columbia, Osborn also became curator at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. Intent upon enlarging his role at the museum, he reduced his teaching and administrative duties at Columbia in 1899. Museum trustee Morris K. Jesup appointed Osborn as his assistant the following year, and, in 1901, he was elevated to trustee. In 1908, Jesup and Morgan persuaded the other trustees to appoint Osborn museum president. As president, Osborn shaped the museum’s Department of Vertebrate Paleontology in the mold of his evolutionary views. In 1897, he secured $15,000 from trustee William C. Whitney to mount a display of fossil horses arranged chronologically from smallest to largest—a sequence that illustrated, Osborn believed, the progressive nature of evolution. Osborn dispatched expeditions to the West to acquire dinosaur fossils, and the discovery of a nearly complete Tyrannosaurus rex skull in 1906 won him praise from the trustees and the press. In about 1908, following the discovery of a Ne-

Section 4: Peterson, Roger Tory 243 anderthal skeleton in France, Osborn turned his attention to human evolution, publishing Men of the Old Stone Age in 1915 and Man Rises to Parnassus in 1927. He followed convention in assigning Neanderthals to a species separate from Homo sapiens sapiens and in slighting the Neanderthals’ intellect. According to this view, the cave art of the Cro-Magnons marked the apex of human achievement. Even modern humans had slipped from this pinnacle by losing the intimate connection with nature enjoyed by their predecessors. If they were to thrive, Osborn believed, humans needed to embrace Theodore Roosevelt’s spirit of rugged individualism. Osborn worried that race mixing was weakening the human species and, in 1921, convened the International Eugenics Congress at the museum. In the 1930s, he supported the Nazi doctrine of racial purity. Osborn’s defense of eugenics and his opposition to experimental biology and genetics prompted opposition from Columbia University geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan, among others. Under pressure from the trustees, Osborn re-

signed as museum president in 1933. He died in Garrison, New York, on November 6, 1935. Christopher Cumo

Sources Rainger, Ronald. An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890–1935. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991. Regal, Brian. Henry Fairfield Osborn: Race and the Search for the Origins of Man. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002.

PETERSON, ROGER TORY (1908–1996) Roger Tory Peterson was a true pioneer in the field of ornithology as an artist, writer, photographer, filmmaker, educator, and conservationist. He considered his efforts as director of education for the National Audubon Society and as popularizer of wildlife study among his most important contributions.

Roger Tory Peterson engaged and informed generations of amateur bird watchers and other nature lovers with his richly illustrated field guides. (Hank Morgan/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

244 Section 4: Peterson, Roger Tory Born in Jamestown, New York, on August 28, 1908, Peterson was chiefly self-taught. He wanted to be remembered as an educator, which was one reason he wrote regularly for Bird Watcher’s Digest, a magazine for readers ranging from novice to expert birders. Peterson’s connections with the magazine spanned its entire existence, from 1978 until the September/October 1996 issue, when he wrote the final essay for his column “All Things Reconsidered.” Peterson struggled to find a publisher for his first field guide. Before A Field Guide to the Birds (1934), bird-watching was practiced by a select few, and the detailed examination of birds was done typically by taxidermists studying preserved specimens in hand. Gradually, birdwatching and the environmental awareness that accompanied it began to spread. The first generation of Peterson devotees became bird club founders and, more importantly, teachers. Over his productive career, Peterson authored or co-authored nineteen books, illustrated seven more, and contributed to fifteen other publications. He made nature accessible to the general public primarily through his “Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide” series, the volumes of which have served as the first guidebooks for many nature lovers. Among his other books are Mexican Birds (1973), Northeastern Wildflowers (1986), and Birds of Britain and Europe (1993). His life work earned him twenty-five honorary doctorate degrees from universities across the United States. The Roger Tory Peterson Institute was established in 1984 in his hometown of Jamestown to promote the cause of nature education through programs designed for teachers. Thanks in part to Peterson’s role in bringing the natural world to the attention of the American public, environmental education is part of the curriculum in schools throughout the country and environmental issues are high on the national political agenda. Jennie McClay

Sources Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History. “General Information: Roger Tory Peterson.” http://www.rtpi. org. Zinsser, William. Peterson’s Birds: The Art and Photography of Roger Tory Peterson. New York: Universe, 2002.

P R E S C O T T , S A M U E L C AT E (1872–1962) Samuel Cate Prescott was a key innovator in the field of modern food technology. He was born on a New Hampshire farm on April 5, 1872, and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating in 1894. Prescott, who became dean of science and professor emeritus at MIT in 1942, contributed to microbiology, industrial biology, food science and technology, and public health. Prescott and William Lyman Underwood, also of MIT, collaborated on resolving the bacteriological problems associated with the American canning industry by establishing the time-temperature heating requirements necessary for sterilization in the food canning process. Their work marked the first attempt to understand the canning process scientifically and began the science of food technology. Prescott also researched and contributed to a greater understanding of the chemistry and preparation of coffee, the bacteriology of water supplies, the development of dehydrated and quick-frozen foods, and fermentation. As an educator and scientist, he promoted and helped advance the fields of health education, public health engineering, food science and technology, and industrial biology. After directing the Boston Biochemical Laboratory (1904–1921), being on the staff of the Sanitary Research Laboratory and Sewage Experimentation Station (1910–1915), and serving as a major in the Sanitary Corps of the U.S. Army in World War I and continuing as a colonel in the reserves, Prescott assumed the leadership of MIT’s Department of Biology and Public Health (1922), and he became the first dean of the School of Science at MIT (1932–1942). During World War II, Prescott served with the Office of the Quartermaster General as a consultant on issues primarily relating to dehydration. He was a charter member and president of the Society of American Bacteriologists (1919) and was one of the principal founders and the first president (1941) of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). Among Prescott’s many honors and awards were the Nicholas Alpert and Babcock-Hart awards bestowed by the IFT. Prescott was also in-

Section 4: Scopes Trial 245 volved in the formation of the Refrigeration Research Foundation and served as chair of its board of governors. He also served for many years as a member of the editorial board of Food Research. Assisted by Charles S. Venable, Prescott translated Jean Effront’s classic book Biochemical Catalysts in Life and Industry: Protolytic Enzymes (1917). He rewrote and expanded with Murray P. Horwood Sedgwick’s Principles of Sanitary Science and Public Health (1935) and co-authored with Cecil G. Dunn the widely used Industrial Microbiology (known popularly as Prescott and Dunn’s Industrial Microbiology), the second edition being translated into German, Spanish, and Russian. He also co-authored Water Bacteriology: With Special Reference to Sanitary Water Analysis (1946). After his retirement from MIT in 1942, Prescott wrote the history of the early years of the university, When M.I.T. Was Boston Tech, 1861–1916 (1954). He died in Boston on March 19, 1962. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Doyle, Michael P., Larry R. Beuchat, and Thomas J. Montville, eds. Food Microbiology: Fundamentals and Frontiers. Washington, DC: ASM Press, 2001. Goldblith, Samuel A. Pioneers in Food Science: Samuel Cate Prescott, MIT Dean and Pioneer Food Technologist. Vol. 1. Trumbull, CT: Food and Nutrition Press, 1993.

S CO P E S T R I A L In July 1925, a twenty-four-year-old Tennessee schoolteacher named John Thomas Scopes was put on trial for violating the Butler Act, a state law that made it “unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” The so-called Scopes “Monkey” Trial was held in the small town of Dayton (pop. 1,800), about thirty miles north of Chattanooga, where several citizens on both sides of the creation-evolution issue concocted a publicity stunt to put the town on the map. They charged a local teacher with

violating the law. Scopes, a likable substitute biology teacher and football coach at the high school, was indicted.

Battle of Titans Fueling the litigation was the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its much publicized desire to challenge the new law’s constitutionality by means of a test case. The New York–based organization assembled an impressive array of attorneys, including the renowned defense lawyer Clarence Darrow, to argue for the defense. William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic nominee for U.S. president, former secretary of state, noted orator, and religious fundamentalist, accepted an invitation to assist the prosecution. The eleven-day trial ran from July 10 to July 21. It was characterized by endless legal wrangling— over whether the law violated the state and federal constitutions, over the admissibility of scientific evidence, even over whether the court sessions should be opened with prayer. One defense strategy was to contend that there was no violation of the law unless a teacher taught human evolution and represented it as contrary to the biblical account of creation. Judge John T. Raulston, who ruled for the prosecution on all the key legal questions, thwarted the attempt to open the possibility of belief in both the Bible and evolution. Darrow maneuvered Bryan into testifying as an expert witness on the Bible. Bryan testified that the “days” of creation referred to in Genesis were not twenty-four hours in duration—a view that seemingly undercut the literalism of Christian fundamentalists. But the judge ultimately ruled Bryan’s testimony inadmissible. Journalists’ reports on the carnival-like atmosphere, a colorful array of evangelists, and merchants hawking monkey-related trinkets painted an indelibly unflattering picture of the rural South and its brand of Christianity. Bryan’s performance on the witness stand was used by the press, perhaps unfairly, to discredit Christian fundamentalism.

Turning Point The trial concluded with the defendant being found guilty and fined $100. Upon appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court, while upholding

246 Section 4: Scopes Trial

In the 1925 Scopes trial, defense attorney Clarence Darrow (left) questioned prosecution attorney William Jennings Bryan (right) on the literal interpretation of the Bible. At the heart of the trial was the conflict between Christian fundamentalism and scientific secularism. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

the constitutionality of the statute, overturned Scopes’s conviction on a technicality. Five days after the trial ended, Bryan died—a symbol of the waning influence of fundamentalism in American culture, at least for the time being. The Scopes trial, which epitomized the battle between fundamentalist Christianity and scientific secularism, marked a turning point in American history. Tennessee repealed the Butler Act in 1967. Attempts in the 1970s and 1980s by Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas to strike a balance in the teaching of evolution and creation were struck down by federal courts.

Ginger, Ray. Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1969. Grebstein, Sheldon Norman, ed. The Monkey Trial: The State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Webb, George E. The Evolution Controversy in America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.

Frank J. Smith

The theory of spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis, holds that living organisms can arise spontaneously from nonliving matter. Many early Greek philosophers, for example, believed that insects and other animals were formed from

Sources De Camp, L. Sprague. The Great Monkey Trial. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968.

S P O N TA N E O U S G E N E R AT I O N

Section 4: Sterilization Movement 247 the mud in swamps or riverbeds. The idea circulated throughout the Middle Ages, when it was commonly believed that flies and mice arose from rotting meat and cheese. Only in the late nineteenth century, after a series of disputes lasting two centuries, would the theory be scientifically discredited. Today, however, the idea that life has evolved from nonliving matter remains a central hypothesis of abiotic chemistry and evolutionary theory. Scientific investigation of spontaneous generation dates to the late seventeenth century. In the 1660s, the Italian physician Francesco Redi tested the idea that flies arise from decaying meats by placing rotted meat in both covered and uncovered jars. When maggots appeared on only the uncovered meat, Redi claimed that the spontaneous generation of flies was merely a superstition. Unfortunately, microscopic observations revived theories of spontaneous generation. The discovery of “animalcules”—tiny living organisms (bacteria)—in swamp water and other substances initiated a new controversy. The debates lasted until the late nineteenth century. In 1745, the English clergyman John Needham published a work detailing experiments supporting spontaneous generation. Needham filled a series of flasks with chicken broth, sealing and heating them to destroy preexisting animalcules and prevent outside contamination. The discovery of organisms inside the sealed tubes invigorated the theory of spontaneous generation until the Italian biologist Lazzaro Spallanzani demonstrated in 1775 that Needham had failed to seal or heat the flasks sufficiently. The controversy grew until the 1860s, when the French Academy of Sciences advertised a prize for conclusive evidence for or against the spontaneous origin of life. The French chemist Louis Pasteur tried repeating Spallanzani’s experiments, but with two critical changes: He substituted flasks with an S-shaped neck and left the flasks exposed to the air. When microorganisms failed to appear, even after many months, it became clear that the microorganisms, which had been trapped in the curves of the S-shaped neck, were airborne rather then innate. Thus, Pasteur’s experiment simultaneously discredited theories of spontaneous generation and lent cre-

dence to the emerging germ theory. Although spontaneous generation has been disproved, the origin of life, and, particularly, the development of life from nonliving matter remains a subject of scientific research. Darwin’s theory of natural selection and descent accounted for changes in flora and fauna over millions of years but failed to address the original creation of life. Two primary positions arose: some argued that divine action had created the first living creatures, which then evolved; others argued that life was inherently materialistic and so had arisen naturally, and very gradually, from preexisting chemicals and conditions. In the 1950s, the American chemist Stanley Miller, in a series of experiments testing the effects of lightning on the atmosphere, demonstrated that amino acids, arguably the building blocks of life, could be created from methane, carbon, and hydrogen with the aid of high voltages of electricity. Miller’s experiments provided the foundation of contemporary abiotic chemistry, a field that continues to search for the chemical basis of life. Although successive experiments have led to the creation of additional amino acids, sugars, and other biologically significant molecules, the origin of life remains an enigma. J.G. Whitesides

Sources Harris, Henry. Things Come to Life: Spontaneous Generation Revisited. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002. Strick, James Edgar. Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

S T E R I L I Z AT I O N M O V E M E N T Sterilization, the forced discontinuation of a person’s ability to beget or conceive children, began in the late nineteenth century in America when medical doctors, and later biologists and social scientists, encouraged state legislatures to legalize forced sterilization of wards of the state. They were particularly interested in sterilizing the patients of mental health facilities that they considered “feebleminded,” a broad cate-

248 Section 4: Sterilization Movement gory that included anyone who appeared incapable of the mental power necessary to overcome physical urges. Among the ranks of the so-called feebleminded were the mentally handicapped, individuals with Down syndrome, alcoholics and drug addicts, and epileptics. Proponents of sterilization also singled out prisoners in jail considered “habitual criminals,” those convicted of three or more separate felonies, as well as homosexuals, rapists, and child molesters. Scholars have located records for approximately 60,000 involuntary sterilizations in the United States but estimate that twice as many people were coercively sterilized during the twentieth century. The majority of the involuntary sterilizations took place in the Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western states. California led the nation in coerced sterilizations with over 15,000. Few coerced sterilizations were performed in the Deep South, due largely to unpopularity of the Progressive movement, some advocates of which supported both the sterilization movement and the broader American eugenics movement, and to the relative lack of mental health facilities in the area. The American sterilization movement evolved through three identifiable eras in the twentieth century. In the first decades of its use, from the 1890s through the 1910s, proponents of sterilization targeted mentally challenged citizens and those convicted of crimes of morality, especially pedophiles and men convicted of crimes associated with homosexuality. Only near the end of this period did medical doctors seek the sanction of state legislatures for the forced sterilization of their wards. In 1907, Indiana became the first state to pass a coerced sterilization law and publicly condone the operations. By the mid-1930s, thirty-three states had adopted sterilization legislation, the legality of which was supported by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1927 Buck v. Bell decision. Beginning in the 1920s and continuing through the 1940s, medical doctors and social scientists promoted sterilization as the solution to the rising cost of housing the nation’s mentally ill and convicted felons. Especially during the Great Depression, politicians and medical doctors turned to sterilization in hopes of surgically removing the threat some patients and prisoners posed so that

they could be released or paroled back into the general population. Eugenicists strongly promoted sterilization during this period, claiming that it would remove from the population traits that would hinder future generations. From the mid-twentieth century through the 1980s, coerced sterilization grew increasingly uncommon, as it was progressively outlawed in many of the states that had once adopted legislation allowing the forced sterilization of wards of the state. During this period, the only citizens subjected to coerced sterilization were mentally ill and mentally challenged patients in state-operated hospitals. As the twentieth century closed, calls for coerced sterilizations were rare in the United States but occasionally arose as a viable solution in discussions about welfare reform or the control of felons labeled as sexual predators. Generally, twenty-first-century legislatures and courts have been unwilling to condone involuntary sterilization. This practice has at least momentarily faded as a viable tool for social and medical reform in the United States. Mark A. Largent

Sources Carlson, Elof Axel. The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea. Cold Spring Harbor, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001. Cravens, Hamilton. The Triumph of Evolution: The Heredity– Environment Controversy, 1900–1941. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Kline, Wendy. Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Paul, Diane B. Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995.

S U T H E R L A N D, E A R L , J R . (1915–1974) Earl W. Sutherland, Jr. discovered the activating agent responsible for the biochemical and physiological functions of body organs. He was born in Burlingame, Kansas, on November 19, 1915. As a schoolboy, he became interested in medical

Section 4: Taxonomy 249 science after reading about Louis Pasteur. He enrolled in Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas, in 1933 and received his B.S. four years later. He joined the School of Medicine at Washington University in St Louis and was awarded his M.D. in 1942. After serving in the armed forces during World War II, Sutherland worked at the Washington University School of Medicine until 1953 and then joined Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, as professor of pharmacology and head of the department. In 1963, he moved to the School of Medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, as professor of physiology. He remained there for ten years, after which time he joined the University of Miami Medical School. It was at Washington University that Sutherland became interested in the study of hormones in relation to glucose levels in the bloodstream. In Cleveland, he continued his research, dispelling the theory that hormones in the bloodstream act directly on the organs. He discovered a new chemical intermediary, cyclic adenyl acid (AMP), that activates the organs, performing biochemical and physiological control mechanisms. When hormones reach an organ, the release of the enzyme adenyl cyclase converts adenosine triphosphate (ATP) into AMP. Afterwards, the AMP becomes instrumental in converting the glycogen from the liver into glucose in the blood. Because of AMP, adrenaline acts on the molecules in liver cells. For his discovery, Sutherland was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1971. The National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association actively supported Sutherland in his research. He was a member of the American Society of Biological Chemists, American Chemical Society, American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, National Institutes of Health Pharmacology Training Committee, and National Institutes of Health Arthritis and Metabolic Disease Program Committee. Earl Sutherland died on March 9, 1974. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Lindsten, Jan, ed. From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1971–1980. Singapore: World Scientific, 1992. Nicole Kresge, Robert D. Simoni, and Robert L. Hill. “Earl W. Sutherland’s Discovery of Cyclic Adenine Monophos-

phate and the Second Messenger System.” Journal of Biological Chemistry 280 (2005).

T A XO N O M Y Taxonomy is the classification and naming of organisms in an orderly system based on natural relationships. The term “systematics” is often used interchangeably with “taxonomy,” but the words are not synonymous. Systematics includes principles of both taxonomy and evolution; a systematist looks not only at how organisms are classified and named, but also at the forces and results of evolution on these groups and the relationships between the groups. The role of the taxonomist, however, is to differentiate between organisms through descriptions and illustrations, and to provide informative names for organisms. Taxonomists often work in museums, zoos, universities, and government agencies and may be responsible for documenting, cataloging, and preserving specimens. Such specimen collections provide a basis for comparison when new or unknown organisms are discovered and for examination of characteristics when relationships between or classification of organisms are reevaluated. Taxonomists must first separate organisms into groups based on observed or inferred properties, such as morphology or genetics. The organisms are then organized into a hierarchy that describes the relationship between the different groups. Finally, information about the organisms and their groups can be placed into a broader context. Currently, organisms are classified based on the system of binomial nomenclature first described by the eighteenth-century Swedish scientist Carolus Linnaeus. Species are identified by a unique combination of characteristics and then organized into progressively larger series of taxa, or groups, in the following manner: Species Genus Family Order Class Phylum Kingdom

250 Section 4: Taxonomy In addition, there may be intermediate categories between the major taxa; for example, subclasses exist between classes and orders. The scientific name of an organism is composed of two Latin names, the genus and species, written as follows: Genus species (as in Homo sapiens). Linnaeus’s system of classification based on plant sexuality had its competitors. Late in the eighteenth century, the French naturalist Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu developed a system based on resemblance of one plant to another. Harvard botanist Asa Gray wrote Elements of Botany in 1887 and established Harvard as the leading institution for taxonomic study; his student Charles Bessey classified plants according to relative development on the evolutionary scale. Arthur Cronquist, influenced by Bessey, was a leading twentieth-century taxonomist working at the New York Botanical Garden. There are several approaches to classifying organisms. The morphological approach examines physical characteristics of organisms, such as the number, shape, and location of appendages and organs. Powerful microscopes are often used to examine and characterize many smaller organisms by their morphology. The embryological approach to taxonomy takes into account the number and character of immature or juvenile stages in addition to adult morphology. For example, many insects go through larval stages during which their appearance, diet, movement, and habitat differ from those of adults. The ecological approach incorporates information such as the habitat, geographic range, diet, and breeding season in grouping and classifying organisms. The behavioral approach uses inherited behaviors such as song patterns and nest construction to distinguish between organisms, especially closely related species. The cytological approach includes the genetic makeup of the organism, from the number and size of chromosomes to the presence of individual genes. The biochemical approach takes into account the presence, location, and concentration of various compounds as well as the metabolism of an organism. Both the cytological and biochemical approaches have been more extensively used in the study of plants than in the study of animals. Taxonomic classification has numerous appli-

cations in the fields of agriculture, commerce, wildlife management, and public health. Taxonomy is one of the most basic components of biological study; only after reliably identifying organisms can one begin to explore the more complex properties and interactions among living organisms. Mollie Sue Oremland

Sources Cronquist, Arthur. An Integrated System of Classification of Flowering Plants. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Schuh, Randall T. Biological Systematics: Principles and Applications. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

TOBACCO Tobacco is derived from several species of the genus Nicotiana, a member of the nightshade family, Solonaceae. This family also includes potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and petunias. The name Nicotiana derives from Jean Nicot de Villemain, the ambassador of France to Portugal who sent tobacco back to the court in Paris in 1560. Precisely where and when tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana rustica) was domesticated is unknown, but it may have been cultivated in parts of the northern Andes of South America, where it was native, for as long as 5,000 years. It was valued for its narcotic effects, notably its capacity to induce hallucinogenic trances, and it was associated with ritual and religious ceremonies in ancient cultures such as the Maya. The use of tobacco later spread north to Central and North America and the Caribbean.

Tobacco in America By the time Europeans arrived in the Americas, tobacco use was widespread and routine, not restricted to special occasions. It was consumed in various ways, the most popular being chewing, nasal ingestion in powder or snuff form, and smoking the dried and ground tobacco in a pipe or wrapped in leaves. It is likely that dried tobacco leaves were offered to Columbus and his crew upon their landing on Guanahani Island

Section 4: Tobacco 251 (San Salvador) in 1492 but were discarded. However, Rodriguo de Jerez, Columbus’s companion voyager, learned the habit. Smoking in public on his return to Spain, he was imprisoned for three years by the Inquisition. Among the first written reports of tobacco in the New World were those from the French explorer Jacques Cartier, who sailed the St. Lawrence River between 1535 and 1536 and visited a number of Iroquois communities. He noted that tobacco—dried and stored, powdered before use, and enjoyed mainly by men—was coveted. Observers of other Native American communities noted that a small number of women also used the plant. There is also evidence that men generally planted and tended tobacco crops, whereas women managed all other crops. Early accounts indicate that tobacco was used frequently by most men in native communities

and that this use was considered beneficial for health. It must be assumed that many American Indians were addicted to nicotine and that many suffered the same diseases with which modern society is familiar. Many early settlers and sailors adopted the smoking habit, and, by the mid-sixteenth century, colonists in North and South America were using tobacco frequently. Sailors returning to Europe brought back a supply of tobacco and accoutrements for use. Cultivation of tobacco began in Santo Domingo in 1531 and in Brazil by 1548, in the latter case by Portuguese colonists for export to Europe. The tobacco plant was introduced to Spain and Portugal in the early sixteenth century, then France by 1559 and Italy by 1560, when it was introduced to Pope Pius IV by the papal nuncio to Lisbon. Both royalty and religious authorities across

Native to the Americas and the major cash crop of the mid-Atlantic colonies by the mid-eighteenth century, tobacco was promoted by explorers and physicians for its supposed medicinal effects. Highly labor-intensive, it also drove the demand for slaves. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

252 Section 4: Tobacco Europe thus became rapidly acquainted with tobacco. Its increasing cultural and economic significance is reflected in the publication in Paris of Instruction sur L’herbe petum in 1572. The first tobacco to be cultivated in Europe was in Portugal, where it had become a commercial crop by the mid-1500s.

Perceived Medicinal Qualities The perceived health benefits of tobacco were promoted by many early explorers and colonists as well as by European physicians, which contributed to its rapid spread. Nicot de Villemain was convinced of its medicinal properties, and Nicholas Monardes, a Spanish medic in Seville, included it among the materia medica in his 1571 Joyfull Newes out of the New Founde Worlde (translated into English by John Frampton in 1577). Although Monardes never visited the New World, he collected specimens and information on plants brought back from there. He promoted tobacco’s virtues and its capacity to alleviate numerous illnesses, including toothache, headache, gastric ailments, orthopedic problems, bubonic plague, and, ironically in light of modern medical knowledge, cancer. Tobacco may have reached England as early as the 1560s as goods imported by returning sailors. It was definitely introduced by Francis Drake in 1580 following his circumnavigation of the globe. Later that decade, Walter Raleigh and his company introduced it to the British court after the initial expedition to Virginia; smoking was widely adopted, possibly even by Queen Elizabeth I herself. Attempts to grow tobacco in England began in the late 1500s, but the major source was Virginia, where the first commercial crop in America was produced in 1612 due to the efforts of John Rolfe. The first book in English devoted to tobacco, by Anthony Chute, was titled Tabaco: The distinct and severall opinions of the late and best Phisitions that have written of the divers natures and qualities thereof, published in 1595. Tobacco was not universally appreciated or encouraged at that point. England’s King James I described tobacco smoking in 1604 as “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs and in the black, stinking fume therof nearest resembling

the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” James I battled with Virginia colonists and merchants for whom tobacco commerce was vital; however, he succumbed, following a brief embargo on tobacco imports, on the grounds that other European ports would benefit at the expense of London and that England would lose tax revenues. Tobacco use spread rapidly throughout Europe and beyond, despite objections from various quarters. Between 1560 and 1580, it spread to Holland, Germany, and Switzerland and then east to Poland and Turkey by the early 1580s, to Japan by 1580, and to Russia by the late 1600s. The momentum proved unstoppable; culture, misplaced medical promotion, commercial interests, and technological developments conspired to promote tobacco use worldwide. Cigarette production, originating in the early 1600s, began on a large scale in the late 1800s. It was only a few decades later that medical authorities began to correlate the occurrence of certain diseases with tobacco consumption. A.M. Mannion

Source Gately, Iain. La Diva Nicotina: The Story of How Tobacco Seduced the World. London: Simon and Schuster, 2001.

TUSKEGEE EXPERIMENT The Tuskegee experiment has become synonymous with the potential for ethical violations and racial abuse in science. In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service initiated a forty-year study of latestage syphilis known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, named after the acclaimed black college, the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where it was based. Set in the rural South, the study drew together 600 African American men (400 infected and 200 who did not have the disease) to record the course of untreated syphilis. Paternalistic notions and racist assumptions led scientists to consider the impoverished and uneducated black sharecroppers and wage laborers in Macon County, Alabama, to be ideal research sub-

Section 4: Waksman, Selman Abraham 253 jects. In the Jim Crow South, physicians believed that blacks were physiologically and psychologically different from whites, and by extension, socially and morally inferior. They accepted stereotypes that African Americans were morally lax, hypersexual, unlikely to seek or maintain medical treatment, and more impervious to pain than whites. Consequently, even though earlier studies of late-stage syphilis had been conducted, doctors proposed an investigation of the disease in blacks, because they assumed that it ran a different course in them and that African Americans would ultimately benefit from the findings. Over the next forty years, even as effective treatments such as penicillin became readily available, researchers continued to dispense placebos. Indeed, they went to great lengths to ensure that the afflicted would not receive treatment, circulating a list of participants to local physicians and, after the start of World War II, to draft boards. They never informed participants of the nature of the project, let alone asked their consent. Instead, the researchers sought to guarantee continued participation with small rewards, such as nursing visits, hot meals, and payment of burial costs. Meanwhile, the researchers furthered their own professional careers with the research, publishing at least a dozen articles during the four decades of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Although concerns were voiced in the late 1960s, the ongoing study did not evoke scientific protest nor attract public attention until 1972, when a Public Health Service employee, Peter Buxton, told a reporter about it. Reactions were immediate and passionate, resulting in scientific inquiries and congressional hearings. In 1973, the study was terminated and the surviving participants given proper medical treatment. In the years since, the U.S. federal government has endeavored to make amends for the harm associated with the study. In 1974, it paid participants or their heirs $10 million, and, in 1997, President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology on behalf of the nation for the harm committed in the name of government-sponsored science. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study continues to affect the delivery of medical care in the United States. On the one hand, it has resulted in the implementation of protocols designed to inform and

protect participants in biomedical research. On the other hand, it has fostered great mistrust of the medical establishment in the African American community, contributing to fears of ongoing exploitation. C. Richard King

Source Reverby, Susan M., ed. Tuskegee’s Truths: Rethinking the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

WA K S M A N , S E L M A N A B R A H A M (1888–1973) Selman Waksman discovered several antibiotics, the most notable being streptomycin. Its effectiveness against tuberculosis won him fame and the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Waksman was born in Pryluky, Ukraine, July 22, 1888. With the aid of private tutors, he received a diploma from the Fifth Gymnasium in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1910. Later that year he emigrated to the United States, where he enrolled at Rutgers University to study medicine. Jacob G. Lipman, dean of the college, persuaded him to study agriculture instead. After receiving his B.S. in agriculture in 1915 and an M.S. in 1916, he entered the University of California, Berkeley, for doctoral studies. While at Berkeley, he worked part-time at Cutter Laboratories, a manufacturer of serums and vaccines. Upon receipt of his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1918, Waksman, now engaged full-time at Cutter, supervised the manufacture of pharmaceuticals for the U.S. Army during World War I. In 1919, Rutgers appointed him lecturer in the College of Agriculture and microbiologist at the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES), the research arm of the college. He rose to associate professor in 1925, professor in 1930, chair of the Microbiology Department in 1940, and director of Rutgers’ Institute of Microbiology in 1949. Science at Rutgers, a land-grant university, focused on practical applications to benefit farmers. Waksman, however, charted his own agenda by using funds from the Adams

254 Section 4: Waksman, Selman Abraham Act, which Congress had passed in 1906, to free scientists at the experiment stations to do research without the demand of immediate utility to farmers. Waksman concentrated his research on actinomycates, a class of soil microbe. From this class, he isolated in 1940 actinomycin, which, like penicillin, was toxic to several strains of bacteria. In laboratory trials, Waksman discovered that actinomycin was toxic to animals as well as to bacteria, disqualifying it as treatment for bacterial infections in humans. In 1941, he coined the term “antibiotic” for any substance toxic to bacteria. Between 1942 and 1948, he discovered five additional antibiotics, among them streptomycin in 1943. Unlike actinomycin, streptomycin was safe for human use; like penicillin, it killed a range of bacteria. Yet streptomycin was no penicillin clone. It was the first antibiotic to prove effective against tuberculosis. In 1950, Albert Schatz, a former student, sued Waksman, charging that he had not given Schatz proper credit for his role in discovering streptomycin. Waksman, who had made Schatz co-author of several papers on streptomycin, insisted that the charge was groundless but reached a settlement with Schatz for a portion of the royalties from the sale of streptomycin. Waksman gave half of the remaining royalties to twenty former students and colleagues and the other half to endow the Waksman Institute for Microbiology at Rutgers. In addition to his research at Rutgers and the NJAES, Waksman in 1931 organized the department of marine bacteriology at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. There, he served as marine bacteriologist until 1942, when he became trustee of the institution. A prolific writer, he authored or co-authored eighteen books and more than 400 journal articles. Waksman held honorary degrees from universities in Greece, Spain, Germany, Israel, Italy, and Japan and belonged to scientific societies in the United States, Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada, Sweden, Italy, Japan, Israel, Spain, and Turkey. In 1950, France appointed him Commander of the French Legion d’Honneur. Waksman retired from Rutgers in 1958. He died in Hyannis, Massachusetts, on August 16, 1973. Christopher Cumo

Sources Amyes, Sebastian G.B. Magic Bullets, Lost Horizons: The Rise and Fall of Antibiotics. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2001. Simmons, John. Doctors and Discoveries: Lives That Created Today’s Medicine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Waksman, Selman A. My Life with Microbes. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954.

W AT S O N , J A M E S (1928– ) James Dewey Watson, an American biologist and zoologist, is best known as the co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Born on April 6, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, Watson achieved great success as a young scientist and went on to have a distinguished academic career, eventually serving as the head of the National Institutes of Health’s Human Genome Project. Always outspoken and often controversial, he remained a towering figure in biology during the last half of the twentieth century as a researcher and administrator. Watson was always intrigued by animals and science. As a child growing up in Chicago, he became an avid bird-watcher and an expert on the birds of his local region. The young scholar maintained an interest in ornithology until reading What Is Life? (1945) by the Austrian physicist Eriwn Schrödinger as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. Fascinated by genetics, Watson majored in zoology and received his B.Sc. in 1947. Three years later, while still in his early twenties, he received his Ph.D. in zoology from Indiana University at Bloomington, where he focused on virus research with microbiologist Salvador Luria. During a year of postdoctoral work in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he conducted research in biochemistry and microbiology, Watson met X-ray crystallographer Maurice Wilkins at a symposium in Naples and became interested in the technique and its application to the study of the molecular structure of proteins and DNA. Determined to investigate DNA via physical chemistry, Watson took a position at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University. At the

Section 4: Watson, James 255 Cavendish, Watson met the man with whom his name will be forever linked, the British biophysicist Francis Crick.

DNA Watson and Crick worked on a variety of projects before achieving success. Their early attempts at determining the structure of DNA failed, although they were able to determine the structure of the tobacco mosaic virus, a common research subject, in 1952. After numerous difficulties with the university administration, and aided by the X-ray crystallography skills of Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, a researcher at nearby King’s College, Watson and Crick built the first molecular model of DNA. The elegant simplicity of the double helix convinced the researchers they were correct and suggested the crucial mechanism for inheritance. In 1953, the two men published “A Structure of Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” in the British journal Nature, a paper often considered one of the most outstanding in the history of biology. Watson was only twenty-five at the time.

In 1953, American molecular biologist James D. Watson and British colleagues described the three-dimensional, double-helix structure of DNA, the substance in cells that controls heredity. Whole new avenues of genetic research were opened. (Andreas Feininger/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Celebrity and accolades followed their discovery. Watson accepted a position at Harvard University in 1955, where he taught for the next twenty-one years. In 1962, along with Crick and Wilkins, he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Watson also entered the literary world, publishing The Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965), a standard textbook for genetics. Watson’s book The Double Helix (1968) created a minor controversy. Well-written and engaging, The Double Helix downplayed the work of fellow researcher Franklin, leading critics to complain that Watson refused to acknowledge her influence because of her gender.

RNA For the next thirty years, Watson excelled as a scientist and administrator. In 1968, he took a position at Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory of Quantitative Biology in New York, where he continued his research into the synthesis of proteins by ribonucleic acid (RNA). As president of that institution beginning in 1994, he helped the laboratory become an internationally renowned center for genetics research. In 1989, the National Institutes of Health appointed Watson director of the Human Genome Project, the international initiative tasked with sequencing the billions of bases in the human genome. Watson resigned from that position in 1992, however, after a public disagreement with other administrators over the patenting of expressed gene sequences and a potential conflict of interest with his investments in biotech startup companies. A talented researcher, prolific author, and gifted administrator, Watson has been at the center of genetic research for more than fifty years. Among his many honors and awards, he was elected into both the American Academy of Arts and Science and the National Academy of Science and served as a consultant to the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee. Through it all, he has maintained a sense of irreverence and an abiding dedication to science, actively supporting genetically modified foods and eugenic engineering. He has gone so far as to suggest that improving human intelligence and physical attractiveness should be goals of genetic research. Truly one of the fathers of the

256 Section 4: Watson, James “genetic revolution,” Watson has earned a prominent place in the history of science. J.G. Whitesides

Sources McElheny, Victor K. Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2003. Watson, James D. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. New York: Scribner’s, 1998. ———. Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix. New York: Random House, 2002.

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT The term “wildlife” is often used to describe birds and mammals, but any nondomesticated organism—including plants, fungi, and insects— can be considered wildlife. Wildlife management focuses on maintaining populations of wildlife through preservation, hunting, relocation, and habitat manipulation. Until the middle of the twentieth century, wildlife management in the United States focused mostly on maintaining game populations for hunting. Modern wildlife management arose from game management in large part due to the work and writings of Aldo Leopold, a professor of forestry at the University of Wisconsin. Leopold’s 1933 book Game Management integrated numerous scientific fields into the study and management of wildlife populations. A Sand County Almanac, published posthumously in 1949, was highly influential in changing the popular view of wildlife and natural resources by viewing the role of humans not as users but as stewards of natural resources. In 1937, Congress passed the PittmanRobertson Act, which placed a tax on sales of arms and ammunition and directed that the funds be used for wildlife management and research. The Journal of Wildlife Management also appeared in 1937, and management increasingly focused on the biology and ecology of wild species, as opposed to simply maintaining populations for hunting and fishing. By the 1960s, the focus of wildlife management expanded to include nongame species

and their habitats, with an increased emphasis on conservation. Passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 was a landmark event in the management of wildlife, because it recognized not only the economic but also the ecological and aesthetic value of species and their habitats. The legislation provided wildlife managers with a tool to protect species of economic importance as well as the resources on which they depend. Wildlife managers depend heavily on science to make the most informed decisions about wildlife populations. Through preservation and manipulation of existing habitats and restoring previously altered habitats, managers seek to affect wildlife populations in some way. Management goals may include increasing the population size of endangered species, or decreasing the population size of nuisance species. Some wildlife populations are maintained for hunting or harvest, while others are monitored over time. Thus, some wildlife management is very hands-on in manipulating populations, while other efforts are designed to monitor, study, and provide appropriate conditions for species to increase, decrease, or remain the same. The greatest threat to wildlife today is the loss of habitat brought on by increasing demands on natural resources due to rapid human population growth. Thus, wildlife managers face a dual challenge: meeting the needs of wildlife and meeting the need of a society that places increasing demands on limited natural resources. Wildlife managers work largely in government agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but also in private agencies or educational institutions, often collaborating to learn more about the complex relationships among wildlife, humans, and natural resources. Ron Davis

Sources Bolen, Eric G., and William L. Robinson. Wildlife Ecology and Management. 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. Leopold, Aldo. Game Management. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1933. ———. A Sand County Almanac. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1949.

Section 4: Wilson, Edward O. 257

WILSON, ALEXANDER (1766–1813) Alexander Wilson, a preeminent naturalist of his time and one of the founders of American ornithology, was born in Paisley, Scotland, on July 6, 1766. His brief education at a country grammar school provided him with the tools to become a self-taught poet, artist, and naturalist. He worked as a weaver and a peddler, but it was through writing poetry that he found both satisfaction and trouble. At the age of twenty-eight, he spent time in jail for what has been interpreted as political persecution for having written a poem that criticized manufacturers and defended the rights of laborers. Wilson left Scotland and arrived in the United States in 1794. He settled near Philadelphia and taught school until he took a position as an editor of the Rees Encyclopedia. In 1803, Wilson proposed a comprehensive text on the birds of the United States, and, with the assistance and encouragement of naturalist William Bartram, he began work on the classic American Ornithology; or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States (1808–1814). Because he received limited financial support for the project, Wilson himself sold subscriptions, gathered data, and oversaw publication. From 1807 until his death in 1813, he traveled, often on foot, throughout the United States, collecting specimens, composing illustrations, and gathering information about the birds to be included in this first major ornithology of the United States. Published by Bradford and Inskeep of Philadelphia, the folio-size, eight-volume American Ornithology includes illustrations of 268 birds, with descriptions of twenty-six previously unidentified species. Each of the volumes contains up to nine hand-colored, copper plate engravings. Wilson recorded the physical appearance of every bird, as well as such behaviors as nesting and eating habits; his sense of poetry is evident throughout the work, especially in the description of the birds’ calls. Wilson believed that American Ornithology served not only to advance ornithological sci-

ence but, more importantly, to celebrate the natural richness of the new nation. As he observed in an 1807 prospectus, the only works to date that included information about American birds were written by Europeans. Wilson sought to encourage the study of American natural history as an “elegant and rational amusement” that would help to elevate the citizens of his adopted country. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1813. Wilson died of dysentery in Philadelphia on August 23, 1813. The final volume of the American Ornithology was completed by George Ord and published posthumously. Elizabeth Fairhead

Sources Cantwell, Robert. Alexander Wilson: Naturalist and Pioneer. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1961. Hunter, Clark. The Life and Letters of Alexander Wilson. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1983.

W I L S O N , E D WA R D O. (1929– ) The entomologist and sociobiologist Edward Osborne Wilson has been one of the most prominent and controversial scientists in America since the mid-twentieth century. With a capacity to synthesize research from multiple fields of study, Wilson has exerted an influence beyond entomology and evolutionary biology to anthropology, psychology, and sociology. Through his research on ant societies, he not only contributed to the discovery of how ants communicate through pheromones, but he also pioneered the field of social behavior, as well as adding to contemporary theories of complexity within natural systems. Along with Charles Lumsden, Wilson developed the concept of “gene-culture co-evolution,” in an attempt to seek out biological roots of culture. Wilson is most famous for his 1975 publication Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, in which he attempted to explain social behavior in a wide range of animals, from ants to humans, by suggesting relationships between genes and culture. His thesis set off a firestorm of controversy that

258 Section 4: Wilson, Edward O.

Harvard entomologist Edward O. Wilson, one of the world’s leading experts on ants, did groundbreaking research on social organization in insects and the biological basis of social behavior in general—the field of sociobiology. (Hugh Patrick Brown/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

spread from the halls of academia to the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines. Since the publication of Sociobiology, Wilson has been accused of racism and misogyny and identified as a proponent of eugenics; his work has been interpreted as an argument for ideas of genetic superiority among some human groups. Critics such as paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and biologist Richard Lewontin identified sociobiology as a form of biological determinism that served only to provide a sci-

entific basis for the socioeconomic status quo, the privileges of ruling elites, and the continuation of authoritarian political systems. Wilson’s argument that the preservation of the gene is the focus of evolution, rather than the preservation of the individual, while controversial, has been taken up in greater detail by other evolutionary biologists. These include Richard Dawkins, whose book The Selfish Gene extends Wilson’s theory in similarly controversial fashion. A longtime proponent of conservation, Wilson is credited with coining the term “biodiversity,” which has become a vital concept in an era of rapid ecological destruction and mass extinction. In his widely influential book The Diversity of Life (1992), Wilson argued that humans have a responsibility to conserve ecosystems, especially in areas, such as the Amazon rain forest, that contain a large percentage of the world’s species, despite making up a small percentage of the globe. Wilson has been an activist on these matters, working with groups such as Conservation International, which purchases logging rights in biodiverse hotspots to prevent deforestation. Wilson also has been a sharp critic of the mass consumerism of Western economies, which places an enormous burden on the natural environment and on poorer nations. For Wilson, the twin tasks facing humanity are to improve the economic standing of the world’s majority while saving as much of the planet as possible, tasks that require concessions from the wealthier countries. Among his recommendations for ecological survival are the widespread education of women, more efficient use of water, vegetarianism, smaller cars, and, perhaps most controversially, the large-scale use of genetically modified organisms. Wilson’s numerous scientific awards include the prestigious National Medal of Science and the Crawford Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His popular writings also have garnered acclaim: Wilson won Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature (1978) and The Ants (1990), with Bert Holldobler. Jeff Shantz

Sources McKie, Robin, “The Ant King’s Latest Mission,” The Observer, October 1, 2006.

Section 4: Wistar, Caspar 259 Wilson, Edward O. The Diversity of Life. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. ———. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

W I S TA R , C A S PA R (1761–1818) The American physician and educator Caspar Wistar, best known for compiling the collection of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia, was born on September 13, 1761, the fifth of eight children. Raised by Quaker parents, he developed a lifelong empathy for the problems of humanity. As a conscientious objector at the age of sixteen, he refused to engage in combat at the Battle of Germantown during the American Revolution, participating instead by helping care for the wounded. As a result of his personal philosophy and wartime experience, Wistar decided to study medicine. Initially, he studied under John Redman, assisted in the practice of another physician, and attended lectures given by Benjamin Rush. After receiving a Bachelor of Medicine degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1782, he was encouraged to go abroad to complete his medical training. He first went to London, where he studied under the most famous anatomist of the time, John Hunter. From there, Wistar traveled to Dublin, then Scotland, where his prodigious reputation earned him both the presidency of the Royal Medical Society and the Edinburgh Natural History Society. When he returned to America in 1787, family connections facilitated his acceptance into the social and medical communities. He was invited to assist his preceptor, Dr. John Jones, in surgery but soon was performing the cutting himself because of Jones’s failing eyesight. Wistar did not continue on the path of surgery, however, preferring clinical medicine and pharmacy. A man of wide-ranging interests, Wistar was elected in 1787 to the American Philosophical Society—a multidisciplinary organization for the purpose of promoting scholarship—and served as its president from 1815 to his death.

He was later appointed physician to the Philadelphia Dispensary and succeeded Benjamin Rush as professor of chemistry at the College of Philadelphia. He retained a close long-term relationship with Rush until the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, when his endorsement of a nonconventional treatment alienated Rush for the rest of his career. In 1792, while he was serving as adjunct professor of anatomy, surgery, and midwifery at the University of Pennsylvania, that institution was united with the rival College of Philadelphia. As a result of the merger, anatomy separated from surgery and midwifery, and, in 1808, Wistar succeeded his mentor, William Shippin, as professor of anatomy. He remained in that position until his death on January 22, 1818. Wistar is credited with writing the first American text on anatomy—A System of Anatomy for the Use of Students of Medicine (2 volumes, 1811– 1814)—and is reported to have been an excellent teacher. According to one of his most famous pupils, Charles Caldwell, he became “one of the most fluent, self-possessed, and instructive lecturers our country has produced.” Like the great sixteenth-century Flemish anatomist Vesalius, Wistar created a variety of teaching aides to help his students learn and remember the parts and systems of the human body. Using a wood carver to create largerthan-life models of anatomical structures, he compiled a collection that formed the basis of the Wistar Institute, founded (and named in his honor) in 1892 by his great-nephew, Isaac J. Wistar. In addition to the institute, Caspar Wistar’s legacy is memorialized in the field of natural science: Botanist Thomas Nuttall named the flower genus Wisteria after him because of its unobtrusive grace, beauty of foliage, and subtle fragrance. Lana Thompson

Sources Davis, Nancy M. Caspar Wistar: Physician, anatomist and teacher. Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia Chapter. http://www.lewis-clark.org. Middleton, William Shainline. “Caspar Wistar, Junior.” In Annals of Medical History, vol. 4. New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1922.

260 Section 4: Woodrow, James

W O O D R O W, J A M E S (1828–1907) James Woodrow, an uncle of Woodrow Wilson, was a Presbyterian minister and professor of physics and chemistry who in the 1880s became embroiled in the controversy over the theory of evolution. Dismissed from the Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina for his defense of Darwinism, he continued to wrestle with the question of how to reconcile the teachings of Christian scripture with the findings of nineteenth-century science.

Career A native of Georgia, Woodrow attended Heidelberg University in Germany and graduated summa cum laude superato in 1856. He was offered a professorship there, but his love for the American South and for his church led him back to Georgia, where he served as professor of natural science at Oglethorpe University. He served as editor of the Southern Presbyterian newspaper and the Southern Presbyterian Review, a respected academic journal. In 1860, he was appointed to the faculty of Columbia Theological Seminary, the first occupant of the first endowed chair at an American theological seminary dedicated to the relationship between natural and divine revelation. In his inaugural address, Woodrow stated that the relationship between natural science and revelation could be construed in three ways: (1) natural theology could be used to demonstrate God’s existence; (2) an analogy could be demonstrated between natural theology and revelation in ways other than natural theology; and (3) harmony between these two areas, where such had been denied or controverted, could be shown. During the U.S. Civil War, Woodrow worked on behalf of the Confederacy and the Presbyterian Church.

Controversy After the war, the impact of Darwinism was felt throughout the church community, and

Woodrow, because of his position, was expected to speak out on the subject. He declined to take a public position for several years, but, in 1883, the seminary board formally requested that he reveal his views in full. In spring 1884, Woodrow declared that, while he was at first skeptical of evolution, he had since come to believe that the theory was sound. He argued that the language of Genesis is not explicit and may admit of different interpretations. In his view, for example, the Bible does not specify that the “dust” out of which Adam was made was nonorganic; rather, the term refers only to preexisting material. Woodrow believed that Adam probably evolved from lower primates but that his soul was immediately created by God. He also contended, however, because of the account of Eve’s creation in Genesis 2, that her body was made directly from Adam’s rib. Woodrow’s public pronouncement sparked profound controversy within the Southern Presbyterian Church. The church’s General Assembly declared evolution incompatible with scripture, and, in 1886, an ecclesiastical court found Woodrow guilty of defending heretical teachings. He was dismissed from his professorship but never defrocked; he continued preaching and editing the Southern Presbyterian. Woodrow’s views on evolution reflected his struggle between belief in scriptural truth and acceptance of natural revelation as a source of truth. Southern Presbyterian traditionalists such as Robert Lewis Dabney and John Lafayette Girardeau opposed him not only for bad scriptural interpretation but also for bad science—his acceptance of philosophical “sensualism,” in which truth and values are said to derive from the five senses. Woodrow had his supporters as well, however, and acceptance of evolution eventually triumphed in the Southern Presbyterian Church. Frank J. Smith

Sources Dabney, Robert Lewis. The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century Considered. 1875. Reprint ed., Dallas: Naphtali, 2003. Elder, Fred Kingsley. Woodrow: Apostle of Freedom. Two Harbors, MN: Bunchberry, 1994.

Section 4: Zoology 261

W R I G H T , C H AU N C E Y (1830–1875) Chauncey Wright, an early proponent of both pragmatism and Darwinism, was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on September 20, 1830. Although his parents were conventional in their religious practices, Wright displayed an independence that disconcerted his teachers, refusing to kneel for morning prayers in school. His high school science teacher, David S. Sheldon, encouraged Wright to read Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of Creation (1844), giving Wright his introduction to the subject of evolution. Wright matriculated at Harvard College in 1848, where his interest in philosophy led him to study the British empiricists. He was a student of the mathematician Benjamin Peirce, and he helped to compile the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac (a compilation of the positions of the sun, moon, and planets for each day of the year). Perhaps through Peirce’s influence, Wright, after graduating from Harvard in 1852, joined the Almanac staff as a computer of the positions of the sun, moon, and planets. By simplifying these computations, he was able to condense twelve months’ work into three, devoting the remaining nine to philosophy. In June 1856, Wright convened in his Cambridge home the first gathering of what would become known as the Metaphysical Club. By the 1870s, its members included the pragmatist philosopher and mathematician Charles Sanders Peirce, psychologist and philosopher William James, and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Their meetings were forums for the discussion of British empiricism, within whose tradition Wright mastered the works of William Hamilton, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer. After 1859, Spencer and Wright both advocated Darwinism, although Wright criticized Spencer for elevating evolution to the certainty of a physical law. Wright thought that Spencer misunderstood the life sciences by assuming the operation of laws in the fashion of the physical sciences. At Harvard, the partisans of Darwinism aligned with botanist Asa Gray and the opponents with zoologist Louis Agassiz. Wright was

nearer Gray than Agassiz, though he did not try, as Gray did, to reconcile evolution with Christianity. Wright preferred that science in general and evolution in particular exclude religious and metaphysical speculation. In contrast to British physicist William Thomson, Wright defended both evolution and the mechanism of natural selection. Unlike British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, he believed human consciousness had arisen by natural selection. In 1860, Wright joined the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, editing its proceedings and between 1863 and 1870 serving as secretary. He lectured at Harvard on psychology in 1870 and on mathematical physics in 1874. Although he took pleasure in informal discussions with small groups of students, he was a poor lecturer. Students complained that he was boring and difficult to follow. Insufficient exercise and sleep, bouts of depression and alcoholism, and irregular hours of work undermined his health. In 1869, Wright contracted whooping cough. He suffered the first of two strokes on September 11, 1875, and died the next day at his home in Cambridge. Christopher Cumo

Sources Madden, Edward H. Chauncey Wright. New York: Washington Square, 1964. ———. Chauncey Wright and the Foundations of Pragmatism. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963. Menard, Louis. The Metaphysical Club. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Z O O LO G Y Zoology (the word comes from the Greek zoion, meaning “animal”) is the scientific study of biology that relates to animals, including their classification, morphology, physiology, genetics, development, behavior, and ecology. The field includes research on mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, and fish. A primary goal is to understand how animals live, reproduce, and die in their respective environments. The many branches of zoology, devoted to different animal groups and their characteristics, include

262 Section 4: Zoology ethology (the study of animal behavior), herpetology (the study of reptiles), ichthyology (the study of fish), ornithology (the study of birds), and entomology (the study of insects). Zoology as a scientific discipline is divided into two major categories, corresponding to two major categories of animal life: vertebrate and invertebrate. Vertebrates include roughly 43,000 species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish that have a cartilaginous rod in their bodies called a notochord, spinal cord, or backbone. Invertebrates do not have a backbone; they are either soft-bodied or have an external skeleton. Invertebrates, which make up 97 percent of all animal species, range in size from large sea clams to very small bacteria. The eighteenth-century Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus helped define the field of zoology, creating a classification system and binomial nomenclature to categorize animal life according to physical and behavioral characteristics. His hierarchical ranking assigned species first to a “kingdom” (animal or plant) and then a “phylum,” followed by “class,” “order,” “family,” “genus,” and “species.” Linnaeus, who classified 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants, explained the system in Systema Naturae, first published in 1735 and expanded in subsequent editions. The next great landmark in the history of zoology was the theory of natural selection, proposed by the nineteenth-century British naturalist Charles Darwin. His groundbreaking book On the Origin of Species (1859) united elements of morphology and physiology to explain that all organic creatures had evolved naturally, over very long periods of time. The study of zoology expanded rapidly in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Universities established advanced research facilities, and others were run by state and federal government offices, generally fish and wildlife departments. A number of Americans made important contributions to the field. Abbott Thayer, a naturalist who lived much of his life in rural Dublin, New Hampshire, advanced the study of animals with his 1909 book Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom. Thayer argued that an animal’s color provides a disguise from other creatures, often predators, and that the development of such coloration is a highly complex example of evolution.

Thomas Hunt Morgan, one of the founders of the field of genetics, studied the mutations of the fruit fly in his lab at Columbia University in New York City. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for his research on the function of chromosomes in hereditary transmission. Archie Carr, a professor of zoology at the University of Florida, was a world authority on the behavior of sea turtles. His book So Excellent a Fishe (1967) provided an authoritative account of sea turtles in a hitherto little known marine environment. Eugenie Clark, a researcher at the University of Maryland, pioneered the methods of studying sharks by going into their native habitats. She also used discreet cameras to peer into the caves of the rarely seen convict fish. Her book The Desert Beneath the Sea (1991) explains how scientists explore the natural world and study the behavior of species in their natural environments with minimal intrusion and disturbance—a hallmark of contemporary zoological observation. Thousands of scientists now conduct zoological research throughout the world, representing universities, government entities, private foundations, and advocacy organizations. The profession has taken on increased importance in the twenty-first century, as many researchers have undertaken rigorous study of the impact of climate change on animal species and how these species may, or may not, cope in modified environmental conditions. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Andrewartha, H.G. Introduction to the Study of Animal Populations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971. Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Hegner, Robert. An Introduction to Zoology. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Hickman, Cleveland. Integrated Principles of Zoology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

ZOOS A “zoo,” short for “zoological park,” is any collection of animals in captivity that is viewable by the public. Most zoos are large institutions consisting of enclosures for many types of animals, which

Section 4: Zoos 263 can be viewed by visitors. The goals of zoos include entertainment, education, conservation, and the advancement of science. Zoo exhibits serve to expose the public to animals, habitats, and ecological information from all over the world. Animals have been privately collected for centuries. There are records of giraffe and cheetah collections in Egypt from 1400 B.C.E., and collections of deer, antelope, and pheasants in China from 1000 B.C.E. It was not until the late 1800s, however, that zoological gardens and parks became accessible to the public. The first zoo in the United States opened in Philadelphia in 1874, followed by the Cincinnati Zoo in 1875. By 1900, zoos could be found in such other major cities as Atlanta, Washington, Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Francisco, Buffalo, Denver, and New York. By 1940, there were zoos in more than 100 American communities. Most American zoos were founded in cooperation with public parks departments. Early zoos did not charge admission fees and were

dependent upon municipal funds to operate. There was little cooperation or sharing of knowledge between the early zoos, as they competed with one another to collect more animals and rare species. Still, zoos were viewed as symbols of civic pride and grew in popularity. In the 1960s, increasing public awareness of environmental issues began to affect public attitudes toward zoos, and zoos began to change in response to public pressure. Zookeepers were increasingly college-educated and more experienced in scientific research, and more women joined the zookeeping profession. Some zoos began charging admissions fees. In 1971, the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums (now the American Zoo and Aquarium Association) separated from its prior association with parks and recreation and established an accreditation program for members. With the environmental movement came pressure to treat animals more humanely and to

At the San Diego Zoo—one of the most progressive anywhere—a conservationist feeds an orphaned baby Indian rhinoceros. Conservation programs, species preservation, and natural habitats for all animals are hallmarks of the world’s leading zoos. (Ken Bohn/San Diego Zoo via Getty Images)

264 Section 4: Zoos house them in more natural surroundings. Whereas cages and pits in early zoos seemed dungeon-like—some consisted only of tiled floors and steel bars—zoo exhibits and enclosures began to grow in size and to more closely resemble animals’ natural habitats. The design and layout of modern zoos also are based on the relationships between groups of animals, enhancing the educational value of a zoo trip. Information for zoo visitors is more extensive than it was in the past, including facts about the geographic range, diet, life span, habitat, and behavior of the animals. Another important change in American zoos in the mid-twentieth century was the introduction of captive breeding programs, which help sustain captive populations of threatened and endangered species. The impact on zoo operations was significant. Wild animals had become more expensive and difficult to import, and endangered species legislation passed by the U.S. Congress between 1966 and 1973 made the collection or import of many wild animals illegal. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association established what were called Species Survival Plans, or cooperative breeding programs among zoos. Captive breeding programs help some species survive, and they contribute to the conservation of exotic species. Zoos also benefit from the programs by having more animals to display, and baby animals are always great attractants for visitors.

In addition to becoming more prominent agents of education and conservation, today’s zoos play a greater role in the support and advancement of scientific research. Through the study of captive animals, knowledge about the diet, behavior, and morphology of many bird, mammal, and reptile species has grown significantly. Routine veterinary observation and care allows for the study of animal health and diseases. Many zoos specialize in a group of animals, such as the snow leopard community at the Bronx Zoo in New York, or in a particular field, such as scientific research at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Whatever the concentration, America’s many zoos remain highly popular attractions that promote the study and dissemination of information about the animals of the world. Mollie Sue Oremland

Sources Hahn, Emily. Animal Gardens. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967. Hanson, Elizabeth. Animal Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Hediger, Heini. Wild Animals in Captivity. New York: Dover, 1964. Livingston, Bernard. Zoo: Animals, People, Places. New York: Arbor House, 1974.

DOCUMENTS John Josselyn’s Description of Seventeenth-Century Fauna John Josselyn’s chapter on “Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, and Plants of that Country” in his 1672 account New-Englands Rarities Discovered contains fascinating zoological descriptions that are a mixture of fact and fancy. The following are excerpts of “The Pond Frog,” “The Rattle Snake,” and “A Bug.” The Pond Frog, which chirp in the Spring like Sparows, and croke like Toads in Autumn: Some of these when they set upon their breech are a Foot high; the Indians will tell you, that up in the Country there are Pond Frogs as big as a Child of a year old. The Rattle Snake, who poisons with a Vapour that comes thorough two crooked Fangs in their Mouth; the hollow of these Fangs are as black as Ink: the Indians, when weary with travelling, will take them up with their bare hands, laying hold with one hand behind their Head, with the other taking hold of their Tail, and with their teeth tear off the Skin of their Backs, and feed upon them alive; which they say refresheth them. There is a certain kind of Bug like a Beetle, but of a glistering brass colour, with four strong Tinsel Wings; their Bodies are full of Corruption or white Matter like a Maggot; being dead, and kept a while, they will stench odiously; they beat the Humming Birds from the Flowers. Source: John Josselyn, New-Englands Rarities Discovered (London: Widdowes, 1672).

John Gyles’s Description of the Maine Beaver While a captive of the Abenaki Indians in Maine along the Penobscot and St. John’s rivers during the late 1600s, John Gyles made the following observations about the beaver. The beaver has a very thick, strong neck; his fore teeth, which are two in the upper and two

in the under jaw, are concave and sharp like a carpenter ’s gouge. Their side teeth are like a sheep’s, for they chew the cud. Their legs are short, the claws something longer than in other creatures. The nails on the toes of their hind feet are flat like an ape’s but joined together by a membrane, as those of the water-fowl, their tails broad and flat like the broad end of a paddle. Near their tails they have four bottles, two of which contain oil, the others gum; the necks of these meet in one common orifice; the latter of these contain the proper castorum, and not the testicles, as some have fancied, for they are distinct and separate from these, in the males only; whereas the castorum and oil bottles are common to male and female. With this oil and gum they preen themselves; so that when they come out of the water it runs off them, as it does from a fowl. They have four teats, which are on their breasts, so that they hug up their young and suckle them, as women do their Infants. They have generally two, and sometimes four in a litter. I have seen seven or five in the matrix, but the Indians think it a strange thing to find so many in a Litter; and they assert, that when it so happens the dam kills all but four. They are the most laborious creatures that I have met with. I have known them to build dams across a river, thirty or forty perches wide; with wood and mud, so as to flow many acres of land. In the deepest part of a pond so raised, they build their houses, round, in the figure of an Indian wigwam, eight or ten feet high, and six or eight in diameter on the floor, which is made descending to the water, the parts near the centre about four, and near the circumference between ten and twenty inches above the water. These floors are covered with strippings of wood, like shavings. On these they sleep with their tails in the water; and if the freshets rise, they have the advantage of rising on their floor to the highest part. They feed on the leaves and bark of trees, and pond lily roots. In the fall of the year they lay in their provisions for the approaching winter; cutting down trees great and small. With one end in their mouths they drag their

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266 Section 4: Documents branches near to their house, and sink many cords of it. (They will cut down trees of a fathom in circumference.) They have doors to go down to the wood under the ice. And in case the freshets rise, break down and carry off their store of wood, they often starve. They have a note for conversing, calling and warning each other when at work or feeding; and while they are at labor they keep out a guard, who upon the first approach of an enemy so strikes the water with his tail that he may be heard half a mile. This so alarms the rest that they are all silent, quit their labor, and are to be seen no more for that time. And if the male or female die, the surviving seeks a mate, and conducts him or her to their house, and carry on affairs as above. Source: John Gyles, Memoirs of Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, &c. in the Captivity of John Gyles, Esq., Commander of the Garrison on St. George’s River (Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1736).

Zebulon Pike’s Description of the Prairie Dog Captain Zebulon Pike, on his 1806 journey across Kansas, described the flora and fauna of the wilderness landscape. Among his writings was one of the first in-depth descriptions of the prairie dog, which the Indians called “wishtonwish,” after their call. The sites of their towns are generally on the brow of a hill, near some creek or pond, in order to be convenient to water, and that the high ground which they inhabit may not be subject to inundation. Their residence, being under ground, is burrowed out, and the earth, which answers the double purpose of keeping out the water and affording an elevated place in wet seasons to repose on, and to give them a further and more distinct view of the country. Their holes descend in a spiral form; therefore I could never ascertain their depth; but I once had 140 kettles of water poured into one of them in order to drive out the occupant, without effect. In the circuit of the villages they clear off all the grass, and leave the earth bare of vegetation; but whether it is from an instinct they possess inducing them to keep the ground thus cleared or whether they make use of the herbage as food, I

cannot pretend to determine. The latter opinion I think entitled to a preference, as their teeth designate them to be of the graminivorous species, and I know of no other substance which is produced in the vicinity of their positions on which they could subsist; and they never extend their excursions more than half a mile from the burrows. They are of a dark brown color, except their bellies, which are white. Their tails are not so long as those of our gray squirrels, but are shaped precisely like theirs; their teeth, head, nails, and body are the perfect squirrel, except that they are generally fatter than that animal. Their villages sometimes extend over two and three miles square, in which there must be innumerable hosts of them, as there is generally a burrow every ten steps in which there are two or more, and you see new ones partly excavated on all the borders of the town. We killed great numbers of them with our rifles and found them excellent meat, after they were exposed a night or two to the frost, by which means the rankness acquired by their subterraneous dwelling is corrected. As you approach their towns, you are saluted on all sides by the cry of “wishtonwish,” from which they derived their name with the Indians, uttered in a shrill and piercing manner. You then observe them all retreating to the entrance of their burrows, where they post themselves, and regard every, even the slightest, movement that you make. It requires a very nice shot with a rifle to kill them, as they must be killed dead, for as long as life exists they continue to work into their cells. It is extremely dangerous to pass through their towns, as they abound with rattlesnakes, both of the yellow and black species; and strange as it may appear, I have seen the wishtonwish, the rattlesnake, the horn frog, with which the prairie abounds (termed by the Spaniards the cammelion [chameleon], from their taking no visible sustenance), and a land-tortoise, all take refuge in the same hole. I do not pretend to assert that it was their common place of resort; but I have witnessed the above facts more than in one instance. Source: Zebulon Pike, “Arkansaw Journal,” in The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, vol. II (New York: F.P. Harper, 1895).

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John Kirk Townsend’s Description of the Vulture John Kirk Townsend was an aspiring ornithologist when he accompanied Thomas Nuttall on a journey across America as part of the Nathaniel Wyeth expedition of 1834. In 1839, Townsend published his Ornithology of the United States of North America, from which the following excerpt is taken.

Black Vulture or Carrion Crow This species is more common in the Southern States. . . . It feeds indiscriminately upon fresh or putrid meat, and not infrequently attacks sick or wearied animals, young chickens, calves, &c. In the southern cities it may be constantly seen perched upon the houses and chimney tops, quietly waiting the appearance of its most appropriate food, which is often deposited in the streets, and attends with great regularity the shambles of the butchers, hopping about them like chickens, and picking up the fragments of meat and offal which are cast away. The mode of feeding of the Vulture is often not a little disgusting. A great number, sometimes even a hundred or more, collect around a carcass, and commence tugging and tearing at the tough and distended skin until a lodgment is effected; and when the aperture is widened sufficiently, the whole filthy crowd dart pell mell into the vile and festering intestines, tearing them in pieces, hissing and blowing the filth from their nostrils, and scrambling and fighting for precedence in the horrible banquet. So great is the number of Vultures, that in a very short time the carcass of a horse or cow is completely stripped of every particle of its flesh, and the denuded skeleton is left to bleach in the sun and to be torn in pieces by half savage dogs, which regularly watch and follow the feathered marauders. After the feast, each Vulture mounts to the limb of some dead tree in the neighbourhood, and there they may be seen by scores, sitting listlessly, their wings open and drooping, and their black, skinny heads depressed between their shoulders. The flight of this species is not so easy and graceful

as that of the Turkey Buzzard. It requires to hop a few times before rising from the earth, and, when in the air, flaps its wings frequently to maintain the sailing motion which the Turkey Buzzard performs with so much ease. During a visit to Chili [Chile], two years since, I found the Condors (Cathartes gryphus) numerous. They frequently approached the purlieus of the town of Valparaiso, and were commonly seen sailing over the quebrados, or vallies, within a mile of it. I made particular inquiry of the natives relative to the habits of this bird, and, with very few exceptions, all agreed that it was guided to his food by its power of vision, and not by its sense of smell. They did not assert that it possessed no olfactory power, but that the ocular sense was in much greater perfection. The Black Vulture, according to Mr. Audubon, never lays more than two eggs, which are deposited in the bottom of a prostrate log, in the excavation of a bank of earth, or on the bare ground. They are about three inches in length, rather pointed at the smaller end, with a pure white ground, marked towards the greater end with large irregular dashes of black and dark brown. Source: John Kirk Townsend, Ornithology of the United States of North America (Philadelphia: Chevalier, 1839).

John Holbrook’s Description of the Coluber Constrictor John Edwards Holbrook was a professor at the Medical College of South Carolina when he wrote his multivolume study of American reptiles. The following excerpt is taken from North American Herpetology: or, A Description of the Reptiles Living in the United States, published from 1836 to 1840. CHARACTERS. Head oval, long; snout prolonged and rather pointed; body and tail long and slender; colour above, uniform bluish-back; abdomen slate-colour, tinged with blue; chin and throat silvery-white, with occasional black spots. DESCRIPTION. The head is elongated, oval, with the snout somewhat prolonged and rather pointed; the vertical plate is pentagonal, broader and rounded in front, narrower and with an obtuse

268 Section 4: Documents angle behind; the superior orbital plates are long, very large, projecting, and quadrilateral in form, rather larger posteriorly; the occipitals are also very large, irregularly pentagonal, broadest before, with three articulating facets for joining with the vertical, superior, and post-orbital plates; the frontals are pentagonal, with their internal borders broadest, and narrower externally, where they pass in behind the nasal plates; the anterior frontals are subround; the rostra is rather elongated and pointed anteriorly, and is very regularly triangular, with its basis down and its apex upwards; there are two nasal plates, of which the anterior is quadrilateral and slightly concave behind; the posterior is nearly of the same size and form, but more semi-lunated or crescentic on its anterior margin, to accommodate the nostril. . . . The nostrils are lateral, very large and near the snout. The eyes are large and bright; the pupil black, and the iris of the darkest grey. The neck is contracted. The body is very long, slender, and covered with large smooth hexagonal scales above, and with broad plates below. The tail is equally long and slender, and at times may be used as a prehensile instrument. COLOUR. The whole superior surface of the Coluber constrictor is of beautiful bluish-black; the abdomen and tail are bluish-slate; while the chin and throat are pure silvery-white, sometimes marked with a few black spots. DIMENSIONS. Length of head, 1 inch 8 lines; length of body, 47 inches; length of tail, 16 inches; total length, 5 feet 3 inches and 8 lines. In the specimen above described there were 176 broad abdominal plates, with a double one before the vent, and 94 scales under the tail. These snakes are said at times far to exceed these dimensions; the longest I have ever seen was 6 feet 1 inch. HABITS. The Coluber constrictor is an extremely active snake, climbing with facility, and running with great rapidity; whence it is not uncommonly called the “Racer.” The Black Snake frequents shady places, covered with thick shrubs, on the margins of streams or ponds of water; though it often leaves these coverts and seeks the borders of old fields, or rocks, or even

the way-side, to bask in the sun. It feeds on mice, toads, &c., or on small birds; and, as it is an excellent climber, is frequently seen on trees in search of their nests. It is a bold and daring serpent, enters barns and out-houses without fear, and has been known to destroy young chickens. It is said to suffocate its prey, like the Boa constrictor, in its folds, which is at least doubtful; as I have often seen it takes its prey both in the native state and in confinement, which it always did by seizing it with the mouth. In the breeding season is extremely irascible, and will frequently attack persons passing at a distance of several steps; its tail then quivers with rage, making a quick vibratory motion, which in forests and among dry leaves sounds not unlike the Rattlesnake; it now elevates the head one or two feet from the ground, and darts upon its adversary; luckily its bite is harmless, and not more painful than the scratch of a pin. . . . The same power of charming its prey has been attributed to the Black as to the Rattlesnake, and with less appearance of reason; for this is a nimble animal, and can pursue his prey, while the Rattlesnake must lie in wait. It is remarkable that the birds most commonly found “charmed,” according to Dr. [Benjamin Smith] Barton, are the Cat Bird (Turdus carolinensis), or Red Winged Black Bird (Icterus phoeniceus). These birds choose thick and shady places on the margins of streams for their residence, and generally build their nests on shrubs, as the alder &c.; the latter bird not infrequently takes the precaution of select such bushes as are on small islands, or such as have their roots surrounded by water, and thus her home is more secure. Now the Black Snake chooses precisely the same localities, knowing, probably, the haunts of its prey. The snake begins the war by besieging the nest; the old bird, aware of its intention, attacks it with fluttering and uncertain motions, accompanied by a plaintive cry of distress, and is then said to be “charmed.” The snake is at last either driven off, or it succeeds in its enterprise, captures the young, and not infrequently the old bird is killed in the struggle and devoured; though the birds most commonly found in the stomach of the Black Snake are young and frequently unfledged. Some-

Section 4: Documents 269 times the old bird by her cries calls in the assistance of her neighbours to drive away the aggressor: I have seen more than a dozen birds thus engaged with a large Black Snake that had probably just committed some depredation but was now quietly stretched on a rock, basking in the sun; and it was not a little singular that birds of very different genera, and those seldom seen

together, all united in this warfare against a common enemy, and finally compelled it to seek shelter among some low thick shrubs, by the violence of their assault. Source: John Holbrook, North American Herpetology: or, A Description of the Reptiles Living in the United States (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1840).

Section 5

M E D I C I N E A N D H E A LT H

ESSAYS The Colonial American Approach to Medicine B

y modern standards, the medicine practiced in colonial America was primitive and filled with superstition, home remedies, quacks, high mortality rates, and premature deaths. It is clear, however, that the “mega-medicine” of the twentyfirst century has its roots in the healing arts of colonial times.

European and Native American B eginnings Medical science during the European Renaissance relied heavily on the recovery and renewed study of ancient writers, in particular Hippocrates and Galen. Hippocrates of Cos was a fifth-century B.C.E. physician and writer who left behind a group of medical treatises known as the Hippocratic Corpus, which influenced generations of ancient physicians, especially the Roman Galen. Galen, the physician of the emperor Marcus Aurelius during the second century C.E., agreed with Hippocrates that there are four humors in the human body that determine a person’s health (humors in balance) or illness (humors out of balance). This concept of the four humors dominated the healing arts in Renaissance Europe (1300–1600), notwithstanding important discoveries by Paracelsus, Andreas Vesalius, and William Harvey. There were no medical schools in colonial America until 1765. The four humors continued to be the dominant teaching at early American colleges, where it represented the most widespread understanding of disease among early Americans, even those who thought themselves able physicians. Equally important in the development of colonial medicine were the practices and materia

medica of Native American tribes. Physicians, housewives, clergy, and interested others learned a great deal from the medicine of the native peoples. Native Americans relied on herbs, purgatives, and steam baths for the treatment of most illnesses; they discovered, for example, the use of quinine contained in cinchona bark to treat malaria. John Josselyn, the English physician who visited New England in 1638 and 1663–1671, learned from settlers and American Indians the traditional remedies and medicines gained from the forest. Josselyn wrote in New-Englands Rarities Discovered (1672) that Atlantic cod had a gastrointestinal stone that, when removed, ground, and ingested with fluid, was a remedy for kidney stones. Likewise, the heart of a rattlesnake, dried, ground, and mixed with wine, was an antidote to snakebite. When John Smith was stung by a stingray during his exploration of the Chesapeake Bay in 1608, the physician for the Virginia Company, Walter Russell, used a “precious oil” to treat the wound. Perhaps he had read John Frampton’s 1577 translation of Spanish physician Nicholas Monardes’s Joyfull Newes out of the New Founde Worlde wherein Is Declared the Rare and Singular Virtues of Diverse and Sundry Herbs, Trees, Oils, Plants, and Stores, with their Applications, as well as for Physic as Chirurgery, the said Being well Applied Bringeth such Present Remedy for All Diseases, as may seem Altogether Incredible. Monardes believed that tobacco and sassafras, both found in America, were cure-alls. Another notable early physician was Lawrence Bohun, who experimented with plants and practiced medicine at Jamestown. Malaria was a major problem at Jamestown. During the first two decades of settlement, close to 80 percent of

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274 Section 5: Essays the population died, notwithstanding that the colonists had learned about treating the disease with quinine, and the fact that they had a hospital after 1612. If the mortality rate at Jamestown is astonishing, the rate of disease and death among Indians from South America to North America was even greater, reaching 90 percent in some places. This was because of European diseases introduced into an environment where they had been hitherto unknown; hence, the native population had little resistance to viruses such as smallpox, mumps, and measles. Other European colonists fared better than the English in their approach to disease. The Spanish in Central and South America developed medical schools, founded hospitals, and published medical treatises during the sixteenth century. Likewise the French in New France and New Orleans had better medical facilities and medical practitioners than did the English. Before the English conquest of New Amsterdam in 1664, the Dutch had founded a hospital. The Quakers of Pennsylvania showed an early interest in medicine as well. For example, John Goodson was “chirurgeon” (surgeon) to “the Free Society of Traders” before William Penn’s arrival in 1681.

Inoculation Controversy The materia medica of the American forest continued to be a dominant concern in early colonial medicine. William Hughes, for example, in 1672, published The American Physition; or a Treatise of the Roots, Plants, Trees, Shrubs, Fruit, Herbs, etc. growing in . . . America. As the colonies continued to develop in the eighteenth century, there were more substantive advances. New Englanders took the lead in combating the dread disease smallpox. Although some thinkers in the 1600s, such as Thomas Thatcher who in 1677 published A Brief Rule to Guide the Common-People of New England in the Small Pocks or Measles, tried to grapple with smallpox, it was not until an epidemic reached Boston in 1721 that advances were made in combating the disease. Cotton Mather, who had long been interested in medicine and who had lost many family members to smallpox, decided to act on a technique described to him by his slave Onesimus,

who had seen a form of inoculation in Africa. Mather told Dr. Zabdiel Boylston of the technique of inoculation. Boylston, inspired, inoculated his two sons; he and Mather advocated other inoculations by physicians throughout the city. Of about 300 who were inoculated, only six died. Some, such as clergyman Benjamin Colman, who wrote Some Observations on the New Method of Receiving the Small-pox, by Ingrafting or Inoculation, supported inoculation. On the other hand, physician William Douglass opposed inoculation, although he later came around to the practice in the face of overwhelming evidence. In time, he wrote A Practical Essay Concerning the Smallpox (1730). Cotton Mather himself wrote Sentiments on the Small Pox Inoculated (1721).

Colonial Physicians As the British colonies matured, their trade became more prosperous, enriching the merchants and bringing wealth to their growing cities. Urban populations grew in sophistication, number, density, and illness. More Americans went to Europe to acquire medical training or demanded such schools in America. Thomas Cadwalader of Philadelphia, for example, went to London to study anatomy and returned to teach students at the new (1765) College of Philadelphia how to perform autopsies and dissections. John Lining of South Carolina studied medicine at one of the premier European medical schools, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and returned to the South to study the impact of climate on disease. American medical institutions were few and far between, yet a beginning was made. In 1752, Philadelphians founded the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first permanent hospital in America (still in operation). Benjamin Franklin was much involved in the creation of this institution, and he wrote Some Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital (1752) to encourage interest in the new venture. The hospital quickly gained a reputation for having better patient survival rates than that in some of Europe’s top hospitals, and it was ahead of its time in receiving the mentally ill for care. By the end of the colonial period, American medicine had evolved to a state where there were increasing numbers of European-trained

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A polymath and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia wrote the first American textbooks on mental illness and chemistry, taught medicine, and pioneered in military hygiene, therapeutic horticulture, and the study of disease. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

physicians, a few nascent medical schools, and a growing number of institutions dedicated to helping the sick. During the American Revolution, the Sharon Medical Society and Massachusetts Medical Society were formed, and the Harvard Medical School was founded. Physicians routinely inoculated patients for smallpox. After the war, an increasing number of homegrown physicians of skill and knowledge, such as Joshua Fisher of Massachusetts, developed successful medical practices. The greatest physician of the Revolutionary generation was Benjamin Rush. He was trained at the University of Edinburgh, as well as at the College of Philadelphia, where he became a teacher of chemistry while he developed his own medical practice in the years immediately before the war. Rush was surgeon general of the United States during the war. He studied tetanus, inoculation, bleeding, and the relationship of poor sanitation to disease. American wartime physicians were influenced by the work of their English predecessors

who had served as military physicians for English armies during the many wars of the eighteenth century. Notable publications included John Pringle’s Observations on Diseases of the Army (1752) and Richard Brocklesby’s Oeconomical and Medical Observations (1764). American physicians also contributed to the growing literature on medical treatments of wounded soldiers. In 1775, John Jones published Plain Concise Practical Remarks on the Treatment of Wounds and Fractures, to which is added a short appendix on Camp and Military Hospitals, Principally designed for the Use of Young Military Surgeons, in North America. Benjamin Rush contributed several works, notably Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers; Recommended to the Consideration of the Officers of the Army of the United States (1778). His Medical Inquiries and Observations, published in 1789, provided Rush’s insights regarding the treatment of wounded soldiers gained during the war. Rush observed that soldiers who were older veterans were less likely to become ill than new recruits; that soldiers from the southern states were more sickly than those from the North; men who wore flannel shirts were less apt to become ill; men who slept outside in the air rather than in tents were healthier; and Native American troops were more prone to illness than their white counterparts. He also noted that soldiers who recovered from wounds in private homes did better than those recovering in military hospitals, which Rush branded “sinks of human life,” commenting that hospitals “robbed the United States of more citizens than the sword.” Rush observed that the most prevalent disease among the troops was typhoid fever; he blamed its prevalence on the close quarters of soldiers, lack of cleanliness, inadequate clothing for the season, and diet. “It sometimes happens,” he wrote, “that a ship with a long established crew shall be very healthy, yet if strangers are introduced among them, who are also healthy, sickness will be mutually produced.” Rush argued that when soldiers from the South joined troops of the North at Cambridge in 1775, the result was a growing number of cases of typhoid fever. “Soldiers are but little more than adult children,” he wrote. “That officer, therefore, will best perform his duty to his men, who obliges them to take the most care of their HEALTH.”

276 Section 5: Essays After the war, Rush wrote books on chemistry and mental illness. He epitomized the early American physician as a polymath simultaneously involved in scientific organizations, public health, political concerns, applied science, social and humanitarian concerns, teaching, and writing. Russell Lawson

Sources Bayne-Jones, Stanhope. Preventive Medicine in the United States Army, 1607–1939. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968. Cassedy, James H. Medicine in America: A Short History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Lawson, Russell M. “Science and Medicine.” In American Eras: The Colonial Era, 1600–1754, ed. Jessica Kross. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

The Revolution in Applied Health A

pplied health involves an array of approaches to increasing human longevity and boosting the overall quality of life through preventive measures as well as healing practices. These may include wellness checks, disease prevention, occupational safety management, nutritional science, and physical fitness. In the United States today, a number of organizations contribute to applied health, including the American Medical Association, hospitals, public health entities, and numerous federal entities.

Early Medical Reform During the nineteenth century, with the advent of scientific medicine, the health field in America experienced dramatic changes that led to professional standardization. Doctors gradually stopped the practices of bloodletting and administering toxins such as arsenic, lead, and mercury. At the same time, the American Medical Association (AMA) began imposing a nationwide standard for medical training to rid the profession of “quacks.” Founded in 1847, the AMA was one of several medical associations vying for hegemony at the time. Until then, power lay in the hands of state and local medical associations whose leaders typically emphasized the enforcement of uniform fee schedules in order to prevent bidding wars between doctors. Believing that citizens have the right to seek medical treatment from whomever they choose, many states did not issue medical licenses or require doctors to have them. By the 1920s, how-

ever, all state legislatures required physician licensing, usually based on an examination administered by the officially recognized state medical association with an AMA-approved charter. After undergoing a significant reorganization in 1901, the AMA focused attention on medical schools. Of the 335 medical colleges that issued diplomas in the United States between 1765 and 1913, a total of 118 were considered dubious in character. Beginning in the 1880s, the Illinois Board of Health published a list of the nation’s reliable medical schools, which, by omission, called attention to the inferior ones. In 1904, the AMA began a campaign to raise academic standards for physician training, a goal lent support by the publication of Abraham Flexner’s muckraking book Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910). The AMA’s Council on Medical Education took over medical school inspections, adopting a standard that gradually phased out sectarian schools of medicine, including homeopathic, Thomsonian, and eclectic. From 1912 to 1913, more than a dozen medical colleges were shut down. By 1927 there were a total of eighty medical schools in the country, of which fifty-seven met AMA standards. Hospitals played a role in raising the standards of the health profession by disallowing residency training of medical students who attended schools not approved by the AMA. Also, their doors were closed to physicians who were not members of the state medical association. However, it was a long and arduous process before hospitals emerged as centers of modernity with sophisticated medical technology, including

Section 5: Essays 277 X-ray machines, electrocardiographs, clinical laboratories, and blood banks. In 1873, there were 178 hospitals in the United States, including mental institutions, with fewer than 50,000 beds in all. But hospital capacity expanded significantly, coinciding with the advent of scientific surgery and the establishment of the nursing profession. In 1909 there were fewer than 4,500 hospitals with about 420,000 beds. Two decades later, there were nearly 7,000 hospitals and a total of about 1.1 million beds. By the time the Hill-Burton Act was passed in 1946, providing grant money for hospital construction in smaller cities and towns, including rural areas, American hospitals had become centers of healing and disease prevention and came to symbolize civilization and social stability. At the close of the twentieth century, however, there were fewer than 6,300 hospitals in the United States, with just over 1 million beds. Often run as charity wards, hospitals during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were contemptuously referred to as “gateways of death.” After 1846, surgery could be performed using anesthesiology, but post-operation infections took the lives of one out of four patients. Going “under the knife” thus remained a risky option. Scrub techniques, based on the antiseptic advancements of British surgeon Joseph Lister, were not employed until after 1865. Ten years earlier, obstetric physicians in Boston had been advised by the physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., that they could reduce the spread of puerperal fever if they would only wash their hands in carbolic acid prior to attending to child deliveries, but this was met with bitter resistance. The introduction of such wonder drugs as sulfa in 1935 and penicillin and other antibiotics beginning in the 1940s made combating infections more effective. At the same time, the use of these drugs contributed to complacency. Despite remarkable advances, problems linger into the twenty-first century. According to a 2005 report, for example, hospital infections in the United States (primarily from staph bacteria) kill an estimated 103,000 people (one out of every twenty patients) annually, a toll greater than the combined number of deaths from AIDS, breast cancer, and automobile accidents. As antibiotics become less effective against drug-

resistant “supergerms,” more priority will have to be given to preventive measures. The scientific prevention of infectious diseases can be traced to Louis Pasteur’s “germ theory,” introduced in 1857. It took many years for American physicians to accept the truth of microbiology, because it seemed ludicrous that tiny organisms could be responsible for the death of such larger ones. Furthermore, they generally believed that spontaneous generation was the cause of germs and not contamination from outside sources. Popular misconceptions influenced health practices and made fighting the spread of disease more difficult. For example, until 1880, the malarial infection known as ague, or autumnal fever, was mistakenly linked to swamp vapors, decaying vegetation, and the plowing of virgin soil, not the bite of a mosquito. Despite lacking key understandings of microbes, physicians exerted themselves, trying to understand their environment and its health consequences. Most notable in this regard was Daniel Drake in his classic study Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America (1850–1854), which won praise from the AMA. Such studies, coupled with Pasteur’s breakthroughs, contributed heavily to the development of the American public health movement.

The R ise of Public Health Proper sanitation was one of the early aims of public health, motivated largely by cholera pandemics that raged across the United States during the nineteenth century. In 1854, the British physician John Snow conclusively proved that cholera is spread by a contaminated water supply. After the Civil War, a number of American states, beginning with Massachusetts, established permanent state boards of health. The federal government became involved in public health after the cholera epidemic of 1872–1873 and the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, establishing the National Board of Health in 1879. In 1893, a national quarantine policy was established, implemented through the Marine Hospital Service, which had been founded at the end of the eighteenth century. The 1918 influenza epidemic, which led to the deaths of more than half a million Americans,

278 Section 5: Essays prompted a growth of local boards of health. But health experts turned their attention to the many incidents of smallpox, scarlet fever, typhoid fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, and tuberculosis that, decade after decade, continued to take an even greater toll on American lives than the flu epidemic. Gains in public health, in no small measure due to immunization breakthroughs, contributed to an increased life expectancy, from forty-eight years in 1900 to seventy-six in 2000. Public health efforts cover diverse public policy and service sectors. These include clean water and air, sewage and refuse disposal, building codes, food and restaurant inspections, vaccinations, birth control, prenatal care, wellness checks, disease screening, nutrition and exercise programs, drug and alcohol counseling, mental health, occupational safety, animal control, and the tracking of vital statistics. Today, state, county, and municipal health departments coordinate their efforts with regional public health departments as well as national agencies to administer public health programs in America. Other government agencies, such as environmental protection departments, also have some responsibilities for public health. Hundreds of private or voluntary health organizations contribute to overall community health by educating the public about good health practices and prevention of AIDS, heart disease, cancer, and other conditions. At the national level, public health matters are directed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), formally established in 1980 (succeeding the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, created in 1953). One of the main branches of HHS is the Public Health Service, which oversees the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The NIH, focusing on biomedical research, maintains twenty-seven institutes and centers, awards grants to researchers, and operates the National Library of Medicine. The CDC, with its headquarters and laboratories in Atlanta, monitors disease outbreaks worldwide, maintains national health statistics, implements prevention programs, and administers public immunizations. The FDA assures the safety of food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and medical devices through legislation and

licensing programs. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), part of the Department of Labor, was established in 1970 to reduce hazards at the workplace and to promote worker health programs. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the federal government has allocated increased funding for public health, fearing that the nation is not adequately prepared for possible bioterrorist attack. The few research samples of smallpox that exist in the United States and Russia have some terrorist experts concerned that a specimen might fall into the wrong hands and be used to cause an epidemic, even though smallpox was eradicated worldwide in 1979. There has been some discussion about extending the military smallpox vaccination program to the general public, but health experts remain unconvinced that the threat outweighs the risk of side effects, which are sometimes fatal. Some public health officials have argued that bird flu, the West Nile virus, or a flu outbreak similar to the 1918 pandemic are of more practical concern. Also, despite the advanced “cocktail drugs” that have enabled people to live with the HIV virus, the AIDS epidemic still poses a universal threat, especially if the virus mutates and begins to spread by other means. Nutrition science, the study of links between diet and health, is a growing field of applied health. In 1941, the National Academy of Science (NAS) began publishing recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) to serve as guidelines for preventing nutrient deficiencies and thereby reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Beginning in the late 1990s, the NAS created the concept of “dietary reference intakes,” to offer further guidelines for improved health. For example, a proper amount of calcium can reduce a woman’s susceptibility to bone deterioration, or osteoporosis; girls who drink milk, as opposed to soft drinks, prevent the likelihood of getting osteoporosis when they are older. By the same token, heart disease can be reduced by a diet low in fat and sodium. The Department of Agriculture has produced a Food Pyramid Guide, a visual aid stressing the importance of six main food groups, to complement the NAS guidelines. The importance of nutrition is underscored by the growing problem of obesity in America, which is leading to an increase of diabetes and heart

Section 5: Essays 279 problems, now extending to younger sectors of the population.

Modern Challenges Although the United States has never implemented comprehensive, cradle-to-grave, universal health care, largely because of effective lobbying by the AMA and other private health entities, Medicare and Medicaid are federal government programs that provide medical care to the elderly and the needy. Established in 1966, Medicare is a health insurance program for retired Americans age sixty-five and older. It also provides services to disabled individuals under the age of sixty-five who meet certain conditions. Medicaid, implemented through the state welfare systems and part of the Social Security system, provides health care to eligible families, children, and the disabled. In 1993, President Bill Clinton proposed a national health-care reform plan that would have guaranteed universal coverage, but political conservatives effectively blocked the proposal by claiming that it would pose too great a financial burden on the federal government, lead to excessive government regulation, and eliminate patient choice. At the start of the twenty-first century, 40 million Americans were uninsured, and the United States remained the only industrialized nation in the world not to offer its citizens guaranteed medical coverage. A high number of personal bankruptcy filings were related to unpaid medical bills. Private “health insurance,” usually obtained through a group policy offered by one’s employer, has long been a misnomer, because it covers the treatment of illness and injury but seldom covers preventive measures. In fact, many health insurance providers do not pay for vaccinations such as flu shots, but they will cover the treatment of pneumonia that can result from the flu. Some plans do not offer regular mammograms to detect breast cancer; some do not even pay for annual checkups. Moreover, high deductibles and co-payments discourage many patients from seeing a doctor during the early phase of a condition, when treatment could be most effective. Rising health costs have made seeing a doctor either unaffordable or an enormous financial burden for millions of Americans.

The rise of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) was one attempt to make health care more affordable for more people, but many believe the experiment has failed. HMOs are associations that obtain prepaid medical care for their members at reduced cost. During the late 1920s, a farmers’ cooperative in Elk City, Oklahoma, started the first HMO. Prepaid group practices increased in number during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. By the late 1970s, there were about 200 HMOs in thirty-seven states. Spurred by the Health Maintenance Organization Act, passed by Congress in 1973 at the urging of President Richard Nixon, the number of such organizations more than doubled nationwide during the following decade, with a fourfold increase in enrollment. Still, while some federal subsidy was provided, HMOs enrolled no more than about 4 percent of the U.S. population. Under President Ronald Reagan, federal funding for HMOs was phased out; insurance companies, such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield, now sponsor most HMOs. Critics of HMOs have complained about the lack of patient choice, the erosion of doctor autonomy and control, and government bureaucracy. In some health areas, prevention has become an integrated aspect of medical treatment. In the field of cardiology, for example, a number of breakthroughs have opened up whole new approaches to heart disease, including some preventive measures. During the 1950s, when a person had a heart attack, it generally signaled that he or she did not have much longer to live. But then came the heart bypass operation, first performed in 1967 by Rene Favaloro at Cleveland Clinic, in which a vein taken from a patient’s leg, or other area, is used to detour blood around blockages in the heart. Until that time, patients with coronary heart disease were treated primarily with medicine. Beginning in the 1970s, many bypass operations were eliminated with angioplasty, a procedure in which a tiny balloon at the tip of wire is threaded into a blocked artery and then inflated to press against the artery’s walls and remove the blockage. Less expensively, the FDA in 1985 ruled that the daily intake of aspirin could reduce the risk of a second heart attack. Aspirin has also been used to prevent blood clots. For many people, however, provided they do not have a genetic predisposition to cardiac disease, the best

280 Section 5: Essays preventive measure against heart problems is good nutrition, regular exercise, and not smoking.

Biotechnology ’s Brave New World

manipulation becomes the norm, however, research and treatment protocols will raise new ethical dilemmas, prompting philosophical debate about what constitutes morally sound medical care. Roger Chapman

Applied health is being radically transformed with the dawn of biotechnology. The discovery of DNA structure in 1953 ushered in a new era, setting the stage for biomedical advances, including bioengineered antibiotics in 1975 and the mapping of the human genome in 2001. Genetic tests, which enable doctors to screen patients to pinpoint medical risks, such as heart disease, open the possibility of providing treatment in a way that totally eliminates the risk. In 1982, the first cancer gene was discovered by molecular biologist Robert Weiberg, which may yet come to be regarded as the first major step in finding the cure for a disease that has plagued humanity for centuries. Indeed, other genes connected with health risks are being found on a regular basis. As gene

Sources Brown, Lawrence D. Politics and Health Care Organization: HMOs as Federal Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983. Bunton, Robin, and Alan Petersen, eds. Genetic Governance: Health, Risk, and Ethics in the Biotech Era. New York: Routledge, 2005. Campion, Frank D. The AMA and U.S. Health Policy Since 1940. Chicago: Chicago Review, 1984. Duffy, John. The Healers: A History of American Medicine. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979. Ludmerer, Kenneth M. Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Rosen, George. A History of Public Health. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Stevens, Rosemary. In Sickness and Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Disease in America D

isease, especially epidemics, illnesses of youth and old age, and diseases particular to a given environment, has had a profound impact on communities and cultures throughout America’s history. Disease also has inspired scientists to research cures, discover medicines, and develop treatments for prevention and care.

Early Colonial Period When the European exploration of America began in the late 1400s, millions of Native Americans came into contact for the first time with malaria, bubonic plague, measles, whooping cough, chicken pox, and smallpox. Lacking immunities, the native peoples were particularly susceptible to many of these deadly Old World diseases. The first Old World diseases to affect areas that would become the United States arrived in Florida in the 1510s, most likely with people

fleeing Spanish rule in Cuba. In 1519, a smallpox epidemic swept through much of Florida, killing as many as 50 percent of native Floridians. More epidemics followed in later decades. By 1617, the indigenous population of Florida numbered only 5 percent of what it had been a century earlier. After the first English colonies were established in New England, outbreaks of disease decimated native communities and caused massive social dislocations. An epidemic that struck coastal indigenous communities between 1616 and 1619— most likely smallpox—killed 75 to 90 percent of the local indigenous population of 7,400. Smallpox broke out again in 1633 and lasted eight years, with devastating effect: Northeastern groups with a total population of 156,000 in 1633 were reduced to only 20,000 people by 1650, a decline of roughly 87 percent. Some Indian tribes, such as the Pawnees, Choctaws, and Navajos,

Section 5: Essays 281 were able to rebound from large losses during epidemics because of the survival of subsistence systems that provided a healthy diet and traditions that emphasized the maintenance and promulgation of tribal culture. These epidemics had less effect on Europeans, who had developed immunities to the diseases. On the other hand, European migrants to the New World faced a number of health and disease problems in American colonies, especially upon first arrival. Until clean water and adequate food and shelter could be secured, new arrivals faced mortality and morbidity rates so high that the very survival of new colonies was often in doubt. The dangers were particularly grave in the southern colonies, where a warm and moist climate created an environment ripe for dysentery, typhoid fever, and malaria. Between 1618 and 1624, approximately 5,100 persons lived in or migrated to Virginia; in 1625, the population had dropped to just over 1,000. Of the 4,000 dead or gone, a quarter had returned to Europe, half had perished from disease, and a quarter had died from other causes. Because of the unhealthful environment, seventeenth-century white male Marylanders, even of elite backgrounds, lived on average two decades less than their New England counterparts. The deadly environment of the South had an important social consequence. Africans had stronger immunities to malaria and yellow fever and could better withstand the challenging climate of the southern plantation, as compared to white indentured servants or Native American slaves. Therefore, enslaving Africans became an economic decision, and slavery became a dominant social and economic institution in the South.

Eighteenth Centur y To thrive, new arrivals to the southern colonies had to go through a period of “seasoning”—the colonial term for the period of adaptation to the southern disease climate. But in general, the colonies, especially those of the North, proved a far more healthful place to live than Europe because these communities were initially lowdensity rural societies. New England had the added advantage of cold winters and short sum-

mers. As the colonies developed and cities grew, however, Americans in both the North and the South faced a disease environment conducive to periodic outbreaks of smallpox, malaria, yellow fever, and dysentery. In the growing port cities of the eastern seaboard—of which Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charles Town were the largest— population growth, high rates of immigration, and increased trade promoted the movement of infectious pathogens. Waves of yellow fever and smallpox periodically swept through these communities. From 1700 to 1765, New York and Charles Town suffered six yellow fever epidemics and Philadelphia four. Between 1721 and 1792, Boston underwent seven epidemics of smallpox. Although smallpox and yellow fever were the most feared diseases of the time, the biggest killer was probably dysentery, which was common in more densely populated areas, especially port cities. Dysentery killed 5 to 10 percent of those who caught the disease and made individuals more vulnerable to other diseases. Next to dysentery, the largest killer was probably respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis and, to a lesser extent, influenza. One contemporary observer of disease patterns in Philadelphia determined that “consumptions, fevers, convulsions, pleurisies, haemorrhages, and dropsies” killed more residents than any other health problem between 1730 and 1750. Another observer blamed tuberculosis for 19 percent of all deaths in Philadelphia in 1787. The situation was much the same in other cities. Childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, and whooping cough also increased during the eighteenth century, especially in towns. Measles, for instance, had not been endemic in North America until 1700, when faster ships enabled its spread to the New World. Sporadic epidemics characterized the eighteenth century, especially in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, killing fifty or sixty persons per thousand.

Nineteenth Centur y Even though the standard of living increased during the nineteenth century, Americans’ life expectancy declined. This was in large part because of the increased population density, the arrival of destitute immigrant groups, and grow-

282 Section 5: Essays ing cities without adequate water systems, waste removal, or housing—all of which created ideal conditions for diseases such as tuberculosis to flourish. Without good waste removal, for instance, the manure from horses became a major health hazard in urban areas. Because of the diseases that flourished in these conditions, the population of urban areas during the nineteenth century would have declined if not for countervailing migration from overseas and rural areas. Although tuberculosis emerged as the leading cause of death during the nineteenth century, it was yellow fever and cholera that most terrified Americans. The incidences of these diseases grew with increasing foreign trade and as steamships increased the speed of travel. Yellow fever was a particularly bad problem in New Orleans. Between 1804 and 1819, the city endured five serious outbreaks. The disease grew more lethal by mid-century. In the epidemic of 1853, 30,000 to 75,000 people fled the city; of the remainder, 40,000 developed the disease, and 9,000

died from it. So many people died in such a short period that the removal of bodies became a serious problem. The first and worst cholera epidemic hit New York City in the spring of 1832. From there, the disease spread west along with those traveling the newly opened Erie Canal and heading south via land and sea routes. The disease struck those living in large urban centers as well as in smaller towns. Between 50,000 and 150,000 Americans died of cholera in the epidemic; the number infected was far greater. Similar epidemics killed roughly 100,000 in 1849 and 50,000 in 1866. Such epidemics did not affect all Americans identically. During the 1848 outbreak of cholera in Buffalo, for instance, native-born Americans accounted for only 3 percent of the fatalities. Irish immigrants comprised over 42 percent of the deaths, despite being less than 25 percent of the population. German immigrants made up nearly 50 percent of the deaths. The poverty and resulting poor living conditions of these immigrants

The National Institutes of Health, based in Bethesda, Maryland, is the major U.S. federal agency devoted to biomedical research. A division of the Department of Health and Human Services, NIH is made up of twenty-seven research institutes and centers. (Mark Wilson/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

Section 5: Essays 283 was the primary contributing factor in the high death rates. Mid-nineteenth-century Americans blamed diseases such as cholera on “miasmas,” or bad air, rather than microorganisms. The necessity of good sanitation and clean water was not understood until British doctor John Snow discovered that clean water prevented the spread of cholera. His discovery led to the elimination of cholera in the United States by 1880.

Twentieth Centur y During the twentieth century, chronic and degenerative diseases such as cancer and heart disease replaced infectious diseases as the worst killers in the United States. By the middle decades of the century, most childhood diseases had become insignificant as large-scale killers. The decline in infectious diseases was due to several factors, such as new therapies for treating disease, the introduction of antibiotics and vaccines, widespread economic prosperity (after mid-century), better nutrition, and improvements in public health. By the end of the twentieth century, diseases now prevalent in an aging population, such as heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s, caused the most mortality. Nonetheless, the twentieth century saw a number of headline-grabbing diseases. In 1918 and 1919, in the wake of World War I, a vicious strain of influenza known as the “Spanish flu” killed millions of people worldwide. Millions in America were infected, and 550,000 died—many times the number of battlefield casualties. Soldiers were particularly susceptible to the pandemic. During World War I, in 1916, and immediately after World War II, from 1945 to 1949, thousands of Americans were infected with polio. It was

not until the 1950s that Jonas Salk developed a vaccine, which was widely distributed by public health officials and led to a dramatic decline in the number of cases of polio. In the 1980s, medical researchers identified a hitherto unknown disease, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), which was particularly prevalent among the homosexual population, although it increasingly spread to heterosexuals as well. The disease, caused by a virus, attacks the immune system. Although there is no cure, antiretroviral drugs have helped AIDS patients live longer, healthier lives. At the onset of the twenty-first century, AIDS continues to threaten Americans who are sexually active with multiple partners, as well as drug users who share hypodermic needles. Many public health officials are worried that a worldwide influenza pandemic—for example, avian or bird flu—will occur, will spread to the United States, and will cause millions of deaths. Another potential killer is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which is spread by a virus; like avian flu, SARS began in Asia and spread to the West. Thomas Robertson

Sources Barry, John M. The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. New York: Viking, 2004. Crosby, Alfred W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1972. Grob, Gerald N. The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Merrill, James. The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Rosenberg, Charles E. The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962; rev. ed. 1987.

A–Z ABORTION Abortion is the premature termination of a pregnancy by natural, medical, or surgical means. Although induced abortion is contrary to many forms of the Hippocratic oath, it has nevertheless been practiced for hundreds of years. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, laws in diverse societies reflected a long-standing opposition to abortion on moral, ethical, and religious grounds—opposition that was expressed, perhaps surprisingly, by many nineteenthcentury feminists. The diversity of beliefs about abortion in the United States reflects differences among Americans on issues such as sexuality, contraception, eugenics, privacy, women’s rights, and fetal rights. After a period of restrictive legislation, liberalization of abortion laws began in several states in the 1960s, leading to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973). The Court, based on a right to privacy deduced from the U.S. Constitution, declared antiabortion statutes throughout the nation to be unconstitutional.

Methods A variety of abortion methods are available. The method that is used will depend on the stage of the pregnancy. For example, drugs such as RU486, Norplant implants, and IUDs (intrauterine devices) can lead to the expulsion of a fertilized egg. Suction can be used to tear an embryo apart and extract the remains. Saline amniocentesis, used in the latter stages of pregnancy, entails the injection of a concentrated saline solution into the amniotic fluid; the fetus dies of acute salt poisoning and is delivered stillborn. Another chemical procedure is the injection into the amniotic sac of a hormone-like substance called prostaglandin, or a poison such as digoxin may be injected into the heart of the fetus. In the dilation and curettage (D and C) proce-

dure, after the cervix is dilated, forceps extract the fetus in pieces, and a curette (a sharp, loopshaped surgical instrument) scrapes the uterus to clear away remaining tissue. In dilation and evacuation (D and E), the fetus is dismembered and removed. In dilation and extraction (D and X), also called partial-birth abortion, forceps pull the fetus through the birth canal, exposing the body except for the head. Scissors puncture the base of the head, and the brain is suctioned out in order to collapse the skull so the rest of the body can be extracted more easily.

Controversy Induced abortion is a highly controversial procedure. Opponents believe that a human being’s life and rights begin at the point of conception in the womb. Advocates draw a sharp distinction between an embryo, a fetus, and a person. Medical discoveries have shown that the developing fetus is in many ways its own entity, separate from the mother; sonograms and other pictures further suggest the human aspects of the fetus. Many critics of abortion maintain that the fetus experiences pain when being aborted. Those who support the legality of abortion argue that the procedure is at times necessary to protect a woman’s life and health and that most abortions (nearly 90 percent) are performed during the first trimester. They also point out that late-term abortions are rare and used only in cases of the most serious health problems. The practice of abortion raises many issues about life, death, morality, medicine, politics, and religion. Some say it lies at the heart of an ongoing struggle over the soul of the nation. Frank J. Smith

Sources Gorney, Cynthia. Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999. Olasky, Marvin. Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America. Washington, DC: Regnery, 1995.

284

Section 5: AIDS 285 Paul, Maureen, et al. A Clinician’s Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1999. Planned Parenthood Federation of America. http://www. plannedparenthood.org.

AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is a disease of the human immune system caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV damages or kills certain cells in the body’s immune system and progressively destroys the body’s ability to fight infections and certain cancers. HIV infection does not automatically mean that a person has AIDS, which is the term applied to the most advanced stages of HIV infection. The level of HIV in the body and the presence of certain infections indicate that HIV has progressed to AIDS. People with AIDS get other diseases, known as opportunistic infections, caused by

viruses or bacteria that are often life-threatening to them but usually easily treatable in healthy people. AIDS was first reported in the United States in 1981, when several gay men were diagnosed with diseases not usually seen in people with healthy immune systems. Similar diseases soon began to appear in intravenous drug users, as well as in hemophiliacs following blood transfusions, leading doctors to conclude that the cause was a virus affecting the immune system. The human immunodeficiency virus was isolated in 1983. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) defines AIDS based on the decline in the number of CD4 positive (CD4+) T cells in the blood. These cells are the main infection fighters of the immune system. The virus can be transmitted through unprotected sex, blood transfusion, or sharing contaminated needles. It can also be transmitted between a mother and infant during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. No evidence has been

Although there is no known cure for AIDS, drug “cocktail” treatment—also known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART)—has proven effective for many individuals infected with the HIV virus. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

286 Section 5: AIDS found that HIV can be transmitted through saliva or casual contact such as sharing food utensils. The virus is highly contagious during its initial stages, but, in most cases, there are no symptoms at the time of initial infection. Therefore, an infected person can unknowingly transmit the virus to other people. Some people do have a glandular fever-like illness once HIV antibodies develop, usually occurring between six weeks and three months after infection. These initial symptoms usually disappear within a month. Some people, however, may have more severe symptoms, starting in the first few months. Others may experience an initial period of “asymptomatic” infection that can last for over 10 years; despite a lack of symptoms, the virus multiplies during this period, infecting and killing the immune system’s cells. In 1985, a blood test was developed to detect the presence of HIV antibodies in the blood. This test is the only way to positively determine if the virus is present. Although there is no cure for AIDS, the use of highly active antiretroviral (HAART) drugs can slow progression of the disease. Drugs are also available to fight associated infections and cancers. Clinical trials have begun on an experimental vaccine designed to prevent the human immunodeficiency virus from causing AIDS. According to the CDC, from 1981 through 2005, 1.5 million people in the United States became infected with HIV. The estimated number of full-blown AIDS cases during that period was 944,305, and the estimated number of AIDS deaths was 529,113. Annually since 2000, approximately 40,000 people in America become infected with HIV. As of December 2005, an estimated 1.1 million people were living with HIV/AIDS in the United States. Of these, African Americans accounted for 51 percent of HIV infections while representing only 13 percent of the total population. Male homosexuals account for the largest percentage of overall diagnoses, at 44 percent. The University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) has the nation’s leading HIV/AIDS treatment and research center, including the AIDS Health Project and AIDS Research Institute. UCSF is one of twenty National Institutes of

Health (NIH) Centers for AIDS Research. These centers coordinate high-quality AIDS research projects. They are located in a number of academic settings, including Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, Texas), Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia), Harvard Medical School (Boston, Massachusetts), and Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland). Another leading center is the Institute of Human Virology (also in Baltimore, Maryland), started by Robert Gallo, who codiscovered the human immunodeficiency virus. Additionally, leading clinical trial centers are available through the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Federal funding for HIV/AIDS research went from just a few thousand dollars in 1981 to $18.5 billion in 2004. In the early years of the epidemic, federal spending focused on care and eventually expanded to include research and prevention. As the number of new cases slowed in the United States and as drug treatments benefited patients, more money was directed to fighting the disease internationally. In 2005, U.S. federal funding for AIDS/HIV totaled $19.7 billion, with 59 percent going to care, 15 percent to research, 9 percent to cash and housing assistance, 4 percent to prevention, and 12 percent to combat the epidemic internationally. The fiscal year 2007 federal budget request to Congress included an estimated $22.8 billion for HIV and AIDS. Aside from federal funding, the nonprofit American Foundation for AIDS Research (AMFAR) is considered the preeminent AIDS funding agency in the United States. Since 1985, AMFAR has awarded more than 2,000 grants for HIV/AIDS research, totaling some $250 million. Since it was first discovered, AIDS has become a global pandemic. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS estimates that more than 25 million people worldwide have died of AIDS since 1981. In 2005, according to the UN, the number of deaths worldwide from AIDS was 3.1 million, while the total number of people living with the AIDS virus was 40.3 million. Judith B. Gerber

Sources Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: Stonewall Inn, 2000.

Section 5: Alzheimer’s Disease 287 Smith, Raymond A. Encyclopedia of AIDS: A Social, Political, Cultural, and Scientific Record of the HIV Epidemic. New York: Penguin, 2001. Ward, Darrell E. The Amfar AIDS Handbook: The Complete Guide to Understanding HIV and AIDS. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.

ALLEN, FREDERICK MADISON (1879–1964) Medical researcher and clinician Frederick Madison Allen was the leading figure in the treatment of diabetes during the first quarter of the twentieth century. His “starvation” diet was the most successful treatment prior to the discovery of insulin in 1922. Allen, who was born in Iowa in 1879, trained in medicine in California. He began research on metabolism at the Harvard Medical School in 1910. His work culminated in Studies Concerning Glycosuria and Diabetes (1913), a massive volume, with over 1,100 pages and a bibliography of nearly 1,200 listings, that was an exhaustive, state-of-the-art look at diabetes research, including his own. It established Allen as the reigning expert in the field. In his research, Allen had formulated a theory, which soon became known as Allen’s Law, to describe how the human body uses sugar. The more sugar a healthy person consumes, the more sugar is utilized; for a person with diabetes, the reverse is true. While much of the research surrounding diabetes at the time focused on the search for a pancreatic extract, Allen turned his attention to the pragmatic question of keeping diabetics alive. Much of his early research consisted of partially depancreatizing dogs to create an equivalent to diabetes in humans, then establishing a dietary balance that would keep them alive while allowing control over blood sugar levels. The strength of Allen’s work was his meticulous research and methodical experimentation. The diets he designed were individualized to the last gram. Every morsel his patients ate was weighed, analyzed, and recorded. Vegetables were boiled three times, the water changed between each boiling, to remove as much carbohy-

drate content as possible. The patient’s urine, and often the blood, was tested at least daily. Allen’s enforced starvation diets kept diabetics alive and active longer than any previous methods. Opponents argued that the diets were inhumane, but Allen was able to add months and years to his patients’ lives. After serving as head of the U.S. Army’s Diabetes Services in World War I, he opened the private Physiatric Institute in 1920 to treat diabetic patients and refine his diets. Initially skeptical of the viability of pancreatic extracts, Allen quickly embraced the newly discovered insulin in 1922, and his institute was the site of one of the earliest North American clinical trials. That same year, he established and edited the Journal of Metabolic Research, which featured the results of insulin trials. The overwhelming success of insulin effectively ended the need for Allen’s diets, however; his accomplishments were immediately overshadowed and were largely forgotten within a few years. Allen later turned his attention to research on hypertension, cancer, and the uses of refrigeration in surgery. Fiercely independent by nature, and something of an outsider in the medical profession—he held no advanced degrees—the remainder of his career was plagued by lack of both funding and a permanent position. Allen was conducting cancer research in the basement of a Massachusetts public hospital at the time of his death in 1964. John P. Hundley

Source Allen, Frederick M. Total dietary regulation in the treatment of diabetes. New York: Rockefeller Institute, 1919. Bliss, Michael. The Discovery of Insulin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by cognitive deterioration, an increasing inability to perform tasks of daily living, and neuropsychiatric behavioral changes. It is the most common type of dementia in human adults.

288 Section 5: Alzheimer’s Disease

A brain scan highlights the deterioration of a brain afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease (left) compared with a healthy brain (right). Some 4.5 million Americans, most of them elderly, suffer from this form of dementia. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

During the 1800s, medical researchers documented patients showing a state of psychological malfunctioning. By the 1900s, these symptoms in older patients were being labeled senile dementia. In 1910, psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin’s Handbook of Psychiatry reported findings by Alois Alzheimer that isolated this disease process in older patients; the condition was subsequently termed Alzheimer’s disease. Solomon Carter Fuller, the first African American psychiatrist, worked in Kraepelin’s laboratory in Germany. In 1907, Fuller conducted research that documented abnormal brain cell structures of dementia patients. His research was a significant contribution to understanding brain pathology and neurology. As life expectancy increased during the twentieth century in America, so did deaths that could be attributed to diseases of the aged, including Alzheimer’s. Currently 4.5 million

Americans have Alzheimer’s, and the number is projected to grow to 13 million by 2050. Part of this increase is due to the high number of baby boomers approaching retirement age. Since Alzheimer’s disease most often afflicts individuals over the age of sixty-five, this older population faces challenges in treatment and provisions for care. About 5 percent of individuals over age sixty-five and one-third of individuals over eighty-five are affected by the disease. African Americans and Hispanics have a greater susceptibility than other population groups. In a small number of cases, the disease afflicts people as young as forty years old. The earliest symptom of Alzheimer’s disease is memory loss. One’s ability to remember old and new information progressively deteriorates, as does one’s orientation to events and activities. Other symptoms are irritability and a loss of the ability to maintain familiar daily routines. Alzheimer’s disease is divided into mild, moderate, and severe levels of impairment. Most families seek a physician’s assistance during the mild stages when symptoms have progressed and require medical care. On average, the disease results in significant decline and death within ten years. In later stages of Alzheimer’s, the patients cease to speak, are confined to bed, and require care for basic needs. Patients in the final stages of Alzheimer’s cannot remember friends and family, and they often stare into space, in a state that resembles a waking coma. Research on the brains of Alzheimer’s victims shows a loss of neurons within brain matter and the development of abnormal deposits outside nerve cells that interfere with nerve functions in the brain. Inside nerve cells, another abnormality is seen: neurofibrillary tangles that resemble twisted fibers, which interfere with neuron’s nutrient system. Both kinds of abnormalities result in major nerve damage and neuron loss, leading to the symptoms of cognitive and memory deficits. Although not entirely proven, Alzheimer’s is believed to be inherited. It has been found, however, that the onset can be delayed by exercising the brain with crossword puzzles or other cognitive exercises and by eating a diet high in vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids, and antioxidants. A Swedish study completed in 2006 found that,

Section 5: American Dental Association 289 out of 12,000 sets of twins over the age of sixtyfive, roughly 400 had Alzheimer’s. Both twins had the disease nearly 60 percent of the time, suggesting the disease follows a genetic, rather than environmental, pathway. New drugs have made improvements in Alzheimer patients’ symptoms. But current treatments offer only partial relief of symptoms during early onset, and little help at the end of life. James Fargo Balliett and James Steinberg

Sources Gatz, Margaret. The Role of Genes and Environments for Explaining Alzheimer Disease. Chicago: Archives of General Psychiatry, American Medical Association, 2006. Morris, Robin. A Cognitive Neuropsychology of Alzheimer’s Disease. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Richter, Brigitte Zoeller. Alzheimer’s Disease: A Physician’s Guide to Practical Management. Totowa, NJ: Humana, 2004. Takeda, Masatoshi, et al. Molecular Neurobiology of Alzheimer Disease and Related Disorders. New York: Karger, 2004.

A M E R I C A N D E N TA L A S S O C I AT I O N The practice of dentistry in America had developed considerably by the mid-nineteenth century, so that practitioners sought to increase their representation by the creation of professional organizations. A short-lived American Society of Dental Surgeons disbanded in 1856, but in 1859 twenty-six dentists met at Niagara Falls, New York, to establish the American Dental Association (ADA). The first constitution and bylaws of the ADA were adopted in 1860, followed six years later by the first code of ethics. Southern dentists who had not participated in the Northern ADA formed the Southern Dental Society in 1869. The group merged with the American Dental Association in 1897 to form the National Dental Association, which was renamed the American Dental Association in 1922. Today, the ADA, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, is the leading professional organization for dentists in the United States. Membership in the ADA has grown to more than 150,000 members. Presently, the association consists of three membership tiers: national, state, and local. A

dentist must retain membership in all three tiers in order to be credentialed by the ADA. From 1859 to 1936, the major publication of the ADA was Dental Cosmos: A Monthly Record of Dental Science, which played an important role in the early development of American dental practice. In 1936, it merged with the Official Bulletin, in publication since 1913, to become Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA). This professional journal is published once a month, with occasional supplements on special topics. The publishing arm of the American Dental Association is the ADA Publishing Company. In addition to the journal, it publishes the ADA News, ADA News Convention Daily, several foreign-language editions of JADA, the ADA Guide to Dental Therapeutics, the ADA Marketplace Exhibit Guide, and Index to Dental Literature. Pamphlets and booklets endorsed by the ADA (such as Your Child’s First Visit to the Dentist) are distributed to the public. The ADA library in Chicago holds approximately 33,000 books and 17,500 bound journal volumes, and it subscribes to more than 800 journals. The Council on Dental Health and Bureau of Dental Health Education of the ADA monitor advertising media and other influences on the family. Similar to a media watchdog, these divisions of the ADA warn against questionable fads or unorthodox dental treatments. For example, in 1937, the ADA criticized the addition of fluoride to toothpaste. In the 1950s, the association changed its position and issued a printed statement on the labels of toothpaste endorsing the value of fluoride in cavity prevention. According to the ADA mission statement, The ADA is the professional association of dentists dedicated to serving both the public and the profession of dentistry. The ADA promotes the public’s health through commitment of member dentists to provide quality oral health care, accessible to everyone. The ADA promotes the profession of dentistry by enhancing the integrity and ethics of the profession, strengthening the patient/dentist relationship and making membership the foundation of successful practice. The ADA fulfills its public and professional mission by providing services and through its initiatives in education, research, advocacy and the development of standards.

290 Section 5: American Dental Association The ADA recognizes eight specialties of dental practice: dental public health; endodontics (treatment of root canals); oral pathology (diagnosis and treatment of cancers and other growths, infections, or diseases affecting the mouth); oral and maxillofacial surgery (surgical treatment of genetic and traumatic injuries to the mouth and face); orthodontics (correction of malocclusions and tooth placement); pediatric dentistry (dentistry for children, also called pedodontics); periodontics (treatment of the gums and supporting tissues); and prosthodontics (implants, dentures, crowns). The ADA’s modern focus is on advocacy representation at the state and federal level, providing business support for dentists (financial systems and retirement transition planning), and a steady flow of dental information to help practices thrive with the latest technology and developments. James Fargo Balliett and Lana Thompson

Sources American Dental Association. http://www.ada.org. Asbell, Milton B. Dentistry: A Historical Perspective. Bryn Mawr, PA: Dorrance, 1988. Hoffmann-Axthelm, Walter. A History of Dentistry. Chicago: Quintessence, 1981. Wynbrandt, James. The Excruciating History of Dentistry: Toothsome Tales and Oral Oddities from Babylon to Braces. New York: St. Martin’s, 1998.

AMERICAN MEDICAL A S S O C I AT I O N The American Medical Association was founded by doctors in 1847 under the leadership of Nathan S. Davis to protect the interests of practitioners of scientific medicine against those who were deemed less professional, such as homeopaths. Until that time, neither medical education nor practice was regulated by the government or any professional body. One hundred delegates attended the first meeting. The first orders of business were to establish a committee on medical education, to set standards for preliminary medical education and the degree of M.D., and to write the AMA Code of Medical Ethics. Within its first decade,

the AMA also put out recommendations for the use of newly discovered anesthetic agents, established a board to enlighten the public as to the dangers of quack remedies and nostrums, and established its Committee on Ethics. These measures initially had limited success, however, because neither the schools nor the individual doctors had incentives to comply. The AMA gained professional prestige when it founded the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1883 and began to provide research grants in 1898. At the turn of the twentieth century, medical practices increasingly came under scrutiny as scientific progress seemed to outstrip medical practice. Flagging membership forced the AMA to reorganize and establish its governing board, the House of Delegates, which helped to draw local and state societies into the national membership. In 1906, the organization turned again to education reform by rating 160 medical schools, which were still unregulated. In 1910, the independently funded Flexner Report established standards for medical schools and began the elimination of “diploma mills.” The revolution in medical education was swift. Within the next decade the AMA helped establish the Federation of State Medical Boards, built a Propaganda Department to gather and disseminate information on health fraud and quackery, and set standards for hospital internships and specialty training. Membership reached 82,000 in 1920. By the 1930s, the AMA was the most authoritative voice in American medicine. Physicians gained professional sovereignty and also became a political force, blocking attempts at establishing national health insurance on more than one occasion. To complement its success at regulating education and licensure, the AMA in 1943 opened an office in Washington, D.C., to maintain a political presence. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, doctors used their connections in Washington to stage major publicity campaigns against government involvement in medicine, especially national health insurance. Morris Fishbein, longtime editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, voiced doctors’ concerns both through the journal and in person. In 1947, Fishbein also published a thorough history of the AMA’s first century.

Section 5: American School for the Deaf 291 To defeat President Harry S. Truman’s proposal for national health insurance in 1949, the group hired the renowned public relations firm Whitaker and Baxter to denounce the Fair Deal. In 1961, the Washington office became AMPAC, the organization’s political action committee. Despite intense lobbying, doctors were unable to block the 1965 Medicare Act. The AMA became more involved in consumer issues in the second half of the twentieth century. A consumer publishing program commenced in 1982 with the AMA Family Medical Guide. In 1983, doctors urged Americans to work toward a smoke-free society by the year 2000. In 1986, the AMA focused on ethical considerations when it addressed the growing AIDS crisis by opposing acts of discrimination against AIDS patients, especially with regard to patient–physician confidentiality. In 1989, the organization reiterated physicians’ ethical responsibilities to treat HIV patients. Amid the political turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s a significant number of physicians left the organization and joined smaller and more specialized associations. This shift was due, in part, to AMA stands on some political issues. One important factor was the categorical opposition to national health insurance, a stance that shifted to a call for health insurance reform in the 1990s. As the twentieth century came to a close, the association’s numbers shrank: in 1963, over twothirds of the nation’s doctors belonged to the AMA; by 1991, that number was closer to onethird. The AMA responded by reorganizing its leadership and reexamining its scope. At century’s end, the group developed an affiliated national labor organization to represent employed physicians and continued patient-oriented initiatives, most notably the movement for a “Patients’ Bill of Rights” in 2001. The AMA remains a significant force in American medicine. Kimberley Green Weathers

Sources American Medical Association. http://www.ama-assn.org. Burrow, James G. AMA: Voice of American Medicine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963. Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books, 1982.

AMERICAN SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF The American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1817, is the oldest educational institution for the hearing impaired in the United States. The idea for the school originated when the prominent Connecticut physician Mason Fitch Cogswell began looking for ways to help his daughter, Alice, who had been deaf since childhood and could barely communicate with her parents or siblings. After discovering the dearth of opportunities, Cogswell began his efforts on behalf of deaf education. He solicited the help of some prominent friends, and they met in Hartford to take steps toward establishing a school. It was decided that a representative should be sent to England for the purpose of learning British methods of teaching the deaf, since no one in America had the skills. The mission was offered to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a graduate of Yale and Andover Theological Seminary. Gallaudet traveled to England, but the teachers of the deaf were unwilling to share their techniques with him. Fortunately, however, he was invited to study at the French Institute for the Deaf in Paris, where he was able to obtain much useful information. There, he met Laurent Clerc, a teacher from the institute who had been deaf since infancy. Clerc returned to America with Gallaudet, and, together with Cogswell, they founded the American Asylum at Hartford for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb. The school opened on April 15, 1817, in the Old City Hotel on Main Street. Alice Cogswell was the first pupil. By year’s end, enrollment had reached thirty-one students from ten states. In 1821, the school moved to the Asylum Hill neighborhood in Hartford and remained there for 100 years. In 1895, the name was changed to the American School for the Deaf, and in 1921 the institution moved to West Hartford, where it remains today. The American School for the Deaf was the first school in the United States to employ deaf teachers. American Sign Language was developed at

292 Section 5: American School for the Deaf the school, modeled after the sign language that Laurent Clerc and his colleagues had been using at the French Institute. In this language, certain hand and arm movements represent words or phrases. Words that do not have a sign associated with them can be communicated using finger spelling, in which the word is spelled out using hand positions that represent the letters of the alphabet. The American School for the Deaf is a private, nonprofit organization. Funding is provided by an annual appropriation from the Connecticut General Assembly and through voluntary contributions, fees paid by students’ home school districts, and federal funds. Today, the school provides comprehensive services for deaf people of all ages and their families. The school offers educational programs for pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade, vocational education, and outreach and support services. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources Gallaudet, Edward Miner. Life of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Founder of Deaf-Mute Instruction in America. New York: Henry Holt, 1910. Neimark, A.E. A Deaf Child Listened: Thomas Gallaudet, Pioneer in American Education. New York: William Morrow, 1983.

ANESTHESIA “Anesthesia” (from Greek words meaning “without feeling”) refers to the medically induced loss of sensation that allows surgical procedures to be performed safely and with less pain for the patient. The term was coined by the Harvard educator and physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in 1846. Prior to the introduction of anesthesia, surgery usually was limited to amputations, surface surgery, wound debriding, and occasionally, out of necessity, the removal of bladder stones. The intense pain and physiological trauma of surgery inside the abdominal and thoracic cavities and the skull limited surgery to those cases for which there was no other choice; operative and postoperative mortality rates were high. The intense suffering necessitated physical restraint of

the patient, and the best surgeons were the fastest. In the United Kingdom in 1800, the chemist Humphry Davy experimented with nitrous oxide to relieve pain, but science was not ready to accept his prediction that someday it could be used prior to surgery. Forty years later, the United States witnessed a spate of discoveries and adaptations for such substances The early anesthetics were sleep-inducing and awarenessdulling agents (soporifics) and various narcotics derived from plants such as marijuana, belladonna, and jimsonweed. Ether had been a recreational drug in the United States before anyone thought of giving it a legitimate medical application. The controversy over who discovered, invented, or first made the application of ether to medicine has long been disputed. In 1842, William E. Clarke, a chemist from Rochester, New York, administered ether as an anesthetic to a patient while dentist Elijah Pope removed a tooth. Crawford W. Long, who studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1830s, knew of nitrous oxide as “laughing gas” and the inhalation of sulfuric ether as a treatment for lung problems. Also in 1842, he administered ether as a surgical anesthetic on a friend who was familiar with its recreational use. By the mid-nineteenth century, there were three major competing inhaled anesthesia agents: ether, chloroform, and nitrous oxide. Ether was effective, because it served as a general anesthetic; it induced pain insensitivity through a deep unconsciousness. Ether also was easier to administer than chloroform. Dosages, however, were difficult to control accurately, and ether negatively affected the operating personnel, often inducing sleepiness. Further disadvantages included ether’s flammability and side effects caused by its use, such as nausea and vomiting. In addition, ether did not anesthetize the patient as deeply as today’s anesthetics, although stronger ethers were available by the time of the Civil War. As chloroform also had serious side effects, ether remained the most common inhaled anesthesia until the introduction of halothane in the 1950s. Similar to the recreational use of ether, nitrous oxide was first used at parties for amusement. In 1844, the New England dentist Horace Wells

Section 5: Antibiotics 293 asked to inhale nitrous oxide before having a maxillary molar extracted, because he had witnessed a public demonstration the previous evening by the pioneering anesthesiologist Gardner Quincy Colton. Of the three early inhaled agents, only nitrous oxide is still used routinely as a light anesthetic. Local anesthetics reduce pain in a particular area of the body and are administered by injection or spray. Cocaine was the first local anesthetic used in America (about 1877); newer, less toxic agents were introduced in the early 1900s. In the same era, nerve blocks, spinal and epidural anesthesia, known as “regional blocks,” were introduced. In these procedures, anesthetic agents were injected into a space adjacent to the spinal column, causing a loss of sensation below the point of injection without the unconsciousness of the “smelly agents.” Placing tubes in the trachea to control the patient’s airway led to better control of breathing during surgery, a technique developed between about 1910 and 1930. Intravenous anesthetic agents (barbiturates), which induced an anesthetized state without the side effects of the inhalation agents, soon followed. Muscle relaxants were introduced in the 1940s and 1950s; used in conjunction with the general anesthetic agents, they permitted the reduction of the amount of general anesthesia required. Muscle relaxants made it easier to penetrate taut muscles, giving greater access to certain parts of the body, in particular the bones and bone cavities. These techniques individually and in combination made more complex surgeries possible and required that the anesthesiologist (either a physician or nurse anesthetist) not only manage the pain of the patient but also support his or her life functions by monitoring and controlling the respiratory and circulatory physiology through drugs and autonomic support devices. It was not until the mid-1930s that anesthesiology was recognized as a medical specialty in America. Richard M. Edwards and Lana Thompson

Sources Davies, N.J.H. Atkinson, R.S., and G.B. Rushman. A Short History of Anaesthesia: The First 150 Years. Burlington, VT: Butterworth-Heinemann Medical, 1996.

Keys, Thomas E. The History of Surgical Anesthesia. Malabar, FL: R.E. Krieger, 1978. Pernick, Martin. A Calculus of Suffering: Pain, Professionalism, and Anesthesia in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

A N T I B I OT I C S The term “antibiotic” was coined in the 1940s by the Russian-born American microbiologist Selman A. Waksman, who found that such chemical compounds are produced by one type of microorganism and are antithetical to other types of microorganisms. They are, in essence, part of the defense mechanisms that living creatures put forth against other organisms that would invade their territories or compete for the same food source. While most such compounds in use as therapeutic agents have historically come from several groups of complex bacteria called actinomycetes and streptomycetes (the “fungal-like” bacteria), several famous antibiotics derive from true fungi, mostly molds (e.g., the penicillins and cephalosporins). Other antibacterial agents, loosely but improperly termed antibiotics, include such chemotherapeutics as the sulfa drugs, but these are made in laboratories and are not the physiological products of living things. The sulfas came out in Germany during the 1930s and were successful against many bacterial species, but they are generally quite toxic to humans; because of this, they are used only in special circumstances (such as kidney infections, in which their greater tissue penetration outweighs their disadvantages). Since the word “antibacterial” is proper for all agents other than true antibiotics when speaking of action against bacteria specifically, it is the preferred term. However, even specialists use the word in a more generic sense, so it has become common through extensive usage. The ideal term is “antimicrobial,” which covers all pathogens, including even the quasi-living things called viruses. (The term “antiviral,” however, should be restricted to antimicrobial agents that kill or incapacitate viruses and nothing else; there are very few such agents). The antibiotics (or antimicrobials) thus can be seen to include a variety of chemically disparate

294 Section 5: Antibiotics molecular types or even families of related chemicals. Semisynthetic penicillins and cephalosporins, for instance, use a naturally occurring antibiotic from certain fungi and, through chemical manipulation in the laboratory or industry setting, are redesigned in molecular structure to make variants of the basic antibiotic that may fight differing resistant strains of pathogenic microbes (in this case, bacteria). Other antibiotics, antifungal antimicrobials, are so specialized that they can kill only fungi. Agents used to treat athlete’s foot fungi are ineffective against bacteria, for instance. The modes of action of the many types of antimicrobial agents in use today vary as much as the molecular structures that characterize them. Some attack the cellular machinery that makes cell walls; others attack the genetic material (DNA); still others plug up crucial metabolic pathways, interfering with the normal reproduction of the pathogen. Few new types or families of antimicrobials have been discovered since the golden age of antibiotic discovery and development—from the 1940s through the 1960s—so these agents are often used in combinations that slow the rise of resistance among the bacterial strains they are employed against. Most of the newer antimicrobials, discovered since the 1960s, are not true antibiotics but laboratory-created, and they are usually very specific in their effects on pathogens. Donald J. McGraw

Sources Levy, Stuart B. The Antibiotic Paradox: How Miracle Drugs Are Destroying the Miracle. New York: Plenum, 1992. McGraw, Donald J. “The History of Antibiotics: A Critical Bibliography.” Bulletin of Bibliography 43:2 (1986): 103–7. Shnayerson, Michael, and Mark J. Plotkin. The Killers Within: The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria. New York: Little, Brown, 2002.

AU T I S M Autism is a neurobiological, behavioral disorder characterized by an impairment of social communication and interaction skills. There are approximately 1.5 million individuals diagnosed with autism in the United States.

Autism was initially described in 1943 by Leo Kanner, a child psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Kanner identified numerous developmental delays in certain young children and described their behavior as “disinterest in interaction with other people.” Initially, autism was classified as a type of mental retardation. Kanner, however, distinguished different symptoms, such as social withdrawal and limited speech. In 1944, understanding of autism was expanded by Hans Asperger, who described variations in the symptons Kanner had identified, including a later age onset. Asperger found that individuals with this disorder exhibited some verbal and intellectual abilities, yet suffered from major interpersonal difficulties. Eventually, this type of disorder was designated Asperger syndrome. By 2000, the American Psychiatric Association placed all types of autism under the umbrella term autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). Research on autism suggests that it is a neurobiological disorder resulting in brain malfunction. Roughly 2 to 6 children out of 1,000 are diagnosed with this condition. The number of diagnosed cases grew from 4 to 5 per 10,000 in 1966 to 14 to 39 per 10,000 in 2003. Males are diagnosed four times more often than females. Although more effective diagnosis is considered the most common reason for the increase in the overall numbers, additional factors are believed to have contributed to the increase. These include population size, the fact that mothers are giving birth later in life, environmental conditions, and other circumstances. While attributed in part to genetic makeup, no single cause of autism has been identified. Three distinct types of autism have been classified: autism, Asperger syndrome, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS). The symptoms of Asperger syndrome include rocking behavior and a lack of ability to understand nonverbal cues such as facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice. Some people with Asperger syndrome are capable of advanced learning and are considered to have a normal intelligence level. PDD-NOS symptoms include language and social difficulties and other symptoms that do not fit typical autistic criteria. Rett syndrome, which is related to autism, affects females and begins with normal

Section 5: Autopsy 295 infant development that stops abruptly. Also related to autism is childhood disintegrative disorder, involving a loss of speech and social skills in children from two to ten years old. The general symptoms of autism are seen in infants who display limited social exchanges with others and have limited speech and initiation of speech. Some children show an exclusive focus on a narrow activity or display repetitive hand gesturing or spinning. The majority of children are diagnosed by three years old, and over 75 percent test as mentally retarded. The severity of impairment varies widely, and particular deficiencies are unique to each child. Up to 25 percent of those diagnosed will have the capability to learn to read and will have limited technological skills. The majority of autistic children, though, are limited in terms of intelligence development and will require extensive living and social supervision for their entire lives. Structured teaching programs and applied behavioral analysis are approaches used by families, special education teachers, and therapists to improve learning in autistic persons. Families with autistic children face the reality of longterm socialization and education efforts, thin financial assistance from government medical systems, and the challenge of finding social resources. Many families have formed grassroots organizations to provide mutual support. Efforts under way to tackle this disorder include drug research, drug trials, more treatment options, and more thorough and earlier diagnosis. The drug secretin, which is derived from hormones secreted by cells in the human digestive tract, has demonstrated a limited ability to improve mental conditions for autism patients, although a clinical trial in 2004 did not find significant benefit to using secretin. Research continues on this and other drugs, including fluoxetine (an antidepressant) for adults and olanzapine (an antipsychotic) for children. James Fargo Balliett and James Steinberg

Sources Autism Society of America. http://www.autism-society.org. Nicolson, R. “Genetic and Neurodevelopmental Influences in Autistic Disorder.” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 8 (September 2003): 526–37. Powers, Michael D., ed. Children with Autism: A Parents’ Guide. Rockville MD: Woodbine House, 1989.

Seroussi, Karyn. Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder: A Mother’s Story of Research and Recovery. New York: Broadway, 2002. Sigman, Marian. Children with Autism: A Developmental Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

AU TO P S Y Referring to an examination of the body after death, the word “autopsy” comes from the Greek auto (“self ”) and opsia (“seeing”) and roughly means “to see for oneself.” Autopsy differs from dissection in that it involves the entire body, whereas a dissection can be of a single limb or organ system. The first known autopsy in the New World was performed in 1533 in Santa Domingo, Hispaniola, where conjoined twins posed a theological paradox for the priest. Were there two souls or one? Questions about the physical location of the soul had long been unanswered, but autopsy allowed what would otherwise have been forbidden: intrusion into the body. Religion was intimately involved with medicine, because the beliefs about disease and health were often associated with supernatural forces. As the scientific revolution created opportunities for exploration of the human body as well as the natural world, autopsy revealed some of the mysteries of life and death. However, because of its highly personal, invasive, and pejorative connotations, autopsy remained a controversial subject despite scientific progress, such as the publication of The Fabric of the Human Body by Andreas Vesalius in 1564. Autopsy as a means of instruction in medical schools began with the eighteenth-century professor and physician Peter Middleton, founder of the Columbia Medical School in New York, who taught his students anatomy by performing an autopsy in 1750 on Hermanus Carroll, an executed criminal. In the mid-1760s, at King’s College in New York City, a program of formal anatomical instruction was initiated. Similar programs were established at other schools, such as the University of Maryland, where dissection of cadavers was compulsory in medical training. In 1810, there were only five medical schools in America, but there were sixty-five by 1860, and the need for bodies to autopsy could not

296 Section 5: Autopsy keep pace with the increase in institutions. Other than executed criminals, the source of bodies for autopsy was from indigent families who could not afford burials. The family would donate the body of the deceased to a medical school and, in return, when the autopsy was completed, the body would be buried. To supplement bodies for autopsy, clandestine trade often developed between grave robbers and someone at the medical school, either a student or professor. American scientists performing autopsies adopted the European technique of making a Y- or U-shaped incision across the chest from shoulder to shoulder, with a straight incision at the midline down to the pelvic region, to either side of the umbilicus. With this method, which became standard because of the growth of the funeral profession and embalming in America, the neck and head appeared untouched. Throughout much of American history, autopsies were performed at medical schools or hospitals for instruction or to establish the cause of a death. During the past twenty-five years, however, autopsies also have become forensic in nature. Lana Thompson

Sources Blakely, Robert, and Judith Harrington. Bones in the Basement. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1997. Pena Chavarria, A., and P.G. Shipley. “The Siamese Twins of Espanola.” Annals of Medical History 6 (1924): 297–302. Rezek, Philipp R. Autopsy Pathology: A Guide for Pathologists and Clinicians. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1963. Sappol, Michael. A Traffic in Dead Bodies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

B A L L A R D, M A R T H A (1735–1812) Martha Moore Ballard, a New England midwife during the colonial and early national eras, is notable for leaving a detailed diary of her daily activities. Martha Moore was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, to a moderately prosperous family of farmers. Little is known about her early life, except that she received an education in an era when very few women learned to write. She probably never read a medical book; her scien-

tific knowledge rested on a long accumulation of experience, much of which was presumably acquired through working with an older midwife in Oxford. She married Ephraim Ballard in 1754. Ballard worked as a miller and surveyor. The couple produced nine children, three of whom succumbed to a diphtheria epidemic in 1769. The family moved to the seaport of Hallowell, Maine, in 1777. Martha Ballard began her diary in January 1785. The birth records in the journal provide the first full accounting of delivery practices and obstetrical mortality in early America. From 1785 to her death in 1812, Ballard performed 816 deliveries. She averaged forty births a year and may have begun the diary simply as a practical way of keeping track of the deliveries. Yet the journal is much more. Unlike other eighteenthcentury medical records, the entries connect birth and death with ordinary life by reporting the personal and the trivial. Ballard worked in an era when the old, female-controlled childbirth practices were being challenged by a new scientific obstetrics practiced by male physicians. Despite the potential for conflict, her relations with physicians remained relatively cordial. The technological simplicity of early medicine meant that male doctors offered little that was not also available from female practitioners, but women charged cheaper fees than men. As a result, Ballard lost few patients to physicians. She sometimes acted under the direction of a doctor, but more frequently she acted alone or with the assistance of other women. Ballard also served as a nurse and general practitioner. Fundamentally an herbalist, she knew how to create salves, syrups, pills, teas, ointments, vapors, and oil emulsions in the English medical tradition. Although sometimes she purchased ingredients from a local physician, frequently she relied on plants grown in her own garden, such as green beans, onions, and currants. She also gathered materials from the woods and fields around her and employed such household staples as vinegar, soap, and flour. There is no indication that she used cow or sheep dung, in the fashion of some New England healers, but she did trust the curative powers of urine.

Section 5: Banting, Frederick Grant 297 Ballard used her mixtures to poultice wounds, give baths, raise blisters, dress burns, and treat dysentery, sore throats, frostbite, measles, colic, and whooping cough. She also induced vomiting, administered enemas, stopped bleeding, reduced swelling, and relieved toothache. Ballard’s treatments and medical practices were representative of midwives’ activities in early America. She is unique only in that she left writings for posterity. Caryn E. Neumann

Source Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.

BANTING, FREDERICK GRANT (1891–1941) The Canadian physician, clinician, and researcher Frederick Grant Banting is best known for his leading role in the discovery of insulin and its extraction from the pancreas, making it possible to extend the lives of diabetes sufferers. Born in Alliston, Ontario, on November 14, 1891, Banting was educated at the University of Toronto, where he briefly considered the ministry before deciding on a career in medicine. His medical education was interrupted in 1916 by Canada’s entry into World War I, in which Banting served as a battalion medical officer. He was awarded the Military Cross for courage under fire at the Battle of Cambrai in France, where he was wounded. After a long convalescence, he returned to Toronto in 1919 and concentrated on orthopedic surgery, honing skills that would prove useful in his insulin research. After an unsuccessful attempt at private practice in London, Ontario, where he struggled to find patients and chafed at his provincial surroundings, Banting approached University of Toronto physiology professor J.J.R. Macleod with an idea for isolating a pancreatic extract that might prove useful in treating diabetes. Researchers had been trying to isolate an internal pancreatic secretion for decades, but many felt it

might never be done, including Macleod, as he indicated in his 1913 textbook on diabetes. Skeptical, he nonetheless set up Banting with a temporary laboratory, a supply of dogs on which to experiment and operate, and an assistant, the medical student Charles Best. After months of mixed results, Banting and Best, joined by chemist James Collip, succeeded in isolating and extracting the hormone insulin in the winter of 1921–1922. Further work was required to purify the extract; although it took several months to develop methods of ensuring a standard batch strength, clinical trials began almost immediately. Word of the discovery spread throughout North America and then Europe. Almost as quickly, dissension spread through the group of researchers over credit for the discovery. In 1923, Banting and Macleod were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Banting immediately announced that he would share his half of the prize with Best; Macleod split his with Collip. As the efficacy and value of insulin became apparent, Banting became one of the most famous men in North America. Virtually overnight, the treatment of diabetes was transformed, and Banting’s name was associated with insulin in the public mind. Although he was proud of his accomplishments, he was uncomfortable with celebrity. The fame he achieved early in his career hounded him thereafter; he never made another significant medical discovery. In 1934, he was dubbed a knight of the British Empire but, characteristically, disliked being called “Sir.” The rest of Banting’s career was spent on cancer research. When Canada entered World War II in 1939, he tried to enlist as a regular medical officer but instead was appointed chair of the nation’s wartime medical research effort. On February 20, 1941, he was flying to England when his plane went down at Gander, Newfoundland, killing everyone aboard. John P. Hundley

Sources Bliss, Michael. Banting: A Biography. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984. ———. The Discovery of Insulin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

298 Section 5: Barber Surgeons

BARBER SURGEONS Barber surgeons constituted a medical profession that arose in Europe during the Middle Ages. Not trained as physicians, barber surgeons handled many of the common, rudimentary medical procedures of the times, including treating wounds, pulling teeth, and performing basic surgical acts. One of their most common procedures was bloodletting. They also dispensed the medicines of their time for various ailments. Originally, barber surgeons provided grooming services, such as haircuts, facial hair trimming, and shaves. Through their work, they developed a good collection of tools and knives, and they picked up practical knowledge about disease, treatments, and chiurgery, or surgery. The recurrent plague epidemics of the fourteenth and subsequent centuries reduced the number of trained physicians and surgeons, whose tasks were increasingly adopted by barber surgeons. The guild of barber surgeons in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England grew in numbers and influence. English barbers were authorized to practice surgery in 1462. Competition between barbers and surgeons grew, until the two professions were joined in 1540 by decree of King Henry VIII, creating the United Barber Surgeons Company. The number of barber surgeons also increased to meet the demand of a growing colonial population in the New World. The first barber surgeons in America were trained in England, Scotland, and the Netherlands. They served on the crews of seventeenthcentury ships carrying immigrants to America, and sometimes remained with the settlers rather than return, particularly if there was political or religious upheaval at home. In some cases, barber surgeons were brought to the colonies under contract by the settlement companies. In North America, barber surgeons were the first to administer to the medical needs of the colonists, as initially there were few, if any, trained physicians. As the population expanded, however, the number of medically educated practitioners grew, along with new schools of medicine. The services of an educated physician were expensive, however, so barber surgeons continued to treat those who could not afford a physician.

Barber surgeons bled and gave emetics to patients to bring the body back into humoral balance. In addition to treating wounds during wartime, they dressed ulcers (quite common before antibiotics), drained abscesses, treated fractures, performed catheterization (to empty the bladder), removed bladder stones, excised small tumors, performed amputations, operated on cataracts, and extracted teeth. The first documented barber surgeons in America worked in Delaware. The Swede Jan Petersen practiced on the South River in Delaware in 1638. Timon Stiddem, after a number of voyages between Sweden and Delaware, settled in Fort Christina, the first permanent settlement in the Delaware Valley. Barber surgeons became rare by the 1750s, when education became mandatory for those who wanted to practice medicine, and the license to practice medicine was issued only to those who held university degrees and had graduated from medical colleges. A historical remnant of this long-disappeared occupation is the candy-cane pole outside the small-town barbershop. The white pole represents the rod or staff that a patient would grab onto when undergoing a painful treatment; the red stripes indicate blood on a cloth after the patient was bled. James Fargo Balliett and Lana Thompson

Sources Bettmann, Otto. A Pictorial History of Medicine. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1956. Deutsch, Albert. “The Sick Poor in Colonial Times.” American Historical Review 46 (1941): 560–79. Lyons, Albert, and R. Joseph Petrocelli. Medicine: An Illustrated History. New York: Abrams, 1992. Magner, Lois. A History of Medicine. New York: Marcel Dekker, 1992. Radbill, Samuel X. “The Barber Surgeons Among the Early Dutch and Swedes Along the Delaware.” Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine 9 (1936): 718–44.

B A R D, J O H N (1716–1799) John Bard was an eminent early American physician. A leader during the latter eighteenth century of the New York medical community, he (and his son Samuel) served as the personal

Section 5: Barnard, Christiaan 299 physician to George Washington when the federal government was seated in New York City. Bard was born in Burlington, New Jersey, on February 1, 1716. Although he received a classical education, he never received a medical school education; instead, he apprenticed himself to a surgeon in Philadelphia. He began his medical practice in Philadelphia and is believed to have been Benjamin Franklin’s personal physician. Franklin’s description of life in New York City encouraged Bard to move there and establish a medical practice in 1746. Bard was active in surgery and the prevention of disease during the mid-eighteenth century. In 1750, he was assisted by the physician Peter Middleton in performing the first dissection on recoil in America. His papers on the treatment of malignant pleurisy and yellow fever were published in the American Medical Register. In the typhus epidemic of 1759 in New York, Bard moved to isolate patients. He purchased Bedlow’s Island (or Bedloe’s Island), known today as Liberty Island, and built a hospital on its 10 acres. Bard’s idea was to isolate the sick to check the spread of disease; henceforth, isolation became common practice in dealing with various fever epidemics in New York City. Isolation was used during the yellow fever epidemic of 1796–1797, during which Bard himself contracted the disease. In 1767, his son Samuel began practicing medicine in partnership with his father. That same year, Bard and Middleton helped found a medical school in connection with King’s College, which, in 1784, was renamed Columbia College (now Columbia University). In 1769, Bard was instrumental in the building of a hospital in conjunction with the medical school, but the building was destroyed by fire. The growth of the medical school was delayed not only by the fire but also by the British occupation of New York City during the American Revolution. The college was closed for the eight years of the war, and a new hospital was not built until 1791. The medical school, now known as the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, was the first medical school in North America to grant the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree. Bard served the medical college as a professor of the practice of medicine and was eventually named dean of its faculty.

Bard also served as the first president of the New York Medical Society. Throughout his later years, before and during retirement to Hyde Park in 1798, he pursued scientific and agricultural interests in addition to his considerable charitable work. Bard died in Hyde Park, New York, on March 30, 1799. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Cassedy, James H. Medicine in America: A Short History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Reiss, Oscar. Medicine in Colonial America. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000. Terkel, Susan Neiburg. Colonial American Medicine. Danbury, CT: Franklin Watts, 1993. Williams, Guy. The Age of Agony: The Art of Healing, c. 1700–1800. Chicago: American Academy, 1986.

B A R N A R D, C H R I S T I A A N (1922–2001) Known for performing the first successful human heart transplant in 1967, Christiaan Neethling Barnard was born on November 8, 1922, in Beaufort West, South Africa. He was granted bachelor of surgery and medicine degrees from the University of Cape Town in 1946. Following his internship at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, he practiced family medicine for three years before returning to the university to further his medical education. He then returned to the hospital as a surgical resident from 1953 to 1956. After completing doctoral studies in cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Minnesota from 1956 to 1958, he went back to Groote Schuur, continuing as the senior cardiothoracic surgeon until his retirement from surgical practice in 1983. While at the University of Minnesota, Barnard developed a friendship with classmate Norman Shumway, who performed the first successful canine heart transplant at Stanford University in 1958. In Cape Town, Barnard began experimentation in canine heart transplantation. Shumway was the recognized authority in that procedure, but he was reluctant to conduct human trials because of the lack of effective immunosuppressive drugs to forestall the rejection of the

300 Section 5: Barnard, Christiaan donated heart. Also, at the time, there was no clear legal definition of death, apart from the cessation of the beating heart. That raised the question of when a donor heart could be harvested. The less cautious Barnard seized the opportunity, and, on December 3, 1967, he and his surgical team at Groote Schuur performed the first human heart transplant. Barnard was criticized for his opportunistic application of Shumway’s research and for the delay that the recipient, a white South African grocer, experienced while waiting for a heart from a white donor. Barnard insisted that the delay was not related to apartheid laws or to any perceived complications of cross-racial transplantation, but rather to his fear of being accused of experimenting on black people in racially segregated South Africa. The recipient, Louis Washkansky, died eighteen days later of double pneumonia. Barnard’s team performed ten more heart transplants in the next six years. Without effective immunosuppressive drugs, the rejection rate proved too high, and Barnard began implanting donor hearts while leaving the original heart in place as a backup. The survival rates improved with this technique, and Barnard, with the help of his team, performed forty-nine of these transplants from 1975 to 1984. An effective immunosuppressive drug, cyclosporine, was introduced in 1982; Barnard returned to his original surgical technique. He performed seventy-five heart transplants and oversaw more than 150 before his retirement. Barnard’s accomplishments are not limited to his initiation of human heart transplantation. He also designed a new artificial mitral valve for the human heart and demonstrated that intestinal atresia, a lack of development in the small intestine of newborns, is caused by a blood supply deficiency during fetal development. In the 1980s, Barnard was Scientist in Residence at the Oklahoma Transplantation Institute in Oklahoma City. Barnard wrote several novels, two autobiographies—Christiaan Barnard: One Life (1969) and The Second Life (1993)—and Good Life Good Death: A Doctor’s Case for Euthanasia and Suicide (1980). Barnard died as the result of an asthma attack on September 2, 2001, in Paphos, Cyprus. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Barnard, Christiaan, and Curtis Bill Pepper. Christiaan Barnard: One Life. Ontario, Canada: Macmillan, 1969. Hawthorne, Peter. The Transplanted Heart: The Incredible Story of the Epic Heart Transplant Operations by Professor Christiaan Barnard and His Team. Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968. Hurt, Raymond. The History of Cardiothoracic Surgery from Early Times. New York: Pantheon, 1996. Naef, Andreas P. The Story of Thoracic Surgery: Milestones and Pioneers. Lewiston, ME: Hogrefe and Huber, 1990.

BIGGS, HERMANN MICHAEL (1859–1923) A pathologist, physician, bacteriologist, and public health official, Hermann Michael Biggs is most remembered for his work with tuberculosis. He was born on September 29, 1859, in Trumansburg, New York, to Melissa Pratt Biggs and Joseph Hunt Biggs, a successful dry goods and hardware store owner. Biggs attended private schools until his father died in 1877, and, at age seventeen, he assumed management of the family business. After two successful years, he left the family business to pursue his education. In 1879, Biggs entered Cornell University, where he became interested in medicine. He earned his bachelor’s degree in two years and enrolled in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1881. He interned at Bellevue from 1882 until 1883, then completed postgraduate work at the Berlin Physiological Institute and in Greifswald, Germany, from 1883 until 1885. Unhappy in Germany, Biggs returned to New York and began working at Bellevue, where his medical career centered on public health. He held a number of posts at Bellevue including pathologist, director of the Carnegie Laboratory, and bacteriology teacher. He also was appointed chief inspector of the New York Health Department’s Division of Pathology, Bacteriology, and Disinfection. In these roles, he investigated outbreaks of typhoid and cholera, traveled to Paris to see Pasteur’s rabies treatment, and introduced a diphtheria antitoxin. Biggs is most known for his work with tuberculosis (TB), the leading cause of death in the late 1800s and early 1900s—in New York City alone, there were 10,000 deaths a year. In 1882, the German bacteriologist Robert Koch proved

Section 5: Blackwell, Elizabeth 301 that TB was caused by a bacterium and spread through contact with an infected person. By 1889, Biggs had developed a systematic program for preventing outbreaks. The plan consisted of mandatory reporting of TB cases, free TB testing, follow-ups with nurses for anyone infected, an aggressive public awareness campaign, and continued support from the government in the form of public health policies and funding. Biggs also worked to establish sanitariums and hospitals with the resources to treat TB patients. Not universally accepted by the medical community at first, Biggs’s program proved highly successful. Biggs’s reputation continued to grow. In 1901, he was named the U.S. Health Department’s chief medical officer, and, in 1905, he was elected president of the National Tuberculosis Association (now the American Lung Association). In 1914, Biggs agreed to serve as the State Commissioner of Health for New York. In that capacity, he set a goal of saving 25,000 lives in five years, concentrating on providing for the health of infants and training more public health nurses. He also authored a great deal of New York’s public health legislation. Biggs continued to work for public health until his death from pneumonia on June 28, 1923. Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Daniel, Thomas M. Pioneers of Medicine and Their Impact on Tuberculosis. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2000. Frieden, Thomas R., Barron H. Lerner, and Bret R. Rutherford. “Lessons from the 1880s: Tuberculosis Control in the New Millennium.” Lancet March 25, 2000, 1088–92. Winslow, Charles-Edward A. The Life of Hermann M. Biggs, M.D. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1929.

BLACKWELL, ELIZ ABETH (1821–1910) The first woman to receive a medical degree in America, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College in New York in 1849. The Blackwell family, including nine children, had emigrated to the United States from Bristol, En-

gland, living first in New York and finally settling in Cincinnati, Ohio. When Blackwell’s father, a tutor, died in 1839, she and her mother established a private school. While teaching there, Blackwell became interested in medicine and began studying in secret. By 1847, she had begun to think of becoming a physician as both a moral struggle for equality and a way to avoid marriage. Most of the medical schools to which she applied thought her application was a joke perpetrated by a rival school and rejected it. Finally, she was accepted at the Geneva Medical College. Blackwell was an outcast in town as well as school, often barred from medical demonstrations because they were considered unacceptable for a woman to see. Over time, however, her persistence and tenacity won over many of her fellow students. She graduated in 1849 with hopes of furthering her education and becoming a surgeon. After graduation, Blackwell traveled to Paris to train as a midwife. During the course of her work, she contracted a serious eye infection that caused her to lose the use of one eye and thereby ended her dream of becoming a surgeon. Despite the setback, Blackwell continued her medical education, working with James Paget, a founder of modern pathology, in London. She returned to New York in 1851. Because hospitals refused to hire her and property owners refused to rent her office space, she purchased a house to establish her medical practice. In 1853, Blackwell established a dispensary in the New York City slums. She was soon joined by two other female physicians—her younger sister, Emily, and Polish-born Marie Zakrzewska. In 1857, the group received a charter to incorporate the dispensary, thus creating the New York Infirmary for Women and Children. During the Civil War, Blackwell was a primary organizer of the Women’s Central Association of Relief, which trained nurses for wartime service. In 1868, Blackwell, along with Emily and Florence Nightingale, opened the Women’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary. The college remained in operation until 1899, when Cornell University began accepting women students. Relocating to England in 1869, she helped organize the National Health Society and the London School of Medicine for Women. She served as professor of gynecology there until 1907.

302 Section 5: Blackwell, Elizabeth botomy) employs leeches (leeching) or instruments to drain the blood. Bloodletting and leeching practices came to America on the Mayflower and reached their peak in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. One of the leading proponents of bloodletting and leeching in colonial America was Benjamin Rush, a staff physician at Pennsylvania Hospital. Rush believed in a unitary explanation of disease, asserting that all diseases, even mental illness (what he termed a disease of the mind), were symptoms of a single disorder: overstimulation of the blood vessels. He argued for and practiced “depletion,” bloodletting in which the quantity of blood let is relative to the symptoms of the disease: the greater the symptoms, the more intensive the bloodletting. So severe were his treatments that, during the yellow fever epidemics in Philadelphia during the 1790s, his cures were feared as much as the disease.

Phlebotomy

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to obtain a medical degree in the United States (Geneva College, 1849) and the first to practice medicine professionally. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–57850)

Blackwell was also an early advocate of animal rights, opposing the use of animals in scientific experimentation. She retired in 1907 after a serious fall and died in Sussex on May 31, 1910. Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Baker, Rachel. The First Woman Doctor: The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D. New York: Julian Messner, 1944. Ross, Ishbel. Child of Destiny: The Life Story of the First Woman Doctor. New York: Harper, 1949.

BLEEDING Bleeding is the depletion of a large quantity of blood from the body or the removal of a small quantity of blood from a localized area for medicinal purposes. Medicinal bloodletting (phle-

Although George Washington was reportedly bled of nine pints of blood in twenty-four hours before he died of a throat infection in 1799, the normal depletion was one to four pints. As the nineteenth century progressed, the practice of phlebotomy and leeching fell into disuse. By the early twentieth century, with the exception of some areas of rural America, bloodletting had all but disappeared. A number of instruments were used in bloodletting. A lancet was used to manually perforate the vein (venesection) and drain the blood into a shallow vessel. Spring-loaded lancets (similar to those used in diabetic glucose testing today) were first used in the early eighteenth century. The fleam, a kind of lancet with a saw tooth shaped like an isosceles triangle, made multiple shallow cuts to drain large areas. The scarificator comprised a series of twelve spring-driven rotary blades that could inflict multiple shallow cuts.

Leeches In the 1980s, interest was renewed in the use of medicinal leeches (Hirudo medicinalis) as microsurgery advanced in the reattachment of severed fingers, limbs, ears, detached scalps, and

Section 5: Bowditch, Henry Ingersoll 303 other medical conditions and surgeries requiring the reestablishment of blood flow to a localized area. A major complication of these surgeries is venous congestion caused by inefficient venous draining. This blood clotting blocks oxygenation and necessary nourishment from the tissues and prevents the drainage of fluid from these tissues. Medicinal leeches secrete in their bite hirudin, an anticoagulant that prevents blood clotting by inhibiting the enzyme thrombin. Hirudin is produced by the bacterium Aeromonan hydrophila, harbored in the gut of the leech. The leeches suck blood from the area, reducing the edema (swelling) and allowing oxygenated blood into the area until normal circulation is restored. One risk factor in leech hirudotherapy is an Aeromonas infection rate of up to 20 percent, which can be treated or prevented by the administration of antibiotics. A mechanical leech is in development as an alternative to live medicinal leeches. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Duke, Martin. The Development of Medical Techniques and Treatments: From Leeches to Heart Surgery. Guilford, CT: International Universities Press, 1991. King, Lester S. Transformations in American Medicine: From Benjamin Rush to William Osler. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Stern, Heinrich. Theory and Practice of Bloodletting. New York: Rebman, 1915.

BOWDITCH, HENRY INGERSOLL (1808–1892) The public health advocate and physician Henry Ingersoll Bowditch was born to the mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch and his wife, Mary Ingersoll Bowditch, on August 9, 1808, in Salem, Massachusetts. He was educated in a private elementary school and the Boston Latin School before attending Harvard College; after graduation in 1828, he continued his studies at the Harvard Medical School. At the same time, he worked as house officer at Massachusetts General Hospital and received his medical degree in 1833. Like many aspiring physicians of his generation, Bowditch felt the need to study in Europe,

because medical practice in the United States had not reached the highest standards. While in Paris, he was eagerly welcomed into academic circles because of his father’s reputation for having translated Méchanique céleste (Celestial Mechanics, 1799–1825), a classic scientific treatise by the French astronomer and mathematician Pierre Simon de Laplace. In Paris, Bowditch emulated his mentor, Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, by studying clinical symptoms and correlating them with microscopic findings and later autopsy specimens; he joined Louis in his commitment to precise observation. Back in the United States, Bowditch founded the Boston Society for Medical Observation, an organization modeled after one he had attended in Paris. Unlike most of his profession, Bowditch was a political and social liberal, supporting the abolition of slavery and the rights of women, especially in education. He wrote cogent articles in which he argued that sex has nothing to do with the right of a person to obtain an education, and he admonished Harvard College for continuing its 200-year tradition of barring women. In 1838, Bowditch married Olivia Yardley, whom he had met while in Paris. At this time, he became an admitting physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. Even as he published, taught, and lectured, however, his medical achievements were secondary to his antislavery activism until the 1850s. Medically, Bowditch is best known for his work in public health, his advocacy for an ambulance service, and his clinical focus on diseases of the chest, especially the epidemiology of tuberculosis (TB), a major concern of his generation. Phthisis (wasting away) and consumption were terms used to describe tuberculosis. Bowditch developed a way to drain the chest known as “thoracis paracentesis.” The surgeon, by making a puncture wound in the chest with a small, hollow needle and then aspirating the contents, relieved the patient of chest pain. Closely related to his interest in thoracic medicine was the application of a new technology, the stethoscope, to facilitate hearing breath sounds. Bowditch published The Young Stethoscopist in 1864. Not only did he describe auscultation (listening to interior sounds) and percussion of the chest, but he also showed creative applications of

304 Section 5: Bowditch, Henry Ingersoll such techniques to the head and neck, abdomen, and veterinary medicine. Bowditch was opposed to the overuse of drugs in treating disease and recommended the continued therapeutic use of bloodletting, a therapy that was being attacked at the time. Bowditch’s work in preventive medicine accelerated when, in 1869, he became the first chair of the newly formed Massachusetts Board of Health. In that position, he was able to reach a large audience in seeking support for a state program that would improve the lives of the most needy. In 1874, he published Preventive Medicine and the Physician of the Future. Frustrated at the lack of support, he resigned from Massachusetts General Hospital and joined the American Medical Association, where he was able to promote the state’s role in preventive medicine. He died after complications from a fall during the winter of 1892. Lana Thompson

Sources Bowditch, Henry I. “The Medical Education of Women: The Present Hostile Position of Harvard University and of the Massachusetts Medical Society: What Remedies therefore can be Suggested?” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 105:5 (1881): 289–93. ———. The Young Stethoscopist. 1846. New York: Hafner, 1964. Felts, John H. “Henry Ingersoll Bowditch and Oliver Wendell Holmes.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 45:4 (2002): 539–48. Garrison, Fielding H. An Introduction to the History of Medicine. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1960.

B OY L S T O N , Z A B D I E L (1676–1766) A physician who introduced smallpox inoculation in the American colonies, Zabdiel Boylston was born in Muddy River Hamlet (Brookline), Massachusetts, on March 9, 1676. He was educated at home by his father and had no medical degree. In 1721, as a smallpox epidemic was sweeping Boston, the Puritan minister Cotton Mather exhorted Boylston to use inoculations of the virus to prevent the disease and its spread. Mather had come to believe in the efficacy of smallpox inocu-

lations as early as 1706, when a slave, Onesimus, described to Mather how he had been inoculated as a child in Africa. Mather also heard reports that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, had had her son prophylactically inoculated there in 1717 and that she continued to advocate prophylactic smallpox inoculation in Europe. Cognizant of the controversy that might arise and the risks of this new and unproven procedure, Boylston inoculated his son, Thomas, along with an adult slave and a boy slave on June 26. The result was a muted form of smallpox from which all three recovered by July 4. Boylston then inoculated more than 240 others, of whom all but six survived. His inoculation technique was to make a small wound and infect it with pus taken from a smallpox sore. Opposition came from physicians as well as the general population, who viewed inoculation as “poisoning.” Newspapers took sides, with the New England Courant publishing viewpoints opposed to inoculation, and the Boston News-Letter and the Boston Gazette refusing to publish anything against inoculation. Although Mather was a well-known Puritan clergyman, neither he nor Boylston was immune to the criticism that asserted smallpox was a judgment of God and should be accepted as such. Both Boylston and Mather received personal threats, with some opponents going so far as to call for Boylston’s murder. Mather’s home was firebombed. The opposition and protests became so great that the inoculations had to be given covertly. At the height of the controversy, however, six of Boston’s most prominent clergy gave open support to Boylston and Mather, even though they themselves were accused of being unfaithful “to the revealed law of God.” Boylston traveled to England in 1724 and published Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated in New England in 1726. That same year, he was elected to the Royal Society, to which he had earlier sent, by way of his nephew, a large kidney stone retrieved from a horse; the contribution became one of the most popular exhibits in the society’s voided-substance collection. Returning to America, he continued to practice medicine as well as pursue scientific and agricultural research. Zabdiel Boylston died in Brookline on March 1, 1766.

Section 5: Boylston, Zabdiel 305

Zabdiel Boylston introduced the smallpox inoculation in America during an outbreak of the disease in Boston in 1721, despite the opposition of religious groups. The inoculations were a success, and Boylston described the results in a 1726 report. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

306 Section 5: Boylston, Zabdiel Smallpox inoculation was never widely accepted and only periodically practiced until Edward Jenner introduced the cowpox inoculation as a vaccination against smallpox in 1798. Only then did it gain general acceptance. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Carroll, Jennifer Lee. The Speckled Monster: A Historic Tale of Battling Smallpox. New York: Dutton, 2003. Mather, Cotton. Some Account of What Is Said of Inoculating or Transplanting the Small Pox. By the learned Dr. Emanuel Timonius, and Jacobus Pylarinus. Microfilm. American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. Winslow, Ola Elizabeth. A Destroying Angel: The Conquest of Smallpox in Colonial Boston. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.

C A D WA L A D E R , T H O M A S (1708–1779) A colonial physician and scientist, Thomas Cadwalader was born in Philadelphia in 1708. He studied medicine in Philadelphia and then in London. In 1731, he returned to Philadelphia to practice medicine and became one of several founders, along with Benjamin Franklin, of the Philadelphia Library Company, the first lending library in America. He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society before its merger with the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge in 1769, as well as one of the founders of Masonry in the colonies.

Physician and Scientist In the winter of 1736–1737, Cadwalader began inoculating Philadelphians prophylactically. This technique had been brought to England in 1717 by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey. Cadwalader authored one of the first American public health advisories, entitled “Essay on the West-India Dry-Gripes, with the Method of Preventing and Curing That Cruel Distemper” (1745). The treatise, which prescribed the proper treatment for vomiting and dysentery (“dry-

gripes” or “dry belly ache”) caused by chronic lead poisoning from drinking rum distilled in lead pipes, was first printed by Benjamin Franklin. Cadwalader used autopsies and empirical observation to discredit the use of purgatives, in particular, quicksilver, as a treatment for the condition. He further demonstrated his penchant for innovation by using electricity in 1750, the first known use in medicine, to stabilize the heart rhythm of the son of Jonathan Belcher, a royal colonial governor of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, and the founder of Princeton University. In 1746, Cadwalader moved to Trenton, New Jersey, but he returned to Philadelphia in 1751. There, he became one of the original subscribers (shareholders) of the capital stock being sold to support the founding of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first in the colonies, initiated by Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond. Cadwalader became one of the founding physicians of that institution (now part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System). In 1766, he was elected a trustee of the Medical College of Philadelphia, where he also lectured.

Patriot Cadwalader was active in colonial politics as well as medicine. He was the son of Brigadier General John Cadwalader, and one of his sons was a member of both the Continental Congress and the U.S. Congress. Cadwalader was elected a member of the Philadelphia Common Council in 1751, a position he held until 1774. He was placed on the provincial council on November 2, 1765, where he signed the nonimportation (boycott) articles, an attempt to force British merchants to pressure Parliament to repeal the Stamp Act. In July 1776, he was appointed to a committee that examined all candidates for the post of surgeon in the colonial navy. He assumed at the same time the additional position of medical director of colonial army hospitals. At the time of his death near Trenton on November 14, 1779, he was a surgeon at the Pennsylvania Hospital. Richard M. Edwards

Section 5: Cancer and Cancer Research 307 Sources Reiss, Oscar. Medicine in Colonial America. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000. Williams, Guy. The Age of Agony: The Art of Healing, c. 1700–1800. Chicago: American Academy, 1986.

CANCER

AND

CANCER RESEARCH

The word “cancer” comes from the Greek “carcinoma,” coined in 430 B.C.E. by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, who observed the crablike pattern of veins emanating from tumors. Cancer is a disease defined by an aggressive growth of abnormal and invasive cells. There are more than 200 kinds of cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, approximately 10.5 million people living in the United States have some form of cancer. About 1.4 million cases of cancer were diagnosed in 2006; an estimated 559,650 deaths from cancer were anticipated in 2007. Cancer is the second leading cause of death each year in the United States, after heart disease.

Diagnosis and Treatment Physicians in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome treated cancer with salves and surgery but had little success. The Roman physician Celsus observed around 40 C.E. that cancer often returned after surgery. The second-century physician Galen found that by the time a patient received a cancer diagnosis, the condition was untreatable. Knowledge of the disease and possible treatment options progressed with science and medicine. Eighteenth-century American and European physicians laid the foundation for scientific oncology, the study and treatment of cancerous tumors. Giovanni Morgagni of Padua recorded postmortem findings beginning in 1761. Scottish surgeon John Hunter realized that some cancers could be cured by surgically removing the tumor. In 1775, Percival Pott, an English physician, noted the high incidence of scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps, demonstrating an environmental origin. Surgery remained the primary treatment for cancer well into the nineteenth century, especially after anesthesia became available in the

1840s. Surgical excision, however, was very painful and far from a complete cure. William Coley, an American physician from New York, tried in the 1890s to use injections of a bacterial solution to cure cancer. Although he did have limited results, his methods were not accepted by the medical community. Major surgical contributions came at the turn of the twentieth century from the British surgeons Stephen Paget and W. Sampson Handley, and from William Halsted of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Paget formed a seed theory about the spread of cancer, hypothesizing that cancer cells spread throughout the body in the bloodstream but settle and grow only on favorable organs. Modern molecular biology has validated this theory and led to systemic treatments for cancers. Handley believed that cancer spread outward from the primary tumor. Drawing on this theory, Halsted used radical mastectomy in 1882 to treat breast cancer. This surgery consisted of removal of the breast as well as the surrounding muscles and adjacent lymph nodes. Radical mastectomy achieved an unprecedented rate of recovery for breast cancer patients and remained the standard treatment for nearly a century. Researchers eventually discovered that a less radical mastectomy could produce similar results, and treatment turned to excision of just the tumor, in conjunction with the application of radiation and chemotherapy. Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery of the X-ray in 1896 revolutionized cancer treatment. X-ray equipment produced an image on negative film that could be read against a light, allowing doctors to “see into” a person. X-rays served not only as a diagnostic tool but also as a treatment. It was found that higher-dose exposures killed cancer cells. The use of X-rays as a treatment waned, however, when it was clear that high doses of radiation hurt patients more than it helped them. Chemotherapy became a new treatment for cancer in the mid-twentieth century. The U.S. government led the first formal chemotherapy treatments in 1955. A low dose of chemicals used in an intravenous injection proved successful against many types of cancers, including systemic cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. Several advanced drugs were developed in the

308 Section 5: Cancer and Cancer Research

Doctors and technicians review the results of positron emission tomography (PET) scans of a cancer patient. Advances in detection and treatment have yielded a significant increase in the percentage of cancer patients who survive the disease. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

1960s that effectively impaired cellular mitosis, targeting the fast dividing cancerous growths. The side effects of treatment varied but commonly included hair loss, damage to the patient’s intestinal lining, and general weakness. In addition, chemotherapy was not an effective treatment for advanced cancer, and too high a dose of the chemicals could be fatal. The U.S. Congress created the National Cancer Institute in 1937 to solidify the government’s role in supporting scientific research on cancer. President Richard M. Nixon vowed to find a cure with the National Cancer Act of 1971, and funding dollars increased from $93 million a year to $417 million in 1978. In the 1990s, breast cancer activists brought attention to women’s health issues and launched a political movement to protest a lack of funding and research. In 1982, the federal government budget for breast cancer research was $30 million a year. By 2006, the amount was more than

$900 million. By 2016, activists hope to raise an additional $1 billion of private donations, much of it through the Susan G. Komen Foundation. In 1997, champion cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong established the Lance Armstrong Foundation to increase awareness of and funding for the cancer crusade. The foundation has raised almost $15 million for research, survivor outreach, and educational programs.

Forms and Statistics According to the American Cancer Society, the percentage of U.S. citizens who get cancer and survive has risen from 51 percent in 1975 to 66 percent in 1996. In 2006, there were 1.4 million new cases of cancer. Lung cancer was the most common type of cancer (231,000), followed by prostate (218,000), breast (180,000), urinary (120,000), colon (112,000), lymphoma (71,000), skin (65,000), leukemia (44,000), pancreas (37,000),

Section 5: Chalmers, Lionel 309 endocrine system (35,000), ovarian (22,000), liver (19,000), brain (19,000), and bone (2,000). The National Institutes of Health has estimated that cancer costs the U.S. economy over $206 billion a year in medical related costs. Prostate cancer (33 percent) and lung cancer (13 percent) kill the most males; breast cancer (32 percent) and lung cancer (12 percent) kill the most females. Since 2000, cancer research scientists have focused on developing the targeted use of over fifty chemotherapy drugs, the application of advanced radiation treatments, and performing detailed DNA studies to better catalog the mutations that cancer causes. It has been established that cancer can be the result of a number of hereditary, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Links have been established between cancer and tobacco smoke, asbestos inhalation, and exposure to radiation, ultraviolet rays, and other carcinogens. Research on the molecular level has targeted using the structure and design of a cancer cell and new methods of DNA manipulation to turn the cancer on itself so that it self-destructs. Although no single cure has been found, the medical community continues to focus on research, preventative healthy living practices, early medical screening and diagnosis, and better treatment to increase survival rates. James Fargo Balliett and Kimberley Green Weathers

Sources American Cancer Society. http://www.cancer.org. Benowitz, Steven. Cancer. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 1999. Fraham, David. A Cancer Battle Plan. New York: Putnam, 1992. Lerner, Barron. Breast Cancer Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Patterson, James T. The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

CHALMERS, LIONEL ( C A . 1715–1777) A leading colonial physician and scientist, Lionel Chalmers was born in Cambleton, Scotland, in about 1715. After studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, he emigrated to South

Carolina. In addition to his research and publications on tetanus and weather observation, Chalmers was a leader and financial supporter of scientific inquiry in South Carolina. Chalmers and other Edinburgh-educated physicians practiced the science of medicine in a culture dominated by superstition and folk remedies. The popular remedy for smallpox, for example, was to position the patient’s feet in the open abdominal cavity of a fowl while applying a poultice of honey and “dry white dog dung” to the patient’s throat. Chalmers helped bring a scientific understanding to this environment with his “Essay on Fevers” (1767) and a paper entitled “Opisthotonus and Tetanus,” published in the London Medical Society’s Transactions in 1754. In the latter article, he observed and discussed the muscle rigidity, arching back, and backward head thrust (opisthotonos) symptomatic of tetanus. Epidemics spread rapidly in the hot, humid, and generally unsanitary conditions of the colonial South. In 1776, Chalmers presciently recognized the effect of these conditions on public health; he was the first to understand and describe the phenomenon known as “urban heat island,” in which temperatures tend to be higher in densely populated urban areas than in the surrounding countryside. The heat and humidity of coastal South Carolina created an ideal environment for the incubation and spread of disease, as Chalmers argued in A Treatise on the Weather and Diseases of South Carolina (1776). The thesis was based on his recorded observations that the weather and environment of South Carolina correlated with the epidemiology of various diseases over a ten-year period starting in 1750. As a patron of scientific inquiry, Chalmers supervised and acted as the agent for the botanist William Bartram, who described more than 350 plant and animal species in his Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (1791). Many of these species were unknown before Bartram discovered and classified them. Chalmers practiced medicine and promoted scientific inquiry in the environs of Charleston County for forty years. He died in Charleston in 1777. He contributed so much to the community that the city named a major downtown thoroughfare, Chalmers Street, after him. Richard M. Edwards

310 Section 5: Chalmers, Lionel Sources Reiss, Oscar. Medicine in Colonial America. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000. Terkel, Susan Neiburg. Colonial American Medicine. Danbury, CT: Franklin Watts, 1993. Williams, Guy. The Age of Agony: The Art of Healing, c. 1700–1800. Chicago: American Academy, 1986.

C H A N N I N G , W A LT E R (1786–1876) Walter Channing was a Boston physician, a leading medical educator, and a pioneer in the use of anesthesia in obstetrics. Born April 15, 1786, in Newport, Rhode Island, he attended Harvard University as an undergraduate. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1809 and began practicing medicine in Boston in 1812. Channing was a general-practice physician (as were almost all physicians of that period), but he focused on obstetrics. In 1815, he was appointed the first lecturer of obstetrics (midwifery) at the Harvard Medical School, and he became professor of midwifery and medical jurisprudence in 1818. He remained at Harvard for almost forty years, serving as dean of the medical school from 1819 to 1847, and assisting in the founding of the Boston Lying-in Hospital in 1832. He also served with John Warren as a coeditor of the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and its successor, the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Channing was a pioneer in the use of anesthesia in obstetrics. In the mid-1800s, while ether had been successfully used in surgery and dentistry, American physicians were wary about its use in childbirth. In addition to concerns regarding the effects of ether on the health of both the mother and the infant, some believed that the pain of childbirth was important for mother–child bonding; others believed it represented God’s punishment for Eve’s sins. In 1847, Channing first published case reports on the use of ether during childbirth. He also surveyed physicians in the Boston area on their experience with ether during childbirth and, in his 1848 Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, summarized results from 581 cases. In this treatise,

Channing declared that the use of ether had been demonstrated to be safe for both the mother and the child, and he strongly advocated its use. Channing also stated that the use of ether in childbirth relieved unnecessary suffering, increased dilation, increased secretions, and prevented exhaustion. He concluded, “etherization is not used to suspend uterine contractions (which it most rarely does), but to prevent pain; and, in this way, to make labor safe and happy to both mother and child, and to secure a successful convalescence.” Channing was a devout Unitarian, and this background likely influenced his medical career. In 1803, he wrote his brother, William Ellery Channing (who became an influential Unitarian minister), that a physician had two important duties: “by an acquaintance with physic he can ease the pains incident to the body & by acquaintance with the comforts of religion he may make the pains of dying much easier.” In addition to his medical works, Channing wrote biographies of prominent physicians John D. Fisher, Joshua Fisher, Enoch Hale, and John Revere, a volume of poems, New and Old (1851), and two accounts of travel in Europe, Professional Reminiscences of Foreign Travel (1852) and A Physician’s Vacation; or, A Summer in Europe (1856). He died on July 27, 1876. Michael T. Halpern

Sources Kass, Amalie M. “ ‘My Brother Preaches, I Practice’: Walter Channing, M.D., Antebellum Obstetrician.” Massachusetts Historical Review 1 (1999): 79–94. ———. “The Obstetrical Casebook of Walter Channing, 1811–1822.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 67:3 (1993): 494–523.

C H A P I N , C H A R L E S V. (1856–1941) Charles Value Chapin was a longtime superintendent of health in Providence, Rhode Island, a Brown University professor of physiology, and, arguably, the leading sanitary scientist and epidemiologist of his time. Born on January 17, 1856, in Providence, Chapin received his training as a physician at

Section 5: Cooley, Denton 311 New York University in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He graduated in 1879, taught at Brown University from 1882 to 1895, and lectured regularly at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Hygiene from 1909 to 1931. He served as health superintendent of the city of Providence from 1884 to 1932. Chapin was a champion of the “new public health” movement of the first decades of the twentieth century. The new public health included many of the preventive measures taken for granted today, including childhood immunizations, protection of drinking water supplies, control of contagious diseases by disinfection and sanitation, and bacteriological testing in the laboratory. Practitioners of the new public health emphasized logic and objective science as the path to “truth systematized.” Chapin heaped scorn on older models of science that relied on common sense or mere guesswork. The quantification or measurement of natural phenomena, he believed, allowed them to be standardized. “The progress of a science is largely dependent upon the extent to which quantitative methods are employed in research,” he explained in a 1909 address to the American Public Health Association. Chapin used his Providence laboratory to count and classify bacteria, as well as to compute their exact thermal death points. He carefully weighed biological and chemical samples, graphed electrophoresis effects, and made extensive biometrical analyses of human subjects. Outside the laboratory, he pioneered in the areas of vital statistics schedules; appraisal forms; health score cards; surveys; birth, death, and marriage certificates; life tables; morbidity and mortality reports; and population censuses. All of these specialized measurements and tools provided a steady flow of information for surveilling the community for disease. Chapin’s focus on the systematization of knowledge paid handsome dividends. His study of the problems of urban sanitation, The Sources and Modes of Infection (1910), put the nail in the coffin of the “filth theory” of disease that attributed illnesses to invisible, noxious emanations coming from such environmental sources as rotting garbage or disturbed soil. Chapin also demonstrated that most contagious diseases were spread by direct contact rather than by va-

porous currents. His labors in Providence are credited with the reduction of infant mortality there by 50 percent and the overall death rate by 30 percent. His single-minded attention to scientific method in the war against disease met growing resistance after World War I. Other health authorities, most notably Charles Edward-Amory Winslow at Yale, charged that sanitary scientists had failed to weigh carefully the need for popular education. This criticism was not unfounded. As late as 1917, Chapin assigned education only 80 out of 1,000 possible points in his professional assessments of public health departments, compared with 100 points allocated for privy sanitation. On balance, Chapin was well respected by his peers, earning numerous honors, such as being made an Honorary Fellow of the Society of Medical Officers of Health in 1934. He died in Providence on January 31, 1941. Philip Frana

Sources Cassedy, James H. Charles V. Chapin and the Public Health Movement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Gorham, Frederick P., and Clarence L. Scamman, comps. Papers of Charles V. Chapin, M.D.: A Review of Public Health Realities. New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1934.

C O O L E Y, D E N T O N (1920– ) The pioneering heart surgeon Denton Arthur Cooley is perhaps best known for implanting an artificial heart in a human patient for the first time in 1969. Cooley was born on August 22, 1920, in Houston, Texas. After graduating from the University of Texas in 1941, he entered the Texas College of Medicine at Galveston and later transferred to Johns Hopkins University; he received his M.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1944. After serving the Army Medical Corps as a chief of hospital surgical services in Austria (1946–1948), he returned to Johns Hopkins to complete his residency and later take an instructorship in surgery. In 1950, he participated in the first intracardiac operations in England.

312 Section 5: Cooley, Denton Cooley returned to Houston in 1951, becoming an associate professor of surgery at Baylor University College of Medicine and practicing at Methodist Hospital. There, he began a collaboration with fellow surgeon and Texas native Michael DeBakey that led to major innovations in cardiovascular surgery. Among these were an improved method of repairing aortic aneurysms and the development of a heart and lung machine, perfected in 1955, based on Cooley’s design. Other notable achievements include the first open-heart operation in the southern United States, the introduction of “bloodless” heart surgery, the implantation of the first totally artificial human heart, pioneering work in pediatric cardiovascular surgery, the development of artificial heart valves, and the first successful extraction of a pulmonary embolism. In 1968, Cooley performed a heart transplant for the first time in the United States. In the course of the following year, he would perform a total of twenty-two heart transplants, including a marathon three transplants in five days. By 1972, Cooley had performed over 1,200 heart bypasses and 10,000 open-heart surgeries. In 1969, Cooley became the first surgeon to implant an artificial heart in a patient. Colleague Michael DeBakey accused Cooley of pirating his research and performing the surgery without federal approval. Cooley vociferously denied the charge, arguing that the recipient’s permission took precedence over federal approval. The American College of Surgeons censored Cooley as a result. Cooley founded the Texas Heart Institute in 1962, where he remains president and chief surgeon. He left Baylor in 1969, and subsequently served as chief of cardiovascular surgery at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, clinical professor of surgery at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, and cardiovascular consultant at Texas Children’s Hospital. He also is a prolific author of hundreds of articles and a dozen books. His honors include the National Medal of Technology, the Medal of Freedom, and decorations from numerous foreign countries. He is an honorary fellow in four Royal Colleges of Surgery and a member of the Longhorn Hall of Honor and the Natural Sciences Hall of Honor.

In 1967, the International Surgical Society presented him with the Renée Lebiche Prize, declaring him “the most valuable surgeon of the heart and blood vessel anywhere in the world.” Richard M. Edwards

Sources Cooley, Denton A. Reflections and Observations: Essays of Denton A. Cooley. Collected by Marianne Kneipp. Austin, TX: Eakin, 1984. Hurt, Raymond. The History of Cardiothoracic Surgery from Early Times. New York: Pantheon, 1996. Minetree, Harry. Cooley: The Career of a Great Heart Surgeon. New York: HarperCollins, 1973. Naef, Andreas P. The Story of Thoracic Surgery: Milestones and Pioneers. Lewiston, NY: Hogrefe and Huber, 1990. Shumacker, Harris B. The Evolution of Cardiac Surgery. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

CUSHING, HARVEY WILLIAMS (1869–1939) A pioneer of modern neuroanatomy and neurosurgery, Harvey Williams Cushing, the last of ten children, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 8, 1869, to Betsey Maria Williams and Henry Kirke. He was educated at a private elementary school and a public high school, where his favorite subjects were math and Latin. In 1887, he entered Yale College, where he participated in baseball (against his father’s wishes) and excelled in chemistry and physiological chemistry. By the time he was a senior, he had decided on a medical career and, with the encouragement of his brother, entered Harvard Medical School. There, he gained the attention of both classmates and teachers with his meticulous dissection skills. After graduating in 1895, Cushing worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he added to the accuracy of patient medical records by documenting his charts with both pre- and postoperative drawings of excised lesions. He and a colleague, Amory Codman, developed a technique to monitor the patient during surgery with regard to depth of ether anesthesia. In 1896, Cushing went to Johns Hopkins for a four-year surgical residency under William Halsted. He brought an X-ray tube with him and

Section 5: DeBakey, Michael E. 313 took the first X-rays in that hospital. Canadian physician William Osler was at Johns Hopkins at the time, teaching surgical students about bedside manner and the importance of the clinical examination. In 1900, Cushing traveled to Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and England, where he researched neurological anatomy. In Italy, he witnessed the use of a blood pressure cuff, which he copied and later introduced as a technology to use in the operating room. In England, he studied with the physiologist Charles Sherrington to learn more about the brain. Back at Johns Hopkins and married to a childhood friend, Catherine Crowell, he remained there for ten years, despite frequent offers from competing university hospitals. While working on head and neck neuropathology, he noted a constellation of findings that could be described as polyglandular disease. This dysfunction of the pituitary gland, later named Cushing’s disease or Cushing’s syndrome, is a hormonal disorder initially mistaken for pregnancy because the patient stops menstruating, gains weight, and develops a characteristic line of hair growth on the abdomen. The symptoms later include an abnormal accumulation of fat in the face, neck, and trunk, and a characteristic hunchback appearance. Ever interested in circus performers, freaks, and human anomalies, it is not surprising that Cushing’s medical interests would focus on endocrine dysfunction, neuroanatomy, and neurophysiology. Aggressively recruited by Harvard, Cushing left Johns Hopkins in 1912 to accept a Moseley professorship of surgery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the position of chief of surgery at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. His work there contributed fundamentally to the development of neurosurgery as a separate specialty in medicine. Cushing’s operating room technique was flawless, and his postoperative treatment of a patient was caring as well as cautious. He documented everything. Given his close working relationship with William Osler, Cushing was commissioned to write a biography; in 1926, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his two-volume Life of Sir William Osler. A prolific writer, Cushing compiled an extensive journal during World War I, which was pub-

lished in condensed form as From a Surgeon’s Journal (1936). Cushing retired in 1933 and spent the rest of his life studying meningiomas with a colleague, Louise Eisenhardt. Another interest was the Flemish Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius, which spurred Cushing to collect everything he could about sixteenth-century anatomy; the collection is now housed at Yale University. In October 1939, Cushing was hospitalized with chest pain and died two days later. His last regret, perhaps understandable only to an anatomist, was that he would not be able to attend his own postmortem. Lana Thompson

Sources Fulton, John F. Harvey Cushing: A Biography. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1946. Thomson, E.H. “Harvey Williams Cushing.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 3. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1971.

D E B A K E Y, M I C H A E L E. (1908– ) Michael E. DeBakey has made numerous contributions to cardiovascular surgery. As a medical statesman, he has advised U.S. presidents on federal health policy. As a surgeon, his patients have included presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, the Duke of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, and Boris Yeltsin of the former Soviet Union. Born on September 7, 1908, to Lebanese immigrants in Lake Charles, Louisiana, DeBakey received his college and medical education at Tulane University in New Orleans. While still in medical school, he invented a key component of the heart and lung machine—a roller pump, made of several mechanically driven rollers that massage a rubber tube to force blood through. DeBakey performed his residency in Europe and returned home in 1937 to join the faculty at Tulane. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, where his observations of battlefield casualties led to the creation of mobile hospitals to treat soldiers on the front lines. First

314 Section 5: DeBakey, Michael E.

Cardiovascular surgeon Michael DeBakey (left) and Baylor College of Medicine colleague Denton Cooley (right) were responsible for major innovations in heart surgery and instrument development. The two had a falling out in the late 1960s and became rivals. (Ralph Crane/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

deployed during the Korean War, these Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units were credited with significantly lowering mortality rates. Back in the United States, DeBakey served on the Hoover Commission (1947–1949) to reorganize the executive branch of the federal government. Finding the surgeon general’s library in disarray and deteriorating, he lobbied for federal funding to protect and expand the collection. This work led to the institution of the National Library of Medicine in 1956. Meanwhile in 1948, DeBakey was appointed chair of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. At the same time, he modernized cardiovascular surgery with his innovations. One of DeBakey’s major endeavors was repairing and bypassing diseased arteries. He used Dacron polyester material from a local fabric store to graft an artery, repairing an aortic aneurysm. He also performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy to remove harmful plaque from the carotid artery.

DeBakey soon worked to develop an artificial heart. In 1966, he successfully used a left ventricular bypass pump on a patient recovering from surgery to replace damaged valves. In 1968, DeBakey and his team performed the first fourorgan transplant (heart, both lungs, and kidney) from one donor to separate recipients, as well as several heart transplants. Controversy involving DeBakey erupted when another Baylor surgeon, Denton Cooley, implanted an artificial heart in a patient. The researcher who developed the heart worked in both DeBakey’s and Cooley’s labs, so clear ownership of the device was difficult to determine. Claiming that the heart was his and that Cooley was not authorized to use it, DeBakey called on the National Heart Institute to investigate whether Cooley had violated federal guidelines in using the experimental device on a human. DeBakey has worked on developing a partial artificial heart. And he has worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on building a ventricular assistance device, clinical trials of which began in Germany in October 1998. DeBakey’s many awards include the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Research, the National Medal of Science, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction. His body of work includes more than 60,000 surgical procedures, over 1,600 scientific articles and books, and some fifty patented surgical instruments. Kimberley Green Weathers

Sources DeBakey, Michael E. General Surgery. Washington, DC: U.S. Army Medical History Office, 1955. Mitka, Mike. “Michael E. DeBakey, MD: Father of Modern Cardiovascular Surgery.” Journal of the American Medical Association 293:8 (2005): 913–8.

DENTISTRY Dentistry in America has changed dramatically from its early years. In the eighteenth century, for example, because of the pain of dental surgery, patients had to be restrained while an itinerant dentist dug into gums and removed teeth without the benefit of anesthesia. By the end of the twentieth century, with the use of local

Section 5: DeVries, William C. 315 anesthetics and nitrous oxide, the dental experience had become relatively painless. The native peoples of North America used a number of medicinal plants to address problems with teeth. American Indians in Pennsylvania decocted the bark of the prickly ash tree (Zanthoxylum americanum) and applied it to aching teeth. When botanist William Bartram of Philadelphia explored North and South Carolina during the 1770s, he found that the Indians tapped the compass plant (Silphium laciniatum) for a gummy substance that, when dried, they chewed to clean their teeth. Early American dentists who made advances in dentistry included Boston native John Greenwood, who made dentures for George Washington and invented a dental drill powered by a foot pedal. The first professional dentist to practice in America was Boston dental surgeon John Baker, who filled teeth, made artificial teeth, and treated scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency that affects the gums. Robert Woofendale, who immigrated to New York from England in 1766, was the first to practice endodontics, or root canal therapy. Silversmith Paul Revere of Boston advertised his dental services as early as 1768. In an example of early forensic odontology in America, Revere examined the teeth of a corpse, discovered a denture of his own making, and identified the remains of Dr. Joseph Warren. Developments in American dentistry during the nineteenth century included the first book on dentistry, Treatise on the Human Teeth, written by Richard Skinner in 1801. Skinner was the staff dentist at the first hospital dental clinic in America, the New York Dispensary. Technological advances in dentistry included the hand mallet, used for tapping gold foil into a prepared tooth, developed in 1838. In 1844, Horace Wells of Connecticut became the first dentist to use an anesthetic, nitrous oxide, to deaden pain when removing teeth. In 1851, Nelson Goodyear (brother of Charles, the inventor of vulcanized rubber) patented vulcanite, a hard rubber used as a denture base. Vulcanite fit so well that spring-based dentures were no longer necessary. Another rubber product, the rubber dam, invented by Sanford Barnum in 1864, enclosed individual teeth to isolate them from saliva and bacteria in the oral cavity

to prevent tooth decay. Another nineteenthcentury advance was the invention of flexible tubes to hold toothpaste. Developments in the early twentieth century included the discovery that fluoride prevents tooth decay. Frederick McKay of Colorado observed that patients who had dark brown spots on their teeth did not have tooth decay. He researched other communities that had the same phenomenon and discovered that a naturally occurring element, fluoride, was found in large amounts in their drinking water. While excess fluoridation causes mottled enamel in teeth, some fluoride prevents decay. In 1945, Michigan became the first state to add prophylactic fluoride to its water supply. The use of locally injected anesthetics and gas anesthesia has made today’s dental work virtually painless. Technologies such as sonic water cleaning and high-speed drills have reduced the amount of time it takes to clean teeth and prepare teeth for restorations. New composite materials have been incorporated in fillings, crowns, and bridges so that such modividations appear the same as natural teeth. With the general improvement in the dental health of most Americans, dentists have increasingly engaged in cosmetic dentistry. Lana Thompson

Sources American Dental Association. http://www.ada.org. Ring, Malvin. Dentistry. New York: Abrams. 1987.

D E V R I E S , W I L L I A M C. (1943– ) A cardiothoracic surgeon, William Castle DeVries implanted the first permanent artificial heart in a human patient. He was born at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital on December 19, 1943, six months before his father, a physician and surgeon on the destroyer USS Kalk, was killed in the Battle of Hollandia in the South Pacific. DeVries graduated from the University of Utah School of Medicine (UUSM) and completed his residency (1979) in cardiothoracic surgery at Duke University before returning to UUSM as a professor.

316 Section 5: DeVries, William C. DeVries’s interest in artificial hearts began when he was a medical student. During this time, he was exposed to the research of William (Willem) J. Kolff, the inventor of the artificial kidney and co-inventor with Robert Jarvik of the Jarvik-7 artificial heart. Kolff and Jarvik were already successfully implanting the device in sheep and calves. Once the device became suitable for human trials and permission was granted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), DeVries on December 2, 1982, implanted the externally airdriven, totally artificial Jarvik-7 heart into the chest of retired Seattle dentist Barney Clark in a seven-and-a-half-hour surgery at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City. The two rubber diaphragms of the Dacron, aluminum, and plastic pump were designed to replace the pumping action of the two lower chambers (ventricles) of the heart. Clark survived 112 days. Although the FDA’s approval (1983) of the use of cyclosporine in combination with steroids and other drugs as an immunosuppressant made heart transplantation a viable option in the 1980s, only 2,000 donor hearts were available annually for the 40,000 people dying each year of heart disease. DeVries advocated an aggressive implantation program to meet this need, but UUSM’s Institutional Review Board endorsed a more tempered pace, allowing future implants on a case-by-case basis only. It was clear to the board, Kolff, Jarvik, and DeVries that the existing technology had its limits and that the artificial heart as a permanent replacement was still years away. It was equally clear that the Jarvik-7 could be used as a temporary replacement while awaiting a suitable transplant. DeVries, Kolff, and Jarvik, however, believed that strides would be made more rapidly with more implantations—and there was no shortage of willing patients. In 1984, DeVries joined the staff of the Humana Heart Institute International in Louisville, Kentucky, with an underwriting guarantee for 100 artificial heart implants at a total cost of $25 million. Despite the funding, DeVries’s renown (he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in December 1984), and the progress in patient survivability (his patients collectively lived more than 1,300 days), DeVries performed only four per-

manent implantations of the Jarvik-7 from 1982 to 1987. By 1988, DeVries had focused his attention on more traditional cardiothoracic surgeries. Meanwhile, the FDA in 1985 had limited the use of the Jarvik-7 to temporary implantations. By 1990, it withdrew its approval of the Jarvik-7 because of what was considered the substandard quality of life for patients who were tethered to an external compressor while suffering strokes, hemorrhages, and infections. DeVries retired in 1999. He came out of retirement when he was commissioned in December 2000 as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, joining the staff of Walter Reed Army Medical Center as academic coordinator of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Service. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Hurt, Raymond. The History of Cardiothoracic Surgery from Early Times. New York: Pantheon, 1996. Naef, Andreas P. The Story of Thoracic Surgery: Milestones and Pioneers. Lewiston, NY: Hogrefe and Huber, 1990. Shumacker, Harris B. The Evolution of Cardiac Surgery. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Westaby, Stephen. Landmarks in Cardiac Surgery. Oxford, UK: Isis Medical Media, 2000.

DIABETES Diabetes is a chronic medical condition characterized by excessive urination (polyuria) and the body’s inability to properly metabolize carbohydrates. The two major forms of diabetes, diabetes insipidus and diabetes mellitus, are two distinct diseases with different causes and different treatments. Diabetes insipidus is caused by the body’s inability to produce, secrete, or respond to the antidiuretic hormone (ADH). Diabetes mellitus, more prevalent and more commonly thought of when discussing diabetes, is a complex metabolic disorder caused by the pancreas’s inability to produce or secrete insulin. Prior to the 1920s, a diagnosis of diabetes was often a death sentence. Unable to fully or properly metabolize glucose, fats, proteins, and carbohydrates, diabetics lost weight, weakened,

Section 5: Diphtheria 317

In 1921, Canadian physician Frederick Banting (right) and graduate student Charles Best (left) succeeded in isolating the hormone insulin from the pancreas, creating an effective treatment for diabetes mellitus. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

and sometimes died within a few months of diagnosis. Diabetics tried various treatments, most of which focused on diet. Some physicians thought that eating one food exclusively, such as oats or rice, would help to cure the disease. The most effective of these early twentiethcentury dietary treatments was a radical “starvation” diet developed in the 1910s by U.S. clinician Fredrick Allen. Diabetics willing to control every calorie of their diet were able to increase their lifespan by months or years. Allen published his research in 1913 in Studies Concerning Glycosuria and Diabetes. In 1922, a team of University of Toronto researchers led by Fredrick Banting and J.J.R. Macleod was able to isolate, extract, and purify the hormone insulin. Secreted by special cells in the pancreas called “islets,” insulin acts to regulate glucose metabolism and the processes for metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.

Delivered by a series of daily injections, insulin allows diabetics to lead long and normal lives. Banting and Macleod shared the Nobel Prize in 1923 for their discovery. During the 1930s, scientists isolated and understood the two separate forms of diabetes mellitus: Type I, or insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM); and Type II, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). Type I, denoted “juvenile” diabetes, generally begins to show symptoms by the onset of puberty. Type II, “adult-onset” diabetes, usually occurs in individuals over the age of forty, but it also may occur in the young. Type II is thought of as a lifestyle disease, as it is often the result of obesity, sedentary habits, heredity, and a high-fat diet. Hence, Type II diabetes is often referred to as a disease of civilization and prosperity. It has reached epidemic proportions in North America, but if properly treated with diet and exercise, Type II diabetes can be effectively controlled for life. Technological breakthroughs in blood testing and insulin delivery have made the treatment of diabetes increasingly effective and more convenient for those who suffer from it. Despite these advances, diabetes remains a chronic, lifethreatening disease for which there is currently no cure. Diabetics are more prone to heart disease, endocrinological problems, and poor circulation in the extremities, sometimes necessitating the amputation of limbs. John P. Hundley

Sources Bliss, Michael. The Discovery of Insulin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Wrenshall, G.A., G. Hetenyi, and W.R. Feasby. The Story of Insulin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962.

DIPHTHERIA One of the great childhood killers of the nineteenth century, diphtheria is an acute bacterial disease that usually affects the tonsils, throat, or skin. Although it can be prevented with a vaccine, it has not been eliminated worldwide. Diphtheria is a disease that strangles. It is a localized infection of mucous membranes or

318 Section 5: Diphtheria skin caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae and Corynebacterium ulcerans. Infections classically involve the upper respiratory tract, but skin infections also have been found. The bacillus usually enters the body through the nose or mouth via droplets transmitted by active cases or carriers, but occasionally it enters via inhaled dust. Humans are the only reservoir of infection. Clinical manifestations occur one to seven days after infection. Diphtheria entails thick, leathery, blue-white lesions composed of blood clots, bacteria, dead skin, and white blood cells. If suffocation by this pseudomembrane does not kill the patient, the protein exotoxin produced by the bacillus and spread through the blood to all parts of the body will often cause the victim’s demise. Prior to the use of specific antitoxins, the fatality rate averaged 35 percent. Deaths rose to 90 percent when the pseudomembrane involved the larynx. Unlike cholera, smallpox, or yellow fever, diphtheria historically did not manifest itself in massive epidemics. An endemic disease, it routinely claimed thousands of people a year without attracting much notice, possibly because physicians could do little to stop it, and the public had become resigned to diphtheria deaths. In the 1870s, diphtheria became more common, and, by the 1920s, it had become a major public health concern.

Identifying the Disease Diphtheria did not acquire its name until the early nineteenth century. Previously, it had been known by a variety of other designations, including morbus stranglatorius, croup, malignant ulcerous sore throat, angina maligna, and throat distemper. The French physician Pierre Fidèle Bretonneau named the disease diphtheria in 1819. Recognizing the defining characteristic of the disease as the formation of a false membrane in the throat, Bretonneau derived the name from the Greek diphtheritis (skin or membrane). Bretonneau, who argued that diphtheria was a communicable disease caused by a specific germ, published his conclusions in 1826. Prominent physicians continued to disagree with Bretonneau about the cause of diphtheria.

In the 1850s, British sanitarians had characterized the disease as zymotic, or caused by filth. The prevalence of diphtheria in the poor wards of cities made this claim difficult to dispute, but accumulating evidence from French and German laboratories pointed to a bacterial etiology. In 1881, the German pathologist Edwin Krebs succeeded in isolating the C. diphtheriae bacteria from the diphtheria membrane.

Diagnosis and Treatment The identification of C. diphtheriae did not initially improve the reporting of diphtheria. Nineteenthcentury physicians often missed the diagnosis in their patients, because they commonly identified a disease by its symptoms. In mild forms of diphtheria, victims had only a sore throat and a mild fever. Paralysis of the muscles of the soft palate created a characteristic nasal voice and the regurgitation of fluids through the nose. The infection also caused the lymph glands and tissue on both sides of the neck to swell to an unusually large size. However, without the presence of a pseudomembrane, physicians could not be absolutely certain that they were looking at a case of diphtheria, and they often diagnosed another inflammation. In the 1890s, diagnosis became possible by the combination of physician examination and a throat culture. Once diphtheria was identified, physicians had little idea of how to help their patients. They recommended that a victim be isolated at once and attempts made to dilute, wash away, or forcibly remove the pseudomembrane without causing injury to the surrounding tissue. Sprays of limewater and other alkalines such as pepsin, typsin, and papayotin were typically used in attempts to dissolve the membrane. To defeat the toxin, mercurials were widely used, with calomel and hydrochloride of mercury given internally or by hypodermic injection. Mechanical help in breathing came in the form of the 1885 tube devised by New York City physician Joseph O’Dwyer, which could be inserted into a suffocating patient’s throat when efforts to destroy the membrane failed. A means of distinguishing individuals susceptible to the disease from those already immune to it still needed to be developed. In 1913, the

Section 5: Douglass, William 319 Viennese physician Béla Schick discovered that diphtheria caused an irritation when injected into the skin and that it only irritated the flesh of those who did not possess any antitoxin. The reaction, characterized by a circumscribed area of redness and a slight inflammation of one to two centimeters in diameter, took thirty-six hours to appear and presented for seven to ten days. Upon fading, it showed some scaling and a persistent brownish pigmentation.

Vaccination In 1892, the first clinical trials of a diphtheria vaccine began in New York City. Immunizations were directed initially at schoolchildren, because children were most susceptible to the disease. Suspicious of the vaccine, physicians and the public were slow to accept it, but immunization was a simple, relatively inexpensive form of protection that did not come with the difficulties associated with isolating diphtheria carriers. By the 1920s, most people accepted immunization as the best way to combat diphtheria, and within the decade the number of diphtheria cases in the United States and Europe had fallen dramatically. In 1920, there were a total of 148,000 reported cases of diphtheria in the United States; by 1959, the number dropped to less than 1,000. Booster vaccinations are needed every ten years if the initial immunization is to remain effective, and the rarity of diphtheria in North America and Europe today has led to concerns that the public has become complacent. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 20–60 percent of the adult population in Europe and the United States remains susceptible to the disease. Although nearly wiped out in the United States and Western Europe by 2000, the disease remains common in many other parts of the world, including the Caribbean and Latin America. In 1990, diphtheria reemerged in countries formerly part of the Soviet Union, following the collapse of state-sponsored public health and immunization programs. By 1995, 80,000 cases had been reported with 2,000 deaths. Diphtheria is in a position to make a return as one of the world’s mass killers. While its cause

and prevention are both now known, complacency has combined with a lack of immunity to create a potential public health risk. Caryn E. Neumann

Sources Hammonds, Evelynn Maxine. Childhood’s Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880–1930. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Wood, W. Barry. From Miasmas to Molecules. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Ziporyn, Teresa. Disease in the Popular American Press: The Case of Diphtheria, Typhoid Fever, and Syphilis, 1870–1920. New York: Greenwood, 1988.

DOUGLASS, WILLIAM (1681–1752) William Douglass was one of the most highly educated medical doctors in colonial America. Born in Gifford, Scotland, the son of George and Katherine Douglass, he had an advantageous upbringing, including formal education at the University of Edinburgh (where he studied with Dr. Archibald Pitcairne), the University of Leiden (where he studied with Dr. Herman Boerhaave), and in Paris. In 1718, Douglass settled in Boston, Massachusetts, expecting to benefit from the patronage of a family friend. That expectation did not materialize, but as he was one of only a handful of colonial practitioners with an earned medical degree, Douglass had little difficulty in establishing a successful practice. Throughout his career, Douglass aimed to regularize and professionalize the practice of medicine. He based his concern for standardization on his experiences in Boston. In 1721, a smallpox epidemic in Boston put Douglass at the center of a controversy over inoculation. Taking the side against inoculation in opposition to Zabdiel Boylston, Cotton Mather, and others, Douglass argued in newspapers and pamphlets that those who supported inoculation did so without sufficient scientific knowledge. He called Boylston “illiterate” and poked fun at his lack of credentials, referring to him as “a certain cutter for stone.” These events were in

320 Section 5: Douglass, William the background when Douglass established the Boston Medical Society in 1736, the earliest such professional society in America. Douglass had a large personal library and was something of a polymath. His interests in weather, astronomy, and geography were evident in his correspondence with Cadwallader Colden, as were his accomplishments in botany. As early as 1721, he had collected and classified 700 different plants from the area around Boston; the list would ultimately grow to about 1,100. His botany records were never published, but he did publish a number of medical works, including A Practical Essay Concerning the Small Pox (1730) and The Practical History of a New Epidemical Eruptive Miliary Fever (1736), a description of scarlet fever. He dabbled in other subjects, too, including economics, and published An Essay, Concerning Silver and Paper Currencies, More Especially with Regard to the British Colonies in New England (1738) and A Discourse Concerning the Currencies of the British Plantations in America (1740). In 1743, he produced an almanac called Mercurius Nov-Anglicanus. His most remembered work is A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements, and Present State of the British Settlements in North America (published in serial pamphlets, 1747–1749, and then in two volumes, 1749, 1753), a polemic to which Adam Smith frequently referred in his Wealth of Nations. Posthumous publications included a map, Plan of the British Dominions of New England, printed in London in 1753, the basis of similar maps for decades thereafter. Douglass’s humanitarian interests went beyond medicine. He founded the Scottish Charitable Society (1728) and served as its president from 1728 until his death in 1752.

E D DY, M A R Y B A K E R (1821–1910) Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science religion and one of the most influential women of nineteenth-century America, was born near Concord, New Hampshire, on July 16, 1821, to Mark Baker and Abigail Barnard Ambrose. Raised on a farm, she was a sickly child who suffered from a nervous disorder characterized by hysterical fits. She was married in 1843 to George Washington Glover, but her husband died months later from yellow fever, leaving her pregnant and impoverished and forcing her to rely on family support. In 1862, she became a follower of the medical spiritualist Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, with

Mark G. Spencer

Sources Bullock, Charles J. “The Life and Writings of William Douglas.” Economic Studies 2 (1897): 265–90. Hindle, Brooke. The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science and author of its official text, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875), argued that health is a function of mind and spirit. Opposed to the cures of physicians, she advocated faith healing. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Section 5: Epidemiology 321 whom she found mental and physical solace. Quimby’s death in 1866 created a therapeutic void in her life that she quickly filled by developing her own brand of spiritual healing. While bedridden with a back injury in 1866, she took to reading the Bible. After three days, she experienced an epiphany in which she connected health to thought and to the teachings of Jesus. She argued that personal health was dependent on one’s mind and that physicians’ cures, such as surgery or medicine, were misguided—an appealing idea during a time when people still associated doctors with the frequent bleedings and harsh purgatives of “heroic” medicine. Sickness, she suggested, arose from incorrect thoughts that manifested themselves in physical debilities. Good health, on the other hand, could be achieved by following proper thoughts—as revealed through the teachings of Jesus Christ—which allowed followers to live healthy, successful lives. Her approach could be understood as “scientific” at the time, inasmuch as it relied on a careful analysis of biblical texts and was supported by anecdotal evidence. This premise became the basis of her book Science and Health (1875) and the doctrine of the Christian Scientists’ Association founded in 1876 and renamed the Church of Christ, Scientist, in 1879. Meanwhile, Mary Baker Glover had married dentist Daniel Patterson in 1853; he left her in 1866, and they divorced in 1873. In 1877, she married Asa Gilbert Eddy, a fellow Christian Scientist who supported her work; he died in 1882. Christian Science has been surrounded by controversy almost since its inception. Mary Baker Eddy had a powerful and sometimes combative personality, which occasionally alienated followers and led to factionalism within the Christian Science movement. Critics also accused her of transforming the church into a profit-driven institution that channeled members into expensive religious classes given at places such as Eddy’s Massachusetts Metaphysical College (established in 1881). Eddy continually revised for resale her foundational text, Science and Health, which reportedly earned $19,000 in royalties for 1895 alone. Bad press plagued the religion, as in the 1888

case of a Christian Scientist charged with killing her daughter and unborn grandchild by attending to the birth herself using Eddy’s theories rather than hiring a regular physician or midwife. In 1908, at the age of eighty-seven, Eddy founded the Christian Science Monitor, now a venerable and highly respected international daily newspaper. Mary Baker Eddy died on December 3, 1910, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Despite the controversy surrounding Eddy and Christian Science, the movement still ranks as the second-largest religion born in nineteenthcentury America, after the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Supported by the Christian Science Monitor and other publications, by World War II, Christian Science had an estimated 270,000 members and nearly 3,000 branches in thirty-seven countries. Members of the church gained a measure of legal protection to treat sick children through religious methods rather than regular medicine, but membership had dwindled to about 180,000 (about 100,000 in the United States) by the 1990s. Advances in modern conventional medicine were seen as undermining the appeal of Christian Science as a therapeutic religion. David G. Schuster

Sources Eddy, Mary Baker. Science and Health. Boston: Christian Science Publishing, 1875. Rev. ed. Boston: Trustees under the Will of Mary Baker Eddy, 1934. Satter, Beryl. Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Thomas, Robert. “With Bleeding Footsteps”: Mary Baker Eddy’s Path to Religious Leadership. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

E P I D E M I O LO G Y Epidemiology is the scientific study of the factors affecting the health and illness of populations. Epidemiologists research the relationships among diseases, human characteristics such as age and race, and environmental factors such as other organisms, weather, and geographical location. Physical, biological, social, cultural, and

322 Section 5: Epidemiology behavioral factors determine how a disease progresses and spreads through a population. Europeans pioneered the early research in epidemiology. For example, John Graunt published Natural and Political Observations Upon the Bills of Mortality in 1662 just as the Black Plague descended on London. Graunt sought to correlate the often separated issues of population factors and the spread of disease. Two centuries later, John Snow’s detailed research on the outbreak of cholera in 1854 in London led to a water pump being shut down, thus ending a massive outbreak. In America, physician and pathologist Theobald Smith was the first to link a disease to an arthropod carrier when in 1899 he found that ticks transmit Texas fever to cattle. This discovery led epidemiologists to consider the role of insects in the spread of such other diseases as malaria, yellow fever, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Smith proposed the role of mosquitoes in the spread of malaria. One of the greatest challenges for American epidemiologists was the 1918 influenza pandemic. Epidemiologists urged strict practices to stem the rapid spread of this deadly disease: Public health officials gave out surgical masks to the public and suspended public gatherings to keep the disease from spreading through coughing and sneezing. Stores were not allowed to hold sales, and funerals were limited to just fifteen minutes. Epidemiologists also sought to educate people by creating posters explaining why hand washing was important to help curb contagious diseases. Modern epidemiologists work in the field and in labs to study the pathology and spread of disease and responses to treatment. Using laboratory experiments, epidemiologists learn the effects of close contact with infected hosts. Although epidemiology is most commonly associated with infectious diseases such as influenza and cholera, it is now being used to study heart disease, cancer, alcoholism, mental illness, and other topics. Epidemiologists have made a number of discoveries concerning respiratory problems and heart conditions, and they were responsible for linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer. Thus, epidemiology is critical in the fact-based decisions that public health organizations make to control disease. As it explores and combats the outbreak of diseases that affect large numbers of

people, epidemiology is at the root of public health services. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Dolman, Claude, and Richard Wolfe. Suppressing the Disease of Animals and Man: Theobald Smith, Microbiologist. Boston: Boston Medical Library, 2003. Winslow, Charles-Edward A. The History of American Epidemiology. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1929.

ETHER Diethyl ether was first used by the English physicians Richard Pearson and Thomas Beddoes in 1794 in the treatment of phthisis (wasting), catarrhal fever, bladder calculus, and scurvy. Its first use in America, in 1805, was for pulmonary inflammation. Dr. Crawford Williamson Long was the first to employ ether as a surgical anesthetic when he removed a neck tumor on March 30, 1842. He had been administering ether as an anesthetic for minor procedures since 1841, learning of it during parties known as “ether frolics” while in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. William Morton, a Massachusetts dentist, began to successfully use ether in his dental practice on September 30, 1846, after learning of its anesthetic potential from a former tutor, Charles T. Jackson, a physician and professor at the Medical College of Massachusetts (now at Harvard). Jackson had learned of its anesthetic potential from a Connecticut dentist, Horace Wells, who had failed to establish the anesthetic potential of nitrous oxide in a demonstration at Massachusetts General Hospital. The positive publicity aroused by Morton’s “painless” dentistry was noticed by Henry Jacob Bigelow, a junior surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Morton was asked to demonstrate ether’s anesthetic potential in surgery. The ether was administered using a glass reservoir with pass-over vaporization, designed by Joseph M. Wightman and Nathan B. Chamberlain and perfected by Morton and Augustus A. Gould, an internist at the hospital. Senior surgeon John Collins Warren painlessly removed a congenital vascular malformation from the anesthetized

Section 5: Flexner, Abraham 323 patient. Bigelow noted ether’s initial use as an anesthetic in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on November 18, 1846. Long published a report of his use of ether in the Southern Medical and Surgical Journal in 1848, effectively ceding the credit to Morton for two years. Morton actively promoted ether as an anesthetic and was granted a patent on November 12 for his anesthetic ether, named Letheon. Because of ether’s distinctive odor, the ruse was shortlived, and Morton admitted the composition of Letheon in his Remarks on the Proper Mode of Administering Sulphuric Ether by Inhalation (1847). After years of petitioning the U.S. Congress, Morton was recognized as the principal discoverer of ether, but he never received any monetary compensation. In 1846, he was awarded the French Academy of Medicine’s Monthyon Prize of 5,000 francs, to be shared with Jackson, but Morton refused to accept a shared award, claiming that he was the sole discoverer of ether as an anesthetic. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Davies, N.J.H., R.S. Atkinson, and G.B. Rushman. A Short History of Anaesthesia: The First 150 Years. Burlington, VT: Butterworth-Heinemann Medical, 1996. Fenster, Julie. Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America’s Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Leake, Chauncey Depew. Letheon: The Cadenced Story of Anesthesia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1947.

FISHER, JOSHUA (1748–1833) Joshua Fisher was a physician and botanist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He practiced medicine at Beverly, Massachusetts, after having served on New England privateers during the American Revolution. He pursued his interest in anatomy and physiology at Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1766. He earned a master’s degree after writing a thesis defending the view captured by the title: “Reptiles of America Originate from Those That Were Preserved by Noah.” Fisher’s interest in medicine derived from

personal medical problems. He was an asthmatic and had a congenital defective palate that made it extremely difficult for him to speak clearly. Yet he led an active life. Fisher joined the BelknapCutler Expedition to the White Mountains in 1784, although he was prevented by a cramp from reaching the summit. He botanized and collected specimens of the animal kingdom, staying with the naturalist Joseph Whipple. During Fisher’s long life and medical practice, he was a leader of the New England medical community. He founded organizations such as the Massachusetts Medical Society and Philosophical Society of Salem, and he served in others such as the Essex Medical Society and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fisher was particularly active in the latter, attending meetings and giving papers, such as “A Medical Discourse on Several Narcotic Vegetable Substances” (1806). Fisher used opium as an analgesic in treating patients, and he was always experimenting with new medicines and new cures. He endowed a chair of natural history and botany at Harvard College. Russell Lawson

Source Lawson, Russell M. Passaconaway’s Realm: Captain John Evans and the Exploration of Mount Washington. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.

FLEXNER, ABRAHAM (1866–1959) As a teacher, author, fundraiser, philanthropist, and organizer, Abraham Flexner was one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century American education. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, as one of nine children of German immigrants, he earned his degree from Johns Hopkins University by the age of nineteen. After six years as a high school teacher in Louisville, Flexner seized an opportunity in 1892 to found an experimental school based on the ideals of progressive education: small classes, personal attention, and hands-on teaching as the keys to effective learning.

324 Section 5: Flexner, Abraham Throughout the 1890s, he gained a reputation as an outspoken critic of conventional education, with his articles appearing in Educational Review, Atlantic Monthly, and Popular Science. Following his nineteen-year career as a teacher and principal, Flexner left Louisville at the age of forty for graduate studies at Harvard, Oxford, and Berlin universities. His experience culminated with the publication of his first book in 1908, The American College, which gained national attention for its fierce attack on American higher education and helped launch a new career for Flexner with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Concerned with the lack of standards in admissions, curricula, and graduation requirements in North American medical schools, Henry Pritchett, the president of the Carnegie Foundation, commissioned Flexner to survey 155 schools over a sixteen-month period beginning in 1909. Despite the fact that Flexner had never been inside a medical school, his stinging 1910 report, “Medical Education in the United States and Canada,” made him an overnight sensation. The Flexner Report, as it became known, made front-page news across the country. Employing a muckraking style typical of classic Progressive Era journalism, Flexner exposed the deplorable conditions in many medical programs and emphasized the need to close substandard schools throughout the nation. While significant reform of the academic curriculum and clinical teaching was well under way before 1910, the Flexner Report helped codify the essentials of a modern medical education and laid out a plan for restructuring medical schools based on the German model of full-time faculty and the combination of scientific and practical knowledge gained in the laboratory and the clinic. By 1915, the movement to shut down medical schools had reduced their number to ninety-six, and, by 1930, there were only seventy-six schools training the nation’s physicians. Following Flexner’s subsequent projects on medical education in Europe, a comparative study of medical education in Europe and America, and a study of prostitution in Europe, Frederick T. Gates recruited him to the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913. As a senior officer of the board, Flexner helped direct

Abraham Flexner’s 1910 report “Medical Education in the United States and Canada,” based on his survey of 155 teaching facilities, led to the closing of almost half the medical schools in America and sweeping reforms in the training of doctors. (Library of Congress, LCUSZ62–104223)

an innovative reform movement in medical education, which included the institution of full-time faculty and improvements in hospital–university affiliations, all with the support of huge sums of Rockefeller money. By 1920, the board had appropriated nearly $15 million for medical education, and, by 1929, a total of more than $78 million had been given to medical programs following the model of upper-echelon schools such as Yale and Johns Hopkins universities. In the mid-1920s, Flexner returned to his interest in the direction and purpose of the American college and university, which resulted in his widely known 1930 study of higher education, Universities: American, English, German. As one of his final projects, Flexner served as director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, from 1930 to 1939. Bearing the imprint of his vision, the program’s flexibility and small size encouraged Albert Einstein to accept the institute’s first appointment in mathematics

Section 5: Forensic Medicine 325 and helped establish it as a center of open intellectual inquiry. Eric Boyle

Sources Bonner, Thomas Neville. Iconoclast: Abraham Flexner and a Life of Learning. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Flexner, Abraham. Abraham Flexner: An Autobiography: A Revision, Brought up-to-Date, of the Author’s I Remember. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960. Hudson, Robert P. “Abraham Flexner in Perspective: American Medical Education 1865–1910.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 46 (1972): 545–61.

F L I N T, A U S T I N (1812–1886) Austin Flint, a leader in nineteenth-century American heart research, first identified the heart murmur. He also coined the medical term “broncho-vesicular breathing,” a condition in which a full inspiratory phase is followed by a shortened and softer expiratory phase. Flint was born on October 20, 1812, in Petersham, Massachusetts. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all physicians. After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1833, he spent one year as a professor at Rush Medical School in Chicago. In 1847, Flint and two colleagues founded the Buffalo Medical School in New York State, where he served as professor of the theory and practice of medicine. In 1860, Flint became a professor at the Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. The following year, he helped found Bellevue Hospital and Medical School in New York. He served as president of the New York Academy of Medicine from 1872 to 1875 and was elected president of the American Medical Association in 1884. Flint made major contributions to the rapidly advancing field of pulmonary medicine. His teaching advocated the use of thorough physical examinations to arrive at differential diagnoses and independent reviews of cases by medical students, which were innovative practices at the time. He was an early proponent of the germ theory and advocated hygiene improvements, frequent hand washing, and exercise for many cardiac disorders to build heart strength.

Flint popularized the use of a binaural stethoscope for auscultation (listening to heart sounds) as part of routine medical evaluations and as an aid in diagnosis. He considered heart sounds to be caused by the heart valves, rather than muscular contractions, which was the predominant view at the time. He is best known for a heart murmur he first described in 1859 as the “mitral direct murmur.” This low-pitched rumbling murmur is heard in mid-diastole at the apex of the heart; it occurs in patients with an incomplete closure of the aortic valve, a condition that leads to a reverse flow of blood, or aortic regurgitation. The murmur is caused by a reverse blood jet from the aortic valve striking the anterior mitral valve leaflet. Flint published a description of this murmur in 1862; it is now commonly called the Austin Flint Murmur. He also stated what is now known as Flint’s Law: “An elevation of pitch always accompanies diminution of resonance in consequence of pulmonary consolidation. In other words, dullness of resonance is never present without the pitch being raised.” Flint was a prolific author, publishing more than 200 articles. Many of his early publications investigated infectious diseases; one described the contagious aspects of typhoid fever, following a disease outbreak investigation he conducted in 1843. In 1866, he published A Treatise on the Principles and Practices of Medicine. It was widely successful, and over 40,000 copies were printed. This was followed by A Textbook on Human Physiology in 1876. Flint died on March 13, 1886. James Fargo Balliett and Michael T. Halpern

Sources Mehta, Nirav J., Rajal N. Mehta, and Ijaz A. Khan. “Austin Flint: Clinician, Teacher, and Visionary.” Texas Heart Journal 27:4 (2000): 386–89. Sternbach, George, and Joseph Varon. “Austin Flint: On Cardiac Murmurs.” Journal of Emergency Medicine 11 (1993): 313–15.

FORENSIC MEDICINE Forensic medicine is the practice of medicine in support of legal and criminal investigation. In early America, the first practitioners of forensic medicine were coroners. Later, during the

326 Section 5: Forensic Medicine nineteenth century, medical examiners began to take the place of coroners in America. The first recorded coroner (1637) was Thomas Baldridge, the sheriff of St. Mary’s County, Maryland, who investigated the circumstances surrounding the body of a man who had been found dead under a tree. Together with twelve jurors, he held an inquest and determined that the death was accidental. In Massachusetts in 1639, an inquiry was made after an apprentice died. The coroner discovered he died due to a skull fracture, which led to the arraignment of his master. In 1691, when New York Governor Henry Sloughter died soon after taking office, the Provincial Council ordered an autopsy, suspecting foul play. However, the autopsy found a pulmonary embolus as the cause of death. Records of the eighteenth century suggest that coroners investigated infant deaths to determine whether such deaths were natural or infanticide. Widespread childhood illnesses and mortality made it difficult to determine the cause. In 1781, for example, a coroner investigated a child’s death but determined that the mother had accidentally rolled over the child in bed during the night. Records during the nineteenth century suggest that police rarely called upon coroners to investigate the deaths of unknown individuals or the poor, criminal, and dispossessed. Although dead infants of unmarried women were often found in public places, the women were not aggressively prosecuted. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many American cities began to replace coroners with medical examiners. Presently, some states have medical examiners, some have coroners. Autopsies are performed by forensic pathologists (physicians with additional training in pathology). Forensic medicine has become highly sophisticated since the days of early America. It now interfaces with many aspects of forensic science such as toxicology, entomology, criminalistics, odontology (tooth and bite-mark analysis), photography, blood-spatter analysis, fingerprints, shoe prints, fiber analysis, and DNA sequencing. Forensic clinical medicine and forensic nursing are two fields that investigate trauma to individuals who are still living that could have medicolegal ramifications. The decomposed or skeletal remains of unidentified individuals are studied

by forensic anthropologists who can determine age, sex, and population group affiliation in certain cases. Linguistics is valuable in detecting voiceprints or identifying characteristics as revealed in written documentation. Several high-profile criminal cases in recent decades have been solved on the basis of the individual’s physical characteristics. In 1979, for example, bite-mark analysis helped convict the serial killer Theodore Bundy; the unique pattern of his dental arch was matched to bite marks found on his victims. Today, DNA analysis is used frequently in criminal proceedings to convict the accused. It has been used as well to free the innocent who have been erroneously convicted. Forensic medicine has evolved into a complex, interdisciplinary field. Lana Thompson

Sources Baden, Michael. Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner. New York: Ballantine, 1990. Eckert, William G. Introduction to Forensic Science. Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 1996. Iserson, Kenneth. Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies? Tucson, AZ: Galen, 2001. Lane, Roger. “Murder in America: A Historian’s Perspective.” Crime and Justice 25 (1999): 191–224. Rowe, G.S. “Infanticide, Its Judicial Resolution, and Criminal Code Revision in Early Pennsylvania.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 135:2 ( June 1991): 200–32.

FULLER, SAMUEL (1580–1633) Samuel Fuller, one of the forty-one signers of the Mayflower Compact, was among the first physicians to arrive in America. Little is known about his early life. He was originally from Leiden, in the Netherlands; his father was a butcher and his mother a midwife. Prior to arriving in America, he had attended public anatomies and read about medicinal herbs at the University of Leiden. Other than his informal training, his medical education is not well documented. Although Fuller was referred to as doctor and practiced as a medical person, his formal education was in the ministry, as were many “preacher physicians.”

Section 5: Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins 327 Fuller practiced medicine on board the Mayflower, bleeding and prescribing purgatives to ill passengers. He established himself at Plymouth as a valuable member of society, building a house, planting an herb garden for his medical practice, and helping nearby settlers. He traveled to Salem and Boston, earning a reputation as a surgeon and devout Puritan. He also served as an official assistant to Governor William Bradford. Evidence suggests that Fuller at times treated ill or injured Native Americans. His wife, Briget, was one of the first midwives to practice at Plymouth. In addition, Fuller was frequently called upon by neighboring communities to help during times of epidemic illness. Fuller contracted smallpox while treating the sick. His death in the summer of 1633 was documented in the Plymouth church records of that year, where he was described as “a Good man and full of the holy spirit.” Lana Thompson

Sources Gevitz, N. “Samuel Fuller of Plymouth Plantation: A ‘Skillful Physician’ or ‘Quacksalver’?” Journal of the History of Medicine 47 (January 1992): 29–48. Viets, Henry R. “Some Features of the History of Medicine in Massachusetts During the Colonial Period (1620–1770).” Isis 23:2 (1935): 389–405.

G A L L AU D E T , T H O M A S H O P K I N S (1787–1851) Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet is remembered for his work in educating the hearing impaired. He opened the first school in America for the deaf and brought an awareness of the value of education to the public. Gallaudet was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on December 10, 1787. When he was thirteen, the family moved to Hartford, Connecticut, and he was enrolled in the Hopkins Grammar School. At age fifteen, he entered Yale College, where he studied English literature and composition. He graduated in 1805 and took a job in a law office. Not satisfied with the drudgery and monotony of legal work, he entered the Andover Theological Seminary in 1812.

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet is memorialized in a statue at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, which he opened in 1817. It was the nation’s first school for deaf people. (Douglas Grundy/Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Gallaudet became interested in missionary work, specifically in developing a language with which he could communicate with Native Americans. Meanwhile, he began to tutor Alice Cogswell, a neighbor’s deaf child, and developed a primitive sign language to communicate with her. Desiring to learn more, Gallaudet went to Paris to study at the Royal School for Deaf Mutes. Returning to America, he opened the American School for the Deaf in Hartford in 1817. Gallaudet served the school for thirteen years as president, training other teachers, and doing philanthropic work. He married one of the school’s first pupils, Sophia Fowler, and they had eight children. Gallaudet also helped to establish vocational schools in Connecticut that focused on the needs of minorities and women. In addition, he edited American Annals of the Deaf, a publication established in 1841. Gallaudet died on September 10, 1851. Lana Thompson

328 Section 5: Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins Sources Fenner, M., and Eleanor C. Fishburn. Pioneer American Educators. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1968. Gallaudet, Edward Miner. Life of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet: Founder of Deaf-mute Instruction in America. New York: Henry Holt, 1888. Savitt, T. “Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet.” In Dictionary of American Medical Biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984.

GENE THERAPY Gene therapy is a means of modifying genes or introducing genes into human cells for the purpose of treating disease. Discussions of the possibility of gene therapy began during the 1960s, followed by key experiments and discoveries during the 1970s and 1980s. Scientists discovered how to transfer genes from one cell to another, developing ex vivo techniques for the removal, treatment, and reintroduction of cells, and in vivo techniques for directly transferring DNA into a cell. Gene therapy (ex vivo) was first used in 1990 on a four-year-old patient with severe combined immune deficiency (SCID). Scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) removed leukocytes (white blood cells) from her body, let the cells grow, inserted the adenosine deaminase gene that she needed into the cells, and then injected the treated cells back into her body. Although this type of gene therapy was not a permanent cure and was required several times a year, quality of life for this child improved significantly. Ex vivo gene therapy uses the patient’s own cells to avoid triggering the body’s immune response, which could reject the treatment. Delivery mechanisms used in transferring DNA or RNA in both ex vivo and in vivo techniques include the use of a retroviral vector, which is artificially produced DNA attached to a chromosome inserted into a cell. Such techniques have not always been safe, and gene therapy trials have been restricted to those patients who have no options and will die without gene therapy. From the 1990s to the present, a variety of achievements have been made in treating diseases such as SCID, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, HIV, and cancer. Gene therapy has received negative publicity as part of the debate over using stem cells from

human embryos for medical treatments and research. Germ-line therapy, which is controversial, and illegal in the United States, requires the use of DNA from embryonic stem cells from fertilized eggs to generate offspring that are unaffected by the diseased gene. Somatic cell therapy, carried out in cells other than germ-line cells, is legal in the United States and treats only the individual, not his or her offspring. This type of therapy has been useful in treating SCID, cardiac disease, and other disease states. The future of gene therapy hinges on important decisions made by researchers and government officials. The benefits of gene therapy are many, as are the moral and ethical issues that surround this controversial therapeutic approach. Amy Thompson

Sources American Society of Gene Therapy. http://www.asgt.org. Cavazzana-Calvo, Mariana, Adrian Thrasher, and Fulvio Mavilio. “The Future of Gene Therapy.” Nature (February 2004): 779–81. “Human Gene Therapy” Series. Scientific American 276:6 (1997).

G O R G A S , W I L L I A M C R AW F O R D (1854–1920) William Crawford Gorgas was a sanitation and disease expert whose specialty included yellow fever and the field practices used to limit its spread. Gorgas was a survivor of yellow fever in 1880. This experience motivated a personal mission to eliminate the disease. Gorgas was born in Mobile, Alabama, on October 3, 1854. His father, Josiah, was chief of the Ordnance Bureau for the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. Gorgas enrolled in Bellevue Medical College in New York City in 1876, graduated in 1879, and, after a one-year internship, entered the medical department of the U.S. Army. In 1898, he was appointed chief sanitary officer in Havana, Cuba, where there had been severe outbreaks of yellow fever. The cleanup program was not successful in reducing incidence of the disease, and a commission was formed, headed by Walter Reed, a physician and

Section 5: Green, Horace 329 professor at the army medical school. With thorough study and Gorgas’s input, the commission recommended eliminating mosquitoes to prevent subsequent outbreaks. To remove the open sources of water used for breeding by Aedes mosquitoes (the carriers of yellow fever), Gorgas directed a survey of all water sources in Havana. Water containers were required to be covered, and all sources were inspected monthly, with fines for uncovered containers. After completion of this program in the summer of 1901, the number of yellow fever deaths dropped from 1,282 in 1898 to zero in the following eighteen years. Yellow fever had been essentially eliminated from the island. In 1903, Gorgas was promoted to colonel and made assistant surgeon general of the U.S. Army. The next year, he was appointed chief sanitary officer of the Isthmian Canal Commission during the construction of the Panama Canal. His activities again focused on mosquitoes that carried yellow fever. Despite resistance from canal engineers, the governor of the Canal Zone, and the U.S. secretary of war, Gorgas’s efforts to treat water sources and prevent mosquito breeding were supported firmly by President Theodore Roosevelt. To remove breeding sites for Anopheles mosquitoes, the carriers of malaria, Gorgas employed multiple methods, including limiting human sources of open water (fountains, pools, and so on), draining swamps near inhabited areas, eliminating natural watercontaining depressions, and occasionally coating freshwater sources with a thin layer of oil. The number of workers on the Panama Canal who were hospitalized for malaria decreased from 821 per 1,000 in 1906 to 76 per 1,000 in 1913, with an associated decrease in mortality. Gorgas used his experiences to write the book Sanitation in Panama (1915), intended as a guide to be used elsewhere to control yellow fever. Gorgas served as president of the American Medical Association in 1908 and as president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine in 1909. He was appointed surgeon general of the U.S. Army by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 and promoted to the rank of major general. Following mandatory retirement from the army four years later, he became director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s yellow fever control program in New York. He traveled the world,

advising other countries on how to combat disease problems. His efforts led to notable progress in places such as Guayaquil, Ecuador, which had experienced fifty years of chronic yellow fever outbreaks. Gorgas died in London on July 3, 1920. James Fargo Balliett and Michael T. Halpern

Sources Chaves-Carballo, Enrique. “The Cost of Running American City Hospitals: The Gorgas 1910 Survey.” Southern Medical Journal 93:2 (2000): 191–94. Craddock, Wallis L. “The Achievements of William Crawford Gorgas.” Military Medicine 162:5 (1997): 325–27. Harding, Robert. Military Foundation of Panamanian Politics. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 2001. Litsios, Socrates. “William Crawford Gorgas (1854–1920).” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44:3 (2001): 368–78.

GREEN, HOR ACE (1802–1866) Horace Green, the founder of laryngology studies in North America, was born in Chittendon, Vermont, on December 4, 1802. He was educated in public schools at Rutland, Vermont, studied medicine at Castleton Medical College in Middlebury, Vermont, and obtained his M.D. degree in 1824. From 1824 to 1829, Green was in private practice, but he felt that he needed more training, so he attended the Pennsylvania Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1829, he married Mary Sigourney Butler; she died of tuberculosis in 1833. Green returned to Vermont and began private practice in 1831. In 1838, he spent five months in Europe, visiting hospitals and medical schools. His interest at that time was with the diseases, pathology, and treatment of the larynx and surrounding tissues. Energized by the knowledge he gained in Europe, he returned to America and set up practice in New York City. From 1839 to 1840, he was both in private practice and a professor of medicine. He met and married Harriet Sheldon Douglas in 1841. Green experimented with an instrument made from whalebone that was curved to the shape of the throat and to which he attached a sponge

330 Section 5: Green, Horace dipped in silver nitrate. In 1846, he presented the results of his experimentation with what he called a “probang” in a book called A Treatise on Diseases of the Air Passages: Comprising an Inquiry into the History, Pathology, Causes and Treatment of Those Affections of the Throat Called Bronchitis, Laryngitis, Clergyman’s Sore Throat, Etc. Etc. Rather than receiving praise and encouragement, he was severely censored for the absurd claim that he could overcome the contrary anatomy of the throat and pass an instrument into the larynx. Undaunted, Green continued to treat patients. In 1850, he and seven associates founded the New York Medical College. In 1854, he helped to found the journal American Medical Monthly. After the laryngoscope was finally introduced in America by a Viennese physician, Green’s innovative work was gradually accepted. Green fell ill with tuberculosis in 1860. Even while suffering from the disease, he wrote A Practical Treatise on Pulmonary Tuberculosis in 1864. He died on November 25, 1866. Lana Thompson

Sources Garrison, Fielding H. An Introduction to the History of Medicine. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1960. Miller, William Snow. “Horace Green and His Probang.” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, no. 342, August 1919. Snyder, Charles. “The Investigation of Horace Green.” Laryngoscope 85 (1975): 2012–22.

G Y N E C O LO G Y Gynecology is the medical specialty that diagnoses and treats diseases or disorders of the female genital system, endocrine dysfunctions, and reproductive issues. A gynecologist is not an obstetrician (who delivers babies and performs caesarian sections), but gynecologists do perform surgery for cancer or other disorders. Before the mid-nineteenth-century, gynecology was not a medical specialty in America. The speculum, an instrument for dilating and looking into the body’s internal passages, had been developed in France but was not used in the United States until the 1840s. Even then, it was

controversial because of the social proscription that men were not supposed to look at women’s genitals. Gunning S. Bedford, professor of obstetrics at University Medical College in New York, established the first gynecological clinic in the United States in 1841. J. Marion Sims, the father of American gynecology, was educated at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. In 1845, he found a way to repair vesico-vaginal fistula: He employed a speculum so that he could see the operating field; used silver sutures that would not give way; and put the patient in the knee-to-chest position to gain better access to the operating field. Many of his patients were female slaves. He published his findings in the 1852 issue of American Journal of Medical Sciences. The ovariotomy, a major abdominal surgical procedure, was successfully performed by Ephraim McDowell of Danville, Kentucky, in 1809 on a forty-seven-year-old woman who had a tumor so large it interfered with her ability to walk. As the use of anesthesia and antisepsis gained acceptance, other gynecologic surgery became possible, including ovariectomy, removal of the ovaries. But the ovariectomy became misapplied, used as a drastic response of the medical profession to “women’s ailments.” During the nineteenth century and for most of the history of women’s health, either the uterus or the ovaries were blamed for any systemic or psychiatric disorder that appeared of uncertain etiology. Hysteria, depression, instability, and nymphomania became reasons for the procedure later known as Battey’s operation. Other mutilating surgeries, clitoridectomy and infibulation, were performed on young girls, ages five to sixteen, to “cure” them of masturbation. Fortunately, as human sexuality became more acceptable as a normal component of behavior, doctors waned in their enthusiasm for ovariectomies not related to ovarian disease and for other inappropriate gynecological surgery. By the 1950s, hysterectomies and hormone or estrogen replacement therapy began an upward trend in acceptability, although hormone replacement has been reassessed regarding its safety in the treatment of menopausal symptoms and requires more research. Gynecology today involves new technology, techniques, and developments in pharmacology.

Section 5: Hamilton, Alexander 331 Notable are estrogen replacement therapy for menopausal women, begun in the 1950s, and the birth control pill, first introduced in the 1960s. As the female population ages, there are environmental and cultural influences that present challenges to the gynecologist. One of these is the increased incidence of lung cancer; another involves racial discrepancies in the incidence of certain cancers, such as cervical cancer. In the 1969, a group of women wrote a book about gynecological problems for the lay public. It was called Our Bodies, Ourselves. Since that time, it has undergone six editions and is a source of information on gynecological issues that women can use that is well researched and readable. Lana Thompson

Sources Boston Women’s Health Collective. Our Bodies, Ourselves: A New Edition for a New Era. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Donegan, Jane B. Women and Men Midwives: Medicine, Morality, and Misogyny in Early America. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978. Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Brought to Bed: Child-Bearing in America 1750–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. McGregor, Deborah Kuhn. Sexual Surgery and the Origins of Gynecology. New York: Garland, 1989. Morantz-Sanchez, Regina. Conduct Unbecoming a Woman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Thompson, Lana. The Wandering Womb: A Cultural History of Outrageous Beliefs About Women. Amherst, NY: Prometheus. 1999.

lished and plentiful than in America. In Germany, he was impressed with the way they trained their surgeons: Basic sciences were integrated with practical clinical teaching by fulltime teachers, and surgical techniques tested with animal models. His initial work was experimental, with spinal anesthesia and then the use of cocaine for regional anesthesia to block the nerves. But his interest and perseverance led to self-experimentation and then addiction, for which he was hospitalized twice. Halsted’s life changed when he gained the support of William Welch at Johns Hopkins, who allowed him to work in the research lab and later in surgery. At Johns Hopkins, Halsted developed a technique for radical mastectomy, which removed both the cancerous breast and axillary lymph nodes; the procedure was used until the 1960s. Halsted’s attention to detail was evident in his ability to control bleeding in surgery and tie off small vessels. Unlike surgeons who tried to perform an operation in a minimal amount of time, he was meticulous and careful, particularly with regard to preserving the integrity of tissues. He invented the Halsted forceps, an instrument to clamp a blood vessel to make it stop bleeding, and he introduced the use of rubber gloves in the operating room. Halsted died in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 7, 1922, of postoperative complications after his former students removed his gall bladder. Lana Thompson

Sources

H A L S T E D, W I L L I A M (1852–1922) William Stewart Halsted was a pioneer surgeon who led the way in American medicine in the use of antibiotics and anesthesia. He was born in New York City on September 23, 1852, to Mary Louisa Haines and William Mills Halsted, an affluent textile importer. As a youth and undergraduate at Yale, he preferred sports to academics, but by the time he graduated from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1877, he was an excellent student. The following year, he traveled to Europe, where the medical schools were more estab-

Bliss, Michael. William Osler: A Life in Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Flexner, Abraham. Medical Education in the United States and Canada. Boston: Merrymount, 1910. Talbott, John. A Biographical History of Medicine. New York: Grune and Stratton, 1970.

H A M I LT O N , A L E X A N D E R (1712–1756) The colonial physician Alexander Hamilton was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on September 26, 1712. His father was William Hamilton, professor of divinity and principal of the University of Edinburgh, and his mother was Mary Robertson.

332 Section 5: Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton was educated at the Edinburgh High School and then at the University of Edinburgh. He learned pharmacy in Dr. David Knox’s Edinburgh shop, possibly as an apprentice. Enrolled in Alexander Monro’s anatomy class at the University of Edinburgh in 1731, Hamilton wrote his thesis (De Morbis Ossium) on bone disease, receiving his medical degree in 1737. While in Edinburgh, he participated in the club life for which eighteenth-century Scotland was famous; he was a member of the Whin-Bush Club and also helped to organize a society for medical students, the precursor of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. Degree in hand, Hamilton set off for America, settling in Maryland in 1738. As one of the few M.D.s in the colony, he established, in Annapolis, a lucrative medical practice and apothecary business. But Hamilton’s medical interests were always part of broader cultural concerns. Soon after being elected as a council member of Annapolis, poor health forced Hamilton to seek drier climates in the North. He departed May 30, 1744, traveled for four months, and arrived back at Annapolis on September 27. In his Itinerarium (first published in 1907), Hamilton recorded his impressions of colonial America through his travel on horseback, which took him as far north as York, Maine, with many stops along the way. Hamilton’s contributions to the cultural life of Annapolis include his founding of the Tuesday Club in 1745, a society whose humorous and fictional history he would write as The History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club (not published until 1990). The Tuesday Club provided the venue around which early Maryland’s cultural life revolved; included among its visitors was Benjamin Franklin. In 1747, Hamilton married Margaret Dulany, which connected him with Maryland’s most powerful political faction. Hamilton was elected to Maryland’s Lower House in 1753, where he was a member of the Dulany interest. Poor health led to his resignation in 1754; he died two years later. Hamilton’s most significant contribution to medical literature was his Defence of Dr. Thomson’s Discourse on the Preparation of the Body for

the Small Pox, a pamphlet published in 1751 by William Bradford. In it, Hamilton defended Adam Thomson, a classmate from medical school in Edinburgh, who was then a physician in Philadelphia. Thomson had lectured and published on inoculation, arguing that many of those who performed inoculations in America did so without adequate medical knowledge. In his pamphlet, Hamilton aimed to defend his friend from those, such as Dr. John Kearsley, who had attacked him in print. Mark G. Spencer

Sources Breslaw, Elaine G., ed. Records of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis, 1745–56. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Hamilton, Alexander. Gentleman’s Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, 1744. 1907. Ed. Carl Bridenbaugh. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948. Micklus, Robert. The Comic Genius of Dr. Alexander Hamilton. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.

H A R VA R D M E D I C A L S C H O O L The third-oldest medical school in the United States, after institutions at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, the Harvard Medical School was founded in 1782 by John Warren, a former surgeon with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. As at other medical schools of the day, medical education for the handful of students attending the institution in its early years consisted of about one year of formal lectures from professors of anatomy, surgery, chemistry, pharmacology, and medical theory, followed by an apprenticeship with a practicing doctor. A college degree was not required for entrance to the school, and written exams were not required to graduate. There also was no general tuition; students paid to attend specific lectures. In 1810, the school moved from Cambridge to Boston. A year later, Warren’s son, John Collins Warren, founded Massachusetts General Hospital. Like most hospitals of the time, it was set up to provide health care for the poor; the financially able usually received private medical care in their homes. The hospital soon became a

Section 5: Hayward, George 333 major training institution for prospective physicians at the Harvard Medical School, offering clinical experience in conjunction with the apprenticeship program. Even more fundamental changes came in the 1860s and 1870s. Prompted by Charles William Eliot, the reform-minded president of Harvard College, the Medical School instituted written exams and grades as part of an overall effort to raise standards. In addition, the program of study was extended to three years of classes and clinical work, and the apprenticeship component was dropped. The new curriculum and program eventually became a model for other medical schools in the United States. Throughout the Harvard Medical School’s history, its faculty have been responsible for a number of medical breakthroughs, including the introduction of the smallpox vaccine to the United States in 1799, the development of the iron lung and the introduction of insulin to the nation in the 1920s, the invention of external heart pacemakers and the first kidney transplant in the 1950s, early work in the visual imaging of the brain in the 1970s and 1980s, the development of artificial skin in the 1980s, and creation of the first vaccine for cholera in the 1990s. The Harvard Medical School is divided into seven basic science departments (Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Cell Biology, Genetics, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Neurobiology, Pathology, and Systems Biology), two social science departments (Health Care Policy, Social Medicine), and one clinical department (Ambulatory Care and Prevention). Long regarded as one of the nation’s preeminent institutions for the teaching of medicine, the school has more than 1,200 students pursuing M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. Including all of the doctors affiliated with its nearly fifty hospital-based clinical departments, it has an extended faculty of more than 11,000. James Ciment

Sources Beecher, Henry K., and Mark D. Altschule. Medicine at Harvard: The First Three Hundred Years. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1977. Harvard Medical School. http://hms.harvard.edu.

H AY WA R D , G E O R G E (1791–1863) George Hayward, a nineteenth-century American surgeon, was one of the first to use anesthesia in surgery. He was born on March 9, 1791, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, into a family of medical people. He graduated from Harvard College in 1809 and then went to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to study medicine under Caspar Wistar, Benjamin Rush, and Benjamin Smith Barton. After obtaining his M.D. in 1812, he went to London for further study. When Hayward returned to the United States, he took over his father’s medical practice. During that time, he translated Marie-FrançoisXavier Bichat’s Anatomie Generale from French to English; it was published in 1822 as Bichat’s Anatomie Generale. In 1835, Hayward became professor of surgery and clinical surgery at Harvard Medical School. Hayward made his mark in American surgery on several occasions. On October 17, 1846, he removed a tumor from a girl’s arm in seven minutes. Although it was actually the second operation under general anesthesia, it was the first ever documented. Nevertheless, Hayward is most remembered for amputating the leg of an Irish woman, Alice Mohan, who had languished in Massachusetts General Hospital for over a year with an infected knee before he performed the surgery. Amputation was the only means by which the spreading infection could be stopped. Her case was momentous, as she was the first person whose life had been saved as a result of anesthetic use. In 1852, Hayward was made a fellow of Harvard College. From 1852 to 1855, he served as president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. He wrote the first American textbook of physiology, and his surgical papers were published in 1855. As a public figure, Hayward avoided attention and preferred the company of his students. He spent a great deal of time preparing his lectures but, to the dismay of later biographers, destroyed all his personal papers. He died on October 7, 1863. Lana Thompson

334 Section 5: Hayward, George Sources Fenster, Julie M. Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America’s Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Hager, Knut. The Illustrated History of Surgery. New York: Bell, 1988.

HERBAL MEDICINE Herbal medicine, the use of plants or plant parts for therapeutic purposes, has been practiced for thousands of years. The Chinese, in the third millennium around 2800 B.C.E., compiled information on more than 300 herbal medicines. Ancients in Mesopotamia, India, and Egypt also collected information on the herbs used in medical treatment. Roman scientists Galen and Dioscorides wrote treatises describing the use of herbs that medieval monks preserved for posterity. In the seventeenth century, English herbalists such as Nicolas Culpeper and John Parkinson wrote about healing with herbs. Native Americans developed the use of herbs by observing their effects on animals and then applying this knowledge to humans. The shaman, or medicine man, learned the secrets of many herbs with which to treat the members of his tribe; the secrets were passed from one generation to the next. African American slaves, who often lacked access to physicians, developed herbal treatments for many ailments, using plants similar to those used in Africa. Many of these treatments were based on the techniques of shamanism and midwifery. In the Hispanic tradition, a curandera or curandero (medicine woman or man) also practiced folk or herbal medicine. British-American colonists also gathered herbs or maintained herbal gardens. Folklore, superstition, and experience guided seventeenth- and eighteenth-century physicians in attempting to heal the sick with herbal remedies. Goodwives often concocted homemade remedies for ill family members. Educated colonial Americans rarely lacked knowledge about “physick,” sickness, and herbal remedies. Hans B. Gram and others introduced homeopathic medicine to the United States starting in

the late 1820s. Developed by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathy used predominantly plant-based remedies to treat a variety of conditions. During the late 1820s into the early 1830s, Samuel Thomson, an American botanic physician, developed a system of giving tonics made from herbs to patients as emetics, to clear out their systems. Thomson believed in adding heat to the system by using herbs such as cayenne pepper. He developed a network of agents who used his New Guide to Health, or Botanic Family Physician (1822) to treat their own families and neighbors. While some physicians supported herbal remedies, the outlandish claims made by Thomson and his followers drove them away from many herbal remedies. The Eclectic movement in the mid1800s hoped to bring together standard medical thinking, Thomson’s ideas, and the use of herbal remedies. As many as eight Eclectic medical schools were established—the leading one being Eclectic Medical College in Cincinnati, Ohio—but all of them were closed by 1938. As conventional medical schools proliferated, and the modern pharmaceutical industry was born, the use of traditional herbal medicines went into decline. Breakthroughs in chemistry allowing the isolation of particular components within plants and the development of antibiotics to treat bacterial diseases brought about more use of pharmaceuticals rather than herbs. Herbalists practice pharmacognosy, the medicinal uses of natural sources and their chemical makeup, while pharmacologists study the properties of drugs and reactions related to their therapeutic use. Many prescription drugs in the United States contain at least one ingredient that derives from natural sources. The use of herbs as a primary method of treatment has recently grown in popularity. People use herbs in alternative medicine as a replacement for conventional medical therapy or in complementary medicine (in conjunction with conventional medicine). Herbs can treat and sometimes cure certain conditions. Risks in using herbs include the questionable quality of some preparations, a lack of standardization of dosage, and a lack of regulation of the herb industry, especially in the reporting of adverse effects. Two offices of the National Institutes of Health provide information pertaining to the use of

Section 5: HMOs 335 herbal medicines. One is the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, established in 1998 with the express purpose of examining complementary and alternative healing practices in a rigorous scientific context, training researchers in these fields, and providing information to the public and health care professionals. The other is the Office of Dietary Supplements, established in 1995 in the Office of Disease Prevention to explore the role of dietary supplements in health care. Mary Jarvis

Sources Cichoke, Anthony J. Secrets of Native American Herbal Remedies: A Comprehensive Guide to the Native American Tradition of Using Herbs and the Mind/Body/Spirit Connection for Improving Health and Well-Being. New York: Avery, 2001. Garcia-Barrio, Constance. “Herbal Heirlooms: A GreatGrandmother’s Homemade Remedies Still Do Good Work.” American Legacy (Fall 1998): 46–48. Grigs, Barbara. Green Pharmacy: A History of Herbal Medicine. New York: Viking, 1981. Kligler, Benjamin, and Roberta Lee. Integrative Medicine: Principles for Practice. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004. Skidmore-Roth, Linda. Mosby’s Handbook of Herbs and Natural Supplements. St. Louis, MO: Mosby, 2001.

HMO S Although HMOs, or health maintenance organizations, are a relatively recent phenomenon, their origins can be traced back to the early decades of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, the Ross-Loos Medical Group of Los Angeles began to offer complete health care, for a standard prepaid fee, to the families of the employees of the County Department of Power and Water. At roughly the same time, in Elks City, Oklahoma, a farmers’ cooperative began to negotiate with local doctors to accept established regular payments for all care that might be needed by member families within a specified period of time. In the decades that followed, government entities and businesses in every region of the country attempted to negotiate group plans with local or regional providers in order to offer employees comprehensive health care at affordable rates. Indeed, as contracted group health care

became more commonplace in the 1950s, “individual practice associations” were organized by physicians seeking an advantage in the competition for group plans. In the 1960s, as government-provided health care expanded rapidly, the costs to businesses providing group coverage also increased. By the early 1970s, all the factors that have contributed to the ongoing escalation of health care costs were in place: increasing consolidation in certain segments of the health care industry; the trend toward publicly held insurance companies; the increased availability of high-end experimental treatments and elective procedures; the restrictions on coverage for preventive care, home health care, and extended institutional care; the two-tiered system of fees for common procedures, whereby patients with high incomes or high-end insurance coverage pay much higher fees to offset losses from those patients with government-provided insurance or no insurance; the dispersion of outpatient services from traditional hospital settings and the increased reliance on hospital emergency rooms for the provision of routine health care to the disadvantaged; and unrestrained medical malpractice settlements, leading to prohibitive increases in malpractice insurance premiums. As early as the administration of President Richard M. Nixon (1969–1974), the federal government began to encourage the development of HMOs as a check against steadily climbing health care costs. In 1973, the federal Health Maintenance Organization Act eliminated many of the legal obstacles to the development of HMOs, and, within five years, there were several hundred HMOs operating in more than threequarters of the fifty states. In the 1980s and 1990s, HMOs became a means for high-end employers to continue to provide health care benefits, as well as a means for poorly compensated workers to purchase their own health care coverage. Initially resisted by physicians, who wished to preserve their status as independent professionals, HMOs were eventually seen as a means for physicians to reduce malpractice costs by providing a patient base whose access to risky procedures is limited by objective case managers. In addition, HMOs ostensibly reduce physicians’ costs by reducing their need to compete for a patient base. Enrollment in HMOs

336 Section 5: HMOs nearly doubled from 1990 to 1996, increasing from 37 million to 70 million subscribers. However, following the expiration in 1995 of the provision of the Health Maintenance Organization Act that required employers to give employees an option to join an HMO, enrollment stabilized at 78 million by 2000. HMOs have not lacked for critics. Patient complaints about restrictions on the choice of caregivers, access to treatments, and ability to contest decisions about treatment rose as rapidly as enrollment. Both physicians and patients have expressed concern about nonmedical personnel making medical decisions or allowing financial considerations to override medical needs. Moreover, although HMOs now account for more than half of private health insurance coverage in the United States, the dramatic annual increases in health care costs show little sign of abating. Martin Kich

Sources Bell, Nancy. “A Managed Care Timeline 1988–1996.” Medical Interface 10 (January 1997): 66–72, 75–80. Coombs, Jan Gregoire. The Rise and Fall of the HMO Movement: An American Health Care Revolution. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005. Fox, Daniel M. “Managed Care: The Third Reorganization of Health Care.” Journal of the American Geriatric Society 46 (March 1998): 314–17. Gage, Barbara. “The History and Growth of Medicare Managed Care.” Generations 22 (Summer 1998): 11–18. Oberlander, Jonathan B. “Managed Care and Medicare Reform.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 22 (February 1997): 595–631. Sachs, Michael A. “Managed Care: The Next Generation.” Frontiers of Health Services Management 14 (Fall 1997): 3–26.

HOLISTIC MEDICINE Holistic medicine is an approach to healing and wellness that considers the physical, spiritual, and emotional “whole” of the human being. The South African philosopher and statesman Jan Christian Smuts introduced the term “holism” in 1926 to define an alternative to the prevailing analytical and reductive approach to scientific thinking. Smuts suggested that the human organism and its systems are greater than the sum of their parts.

The idea enjoyed considerable favor among contemporary biologists reacting against the tendency to reduce animals to simple biochemical machines, and some physicians of the day embraced the concept as a valuable approach to the treatment of human patients. The term did not become part of everyday medical discourse, however, until the 1970s, when critics of conventional medicine saw the need for a new approach to interpreting disease and healing the sick that considered the whole person in the context of the total environment. As an approach, an attitude, and a philosophy rather than any specific type of medical practice, holistic medicine reflects dissatisfaction with the modern, aggressive, interventionist approach to healing. A holistic approach to medicine suggests that the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual elements of a person are interconnected to maintain wellness. Holistic treatment emphasizes positive lifestyle changes to prevent illness, encourages partnerships between practitioners and patients, and is designed to concentrate on the whole body rather than focusing on a particular illness or unhealthy part of the body. Holistic medicine also offers a bridge between ancient and modern systems of healing. Advocates of various nontraditional methods of diagnosis and therapy—such as herbalism, folk medicine, reflexology, meditation, and acupuncture—suggest that their approach is not new by identifying precursors from Hippocrates in ancient Greece to the millennia-old healing traditions of India and China. The holistic approach gathers supporters from a variety of modern medical camps, including psychosomatic medicine (an approach that emphasizes the interdependence of physical and psychological factors), behavioral medicine (in which the psychosocial causes and effects of illness are studied), and humanistic medicine (which emphasizes the importance of a close relationship between the doctor and patient). Each encourages patients to take personal responsibility for their health, frequently through a combination of conventional and unconventional approaches. Embracing the philosophy that health is a product of body, mind, and spirit, several holistic health associations were founded during the 1970s. In 1975, the Association for Holistic Health was established, followed by the Holistic

Section 5: Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr. 337 Health Association in 1977. The latter organization is now defunct, though the Association for Holistic Health still exists and promotes the idea that health is a reflection of physical, mental, and spiritual wellness. The Association for Holistic Health has established educational and research programs as well as holistic health centers, and it published the Journal of Holistic Health until 1984. A wave of books in the 1970s identified similar problems with rising costs, limited accessibility to care, and dissatisfaction with physicians. Ivan Illich announced a crisis of confidence in modern medicine in Medical Nemesis (1976); Thomas McKeown suggested in The Role of Medicine (1976) that conventional medicine is inclined to dictate and impose treatment upon patients; Rick Carlson in The End of Medicine (1975) argued that physicians equate the human organism with machines. At the same time, growing numbers within the medical profession began to agree with psychiatrist George Engel that the conventional biomedical model left no room for social, psychological, and behavioral influences in health. Mainstream recognition of holism culminated in 1978, when a group of 225 physicians created the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA). Adopting the structure of the mainstream American Medical Association, the AHMA publishes the monthly Journal of Holistic Medicine, holds an annual national scientific conference, and runs a nonprofit foundation for public education and research. The AHMA has been a political force in the promotion of holistic therapies and signaled the collaborative trend that came to dominate the discussion between holistic alternative practitioners and mainstream physicians in the 1980s and 1990s. In an effort to bridge the divide between alternative and conventional medicine, the concept of “complementary medicine” was developed to suggest that the two practices could be used alongside each other. Eric Boyle

Source Alster, Kristine. The Holistic Health Movement. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989. Lawrence, Christopher, and George Weisz, eds. Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Whorton, James C. Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, SR. (1809–1894) Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., known to readers as a wit, satirist, and poet, was also a physician of international repute, as well as the father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Arthur Conan Doyle so respected and valued Holmes that he named his famous detective protagonist after him. In both medicine and literature, Holmes exerted considerable influence. In one poem, Holmes compared a day in the life of a doctor treating a patient with the doctor’s experience as a patient. His best-known work, The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table (1858), gained an enthusiastic following when it first appeared in the newly established Atlantic Monthly. This was followed by The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859) and The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872). Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 29, 1809. His father, a minister, was forty-six and had been married previously; his mother was forty-one. He was raised in an environment rich in culture: classical literature lined the bookshelves of the family library. He progressed rapidly in school and entered Phillips Andover Academy at the age of fifteen. One year later, he entered Harvard College, where he studied chemistry and mineralogy and continued his unique penchant for witty writing. After graduating, he attended Boston Medical College and Harvard Medical School. Like most aspiring physicians in America, Holmes went to Paris to pursue his studies. European physicians were ahead of Americans in recognizing the importance of pathological anatomy and its relationship to disease. Holmes returned to Boston and received his M.D. in 1836. Holmes wrote both satiric and serious medical pieces. Among the latter was an essay on percussion and auscultation for which he won the prestigious Boylston Prize. The following year, he won the prize on the subject of malaria and neuralgia. In 1838, Holmes was appointed chair of anatomy and physiology at Dartmouth College,

338 Section 5: Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr.

Best known as a writer (and father of the Supreme Court justice), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., was a prominent physician and medical educator. He is pictured here reading his groundbreaking 1843 essay on puerperal fever to a Boston medical society. (Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

where he remained for two years. When he returned to Boston to teach at Harvard, puerperal fever (childbed fever) was of particular concern to doctors on both sides of the Atlantic. This iatrogenic (doctor-caused) disease resulted from the transfer of germs from the morgue to the delivery rooms. Simple handwashing could prevent it. Holmes hypothesized that puerperal fever was contagious and wrote a breakthrough paper, “The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever,” which was published in the New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery. In 1847, Holmes was appointed Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology and dean of Harvard Medical School, where he instituted fundamental changes in the medical curriculum and salaries for instructors. He was also an outspoken critic of social inequality and advocated the admission of women and African Americans into programs of higher education. He died on October 7, 1894, in Boston. Lana Thompson

Sources Gibian, Peter. Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Culture of Conversation. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Small, Miriam R. Oliver Wendell Holmes. New York: Twayne, 1962. Talbott, John. A Biographical History of Medicine. New York: Grune and Stratton, 1970.

HORNER, WILLIAM EDMONDS (1793–1853) William Edmonds Horner, anatomist, physician, and educator, was the author of the first text on pathology published in America. Horner was born on June 3, 1793, in Warrenton, Virginia. As a child, he was teased because of his slight build and frail constitution. Perhaps because of these humiliating episodes, he avoided sports and chose instead to read and pursue mental and intellectual activities. At the age of twelve, he entered an Episcopal religious acad-

Section 5: Hospitals 339 emy but soon became bored and critical of his teachers. As a reaction to his disappointment with the quality of learning, he independently pursued the classics in depth, an interest that he retained throughout his life. In 1809, at age sixteen, Horner began the study of medicine as a house student under the direction of John Spence of Dumfries; he then attended two classes at Pennsylvania University. Before he could complete his medical studies, the War of 1812 began, and he joined the army to serve as surgeon’s mate in the hospital department. In 1813, he obtained a furlough to complete his medical studies and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in April of the following year; his thesis was on gunshot wounds. After a short hiatus, he returned to Philadelphia to lecture on practical anatomy, using prepared specimens for observation in his class. His talents in dissection and specimen preparation garnered him a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1831, Horner was elevated to full professor of anatomy. He also served as dean of the medical school. Horner is credited with several original anatomical descriptions. One was a tiny muscle of the eye called the tensor tarsi, or musculus hornerii. Another was the muscular arrangement of the rectal layers. Still another was the fibroelastic layer lining the inner surface of the larynx. Horner also described the cartilages of the bronchi. His publications included Wistar’s System of Anatomy in 1823 and a treatise on pathological anatomy. In 1832, when the Asiatic cholera epidemic broke out in Philadelphia, Horner participated in treating patients and controlling the spread of the disease, for which the city council awarded him a silver pitcher. That year, he wrote an article about the use of the microscope to determine lesions of the intestine caused by cholera, which was published in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences. At the University of Pennsylvania, Caspar Wistar had established an anatomic museum, and Horner regularly added preparations to this collection. During the six years after Wistar’s death, Horner brought the museum from a small collection to a world-class institute. When Horner died, he bequeathed his entire collection

of specimens to the museum, and the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania changed the name to the Wistar and Horner Museum. In 1853, Horner developed severe abdominal pains, diagnosed as enterocolitis with gangrene and peritonitis. As he lay suffering in the presence of his two friends, Dr. Samuel Jackson and Dr. Henry Smith, he used his fingers to trace the areas of pain on his abdominal and thoracic skin in a didactic manner, as if lecturing to students. He was, to the end of his life, the quintessential anatomist. Lana Thompson

Source Shands, Alfred Rives. William Edmonds Horner, 1793–1853. Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, vol. 22, 4th ser. Baltimore: Waverly, 1954–1955.

H O S P I TA L S Most modern hospitals offer a wide range of medical services to the public while providing a setting for medical research, medical education, and the application of new medical technologies and techniques. In addition to general hospitals, which offer a broad range of services to their communities, the modern U.S. hospital system also consists of a variety of more specialized facilities, including psychiatric hospitals, children’s hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, and regional medical centers. These hospitals are operated as either government-funded, private nonprofit, or for-profit institutions. Although facilities providing intensive on-site treatment to the sick and injured have existed throughout Western history, modern hospitals can be traced back to the “hospes” run by monasteries in medieval England as resting places for travelers and, later, as facilities for housing and treating the seriously ill. Specialty hospitals originated with the asylums and sanatoria that isolated and treated persons with mental illness, leprosy, and tuberculosis. The first hospital in North America was established in 1524 in Mexico City by the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortés. Pennsylvania Hospital, founded in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin

340 Section 5: Hospitals in 1751, was the first in the British colonies of North America. Early hospitals typically were unsanitary and unpleasant, though the development of infectious disease control made hospitals safer beginning in the late nineteenth century. The demand for modern health care facilities and equipment generated increasing revenues, leading to expanding facilities. The role of hospitals in American community health care increased, as did their emphasis on scientific diagnosis and treatment over simply housing patients.

Education and Technology American hospitals increasingly became centers of medical education in the early twentieth century. Teaching hospitals had been operating in the United States and Canada since the early nineteenth century, but they proliferated after the release of the Flexner Report in 1910, which called for sweeping reforms in medical education. Among these reforms were greater reliance on teaching hospitals as places for medical students to receive hands-on clinical experience in diagnosing and treating patients and as centers for medical research. The Flexner Report also encouraged the growth of formal residency programs in teaching hospitals, whereby physicians receive intensive training in a medical specialty, and of fellowships, in which doctors participate in advanced research in their specialty areas. As a result, more medical colleges founded their own teaching hospitals, and a growing number of community hospitals established teaching, residency, and fellowship programs. The expansion of the role of hospitals in medical education gave them further incentive to acquire the latest technology and embrace new and innovative procedures. In the early twentieth century, a host of new technologies became available to hospitals, including improved methods of analyzing blood and urine, X-ray machines, and penicillin, the first antibiotic. In addition, advances in anesthesia and the control of infection had become part of standard surgical procedure by 1900, resulting in an increase in surgeries during the first half of the twentieth century. These and other advances

improved the speed and efficiency with which hospitals diagnosed and treated diseases, reducing the length of hospital stays and reversing the stereotype of hospitals as long-term care facilities for the indigent and chronically ill. The resulting increase of public confidence in hospitals prompted more citizens to use them for minor surgeries, childbirth, and other procedures, as well as services previously performed outside the hospital setting. An increasing flow of public monies into hospitals fueled the continued trend toward technological advancement in the latter half of the twentieth century. Federal legislation such as the Hill-Burton Act of 1946, which earmarked federal funds for the expansion and modernization of community hospitals, and the Great Society programs of the 1960s (including Medicare, Medicaid, and regional health care grants) provided many hospitals with the capital reserves necessary to acquire new technologies. The increase in public funding permitted even rural hospitals to purchase modern equipment previously available only in large urban hospitals, such as electrocardiograph (EKG) machines, computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanners, ultrasound units, and vascular imaging equipment. Along with the new equipment came cutting-edge therapies and techniques. By the waning decades of the twentieth century, hospitals nationwide offered such innovative services as laparoscopic and laser surgeries, gene therapies, and highly specialized, technologically sophisticated facilities to treat trauma and cancer.

Impac t of Technology New technologies and procedures saved countless lives and reduced dramatically the average length of hospital stays. Yet the increased reliance on technology also fueled an increase in health care costs by increasing demand for expensive tests and procedures. As of 2005, there were more than 10,000 hospitals in the United States, with a total of more than 1.7 million beds. Expenses for American hospitals top $1 trillion annually. Soaring health care costs in the late twentieth century prompted hospitals, insurance providers,

Section 5: Humors and Humoral Theory 341 and government agencies to explore ways to decrease overall outlays. Cost containment provided the impetus for the managed care model, in which the medical necessity and cost effectiveness of specific medical treatments are more closely scrutinized. Managed care, while slowing the rise in health care costs, has been widely criticized for compromising the care of individual patients and the ability of hospitals to keep pace with constantly evolving medical technology. Patterns of technological development and the growing financial self-sufficiency of American hospitals have encouraged an atmosphere of competitiveness in which many hospitals strive to surpass neighboring hospitals in technological capability. As a result, hospitals previously devoted to community service have shifted their focus to acquiring sufficient technology, facilities, and medical staffs to serve larger geographical areas. The trend toward regional medical centers, while enhancing health care options for patients seeking specialized and sophisticated care, has compromised the ability and willingness of many hospitals to meet the specific needs of their communities. Thus, the evolution of health care technology has driven the transformation of hospitals from havens for the poor and chronically ill to highly complex health care centers offering a multiplicity of services to the general public. A number of additional forces have shaped this transformation, including public policy, the evolution of the medical profession, the availability of outside funding, and concerns about rising health care costs. While alleviating many of the problems that hospitals have historically faced, technology has also created a number of new challenges for the American hospital, many of which still await solutions in the twenty-first century. Michael H. Burchett

Sources Granshaw, Lindsay, and Roy Porter. The Hospital in History. New York: Taylor and Francis, 1990. Howell, Joel D. Technology in the Hospital: Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Jennett, Bryan. High-Technology Medicine: Benefits and Burdens. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. Rosenburg, Charles E. The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s Hospital System. New York: Basic Books, 1997.

Sultz, H.A., and K.M. Young. Health Care USA: Understanding Its Organization and Delivery. 2nd ed. Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen, 1999.

HUMORS AND HUMORAL THEORY “Humors” (a term derived from the Latin word for “liquid”) are the basis of an ancient belief about physiology and disease that held the body is a microcosm of fluids corresponding to the seasons, the four elements, and even the movement of stars and planets. There are four elements: earth, air, water, and fire. There are four directions: east, south, west, and north. And there are four bodily qualities corresponding to the four seasons: moist warmth in spring, dry warmth in summer, dry cold in autumn, and wet cold in winter. Elements, directions, bodily fluids, and qualities are connected with the planets and stars and their positions at the time a person is born. Healing and the practice of medicine based on humoral theory depends on elaborate charts that show what seasons are appropriate for particular treatments and how to use opposites to combat illness. Early American physicians read the writings of the Greek Hippocrates and the Roman Galen to learn the humoral theory and techniques of treating the sick. Colonial physicians believed that disease arose from an imbalance of fluid in the body. The great eighteenth-century physician Benjamin Rush believed in bleeding, a process known as “depletion,” to remove excess blood and restore the balance of the four humors. Purging with enemas to clear the bowels or using herbs to force vomiting was designed to rid the body of black or yellow bile. Physicians also blistered the skin, and they bled patients using leeches and lancets. For example, the physician treating George Washington during his last illness bled him of nine pints. President Zachary Taylor died after being both bled and purged for his diarrhea and vomiting, as this treatment exacerbated his gastrointestinal illness. American physicians and psychologists (Benjamin Rush being one of the first) believed that

342 Section 5: Humors and Humoral Theory the humoral theory also predicted personality and psychological events. Basic temperaments were associated with each fluid. The sanguine person had a preponderance of blood, a fleshy build, lots of hair, a full pulse, good digestion, and a joyful spirit. A choleric person had a preponderance of yellow bile, was lean, hairy, and had a strong pulse and an angry demeanor. A melancholic person had a great deal of black bile, was moderately tall, lacked body hair, had a slow pulse and a big appetite, and had a fearful, worrisome personality. A phlegm-filled person was short, lacked body hair, had a weak pulse, and was emotionally void. Women by nature were considered cold and wet, men hot and dry. The ovaries were believed to be located inside the woman’s body, because they lacked sufficient heat to descend like testicles. Men were thought to become bald in later life, because their body heat burned off their hair, while women’s moisture and coldness kept their hair on their heads. Humoral theory declined in the nineteenth century, in the wake of the discovery of the role of microorganisms in producing disease. The principles of balance and moderation, however, upon which humoral theory was based, continue to be an important consideration in a person’s overall physical and emotional health. Lana Thompson

Sources Clendening, Logan. Source Book of Medical History. New York: Dover, 1960. Tobyn, Graeme. Culpepper’s Medicine: A Practice of Western Holistic Medicine. Rockport, MA: Element, 1997.

H YG I E N E Hygiene (a term derived from Hygeia, the name of the Greek goddess of health and well-being) refers to practices associated with the health and cleanliness of the body—such as bathing, hair care, and brushing the teeth—as well as the care and cleanliness of the household— including laundry, dish washing, and safe food preparation. The development of modern hygiene is rooted in the creation of the germ theory of dis-

ease and the related discovery of antiseptic medical and surgical practices. In the mid-nineteenth century, the French biologist Louis Pasteur discovered how microorganisms cause sickness and infect wounds. Pasteur noticed that when sterilized broths or liquids were exposed to the air, they spoiled, but when they were isolated from air, they remained sterile. In 1865, Pasteur investigated an epidemic affecting silkworms and observed that the infected eggs and worms all appeared to be infested with small organisms. Pasteur isolated two sets of worms and exposed one set to the secretions of sick worms while keeping the other separate from infection; the first set became ill and died. Pasteur argued that the organisms had caused the infection, a discovery that profoundly changed medical science and practice. The eminent English surgeon Joseph Lister read Pasteur’s work in the mid-1800s and began treating surgical patients with a dressing of carbolic acid during and after surgery in an effort to reduce postoperative deaths, which ran as high as 50 percent. Lister also sprayed the surgical theater or operating room with a solution of carbolic acid. He maintained such practices for two years and, by 1867, had reduced postoperative deaths to 15 percent. He called carbolic acid an “antiseptic,” a solution that would prevent infection (or “sepsis”) from affecting a wound. Hygiene practices such as cleanliness and the understanding of the role of germs in illness and infection combined during the 1800s with the beginnings of the field of domestic economy. The American writer and educator Catharine Beecher provided an analytical understanding of homemaking in A Treatise on Domestic Economy, for the Use of Young Ladies at Home, and at School (1841). The combination of homemaking with science occurred in the early twentieth century with the founding of “home economics” by Ellen Swallow Richards, who drew on her own background in chemistry. The field of domestic science combined themes of cleanliness, balanced nutrition, and a rationalized approach to housekeeping. This approach was adopted by the U.S. government as a method of inculcating European immigrants with “American” values and norms. Modern American society continues to place cultural value on hygiene. One result is a proliferation of antibacterial soaps and related products.

Section 5: Immunology 343 However, recent research conducted under the auspices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that such products may contribute to a rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Other research, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests a link between the rise in hygienic practices and the rise in allergies and autoimmune diseases. Robin O’Brian

Sources Aiello, Alison E., et. al. “Antibacterial Cleaning Products and Drug Resistance.” Emerging Infectious Diseases 11 (2005). Available from http://www.cdc.gov. Garrett, Laurie. Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. New York: Hyperion, 2001. Levy, Stuart B. The Antibiotic Paradox: How the Misuse of Antibiotics Destroys Their Curative Powers. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity. New York: W.W. Norton, 1976. Tomes, Nancy. The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

I M M U N O LO G Y Immunology is the field of science that examines the immune system of living organisms. Immunologists study how living creatures use their chemical and physical immune systems to protect themselves against foreign substances such as bacteria, viruses, and other toxins. The human immune system consists of a complex set of biological components, including the central lymphoid system (bone marrow and thymus), the peripheral lymphoid organs (lymph nodes and spleen), and the secondary lymphatic tissues (skin, adenoids, and tonsils). Immunologists’ central accomplishment has been to develop vaccines to provide individuals with immunity against specific disease-causing organisms. Vaccinations introduce a mild form of a disease in a controlled environment (delivered by injection or liquid form), thus allowing the body to produce antibodies that provide future immunity to the disease. Such vaccination programs have globally eradicated smallpox and have helped prevent the spread of cholera, hepatitis, influenza, rabies, tetanus, and typhoid

fever. Another aspect of immunology deals with unwanted responses of the immune system, including allergic reactions and autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and Hashimoto’s thyroid. Immunology as applied science began in the early 1700s in Europe, Africa, and colonial America with the development of inoculation for smallpox. Edward Jenner of England introduced vaccination in 1796. French scientist Louis Pasteur applied vaccination to silkworm disease, chicken cholera, anthrax, and rabies. American pathologist Theobald Smith in 1886 proved that a culture of cholera that had been killed by heat could still be viable to induce an immune protection response. In 1925, American bacteriologist Hans Zinsser demonstrated that infections mobilize the entire immune system, rather than individual parts, and that the various parts of the system work together to fight disease. Karl Landsteiner, of the Rockefeller Institute in New York, was able to map elements of the immune system in 1930 by studying how altered antigens are managed, winning a Nobel Prize for his accomplishments. In 1972, Gerald Edelman from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered how animals use their genetic systems to adapt and alter their immune systems over time. The development of powerful electron microscopes, high-speed computer analysis, and mapping of the human genetic code rapidly accelerated immune system research after 1980, including the discovery of HIV in 1983 and a hepatitis B vaccine produced by genetic engineering in 1986. Current immunology research uses genetic analysis to better understand the immune system and how to treat various diseases. Some researchers are examining how to mobilize facets of the human immune system to help in fighting diseases such as cancer. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Gest, Howard. Microbes: An Invisible Universe. Washington, DC: ASM, 2003. Mazumdar, Pauline M.H. Species and Specificity: An Interpretation of the History of Immunology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Silverstein, Arthur M. A History of Immunology. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1989.

344 Section 5: Influenza

I N F LU E N Z A Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is a contagious disease caused by the influenza virus. The flu, which differs from but is often mistaken for the common cold, attacks the respiratory tract in humans. Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, dry cough, sore throat, nasal congestion, and body aches. Most people who get influenza recover in one to two weeks. The disease can be severe for people age sixtyfive and older, people with chronic medical conditions, and young children. Individuals in those categories may develop complications such as pneumonia, bronchitis, sinus and ear infections, and exacerbation of asthma attacks. About 10–20 percent of U.S. residents get influenza every year. An average of 36,000 people per year die from influenza in the United States, and 114,000 per year are hospitalized from it. In recent years, influenza has ranked seventh on the list of leading causes of death in the United States by age, sex, and race.

Etiology There are three types of influenza virus: A, B, and C. Types A and B are responsible for the epidemics of disease almost every winter. Type C causes mild respiratory illness and is not prevented by a flu shot. Influenza viruses may change in two different ways. The first way, antigenic drift, involves small changes that happen continually over time, producing new virus strains that may not be recognized by the body’s immune system. The second and less common type of change, antigenic shift, is an abrupt, major change in influenza A viruses.

Pandemics and Spread A pandemic is a worldwide epidemic of a disease. New subtypes of flu virus may cause pandemics, as occurred in: 1918–1919: “Spanish flu,” 20–50 million deaths worldwide. 1957–1958: “Asian flu,” 70,000 deaths in the United States.

1968–1969: “Hong Kong flu,” 34,000 deaths in the United States. Influenza viruses may be transmitted from animals to people, although this is a rare occurrence. Generally, it is spread when a sick individual coughs, sneezes, or otherwise sends a flu virus into the air and other people inhale it. The virus then enters the person’s respiratory tract and multiplies. Influenza also may be spread when a person touches a surface that has flu viruses on it and then touches his or her nose or mouth. An infected person can spread the flu starting one day before he or she feels sick until around seven days after symptom onset. However, some people can be infected with the virus without having symptoms. Jennie McClay

Sources Centers for Disease Control. National Center for Infectious Disease. Flu Home Page. http://www.cdc.gov/flu. Nicholson, K.G., J.M. Wood, and M. Zambon. “Influenza.” Lancet 362:9397 (2003): 1733–45.

I N F LU E N Z A E P I D E M I C (1918–1919) The influenza epidemic or pandemic of 1918– 1919 killed more people, mostly otherwise healthy young adults, than any other disease of similar duration in world history. The exact number of dead is unknown but is estimated to be 20–50 million worldwide, with more than 500,000 in the United States. A U.S. Public Health Service survey of eleven cities and towns in 1919 revealed that 280 out of every 1,000 persons had the flu during the epidemic. If the percentage held true for the nation as a whole, then more than 25 million Americans had overt cases of influenza in the epidemic. Commonly referred to as the Spanish influenza or Spanish flu, the epidemic moved too quickly for public health authorities to respond adequately. The disease, nicknamed the “purple death,” turned people the color of wet ashes and sparked sudden nosebleeds. It struck suddenly; the passage from health to prostration took only one to two hours. Fevers ran from 101 to 105 de-

Section 5: Influenza Epidemic (1918–1919) 345 grees Fahrenheit. Aches were characteristic, with sufferers commonly describing themselves as feeling as if they had been beaten all over with a club. A cough, running nose, and sore throat completed the diagnosis. Those in the grip of the disease were typically delirious and occasionally were found wandering in the streets. Pneumonic complications were common and contributed to the high death rate. Many who survived the influenza were so weakened by the bout that they fell prey to such killer diseases as bronchitis and pleurisy. As the symptoms of flu subsided, depression often took hold and undoubtedly helped add to the death toll. The 1918–1919 pandemic was unusually deadly, because it coincided with the end of World War I. The massive movement of troops and the shifts of civilian populations during the conflict provided the best possible opportunity for the interchange of airborne germs.

Russia, for example, received influenza from prisoners of war returning home from the Western Front. The total number of Russian casualties is unknown, but anecdotes abound of entire families found dead in their homes. In Guam, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a U.S. Navy transport brought in the flu virus, which killed more than 4 percent of the population. The arrival of a sailor or soldier often meant the arrival of influenza. In the United States, the first case appeared in March 1918 in the chief embarkation port of New York City. The circumstances of war and the severity of the disease also hampered the accurate reporting of influenza statistics. Many men in uniform feared that they would be regarded as slackers for reporting respiratory problems and did not seek medical aid. Men struck down aboard transport ships often did not bother to go to sick bay, because it was already filled beyond capacity

Seattle policemen wear protective gauze masks during the influenza epidemic of 1918–1919, which took half a million lives in the United States and more than 20 million worldwide. (National Archives/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

346 Section 5: Influenza Epidemic (1918–1919) with flu-stricken shipmates. Soldiers struck down at the front could not be easily moved through a mile or more of mud to a waiting ambulance, especially if the others in their unit were also ill. Additionally, the U.S. Army advised officers not to transfer patients, because rest was absolutely vital to recovery. Physicians and nurses, overwhelmed by so many desperately ill patients, simply lacked the time to complete paperwork. One San Jose physician, who saw 525 patients in one day, saved time by having a friend drive his car so he could ride the running board instead of getting in and out. Responses to influenza varied from place to place. The commissioner of health in Detroit banned all military personnel from the city, except those in perfect health on vital military business and carrying a letter from a superior officer to that effect; the pandemic struck the Motor City nevertheless. Some cities closed schools, saloons, and theaters. San Franciscans, at the demand of city government, wore thick gauze surgical masks over the nose and mouth. Despite wearing masks, 78 percent of the nurses at San Francisco Hospital contracted influenza. Other Americans, in the grip of anti-German war fever, attributed the disease to a Teutonic plot and forced the federal government to run tests on Bayer aspirin, made under a German patent. The disease also severely stressed public services. Garbage accumulated in the streets, because so many collectors had fallen ill. Telephone service in several cites was on the brink of collapse, because so many operators were unable to report to duty; phone companies pleaded with patrons to make essential calls only, so requests for medical assistance would be able to get through. The Red Cross issued general appeals for volunteers to care for children whose parents were dead or hopelessly ill. Most gruesomely, bodies piled up in morgues, because coroners had been felled by the flu, coffin makers were unable to keep up with the demand, and gravediggers could not dig quickly enough. The numbers of sick had a significant effect on World War I. The U.S. Army lost to illness the equivalent of two divisions every day of 1918, snarling attempts to reinforce divisions already in battle. In October 1918, the government canceled the draft call for 142,000 men, despite Gen-

eral John Pershing’s request for more troops. The Germans, struck just as hard by the disease, could not maintain their supply lines. By reducing mobility, influenza reduced the capacity of troops to advance and retreat. It remains a mystery why the Spanish flu killed so many people. Immunologist MacFarlane Brunet theorized that the virus was of a very virulent strain that had not been seen in a long time, making resistance to it very low. The average age at death was thirty-three, possibly because young adults produced intense localized inflammation that overwhelmed their bodies. Caryn E. Neumann

Sources Crosby, Alfred W. Epidemic and Peace, 1918. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1976. Davies, Pete. Devil’s Flu: The World’s Deadliest Influenza Epidemic and the Scientific Hunt for the Virus That Caused It. New York: Henry Holt, 2000. Kolata, Gina. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic. New York: Touchstone, 2001.

I N O C U L AT I O N Inoculation is primarily the transfer of biological or chemical substances from a source to a recipient to promote immunity to a disease. Inoculation is a term also applied when injecting chemicals, such as hormones or vitamins, and when transferring microbes into sterile media. A microbe or particle may be introduced into a body to stimulate the production of an antibody against the introduced substance, a process called active immunity. Or antibodies that are produced in one body may be introduced into another body in a process called passive immunity. While the purposeful infection of a subject (variolation) has been practiced for millennia, the injection of an antibody, microbe, or toxin is a late nineteenth-century development. Practiced in China and the Middle East, variolation was brought to England in 1718 by Lady Montague, who had seen the procedure used for protection against smallpox in Constantinople; the procedure was introduced in America by Boston clergyman Cotton Mather. Natural infection with smallpox was fatal in 20 to 30 percent

Section 5: Itinerant Physicians 347 of cases, and survivors were disfigured with pitted scarring. Only five of every thousand persons escaped smallpox infection. Mather, in response to an outbreak of smallpox in Boston in 1721, advocated inoculating the people of Boston to reduce mortality. Mather knew that inoculation led to a less virulent form of the disease and that the colonial legislation requiring quarantine had been ineffective. The procedure was not without risk: The mortality rate from inoculation could reach 2 percent, and inoculated patients were contagious. The majority of Boston physicians and many clergy resisted the procedure, until they saw proof of its success in reduced mortality from the disease. By the time of the American Revolution, inoculation was the preferred way to respond to the threat of smallpox. In 1777, General George Washington wrote to Congress concerning the spread of smallpox through the Continental Army, which resulted in the inoculation of the whole army and of all new recruits. Smallpox inoculation was abandoned after the British physician Edward Jenner’s use of cowpox to induce immunity to smallpox, introducing the term “vaccination” (from the Latin vacca, or “cow”) in 1796. The process was rarely fatal, and the vaccinated patient was not contagious. Louis Pasteur’s further work, resulting in the development of preventive inoculations for rabies and anthrax, led him to apply the term “vaccine” to any inoculation that led to the stimulation of host immunity. During the nineteenth century, scientists realized that immunity could be directly transferred from an immune source, usually equine, to a nonimmune human. This discovery led to the first use of a “serum” to treat cases of diphtheria with diphtheria antitoxin, and tetanus with tetanus antitoxin, in the 1890s. Inoculation with antibodies is still used today in the prevention and treatment of tetanus following a contaminated wound and in preventing hepatitis A in people exposed to the disease through contaminated food. It is increasingly used to treat species-specific snakebites and black widow spider bites, although the use of cell cultures to produce the antibodies is replacing the use of animal and human sources. Sharon M. Gillett

Sources Devles, Peter J., ed. Encyclopedia of Immunology. Vol. 3, 2nd ed. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1998. Stites, Daniel P., John D. Stobo, and J. Vivian Wells, eds. Basic and Clinical Immunology. 6th ed. Norwalk, CT: Appleton and Lange, 1987. Tandy, Elizabeth C. “Local Quarantine and Inoculation for Smallpox in the American Colonies (1620–1775).” American Journal of Public Health 13:1 (1923): 203–7.

ITINER ANT PHYSICIANS In colonial America, itinerant physicians traveled by foot, horseback, or elaborate carriages from town to town, as most settlements were too small to support a permanent resident physician. Itinerant physicians had no formal training—some, no training at all—and often apprenticed with relatives, associates, or other itinerants. Early Americans called itinerant physicians quacks, charlatans, electrizers, bonesetters, animal healers, herbalists, peddlers, dentists, surgeons, and mountebanks (“he who jumps on a bench”). To attract customers, many performed on platforms and stages with snakes, assistants, and musicians. Often, the itinerant physician had a warehouse of pharmaceuticals that he mixed, bottled, and labeled with an elaborate design. Many of these “medicines” contained cocaine, alcohol, lobelia, or opium in large enough amounts to appear to cause instant results. Dependent on credulity, superstition, and ignorance, fraudulent physicians were well equipped with zodiac calendars and charts, informed by the humoral theory and used as diagnostic and prognostic tools. Some itinerants were tooth drawers, aurists, oculists, lithotomists (bladder stone removers), cancer specialists, or empirics who fixed hernias. Some professed to cure venereal disease. The first itinerants on record in America practiced their trade in the early colonial period. For example, in the mid-seventeenth century, Massachusetts villagers complained to the county court that they were without medical care and asked that their miller be allowed to practice surgery. Shortly thereafter, an itinerant physician named Phillip Reade, perhaps hearing about the lack of medical care in the region, appeared at

348 Section 5: Itinerant Physicians inns and community centers to render his services. Although he was not a charlatan, he was outspoken with regard to religion, and his argumentative personality did not conform to the expectations of the townspeople. As medical schools were established in the United States and more doctors became available over time, the itinerant physician was no longer needed. In addition, professional scientific education became a mandate for anyone wanting to practice medicine. Lana Thompson

Sources Benes, Peter, ed. Medicine and Healing. Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings, vol. 15. Boston University, 1992. Helfand, William H. Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints Posters, Ephemera and Books. New York: Grolier, 2002. Shafer, Henry B. The American Medical Profession, 1783–1850. New York: AMS, 1968.

JARVIK, ROBERT (1946– ) Robert Koffler Jarvik, a cardiothoracic surgeon, invented the Jarvik-7 artificial heart, the Jarvik 2000 heart pump, and an artificial kidney. Jarvik was born on May 11, 1946, in Midland, Michigan, to Norman Eugene Jarvik and Edythe Koffler Jarvik, and he grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, His aptitude for invention dates to his boyhood; he invented a surgical stapler when he was in his late teens. He attended Syracuse University and earned his M.D. from the University of Utah School of Medicine, where he worked with William J. Kolff, who tested the first artificial heart model in animals in 1957. Jarvik gained a lifelong passion for heart surgery when his father became ill in 1964 and needed open-heart surgery. Kolff stimulated Jarvik’s interest in a permanent, implantable artificial heart, leading Jarvik to design a device called the Jarvik-7. In order to prepare this artificial heart for human implantation, Jarvik began extensive testing by implanting the device in

sheep and calves. By the late 1970s, several other artificial heart designs also had emerged, including one from Jarvik’s old mentor, Kolff, and one from a team at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston. The Jarvik-7 design was ahead in development and ready for human implantation by 1982. William DeVries, a cardiothoracic surgeon, implanted the first Jarvik-7 artificial heart on December 2, 1982, into the chest of retired Seattle dentist Barney Clark in seven and a half hours of surgery at Salt Lake City’s University of Utah Medical Center. The Jarvik-7 was externally airdriven, through a compressor connected by hoses to the device. The artificial heart, made of Dacron polyester, aluminum, and plastic, had a pump designed to replace the circulatory action of the two lower chambers (ventricles) of a heart. Clark survived only 112 days, dying of multiple organ failure, although the artificial heart was still beating when he died. It was clear that the existing technology had its limits and that the artificial heart as a permanent replacement was years away, yet DeVries and Jarvik still advocated an aggressive implantation program, not only to meet patient demand, but also to advance the technology as rapidly as possible. In 1983, 40,000 people sat on waiting lists to obtain a replacement heart, and only 2,000 donor hearts were available per year. The FDA responded that same year by approving the use of cyclosporine (a powerful antirejection drug) in combination with steroids and other drugs as an immunosuppressant to make heart transplantation a more viable option. Even with more heart transplants happening, the demand for the procedure was still unmet. The FDA limited the Jarvik-7 to temporary implantations in 1985 due to the patients’ substandard quality of life (patients were tethered to an external compressor and suffered occasional strokes, hemorrhages, and infections). William Schroeder was the longest survivor; after his implant, he lived for eighteen months from 1985 to 1986. In 1988, Jarvik moved to New York City and formed Jarvik Heart, Inc., which created a series of miniaturized heart assist devices, including the Jarvik 2000 FlowMaker, a left ventricular assist system (LVAD) designed to be implanted beside a patient’s heart to assist it until a donor heart is available.

Section 5: Koop, C. Everett 349 The thumb-sized Jarvik 2000 is used in Europe and the United States as a bridge to a transplant; in Europe, it also is considered suitable for lifetime use. The Jarvik 2000 has been implanted as a heart assist device in over 100 patients in the United States. As of early 2007, the first lifetime-use patient remained in good health after five years. When Jarvik was asked why he designed this heart pump, he replied: “People want a normal life and just being alive is not good enough.” James Fargo Balliett and Richard M. Edwards

Sources Bankston, John. Robert Jarvik and the First Artificial Heart: Unlocking the Secrets of Science. Hockessin, DE: Mitchell Lane, 2002. Bosher, Cecil. Landmarks in Cardiac Surgery. London: Taylor and Francis, 1997. Jarvik Heart. http://www.jarvikheart.com. Naef, Andreas P. The Story of Thoracic Surgery: Milestones and Pioneers. Lewiston, NY: Hogrefe and Huber, 1990. Shumacker, Harris B. The Evolution of Cardiac Surgery. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. Westaby, Stephen. Landmarks in Cardiac Surgery. Oxford, UK: Isis Medical Media, 2000.

JONES, JOHN (1729–1791) John Jones wrote the first American text on surgery, was one of the co-founders of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, and founded and designed the New York Hospital in 1770. He served as a physician to both Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Jones was born in Jamaica, Long Island, to Quaker parents and attended private school in New York City. At the age of eighteen, he was apprenticed to John Cadwalader to learn the practice of medicine. As most serious students did in the eighteenth century, he went abroad to study and visited England, France, Edinburgh, and Leiden. He graduated in 1751 from the University of Rheims, whereupon he moved to New York and set up practice as a surgeon and obstetrician. He developed a reputation for bladder stone removal, and more than one colony depended on his skills as a lithotomist.

During the American Revolution, Jones wrote Plain Concise Practical Remarks on the Treatment of Wounds and Fractures (1775), which was the first American textbook on surgery. He also translated Van Swieten’s Diseases Incident to Armies and had it bound to his own book, a common practice in the eighteenth century. Jones worked at the Pennsylvania Hospital from 1781 to 1791, and he co-founded the College of Physicians in Philadelphia in 1787. When President Washington was being treated for pneumonia in 1790, his personal physician, Samuel Bard, consulted with Jones about the leader’s condition. Jones also attended Franklin in old age but could do nothing other than allay the pain of a large bladder stone and gout. After Franklin died, Jones published articles about Franklin’s final days in the Pennsylvania Gazette and Freeman’s Journal. Lana Thompson

Sources Bayne-Jones, Stanhope. Preventive Medicine in the United States Army, 1607–1939. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968. Galishoff, Stuart. “John Jones.” In Dictionary of American Medical Biography, ed. Martin Kaufman, et al. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984. Preble, Edward. “John Jones,” Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 5. Ed. Dumas Malone. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1961.

K O O P, C. E V E R E T T (1916– ) Charles Everett Koop, surgeon general of the United States during the Reagan administration, was born October 14, 1916, in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Dartmouth College (1937) and Cornell Medical School (M.D., 1941) and received a Doctor of Medical Science degree from the University of Pennsylvania (1947) in conjunction with his work in trying to find a blood plasma substitute. At the age of twenty-nine, Koop became a pioneering pediatric surgeon at Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia. At the time, general surgeons resented the development of the new pediatric

350 Section 5: Koop, C. Everett surgery specialty, but Koop, through his selfconfident determination and remarkable innovations, helped wage a successful battle for professional recognition.

Pediatric Surgeon and Pro-Life Advocate Koop’s breakthroughs included improvements not only in surgical techniques but also in perspectives. With anesthesiologist Margo Deming, he devised an apparatus to enable successful endotracheal (through the trachea, or windpipe) anesthesia in infants—hitherto a rare procedure. This gentler method led to considerably swifter recovery for children who underwent hernia operations. He was the first to put in a shunt (surgically implanted passageway) for babies suffering from hydrocephalus (water on the brain), and the first to use a section of an infant’s colon to replace a missing esophagus. He performed several successful separations of Siamese twins, including two fourteen-month-old girls from the Dominican Republic who shared a liver and a colon and whose urinary tracts were intertwined. Koop’s sense of justice and compassion for child patients led him early in his career to be a pro-life advocate. His antiabortion position was bolstered by his Christian faith—an evangelical Calvinism fostered at Tenth Presbyterian Church, a conservative congregation in downtown Philadelphia. In 1979, Koop and the Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer collaborated on a five-part cinematic series, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? The films debuted that autumn in twenty American cities during three-day events, which included personal presentations by Koop, Schaeffer, and others.

When Koop arrived in Washington, he declared that he had said everything on abortion that was necessary and would not be talking about it further. He kept his word and concentrated his energies on revitalizing the morale of the Commissioned Corps, the uniformed service of the U.S. Public Health Service. He sought to achieve that goal by advocating higher salaries and restructuring the corps; he also wore the full dress uniform of a commissioned officer. Koop’s seven-year tenure as surgeon general was marked by at least three controversies. First, his antismoking campaign angered tobacco companies and their political allies. A second controversy was his report to the nation on AIDS, which disconcerted many of his former conservative allies because of its mentioning of condoms and its nonjudgmental attitude toward homosexuals. Simultaneously, the report endeared him to many of his formerly vitriolic enemies on the left. A third controversy arose when he declined to conclude in an official report (requested by President Reagan) that it is scientifically proven that women who have abortions suffer adverse health effects. Among numerous government and professional recognitions for service, Koop was awarded the French Medal of the Legion of Honor (1980) and the Order of the Duarte, Sanchez, and Mella, the Dominican Republic’s highest award. Informed by the Hippocratic oath’s principle of “do no harm” and a strong Christian faith, Koop set standards of excellence in pediatrics, patient care, and public health service. Frank J. Smith

Sources Easterbrook, Gregg. Surgeon Koop. Knoxville, TN: Whittle, 1991. Koop, C. Everett. Koop: The Memoirs of America’s Family Doctor. New York: Random House, 1991.

Surgeon G eneral Koop’s high-profile pro-life credentials led President Ronald Reagan to nominate him for the position of U.S. surgeon general. A bitter fight ensued, with the liberal establishment portraying him as “Dr. Kook” and trying to block his confirmation. He was confirmed by the Senate (68–24) in 1982.

L I F E E X P E C TA N C Y Life expectancy is the statistical average (mean) life span of a designated group of people, based on certain variables such as geography and gender. The systematic recording of vital statistics in the United States began in the late 1800s with

Section 5: Lining, John 351 the establishment of birth and death certificates and marriage and divorce records. These documents, maintained by state, county, and local authorities, provided demographers with data that could measure an average life expectancy based on the data available for a group of individuals. In 1900, the U.S. life expectancy for all races was 47.3 years. By 2000, life expectancy had increased to 77 years—a thirty-year increase in longevity over the course of a century. The 1900 U.S. Census reported that 6.4 percent of the total population was age sixty and above; by 2000, this figure was 16.5 percent. This data can be further broken down by gender. For instance, life expectancy in the 2000 U.S. Census was 80.1 years for white females and 74.9 years for white males. Life expectancy is also examined for other racial and ethnic groups. African American rates showed significant changes during the twentieth century. The average length of life for African Americans of both sexes in 1900 was 33 years; this increased to 71.9 years by 2000, resulting in an increased longevity of forty years in the last century. As of 2000, life expectancy was 75.2 years for African American females, 68.3 years for African American males. Among American Indians, life expectancy was 82 years for females, 73 years for males. Life expectancy for Americans of Hispanic ethnicity was 83.7 years for females, 77 years for males. Among Asian Americans, life expectancy was 86.5 years for females, 81 years for males. The increases in life expectancy figures are the result of several factors: more detailed census analysis, better data gathering, and advances in public health and medicine. Preventive health measures have included improved prenatal care; widespread health and nutritional education; increased sanitation, water purification, and solid waste treatment; and the development of antibiotics (penicillin was introduced in 1945). As a result, the infant mortality rate declined significantly during the course of the twentieth century. The use of better agricultural technology (more efficient machines, improved seed yield, and more effective fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides) during the latter half of the twentieth century led to increased food production and thus to better nutrition among the general public. With these and other advances, the

U.S. population grew from 3.9 million in 1790 to 77 million in 1900 to 300 million in 2006. The primary causes of death among Americans have changed significantly over the centuries. As people live longer, diseases of old age have replaced childhood disease and accidents as the most prevalent causes of death. A century ago, serious childhood diseases such as mumps, measles, rubella, chicken pox, polio, tetanus, and hepatitis caused high childhood mortality. Today, the major causes of death are cancers, heart disease, strokes, respiratory diseases, motor vehicle accidents, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. James Fargo Balliett and James Steinberg

Sources Carey, James R., and Shripad Taljapurkar, eds. Life Span: Evolutionary, Ecological, and Demographic Perspectives. New York: Population Council, 2003. Gavrilov, Leonid. The Biology of a Life Span. New York: Harwood Academic, 1991. Riley, James. Rising Life Expectancy: A Global History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. U.S. Congress. Senate Committee on Finance. Trends in U.S. Life Expectancy. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983.

LINING, JOHN (1708–1760) John Lining is best known for his description of the symptoms of yellow fever in America, as well as for his experiments with metabolic processes and their relationship to weather conditions. Lining was also interested in the effects of electricity on disease and how humidity, rainfall, wind, or cloud cover might affect health. He was part of a group of intellectuals and scientists who gathered in Charleston, South Carolina, to exchange information. Lining, was born in Walston, Scotland, to the Reverend Thomas and Anne Lining, the second of seven children. In early adulthood, he studied medicine at Leiden and was an apprentice to a physician, Hermann Boerhaave. During Lining’s lifetime, medicine was not yet fully professionalized; aspiring doctors could attend classes without graduating and still practice medicine, provided they had been apprenticed

352 Section 5: Lining, John to a working physician. In 1728, Lining traveled to America and set up an apothecary shop as a pharmacist, then set up a private practice as a physician in Charleston, South Carolina. He dealt with outbreaks of malaria, smallpox, yellow fever, and dysentery in epidemic proportions among slave populations. In 1737, he was appointed parish doctor, a position connected with St. Philip’s Hospital, where he treated patients during a smallpox epidemic. He became acquainted with Sarah Hill, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. They married in 1739 and had eleven children, four of whom died during childhood. Lining’s first reports of medicine in the colonies were communicated to Robert Whytt, a professor in Edinburgh, Scotland. Lining wrote on “The Anthelmintic Virtues of the Root of the Indian Pink.” A report that addressed the yellow fever epidemic of 1748 was published in Edinburgh in 1752. Lining was interested in climate and its influence on physiology and disease. Contemporaries believed that the onset of diseases such as yellow fever was related to the quality of the air. Lining kept a whipcord hygroscope to record relative humidity and had two types of thermometers, Fahrenheit and Heath’s, for meticulous records on temperature. He also had instruments to measure barometric pressure and the amount of rainfall, and he made notes on cloud cover and wind force. His meterological data were published in the South Carolina Gazette and Gentleman’s Magazine. In 1737, Lining began an experiment to study the effects of temperature, humidity, cloudiness, rainfall, and wind on his own body. He took his pulse, weighed himself, and measured everything he ate, drank, and excreted. He published the results as Statical Experiments, and concluded that the volume of urine was inversely proportional to the amount of perspiration excreted, perspiration being greater than urine in the summer and urine being greater in the winter than in the summer. Although he wanted to experiment with his blood, technologies were not sophisticated enough to allow such measurements. Lining wrote to Benjamin Franklin and learned how to attract lightning with a kite. Cognizant of

the dangers of electricity, he was meticulous in grounding himself and insulating any equipment he used. Franklin, in his Treatise on Electricity (1752), wrote about Lining’s kite experiment. John Lining died in 1760 at the age of fiftytwo, probably from contracting smallpox while treating patients in an epidemic at Charlestown. Lana Thompson

Sources Bing, F.C. “John Lining, an Early American Scientist.” Scientific Monthly 20:3 (1928): 249–52. Mendelsohn, E. “John Lining and His Contribution to Early American Science.” Isis 51:3 (1960): 278–92.

L O N G , C R AW F O R D (1815–1878) The nineteenth-century American physician and pharmacist Crawford Long used ether as a surgical anesthetic when he removed a tumor from the neck of James Venable in 1842. But because Long did not formally seek credit or publish an account of this procedure for seven years, the credit for first use went to William Morton, who employed ether as a general anesthetic in 1846. Long’s feat, however, was later recognized as a first in American surgical procedures. Long was born on November 1, 1815, in Danielsville, Georgia, the oldest of four children of Elizabeth and James Long. As the son of a prominent planter, merchant, and state senator, he was raised in a comfortable home with all the educational opportunities afforded to well-off young men of his time. At the age of fourteen, he was accepted to the University of Georgia in Athens. Graduating with honors in 1835, he taught at Danielsville Academy for one year. In 1836, Long began studying medicine with George Grant in Jefferson, Georgia, and entered Transylvania College in Kentucky. After a year, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his medical degree in 1839. Long completed an eighteen-month internship in New York City, where he was recognized for his surgical skills. Surgery had advanced with new techniques and tools, but it still could be a harrowing experience; patients could experience

Section 5: Massachusetts General Hospital 353 excruciating pain, because no powerful sedatives existed. During medical school, Long observed and participated in “ether frolics” and “laughing gas parties” (using nitrous oxide), common activities for young scientists at the time. He noticed that individuals under the influence of either ether or nitrous oxide seemed to feel little pain when they crashed into objects or fell. Back in Georgia, Long began to experiment with sulfuric ether as an anesthetic in hopes of finding a better way to sedate patients than applying a blow to the head or using alcohol or hypnotism. On March 30, 1842, Long performed his first surgery on a patient sedated with ether. Witnessed by several medical students, the twenty-six-year-old physician administered ether using a towel to twenty-oneyear-old James Venable and then removed a half inch cyst from his neck. Venable was so pleased with the results that he allowed Long to remove a second cyst on another occasion, at a cost of $2 each time. Long continued to use ether as an anesthetic, but the first physician to publish about the use of ether was William Morton in 1846. It was only then that Long began to write about his procedures. In 1849, he presented his work to the Medical College of Georgia, where he learned that not one but two other doctors (Horace Wells and Charles Jackson) also claimed to be the first to use surgical anesthesia. Despite this news, Long proceeded to publish his article as well as affidavits in the Southern Medical and Surgical Journal in 1849. Long married Caroline Swain in 1842, and the couple had twelve children. In 1851, Long moved his family to Athens, Georgia, where he and his brother, Robert, opened a medical practice and pharmacy. During the American Civil War, Long served as a surgeon to soldiers on both sides of the conflict. He died of heart failure on June 16, 1878; he had just finished delivering a baby. Long would not receive full recognition for the first use of ether as a surgical anesthetic until the National Eclectic Medical Association credited him with the achievement on June 18, 1879, a year after his death. Since then, Long has been honored with a variety of monuments, including a U.S. postage stamp. A Georgia county is

named in his honor, as is the Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Boland, Frank Kells. The First Anesthetic: The Story of Crawford Long. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1950. Gay, Evelyn. The Medical Profession in Georgia, 1733–1983. Atlanta: Auxiliary to the Medical Association of Georgia, 1983. Keys, Thomas E. The History of Surgical Anesthesia. New York: Dover, 1963; Malabar, FL: R.E. Kreiger, 1978.

MASSACHUSET TS GENER AL H O S P I TA L Known colloquially as “Mass General,” Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) is located in Boston, adjacent to the Charles River and Beacon Hill. Established in 1811 and formally opened in 1821, it is the original and largest teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School, the third-oldest general hospital in the United States, and the oldest and largest in New England. John Adams and John Quincy Adams were early organizers and supporters of the hospital. The two physicians most credited with incorporation of the Massachusetts General Hospital by the Massachusetts state legislature were James Jackson and John Collins Warren, who also founded the New England Journal of Medicine in 1812. The Ether Dome is one of the oldest operating theaters in the United States, and it was here that Boston dentist William Morton was one of the earliest professionals to use general anesthesia in surgery, on November 18, 1846. Henry Jacob Bigelow, a junior surgeon at the hospital, heard of Morton’s “painless” dentistry and asked him to demonstrate ether’s anesthetic potential in surgery. The ether was administered using a glass reservoir with pass-over vaporization designed by Joseph M. Wightman and Nathan B. Chamberlain, and perfected by Morton and Augustus A. Gould, an internist at the hospital. Warren, the hospital’s senior surgeon, also painlessly removed a congenital vascular malformation from the jaw of an anesthetized patient.

354 Section 5: Massachusetts General Hospital Many additional medical milestones are credited to Massachusetts General: the first use of an X-ray machine in the United States (1896); the first medical social service department established in a hospital (1905); the first tumor clinic in a hospital to study and treat cancer patients (1925); the first surgery to feature the reattachment of a severed human limb (1962); and the first commercial success by cardiac surgeons to insert an intra-aortic balloon catheter to open blocked arteries (1969). Researchers at Mass General also were the first to discover the genes responsible for Huntington’s disease, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), and neurofibromatosis. In 2000, Mass General surgeons were the first to perform a split liver transplant, in which one donated liver was divided and successfully transplanted into two separate patients. Today, the hospital is a nonprofit facility owned and operated by Partners HealthCare System (which also owns Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston), and it encompasses five satellite facilities in the metropolitan Boston region located at Back Bay, Charlestown, Chelsea, Everett, and Revere. Mass General’s 19,500 employees annually admit over 44,000 patients to its 898 beds, perform 30,000 inpatient surgeries, deliver over 3,500 children, and treat more than 1 million outpatients at its main campus alone. The hospital is known, however, as a medical research powerhouse. Currently, the Massachusetts General’s hospital-based research program has an annual budget of about $500 million, by far the largest in the United States. This facility has been consistently ranked among the best hospitals in the United States by major surveys. In 2006, Solucient, an independent health care research organization that ranks the top 100 hospitals each year, judged Massachusetts General as a top hospital with a cardiovascular residency program. U.S. News and World Report ranked it the number three hospital for neurology/neurosurgery, number two for endocrinology, and the best psychiatric hospital in the United States in 2006. Current advanced research at the hospital is carried out in two dozen departments, employing several thousand scientists and doctors on a range of issues, including knifeless laser and radiation surgery techniques, HIV disease control,

better cardiovascular “predictive” practices to expose the risk of disease, clinical trials of new breast and other cancer drugs, the use of a new proton beam to shrink tumors, and new technology to provide “virtual” biopsies of internal organs. James Fargo Balliett and Richard M. Edwards

Sources Bowditch, Nathaniel Ingersoll. A History of the Massachusetts General Hospital, to August 5, 1851. New York: Arno, 1972. Castleman, Benjamin, David C. Crockett, and S.B. Sutton, eds. The Massachusetts General Hospital, 1955–1980. Boston: Little Brown, 1983. Massachusetts General Hospital. http://www.mgh.harvard.edu.

M AYO C L I N I C The Mayo Clinic, based in Rochester, Minnesota, is a world-renowned hospital, health care system, medical school, and medical research facility operated by the nonprofit Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Mayo operates three major clinics (in Rochester; in Jacksonville, Florida; and in Scottsdale, Arizona), four major hospitals, and the Mayo Health System, which includes smaller clinics and hospitals in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The history of the Mayo Clinic starts with William Worrall Mayo, who was born on May 31, 1819, to James and Anne Mayo in the English village of Salford. At the age of twenty-six, seeking to pursue a medical career, Mayo boarded a ship for America. Settling in Rochester, he opened a medical practice in the 1860s. Mayo was hardworking, always seeking to advance the medical profession, and he had a passion for teaching others. “No one is big enough to be independent of others,” he asserted. Mayo’s sons, William (1861–1939) and Charles (1865–1939), both became surgeons and joined their father ’s practice. Along with other physicians—including Augustus Stinchfield, Christopher Graham, Melvin Millet, and Henry Stanley Plummer—they pioneered the teamoriented approach to the diagnosis and treatment of disease. In 1910, William Mayo expanded on his father’s thoughts by offering: “The sum total

Section 5: Mayo Clinic 355 of medical knowledge is now so great and wide spreading that it would be futile for one man to attempt to acquire, or for any one man to assume that he has even a good working knowledge of any large part of the whole.” The Mayo brothers’ philosophy and collaborative surgical successes made their advice sought after in a broader region. In 1914, they expanded their medical practice with a new building named the Mayo Clinic, which stands to this day. The next year, the Mayo facilities added its Graduate School of Medicine to offer formal specialized training for licensed physicians. In 1919, the Mayo brothers transferred all of the assets of the clinic to the not-for-profit Mayo Properties Association, later called the Mayo Foundation and now part of the University of Minnesota Graduate School. Groundbreaking additions to the Mayo network have included

An arthritis specialist does research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The internationally renowned hospital and research facility began as the medical practice of brothers William and Charles Mayo in the early 1900s. (Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

the Allergic Diseases Research Laboratory, which opened in 1970 and focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of bronchial asthma and immune system diseases; the Mayo Medical School, which opened in 1972; and the Mayo School of Health-Related Sciences, which was completed in 1973. Also in 1973, the Mayo Cancer Center was founded to conduct cancer research and clinical studies, train cancer specialists, and serve as a cancer research information clearinghouse. In 2000, the Mayo Clinic Transplant Center opened; it integrates all of the services necessary for the care of transplant patients into a single facility. Seeking to lead the medical field in the latest research, the University of Minnesota and Mayo formed the $4 million Minnesota Partnership for Biotechnology and Medical Genomics in 2004 for biogenomic research. The Mayo Clinic has been credited with an impressive list of medical accomplishments. These include the isolation of thyroxine (1914), a metabolic thyroid hormone; the development of new instruments and technology for testing lung function (beginning in 1914); the development of a system for grading the severity of cancers (1920); the development of the oxygen mask (1938) and pressure suit (1945) for aircraft pilots; the isolation of cortisone (1950); the first openheart surgery with a mechanical heart bypass machine (1955); the first use of antibiotic drugs (streptomycin) to fight tuberculosis (1969); and the first North American use of computerized tomographic (CT) scanning (1973). The clinic is also known worldwide for its general medical examination, known as the “Mayo Checkup.” Today, the Mayo system annually treats over 320,000 patients and logs 1.5 million outpatient visits, performs over 30,000 laboratory tests daily, and treats 3,550 patients each day. Mayo provides over $2 million annually in free health care, expends $300 million annually on medical research, and employs more than 4,000 physicians (in more than 100 medical and surgical specialties), scientists, nurses, and allied health workers. The Mayo Clinic consistently ranks among the best medical facilities in the United States. James Fargo Balliett and Richard M. Edwards

356 Section 5: Mayo Clinic Sources Braasch, William F. Early Days in the Mayo Clinic. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1969. Clapesattle, Helen B. The Doctors Mayo. Rochester, MN: Mayo Clinic Health Management, 2003. Hartzell, Judith. I Started All This: The Life of Dr. William Worrall Mayo. Greenville, SC: Arvi, 2004. Mayo Clinic. http://www.mayoclinic.org.

MEASLES A highly contagious disease, measles (also called rubeola) is caused by a viral infection in the upper respiratory tract (nose, mouth, or throat). Spread through coughing and sneezing, the disease infects almost 85 percent of the people who come in contact with the virus. The initial symptoms of measles include fever, runny nose, red and watery eyes, and a cough. A rash called Koplik’s spots appears on the skin several days later. The measles rash usually begins on the head and face before spreading to the rest of the body. The incubation period for measles is seven to fourteen days. High fever, nausea, and diarrhea often accompany the rash. Measles can cause many other complications, including laryngitis, bronchopneumonia, and encephalitis, which causes the brain to swell. There is no known cure for measles. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, European explorers brought measles to America, where it occasionally reached epidemic proportions, killing tens of thousands. Epidemics occurred throughout the eastern colonies and across the continent—New England in 1658, the Great Lakes in 1713, the Southwest in 1768, and the Pacific Northwest in 1847. While measles also affected those of European background, the disease epidemics proved particularly catastrophic to the indigenous populations of North America. Having never been exposed to the virus prior to contact with the Europeans, native populations had developed no resistance by means of antibodies in the bloodstream; the results were lethal. Estimates are that hundreds of thousands of Native Americans died from measles over the course of several centuries. Measles made a reappearance during the American Civil War. The Union Army, for exam-

ple, reported almost 70,000 cases, with more than 4,000 deaths. Military encampments and prisons were a major breeding ground, as men lived in close and cramped conditions. During World War II, researchers at Harvard Medical School isolated the immune gamma globulin (a class of proteins produced in lymph tissue that function as antibodies and produce an immune response). When the immune gamma globulin was injected, it produced a mild case of measles, allowing the person to develop immunity to the virus. Researchers also developed a treatment for victims of measles, using organic sulfur compounds and penicillin to combat the complications of the disease, resulting in fewer deaths. In 1963, Boston physicians John Enders and T.C. Peebles developed a vaccine of weakened measles, which diminished the impact of the virus but produced the same immune response. While almost 500,000 cases of measles were reported in the United States in 1962, there were just over 20,000 cases five years after the vaccine was introduced. Today, infants usually receive the measles vaccine (called MMR, as it is a vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella) when they are about fifteen months old. Physicians recommend that children receive a second vaccination between the ages of five and nineteen. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported only 100 cases of measles nationwide in 1998, 71 of which were brought to the United States from abroad. In developing countries, however, measles continues to infect more than 30 million people worldwide each year, killing nearly 875,000 of those infected. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Cliff, Andrew, Peter Haggett, and Matthew SmallmanRaynot. Measles: An Historical Geography of a Major Human Viral Disease, from Global Expansion to Local Retreat, 1840–1990. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993. Spink, Wesley W. Infectious Diseases: Prevention and Treatment in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Measles: Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine Preventable Diseases. Atlanta: CDC, 2000. World Health Organization and United Nations Children’s Fund. Measles, Mortality Reduction, and Regional Elimination. Strategic Plan for 2001–2005.

Section 5: Medical Education 357

M E D I C A L E D U C AT I O N Medical education in the United States has followed the progress of medicine, as well as the social factors of professionalization and social welfare. Few instructors and medical facilities existed in colonial America. As the population and infrastructure grew, this gradually changed. Training options for nurses and doctors expanded from a system dominated by simple apprenticeships to one with actual school opportunities. The University of Pennsylvania opened the first medical college in 1765, but by the 1770s, only 10 percent of the colonies’ 4,000 doctors had formal training. The basic medical program at the University of Pennsylvania for a physician included lectures and classes for a year or so, and then an apprenticeship of one to four years. These early programs were not based on written materials and tests but instead used hands-on experiences and exposure to real-life medical situations. After the War of 1812, U.S. medical schools proliferated, numbering forty-two by 1850. Nominal requirements set by each state for a doctorate in medicine included knowledge of Latin and philosophy, attendance of two terms of lectures, passing all examinations, a thesis, and a three-year apprenticeship—but these requirements were rarely enforced. Most schools during this period survived solely on income from student tuition, a system that discouraged reform. Wealthy students often trained in Europe. By the 1870s, the community of American medical schools and physicians began to discuss a reorganization effort. A number of medical schools sought university affiliations to gain credibility, an endeavor that developed into educational requirements shaped after the German university model, which emphasized research and independent study. In the early summer of 1876, twenty-two medical schools sent representatives to Philadelphia to form the Association of American Medical Colleges. The group’s original goal was the “establishment of a common policy among the medical colleges in the more important matters of college management.” In 1893, Johns Hopkins University in Balti-

The turn of the twentieth century brought a revolution in American medical education. Conditions were improved, and the emphasis shifted from lectures to hands-on training. The dissecting room at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia is seen here in 1902. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–71956)

more required entering medical students to first obtain college degrees. Emphasizing scientific and hospital medicine, Johns Hopkins employed many instructors from European universities who were accomplished in research to teach a four-year regimen. Internships and residencies became requisite, increasing the physician’s education to eight years. By the turn of the twentieth century, most schools were still proprietary and uncredentialed, But, as medicine advanced, there was a revolution in medical education. The American Medical Association (AMA) imposed licensing standards and established the Council on Medical Education in 1904. The new criteria brought about a decline in the number of medical schools. The watershed moment for U.S. medical education came with the release of the Flexner Report in 1910, a work commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation at the behest of the AMA. Abraham Flexner was an educator who emphasized the importance of hands-on teaching and small classes. His 1908 book The American College was critical of the university lecture as an overused method of instruction that took individuality out of the education process. Flexner conducted a two-year comprehensive survey of American medical schools and recommended rigorous new standards based on elements of the Johns Hopkins curriculum, which the AMA Council on Medical

358 Section 5: Medical Education Education and the new Federation of State Medical Boards subsequently implemented. The Flexner Report was a vehicle of reform that changed U.S. medical education. The system created the field of academic medicine and enforced a new professionalism in medicine. Of the 155 medical schools at the time of the report, only sixteen required two years of college work as an admission requirement. Flexner proposed a four-year medical school requirement, divided between two years of scientific learning and two years of clinical training. Additional standards for medical schools included the implementation of the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) in 1928, designed to reduce high attrition rates. By 1935, only sixty-six of the institutions granting medical degrees had survived the reforms; fifty-seven were affiliated with an existing university. One downside of these reforms was that the number of women and minority medical students, which had grown in the nineteenth century, dropped significantly with the decrease in the number of schools. After World War II, medical schools in the United States enjoyed liberal funding from both the National Institutes of Health and private philanthropies that facilitated a growing medical research enterprise. University–hospital affiliations spawned larger academic medical centers that provided care to needy patients and teaching material to students. In the 1980s and 1990s, managed care began to dominate the administration of health care, leaving both students and doctors less time to spend with patients. Medical schools placed a new emphasis on research and accompanying funding. By 2005, the 125 M.D.-granting medical schools, spread across forty-four states, reviewed 37,364 applications for admission, accepting 17,000 for enrollment for 2006. The cost of attending medical school varied from $19,961 for an average in-state public program to $39,024 for a private school. This left the majority of graduating student with loan debts averaging $150,000. James Fargo Balliett and Kimberley Green Weathers

Sources Association of American Medical Colleges. http://www.aamc. org.

Fishbein, Morris. A History of the American Medical Association. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1947. Garrison, Fielding H. An Introduction to the History of Medicine. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1960. Miller, Genevieve. Bibliography of the History of Medicine in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964. Rothstein, W.G. American Medical Schools and the Practice of Medicine: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

MIDWIFERY Midwives are medical specialists, usually women, who assist in the birth of a child. They are documented in the Bible and depicted in ancient Greek and Roman art. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, they occupied a precarious political position; many were persecuted as witches in Europe. In colonial America, midwives were health care providers for women and children. The training of a midwife was usually by apprenticeship with an experienced relative or neighbor. In early America, midwives delivered all but the most difficult cases. Supported by family and neighbors, a midwife attended a woman’s lyingin period and helped in the postpartum period. Caesarian sections were performed by surgeons but usually on women who had already died. Ordinarily, men were not welcome in the delivery room for reasons of modesty on the part of women. Between 1783 and 1850, male midwives (also called accoucheurs) and medical doctors usurped midwifery despite the traditional societal caveats: Men were not supposed to look at or touch women’s bodies below the waist, and childbearing was supposed to be difficult, because it was a God-given curse. Upper- and middle-class American women, however, were intrigued by the promise of an easy childbirth, and the culture gradually evolved to overcome its bias. Male doctors, previously not trained in delivering babies, revolutionized obstetrics by creating professorships to study midwifery. Ironically, women were not allowed to attend classes. William Shippen, Jr., of Philadelphia, an eighteenth-century obstetrician, employed forceps and used a popular opiate to allay the pain of childbirth well before the accepted use of analgesics for obstetrics. In 1762, he offered a first

Section 5: Minot, George Richards 359 course in midwifery that included anatomical lectures, clinical instruction, and discussions of normal and abnormal presentations. Dr. Thomas Bond, a founder of the Pennsylvania Hospital, began clinical lectures in midwifery around the same time. Harvard’s first professor of obstetrics was Walter Channing in 1820. By 1900, the American Medical Association was promoting the abolition of all midwives. At the same time, courses in midwifery for practicing midwives, many of them immigrants, were offered in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. As restrictions on immigration increased, however, additional midwives were prevented from entering the country. The new specialty of obstetrics, although more expensive than midwifery—and for a period of time with higher rates of morbidity and mortality—had won acceptance among white middle-class women. Lana Thompson

Sources Donegan, Jane B. Women and Men Midwives: Medicine, Morality, and Misogyny in Early America. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978. Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deidre English. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers. New York: Feminist Press, 1973. Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Brought to Bed: Child-Bearing in America 1750–1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Wertz, Richard W., and Dorothy Wertz. Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989.

M I N O T, G E O R G E R I C H A R D S (1885–1950) Best known for his research on anemia and other disorders of the blood, George Richards Minot was a pioneer physician in the field of hematology, the study of blood. Minot was born in Boston on December 2, 1885, to physician James Jackson Minot and Elizabeth Francis Whitney. Minot’s family spent the winter months in California and Florida, where he developed his interest in natural history. In his teens, Minot began publishing articles on moths and butterflies. Upon his graduation from a Boston private school, Minot entered Harvard University. After

receiving a B.A. in 1908, Minot entered Harvard’s medical school. There he developed an interest in hematology while working with Homer Wright, who invented the staining procedure for examining blood under a microscope. After receiving his M.D. in 1912, Minot interned at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studied anemia, a blood disorder that occurs when the level of healthy red blood cells in the body becomes too low. In 1915, Minot joined the Massachusetts General Hospital’s staff as well as the Harvard Medical School. In Massachusetts, Minot investigated blood platelets, irregularly shaped, colorless bodies that are present in blood and play a role in forming clots to stop bleeding. He also studied pernicious anemia, a fatal form of anemia resulting from a B-12 vitamin deficiency. Minot observed that an increase in new red blood cells, called reticulocytes, occurred during remission. As Minot continued his study of pernicious anemia, he discovered that the diets of the anemic patients were lacking nutrition. Along with two other physicians, George Whipple and William Murphy, Minot began to prescribe a diet for anemia patients that included up to half a pound of raw cow liver a day. By 1929, they reported that pernicious anemia patients who maintained a steady diet of liver had significantly improved, generally within a couple of weeks. Minot prepared a liver extract that could be taken orally each day to accomplish the same purpose as ingesting the liver itself. The three doctors received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934 for their research and treatment. In addition to his work with anemia, Minot also conducted research on blood transfusions, coagulation, platelets, hemophilia, and leukemia. He became an internationally recognized expert on diseases of the blood. While continuing his work at Harvard, Minot also served as physician in chief at Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital in Boston and on the staff of Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Cambridge. In 1928, he became a professor of medicine at Harvard and the director of the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory in Boston. Minot continued to publish on a variety of topics, including arthritis, cancer, and dietary issues. Among his honors are the Cameron Prize

360 Section 5: Minot, George Richards in Practical Therapeutics in 1930, the Popular Science Monthly Gold Medal that same year, and the John Scott Medal of the City of Philadelphia in 1933. In 1921, Minot was diagnosed with diabetes, which later caused him to develop vascular and neurological diseases. He suffered a stroke in 1947 that left him partially paralyzed. He died on February 25, 1950. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Dameshek, William. George R. Minot Symposium on Hematology. New York: Grune and Stratton, 1949. Rackeman, Francis Minot. The Inquisitive Physician: The Life and Times of George Richards Minot. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956.

MORTON, WILLIAM (1819–1868) William T.G. Morton was an innovative Massachusetts dentist who, in his attempts to reduce the pain experienced in the extraction of teeth and the removal of roots, experimented with magnetism, opium, and stimulants. He learned of the anesthetic potential of ether from a former chemistry tutor, Charles T. Jackson, a physician and professor at the Medical College of Massachusetts (now Harvard) who had learned of ether’s anesthetic potential through Connecticut dentist Horace Wells. Morton began to use ether successfully in his dental practice on September 30, 1846. His innovation was not in the discovery of ether or its introduction to the practice of medicine in America. Diethyl ether had been used in the late eighteenth century in England to treat a variety of diseases, including scurvy; by 1805, it was being used in America to treat pulmonary inflammation. Morton’s innovation was in the use of ether as an anesthetic. Morton demonstrated ether’s effectiveness during a surgical operation at Massachusetts General Hospital, which was noted by junior surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on November 18, 1846. Morton actively promoted ether as an anesthetic and was granted a patent for his anesthetic ether under the name of Letheon. Due to ether’s dis-

William T.G. Morton, a Boston dentist, made the first public demonstration of the use of ether as an anesthetic, at Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16, 1846. (Mansell/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

tinctive odor, however, the ruse was short-lived, and Morton admitted the composition of Letheon in an article titled “Remarks on the Proper Mode of Administering Sulphuric Ether by Inhalation” (1847). He attempted to prevent the governmental appropriation of his patent by allowing all charitable institutions throughout the country to use ether for no fee. The ploy failed, and the federal government assumed the patent without paying Morton any compensation. After years of petitioning the U.S. Congress, Morton was recognized as the principal discoverer of ether, but he never received monetary compensation. In 1846, he was awarded the French Academy of Medicine’s Monthyon Prize of 5,000 francs, to be shared with Charles T. Jackson, but Morton refused to accept a shared award, claiming that he was the sole discoverer of ether as an anesthetic. In 1848, the trustees of Massachusetts General Hospital conceded the

Section 5: National Institutes of Health 361 discovery of ether as a safe anesthetic to Morton, though a statue in Boston dedicated to the “Father of Anesthesia” bears no name. Morton spent the remainder of his life engaged in agricultural studies and the raising and importation of cattle. He died in New York City on July 15, 1868. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Davies, N.J.H, R.S. Atkinson, and G.B. Rushman. A Short History of Anaesthesia: The First 150 Years. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann Medical, 1996. Fenster, Julie. Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America’s Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It. New York: HarperCollins, 2001. Leake, Chauncey Depew. Letheon: The Cadenced Story of Anesthesia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1947.

N AT I O N A L I N S T I T U T E S O F H E A LT H The National Institutes of Health (NIH), under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary federal agency that supports and conducts medical research. NIH scientists, including 18,627 employees headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, perform studies on human and animal diseases, treatments, and cures. The agency uses 80 percent of its annual budget of $27 billion to support research grants for work in all fifty states, as well as in foreign countries. The origins of the NIH can be found in the creation in 1887 of the Marine Hospital Service (MHS), with a staff of one physician, Joseph Kinyoun, who worked in a one-room laboratory on Staten Island, New York. The MHS moved to Washington, D.C., in 1891 as the Hygienic Laboratory, where it assumed a regulatory role in overseeing merchant seamen and tracking passenger health from incoming ocean vessels. The MHS also oversaw research on serums, antitoxins, and vaccines used to combat diseases such as diphtheria and tetanus. In 1901, Congress appropriated $35,000 to build a new laboratory to investigate “infectious and contagious diseases and matters pertaining to public health.” This landmark action to em-

power the agency was placed deep within a routine supplemental appropriations act. In 1912, the lab became the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service. In 1930, the agency became the National Institute of Health, charged by Congress with public hygiene and extensive disease and pollution research. During World War II, the National Cancer Institute was created as part of the NIH. At this time, the NIH also expanded its research, seeking new cures for diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and typhus and testing the efficacy of chemotherapy. Battlefield research found that sodium deficiency was common in wounded soldiers, a condition that contributed to many deaths. A solution devised by federal scientists included an intravenous saline solution that is now a standard hydration treatment. After the war, new research centers in microbiology, experimental biology, arthritis, aging, and infectious diseases expanded the reach of the renamed National Institutes of Health. The NIH main campus is situated in Bethesda, Maryland, and the organization is made up of twenty-seven entities devoted to original research to contribute to public health and to detect and prevent diseases. Other entities of the NIH are the National Cancer Institute; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; National Eye Institute; National Institute on Aging; National Institute of Child Health; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; National Human Genome Research Institute; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; National Institute of Drug Abuse; National Institute of Mental Health; and National Library of Medicine. Research supported by the NIH has resulted in more than eight Nobel Prizes, ranging from the discovery of the human genetic code, to proving that chemicals act to transmit electrical signals between nerve cells, to explaining how the chemical composition of protein results in biological activity and energy. Broad research has meant longer and healthier lives for many people. For example, reams of scientific analysis eventually proved that a good diet, moderate exercise, and not using harmful drugs can improve one’s health and extend longevity. Describing itself as “the steward of medical and behavioral research for the nation,” the NIH is focused on

362 Section 5: National Institutes of Health “science in pursuit of fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to extend healthy life and reduce the burdens of illness and disability.” James Fargo Balliett, Patit Paban Mishra, and Sudhansu S. Rath

Sources National Institutes of Health. http://www.nih.gov. National Research Council Institute of Medicine. Enhancing the Vitality of the National Institutes of Health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003. Robinson, Judith. Noble Conspirator: Florence S. Mahoney and the Rise of the National Institutes of Health. Washington, DC: Francis, 2001.

NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal published in the United States. When it was founded in 1812 by John Collins Warren, it was called the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery and was published four times a year. When it merged with the Boston Medical Intelligencer in 1828, it became the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, which was published weekly. One hundred years later, the journal’s name was changed to the New England Journal of Medicine. The journal during the nineteenth century was unique, because articles were culled from every specialty, and interesting and unusual cases were presented. The first issue included “Remarks on Angina Pectoris,” “Some Remarks on the Morbid Effects of Dentition,” “Account of Bichat, Cases of Apoplexy with Dissections,” “A Concise View of the Results of Dr. Davy’s Late Electro-Chemical Research,” “Observations and Experiments on the Treatment of Injuries Occasioned by Fire and Heated Substances,” “Remarks on Diseases Resembling Syphilis,” “Case and Dissection of a Blue Female Child,” and “Spurred Rye.” The journal was important, because it was one of the few ways that physicians and scientists could communicate with each other and compare their experiences. Although the journal was published by the Mas-

sachusetts Medical Society, articles came from all over the world. Its authors included such notable figures as Benjamin Rush and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Like most academic journals, the New England Journal of Medicine subjects the articles to a stringent review process. It takes a minimum of three months for reviewers to read and approve an article, and additional time to go to press. This process preserves the journal’s standard of excellence and its reputation, but sometimes it works against timely communication of important issues, such as when the AIDS epidemic struck early in the 1980s. In 1981, the appearance of a rare type of pneumonia (Pneumocystis carini), typically seen only in severely immunocompromised patients, concerned physicians Michael Gottlieb and Wayne Shandera, who wanted to alert the medical community to what they called gay-related immunosuppressive disease (GRID), a newly identified syndrome. They were concerned that an epidemic was in the making and that the rigorous time and editorial constraints of the NEJM would not allow them to publish their findings in that journal soon enough. Instead, Gottlieb and Shandera sent their data to the Centers for Disease Control, which quickly published their article, “Pneumocystis Pneumonia in Homosexual Men.” Jeffrey M. Drazen has served as editor of the New England Journal of Medicine since 2000. Current subscribers number more than 200,000. Lana Thompson

Sources Davidoff, Frank, et al. “Sponsorship, Authorship and Accountability.” New England Journal of Medicine 345 (2001): 825–27. Kassirer, Jerome, and Edward W. Campion. “Peer Review: Crude and Understudied, but Indispensable.” Journal of the American Medical Association 272 (1994): 96–97. Shafer, Henry B. The American Medical Profession 1783–1850. New York: AMS, 1936.

OBSTETRICS Modern childbirth in the United States typically consists of a woman laboring in a hospital delivery room guided by a medical doctor who is a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology. Prior

Section 5: Obstetrics 363

It was not until the mid-twentieth century that medical specialists—obstetricians—replaced general practitioners in assisting with the birth of most babies in America. (Hansel Mieth/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

to the acceptance of obstetrics as a medical specialty, female midwives usually attended births along with the mother’s female relatives and friends while the father and other men waited outside. Midwives viewed their role as assisting the mother through a natural process. Beginning in the eighteenth century, upper-class women who were eager to increase their chances of a safe delivery rejected midwives for medical doctors, whom they believed had superior training and expertise. The rise of modern medicine removed childbirth from the home to the hospital. The development of obstetrics as a specialty differed from other fields of expertise, because the boundaries were often unclear. By the 1900s, general practitioners claimed birthing babies as an integral part of their work, and obstetrical surgery usually fell to gynecologists or general practitioners. Technological innovation eventually helped to define the obstetrician as one who is specially trained in the delivery of babies. John Whitridge Williams created the first fulltime department of obstetrics in 1919 at Johns Hopkins University, a medical school renowned for being the first to embrace scientific medicine. Many of Williams’s students went on to become academicians who furthered the development of the obstetrics specialty by urging the formation of a board and the publication of specialty journals.

American professional organizations for obstetrics have existed since 1851, when physicians formed the Obstetrical Society of Boston to discuss clinical cases and other matters of interest. The American Medical Association established the Section on Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1859, which concerned itself with educating general practitioners in obstetrical technique but did not limit membership strictly to specialists. Most medical specialties did not require or even offer certification until World War I, when the U.S. Army established standards for most practitioners. Obstetrics lagged behind until 1920, when Walter T. Dannreuther and John Osborn Polak proposed the formation of the Board for Obstetrics and Gynecology, sponsored by the American Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Gynecological Society, and the American Medical Association. Dannreuther served as the first president of the board in 1930. Specialty certification requirements included three to five years of training in obstetrics and gynecology following an internship, demonstrated knowledge in both obstetrics and gynecology, experience in private practice, and a willingness to practice only obstetrics and gynecology. Certification was largely symbolic, however, since the board had no governance over physicians who did not claim to be specialists but still practiced obstetrics. Nonetheless, by 1968, when the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology limited board certification to specialists and excluded general practitioners, 68 percent of all births in America were attended by obstetricians. Midwives played an important part in the history of obstetrics, but as physicians, who were usually male, moved childbirth to a hospital setting, midwives faded from view. Birthing mothers became clinical cases that required medical involvement in the form of anesthesia, Cesarean sections, and other technological interventions. By the early 1980s, critics wondered if obstetricians were too eager to intervene in the natural birthing process. Some argued that the field had become “over-medicalized,” since U.S. rates of maternal and infant mortality remained high despite the increased involvement of doctors. Activists encouraged women to take control of

364 Section 5: Obstetrics childbirth by educating themselves, using midwives, and working in partnership with practitioners. This movement led to the multiple approaches to childbirth available in the twentyfirst century, ranging from home birth attended by a midwife to the scheduled induction of labor in a hospital setting. Kimberley Green Weathers

Sources Bogdan, Janet Carlisle. “Childbirth in America, 1650–1990.” In Women, Health, and Medicine in America: A Historical Handbook, ed. Rima D. Apple. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Borst, Charlotte. Catching Babies: The Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Leavitt, Judith Walzer. “Science Enters the Birthing Room: Obstetrics in America Since the Eighteenth Century.” The Journal of American History 70:2 (1983): 281–304.

OSLER, WILLIAM (1849–1919) An innovator in medical education and a highly influential figure in the practice of internal medicine, William Osler was born on July 12, 1849, in a parsonage at Tecumseh, Canada, a wild outpost with few comforts. His father, Featherstone Lake, was a pastor of great material and spiritual generosity. His mother, Ellen, was a faithful, industrious, and resourceful teacher with an abiding dedication to the less fortunate. William was not a particularly studious child and prone to mischievous behavior, which led to his expulsion from grammar school. As he matured, however, he discovered an interest in religion and natural history. He began to study the latter seriously after using a microscope to observe a microscopic parasite, trichina spirila, the cause of trichinosis, a wasting disease that affects skeletal muscle. Osler went to medical school, earning his M.D. at McGill University in Montreal, then traveled to Europe for further education. Intending to study ophthalmology, he went to London, Berlin, Paris, and Vienna but soon became enamored of pathology. When he returned to Canada, he was appointed lecturer at McGill. As his reputation

grew, he gained the respect of the medical community and was made a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1882. After living for five years in Philadelphia, Osler was appointed pathologist in the new Johns Hopkins medical school in Baltimore. His first lecture emphasized the importance of patient contact, bedside manner, and knowledge of the clinical aspect of medicine, the humanitarian side. Soon, he was appointed chair of medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was able to establish a clinic. He advocated the Training School for Nurses and traveled back to Europe to learn about rabies from Louis Pasteur in Paris, tuberculosis from Robert Koch in Berlin, and the applications of a newly introduced technology, the stethoscope. When he returned to the United States, he formed the Laennec Society in honor of the stethoscope’s inventor. Osler reorganized the medical curriculum at Johns Hopkins, focusing on practical, clinical education; he also opened the doors of the college to female students. In 1892, he published The Principles and Practice of Medicine and, in 1905, became Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University in England. Osler contracted pneumonia in 1919, and his lungs developed abscesses from which he did not recover. He wanted his epitaph to read, “I taught medical students in the wards, as I regard this as by far the most useful and important work I have been called upon to do.” Lana Thompson

Sources Bliss, Michael. William Osler: A Life in Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Cushing, Harvey. The Life of Sir William Osler. London: Oxford University Press, 1940. Smith, Peter. A Way of Life and Selected Writings of Sir William Osler. New York: Dover, 1958.

PENICILLIN Penicillin was the first in a series of successful antibacterial therapeutic chemical compounds that could be used systemically in humans to attack types of pathogenic bacteria. Several true antibiotics (gramicidin, for example) predated penicillin and were successful in topical applications,

Section 5: Penicillin 365 but they were too toxic to use inside the body. To an extent, this also was true of the sulfa drugs of the 1930s; while particularly toxic to humans, some drugs in this class of antimicrobials are so valuable in certain types of infections (e.g., in kidneys where deep penetration of tissues is difficult for antibiotics) that they are still used today. Penicillin is not the ideal antibiotic either, as it is ineffective on many human pathogens. Penicillin is an antibiotic, a class of antibacterial agents that are produced by microorganisms that are antithetical to other microorganisms. Unlike the laboratory-made sulfa drugs, all antibiotics are naturally occurring compounds produced as a part of the physiology of certain microbes. Penicillin is an antagonistic chemical naturally produced by members of several genera of fungi, especially that classified as Penicillium, and it functions ecologically to kill or minimize the activity of competing microbes in or near the fungus’s food source. The organism is commonly known as a bread mold that can discolor many starchy or sugary materials, including fruits. Recognizable by the color, some species are used in the production of blue cheese (the blue marbling being the actual fungal tissue). Humans, at least as far back as the Middle Ages and likely long before, recognized the curative powers of blue- or green-colored bread; they applied slices of it to wounds to promote healing. Penicillin’s action was noted by several wellknown scientists, including Louis Pasteur, as early as the mid-nineteenth century. The nature of the Penicillium mold was not studied seriously until 1928, however, when the Scottish physician Alexander Fleming accidentally contaminated one of his bacterial culture experiments in his laboratory at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Fleming, who coined the word “penicillin,” sought to understand the chemistry of what the mold was producing and disseminating into his culture medium. He worked for several years along with two young medical colleagues, S.R. Craddock and F. Ridley, but the chemical isolation and characterization proved beyond the trio’s knowledge of analytical chemistry. Fleming abandoned the work during the 1930s and returned to another area of his antimicrobial interests: lysozyme. Since this protective agent is produced naturally in the human body, he reasoned that it would be a more logical can-

An incubator houses mold cultures in the mass production of penicillin during the 1940s. Discovery of the antibacterial effects of penicillin in 1929 was one of the defining events of modern medicine. (Fritz Goro/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

didate as a safe and universally useful antimicrobial; it has never become so beyond its normal physiological usefulness (in tears, for example, where it kills bacteria). When Fleming gave up pursuit of the chemical nature of penicillin, he did so having never clearly realized its potential as a human medicine. He saw it only as an ingredient in the selective growth medium for one species of pathogen he was pursuing in his bacteriological studies. Others deserve the credit for bringing the effective use of penicillin to the world. Led by the Australian physician and scientist Howard Walter Florey and the German biochemist Ernst Chain, a team at Oxford University in England took up where Fleming left off and made penicillin the first useful antibiotic (early on termed the “miracle drug”). This was possible because Florey, recognizing his limitations in chemistry (doctors were often poorly trained in the basic sciences), undertook to learn physiological chemistry and thus immersed himself in the subject. Equally or more important, Chain had been trained as a chemist in the first place. The Oxford team of physicians and scientists worked

366 Section 5: Penicillin from the close of the 1930s to the mid-1940s on making penicillin of value, first to the military (initially British soldiers in North Africa during World War II) and shortly thereafter to civilians. Wartime conditions in England did not permit the extensive industrial development necessary to produce penicillin on a large scale, so Florey undertook a secret trip to the United States— with Penicillium spores rubbed into the fabric of his suit lapel for safety of transport and to avoid their discovery should he fall into the hands of the Axis powers. Norman Heatley of the Oxford team then played a lead role in the buildup of the antibiotic fermentation industry. While patent ownership issues characterized the era, America became the seat of massive penicillin production, as it did for many later types of antibiotics. In 1945, Florey, Chain, and Fleming shared the Nobel Prize for their work. Penicillin had proved successful in human tests in 1940, but the first evidence of resistance to it was also seen in bacteria. Penicillin quickly became overprescribed by the medical profession, improperly treated as a cure-all for such ills as viral diseases, against which it has no effect whatsoever. As the first miracle drug, it was used by ill-informed physicians in attempts to cure or control even such nonbacterial diseases as cancer. By the early 1950s, the first semisynthetic penicillin compounds had to be used against many resistant strains of bacteria, such as Staphylococcus (staph) and Streptococcus (strep). The basic molecule of penicillin (produced by deep-tank fermentation techniques not unlike those used to make beer) can be manipulated to yield many variant forms, all of which, however, have had resistance arise against them. Still a valuable antibiotic today, the family of penicillins may someday become useless against increasingly resistant bacteria. Donald J. McGraw

Sources Hare, Ronald. The Birth of Penicillin, and the Disarming of Microbes. London: Allen and Unwin, 1978. Hobby, Gladys L. Penicillin: Meeting the Challenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Macfarlane, Gwyn. Howard Florey: The Making of a Great Scientist. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1979. McGraw, Donald J. “The History of Antibiotics: A Critical Bibliography.” Bulletin of Bibliography 43:2 (1986): 103–7.

P E N N S Y LVA N I A H O S P I TA L The Pennsylvania Hospital was founded in Philadelphia in 1751 by Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin. Bond, a Philadelphia physician and member of the American Philosophical Society, wanted a voluntary hospital where the sick poor could obtain health care and a facility for the “reception and cure of lunaticks.” Bond enlisted the help of Franklin, and on May 11 a charter was granted by the Pennsylvania legislature to establish the hospital. While the main facility was being built, a temporary hospital, run by Elizabeth Gardner, a Quaker, was opened in a house on Market Street in 1752. In 1755, at the completion of the final phase of construction, the cornerstone was laid on property between Pine and Eighth Streets. Care of the mentally ill was the main focus of the hospital. The first department for the mentally ill, then called “insane department,” was initially established by physician and humanitarian Benjamin Rush, who risked ridicule when he declared that insanity was a disease rather than a divine punishment. He advocated a philosophy of treatment by administering kindness rather than punishment or restrictions. The seal of the Good Samaritan, chosen as the official seal of the hospital, exemplified this belief. The staff established activities where the patients would work outdoors, learn to make things, clean, read, sew, exercise, ride in a carriage, and play games such as chess. The hospital invited lecturers to talk on popular subjects. A library was established in 1762, its first volume donated by the Quaker physician John Fothergill. More property was donated by Thomas and Richard Penn in 1767 so that the entire block between Pine and Spruce extending to Ninth Street could be used. Consistent with the Quaker caring philosophy, the hospital treated everyone who needed care, including soldiers and prisoners from both sides of any conflict. During the French and Indian War, Native Americans were treated, as were French Canadians fleeing their homes in Nova Scotia. Because the hospital treated both British and Continental soldiers during the American Revolution, four board members resigned. After the war, the hospital opened a surgical

Section 5: Pesthouse 367

Pennsylvania Hospital, founded in Philadelphia in 1751, was the first in America. The facility, shown here in 1799, became known for its innovations in care, education, and research. It is now part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

unit under Phillip Syng Physick, a Philadelphia surgeon. The first maternity ward was established in the hospital in 1803. In 1832, the hospital started construction for a separate building for the mentally ill, which was completed in 1839. In 1875, a one-year training program for nurses was launched. During the twentieth century, innovations included the first training school in the United States for male nurses, the Pennsylvania Hospital School of Nursing for Men, which opened in 1914. The Woman’s Building opened in 1929, with two operating rooms, labor and delivery rooms, outpatient clinics, eighty bassinets, and 150 adult beds. In the 1950s, the hospital made such improvements as an intensive care unit for neurological patients, a coronary care unit, an orthopaedic institute, a diabetes center, a hospice, and oncology and urology departments. In 1976, the “physic garden,” a collection of herbs and plants with medicinal value, originally proposed in 1774, was established. In 1997, the hospital merged with the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Lana Thompson

Sources Hunter, Robert J. The Origin of the Philadelphia General Hospital. Philadelphia: Rittenhouse, 1955. Marion, John Francis. Philadelphia Medica. Philadelphia: SmithKline, 1975. Pennsylvania Hospital. http://www.pennhealth.com/pahosp. Shafer, Henry B. The American Medical Profession 1783–1850. New York: AMS, 1968. Williams, William H. America’s First Hospital: The Pennsylvania Hospital, 1751–1841. Wayne, PA: Haverford House, 1976.

PESTHOUSE In colonial America, people stricken with a contagious disease might be quarantined in a pesthouse, a medical care facility located in a remote or isolated place. By the early 1800s, most larger municipal communities had at least one pesthouse; its occupants were often the poorest members of a community. Going there often meant death, and cemeteries were conveniently located nearby. The concept was derived from the European lazaretto, first used in Venice in the fourteenth century to control the spread of the

368 Section 5: Pesthouse plague known as the Black Death. The first quarantine regulation in America was passed in Massachusetts in 1647 to prevent diseased sailors aboard West India Company ships from disembarking and spreading contagion. Preventing the spread of diseases such as smallpox, yellow fever, and cholera was a constant concern on both sides of the Atlantic and along trade routes. Colonial physicians knew rapid contagion was a serious problem, and some sought help from English physician Richard Mead and his medical guidebook, A Short Discourse Concerning Pestilential Contagion and the Methods to Be Used to Prevent It (1719). One of the early places of land quarantine was built in 1751 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on an island in the Piscataqua River called Pest Island. Portsmouth was a city of several thousand, and it had experienced an outbreak of smallpox, especially in soldiers who had returned from a military campaign in North Carolina in 1745. Portsmouth physicians encouraged citizens to have themselves inoculated. Inoculation produced a less virulent outbreak of the disease that lasted for several weeks, during which time the patient was contagious and thus had to be quarantined at the pesthouse, along with others ill with the disease; once the wait was over, however, the patient was immune to smallpox. In 1757, a large pesthouse was built in Boston, on Rainsford Island in Boston Harbor. This facility was noted as a leader for inoculation practices. In Philadelphia, a pesthouse (later named the Lazaretto) was built in 1742 on 342 acres of land on Fisher’s Island in the Delaware River. Six acres near the river were used for a quarantine station. The pesthouse had stables, kitchens, and a threestory hospital. Over the ensuing years, smallpox, cholera, and yellow fever epidemics presented enough threats to the general population to bring about the relocation of this pesthouse in 1799 to Tinicum Island. At the Philadelphia pesthouse, physicians were in charge of the entire care of the sick, including inspection of provisions and supervision of the staff. Philadelphia in the 1790s had a city health board with a committee to judge the gravity of the situation during an epidemic, such as the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. The enforcement of sanitary regulations and the maintenance of com-

munity cleanliness were not functions of health officers, however; the police assumed this role. In 1880, the U.S. government took over the responsibility of quarantine functions from the individual states and began managing larger facilities with unified practices. As more sophisticated hospitals were built and more medicine was developed to combat diseases, fewer large-scale outbreaks of disease occurred. Many quarantine facilities were closed at the turn of the century, including Philadelphia’s Lazaretto in 1895. Some were preserved as historical sites, such as the Lynchburg, Virginia, House of Pestilence, which reached peak use in 1840; since 1988 it has served as a museum and stark reminder of times past. James Fargo Balliett and Lana Thompson

Sources Leikind, Morris C. “Quarantine in the United States.” Ciba Symposium (September 1940): 581–92. Mormon, Edward. “The Philadelphia Lazaretto 1854–1893.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 108 (1998): 131–51. Shafer, Henry B. The American Medical Profession: 1783–1850. New York: AMS, 1968.

PHYSICK, PHILIP SYNG (1768–1837) Philip Syng Physick, a founder of the American practice of surgery, was born to an affluent and prestigious family on July 7, 1768, in Philadelphia. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and, after graduation, began to study medicine with Adam Kuhn, physician to the family of George Washington and one of the founders of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. Physick also studied with William Hunter, the English anatomist and physician, at the Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy in London. In 1791, he obtained his surgeon’s license and diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons. Thereupon, he went to Scotland to learn from John Hunter, William Hunter’s surgeon brother at the University of Edinburgh. He received his M.D. degree in 1792. Physick returned to Philadelphia during the raging yellow fever epidemic of 1793; he was

Section 5: Polio 369 made attending physician at Bush Hill Hospital, where most yellow fever patients were cared for. Physick, who contracted the disease, was treated with bleeding and purging by the Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush. In 1794, Physick was elected to the staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and, in 1800, he initiated a series of lectures that proved highly popular with students. Five years later, he became chair of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania. A contemporary, Samuel Gross, the anatomist, surgeon, and writer from Jefferson Medical College, dubbed Physick “the father of American surgery.” When Thomas Jefferson opened the anatomical school at the University of Virginia, he consulted Physick for his recommendations regarding laboratories. Physick’s most famous patient was Chief Justice John Marshall, who was plagued by bladder stones until Physick removed them using his invention, a urological instrument that was a combination catheter and bougie (for opening the rectum). Physick developed such surgical techniques as using gastric lavage to wash the stomach in case of poisoning (1802), using animal tissue for dissolvable sutures (1816), and using a seton (stitch) in orthopedic surgery to stimulate bone growth in fractures (1822). He developed a technique for making an artificial anus (1826). He also invented an instrument for removing tonsils (1828) and a forceps and curved needle for arterial ligation (sutures). In 1836, he described rectal diverticula (protrusions). Physick was active in the Phrenological Society, the Institute for the Blind, and the Philadelphia Almshouse, and he was the first American to become a member of the French Academy of Medicine. Despite his bouts with yellow fever, typhoid fever, kidney pain, and heart problems, he continued to practice medicine his entire life. He died on December 15, 1837. Lana Thompson

Sources Bettmann, Otto. A Pictorial History of Medicine. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1956. Castiglioni, Arturo. A History of Medicine. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958. Physick, Philip. “Extracts from an Account of a Case in Which a New and Peculiar Operation for Artificial Anus Was Performed.” Journal of Medical and Physical Sciences 13 (1826): 199–202.

Philip Syng Physick of Philadelphia devised a number of surgical procedures and instruments that became standard. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Randolph, Jacob. A Memoir on the Life and Character of Philip Syng Physick. Philadelphia: Collins, 1839. Toledo-Pereyra, L.H. “Philip Syng Physick: Father of American Surgery.” Journal of Investigative Surgery 16 (2003): 123–24. Trice, E.R. “Philip Syng Physick, Father of American Surgery.” Virginia Medical Journal 108 (1981): 456–59.

POLIO A communicable, often crippling disease, polio (poliomyelitis) is caused by a virus that attacks the spinal cord and brain. The disease appears suddenly, with flu-like symptoms, headache, nausea, vomiting, sore throat, drowsiness, irritability, diarrhea or constipation, and sometimes convulsions and sensitivity to touch. There are three types of polio: bulbar, spinal, and bulbar spinal. Bulbar polio, the most serious, attacks the medulla oblongata (brain stem) and affects breathing, often causing suffocation. Polio was not identified as a viral illness until the twentieth century. Little was known about polio in America prior to the nineteenth century,

370 Section 5: Polio when the crowding and poor sanitation in urban environments increased the prevalence and spread of the disease. Major outbreaks occurred in Boston in 1893, New York in 1907, and Buffalo in 1912. The two greatest epidemics in the United States occurred in 1916 during World War I and in 1942 during World War II. Early preventive measures were futile until researchers in California identified the route the virus took—the nerve tissue of the spinal cord, nerves, or brain. From there, experiments were performed on lower primates, spraying various chemicals into the nasal cavity, because that is the only place in the body where nerves are actually exposed to air. If the nerve receptors were blocked, then the virus could not gain hold. The hypothesis proved to be successful. After many trials, Charles Armstrong of the U.S. Public Health Service in 1935 experimented with a mixture of picric acid and alum

(already proven to be effective in monkeys) to prevent polio in children. People who learned of his technique went to drugstores and purchased their own chemicals and atomizers and administered the serum to themselves. When a 1936 epidemic in Birmingham, Alabama, ended, Armstrong investigated the spread of the disease and discovered that those families who used the homemade serum had a reduced rate of polio by 33 percent. Zinc sulfate nasal sprays were also tested but were found to cause undue pain, headache, and loss of the faculty of smell. To help those with bulbar polio, Philip Drinker and Louise Shaw in 1928 invented the iron lung, a large cylindrical tub in which the patient lay. A machine activated the air inside so that it would compress the chest, mimicking the motion of the ribs during breathing. In effect, the apparatus saved bulbar victims, because it breathed for them. In the late 1930s, three types of the polio virus were identified: Brünhilde (a strain named after a chimpanzee), Leon (named after a child), and Lansing (or Type II, named after a man who died from polio in Lansing, Michigan, in 1938). Once the viruses were identified, research began on a vaccine. Jonas Salk was the most successful, developing a killed-virus vaccine. In 1954, both Canada and the United States conducted testing, which proved successful. Three years later, Albert Sabin began to test an oral vaccine consisting of parts of a live virus and an attenuated infectious part. This highly effective vaccine became available to the public in 1963. In the 1950s, 38,000 Americans were stricken with polio annually; by the twenty-first century, the disease had been virtually eliminated in the United States. In other parts of the world, however, the disease is still prevalent, and effective eradication measures are needed. Lana Thompson

Sources The iron lung machine, a pressure-regulated chamber that helped ventilate patients who could not breathe well on their own, was a common treatment for bulbar polio during the outbreaks of the 1940s and 1950s. (Hansel Mieth/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Boyd, William. A Text-Book of Pathology. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1947. Kruif, Paul de. The Fight for Life. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938. Oshinsky, David M. Polio: An American Story. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Section 5: Public Health 371

P U B L I C H E A LT H Public health may be loosely defined as the common actions taken by a society to avoid disease and promote the health and general welfare of the population. The nature and scope of these actions have expanded steadily in North America, as population, medical knowledge, and the roles of government and private institutions have grown. Colonists brought their public health standards with them to North America, along with common European infectious diseases such as smallpox, mumps, and measles. The colonies were repeatedly ravaged by outbreaks and epidemics, and most public health measures were aimed at controlling the spread of disease. Other policies addressed the removal of human waste, garbage, and the bodies of dead animals—a concern in an age when livestock roamed freely in cities. By the 1630s, public health laws were being enacted in the emerging cities along the eastern coast of North America. Such laws were local, piecemeal, and only sporadically enforced. Quarantine laws governing the crew and cargo of incoming vessels, for example, were routinely passed and strictly enforced during times of epidemic, but repealed or ignored once the danger was thought to be over. Laws aimed at controlling waste ran afoul of notions of personal freedom and free enterprise held by butchers, tanners, and others who used city streets and open sewers to dispose of effluvia. Additionally, many physicians, well into the late nineteenth century, saw public health efforts as infringing on their livelihood and autonomy. Compounding such views was the lack of knowledge of the causes and vectors of diseases. Despite opposition, public health measures and standards grew throughout the eighteenth century. By the time of the American Revolution, most cities had some form of public health official, as well as almshouses or hospitals for the poor and pesthouses for the quarantine of victims and possible carriers of infectious disease. By 1793, the cities of New York and Philadelphia had functioning boards of health, though they were poorly funded and generally had only advisory powers.

The public health movement of the Progressive Era included the construction of public baths, such as this one in San Francisco, to improve hygiene among the working class. (Henry G. Peabody/National Archives/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

The U.S. Civil War stimulated widespread acceptance and implementation of sanitary measures. The newly formed U.S. Sanitary Commission (1861) exposed and corrected many of the wretched conditions that surrounded soldiers in camps, hospitals, and, by extension, the rest of society. The conclusion of the war coincided with public dissemination of the germ theory, antisepsis, and the emerging field of bacteriology. Thus, the American public was ready to accept, even encourage, sanitary measures. In 1872, the American Public Health Association was formed, the first successful creation of a national public health organization. With the advent of the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century, the field of public health came to include such issues as workplace safety, child labor, and sexually transmitted diseases. The scope of public health in America continued to expand throughout the twentieth century, encompassing health insurance, mental health, alcohol and drug addiction, and environmental pollution. The cooperation of public and private organizations such as the Red Cross has led to a combination of research, education, and outreach, which has resulted in the elimination of diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and pellagra. In the twenty-first century, health threats such as SARS, AIDS, and the Ebola virus have

372 Section 5: Public Health turned public health into a worldwide concern. U.S. organizations are increasingly working in concert with those of other nations and with international groups such as the World Health Organization to address issues that affect global populations. John P. Hundley

Sources Duffy, John. The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Rosen, George. A History of Public Health. MD Monographs on Medical History, no. 1. New York: MD Publications, 1958.

R E E D , W A LT E R (1851–1902) Walter Reed was a U.S. Army physician, pathologist, and bacteriologist who led the research that established the epidemiology of typhoid fever and yellow fever, although he never determined the etiology (the arbovirus Flaviviridae) of the latter. Born in Belroi, Virginia, on September 13, 1851, Reed earned his M.D. from the University of Virginia in 1869 and a second medical degree from Bellevue Medical College the following year. He joined the Army Medical Corps in 1875 and was assigned to Fort Lowell in Arizona. Over the next eighteen years, he served at various U.S. Army posts, some in the western frontier. For a time, he was assigned to Fort McHenry in Baltimore and studied physiology at Johns Hopkins in 1881–1882. After being posted elsewhere, he returned to Baltimore in 1889 as the attending surgeon and examiner of recruits. Back at Johns Hopkins, he studied pathology and bacteriology, subjects that were new to the medical curriculum. Reed became the curator of the Army Medical Museum in 1893, and he assumed a professorship in bacteriology and clinical microscopy at the recently created Army Medical School. In 1899, he began studying the etiology and epidemiology of yellow fever. It was generally accepted in the nineteenth century that yellow fever was spread by contact

with the personal articles called “fomites” (e.g., bedding and clothing) of yellow fever patients. Cuban physician and epidemiologist Carlos Juan Finlay had hypothesized in 1881 that yellow fever was insect borne, with the Aedes aegypti mosquito as the vector (carrier), though he was never able to prove his theory. When Italian bacteriologist Giuseppe Sanarelli claimed in 1896 to have isolated a bacterium (Bacillus icteroides) from yellow fever patients, the U.S. Army charged Reed, along with army physician James Carroll and assistant army surgeon Aristides Agramonte, to determine the validity of that claim. Agramonte found the bacterium in only one-third of yellow fever patients, as well as in other patients, and the team determined that the suspect organism was not the cause of the disease. Another outbreak of yellow fever shortly thereafter brought the team, with the addition of bacteriologist Jesse W. Lazear, back to Cuba. The

Major Walter Reed, a U.S. Army surgeon, proved in 1901 that yellow fever is not caused by bacteria or spread by contact, as previously thought, but that it is a virus transmitted by the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–119815)

Section 5: Rush, Benjamin 373 team determined that a reported outbreak of malaria in an army barracks 200 miles from Havana was instead yellow fever. One of nine prisoners in a cell there had died from yellow fever. Since none of the other eight prisoners had become infected, fomite transmission was precluded. The vector had to be a source that would selectively transmit yellow fever, whatever its cause. Reed decided to prove or disprove the theory of intermediate host insect vector. Carroll allowed himself to be bitten by a mosquito suspected of carrying the infection. Sure enough, he contracted yellow fever—as did Lazear, who died soon after being bitten. In a controlled experiment in August 1900, Reed was able to prove that the mosquito Stegomyia fasciata, later renamed Aedes aegypti, was the only disease vector. Reed returned to his teaching post at the Army Medical School and died the following year, on November 22, 1902, after an appendectomy. Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., was named for him upon its opening in 1923. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Bean, William B. Walter Reed: A Biography. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1982. Groh, Lynn. Walter Reed, Pioneer in Medicine. Champaign, IL: Garrard, 1971. Hill, Ralph Nading. Doctors Who Conquered Yellow Fever. New York: Random Library, 1966.

RUSH, BENJAMIN (1746–1813) The physician, natural philosopher, social reformer, and educator Benjamin Rush was a founder of American psychiatry; his Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812) was the first formal exposition on the subject in America. He was also a pioneering figure in the fields of public health, military hygiene, and disease theory. A native of Philadelphia, Rush was born on January 4, 1746. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton University) in 1760, and earned his medical degree in Edinburgh,

Scotland, in 1768. He returned home to Philadelphia the following year. Rush began his medical practice in 1769 and was appointed professor of chemistry at the College of Philadelphia. The following year, he published the first American textbook in that field, Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry. He went on to serve as surgeon to the Pennsylvania Navy (1775–1776), then as surgeon general and physician general of the Middle Department of the Continental Army (1777–1778). He treated the wounded and ill in the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, and Valley Forge; however, he resigned his position in the Continental Army over a disagreement with his superior (who had the support of General George Washington) regarding the management of military hospitals. Rush went on to become a staff physician at Pennsylvania Hospital (1783–1813) and served as the president of the Philadelphia Medical Society. As a professor in the College of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania College of Physicians, which he helped to found, he taught chemistry, the theory and practice of medicine, the institutes of medicine, and clinical medicine to as many as 3,000 students. His sixty-five publications in medicine include Medical Inquiries and Observations (5 vols., 1789– 1798) and Sixteen Introductory Lectures (1811). He published essays on health, slavery, temperance, the penal code, and public education, and he wrote numerous communications to magazines and newspapers. Rush believed in a unitary explanation of disease, asserting that all disorders, even mental illness, were most often symptoms of a single, underlying process: overstimulation of the blood vessels. He argued for and practiced “depletion,” bloodletting in which the quantity of blood let was relative to the symptoms of the disease; the greater the symptoms, the more intensive the bloodletting. Rush concluded that yellow fever was not contagious and was indigenous to the Americas, though he was unsure of its epidemiology. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia, when he saw as many as 120 patients per day, his bloodletting cures were feared as much as the disease itself. His treatment was so fiercely attacked by the newspaper Peter

374 Section 5: Rush, Benjamin A founder of Dickinson College and the Philadelphia Dispensary, he promoted the establishment of public schools and advocated the use of the Bible as a textbook. He was a founder and vice president of the Philadelphia Bible Society. In addition to medicine, science, and education, Rush was active in politics and government. He served as a member of the provincial conference of Pennsylvania, chaired the committee that recommended the Continental Congress should declare independence, and signed the Declaration of Independence. He was a member of the Pennsylvania state convention that ratified the Constitution of the United States in 1787. That same year, he also participated in the convention that composed the constitution of the state of Pennsylvania, in which he argued for his views on public education and the penal code. Rush was appointed treasurer of the U.S. Mint (1797) by President John Adams. He remained in the office until his death on April 19, 1813. Richard M. Edwards

Sources

The early American physician, educator, and social reformer Benjamin Rush exemplified the principle stated in his medical lectures of 1789: “[T]he practice of a physic favours his opportunities of doing good by diffusing knowledge of all kinds.” (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Porcupine’s Gazette that Rush won a jury verdict against its publisher, William Cobbett. Rush distributed the proceeds among the poor of Philadelphia. Rush joined with Benjamin Franklin, a longtime friend, in resurrecting the defunct American Philosophical Society (originally founded in 1743). Rush presented the annual speech before society members in 1774, entitled “Natural History of Medicine among the Indians of North America.” He also served as vice president of the society in 1799–1800.

Brodsky, Alyn. Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician. New York: Truman Talley, 2004. D’Elia, Donald J. Benjamin Rush, Philosopher of the American Revolution. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1974. King, Lester S. Transformations in American Medicine: From Benjamin Rush to William Osler. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Terkel, Susan Neiburg. Colonial American Medicine. Danbury, CT: Franklin Watts, 1993. Williams, Guy. The Age of Agony: The Art of Healing, c. 1700–1800. Chicago: American Academy, 1986.

SABIN, ALBERT (1906–1993) The virologist Albert Sabin, known for developing an oral vaccine against polio, was born on August 26, 1906, in Bialystok, Russia (now Poland), and emigrated to the United States with his family in 1921 to escape anti-Semitism. He became a U.S. citizen in 1930 and earned his M.D. from New York University School of Medicine in 1931.

Section 5: Salk, Jonas 375 Sabin practiced medicine at Bellevue Hospital and then attended the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine in London. At the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1935, he renewed his study of human poliomyelitis that he had begun at New York University, demonstrating that the polio virus could grow in human nervous tissue outside the body. In 1939, Sabin assumed an associate professorship of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and became chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the college’s Children’s Hospital Research Foundation, ultimately being promoted to professor of pediatric research. His research proved that the polio virus enters the body through the digestive tract, rather than the respiratory tract, as previously believed. Sabin theorized that an orally administered, live attenuated (weakened) virus might extend the immunity beyond that of the injected killedvirus vaccine created by Jonas Salk in 1953. He searched for weak strains of the polio virus and, in 1957, found three that did not propagate the disease but did stimulate antibody production. In the same year, the World Health Organization began sponsoring extensive worldwide preliminary trials that culminated with the approval of the Sabin oral polio vaccine by the United States in 1960. The first test was held on “Sabin Sunday,” April 24, 1960. By the time vaccinations began in 1962, Sabin had reduced the cost and increased the effectiveness of his oral vaccine. In the first two years (1962–1964) of worldwide use, an estimated 5 million cases of paralytic polio and 500,000 deaths were prevented. The oral vaccine had numerous advantages: Because no injection was required, it was more easily administered in lessdeveloped countries; it gave both intestinal and bodily immunity, preventing the immune person from transmitting the disease; and it provided lifelong immunity, eliminating the need for further vaccination or booster shots. After leaving Cincinnati as professor emeritus in 1971, Sabin served as president of the Weizmann Institute of Sciences in Israel and as a consultant to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. In 1974, he assumed the Distinguished Research Professorship of Biomedicine at the University of South Carolina in Charleston, and he ended his career as the senior expert consultant at the

Fogarty International Center for Advanced Studies in the Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health from 1984 to 1986. Sabin died in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 1993. Sabin produced more than 350 scientific papers. Among them were studies on the isolation of the B virus that formed the basis of vaccines for sandfly fever and dengue fever; the development of immunity to viruses; the effect of viruses on the human nervous system; and the role of viruses in cancer, pneumonia, encephalitis, and toxoplasmosis. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Hellman, Hal. Great Feuds in Medicine: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2001. Paul, John R. A History of Poliomyelitis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971. Smith, Jane S. Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine. New York: William Morrow, 1990.

SALK, JONAS (1914–1995) Known for developing the first vaccine effective in the fight against polio, microbiologist Jonas Salk of New York City was the first member of his family to attend college. Born on October 28, 1914, to Russian immigrants who lacked a formal education, Salk obtained his medical degree from the New York University College of Medicine in 1939. While there, Salk began working with the microbiologist Thomas Francis, Jr., who was seeking to develop an influenza (flu) vaccine using killed viruses. After finishing medical school and his internship, Salk resumed his research on the influenza virus, reuniting with Francis in 1942 at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and becoming part of a group seeking to develop more and better vaccines. This task was made even more important by the outbreak of World War II and the fear among public health experts that a flu epidemic such as the one that had killed millions during World War I would recur. Salk, Francis, and their team succeeded in developing a killed-virus flu vaccine that was used by U.S. armed forces during the war.

376 Section 5: Salk, Jonas Salk became associate professor of bacteriology, preventive medicine, and experimental medicine and head of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1947. Working in consort with the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and scientists from other universities, he focused his research on poliomyelitis. The first task was to classify the different strains of the polio virus. Earlier studies had identified three separate strains, and Salk’s studies corroborated these findings. After determining that the killed virus of each of the three separate strains was incapable of producing the disease, Salk demonstrated that antibody formation against each strain could be induced in monkeys. Salk’s first field test (1952) of the killed polio virus vaccine was on volunteer children who had recovered from polio. After first testing the vaccine on himself, his wife, and their three sons, he proceeded to test the vaccine on volunteers who had not had the disease. The tests proved the efficacy of the killed-virus vaccine in producing significantly heightened levels of antibodies.

In addition, no infection associated with the vaccine was found in any of the participants in the test groups. Salk published the results of his studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1953. His mentor and former fellow researcher Francis directed both the mass field trial in 1954, which demonstrated that the injected vaccine effectively and safely reduced the incidence of polio, and the first mass vaccination of schoolchildren on April 12, 1955. Vaccination of the general population followed shortly. With the support of the March of Dimes and a $20 million National Science Foundation grant, in 1963 Jonas Salk became the first fellow and director of the Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California. It was later renamed the Salk Institute. Salk’s published books include Man Unfolding (1972), The Survival of the Wisest (1973), World Population and Human Values: A New Reality (1981), and Anatomy of Reality (1983). Among his many honors is the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977). He died of congestive heart failure on June 23, 1995. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Hellman, Hal. Great Feuds in Medicine: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2001. Paul, John R. A History of Poliomyelitis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1971. Smith, Jane S. Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine. New York: William Morrow, 1990.

S A N AT O R I U M

Jonas Salk, who developed the first effective vaccine against polio in the early 1950s, injects a young test volunteer. After extensive field trials, mass immunization began in 1955. Incidence of the disease fell dramatically. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A sanatorium is a medical facility designed for the treatment and care of people with long-term illnesses, particularly tuberculosis (TB). (The similar term “sanitarium,” derived from the Latin sanitas, meaning “health,” refers to a health resort.) During the nineteenth century, Americans believed that TB was an inherited condition aggravated by a person’s lifestyle. The medical staffs of sanatoriums advocated a regimen of rest, a healthy diet, graduated exercise, and fresh, dry air to treat patients. From 1840 to about 1890,

Section 5: Sanger, Margaret 377 thousands of TB sufferers moved to places they believed had healthier climates, such as Florida and the arid West. When Robert Koch in 1882 isolated the bacterium that caused TB, proving the disease was contagious, sanatoriums not only served as treatment and research centers but also as places where infected people could be isolated from the general population. There was no cure for TB, so patients remained in the sanatorium until they died or their TB went into remission. Sanatoriums were first established in Europe— one example was the Heliantia Sanatorium in Valadares, Portugal, in the 1930s—and their popularity soon spread to the United States. Edward Livingston Trudeau’s Adirondack Cottage Sanitarium, on Saranac Lake in northeastern New York State, opened in 1885 and by 1900 was a major treatment and research center. By 1910, there were almost 400 public and private sanatoriums in the United States; by 1938, the number had grown to over 700. The sanatorium movement led to a general emphasis on developing a healthy lifestyle complete with proper nutrition and hygiene. The movement also placed pressure on federal and local governments to improve sanitation and address slum housing. Care and treatment depended on class and wealth. Sanatoriums operated as charities, semi-charities, or public or private facilities. Housing for charity cases consisted of a boardinghouse arrangement, while paying patients could afford a private cottage or room. Charity patients were often required to help maintain facilities by doing light housework and odd jobs as their form of graduated exercise. During the 1920s, surgical procedures became popular treatments in sanatoriums. One such procedure, an artificial pneumothorax, involved the surgeon temporarily collapsing a patient’s lung so the organ could rest and heal. One medical breakthrough offered a particularly important advance in treatment. A graduate student at Rutgers University, Albert Schatz (1920–2005), developed the formula for the antibiotic streptomycin, the first true cure for tuberculosis. In 1890, the median age of death from TB was twenty years of age. By 2000, that had changed to age sixty-five, and deaths are now infrequent.

By the 1960s, the vast majority of sanatoriums had closed or altered their primary medical care mission to other diseases. The last remaining active tuberculosis sanatorium is in the A.G. Holley Hospital in Lantana, Florida. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Corper, H.J. A Modern American Tuberculosis Sanatorium. New York: Modern Hospital, 1924. Dormandy, Thomas. The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis. London: Hambledon, 2001. Fairchild, Amy L., and Gerald M. Oppenheimer. “Public Health Nihilism vs. Pragmatism: History, Politics, and the Control of Tuberculosis.” American Journal of Public Health 88:7 (1998): 1105–17.

SANGER, MARGARET (1879–1966) The pioneering birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York, the sixth child in a family of eleven. Her parents were Irish Catholic, her father native born, and her mother Irish American. As a child, she observed her mother trying to keep up with domestic duties while limited by extreme poverty and poor health; her mother died at age fifty. Margaret identified with her father, whose iconoclastic personality gave her a sense of strength and security. Her two older sisters encouraged her to get a higher education. They paid for her first two years at Claverack College, but she had to drop out, because they could not afford the entire program. After working for three years to save money, she enrolled in a program at Nurses Training School of White Plains Hospital in New York. While there, she was diagnosed and treated for tuberculosis in the cervical lymph nodes. She worked in the School of Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital. There, in 1902, she met William Sanger; they were married that year. When she became pregnant, six months after marrying Sanger, her family insisted that she go to a sanitarium in the Adirondack Mountains because the stress of pregnancy added to the gravity of her tuberculosis. After three months, she

378 Section 5: Sanger, Margaret

Margaret Sanger’s unrelenting campaign in the early twentieth century for the right of women to control pregnancy finally led to the legal sanction of contraception and the right of doctors to dispense birth-control information to patients. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

returned to the city and gave birth to a son, Stuart. Two pregnancies followed, and she had a daughter, Peggy, and another son, Grant. In 1910, Sanger worked as an obstetrical nurse with Lillian Wald’s Visiting Nurses Association on the lower east side of New York City. As a visiting nurse, she overheard a woman beg for help in preventing another pregnancy. The doctor, rather than counsel the woman about coitus interruptus or condom use, advised the woman to tell her husband to sleep elsewhere so that he would not have sexual relations with her. Three months later, the woman returned to the tenement clinic with a high fever, later dying from the self-induced abortion that infected her entire body. The horror of this event was the epiphany that led Sanger to her life’s work: to improve conditions for women and free them from the “servitude of unwanted pregnancies.” Sanger joined the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist Party in 1912 and participated

in the historic textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. That same year, she began a column called “What Every Girl Should Know” for the the Call, a Socialist daily. The Comstock Act of 1873 was still being enforced to prohibit any printed materials pertaining to sex to be sent through the mail, and her 1914 article on venereal disease and its prevention caught the attention of law enforcement authorities. Sanger was arrested for publishing obscene material. In the pages of the Woman Rebel, a monthly newspaper she had launched in 1913 to advance her views, Sanger coined the term “birth control.” Contraception is a basic human right that should be available to all, she wrote, and a means to free women from uncontrolled reproduction. She was arrested again for obscenity but avoided the jail sentence by escaping to Europe. While abroad, she explored the status of women’s reproductive health and learned more about contraception. She returned to the United States after the indictment against her was dropped. In 1916, she founded a birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, New York, for which she was arrested under state law and spent a month in jail. Still, Sanger continued her writings on contraception. Intensifying her activities, she founded Birth Control Review, the organ of her campaign for over two decades, and traveled widely to lecture and lobby for reform. In the meantime, she divorced William Sanger and married Noah Slee, a wealthy industrialist who supported the birth-control movement and allowed her a degree of autonomy uncommon for women in the 1920s. Sanger organized the first international birth control congress at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1927. Two years later, she opened the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau in New York, which employed female physicians to administer comprehensive gynecological health care. In 1929, she organized a formal lobby for birth-control legislation. At the same time, she began to promote eugenics and sterilization of the “unfit.” A more conservative group of concerned women continued the American Birth Control League and later changed its name to Planned Parenthood. Sanger spent the rest of her life advocating reproductive rights in the United States and overseas, playing a central role in such organizations as the International Planned Parenthood

Section 5: Scarlet Fever 379 Federation, established in India in 1952. As her health declined, Sanger’s efforts were slowed only by her reliance on a wheelchair and her declining memory. She died of arteriosclerosis on September 6, 1966. Lana Thompson

Sources Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America. New York: Anchor, 1992. Kennedy, David M. Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Sanger, Margaret. The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger. New York: Dover, 2004.

SCARLET FEVER Named for the crimson rash that is one of its symptoms, scarlet fever is a serious streptococcal infection that produces chills, nausea, high fever, headache, rapid pulse, a white tongue, and a sore throat. The disease primarily affects children under eighteen. More than 80 percent of adult individuals have developed protective antibodies against the streptococcal bacteria that cause the fever. Highly contagious, scarlet fever travels in an airborne manner: It is spread through direct contact, primarily from sneezing and coughing. Before effective treatment became available in the mid-twentieth century, serious complications often occurred, affecting the heart, liver, kidneys, and other organs, usually leaving survivors permanently weakened with chronic symptoms. The disease was often fatal. Epidemics of scarlet fever were reported throughout the American colonies in the eighteenth century, and physicians formulated a detailed description of the disease and its progression. By the early nineteenth century, devastating outbreaks were occurring throughout Europe and the United States. In New York City between 1822 and 1847, for example, 4,074 cases of scarlet fever were reported. New York was hit again in 1857, with 1,325 cases. Sufferers and their families were usually quarantined in their homes while scarlet fever ran its course. Throughout the early twentieth century, European and American researchers worked to

find a cure for scarlet fever. In 1924, University of Chicago scientists George and Gladys Dick discovered that hemolytic streptococcus was the bacteria that caused scarlet fever. This strain of bacteria produces an erythrogenic toxin, which causes the skin to flush. The Dicks established a test that successfully determined whether a person was immune to scarlet fever, which helped to manage outbreaks. By 1929, the Dicks developed an antitoxin that countered the toxic effects of the bacteria. By the end of the 1920s, thousands of American children were receiving the Dick test; those who tested positive received the antitoxin. The Dick antitoxin was only partially successful, however, and, in 1933, the Rockefeller Institute’s Rebecca Lancefield figured out why. Lancefield demonstrated that it was not one streptococci that caused scarlet fever but a group of different streptococcus bacteria that together could cause variations of the disease. People could be immune to the agent causing the rash, but they could still develop the fever and sore throat. Over forty streptococcus varieties were identified and called the Lancefield Group A (hemolytic streptococcus). During the 1940s, the use of antibiotic drugs lessened the need to develop a serum for scarlet fever. Initially sulfonamides, organic sulfur compounds, were used with some success, but penicillin and more recently erythromycin have been most effective in treating scarlet fever. However, the scientific and medical community still has only discovered how to manage, not prevent, scarlet fever. The severity of historical outbreaks is still unexplained, and scarlet fever could develop a resistance to current drug therapies, becoming a dangerous disease again. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Quinn, R.W. “A Comprehensive Review of the Morbidity and Mortality Trends for Rheumatic Fever, Streptococcal Disease, and Scarlet Fever.” Review of Infectious Diseases 11 (November/December 1989): 928–53. Spink, Wesley W. Infectious Diseases: Prevention and Treatment in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978. Steele, Volney. Bleed, Blister, and Purge: A History of Medicine on the American Frontier. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press, 2005.

380 Section 5: Shattuck, George

S H AT T U C K , G E O R G E (1879–1972) The American physician George Cheever Shattuck is best known for his pioneering work in advancing the medical knowledge about and the understanding of tropical diseases. Shattuck spent much of his life abroad in remote locations, and he wrote often of his travels. He was born on October 12, 1879, to Frederick Cheever and Elizabeth Shattuck. He attended Harvard Medical School, graduating in 1905. One of his first jobs was with Richard Pearson Strong, head of the Government Biological Laboratory in the Philippines, who was researching the cholera virus affecting prison inmates in Manila. It was in the Philippines that Shattuck became interested in tropical medicine. During World War I, Shattack, Strong, and Hans Zinsser were commissioned by the American Red Cross to develop a handbook to implement new practices to control the spread of typhus in prison camps. In search of the etiology agent, Shattuck performed autopsies on those who had succumbed to the disease. He then was sent to the Harvard Medical Unit to assist the British Expeditionary Forces in France. When the war ended, Shattuck went to Geneva and served as general medical secretary for the League of Red Cross Societies. Harvard organized a department of tropical medicine in 1913, and Shattuck was appointed assistant professor in 1921. Certain vitamin deficiency diseases as well as rat-bite fever, granuloma inguinale, sprue, and malaria were studied there. He also studied such diseases as pellagra and scurvy, which are not tropical diseases per se, but tended to occur in pre-industrial populations and in areas of the world where nutrition was poor. During his research, Shattuck recognized that vitamin B deficiency occurred in chronic alcoholism, leading to beriberi, a nervous system ailment. In 1921, Shattuck organized a service for tropical diseases at the Boston City Hospital, where the first case of rat-bite fever in the United States was confirmed by microscopic analysis. During his tenure at the hospital, he participated in two Yucatan Medical Expedition field studies, orga-

nized by the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Harvard’s Department of Tropical Medicine. From 1924 to 1925, he joined the Hamilton Rice Expedition to the Amazon valley, hoping to bring tropical medicine to the indigenous peoples along the river. However, many of the Indians were not hospitable, and mosquitoes were numerous. Many of Shattuck’s colleagues contracted malaria or died of infected wounds. Shattuck’s methods included a “full medical survey,” as he called it, of any disease. He preferred to see the impact and circumstances in the country of origin to better prescribe a level of care. Shattuck published a number of notable works, including Principles of Medical Treatment (1921). His most important book, Diseases of the Tropics (1951), was the first to combine information about bacterial and viral diseases in a format that included observational details on their environmental and social aspects. Shattuck died on June 12, 1972. James Fargo Balliett and Lana Thompson

Sources Caelleigh, Addeane S. “Prisoners.” Academic Medicine 75 (2000): 999. Richardson, George S. “George Cheever Shattuck.” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 84 (1972): 118– 24. Shattuck, George Cheever. Diseases of the Tropics. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951.

S H U M WAY, N O R M A N (1923–2006) Norman Edward Shumway was a pioneer in heart valve and heart transplantation, performing the first adult heart transplant in the United States on January 6, 1968, at the Stanford Medical Center. Born on February 9, 1923, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Shumway graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1949. He earned a doctorate in surgery from the University of Minnesota in 1956. It was there that he developed a friendship and mentoring relationship with the South African cardiothoracic surgeon Christiaan Barnard. Shumway joined the faculty of the Stanford University School of Medicine in 1958, becoming

Section 5: Smallpox 381 chair of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery in 1974. In 1958, Shumway, along with Richard Lower, performed the first successful canine heart transplant operation; he worked for the next ten years refining the surgical techniques necessary to transplant a human heart. In 1967, Shumway announced his intent to begin human heart transplantation. Before he could begin, however, his surgical techniques were used in December 1967 by a less cautious Barnard in performing the first-ever human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. By 1971, 146 of the first 170 heart transplant recipients worldwide were dead. Without effective immunosuppressive drugs, the rejection rate proved too high, and heart transplantation virtually ceased to exist as a treatment option. However, Shumway kept performing heart transplants on a limited basis. He employed different combinations of immunosuppressants, and nine of his twenty-three patients survived. Seeking to improve the survival rate, he and his associates focused on the immunological problems associated with tissue rejection. Using heart-muscle pathology obtained through heart catheterization, they learned how to recognize rejection attacks and when to use combinations of the dangerous immunosuppressant drugs then available. In 1981, Shumway and Bruce Reitz performed the first combined heart and lung transplant. In 1973, Shumway was the first to use a donor heart transported from another hospital. This particular heart had been harvested from a murder victim who had been declared brain dead. In the absence of a clear legal and moral definition of death apart from the cessation of the beating heart, the attorney for the man accused of the murder argued in court that Shumway and the other harvesting surgeons had killed the victim. The jury’s decision established the legality of “brain death” as constituting death, establishing a precedent for future organ donations. In 1980, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz made available to select transplant surgeons an experimental drug called Cyclosporine A (CyA) that had been discovered by Sandoz researcher Jean Borel in 1972–1974 while deriving compounds from a fungus that grew in soil

around Norway’s Hardaanger Fjord and in Wisconsin. Shumway and Tom Starzl, who had performed the first successful liver transplant in 1967 at the University of Colorado, began exhaustive laboratory and clinical trials. Cyclosporine, when combined with steroids and other drugs, proved to be an effective and relatively safe immunosuppressant that minimized the rejection of foreign tissue. The Food and Drug Administration approved the use of Cyclosporine with steroids for all transplant patients in 1983. As a result, organ transplants have become so common that they are rarely reported as news. Having left behind a legacy of lifesaving procedures, Shumway died on February 10, 2006, in Palo Alto, California. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Hurt, Raymond. The History of Cardiothoracic Surgery from Early Times. New York: Pantheon, 1996. Naef, Andreas P. The Story of Thoracic Surgery: Milestones and Pioneers. Lewiston, ME: Hogrefe and Huber, 1990. Shumacker, Harris B. The Evolution of Cardiac Surgery. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

S M A L L P OX Smallpox is a highly contagious and sometimes fatal disease. It is said to have been responsible for up to 500 million deaths in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The disease is called smallpox because of the small raised bumps that appear on the skin of an infected person. European explorers first brought smallpox to America, and the disease spread quickly through indigenous peoples, with catastrophic results. Entire villages and tribes were completely destroyed by the disease within a matter of weeks. For instance, in 1520, a smallpox outbreak spread through the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in central Mexico, devastating the population of nearly 150,000 and paving the way for Hernán Cortés’s conquest. Although they had greater resistance than the Native Americans, Europeans immigrants were not immune to the disease. The North American colonists also experienced frequent smallpox epidemics.

382 Section 5: Smallpox

Forms and Progression Clinical forms of the smallpox virus are variola major and variola minor. Mortality rates for the variola major virus are as high as 40 percent but are less than 1 percent for the variola minor virus. There are four different types of the variola major virus: ordinary, causing 90 percent of cases; modified, a far milder case that generally occurs in people who have been vaccinated; flat, a rare but severe variety in which the lesions do not rise above the skin surface; and hemorrhagic, a rare but highly fatal variety in which skin lesions and mucus membranes hemorrhage. Smallpox is spread by direct human contact or by means of contaminated objects (blankets, sheets, clothing, handled food). Only rarely has smallpox been transmitted by air in confined places. Children are more commonly infected than adults, since the latter usually have developed immunity to the disease as a result of vaccination or surviving a previous smallpox outbreak. The incubation period for the disease can range from seven to seventeen days. During the incubation, the person feels fine and is not contagious. Symptoms of the disease begin with a high fever, aching muscles, a rash, lesions, and vomiting. The first stage of the disease resembles influenza. Several days later, small pus-filled bumps appear on the body, primarily on the face, arms, and legs. In some cases, the rash is so severe that no normal skin can be seen, and swelling and disfigurement are likely. By the fourth day, the major distinguishing feature of smallpox appears—the bumps fill with cloudy liquid and a small depression forms in the center. Scabs begin to form after the eighth day. The scabs fall off after the third week, leaving behind deep pits and scars on the skin.

Inoculation In the American colonies, the most controversial method for coping with the disease was inoculation. Cotton Mather, a Massachusetts resident, advocated inoculation as early as 1706. Mather learned of the process from his slave Onesimus, who had learned in Africa that applying a little pus from an infected person to a small cut on a healthy person would cause a mild case of the disease, thus forming a natural immunity. During a 1721 epidemic, even though the vast ma-

A Depression-era poster for the Chicago Department of Health calls on parents to have their children vaccinated for smallpox. The disease, a human scourge for centuries, last appeared in the United States in 1949. (Library of Congress, LC-USZC2–5173)

jority of Boston physicians and clergy opposed the technique, 200 people successfully resorted to inoculation. Smallpox was also an important factor in the American Revolution. The disease played such a significant role in the American loss at the Battle of Quebec in 1775 that Washington decided to have American soldiers inoculated. Meanwhile, in South Carolina, the British released prisoners infected with smallpox in hopes that they would carry the disease back to their military units and their homes.

Vaccine In 1796, British physician Edward Jenner produced a vaccine for smallpox by using a similar

Section 5: Spock, Benjamin 383 cowpox virus to transfer the immunity of that disease to smallpox. Jenner’s vaccine was more effective than the previous, rudimentary inoculation methods; it produced much milder symptoms and had a lower death rate. By 1800, thousands of people were vaccinated, mostly in Europe and the United States. Smallpox vaccination largely eradicated the disease from Europe, the United States, and Canada by the early 1940s. The last case of smallpox appeared in the United States in 1949 in Texas. During the 1950s, the Pan-American Sanitary Bureau helped to vaccinate against and eliminate smallpox throughout Central America. In 1966, the World Health Assembly appropriated $2.5 million to aid in the global elimination of the disease. This campaign destroyed smallpox in most of Africa, the Americas, and Indonesia. The United States stopped mandatory vaccination for smallpox in 1972, and the World Health Organization officially declared smallpox eradicated in 1980. The only official samples of the smallpox virus exist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, and at the Ivanovsky Institute of Virology in Moscow. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, the U.S. government and major metropolitan cities began to take precautions for coping with potential smallpox bioterrorist attacks. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Fenner, Frank, et al. Smallpox and Its Eradication. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1988. Gehlbach, Stephen H. American Plagues: Lessons from Our Battles with Disease. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Hopkins, Jack. The Eradication of Smallpox. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1989. Koplow, David A. Smallpox: The Fight to Eradicate a Global Scourge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

SPOCK, BENJAMIN (1903–1998) The pediatrician and psychiatrist Benjamin Spock became an icon of post–World War II American life by writing The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946), the best-selling

child-care guide of all time. Translated into thirty-nine languages, it sold more than 50 million copies and made Spock the foremost authority on child care in America during the Baby Boom. The book was a reaction against the glorification of pediatric specialists and other credentialed experts in childrearing. Spock encouraged parents to follow their own instincts about caring for their children and to reject professional advice when it seemed counterintuitive, such as setting strict feeding schedules or withholding affection from a child. Spock provoked further controversy by inserting Freudian concepts into his discussion of child care and pediatric medicine. For most readers, however, Spock’s straightforward and commonsense approach, as well as his obvious empathy for parents and his warm understanding of children, outweighed any deficiencies that “experts” found with his book. Born on May 2, 1903, Spock was raised in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1925, he completed his baccalaureate studies at Yale University. While attending medical school there, Spock first came to national attention as a member of the all-Yale crew that won a gold medal in rowing at the Paris Olympics of 1924. Transferring to Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1927, he graduated in 1929 as valedictorian of his class. After completing an internship in pediatrics at a hospital in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, he then undertook a yearlong residency in psychiatric medicine before establishing his own practice in pediatric medicine in 1933. From 1944 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Navy as a psychiatrist, working on the manuscript of Baby and Child Care in his off-duty hours. Following the publication of his book, Spock accepted, in turn, a consultancy in psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; a professorship in child development at the University of Pittsburgh; and a professorship at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, which he held from 1955 to 1967. His subsequent books included A Baby’s First Year (1954), Feeding Your Baby and Child (1955), Decent and Indecent (1970), and Raising Children in a Difficult Time (1974, revised 1985). Spock retired from teaching in 1967 to concentrate his energies on expressing his opposition to

384 Section 5: Spock, Benjamin the most popular visiting lecturers on American campuses in the 1970s and 1980s. His political agenda grew to include opposition to reductions in social welfare programs and to the development of nuclear energy plants. In later editions of Baby and Child Care, Spock responded to feminist criticism by emphasizing the responsibilities of both parents, not just of mothers, in almost all aspects of child care. He died on March 15, 1998. Martin Kich

Sources Bloom, Lynn Z. Dr. Spock: Biography of a Conservative Radical. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972. Kaye, Judith. The Life of Benjamin Spock. New York: TwentyFirst Century Books, 1993. Maier, Thomas. Dr. Spock: An American Life. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998. Mitford, Jessica. The Trial of Dr. Spock, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.

The approach to child care advocated by Benjamin Spock in the period after World War II—flexible, commonsensical, and affectionate—has influenced generations of parents. Critics blamed his “permissiveness” for the social turbulence of the 1960s. (Bob Gomel/Time & Life Pictures/ Getty Images)

the Vietnam War. In 1968, Spock and four others, called the “Boston Five” by media commentators, were tried and convicted for abetting resistance to the U.S. draft laws. Although he was sentenced to a two-year prison term, his conviction was overturned on appeal. Some critics attacked not only Spock’s political activism but his promotion of “permissiveness,” attempting to trace the social and cultural turbulence of the 1960s to his principles of childrearing. In 1972, Spock ran for president of the United States as the candidate of the People’s Party, whose platform called for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from foreign lands, the guarantee of a minimum income for all American families, free access to medical care for all Americans, and the legalization of abortion and marijuana use. Although Spock received a negligible percentage of the votes, he became one of

STERNBERG, GEORGE MILLER (1838–1915) George Miller Sternberg was one of the first bacteriologists in America. His Manual of Bacteriology (1892) was the first work of its kind published in the United States. Sternberg was born on June 8, 1838, the first of eight children. His father was a Lutheran minister, and he was raised in the strict religious environment of the Hartwick Seminary in Otsego County, New York. When he was twelve years old, he obtained work on a traveling lendinglibrary barge at Cooperstown. As a teen, he developed an interest in math and science, which led to his decision to become a physician. After studying for three years with Cooperstown physician Horace Lathrop, Jr., Sternberg matriculated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University; he graduated in 1860. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Sternberg became an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army. Captured by Confederates at the Battle of Bull Run, he was made a prisoner of war but escaped shortly thereafter. He served in U.S. military hospitals until the end of the war, when he

Section 5: Still, Andrew Taylor 385 was transferred to Kansas. While stationed at Fort Riley, he developed an interest in landforms and Native American artifacts. He collected skulls of the Nez Perce tribe, animal and bird skeletons, and fossils from regional sandstone and chalk deposits. After amassing a sizable collection, he turned to a new technology, photography, finding it a unique way to document his specimens, both large and microscopic. His first book of photomicrography was published in 1879, followed by a manual, Photomicrographs and How to Make Them, in 1883. Sternberg used photographic techniques to study human microbes. In particular, he studied tuberculosis microbes and sought the mechanism in the human body that protected against bacterial invasions. He hypothesized that white corpuscles was the agent responsible for attacking bacteria in the bloodstream, a process known as phagocytosis. During the 1870s and 1880s, Sternberg was the first to demonstrate that malaria was caused by a plasmodium (amoeba) rather than a bacterium, and that tuberculosis and typhoid fever were caused by bacilli. He discovered that pneumococcus was the cause of lobar pneumonia at the same time that Louis Pasteur did. Yellow fever was a major health threat in the late nineteenth century, and although he was an authority on its natural history, Sternberg recognized that its etiology would not be possible until more progress was made in bacteriology. By the time the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, Sternberg had been promoted to brigadier general. The worst casualties of the war resulted from typhoid fever, spread by improper hygiene and disposal of human waste. Sternberg appointed a team to examine the problem. They drew maps and showed the proximity of latrines to food preparation facilities. Because of Sternberg’s work on sanitation and preventing the contamination of food, the infection and death rates among troops declined. Following the Spanish-American War, Sternberg established the Army Medical School and organized a contract dental service and the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. He also established a tuberculosis hospital in Fort Bayard, New Mexico, and a surgical hospital at Washington Barracks (Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.). He was elected president of the American Medical Association in 1897.

Sternberg wrote thirteen books and pamphlets and more than 100 published articles. He was awarded the Lomb prize in 1886 for his essay Disinfection and Individual Prophylaxis Against Infectious Diseases. He died in 1915 from a cerebral hemorrhage due to a heart attack brought on by chronic heart muscle damage from an earlier yellow fever infection. The George M. Sternberg Papers are preserved at the National Library of Medicine. Lana Thompson

Sources Craig, Stephen C. “Army Medicine on the Plains: George M. Sternberg’s Life on the Kansas Frontier, 1866–70.” Kansas History 21 (1998). Gibson, John M. Soldier in White. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1958. Sternberg, George Miller. Infection and Immunity, with Special Reference to the Prevention of Infectious Diseases. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1907. ———. Malaria and Malarial Diseases. New York: W. Wood, 1884. ———. Sanitary Lessons of the War, and Other Papers. New York: Beaufort, 1999. ———. A Textbook of Bacteriology. London: J. and A. Churchill, 1896.

S T I L L , A N D R E W T AY LO R (1828–1917) The founder of osteopathic medicine, Andrew Taylor Still was born in Lee County, Virginia, on August 6, 1828, the third of nine children. His father was a Methodist circuit preacher and frontier physician, and the family moved many times from 1834 to 1851, when his father was sent to the Shawnee Mission in Kansas. In 1853, Still, now married to Mary M. Vaughn and the father of two children, joined his parents in Kansas and began pursuing a medical career. Training for doctors consisted of studying medical books and working with a practicing physician. Still apprenticed with his father and then began his own practice using traditional medical techniques. During the 1850s and 1860s, Still became involved in the fight for a free Kansas and then served as a surgeon during the U.S. Civil War. His wife died during childbirth, and three of his

386 Section 5: Still, Andrew Taylor children died in a spinal meningitis epidemic. War and personal loss set the stage for Still’s challenge to traditional medicine. Through a study of anatomy, Still found that the manipulation of vertebrae seemed to correct other conditions such as asthma and headaches. He surmised that many illnesses were the result of misaligned vertebrae blocking the patients’ blood supply. He believed that the human body operated as a whole organism and that an illness in one part of the body affected other parts of the body. Still named his new philosophy osteopathy. He was convinced that if the skeletal system was kept in correct alignment, most illnesses would cure themselves without the use of drugs. Still’s ideas were not well received by the local community. In 1874, he left Kansas and moved to Missouri, settling in Kirksville, where he found enough acceptance to open a practice. He took on patients whose conditions were deemed hopeless by traditional physicians but who responded to osteopathic treatments. As word spread, Still’s practice grew; he took on students and trained his children to work in his practice. By 1892, osteopathy was sufficiently popular that Still was able to open the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville. The success of the school led to the construction of an infirmary in 1895, and, within two years, the school tripled in size. Still remained active in the school’s affairs even after he suffered from a stroke in 1914. He died on December 12, 1917. The institution he founded is now called the Still National Osteopathic Museum and National Center for Osteopathic History. Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Trowbridge, Carol. Andrew Taylor Still, 1828–1917. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1991. Wardell, Walter I. Chiropractic: History and Evolution of a New Profession. St. Louis, MO: Mosby Year Book, 1992.

SURGERY The term surgery is derived from the Greek cheirourgia, meaning “hand work.” Surgeons treat diseases and injuries through operations

that require skilled use of their hands and instruments. Surgeons are trained as doctors, and their ranks include physicians and dentists. Although examples of surgery are found as far back as early Egyptian civilization, the use of general anesthesia in the 1840s completely changed the practice from one that was horrific to one that is in many cases a routine procedure. Surgical operations occur 123,000 times a day in the United States alone. The historical evidence of surgery goes back thousands of years. Archeologists discovered a human jawbone and teeth from about 2650 B.C.E. that had two distinct marks, indicating where an instrument was used to drain an infected region. The Edwin Smith Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian textbook on surgery dating back to 1700 B.C.E., gives details of the examination, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis involved with surgical cases. The document describes twenty-seven cases dealing with head trauma, six with spine trauma, and four with deep wounds, all probably caused by the dangerous work conditions common during this era. Susrutha, who lived about 400 B.C.E. in what is now the city of Benares in Uttar Pradesh, India, is known for his seminal and numerous contributions to the science and art of surgery. His Susrutha Samhita contains a series of volumes about his work in surgery. His technique and instructions for repairing a disfigured nose are still used in rhinoplasty surgery. Ambroise Paré, a French surgeon, published a treatise in 1545 on procedures for wounds inflicted from gunshot. Paré introduced a procedure using egg yolks and turpentine to treat surgical wounds, instead of the traditional hot oil. He also improved the technique used in cauterization after an amputation. Surgery before the use of anesthesia demanded speed and efficiency to minimize patient suffering. Operations were mostly limited to procedures such as amputation for treating blunt-force trauma and surgery to remove masses such as cancers and tumors. Life-threatening postoperative infections in patients were common due to a lack of hygiene, and there were no antibiotics. Philip Physick, who had trained in Scotland, began to teach surgery at the University of Pennsylvania in 1794. Physick advanced the practice of surgery through a number of his inventions, in-

Section 5: Surgery 387 cluding the needle forceps, a snare for performing tonsillectomies, and improved traction devices.

Anesthesia and O ther Advances The 1840s saw a significant change in surgical treatment with the discovery of effective anesthetic chemicals such as ether and chloroform. On March 30, 1842, the Georgia physician Crawford Long performed the first documented surgery using general anesthesia when he removed a tumor from a patient’s neck. The patient reported feeling no pain whatsoever. Anesthesia allowed surgeons to perform more intricate operations. Also, the discovery of muscle relaxants, antibiotics, and steroids facilitated longer and more successful operations. William Halsted founded the first modern residency training program for surgeons in 1892 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Halstead demanded a sterile operating environ-

ment and applied methods to control bleeding during and after surgery. He also promoted better practices to close wounds, and he insisted on the most gentle touch when handling internal organs, to prevent the damage that was common during surgery. Prolonged exposure of surgical wounds to the open air increased the chance of infections resulting in dangerous complications. The rise of microbiology in the late nineteenth century led to the understanding that strict cleanliness and sterile settings were needed during surgery. Changes since the 1950s include the development of even more powerful drugs to fight infection, to allow for organ transplantation, and to stabilize patients for longer, more involved surgery. The growth in the number of procedures in modern surgery since 1950 is astonishing. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, more than 45 million inpatient surgical procedures and 34 million outpatient procedures were performed in 2004. Heart angiocardiography

Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital treat a surgery patient under ether in 1847. Before the introduction of general anesthesia in the 1840s, intense pain and physiological trauma restricted internal surgery to only the most desperate cases. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

388 Section 5: Surgery bypass was the most common surgery (2.1 million operations), followed by cardiac catheterization (1.3 million), endoscopy of the small intestine (1.1 million), fracture reductions (667,000), hysterectomies (617,000), insertion of cardiac stents (615,000), knee replacements (478,000), and hip replacements (234,000). Additional types of surgery include brain surgery, dental surgery, plastic surgery, cardiac surgery, vascular surgery, neurosurgery, organ transplantation, sexual reassignment surgery, and orthopedic surgery. Technological improvements since the 1990s include knifeless surgery using pinpoint targeted radiation, computer-targeted proton beams, and guided laser beams. These and other minimally invasive practices allow a patient to return home a few hours after surgery. James Fargo Balliett, Patit Paban Mishra, and Sudhansu S. Rath

Sources Bosher, Cecil. Landmarks in Cardiac Surgery. London: Taylor and Francis, 1997. Ellis, Harold. A History of Surgery. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Hager, Knut. The Illustrated History of Surgery. New York: Bell, 1988. Zimmerman, Leo. Great Ideas in the History of Surgery. New York: Dover, 1967.

T AU S S I G , H E L E N (1898–1986) The physician Helen Brooke Taussig led significant innovations in the field of pediatric congenital heart defects and pioneered identification of the “blue baby syndrome.” Using a new technology, fluoroscopy, she traced the flow of blood to find out why oxygen was not getting to the heart from the lungs. Taussig, who was born on May 24, 1898, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Frank and Edith Guild Taussig, was dyslexic as a child. She graduated from the Cambridge School for Girls, attended Radcliffe College, then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, where she earned a B.A. in 1921. She enrolled at Harvard as a “special student,” because women were not allowed to ma-

triculate, and took classes for two terms, preparing for the field of public health. She then transferred to Boston Medical School and, under the tutelage of Alexander Swann Begg, became interested in cardiac muscle anatomy and physiology. Begg encouraged her to continue at Johns Hopkins because of its research program in cardiology. In 1923, Taussig was accepted at Johns Hopkins Medical School, one of ten women in a class of seventy. While there, Taussig lost her hearing due to a congenital disease and had to rely on lip reading and hearing aids, but she developed the ability to judge a patient’s heart by touch rather than sound. Earning her medical degree in 1927, she accepted a one-year fellowship in cardiology, followed by a two-year internship in pediatrics. In 1930, the Children’s Heart Clinic of Harriet Lane Home, a division of Johns Hopkins, appointed her head of doctors. She continued there for thirty-three years. At the Children’s Heart Clinic, Taussig studied infants who had a congenital heart defect known as the tetralogy of Fallot. She was able to combine her clinical observations with postmortem dissections and compare the findings. Taussig hypothesized that a shunt or tube would be required to get the blood to the lungs. She enlisted the help of Alfred Blalock, the chair of Johns Hopkins’s Department of Surgery. They experimented first with dogs and then, in 1943, performed the procedure on a blue baby, who survived. During the next year, fifty-five babies were operated on. The technique, called the Blalock-Taussig procedure, consisted of inserting an artificial vessel into the heart to correct the malformation. Their successes were published in the May 1945 Journal of the American Medical Association. In 1947, Taussig published Congenital Malformations of the Heart, which was the foundation for future studies and a milestone in establishing pediatric cardiology as a specialty in medicine. In 1959, Taussig was made full professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins, becoming the first woman to ever receive this rank. During the 1960s, Taussig worked to prevent the distribution of the drug thalidomide, sometimes taken by pregnant women, which caused a birth defect called phocomelia (seal limbs), where a child was born with foreshortened arms or legs, missing

Section 5: Tetanus 389 the two lower bones, and having small buds of skin for fingers or toes. Although she retired in 1963, Taussig continued to write and perform research. In 1964, she was given the Medal of Freedom, the highest award an American civilian can receive. The following year, she became the first female president of the American Heart Association. During her medical career, Taussig wrote over 129 scientific articles, and she received twenty honorary degrees and over thirty international awards. She died on May 20, 1986. James Fargo Balliett and Lana Thompson

Sources Levin, Beatrice. Women and Medicine. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2002. McNamara, Dan G. “Helen B. Taussig: The Original Pediatric Cardiologist.” Medical Times 106:11 (1978): 23–27. More, Ellen. Restoring the Balance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Nuland, Sherwin. Doctors. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989. Taussig, Helen B. Congenital Malformations of the Heart. New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1947. ———. “The Thalidomide Syndrome.” Scientific American 207:2 (August 1962): 29–35.

Like most physicians of the colonial period, Tennent believed in “the doctrine of specifics”: A root or plant should be used to treat something it resembles. Interested as well in Native American culture and healing practices, he hypothesized that the rattlesnake root, or St. Andrew’s Cross plant, was useful in treating snakebite by breaking up the blood clots created by the snake venom. He argued in Every Man His Own Doctor: or The Poor Planter’s Physician that when a rattlesnake bites a person, the person must kill the snake, use the snake fat to cover the wound, then apply rattlesnake root to the wound. Tennent also suggested that the active ingredient in rattlesnake root would be of equal therapeutic value in treating diseases such as gout, consumption, dropsy, and “the bite of a mad dog” (rabies). His Essay on Pleurisy further recommended rattlesnake root in the treatment of ague, intermitting fever, jaundice, and smallpox. In 1744, Tennent was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. His son, John Van Brugh Tennent, became the first professor of obstetrics in America at the medical school at King’s College in New York. James Fargo Balliett and Lana Thompson

T E N N E N T, J O H N ( C A . 1700–1760) Physician John Tennent wrote the first American medical manual, Every Man His Own Doctor: or The Poor Planter’s Physician (1734) and promoted the widespread use of the medicinal plant snakeroot for a variety of illnesses. His enthusiasm for that herb, native to Virginia, was shared by Benjamin Franklin, who was so impressed with the writings of Tennent that he printed two editions of Tennent’s An Essay on Pleurisy, which advocated the use of snakeroot. Tennent was born in the British Isles in the early 1700s, and he emigrated from Scotland to America in 1725. Two years later, he was apprenticed to physician Mark Bannerman in Middlesex County, Virginia. After Bannerman died, Tennent took over his medical practice. He moved to Spotsylvania County, Virginia, where he married and published essays in the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1735, he moved to Williamsburg, where the first edition of An Essay on Pleurisy was published.

Sources Blanton, Wynton Bolling. Medicine in Virginia in the Eighteenth Century. Richmond, VA: Garrett and Massie, 1931. Hoffman, Bernard G. “John Clayton’s 1687 Account of the Medicinal Practices of the Virginia Indians.” Ethnohistory 11:1 (1964): 1–40. Jellison, Richard. “John Tennent and the Universal Specific.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 37 (1963): 336–46.

T E TA N U S Tetanus (lockjaw), left untreated, is a highly fatal but not contagious disease caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium tetani, which lives in soil and animal intestinal tracts worldwide. The organism cannot live in the presence of oxygen, but the spore is very heat tolerant and resistant to chemical agents. Treatment was developed in the late nineteenth century, and a preventive vaccine was put into routine childhood use in the 1940s at the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics. While tetanus

390 Section 5: Tetanus is still a dangerous disease, the incidence in the United States has fallen to a handful of cases per year. Spores that contaminate wounds can germinate and cause the proliferation of bacteria. Toxins are produced and disseminated via blood and lymphatic routes. The typical clinical features are caused when the toxin interferes with neurotransmitter release, resulting in unopposed muscle contraction and spasm. Symptoms appear in three to twenty-one days and usually begin with the inability to fully open the mouth. This condition is called trismus or, more commonly, lockjaw. Tetanus was well known to ancient physicians because of its contorting muscle contractions and high fatality rate. Treatments with the usual purgatives and bleeding were applied throughout the ages to no avail. The death rate from tetanus was more than 95 percent. There is no natural immunity, and surviving an infection does not protect against future infection. Research and testing by European scientists in the late 1800s revealed that the cause of tetanus was not the bacteria itself but a toxin that spread throughout the body. It was also discovered that antibodies formed against the toxin could neutralize it, and further that those antibodies (antitoxins) could be transferred to other mammals. This passive immunity was used to treat persons with tetanus to neutralize the toxin, and it was given to uninfected persons to prevent the disease. British and American servicemen were immunized during World War I, decreasing the incidence of tetanus from nine cases per thousand wounded to 0.6 cases per thousand wounded. The next step in preventing tetanus was the development of a vaccine using direct inoculation with toxoid, a chemically treated form of the tetanus toxin. This was accomplished in 1924, and the toxoid immunization was used extensively in the U.S. armed services during World War II. There were seventy cases of tetanus among U.S. troops in World War I and only twelve in World War II. Of the twelve cases, half had not been immunized with toxoid. Tetanus toxoid was included in routine childhood vaccination schedules in the 1940s; adults receive booster injections every ten years or at the time of a related injury. Since the mid-1970s, there

have been fewer than 100 cases of tetanus reported per year in the United States. Tetanus continues to be a threat in developing countries, primarily from contamination of the umbilical stumps of newborns, causing more than 215,000 deaths worldwide in 1998. Vaccination programs would not prevent these deaths, but incorporation of antiseptic practices during and following birth would lower the incidence of tetanus. Sharon M. Gillett

Sources Finegold, Sydney M., and W. Lance George, eds. Anaerobic Infections in Humans. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1984. Tops, Franklin H., and Paul F. Wehrle, eds. Communicable and Infectious Diseases. 6th ed. St. Louis, MO: Mosby, 1972.

TYPHOID FEVER A life-threatening intestinal illness caused by the Salmonella typhi bacteria, typhoid fever was thought to be the culprit in the historic downfall of Athens to Sparta in 430 B.C.E. Typhoid is most common in tropical areas, but cases have been reported worldwide. Typhoid fever is difficult to diagnose, because it is similar to a number of other infectious diseases. It has an insidious onset of symptoms, such as fever, headache, constipation, chills, fatigue, and muscle pain. In severe cases, confusion, delirium, intestinal perforation, and death can occur. If the illness is left untreated, symptoms may last for three to four weeks, with death rates as high as 30 percent. The bacteria that cause typhoid live in the human digestive system and are transmitted by human feces, vomit, and urine. Generally, humans become infected by consuming food or water contaminated either by carriers, or when sewage invades a water supply that is used for drinking or to wash food. Flies also can carry the bacteria on their legs and contaminate food and water. After 1930, antibiotics (ampicillin) and greatly improved sanitation systems essentially eliminated outbreaks of typhoid in the United States. In early colonial times, typhoid often appeared in crowded cities and army camps. During the

Section 5: Vaccination 391 Spanish-American War, typhoid was responsible for 1,580 deaths (243 was the total for battle casualties). Subsequently, a typhoid board was established by the U.S. Army to investigate how the disease spread. Led by Major Walter Reed, the board declared that typhoid was spread by flies, contaminated water, and improper disposal of human excrement. Reed’s findings led the army to develop new standards and techniques for camp hygiene. By the start of the twentieth century, however, typhoid was still a serious threat and the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. In Montana, there were over 1,500 cases of typhoid in 1908. Not all infected people become ill. One famous carrier was Mary Mallon, known as Typhoid Mary, a cook in the early twentieth century in New York who infected a large number of people. In 1907, she was identified by sanitary engineer George Soper, who had been hired by Mallon’s employer to find out why his family had taken ill. Since she felt fine, Mallon refused to believe she was infected. Soper had found a string of outbreaks of typhoid in each location Mallon had previously worked. She was arrested and quarantined for three years on North Brother Island, then released in 1910 after agreeing not to work as a cook again. In 1915, however, under the name Mrs. Brown, Mallon took a job as a cook at the Sloan Hospital in New York, where she infected twenty-five people, two of whom died. This time, she was quarantined for life in a remote cottage on North Brother Island. Today, approximately 17 million cases of typhoid occur worldwide annually. Of these, only an estimated 400 are in the United States, and a majority (75 percent or greater) of the infected contract the disease abroad. Cleanliness and avoiding contaminated foods are the best ways to avoid contracting typhoid. Vaccinations are not completely effective. Although some strains of the disease have grown resistant to drugs, antibiotics usually bring an improvement to an infected patient in just a couple of days. Once the symptoms subside, however, a person can still carry the bacteria and pass the infection on to others. James Fargo Balliett and Lisa A. Ennis

Sources Leavitt, Judith Walzer. Typhoid Mary: Captive to the Public’s Health. Boston, MA: Beacon, 1996. Spink, Wesley W. Infectious Diseases: Prevention and Treatment in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978. Steele, Volney. Bleed, Blister, and Purge: A History of Medicine on the American Frontier. Missoula, MT: Mountain, 2005.

V A C C I N AT I O N The term “vaccination” was coined by the English physician Edward Jenner to describe his 1790s procedure of transferring infectious material from cows (Latin: vacca) infected with cowpox to humans, resulting in the acquisition of immunity to smallpox. For centuries, smallpox had been feared as a disfiguring and often deadly disease, with only five in every thousand persons escaping infection and up to 30 percent of those infected eventually dying. Jenner’s procedure was safer than the ancient practice of variolation, in which material from a smallpox lesion was introduced into an uninfected person, yielding a milder yet highly contagious form of smallpox with a fatality rate of up to 2 percent. The French microbiologist Louis Pasteur later established that specific diseases are caused by specific organisms, and his work in the 1870s broadened the use of the term vaccination to include any injection that protected against a disease-causing agent. He developed vaccines for rabies and anthrax, among other infections. The development of germ theory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the next major achievements in vaccine treatment, diphtheria and tetanus antitoxins. In these two diseases, the damage done to human tissue is not caused by invading bacteria but by toxins that either spread along the nerve pathways (tetanus) or compromise local cells (diphtheria). The use of diphtheria antitoxin, injection of antibodies to the toxin, reduced the mortality rate from 50 percent to 31 percent. During the nineteenth century, American physicians abandoned inoculation for vaccination. Even so, recruits from both sides that fought in the U.S. Civil War had typically not been vaccinated for smallpox, which resulted in epidemics of the disease. Military physicians

392 Section 5: Vaccination quickly had to find a supply of smallpox scabs, which they obtained from the skin of patients who had been vaccinated. The demand for scabs outweighed supply, however, and many soldiers never were vaccinated. Until 1886, the American medical and scientific communities produced little research on vaccination. In the late nineteenth century, however, American bacteriologists Edmund Salmon and Theobald Smith, working at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, showed that hog cholera bacteria killed by heat produced immunity in pigeons. Research using killed vaccines continued, and vaccines for typhoid, plague, and cholera were developed by 1900. Smith contributed again when he successfully immunized guinea pigs with diphtheria toxoid (altered toxin). Vaccines may contain laboratory-grown, live, attenuated (weakened) organisms, or inactivated organisms. These altered organisms retain the ability to trigger immunity but usually do not cause the disease. Inactivated vaccines contain either whole organisms or fractions of the virus or bacteria, such as a chemical by-product of the agent (toxoid). Some require carrier proteins or other chemicals to help the body recognize the vaccine as foreign and attempt to destroy it by producing antibodies.

In the century after Pasteur, scientists created vaccines for pertussis (whooping cough), yellow fever, influenza, poliovirus, measles (rubeola), rubella, mumps, and hepatitis B. Since the 1970s, vaccines for meningitis, pneumococcal pneumonia, chicken pox, and hepatitis A have become available and are included in standard childhood immunization programs in developed countries. The last smallpox outbreak in the United States occurred in 1949; only one person died. Vaccination for smallpox in America ended in 1972, though terrorist threats in the twenty-first century have created a new demand for the vaccine. There are yet many viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases for which vaccines are unavailable or in development. Worldwide, millions of deaths from HIV, malaria, and rotavirus will be prevented when vaccines are made available. In America, vaccines for the prevention of hepatitis C and cytomegalovirus, as well as HIV, will allow for a great expansion of organ transplant programs. Sharon M. Gillett

Sources Plotkin, Stanley A., and Edward A. Mortimer, eds. Vaccines. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1988. Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. New York: Basic Books, 1982. Stites, Daniel P., John D. Stobo, and J. Vivian Wells, eds. Basic and Clinical Immunology. 6th ed. Norwalk, CT: Appleton and Lange, 1987.

W AT E R H O U S E , B E N J A M I N (1754–1846)

Vaccination for typhoid fever, smallpox, and tetanus was mandatory for U.S. military personnel during World War II. Vaccination has been a powerful and highly effective weapon in worldwide disease prevention. (Marie Hansen/ Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Benjamin Waterhouse, sometimes referred to as the “American Jenner,” was born in Newport, Rhode Island, on March 4, 1754. His mother was the niece of John Fothergill, the London physician who first described the symptoms and treatment of diphtheria. At the age of sixteen, Waterhouse began the study of medicine with Dr. John Halliburton in Newport, and he spent the next six years in training. In 1775, he sailed to England and continued to study under his uncle’s auspices at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospitals. While in London, he

Section 5: Whipple, George H. 393 attended lectures by the famed anatomist John Hunter and the philosopher James Fergusson; he also met and became friends with Joseph Priestley (the discoverer of oxygen) and such leading figures of the medical community as John Haygarth and John Lettsome. For the next five years, he studied in Edinburgh with William Cullen and then proceeded to Leiden, the Netherlands, where he received his M.D. degree in 1780. After graduation he remained in Europe to study history and law, two fields that had always interested him as well. After his return to the United States at the age of twenty-eight, Waterhouse set up a practice in Newport and aided in establishing the medical school at Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After only one year, he was invited to Cambridge to become the first chair of medicine (then called “theory and practice of physic”), along with John Warren, professor of anatomy and surgery, and Aaron Dexter, professor of chemistry. While in Europe, Waterhouse had learned of Edward Jenner’s experiments with cowpox as a preventive against smallpox, and, in 1798, Lettsome sent him a copy of Jenner’s treatise. So convinced was Waterhouse that vaccination (then called variolation) was effective against the dreaded disease, he obtained a small amount of pus from a cowpox lesion from his other friend in London, John Haygarth, and began experimenting with his family. First his two sons received a bit of pus in a scratch that Waterhouse made in their arms. Both children developed the predictable symptoms and a mild form of the disease but soon recovered. They never contracted smallpox. The next subject was a servant, then Waterhouse’s infant daughter, and finally the nursemaid who cared for her. Waterhouse published the results of his experiments in the Columbian Centinel in a column called “Something Curious in the Medical Line.” The article interested Thomas Jefferson, who asked for some vaccine to be sent to him and likewise vaccinated his household. The pamphlets that Waterhouse published on vaccination between 1800 and 1802 are some of the rarest and most highly valued pieces of medical literature. There were some people, however, who had not been properly inoculated and became sick.

Despite his success and the enthusiastic support of many in the medical profession, Waterhouse developed adversaries who seized on these few examples as proof that the vaccine was a failure. Their influence was great enough to cause him to lose his chair at Harvard in 1812, as well as two other academic positions he held: one as a lecturer in natural history and the other as curator of the mineral collection. Waterhouse continued his efforts on behalf of public health, including writing on the injurious effects of smoking and alcohol. He held the office of medical supervisor of military posts in New England until 1825. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 2, 1846. Lana Thompson

Source Cash, Philip. Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse: A Life in Medicine and Public Service (1754–1846). Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2006.

W H I P P L E , G E O R G E H. (1878–1976) George Hoyt Whipple, a Nobel laureate in physiology and medicine, was the discoverer of Whipple’s disease. Born in Ashland, New Hampshire, on August 28, 1878, Whipple was the son of a physician. He attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and Yale University and received an M.D. at Johns Hopkins in 1905. From 1907 to 1908, he served briefly in Panama as a pathologist at Gorgas Hospital, where he researched blackwater fever, a complication of malaria. As a professor of research medicine and later dean at the California Medical School (1914–1921), then as professor of pathology and dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Rochester (1921–1954), Whipple studied anemia and the efficacy of ingesting beef liver to help counter its effects. He experimented with providing different foods for anemic dogs, noting which foods stimulated production of red blood cells. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1934 with George Monet and William Murphy, “for their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anaemia.”

394 Section 5: Whipple, George H. While serving as assistant professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins, Whipple autopsied a missionary who had suffered from an unknown disease for five years before succumbing. Whipple described his findings in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin. The symptoms of the disease included arthritic swellings that were episodic, migratory, and asymmetrical. The deceased had experienced fever, diarrhea, weight loss, hypertension, and severe anemia. The autopsy revealed foamy macrophages in the joints and aortic valves, as well as prominent deposits in the small intestines and lymph nodes. Whipple also found numerous rod-shaped bacteria in the tissue. The intestinal deposits suggested to Whipple that the disease was a malabsorption disease and should be called “intestinal lipodystrophy.” For his discovery of Tropheryma whipplei, the bacterial agent, the disease was henceforth called Whipple’s disease. During Whipple’s long career, he also researched the metabolism of protein and iron, the nature of bile, tuberculosis, and pancreatitis. He was awarded a number of honorary degrees, won many awards, such as being elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1962, and served on the Rockefeller Foundation. Whipple died on February 1, 1976, in Rochester, New York. Andrew J. Waskey and Russell Lawson

Sources Corner, George Washington. George Hoyt Whipple and His Friends: The Life Story of a Nobel Prize Pathologist. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1963. Nobel Lectures. Physiology or Medicine 1891–1970. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1970. Raoult, Didier, et al. “Cultivation of the Bacillus of Whipple’s Disease.” New England Journal of Medicine 342 (2000): 620–25.

WILLIAMS, DANIEL HALE (1856–1931) Daniel Hale Williams was a leading African American surgeon of the early twentieth century. Born on January 18, 1856, in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, Williams grew up well educated in a large and prosperous family. In 1867,

tragedy struck the family when, shortly after moving to Annapolis, Maryland, Williams’s father died of tuberculosis. His mother, unable to care for seven children alone, placed Williams in the care of a friend in Baltimore who was to teach him the shoemaking trade. Unhappy with this situation, at age seventeen Williams moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, to live with his sister. There, he worked as a barber for Charles Anderson, who immediately recognized Williams’s steady hand and intellectual curiosity and allowed him to work part-time so that he could attend high school. Williams was to experience a life-altering event when Henry Palmer, a regular at Anderson’s barbershop, struck up a conversation about medicine with Williams. During their talk, Palmer realized Williams’s keen intellect and agreed to have him apprentice in his office. In 1880, after only two years of apprenticing, Williams was prepared to enter Chicago Medical College, now Northwestern University Medical School. Although Williams had to work part-time and borrow money to put himself through medical school, he graduated in 1883. After years of performing operations in substandard conditions, even the kitchens of patients, Williams was determined to defeat the racism of his time and open a hospital that would serve the needs of all people rather than just those of whites. His determination paid off with the opening in 1891 of the Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses in Chicago. In this facility, African Americans were able to receive high-quality medical training and care. Surrounded by top-tier medical professionals and armed with an in-depth knowledge of anatomy, Williams quickly became one of the leading surgeons in Illinois, commanding visits from doctors all over the state. Although Williams’s work to combat racism and his accomplishments in medicine are a testament to his character and intellect, he is best known for an operation he performed on James Cornish in 1893. Cornish had been stabbed in the chest and would surely die unless he received immediate emergency surgery. Without the aid of modern medical devices such as heart-rate or respiratory monitoring machines, Williams opened Cornish’s chest, repaired his pericardium

Section 5: Wolcott, Erastus Bradley 395 (the sac that envelops the heart), and sutured him up for recovery. Cornish went on to live an active normal life for twenty more years, and Williams became the first person to perform a successful open-heart surgery, an operation that seemed beyond the reach of even the most confident and skilled surgeons of that time. Williams went on to further accomplishments. In 1894, he was appointed chief surgeon at the Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D.C.. In 1913, he became the only African American charter member of the American College of Surgeons. He was also a founding member and the first vice president of the National Medical Association. Williams retired from medicine in 1920. He died in Idlewild, Michigan, on August 4, 1931. Paul T. Miller

Sources Hayden, Robert. Seven Black American Scientists. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1970. Jenkins, Edward. To Fathom More: African American Scientists and Inventors. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2001. Kaye, Judith. Life of Daniel Hale Williams. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner, 1993. Sammons, Vivian. Blacks in Science and Medicine. Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis, 1989.

W O LC O T T , E R A S T U S B R A D L E Y (1804–1880) Erastus Bradley Wolcott is best known for pioneering kidney surgery, having performed the first nephrectomy in 1861. He also repaired burn scars and performed trephinations (drilling into the skull to relieve pressure), chest surgery, mastectomies, oophorectomies (removal of the ovaries), and caesarian sections (surgical removal of the newborn when normal delivery is not possible). Wolcott was born on October 18, 1804, to Elisha and Anna Hull Wolcott in Benton, New York. He was educated in public school. After graduating from high school, he apprenticed to Joshua Lee for three years and in 1825 received a diploma to practice medicine in Yates County, New York. He attended Fairfield Medical Col-

lege and then moved to South Carolina to be a surgeon for a mining company. In 1833, he matriculated at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Enlisting in the army, Wolcott was appointed army surgeon in 1836. His responsibilities included overseeing the removal of members of the Cherokee tribe from their eastern lands to the West. In 1838, Wolcott resigned and moved to Milwaukee, where he established a successful medical practice that he maintained for more than forty years. He was surgeon general for the state of Wisconsin beginning in 1842 and served as a major general in Wisconsin’s militia. He was instrumental in establishing a national home for disabled volunteer soldiers in Milwaukee, and he served on the board of trustees for the Wisconsin hospital for the insane. Because he lent surgical guidance to homeopathic physicians, who were not viewed favorably by the established medical profession, Wolcott was barred from certain professional societies. He also lent assistance to spiritualists such as Adeline Lucia Hart Ballou, a poet, artist, and essayist who identified herself as a healing medium and trance lecturer. He gave Ballou a commission as a nurse in the Thirty-Second Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. The nephrectomy in 1861 for which Wolcott gained particular recognition in the medical profession was on a fifty-eight-year-old man. The man was suffering from a tumor in his kidney that had been growing for six years and was so large that it had displaced other abdominal organs. This surgery was performed with chloroform anesthesia but without antibiotics or sterile techniques, because neither had yet been implemented in standard surgical protocol. Wolcott was married in 1869 to Laura Ross, a pioneer woman physician. He died on January 5, 1880, from an illness, probably pneumonia resulting from exposure to cold and dampness. James Fargo Balliett and Lana Thompson

Sources “Erastus Wolcott.” Dictionary of Wisconsin History. Wisconsin Historical Society online database. http://www.wisconsin history.org. Gifford, Robert. “Erastus B. Wolcott.” Investigative Urology 10:5 (1973): 409–10.

396 Section 5: Women’s Health

W O M E N ’ S H E A LT H The history of women’s health in America is marked by gradual improvements, including better access to professional care, more successful educational efforts, and substantial technological enhancements. These changes have ultimately meant longer, healthier lives for many women. Most early colonial health care was administered by barber surgeons, apothecaries, or ministers who undertook the duties of a physician. As almost all of these practitioners were men, they provided limited treatment for women because of cultural prohibitions against men examining women. Menstruation, pregnancy, labor, childbirth, and lactation were not part of the medical training of male colonial American medical practitioners. Thus many women relied on midwives, who attended to women in labor and assisted in other intimate aspects of a woman’s health. Midwives helped in the management of children’s health as well. Midwifery was a traditional occupation for women at a time when apprenticeship was the means to learn a skill or trade. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before women were admitted to medical schools, they apprenticed to be midwives. Such apprentices, including midwives’ daughters, witnessed childbirth, sickness, disease, and death in the midwife’s patients.

Pioneering Women Physicians Midwives and female physicians of the American frontier in the late 1800s rode horses through all kinds of weather and terrain to deliver babies, treat fractures, dress wounds, and remove bullets. Their active participation in medical care served to build broad community recognition of their abilities and skills. Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke, a practitioner of botanic medicine, traveled to Cairo, Illinois, during the American Civil War on a mission from her church to deliver supplies for Union soldiers. She remained there to tend the wounded; before the war ended, she had assisted the wounded in nineteen battles, treating hundreds of soldiers.

Harriet Kezia Hunt, a Massachusetts resident, cared for her sister during a lengthy illness. She decided to apprentice with an English couple who practiced Thomsonianism, a form of herbal medicine. After building a practice of treating women and children in the 1850s, Hunt applied to Harvard Medical School. She was rejected despite her experience. Another practitioner who defied tradition was Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska, who earned a medical degree from Cleveland Medical College. In 1856, she helped found the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, the first hospital in the United States staffed by women, for women. Mary Canaga Rowland was married to a doctor who supported her desire to practice medicine. After her husband was murdered, she attended Women’s Medical College in Kansas City, Missouri, graduating in 1901. She continued her education and received a second M.D. in 1905 from Creighton Medical College in Omaha, Nebraska. For more than forty years, she traveled throughout Kansas, Idaho, and Oregon by horseback, treating patients and suffering great hardships.

Improved Care, B etter Educational Oppor tunities Between the American Civil War and World War I, there were drastic changes in the way women’s health care was managed in the United States. The professionalization of medicine was distinguished by a number of significant developments, including a growth in the number of medical schools and the introduction of new technologies such as forceps, but midwives were gradually excluded from the profession as an increasing number of medical doctors attended to births. Social movements stressed fewer children, and reproductive responsibility gained acceptance, despite the Comstock Laws, which sought to prevent the distribution of contraceptive and other sex-education information. The Comstock Laws, intended to prohibit pornographic materials from being sent through the U.S. Postal Service, were interpreted to include any materials dealing with sex and reproduction, even when it

Section 5: Women’s Health 397 applied to health issues such as pregnancy, venereal disease, or contraception. The work of Margaret Sanger and others, however, resulted in birth control centers in every major city after 1914, beginning in New York City. A National Birth Control League was established in 1916. It later changed its name to the American Birth Control League and became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. The philosophy of Planned Parenthood was to address poverty through better family planning. Increasingly after World War II, women had smaller families, suffered fewer injuries from traumatic births, and made gains in pursuing work outside the home. Far more women enrolled in college and eventually in medical school. Menstruation had previously limited physical activity and travel for many women, because no practical means of concealment had been invented. This was no longer a problem when sanitary napkins were made available in vending machines in the 1920s, and the first commercial disposable tampons became available in the United States in the 1930s. By the end of World War II, penicillin and other antibiotics had removed much of the threat and health risks of venereal and other diseases. In the 1960s, an oral contraceptive for women, the birth control pill, was made available to the public; it was superior in preventing pregnancy compared to the existing methods (condoms, diaphragms, and chemical barriers). The advent of “the pill” has been credited with providing women with a new sense of ownership and control of their bodies. With a newfound sense of sexual freedom in the 1970s, women were able to talk openly about their bodies and reproductive decisions.

New Hurdles Significant challenges to women’s health in recent decades have included tobacco use, as smoking (and lung cancer) has increased among teenagers and college-age women. Hormone replacement therapies for menopausal women addressed hot flashes and improved quality of life but were associated with a rise in endometrial and breast cancer. Modern medicine’s use of forceps, “twilight sleep” (temporary memory loss

induced by a combination of a painkiller and scopolamine), gas analgesia (pain control induced by inhaled gas), episiotomy (a surgical cut in the perineum to prevent vaginal tearing during childbirth), and caesarian section produced both beneficial and negative changes for women’s health during childbirth. Increased medical care and technology such as amniocentesis, DNA testing, fetal monitors, and ultrasound aided the diagnosis of fetal defects, but some of these technologies carried the risk of procedurally induced disorders. Accelerating medical costs also affect women’s health care. The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation funded extensive research on women’s health topics, including a national survey in 2005. The findings reveal that one in four women delays medical treatment (doctor’s care or prescriptions) due to the high cost. A federal study in 2003 led to the National Health Care Quality Report, which showed that poverty disproportionately impacts women and that women reported having arthritis, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and depression more often than did men. According to the report, poor women are more likely to suffer from anxiety, asthma, diabetes, and osteoporosis and not be able to seek or afford adequate care for treatment. On balance, Rosaly Correa-de-Araujo reported in a 2004 publication, “Women, Gender, and Health Care Disparities,” that women’s health care has been elevated to its highest level ever, especially with dozens of health trial studies focused on women, a National Women’s Health Initiative Project, and the formation of several private and public organizations that focus primarily on women’s issues. Correade-Araujo emphasized that these research results must be carried from reports and into treatment and care facilities to improve care, including preventative measures, heart disease care, and cancer treatment. James Fargo Balliett and Lana Thompson

Sources Bullough, Vern, and Martha Voght. “Women, Menstruation, and Nineteenth-Century Medicine.” In Women and Health in America, ed. Judith Walzer Leavitt. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. Loomis, F.A., ed. As Long as Life: The Memoirs of a Frontier Doctor. Seattle, WA: Storm Peak, 1994.

398 Section 5: Women’s Health Luchetti, Cathy. Medicine Women: The Story of Early-American Women Doctors. New York: Crown, 1998. Ulrich, Laura Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. U.S. Agency for Health Care Research. National Health Care Quality Report. Washington, DC: Health and Human Services Administration, 2003. Wells, Susan. Out of the Dead House. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

YA LO W , R O S A LY N S U S S M A N (1921– ) The physiologist and 1977 Nobel laureate Rosalyn Sussman Yalow developed a form of radioisotope tracing called radioimmunoassay, a method for measuring tiny quantities of biological substances in the blood. Born on July 19, 1921, in New York City, she was the second child of Simon Sussman and Clara Zipper. Her parents, Jewish immigrants, had not received any education above elementary school, and they stressed higher education as a means of upward social mobility for their children. Rosalyn became interested in science at Walton High in the Bronx. In 1941, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College (now part of the City University of New York), intending to become a physicist. By that time, the United States had entered World War II. With many young men drafted into the armed forces, the University of Illinois at Urbana offered Rosalyn Sussman a graduate assistantship in physics, a field then reserved almost exclusively for men. She was the first woman to receive such an appointment since 1917 and the only woman among 400 members of the College of Engineering faculty. On her first day in graduate school, she met Aaron Yalow, a rabbi’s son and fellow graduate physics student, whom she married on June 6, 1943. She was awarded an M.S. degree in physics in 1942 and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics in 1945. After a stint as assistant professor of physics (1946–1950) at Hunter College, Rosalyn Sussman Yalow became a physicist and assistant chief of the radioisotope service at the Veterans Administration (VA) Hospital in the Bronx. That same year, she was joined by Solomon A.

Medical physicist Rosalyn Sussman Yalow shared the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing the radioimmunoassay (RIA) technique, which measures tiny amounts of hormones, enzymes, and proteins in the blood—a valuable research tool. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Berson, a medical internist who had just completed his residency at the VA Hospital. Yalow and Berson collaborated for over twenty years, researching various medical applications of radioisotopes. By combining techniques from radioisotope tracing and immunology, Yalow and Berson developed radioimmunoassay, an extremely sensitive, simple method for measuring minute concentrations of biological and pharmacological substances in blood and other fluid samples. They first used radioimmunoassay in 1959 to study insulin concentrations in the blood of diabetics. Thereafter, their technique was used to measure enzyme concentrations, vitamin levels, allergic substances, and hormones and for other blood tests. To share their discovery and allow others to advance the science without limits, they decided not to patent it.

Section 5: Yellow Fever 399 In 1968, Yalow became research professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, and she was named chief of nuclear medicine in 1970. She remained close to Berson until his death on April 11, 1972. In 1973, she named her research laboratory in honor of her longtime collaborator. Yalow was appointed Distinguished Service Professor in 1974, and, in 1986, she became the first Solomon A. Berson Distinguished Professor at large. She received numerous honors, including the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1976 (the first woman to win it), the National Medal of Science in 1988 (the United States’s highest science award), and more than two dozen other awards and honorary degrees. In 1977, Yalow, dubbed “Madame Curie of the Bronx,” shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Berson “for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones.” In 1991, Yalow retired from the VA Hospital at the mandatory age of seventy; her husband died the following year. She remained in the Bronx after suffering a stroke in 1995. James Fargo Balliett and George B. Kauffman

Sources Biermann, Carol A., and Ludwig Biermann. “Rosalyn Sussman Yalow.” In Women in Chemistry and Physics: A Bibliographic Sourcebook, ed. Louise S. Grinstein, Rose K. Rose, and Miriam H. Rafailovich. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1993. Rall, J.E. Solomon Berson: Biographical Memoirs. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1990. Straus, Eugene. Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel Laureate: Her Life and Work in Medicine. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2000. Yalow, R.S. “Radioimmunoassay: A Probe for the Fine Structure of Biological Systems.” Science 200 (1978): 1236–45.

Y E L LO W F E V E R Yellow fever is a viral disease most common in tropical and subtropical climates but occurring in temperate climates as well. Known as “the American plague,” it was common in the United States from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, with epidemics recorded as far north as Boston (1798). Philadelphia had epidemics in 1699, 1741, 1762, the Great Epidemic of 1793, 1797, 1798, 1799, and 1802; New York in 1791, 1793, 1795, 1798, and

1805; Baltimore in 1794; and New Haven in 1794. After 1794, there were only minor epidemics in northern cities until the last widespread epidemic in 1822 and subsequently small, isolated outbreaks. There were major epidemics in Virginia in 1741 and Charleston, South Carolina, in 1745. As in the North, there were few epidemics in the South following the 1820s with the exception of the 1878 epidemic that spread throughout the Mississippi Valley as far north as Memphis. Symptoms of the disease ordinarily include bleeding from the eyes, nostrils, anus, and other membranes, as well as black, bloody vomit. Yellow fever gets its name from jaundice caused by the accumulation of yellow bile pigments in the skin that have been secreted by a damaged liver. The virus also damages and retards the function of the kidneys and heart. Those who die succumb in four to eight days after the onset of symptoms. Since fever reduction greatly reduces mortality, various methods to reduce fever, including bloodletting, were used in early America. The most common course of treatment was isolation in an attempt to halt the spread of the disease; however, yellow fever is not contagious through contact with a patient or the patient’s personal articles. As late as 1898, the American medical community erroneously thought that yellow fever was contracted by contact with “fomites”— personal articles such as bedding and clothing. It was not yet known that the disease was viral or that it was transmitted by an intermediate host insect. Specifically, yellow fever is transmitted by the infusion of blood infected with the virus into the body of a susceptible host by the bite of several species of mosquito, most commonly Aedes aegypti. The Cuban physician and epidemiologist Carlos Juan Finlay hypothesized in 1881 that yellow fever was insect borne, with the Aedes mosquito as the vector (carrier), but he was never able to prove his theory or isolate the infectious agent. In 1900, a team of U.S. Army physicians and scientists led by Major Walter Reed, a physician, pathologist, and bacteriologist, investigated a supposed outbreak of malaria at a U.S. Army garrison 200 miles from Havana, Cuba. Recognizing the disease as yellow fever, the team structured a controlled experiment using team members as test subjects. This experiment proved that mosquitoes were the only vectors

400 Section 5: Yellow Fever for yellow fever. Though uncommon in North America, “jungle yellow fever,” a second cycle of the disease, is transmitted to humans by a variety of mosquito species that carries the disease to humans from infected mammalian hosts, most commonly monkeys. Not knowing the infectious agent, the team had earlier rejected a bacterium (Bacillus icteroides) proposed by the Italian bacteriologist Giuseppe Sanarelli in 1896. An American surgeon, William Crawford Gorgas, proposed immediate prevention as the goal, rather than searching for a cure for an agent not yet isolated. By controlling the Aedes mosquito population, Gorgas was able to virtually eliminate yellow fever in Havana. The program of prevention was successfully duplicated in Rio de Janeiro and in Panama during the construction of the canal. (Tropical diseases, yellow fever in particular, had halted the French attempt to construct a canal there in the late nineteenth century.) Yellow fever last appeared in the United States in New Orleans and other Southern ports in 1905. Even though the infectious agent and vector are now known, there is no known cure for the disease, though it is preventable. Seasonal spraying to control the mosquito population is still the main weapon against yellow fever, but live-virus vaccines are available that produce active immunity without precipitating the disease. Patients who do recover from the disease develop a lifelong immunity. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Bean, William B. Walter Reed: A Biography. Charlottesville: University Virginia of Press, 1982. Coleman, William L. Yellow Fever in the North: The Method of Epidemiology. Wisconsin Publications in the History of Science and Medicine, no 6. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. Groh, Lynn. Walter Reed, Pioneer in Medicine. Champaign, IL: Garrard, 1971. Hill, Ralph Nading. Doctors Who Conquered Yellow Fever. New York: Random House, 1966. Humphreys, Margaret. Yellow Fever and the South. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Murphy, Jim. An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. New York: Clarion, 2003. Neachtain, Ted. Yellow Fever. Oakton, VA: Ravensyard, 1999. Wood, Laura Newbold. Walter Reed: Doctor in Uniform. New York: Julian Messner, 1943.

ZAKRZEWSKA, MARIE ELIZABETH (1829–1902) Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska, the founder of the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, broke many gender barriers in the medical profession in the United States. She was born in Berlin, Germany, on September 6, 1829, the oldest of the five daughters of Ludwig Martin Zakrzewski and Caroline Fredericke Wilhelmina Urban. As a little girl, Zakrzewska accompanied her mother, a midwife, on her work rounds, helping her with small tasks. She later trained as a midwife at the Berlin Charité Hospital, graduating in 1851, then practiced there and was promoted to head midwife in 1852. Seeking to advance her medical career, Zakrzewska emigrated alone to the United States in 1853. She received an M.D. in 1856 from the Cleveland Medical College. Following graduation, she worked with physicians Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell to start and operate the New York Infirmary for Women and Children (now Beth Israel Medical Center) in New York City, the first hospital totally staffed by women. Zakrzewska served as resident physician and general manager of the infirmary. In 1859, she was appointed professor of obstetrics and diseases of women and children at the New England Female Medical College in Boston. In her drive to improve the skills and knowledge of the graduating female doctors, Zakrzewska fought hard to modify the school curriculum to match that of all-male medical schools. In a speech at the college in November 1859, Zakrzewska emphasized the importance of an “earnest desire and love of scientific investigation” as a prerequisite for the study of medicine. This was a challenge to the traditional genderbased roles at that time, when male physicians were viewed as scientific and rational, and female physicians were characterized as caring and sympathetic. Zakrzewska wanted women to have the skills that would enable them to break out of their traditional midwife roles, and she advocated further changes and a rigor for medical education that were generally not present for men or women in the United States.

Section 5: Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth 401 In 1862, Zakrzewska left the New England Female Medical College following disagreements with its director. She founded the New England Hospital for Women and Children (now the Dimock Community Health Center in Roxbury, Massachusetts), which was staffed by female physicians. The goals of the facility were to provide women with medical care from female physicians, to offer women an opportunity for medical training, and to train nurses. As director of the hospital, Zakrzewska instituted scientific procedures as components of medical training and practice, including detailed urinalysis; charting pulse, temperature, and respiration; and microscopic examination of tumors. In 1872, the hospital opened the first professional nurse training program in the United States. Beyond her work at the hospital, Za-

krzewska maintained a large private practice and provided charity medical care. Zakrzewska retired from her position at the hospital in 1899. In addition to medicine, she was also involved in advancing women’s suffrage and supporting the abolition of slavery. She died on May 12, 1902. James Fargo Balliett and Michael T. Halpern

Sources Abram, Ruth. Send Us a Lady Physician: Women Doctors in America, 1835–1920. New York: W.W. Norton, 1985. Blake, John B. “Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska.” In Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Edward T. James et al. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971. Tuchman, Arleen M. “Situating Gender: Marie E. Zakrzewska and the Place of Science in Women’s Medical Education.” Isis 95 (2004): 34–57.

DOCUMENTS The Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 Ebenezer Hazard remained in Philadelphia during the late summer and early fall of 1793, when most of those who could afford to flee the city departed because of the spread of yellow fever. Hazard’s firsthand account was preserved in letters written to friends in other cities. August 27, 1793, Ebenezer Hazard to Jeremy Belknap The city is remarkably sickly at present. The prevailing disorder does not appear to be accurately defined or understood. It is highly infectious, and generally proves mortal. I do not know even the symptoms attending it. Many suppose it to have been imported, or occasioned by too many French coming in crowded vessels. . . . Others think it arises from the season, which has been remarkably dry and sultry; and we have had very little thunder. Query: whether the large number of conductors fixed to the houses in this city may not, by imperceptibly drawing off the electric fluid from the clouds, and thereby preventing thunder, contribute very much to increase diseases? October 12, 1793, Ebenezer Hazard to Samuel A. Otis I hardly know what to say about “the state of the disorder.” It does not appear to abate, and I do not think it increases. My physician, Dr. Hodge, whom I think a judicious man, says that, since the disorder first began, it has altered its appearance four different times. . . . He says its malignancy is greater at present than it was lately. It is curious to see the diversity of opinion among the learned, both [with] respect to the disorder itself and the mode of treatment. It is distressing, too; for people are perplexed to know which of them to trust. I believe that no particular fixed mode is right, but that predominant symptoms must direct the mode of treatment in all cases. In some, plentiful evacuations, by bleeding, &c, are necessary; in others, they must be fatal. In some they are necessary at first; but, as soon as the disorder is checked, the nurse, the butcher, and the cook ought to be called to the aid of the physician. . . .

[Dr. Benjamin Rush] prescribes . . . bleeding . . . in all cases, and boasts lustily of his success. At the same time, it is a fact that he has lost three of his apprentices, and his sister, out of his own family. . . . He was called to a friend of mine, and directed 12 or 15 ounces of blood to be drawn, and one of his powders to be taken. It was done. The next day, 8 or 10 ounces, and another powder. It was done. The 3d day, more bleeding and purging. The patient, having felt his own pulse, objected against bleeding, as unnecessary. The Dr. pronounced “this opinion one of the most dangerous symptoms in the case; the disorder was extremely insidious; the case extremely critical; not a moment to be lost; send for the bleeder directly. . . . If you are not bled to-day, I shall not be surprized to hear that you are dead to-morrow.” The patient declared he would lose no more blood; the Dr. declared he would no longer consider him as his patient, left him to die, and the man got well. I am told he took some bark, to strengthen his stomach; drank a little good wine, extraordinary, to enrich his remaining blood; and ate nourishing food in small quantities, but frequently. Source: Jeremy Belknap Papers, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 5, vol. 3 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1887).

Nineteenth-Century Herbal Remedies The following is a list of nineteenth-century herbal remedies that formed part of the materia medica of American folklore. (For historical interest only—do not attempt.) Expectorant Pills. Take of dried root of squills, in fine powder, 1 scruple; gum ammoniac, lesser cardamom seeds in powder, extract of liquorice, each 1 drachm. Form them into a mass with simple syrup. This is an elegant and commodius form for the exhibition of squills, whether for promoting expectoration, or for the other purposes to which that medicine is applied.

402

Section 5: Documents 403 The dose is from 10 grains to 1 scruple, three times a day. Napoleon’s Pectoral Pills. The following recipe was copied from one in the possession of the late Emperor of France, and was a very favorite remedy with Napoleon for difficulty of breathing, or oppression of the chest arising from a collection of mucus in the air cells and vessels of the lungs, and in the gullet. Considerable benefit has been derived from it in many similar cases. Take of ipecacuanha root, in powder, 30 grains; squill root, in powder, gum ammoniac, in powder, each 2 scruples; mucilage of gum arabic, sufficient to form a mass. To be divided into 24 pills; two to be taken every night and morning. Dr. Ratcliff ’s Cough Mixture. Mix together 4 drachms of syrup of squills; 4 drachms of elixir of paregoric; 4 drachms of syrup of poppies. Of this take a teaspoonful in a little tea or warm water, as occasion requires. Dr. Munro’s Cough Medicine. Take 4 drachms of paregoric elixir, 2 drachms of sulphuric ether; 2 drachms of tincture of tolu. Mix, and take a teaspoonful night and morning, or when the cough is troublesome, in a little milkwarm water. Simple Remedy for Coughs. Take of boiling water, half a pint; black currant jelly, a desertspoonful; sweet spirits of nitre, a teaspoonful. Mix the jelly in the water first till it is quite dissolved, and add the nitre last. Take a desertspoonful of the mixture at night, going to bed, or when the cough is troublesome. The mixture should be made and kept in a teapot, or other covered vessel. Remedy for Chronic Cough. The following is very serviceable in common obstinate coughs, unattended with fever. Take of tincture of tolu, 3 drachms; elixir of paregoric, 1/2 an ounce; tincture of squills, 1 drachm. Two teaspoonsful to be taken in a tumbler of barleywater going to bed, and when the cough is troublesome. For Coughs in Aged Persons. In the coughs of aged persons, or in cases where there are large accumulations of purulent or viscid matter, with feeble expectoration, the following mixture will be found highly beneficial: Pour gradually 2

drachms of nitric acid, diluted in half a pint of water, on 2 drachms of gum ammoniac, and triturate them in a glass mortar, until the gum is dissolved. A tablespoonful to be taken, in sweetened water, every two or three hours. Cough Emulsion. Take of oil of almonds, 6 drachms; milk of almonds, 5 ounces; rose water, gum arabic, and purified sugar, equal parts, 2 drachms. Let these be well rubbed together, and take two tablespoonsful four times a day, and a teaspoonful upon coughing. This is far preferable to the common white emulsions formed by an alkali, which, uniting with the oil, produces a kind of soap, and readily mingling with the water, forms the white appearance observed, and is commonly disgusting to patients, and unpleasant to the stomach; whereas this suits every palate, and removes that tickling in the throat so very distressing to patients. Emulsion for a Cold, etc. Take of milk of almonds, 1 ounce; syrup of tolu, 2 drachms; rose-water, 2 drachms; tincture of squills, 16 drops. Make into a draught. Four to be taken during the day. This is an admirable remedy in colds, and also in chronic cough, as well as in asthma. Gargle for Thrush. Thrush or aphthae in the mouth, will be greatly benefited by the frequent use of the following gargle: Mix together 20 drops of muriatic acid (spirits of salts); 1 ounce of honey of rose; and 4 ounces of decoction of barley. Another.—Make a gargle of 2 drachms of borax; 1 ounce of honey of roses, and 7 ounces of rosewater. To be used three or four times a day. Gargle for Sore Throat. Take of decoction of bark, 7 ounces; tincture of myrrh, 2 drachms; purified nitre, 3 drachms. Make into a gargle. This is a sovereign method to disperse a tumefied gland, or common sore throat. By taking upon such occasions a small lump of purified nitre, putting it into the mouth, and letting it dissolve there, then removing it, and applying it again in a few seconds, and swallowing the saliva, I have, says Dr. Thornton, for many years prevented a sore throat from forming. For Putrid Sore Throat. Take of decoction of bark, 6 ounces; diluted muriatic acid, 1 drachm; honey

404 Section 5: Documents of roses, 1 ounce. Make into a gargle. To be used, mixed with port wine, frequently during the day. For Inflammatory Sore Throat. Take of nitre, 2 drachms; honey, 4 drachms; rosewater, 6 ounces. Mix. To be used frequently. Another.—Dissolve 2 teaspoonsful of alum in 1 pint of sage tea. Another.—Take of muriatic acid, 20 drops; glycerine, 1 ounce; water, 3 ounces. Mix. For Ulcerated Sore Throat. The chlorate of potassa, in cases of putrid ulcerated sore throat, has been used with the most decisive success. Its internal exhibition more effectually allays thirst and abates fever than any other medicine; and, when applied as a gargle to inflamed or ulcerated sore throats, it has been found to disperse the inflammation and to deterge the ulcers more effectually than the infusion of rose-leaves with the sulphuric acid, the gargle generally resorted to in those cases. The chlorate of potassa may be given in the dose of from 20 to 30 grains in a half glass of water, three or four times a day. For the purpose of gargling the throat, 4 drachms of the chlorate may be added to half a pint of water. Source: Henry Hartshorne, The Household Cyclopedia of General Information (New York: Thomas Kelly, 1881).

The Maintenance of Health at Sea In the age of sailing ships, the health of seamen was a constant concern. The following is an excerpt from a book giving practical advice to seamen on how to maintain health on a long voyage. Cleanliness. To preserve seamen in health and prevent the prevalence of scurvy and other diseases, it will be further necessary to keep the ship perfectly clean and to have the different parts of it daily purified by a free admission of air when the weather will admit of it, and likewise by frequent fumigations. This precaution will more particularly be necessary for the purification of such places as are remarkably close and confined. Prevention of Dampness and Cold. The coldness and dampness of the atmosphere are to be corrected by sufficient fires.

Cleanliness on board of a ship is highly necessary for the preservation of the health of seamen, but the custom of frequent swabbings or washings between the decks, as is too frequently practised, is certainly injurious, and greatly favors the production of scurvy and other diseases by a constant dampness being kept up. Exercise and Amusements. The men should be made to air their hammocks and bedding every fine day; they should wash their bodies and apparel often, for which purpose an adequate supply of soap ought to be allowed, and they should change their linen and other clothes frequently. In rainy weather, on being relieved from their duty on deck by the succeeding watch, they should take off their wet clothes instead of keeping them on and lying down in them, as they are too apt to do. Two sets of hammocks ought to be provided for them. In fine pleasant weather, and after their usual duty is over, they should be indulged in any innocent amusement that will keep their minds as well as bodies in a state of pleasant activity, and perhaps none is then more proper than dancing. This makes a fiddle or a pipe and tabor desirable acquisitions on board of every ship bound on a long voyage. Effects of Climate, etc. In warm climates the crews of ships are healthier at sea when the air is dry and serene, and the heat moderated by gentle breezes, than when rainy or damp weather prevails; and they usually enjoy better health when the ship is moored at a considerable distance from the shore, and to windward of any marshy ground or stagnant waters, than when it is anchored to leeward of these and lies close in with the land. Masters of vessels stationed at or trading to any parts between the tropics, will therefore act prudently when they have arrived at their destined port, to anchor at a considerable distance from the shore, and as far to windward of all swamps, pools and lakes as can conveniently be done, as the noxious vapors which will be wafted to the crew when the ship is in a station of this nature will not fail to give rise to disease among them. Cautions when in Tropical Climates. In tropical climates the healthiness of seamen will much de-

Section 5: Documents 405 pend upon avoiding undue exposure to the sun, rain, night air, long fasting, intemperance, unwholesome shore duties, especially during the sickly season, and upon the attention paid to the various regulations and preventive measures. The bad effects of remaining too long in port at any one time (independent of irregularities of harbor duties, particularly after sunset, as well as during his meridian power) cannot be too strongly adverted to by the commander of every ship, and therefore a measure of the highest importance in the navy is the employment of negroes and natives of the country, or at least men accustomed to the torrid zone, in wooding, watering, transporting stores, rigging, clearing, careening ships, etc., and in fine in all such occupations as might subject the seamen to ex-

cessive heat or noxious exhalations, which cannot fail to be highly dangerous to the health of the unacclimated seaman. The practice of heaving down vessels of war in the West Indies, in the ordinary routine of service at least, cannot be too highly deprecated, as well from the excessive fatigue and exertion it demands as because it is a process which requires for its execution local security, or in other words a land that is locked, and therefore generally an unhealthy harbor. The instances of sickness and mortality from the effects of clearing a foul hold in an unhealthy harbor are too numerous to be specified. Source: Henry Hartshorne, The Household Cyclopedia of General Information (New York: Thomas Kelly, 1881).

Section 6

GEOSCIENCES

ESSAYS Weather in Early America E

arly Americans were practical scientists rarely allowed the opportunity to speculate and theorize: trying to carve a society from the forest and plains took most of their energies. Yet daily temperature, humidity, wind direction and speed, and precipitation had such an impact on the lives of these agrarian peoples that it seemed of utmost importance to understand the changing phenomena of weather. The human dilemma of living in time, not knowing from moment to moment what the next moment will bring, was repeatedly reinforced by the changing weather: the cold fronts that would unexpectedly blow in from the north; the nor’easters that would swirl up the Atlantic coast, bringing plentiful snow; the varying winds that were a constant irritation to sailors, who often had to alter plans on the spur of the moment in response to an unexpected change in direction and speed of the wind; the snow of one day followed by thaw the next. If only a way could be found to know the future, even the restricted future of the next day’s weather! In seventeenth-century Puritan New England, the scientist who presumed to forecast the weather would put himself in a compromising position. To predict, to forecast, sounded a lot like fortune-telling, as practiced by a soothsayer of the pagan, ancient world. God had determined that humans remain ignorant of the future except that part of the future revealed by the New Testament. Even such an apparently benign activity as weather forecasting could put a person’s life and liberty in jeopardy in the Godfearing commonwealth of early Massachusetts. It was important to proceed slowly, to begin with simple recording of data, to restrict predictions to what humans had always sought to predict (hence, such must be consistent with the will of God): the seasons, the time to plant in the spring and harvest in the fall, the beginnings of

summer and winter, and the approximate dates of the equinoxes (vernal and autumnal, when the rays of the sun are directly over Earth’s equator) and the summer and winter solstices (when the rays of the sun are directly over the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, respectively). Weather forecasting had much to do, then, with astronomy. Among the first European Americans to attempt to understand the weather were almanac writers and clergy. The Puritans in particular believed that God was involved in all events, natural as well as historical. The daily weather was part of the divine plan, which Puritans were intent on discovering. To understand natural history and natural phenomena was important for understanding God and God’s will. Understanding meteorological events such as temperature, winds, and rainfall was a small part of the huge yet magnificent task of seeking to understand the mind of God. The Reverend Manasseh Cutler, for example, kept a “Meteorological Journal,” which he described as containing daily measurements of “the height of the mercury in Fahrenheit’s Thermometer in the morning, noon, and night; the course and quantity of the wind, weather, a particular description of every Aurora Borealis, and the diseases in this Town. . . . But I very sensibly feel the want of a Barometer, without which my Journal must be very defective.” Cutler, who was also a practicing physician, believed (following the tradition begun by the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates) that weather had an impact on sickness. Clergy typically kept track of the weather in journalistic fashion, often recording their observations in almanacs. In this way, experience would accompany theory: the record of the daily weather would be adjacent to the astronomical chart of the phases of the moon and

409

410 Section 6: Essays planets, the movements of the sun, and lunar and solar eclipses. Early American almanac writers had to be good scientists of astronomy and meteorology. The most accomplished almanac writers were often the most accomplished scientists. Not surprisingly, the most famous early American almanac was Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, which appeared annually from 1733 to 1758. Poor Richard’s was, according to the title page of the 1753 edition, “an Almanack and Ephemeris of the Motions of the Sun and Moon; the True Places and Aspects of the Planets; the Rising and Setting of the Sun; and the Rising, Setting, and Southing of the Moon.” Along with the prediction of “Lunations, Conjunctions, Eclipses” was a “Judgment of the Weather.” That Franklin’s judgment, enlightened by science, was better than most is seen in a 1743 series of letters between Franklin, living in Philadelphia, and his brother in Boston. The brothers corresponded about various natural phenomena, in this instance, discussing a lunar eclipse scheduled for an evening in October, which they prepared to view from their respective locations. But a storm blew in from the north, a particularly violent nor’easter. The overcast skies and heavy rain ensured that the eclipse would not be witnessed. Franklin was astonished, therefore, when he received a letter a few weeks later in which his brother wrote how wonderful the eclipse was and asked Franklin’s opinion of it. How could his brother have seen the eclipse when the nor’easter blew in from the north? Surely Boston would have been hit by the storm before Philadelphia. It seemed impossible that the citizens of Boston could have seen the eclipse while citizens of Philadelphia could not. Franklin’s speculation regarding this incident

led him to an explanation of a fundamental meteorological phenomenon—the cyclone effect. He hypothesized that the nor’easter acted in the same way that the air moved about in his own house. Warm air from the fireplace moves into the room, taking the place of the cooler air, which moves toward the fireplace, drawn in by the draft of the chimney flue. A nor’easter likewise involves the replacing of one air mass with another air mass. In this case, a low-pressure air mass moving up the east coast from the southwest to the northeast displaces the higherpressure air (and clear skies) of Philadelphia and Boston. Franklin was unable to see the eclipse because the storm hit Philadelphia first—but how? He hypothesized that the storm moved up the coast in a cyclonic fashion, the winds swirling in a massive counterclockwise motion. True, the wind of the nor’easter comes from the northeast, but only as part of a gigantic cyclone that originates from the southwest. Franklin’s analysis of the nor’easter involved logic, observation, common sense, knowledge of astronomy, and an understanding of how relative temperature and air pressure affect the circulation of air. Meteorologists today continue to use the same means to understand the weather and make their daily predictions. Russell Lawson

Sources Cohen, I. Bernard. Benjamin Franklin’s Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Daniels, George H. Science in American Society: A Social History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. Lawson, Russell M. “Religion and Science.” In American Eras: The Colonial Era, 1600–1754, ed. Jessica Kross. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

Reconstructing the Geological Past T

he geological column, or geological time scale, is a representation in chart form of how most geologists today interpret the geological record of rock layers and fossils to reconstruct the history of Earth. Many people over the

course of several centuries have contributed to the development of the geological column. The fundamental elements of geological study—fieldwork, collection, and theory construction—were not developed until the six-

Section 6: Essays 411 teenth to eighteenth centuries. Previously, many observers believed that fossils were the remains of former living beings; early Christian thinkers such as Tertullian, Chrysostom, and Augustine attributed them to the great flood in the biblical story of Noah. But others rejected these ideas and regarded fossils as either jokes of nature, the products of rocks endowed with life in some sense, the creative works of God, or the deceptions of Satan. The debate was finally settled when the seventeenth-century British natural philosopher Robert Hooke confirmed by microscopic analysis of fossilized wood that fossils were the mineralized remains of former living creatures. Before 1750, one of the most important geological thinkers was Niels Steensen (Nicolaus Steno), a seventeenth-century Dutch anatomist and geologist who established the principle of superposition: sedimentary rock layers are deposited in a successive, essentially horizontal fashion, so that a lower stratum is older than the one above it. In his Forerunner (1669), he expressed belief in a roughly 6,000-year-old Earth and that the global Noachian Flood deposited many of the fossilbearing sedimentary rock layers. Over the next century, the Englishmen Thomas Burnet, John Woodward, and William Whiston wrote books essentially reinforcing Steensen’s view. Johann Lehmann studied German mountain strata and believed that primary, non-fossilbearing rock layers originated during the week of the creation described in the Bible, whereas secondary sedimentary strata on top of the primary formations were attributed to the flood. Other eighteenth-century European geologists, such as Jean-Etienne Guettard, Nicholas Desmarest, and Giovanne Arduino, were critical of the flood theory and advocated a much older Earth.

Neptune vs. Vulcan The years 1790–1820 have been called the “heroic age” of geology, a time when geology became established as a separate field of scientific study. The period was also characterized by a fundamental debate between Neptunists and Vulcanists, named after the Roman gods of the sea and fire, respectively. The leading Neptunist was Abraham Werner, a mineralogy professor in

Germany. Building on the ideas of Lehmann and others, Werner believed that most of Earth’s crust had been precipitated chemically or mechanically by a slowly receding primeval global ocean over the course of about 1 million years, and that the strata were then ordered by their mineral content. Lehmann classified them into five stratigraphic units, from oldest to youngest: primitive, transitional, floetz, loose conglomerates, and volcanic. The leading Vulcanist was the Scotsman James Hutton, a medical doctor turned geologist. In his Theory of the Earth (1795), Hutton argued that the continents were being slowly eroded into the oceans. According to his theory, the sediments were gradually hardened by Earth’s internal heat and then raised to become new landmasses, which would later be eroded into the oceans, then hardened and elevated to continue in an endless cycle. According to this view, the age of Earth was so great that it was virtually beyond calculation or comprehension.

Catastrophe vs. Uniformit y Neither Werner nor Hutton paid much attention to fossil remains. In the early 1800s, however, Georges Cuvier, the famous French comparative anatomist and vertebrate paleontologist, developed his catastrophist theory of Earth history, as expressed in his Discourse on the Revolutions of the Earth (1812). Cuvier concluded that, over long periods of Earth history, a number of catastrophic floods—of regional or nearly global extent—had destroyed and buried living creatures in sediment. All but one of these catastrophes occurred before the emergence of humans. William Smith was a drainage engineer and surveyor, who, in the course of his work around Great Britain, became fascinated with geological strata and fossils. Like Cuvier, he had a catastrophist view of Earth history. In three works published from 1815 to 1817, Smith presented the first geological map of England and Wales and explained the order and relative chronology of the rock formations as defined by certain characteristic fossils rather than by the mineralogical character of the rocks. Others who contributed to the wide acceptance of the catastrophist view in the 1820s were the Britons William Buckland (geology professor at Oxford),

412 Section 6: Essays Adam Sedgwick (Buckland’s counterpart at Cambridge), George Greenough, William Conybeare, and Roderick Murchison. By the end of the 1820s, the major divisions of the geological record were well defined. Primary rocks, the lowest and supposedly oldest, were mostly igneous or metamorphic and devoid of fossils. Secondary rocks were next in level and age, predominantly sedimentary strata containing fossils. Tertiary formations were above these and also contained many fossils, but these more closely resembled existing species. The most recent formations were alluvial deposits of gravel, sands, and boulders covered by soil. A massive blow to the doctrine of catastrophe came during the period from 1830 to 1833, when Charles Lyell, a lawyer and former student of Buckland, published his masterful three-volume Principles of Geology. Reviving and augmenting the ideas of Hutton, Lyell proposed a theory of uniformity, insisting that only present-day processes at present-day rates of intensity and magnitude should be used to interpret the rock record of past geological activity. By explaining the entire rock record in terms of slow, gradual processes (except for localized catastrophes, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes), he reduced the biblical flood to a geological nonevent. Catastrophism did not die out immediately, but, by the late 1830s, few catastrophists in Europe or America believed in a geologically significant flood. The 1830s and 1840s saw much debate among European geologists regarding the classification of the lowest fossil formations (Cambrian to Devonian), and glacial theory began emerging to explain what the earlier catastrophists had attributed to the great flood. By the mid-1850s, all the main divisions of the geological column were identified, and the nomenclature was standardized. No American geologists were directly involved in the development of the geological column per se, although by their teaching at prominent universities and leadership in American science, three nineteenth-century scientists contributed significantly in applying the principles of Steno, Smith, and Lyell to the interpretation of the American stratigraphic record. Benjamin Silliman was the first professor of chemistry and natural history at Yale, a founder

and editor (1818–1846) of the American Journal of Science and Arts, the first president of the Association of American Geologists (which became the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1848), and a founding member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1846, James Dwight Dana succeeded Silliman at Yale as professor of natural history and geology. On the basis of geological studies in the South Pacific, America, Europe, and Antarctica, Dana wrote several comprehensive books on mineralogy and geology, as well as specialized studies on zoophytes, crustaceans, corals, and volcanoes. The Swiss zoologist and geologist Louis Agassiz was a student of Cuvier and published research on fossil fish, fossil mollusks, and glaciers before moving to the United States in 1846 and becoming professor of zoology and geology at Harvard. Agassiz made extensive research expeditions along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the Americas and contributed much to the natural history of the United States.

Scriptural G eologists During the first half of the nineteenth century, a number of writers in Great Britain and a few in America, called the scriptural geologists, raised biblical, geological, and philosophical arguments against the catastrophist and uniformitarian views of Earth history. Many of them were geologically competent by the standards of their day. They believed that the biblical account of creation and Noah’s flood better explained the rock record. By the time of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), however, their view had essentially disappeared, even within the church. Lyell’s uniformitarian Principles dominated geology until about the 1970s, when Derek Ager, a prominent British geologist, and others increasingly challenged Lyell’s assumptions. They argued that much of the rock record shows evidence of rapid catastrophic erosion or sedimentation, drastically reducing the time involved in the formation of many geological deposits. These “neo-catastrophist” reinterpretations have developed contemporaneously with a resurgence of “flood geology,” a view of Earth history very similar to that of the nineteenth-century

Section 6: Essays 413 scriptural geologists. This movement has been led by Americans, though a small but growing number of geologists in other countries also favor this creationist view. Terry J. Mortensen

Sources Ager, Derek. The New Catastrophism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Berry, William B.N. Growth of the Prehistoric Time Scale. San Francisco: Freeman, 1968. Gould, Stephen Jay. “The Great Scablands Debate.” Natural History 87:7 (1978): 12–18. Haber, Francis C. The Age of the World: Moses to Darwin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959. Hallam, A. Great Geological Controversies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1989. Mortenson, Terry. The Great Turning Point: The Church’s Catastrophic Mistake on Geology—Before Darwin. Green Forest, AR: Master, 2004.

The Revolution in Meteorology A

t the turn of the twentieth century, meteorology in America was beginning to emerge as a modern scientific discipline based not only on observation and empiricism but on theory as well. Although systematic weather observations had been made since the colonial period, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century, with the invention and widespread use of the telegraph, that scientists realized the practical application of simultaneous weather observations from various locations, which paved the way for more accurate weather forecasts.

Weather Bureau In 1900, the U.S. Weather Bureau (the predecessor to the National Weather Service) began its second decade as a civilian agency under the Department of Agriculture, having been transferred from the War Department by act of Congress in 1890. Early weather forecasts issued by the Weather Bureau relied solely on observations taken at surface weather stations around the country. These reports were sent by telegraph to the Weather Bureau’s central office in Washington, D.C., where a small group of forecasters plotted and analyzed the variations in temperature and air pressure and tracked the progress of storms. Forecasts were based more on rules of thumb and comparisons of the current weather map with similar past situations than on scientific or mathematic principles. The advent of aviation gave rise to the need for observations of upper-air conditions, and, in 1909, the Weather Bureau began launching free-

rising balloons with instruments attached to measure the temperature, humidity, and air pressure at various levels of the atmosphere. Though useful for local aviation forecasts, the full practical use of these upper-air observations, like their early surface counterparts, required advances in technology and the understanding of the physical processes that controlled them. A major breakthrough in the understanding of how weather systems evolve and, subsequently, how to predict them, came after World War I from a small group of scientists working at the Geophysical Institute in Bergen, Norway. The “Bergen School” of meteorology, led by Vilhelm Bjerknes (and including his son, Jacob), developed a theory that weather systems evolve from differences between contrasting air masses. They called the boundaries where these tropical and polar air masses meet “fronts,” in reference to the battlefronts of World War I. Bjerknes’s “polar front theory” further explained that interactions between air masses led to the development of mid-latitude, or extratropical, wave cyclones. These are the weather systems that march across the continents of North America and Europe and bring most of the unsettled weather, particularly during winter. Although slow to receive widespread recognition, especially in the United States, Bjerknes’s ideas served as a turning point in modern meteorology. One of Bjerknes’s students in Bergen was the Swedish-born Carl-Gustaf Rossby, who immigrated to the United States in 1926 and founded the department of meteorology at the Massa-

414 Section 6: Essays chusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1940, Rossby became chair of the Department of Meteorology at the University of Chicago, where he did pioneering work in dynamic meteorology, including the large-scale circulation of the atmosphere and jet streams. Building on the concepts developed by his predecessors, Rossby’s ideas helped refine a three-dimensional model of the atmosphere that was essential in the development of long-range weather forecasting. As early as 1904, Bjerknes theorized that weather could be predicted through the solution of complex mathematical equations that governed the physics of the atmosphere. During World War I, the English mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson attempted to devise a practical scheme to translate the theory of the atmosphere into the prediction of the weather. Since electronic computers did not exist in Richardson’s time, his plan relied on human computing power to carry out the necessary calculations. In his 1922 book Weather Prediction by Numerical Process, Richardson described an elaborate “forecast factory” that involved 64,000 people working around the clock to produce a forecast for twenty-four hours into the future. As the physical understanding of weather continued to develop, so did the technology that would help put forecasting it into practical use. In 1945, the world’s first electronic computer, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), began operation. It was originally used by the U.S. Army for ballistics calculations, but mathematician John von Neumann successfully campaigned for ENIAC to be used for weather predictions. Von Neumann employed a small team at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, including Rossby’s protégé Jule Charney, who simplified the set of equations used by Richardson for use by the computer. In April 1950, the first successful numeric weather prediction was made by Charney and his colleagues using ENIAC. Although advances in computing ability and refinement of numeric models have led to increased accuracy of medium- and long-range forecasts, the most accurate forecasts continue to be those made for the shortest time periods in the future. These limitations were first expressed in the 1960s by meteorologist Edward Lorenz as an ap-

plication of chaos theory. Chaos theory suggests that certain dynamical systems, known as nonlinear systems, are sensitive to their initial conditions such that small changes in these conditions can result in large variations as the system evolves over time. What may seem like miniscule differences in the data actually can produce significant differences in a computer model of a nonlinear system. Since the atmosphere is a nonlinear dynamic system, small variations in the initial weather observations that go into a computer forecast model can produce large changes in the conditions that are predicted over time. It is impossible to input data detailing the precise state of the atmosphere everywhere on Earth into computer models. As a result, actual weather conditions will differ slightly from the data in the computer model, and weather phenomena will not exactly match predictions. Lorenz’s theory has been popularized as “the butterfly effect.” This label was inspired by Lorenz’s 1972 paper “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”

Engineers and technicians make final checks on NASA’s TIROS I, the world’s first successful weather satellite, before launch on April 1, 1960. TIROS I marked the beginning of a new era in atmospheric observation and data collection. (NASA/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Section 6: Essays 415

R adar and S atellites The second half of the twentieth century saw other important technological advancements applied to the study and forecasting of weather. During World War II, radar systems—originally used to detect aircraft and ships—began to be applied to the study of weather systems. Because radar could detect areas of precipitation (such as rain, snow, and hail) of varying intensities, it became an invaluable tool for forecasters. For the first time, they could see inside storms approaching from a distance. This ability to detect the circulation inside a storm is critical in identifying severe weather, such as tornado development. Improvements in radar technology eventually led to the implementation of a national network of Doppler radars, which are capable of detecting not only the location of precipitation within a storm but also whether it is moving toward or away from the radar. On April 1, 1960, meteorology entered the space age when the world’s first successful weather satellite, TIROS I (Television and Infrared Observation Satellite I), was launched by the United States. During its seventy-eight-day life span, TIROS I sent back nearly 23,000 images of cloud cover from its orbit of about 370 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. Although the early images were crude by current standards, they gave researchers and forecasters a new perspective on clouds and storm systems and demonstrated the usefulness of space-based observations. As the technology of satellites improved, so did the quality of the images and usefulness of the data. Today, in addition to visible and infrared images of clouds, weather and environmental satellites collect a wide variety of data, including water vapor content, sea surface temperatures, stratospheric ozone concentrations, ice fields, and snow cover. During the 1990s, the National Weather Service completed a major modernization program designed to improve the efficiency and accuracy with which the agency provides weather and climate data and services to the public. The modernization resulted in the implementation of

new technologies, including Doppler-based Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD), the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS), an interactive computer workstation that allows forecasters to overlay radar, satellite imagery with real-time observation data, and forecast model output on a single screen to better assess current conditions and predict future weather. Other observational tools, such as LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), wind profilers, and radiometers have given researchers and forecasters new ways of looking at various components of the atmosphere. Meteorology in the twenty-first century is focusing on improving our understanding of the complex interactions among Earth’s systems to better predict changes in weather and climate on various scales. Issues such as El Niño and La Niña (the periodic warming and cooling of the surface waters of the eastern and central Pacific near the equator, which causes shifts in regional climate patterns), global climate change, atmospheric pollution, predictability and tracking of tropical storms and hurricanes, as well as basic forecasting of weather systems for a growing population, economy, and global infrastructure, will drive the demand for new technologies, improved computer models, and further research in the ever evolving science of meteorology. Sean Potter

Sources Cox, John D. Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin’s Kite to El Niño. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2002. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Ed. J.T. Houghton, et al. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Laskin, David. Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather. New York: Doubleday, 1996. Monmonier, Mark. Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. National Research Council. Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2001. Nebeker, Fred. Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the 20th Century. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1995.

A–Z Agassiz in America

AG A S S I Z , LO U I S (1807–1873) The naturalist Louis Agassiz was a pioneer in the classification of animals, especially fossil forms, and a promoter of the idea of ice ages. Born on May 28, 1807, in the village of Môntier en Vully, Switzerland, he was christened Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. He was educated at the universities of Zurich and Heidelberg, from which he graduated in 1824 and 1826, respectively. Following a bout with typhoid fever in 1827, he studied medicine at Munich University and Erlangen University, earning his degree in 1830. Although he was trained as a physician, Agassiz became more interested in the field of natural history and went to Paris to study with the famous French paleontologist and anatomist Georges Cuvier. In 1832, after completing a breakthrough work entitled Poisson Fossiles (Fossil Fish), Agassiz returned to Switzerland as professor of natural history at the University of Neuchâtel. He remained there until 1845, building a formidable team of assistants with whom he conducted research in such fields as glaciology, geology, paleontology, and systematics. His observations on Swiss glaciers and their deposits led him to propose the possibility of an ice age millions of years ago and to question the traditional explanation—the biblical flood, or diluvial theory—for erratic deposits and moraines. He published his ideas in a controversial paper that became known as “The Discourse of Neuchâtel” and in two books, Études sur les Glaciers (Studies of Glaciers, 1840) and Système Glaciare (Glacial System, 1847). Although Agassiz did not devise the glacial theory himself, his publications were influential in persuading the scientific community of its merits. Even as his scientific reputation was growing, however, deteriorating finances and a desire to advance his status and research led him to organize an academic tour of Europe and then the United States.

Agassiz journeyed to the United States in 1846, and he was appointed to a specially created professorship in zoology and geology at Harvard University two years later. His work also entailed extensive visits to colleagues in other academic institutions, raising funds for a museum of comparative zoology, and efforts to help establish the National Academy of Science. While he was on a trip to Lake Superior in the summer of 1848, his wife died in Baden, Germany. Two years later, Agassiz married Elizabeth C. Carey, who acted as his research assistant as well as the manager of his household and the founder of a girls’ school. In addition to assisting him on various expeditions, she promoted his theories as a natural history writer, wrote the two-volume biography Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence (1885), and served as the first president of Radcliffe College for women. In 1859, Agassiz established the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and served as its president from its inception until his death in 1873. His contributions to American science were further recognized when he was appointed a regent of the prestigious Smithsonian Institution in 1863, an auspicious year in which he also became a founding member of the newly inaugurated National Academy of Sciences. A source of pride, the Museum of Comparative Zoology was also a source of some frustration. There was an ever increasing need to raise funds for the building and for staff, Agassiz no longer enjoyed robust health, and the American Civil War of 1861–1865 diverted financing and labor.

Response to Dar win Perhaps Agassiz’s greatest disappointment was the rise of Darwinism after publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and its ultimate acceptance by the scientific community. Like so many of his contemporaries, the Swiss-born naturalist did not agree with Darwin’s

416

Section 6: American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac 417

Swiss-born naturalist Louis Agassiz was among the most influential researchers, educators, and collectors in American science during the mid-nineteenth century— until the rise of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which he opposed. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

nity in Europe and the United States by renewing an old interest in Amazonian fish, embarking with his wife, two friends, six assistants, and seven volunteers on a major expedition to Brazil. The journey took the company to the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers and Brazil’s Atlantic coast. The expedition resulted in the collection of some 34,000 specimens of fish, which can be found in the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Agassiz became involved in the U.S. Coast Survey deep-sea dredging project in 1869 and the Hassler Expedition, another deep-sea dredging project, in 1871. Two years later, he founded the Anderson School of Natural History at Penikese Island, Massachusetts. Unlike so many of his ventures, this one was short lived. Agassiz died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on December 14, 1873, leaving a significant legacy to the scientific community of the United States, in which he was acknowledged as the nation’s leading natural scientist of his day. His ideas, records, and teaching inspired many and contributed to major advances in the natural sciences. The international reputation of the Museum of Comparative Zoology is a lasting testament to Agassiz’s influence. A.M. Mannion

theory of evolution. In fact, Agassiz vehemently opposed it, adhering to the views of Georges Cuvier, his former mentor. Agassiz summed up his views in Essay on Classification (1851), in which he argued for a theory of the predetermined plan for the development of life based on the relationship between God and nature. This approach to earth science, referred to as natural theology, saw God as the creator, the origin of all life, the first mover of all cause and effect on Earth. Agassiz also advanced Cuvier’s theory of “catastrophism,” which proposes that major natural traumas, such as earthquakes, transform Earth’s surface and provide a milieu for the emergence of new plants and animals. Cuvier believed that one such trauma was the biblical flood. Although, in his own theory, Agassiz replaced this flood with glacial activity, he remained faithful to the theory of catastrophism. Between April 1865 and July 1866, Agassiz escaped the controversies of the scientific commu-

Source Lurie, Edward. Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.

AMERICAN EPHEMERIS A N D N AU T I C A L A L M A N AC First published by the U.S. Naval Observatory in 1852, American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac is a basic resource for celestial navigation. Each year, a new nautical almanac provides coordinates within its ephemeris, a collection of tables used for determining the position of the celestial bodies at a given time for each day of the year. Before publication of the Nautical Almanac, American navigators relied on almanacs produced in other nations. The oldest of the ephemerides, Connaissance de Temps, was published in France in 1679. The original source of nautical almanacs for Americans was the Royal

418 Section 6: American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac Greenwich Observatory in England, established in 1675 and renamed the Nautical Almanac Office in 1832. Its first edition, The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, published in 1766, covered the following year. In 1849, the United States began producing an independent nautical almanac when Congress established the Nautical Almanac Office in the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. Lieutenant Charles Henry Davis was appointed director and founded its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He thought Cambridge better suited to the new almanac office, because it was the site of Harvard University, whose faculty included the nation’s leading mathematician, Benjamin Peirce. The first task of the Nautical Almanac Office was to survey astronomical data and calculate positions of celestial bodies important for navigational purposes. Davis and Peirce developed a team that worked meticulously to carry out the readings and calculations by hand. Peirce relied heavily on European practices and methods. The constant motion of the sun, moon, and planets made it difficult to keep pace with the task, and the project proved to be an enormous undertaking. The first volume of the almanac was published in 1852, with the ephemeris projected for 1855. From 1855 to 1915, the almanac was divided into two parts. The first part was also reprinted as The American Nautical Almanac and included the ephemeris for the Greenwich meridian of the sun, moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Mercury, Uranus, and Neptune were added in 1882. The second part was an ephemeris adjusted to the meridian of Washington, D.C. It also included information on eclipses, occultations, and other celestial events. In 1866 the Nautical Almanac Office was moved from Cambridge to Washington, D.C., and in 1893 it was moved within the city to its current home at the Naval Observatory. The early decades of the twentieth century brought significant changes and improvements to the almanac. The Paris Convention in 1911 yielded minor technical and organizational changes that made the almanac easier for navigators to use. In 1916, the United States extracted sections of The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac that were more geared to marine navi-

gation and published them separately as the U.S. Nautical Almanac. Tables of the rising and setting of the sun and moon were added to the main publication in 1919. New stars and the planet Pluto were added in 1950. Data revolving around the Washington, D.C., meridian was dropped from subsequent volumes in 1951 because of limited utility. Unification of the British and American ephemerides was agreed on in 1954 and accomplished in the 1960 volume. Despite the invention of the global positioning system (GPS) based on time and location data gathered by satellites, the nautical almanac remains the most accurate and reliable source for navigators today. Alicia S. Long

Sources Sadler, D.H. Man Is Not Lost: A Record of Two Hundred Years of Astronomical Navigation with the Nautical Almanac 1767–1967. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1968. Seidelmann, P.K. “The Ephemerides: Past, Present and Future.” In Proceedings of the 81st Symposium of the International Astronomical Union: Dynamics of the Solar System, ed. Raynor L. Duncombe. Hingham, MA: D. Reidel, 1979.

AU R O R A B O R E A L I S Latin for “northern dawn,” aurora borealis is the scientific name for the “northern lights,” a colorful, luminous spectacle of the upper atmosphere seen in the night skies of northern and, occasionally, middle latitudes. The corresponding phenomenon in the southern hemisphere is known as the aurora australis. Aurorae can be motionless or active, and may appear in various forms, such as homogenous or rayed arcs, bands, curtains, and patches. Prominent colors include yellowish-green, red, and white, as well as bluish-violet on occasion. The northern lights have long impressed observers, but scientific understanding was elusive until relatively recently. In the fourth century B.C.E., the Greek philosopher Aristotle classified aurorae as meteorological phenomena. Similar misperceptions persisted for millennia. In the early seventeenth century, for example, the French philosopher René Descartes suggested

Section 6: Balloons and Ballooning 419 that aurorae are reflections of sunlight from ice crystals in the atmosphere. Another idea, championed by Benjamin Franklin more than a century later, was that they are electrical discharges within Earth’s atmosphere, analogous to lightning. In 1733, French theorist Jean-Jacques de Mairan presciently suggested a direct correlation between auroral and sunspot frequencies. About a decade later, the Swedish physicist Anders Celsius and his associate Olof Hiorter noted apparent connections between auroral displays and magnetic disturbances. In 1859, the English astronomer Richard Carrington discovered a massive solar flare while sketching sunspots. Telegraph communications were subsequently disrupted worldwide, and aurorae were seen as far away as the tropics. In 1867, Swedish physicist Anders Ångström demonstrated with spectral analysis that aurorae consist of luminous gases, not water vapor or ice particles. And, in 1860, Yale University Professor Elias Loomis mapped the geographic frequency of auroral sightings; his work was followed by German physicist Hermann Fritz’s improved map of 1881. By the early twentieth century, strong evidence had accumulated that aurorae are electromagnetic phenomena with solar origins. Several Norwegian researchers made fundamental contributions to this evidence. These included the innovative laboratory experiments of physicist Kristian Birkeland, the theoretical and photographic programs of mathematician Carl Størmer (who accurately triangulated auroral heights), and the spectroscopic work of physicist Lars Vegard. The arrival of the Space Age during the late 1950s dramatically enhanced empirical capabilities. For the first time, outer space could be studied directly with satellite instruments, and aurorae could be photographed from above. The current model of the aurora begins with charged particles from the solar wind that are trapped by Earth’s magnetic field and deposited in a comet-shaped region called the magnetosphere. This region periodically becomes overloaded, particularly following violent solar events such as flares. Consequently, energetic particles are accelerated along magnetic lines of force into Earth’s high atmosphere surrounding the geomagnetic poles. There, the particles collide with and excite

atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen, releasing light as a byproduct, and thus creating two prominent auroral ovals. When solar activity is high, these ovals can expand by thousands of kilometers, bringing the visual effects of aurorae to much lower latitudes. Matthew C. Aberman

Sources Bone, Neil. The Aurora: Sun-Earth Interactions. 2nd ed. New York: Praxis, 1996. Brekke, Asgeir, and Alv Egeland. The Northern Light: From Mythology to Space Research. New York: Springer Verlag, 1983.

B A L LO O N S

AND

B A L LO O N I N G

Although the theory of hot-air ballooning was developed in the seventeenth century, it was not put to use until the 1783 test flights by the Montgolfier brothers in France. One of these experiments saw the ascension of Jean-Francois Piltré de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes in what is recognized as the first human flight in a hot-air balloon. Several Americans, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, witnessed these flights. Hot-air ballooning arrived in the United States the following year. A tethered balloon belonging to Peter Carnes succeeded in taking a teenager aloft in Baltimore on June 24, 1784. Carnes had independently solved most of the problems associated with hot-air ballooning without access to information about the French designs. An accident in Philadelphia prompted Carnes to retire from ballooning, however. It was not until January 1793 that an untethered manned balloon flight took place in America, when Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard traveled from Philadelphia to Gloucester County, New Jersey. Throughout the nineteenth century, ballooning became a major tool of entertainment and long-distance derring-do. Hydrogen soon replaced the hot air blown into the balloon envelope; as a result, hot-air ballooning became almost extinct. Hydrogen was dangerous, but it could be sealed reasonably well inside a waterproof and airtight envelope. Heating up a balloon with

420 Section 6: Balloons and Ballooning an open flame, on the other hand, risked setting the whole contraption on fire. Hydrogen ballooning found favor with scientists, especially in weather observation. Already in the late eighteenth century, several aeronauts wrote of the need to study wind speed as a way of finding the means to better control balloon navigation. By 1887, the National Weather Bureau balloonists had reached 15,000 feet (though breathing apparatus is usually necessary above 10,000 feet). The alternative to high-altitude balloon flights was to launch a series of kites or to release unmanned weather balloons. This, however, required the development of proper tools such as meteorographs that could be recovered later. These sounding balloons, as they became known, helped establish upper-atmosphere air maps, though such charts did not become reliable until World War II. Through the work of A. Lawrence Rotch at the Blue Hill Observatory in Massachusetts and others, the testing of early theories concerning the stratosphere was undertaken in 1909 using sounding balloons. In 1927, U.S. Army aeronaut William Gray reached 42,000 feet, though he was killed in the process. During the 1930s, Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard built a pressurized cabin that allowed an ascent to over 70,000 feet. U.S. Army aeronauts Albert Stevens and Orvil Anderson soon bested the record. In 1935, Explorer II, a helium-filled balloon with a pressurized cabin reached 72,395 feet, and its crew sent radio broadcasts. In recent decades, high-altitude sounding balloons, which reach over 45,000 feet, have been launched by NASA for purposes ranging from stratospheric studies to the testing of parachutes in rarefied air in preparation for a possible Mars landing. Beginning in the 1960s, hot-air ballooning was reborn as a recreational pastime thanks to the development of the controlled flame burner. Hotair balloons had given way to hydrogen in most balloon races before World War II, but the testing of new types of plastics after 1945 yielded promising results for a return to the use of hot air. In 1956, aeronaut Ed Yost built a series of balloons for the Office of Naval Research. Within five years, Yost had modified the shape of balloons from a sphere into the now-standard lightbulb design as a way to compensate for the accumulation of hot air in the upper half. This, com-

bined with the installation of a “rip panel”—a device allowing quick deflation for rapid descent (originally conceived in 1859 by aeronaut John Wise)—helped ensure the rapid development of modern hot-air ballooning as a recreational pursuit. Guillaume de Syon

Sources Baldwin, Munson. With Brass and Gas: An Illustrated and Embellished Chronicle of Ballooning in Mid-Nineteenth Century America. Boston: Beacon, 1967. Crouch, Tom D. The Eagle Aloft: Two Centuries of the Balloon in America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1983.

B AT H Y S P H E R E Efforts at deepwater exploration had been made in a “diving bell” as early as 1535, but it was not until English engineer John Smeaton’s attempts in 1778 that sound engineering went into such devices. The French explorer and photographer Ernest Bazin in 1865 and the American sea captain Charles Williamson in 1913 attempted use of spherically shaped divers. A fully self-contained, tethered, deep-diving device was first adopted by American William Beebe, inventor of the bathysphere, in the 1930s. Although Beebe credited President Theodore Roosevelt with suggesting to him that such a device be created, it was a young New England engineer and naturalist, Otis Barton, who enticed Beebe to have one made. In 1929, the successful sphere was built for Beebe and Barton by the Watson-Stillman Company in Roselle, New Jersey. The first casting was too heavy to be practicable, so the sphere was melted down and made into a smaller and thinner version. The second, successful sphere was made of steel one and one-half inches thick; it weighed 5,000 pounds empty on land and just under a ton when submerged. The exterior diameter measured four feet, nine inches, and the sphere was entered through a round viewing port with a door only fourteen inches in diameter. The door alone weighed 400 pounds; it was set in place with a winch and sealed with ten large bolts. The sphere had wooden skids on the bottom, a steel loop at the top for cable attachment, and

Section 6: Bathysphere 421

Naturalist Charles Beebe (center) and members of his research team stand beside the bathysphere in which he made his first successful deep-sea dives, off the coast of Bermuda in the early 1930s. The vessel was lowered from a ship by heavy cables. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

three small viewing ports in addition to the door window. Electric and phone lines entered a sometimes questionably sealed aperture at the top, and oxygen was supplied by small tanks inside. Exhaled carbon dioxide was absorbed into pans of soda lime, and moisture into calcium chloride. Heat was provided by a 250 watt lamp. The first of fifteen dives in 1930 were made off Bermuda and nearby Nonsuch Island to a depth of 2,000 feet in tests and to a maximum 1,426 feet on the manned dives. Several unmanned test dives included such mishaps as leaks, a cable pile-up in the chamber’s interior, and cracks in the fused-quartz windowpanes. Beebe and Barton began the era of manned deep-sea exploration on June 6, 1930, in the tiny space of their bathysphere with only thin cushions to sit on and legs entangled. On that first dive, they watched the water turn from green to

blue at about 300 feet, and from blue to black after 700 hundred feet. The door had begun to leak at 300 feet, and an electric switch failed after that. With these worries, the dive was halted at 800 feet. On the twentieth dive, their discoveries of deep-sea life were broadcast over radio to a rapt audience in America. The bathysphere descended to 2,200 feet—the deepest yet—before rough seas forced an end to the dive. Beebe and Barton continued to set records in later dives. Donald J. McGraw

Sources Beebe, William. Half Mile Down. Chicago: Cadmus, 1934. Berra, Tim N. William Beebe: An Annotated Bibliography. Hamden, CT: Archon, 1977. Welker, Robert Henry. Natural Man: The Life of William Beebe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975.

422 Section 6: Bentley, Wilson Alwyn

B E N T L E Y, W I L S O N A LW Y N (1865–1931) Wilson Alwyn Bentley was an American farmer and amateur scientist known for his study and photographs of snow crystals. Born on February 9, 1865, on a farm in rural Jericho, Vermont, he was educated at home by his mother, a former schoolteacher, until the age of fourteen. As a teenager, Bentley developed an interest in microscopy, and he began studying the microcosmic world of nature through the lens of his mother’s microscope. Of particular interest to him were snow crystals, more commonly known as snowflakes and typically made up of an aggregation of many crystals. Initially, Bentley made sketches of the snow crystals he observed. Later, after acquiring a new microscope and a bellows camera, he began experimenting with taking photographs through the microscope. On January 15, 1885, at the age of nineteen, Bentley created the first successful photomicrograph of snow crystals. Over the next thirteen years, he created more than 400 photomicrographs of crystals he collected during snowstorms. He worked outdoors and developed a technique in which he moved quickly to avoid melting the crystals. Bentley’s work went largely unnoticed outside his local community, where he was often misunderstood and even ridiculed. But, in 1898, he published his first of many articles in Popular Scientific Monthly. His work also appeared in National Geographic, Popular Mechanics, the New York Times Magazine, Life, and other popular publications. In Monthly Weather Review, a science journal published by the U.S. Weather Bureau, he detailed hypotheses of snow crystal formation, relating it to temperature and storm circulation. During the summer, Bentley turned his attention to raindrops and dew formation. Ahead of his time, he was one of the first people to make detailed studies of raindrops, including their size, formation, and relationship to lightning in thunderstorms. He was also an avid observer of the sky and took detailed observations of local weather conditions three times a day, as well as appearances of the aurora borealis.

Yet it was for his detailed and striking photographs of snow crystals that Bentley was best known. By 1920, he had developed a reputation as “the Snowflake Man” and “Snowflake Bentley.” That year, he was elected a fellow of the newly founded American Meteorological Society (AMS), and, in 1924, he received the first research grant ever awarded by the AMS. As demand for reproductions of his photomicrographs grew, he worked under the direction of William J. Humphreys of the U.S. Weather Bureau and spent several years organizing what had grown to nearly 4,000 images, mostly of snow crystals. More than 2,400 images were published in Snow Crystals in 1931. Although he would live to see his life’s labor receive the recognition it deserved, he would not have long to savor it. Wilson Bentley died from pneumonia on December 23, 1931, at the age of sixty-six, after walking home in a snowstorm. Sean Potter

Sources Bentley, Wilson A., and W.J. Humphreys. Snow Crystals. 1931. Reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover, 1962. Blanchard, Duncan C. The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson Bentley. Blacksburg, VA: McDonald and Woodward, 1998.

C L I M AT O LO G Y Climatology is the scientific study of climate. The field is closely related to, but differs from, meteorology in that it is concerned with longterm averages of the physical properties that make up Earth’s atmosphere rather than the study and prediction of individual atmospheric phenomena or day-to-day weather. Traditionally, climatology has involved the descriptive analysis of observed meteorological variables at particular geographic locations over specific time periods. In this sense, climatology may also refer to the description of a location’s climate. The climatology of a particular location might include the average and extreme values of temperature, precipitation, and other variables that make up that location’s observational weather records. Such quantitative description

Section 6: Climatology 423 of a location’s climate is referred to as climatography. The first comprehensive description of American climate was Climatology of the United States and of the Temperate Latitudes of the North American Continent (1857), by Lorin Blodget. The climate of a particular location is often described using climate normals. In terms of climatology, a “normal” is defined as a thirty-year average of any meteorological variable. Climate normals are computed on both a daily and monthly basis for several thousand locations across the United States. The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) in Asheville, North Carolina, is the nation’s official keeper of weather and climate records and has the responsibility of updating the official climate normals every ten years. The earliest identified North American climate records were the weather observations taken in 1644–1645 by Reverend John Companius Holm near present-day Wilmington, Delaware. Although various observation networks were established during the nineteenth century—including those of the U.S. Army and the Smithsonian Institution—official climate services began in 1890 with the creation of the U.S. Weather Bureau (predecessor to the National Weather Service), whose mandate from Congress was “to establish and record the climatic conditions of the United States.” This resulted in the organization of a network of voluntary weather observers across the country. The program, known today as the National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program (COOP), consists of more than 11,000 observers and makes up the bulk of America’s climate data. As understanding of Earth’s climate system developed during the twentieth century, climatology began to evolve from being strictly descriptive in nature to a more applied science. As its name implies, applied climatology deals with the use of climate data and information in various fields such as agriculture, aviation, other forms of transportation, energy, industry, and urban planning. This has led to the development of various subfields, including agricultural climatology, aviation climatology, bioclimatology, industrial climatology, and urban climatology. One pioneer of both bioclimatology and urban climatology was Helmut Landsberg, who became director of the Weather Bureau’s newly

established Office of Climatology in 1954. He worked to consolidate and modernize climatological services in the United States through, among other projects, the creation of a state climatologist program. Typically housed at universities, state climatologists provide climate data and services to a variety of users within their states, while conducting applied research on the effects of climate on such areas as agriculture, health, and tourism. Although the state climatologist program was officially dropped from the federal budget in 1973, it continues today as part of a three-tiered program of climate services (along with six regional climate centers and NCDC) that resulted from the National Climate Program Act, passed by Congress in 1987. Other branches of climatology include physical climatology, which seeks to explain the processes that influence climate, and dynamic climatology (also called climate dynamics), which relates the physical laws and circulation of the atmosphere to the evolution and changes in climate on a global scale, especially over long time periods. Synoptic climatology looks at how large-scale weather patterns, such as storm systems, influence local and regional climates. This can be done by classifying different types of synoptic weather patterns that affect a location or region and analyzing the various weather conditions associated with them. Climate variability and change is an area of research that deals with detecting, understanding, and predicting changes and variations in Earth’s climate system, on scales from seasons to millennia. Studying the influence of El Niño and La Niña (referring to changes in water temperature in the Pacific Ocean leading to weather anomalies) on local and regional climates is an example of such research, as is the study of natural climate variability and climate change that results from human activities. Sean Potter

Sources Aguado, Edward, and James E. Burt. Understanding Weather and Climate. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. Henderson-Sellers, Ann, and Peter J. Robinson. Contemporary Climatology. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. National Climatic Data Center. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov.

424 Section 6: Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S.

COAST AND GEODETIC S U R V E Y, U.S. The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey (USCGS) was the forerunner of the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) and the Office of Coast Survey (OCS), which are charged with surveying the nation’s coastline, important waterways, and areas of transportation using oceanographic and geophysical data. Geodetic and coastal surveying involves precise methods of determining the positions of geographic points and the contours and dimensions of Earth. The functions of the NGS and OCS include providing nautical charts to mariners, studying earthquakes, and conducting aerial photography, all of which contribute to a better understanding of America’s coasts. The USCGS was one of the earliest agencies of the federal government, having been established as the Coast Survey in 1807. Given the magnitude of the tasks belonging to the survey, the bureau was enlarged in 1878 and renamed the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. After a number of reorganizations and name changes, the USCGS no longer exists. Its duties are now carried out within the National Ocean Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Coastal surveying became an interest of the United States with the emergence of the fishing industry. Lack of adequate charts for fishing fleets led to a large number of shipwrecks in and around U.S. harbors. President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin recognized a need for better coastal surveying and the necessity of government involvement. On February 10, 1807, the Coast Survey was created as an office of the Treasury Department. Ferdinand Hassler, a respected Swiss geodesist, was selected as superintendent of the new bureau. Hassler was eccentric, strong in his convictions, and either well liked or hated. He was chosen over a number of other accomplished candidates because of his previous survey work in Switzerland, his profound scientific approach, and his strong dedication and perfectionism. Lack of supplies and funds, however, prevented much productivity for the first four years

of the survey’s existence. In 1811, Hassler was able to travel to Europe to purchase equipment necessary for surveying tasks, such as the theodolite, used to precisely measure horizontal and vertical angles for triangulation, a survey technique that uses trigonometry and points of locale connected by triangles in order to determine distances and locations of geologic features. The Coast Survey went through several periods of reorganization. From 1818 to 1832, it was under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Navy, and Hassler and all civilian workers were replaced by navy personnel. In July 1832, however, because of dissatisfaction with the navy’s handling of the survey, the bureau was reinstated in the Treasury Department, and Hassler returned as superintendent. An overburdened Treasury Department forced the Coast Survey to be returned to the navy again in 1834, but this time retaining Hassler and the civilian employees. Hassler trained his workforce in astronomical and geodetic observation as well as hydrographic components such as the study of tides and currents. Copper plates were used for engraving the first charts, and black and white paper impressions were pressed by hand. The first charts were produced in 1834, covering the coastal seas of Long Island, New York, and Connecticut. The production of the survey’s first charts occurred simultaneously with the commencement of hydrographic surveys. Two schooners, the Jersey and Experiment, began surveying New York harbor and the coast of Long Island, providing information crucial to navigation. They were able to discover submerged ledges that were dangerous for ships entering and leaving New York harbor. Hydrographic soundings were taken with a lead line by aligning lines of position with the shoreline, and using celestial navigation when land was not visible. Benjamin Franklin’s great-grandson, Alexander Dallas Bache, took over as superintendent of the Coast Survey in December 1843, following Hassler’s death. Bache was qualified for the position based on his extensive scientific training, ranging from meteorology to magnetism. He had established and served as the first president of the National Academy of Sciences and also as

Section 6: Continental Drift 425 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an associate of the Smithsonian Institution. The Coast Survey became the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878. Its activities had expanded with U.S. acquisitions of land stretching to the Pacific coast and including Alaska; they eventually extended to the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. Through the course of the twentieth century, the survey increased its operations and efficiency with technological advancements. Copper printing plates were replaced by lithographic stones in 1905; more efficient aluminum plates were introduced in 1916. The aluminum plates could print four times the number of copies that the original copper plates had been able to produce. Other advances included sounding machines, wire cleaning attachments, and most significantly, a wire drag to replace the earlier crude pipesweeps. More powerful steamer ships were added to the survey fleet, further increasing the efficiency of operations. Triangulation instruments were improved with smaller theodolites and more accurate equipment, eventually leading to echo sounding and radio-acoustic practices. The development of the Division of Photogrammetry within the survey in 1945 led to a more continuous and systematic approach to aerial mapping, which was first introduced to the survey in the 1890s. Today, the duties of the USCGS are divided between the NGS and OCS. The National Geodetic Survey manages a coordinate system called the National Spatial Reference System, which is important in determining exact positions, distances, gravitational forces, and shoreline properties for U.S. locales. These data have a variety of scientific and engineering applications, such as coastal charting and mapping, civil engineering, structural planning, and transportation. The Office of Coast Survey is responsible for surveying U.S. coastal waters and publishing and distributing nautical charts that result from these hydrographic surveys. In addition, they have a development laboratory that seeks new innovations and techniques to improve the process of coastal surveying. Alicia S. Long

Sources Cary, Edward R. Geodetic Surveying. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1916. Wraight, A. Joseph, and Elliot B. Roberts. The Coast and Geodetic Survey 1807–1957: 150 Years of History. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1957.

C O N T I N E N TA L D R I F T The continental drift theory—which holds that the major land masses have been drifting apart across Earth’s surface for millions of years—is not a new one. The idea initially gained momentum from the observations of the close match between the Atlantic coasts of Africa and South America. In 1915, Alfred Wegener theorized continental displacement according to which large continental plates move freely across oceanic crust. Wegener argued against the prevailing theory that land bridges explain the commonality of species around the world. He buttressed his theory of joined continents moving apart with comprehensive evidence about ancient climates, fossils, and the compatibility of geological features on both sides of the Atlantic. This commonality, he theorized, is because Earth’s landmasses were once part of a supercontinent called Pangaea, meaning “All Earth.” According to this theory, Pangaea began to break apart in the early Jurassic Period along a fracture known as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, creating two large landmasses—Laurasia to the north and Gondwanaland to the south. The breakup of the supercontinent was said to be complete by the time of the early Cretaceous Period, with the Atlantic-bordering continents continuing to drift apart. Skeptics doubted that terrestrial forces were sufficient to break up whole continents and then push the pieces across Earth’s surface. Evidence of continental drift was later obtained through the study of the geomagnetic field. Magnetometers revealed magnetic inclinations that changed with the age of rocks. Measurements taken in England during the 1950s suggested that the area was once much farther south. Similarly, India was once in the southern hemisphere and crossed the equator

426 Section 6: Continental Drift to become part of Asia. Results obtained in North America showed that the readings were not due to polar wandering but were a result of continental movement. By 1960, Henry Hammond Hess was able to provide the foundation for the scientific development of plate tectonics based on his theory of seafloor spreading. His theory posited the upswelling of mantle material that spread from oceanic ridges, moving the ocean floor and its associated continent away from the ridges in both directions. Convection currents, originating from the heat generated deep within Earth’s mantle, are the motive force propelling Earth’s tectonic plates. Heat transferred from the lower mantle to the upper mantle causes convective currents to rise and travel underneath the plates. As heat energy is lost to the cooler landmass, the currents drop back into the mantle, completing a circular flow. It is this circular flow, originating over 400 miles beneath Earth’s surface, that creates continental drift. The drift of India pushing on Asia, for example, continues to build the Himalayas. The synthesis of continental drift and seafloor spreading evolved into the theory of plate tectonics developed in 1968 by W. Jason Morgan, a 2002 National Medal of Science honoree. Morgan argued that Earth’s movable plates, sixty miles thick, incorporate all aspects of the planet’s evolution and structure. These plates transport the ocean basins and the continents along with them, at roughly the speed a human fingernail grows. Continental drift has significant influence on Earth’s environment, climate, and natural selection of species. The changing number and shape of the continents have affected global temperatures, ocean currents, diversity of flora and fauna, and a number of other factors important to planetary life. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Erickson, Jon. Plate Tectonics: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Earth. New York: Checkmark, 2001. Moores, Eldridge, ed. Shaping the Earth: Tectonics of Continents and Oceans. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1990.

DANA, JAMES DWIGHT (1813–1895) The influential geologist and educator James Dana was born in Utica, New York, the oldest child of James Dana and Harriet Dwight. He graduated from Utica High School in 1830 and received a B.A. from Yale College in 1833. With few opportunities for a career in science, Dana in 1833 joined the U.S. Navy as a civilian instructor aboard the USS Delaware, bound for the Mediterranean Sea. He used the occasion to widen his interest in natural history, collecting insects and climbing Mount Vesuvius in Italy. His paper on that volcano in the American Journal of Science (1835) was his first publication. Upon Dana’s return to New Haven, Connecticut, his mentor, Benjamin Silliman, made him an assistant in the Yale chemistry laboratory. While in that position, Dana published System of Mineralogy (1837), which went through six editions during his life. In the summer of 1836, botanist Asa Gray persuaded Dana to join the U.S. Exploring Expedition as mineralogist and geologist. The following January, Dana received confirmation from the secretary of the navy. He was to be paid $500 a year. In 1838, Dana set sail on the Peacock, one of three ships in the expedition. At Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dana studied race relations, concluding that blacks in that country were superior to those in the United States and attributing this circumstance to the fluidity of political and social relations in Brazil. Once through the Strait of Magellan, Dana and the other members of the scientific corps sailed west, giving him the opportunity to chronicle cannibalism among the natives of Fiji and the formation of coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean. In July 1840, the Peacock ran aground and Dana made his way on foot to the Vincenna, another ship in the expedition. Aboard it, he rounded the Cape of Good Hope and returned to New York City on June 10, 1842. In the midst of the expedition, Benjamin Silliman in 1840 named Dana editor of the American Journal of Science. Dana’s ties to Silliman deepened in June 1844, when he married Silliman’s daughter Harietta. When Silliman retired in

Section 6: Dana, James Dwight 427 1849, Dana was named a professor of natural history at Yale, though he did not assume the position until 1855. Between 1846 and 1852, Dana published three volumes for the expedition: Zoophytes (1846), Geology (1849), and Crustacea (1852). The first and third were taxonomies dividing zoophytes and crustaceans respectively into genera and species. The second, along with Corals and Coral Islands (1872), announced his theory of the formation of corals. Dana agreed with Charles Darwin that corals form by subsidence—through this process corals progress from a fringing reef to a barrier reef to an atoll. Dana applied the theory of subsidence of the corals off the coast of Tahiti but asserted, in contrast to Darwin, that subsidence is not an ongoing process. He argued that some corals are not subject to it. Dana understood, unlike Darwin, that a volcano heating the ocean might prevent corals from forming. Reef-forming corals also cannot form in water below 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

Dana’s Geology, Manual of Geology (1862), and Textbook of Geology (1864) followed James Hutton and Charles Lyell in their uniformitarianism: gradual processes rather than sudden events have formed Earth. In these books, Dana advanced his theory that Earth, originally a mass of molten rock, cooled gradually but unevenly. The bottom of the ocean had been the hottest and so the last to solidify. As it cooled, the ocean floor contracted, an action that deepened it and thrust up the continents. Although a uniformitarian in geology, Dana was a catastrophist in biology. He believed that mass extinctions punctuated the history of life, extinguishing vast numbers of species. Dana’s catastrophism made sense of a fossil record in which new species had abruptly replaced extinct ones. In 1864, Yale recast Dana’s professorship to include meteorology and geology. By that time, overwork had plunged Dana into a nervous breakdown. He never fully recovered and was thereafter able to work only three or four hours at a stretch. A second illness followed in 1880 and a third in 1890. Perhaps because he had initially fallen ill in 1859, the year Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, Dana was slow to assimilate Darwin’s ideas. Dana accepted evolution only in 1874, although he never espoused the mechanism of natural selection. He preferred, as had Asa Gray, to reconcile Darwinism to theology. Toward the end of his life Dana published Characteristics of Volcanoes (1890), in which he disagreed with Christian Leopold von Buch that hot steam from Earth’s core had formed volcanoes by its upward thrust. Instead Dana asserted that volcanoes form from the solidification of lava at their apex. He went on to differentiate volcanoes that eject their lava with great force and those in which lava flows at a steady rate. Dana died in New Haven on April 14, 1895. Christopher Cumo

Sources The preeminent American geologist of his time, James Dwight Dana was known for his observations and theories on the formation of the continents and Earth’s crust. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–103928)

Gilman, Daniel C. The Life of James Dwight Dana: Scientific Explorer, Mineralogist, Geologist, Zoologist, Professor in Yale University. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1899. Hoffmeister, J. Edward. “James Dwight Dana’s Studies of Volcanoes and Coral Islands.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 82 (1940): 721–32.

428 Section 6: Dana, James Dwight Pirsson, Louis V. Biographical Memoir of James Dwight Dana, 1813–1895. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1919. Sanford, William F. “Dana and Darwinism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 26 (1965): 531–46.

D A R K D AY Perhaps the most interesting and alarming meteorological phenomena of eighteenth-century America was the day of darkness that befell most of New England on May 19, 1780. Fascinated scientists tried to explain it, while the credulous allowed their imaginations to run amuck. Jeremy Belknap and Ebenezer Hazard, two polymaths who corresponded about remarkable phenomena in the 1780s, had much to say about the Dark Day. Belknap was the first to write Hazard about “the darkness which overspread almost the whole of New England on the 19th of May. As I am no theorist, I shall not trouble you with any conjectures, but shall rather give you a detail of such facts as either fell under my own observation or are creditably evidenced by others.” It was a typical sunny spring day until noon, when the darkness began setting in. By early afternoon, candles were lit, and they were kept burning for the remainder of the day. As Belknap wrote, “It was not the darkness of a thunder-cloud, but a vapour like the smoke of a malt-house or a coal-kiln, and there was a strong smell of smoke the whole day, as there had been for some days before.” There had been little recent rain, and it was the time of year “for burning the woods to plant corn on the new lands.” The air had been smoky in recent days, it was often difficult to see, and sunlight disappeared “half an hour before setting.” Several days before the event, Belknap recalled, “every part of our house was full of smoke, as well as all the surrounding air, and I examined to see if it proceeded from our own fire, but was satisfied it was the same vapour that the air was full of.” As Belknap wrote to Hazard, “Colonel Hazzen, of the Continental troops, was riding in the woods somewhere about Pennicook, and in the low grounds the vapour was so thick that it was difficult to fetch his breath.” Also, “small birds, such as sparrows and yellow-birds, were

found dead in divers places; and some flew into the houses, very probably to avoid the suffocating vapour.” As for the extent, Belknap wrote acquaintances to discover how far the smoke spread. “Shall I now entertain you with the whims and apprehensions of mankind upon this unusual appearance?” he wrote to Hazard. “It is not surprizing that the vulgar should turn it all into prodigy and miracle; but what would you think of men of sense, and of a liberal education,” who said, as did one local clergyman, “that it was the fulfilling of Joel’s prophecy of a ‘pillar of smoke’ ” as found in the Old Testament? “Another wondered at me for not placing this phenomenon in the same rank with [the ancient historian] Josephus’s signs of the destruction of Jerusalem.” One person drew from it inspiration to explain the mysteries of the book of Revelation. “Another . . . called his congregation together during the darkness, and prayed that the sun might shine again.” Others with fewer religious proclivities thought the phenomenon was the effect of Earth passing through the tail of a comet. Belknap concluded that the cause of the darkness was simply smoke. “How many more extravagant conceptions have been formed by men, whose minds one would think had been enlarged by reason and philosophy, I know not. Doubtless you will hear enough on your return to make you stand amazed at the power which fear and superstition have over the minds of men.” Belknap was particularly interested in what Hazard could find out from people in Philadelphia, New York, and southern New England. Hazard, who served as surveyor of post roads for the United States (and was constantly on the road), wrote on June 27: “I can add but very little to your present stock of ideas about the darkness, &c., of the 19th May, for as it was not so remarkable at Philadelphia, but little attention was paid to it.” Hazard did, however, pick up some tidbits on his journey north. “A lady at Middletown upper houses [in Connecticut] told me she was ironing on that day, and was very much mortified to find her clothes look so yellow.” It was sufficiently dark in Massachusetts for “our friends . . . to dine by candle-light, and the night was ‘darkness visible.’ Some people who were going home from a public meeting could hardly

Section 6: Drake, Edwin L. 429 get their horses to stir. From this circumstance it appears as if every thing like light had been absolutely banished.” In Hartford, Connecticut, the darkness interrupted debate in the House of Representatives. The legislators trembled and bent their knees in prayer as they awaited fulfillment of the day of judgment and Christ’s return. Abraham Davenport, a no-nonsense patriot, admonished the legislators to get back to work: “I am against adjournment. The day of Judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty.” Manasseh Cutler, who kept a meteorological journal, wrote that he “could not read a word in large print close to the window.” He noted that the afternoon was as dark as night, and that the smell was that of “burning turf.” Modern meteorologists believe that the darkness was caused by a great quantity of ash, produced by numerous fires burning in New England, combined with water vapor such as a fog. Other famous dark days have occurred in North America, such as the darkness of September 1881, which covered south central Canada and the north central and northeastern United States, and “The Great Smoke Pall” of western Canada in 1950. None, however, have equaled New England’s Dark Day.

well was to create an “oil rush” in western Pennsylvania that led to the rapid development of the oil industry in the United States. Several seeps along Oil Creek had been used by the Native Americans in the region and then by farmers. One farmer created a retention pond in which he annually captured twenty to thirty barrels, most of which he sold commercially for use in oil lamps and as a lubricant. In 1853, Joel D. Angier signed the first commercial lease of an oil seep in the United States, hoping to exploit the largest one along Oil Creek near a sawmill, but he could not gather enough oil to make the operation commercially profitable. The price of leases on the seeps rose dramatically nevertheless, as the potential for commercial exploitation generated competitive interest. George H. Bissell of New York purchased 100 acres of land deemed worthless, because it was too oily to farm but did not have large enough seeps to make it commercially desirable. Bissell

Russell Lawson

Sources Belknap Papers. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Ser. 5, vol. 2. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1877. Ludlum, David. “New England’s Dark Day: 19 May 1780.” Weatherwise, June 1972.

D R A K E , E D W I N L. (1819–1880) On August 27, 1859, Edwin Drake began pumping oil in commercial quantities from a well at Oil Creek, near Titusville in northwestern Pennsylvania. Oil had been gathered from seepages for several millennia, and wells in other parts of the world are said to have been the first to pump oil to the surface. But the achievement of Drake’s

Edwin L. Drake (right) discusses operations with an engineer at his oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania—the birthplace of the U.S. petroleum industry. Drake, itinerant and untrained, struck oil some 70 feet (21 meters) below ground in August 1859. (Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, Drake Well Museum, Titusville, PA)

430 Section 6: Drake, Edwin L. hired Benjamin Silliman, Jr., to analyze the quality and quantity of oil potentially available on the site, and Silliman’s report became the main selling tool for attracting investors to a project to extract the oil. This first oil company in America would be known, in turn, as the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company of New York, the Connecticut Oil Company, and finally the Seneca Oil Company of Connecticut. Edwin Drake became involved with the company by happenstance. Out of work, he was staying at the same hotel as some of the company’s directors, and they hired him to do an initial on-site report of the modest beginnings of their investment. Born on March 29, 1819, in Greene County, New York, Drake had been employed previously as a clerk, an express agent, and a railway conductor. Despite his lack of any relevant experience in geology, engineering, or mining, the company promoted Drake to supervise and improve its operations at the Titusville site. He first tried to increase the volume of oil at some seeps and then the number of seeps, but the volume of oil increased only marginally. Then, he tried to deep-mine the oil, but he could not keep the mines from being inundated by water. He finally hit on the idea of drilling a well. The well had to pass through an initial sixteen-foot layer of gravel that kept caving into the bored hole. Drake invented the drive pipe, or conductor, without which modern drilling operations would not have become possible. Demonstrating a lack of commercial foresight that would dog him throughout his life, Drake did not bother to patent his invention. What Drake lacked in business sense, he more than made up for with determination. He continued to drill down through the bedrock at an agonizingly slow rate until the company’s resources were exhausted, until he had sunk all of his own money into the project, and until he had convinced every willing investor in the Titusville area that he was on the verge of finding the underground reservoir of oil that fed the seeps. With considerable justification, skeptics took to calling the well “Drake’s Folly.” At a depth of 69.5 feet, the drillers found the reservoir. In contrast to popular conceptions of the event, the oil did not gush from the well but rose slowly and undramatically to the surface. A

simple hand pump was used to increase the flow. The oil was barreled for shipment to refiners, and the well’s output of ten to twenty barrels a day soon overtaxed the capacity of the coopers in the area. As production from the first well declined, Drake drilled two more wells relatively near to the first; by 1870, all three had been shut down. In 1876, the original well was disassembled and shipped to Philadelphia, where it was reconstructed as an exhibit at the Centennial Exhibition. Afterward, it was taken apart and sold as scrap. Drake never became wealthy from his stake in the Seneca Oil Company, and he experienced several financial setbacks before his death. By the time of his passing in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on November 8, 1880, he had slipped into anonymity. It was not until 1902 that oil executives disinterred Drake’s remains and reburied them under a sizable monument to his achievement in Titusville. Martin Kich

Sources Dickey, P.A. “The First Oil Well: Oil Industry Centennial.” Journal of Petroleum Technology 9 (January 1959): 14–25. Giddens, Paul Henry. The Birth of the Oil Industry. New York: Macmillan, 1938. Pees, S.T., and A.W. Stewart. “The Setting in Oil Creek Valley, Pa., and the Chronological Progress of the Drake Well Museum, an Important Repository of Oil Industry History.” Northeastern Geology and Environmental Sciences 17:3 (1995): 282–94.

EARTHQUAKES

AND

S E I S M O LO G Y

Earthquakes are a violent natural phenomenon caused by large geologic plates that move on Earth’s surface. The movement of these tectonic plates causes a release of stored energy, which in turn creates seismic waves that travel great distances. These events, which have occurred since the formation of the planet over 4 billion years ago, range from momentary vibrations to minutes of massive destruction. Below the lithosphere—seven large and several smaller geologic plates—is a molten, viscous layer called the asthenosphere. The collisions and breaks of the plates results in a series of earth-

Section 6: Earthquakes and Seismology 431 quakes of varying intensity—the scientific study of which is called seismology (from the Greek word seismos). In addition to the mechanics, modes, locations, and prediction of earthquakes, seismologists study associated phenomena and direct effects. For example, underwater earthquakes can generate massive tidal waves called tsunamis. Earthquakes cause different types of seismic waves, on land as well as water, that may travel great distances across Earth’s surface. The two major categories are body waves, which are high in frequency and leave the site of an earthquake first, and surface waves, which are lower in frequency and travel more slowly through the geologic crust. In 1880, John Milne, a professor of geology at the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo, invented the first device to measure the intensity of earthquakes. His horizontal pendulum seismograph measured the relative motion between a frame and a suspended object. In 1935, seismologist Charles Richter at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena devised a scale for quantifying the relative strength of an earthquake. His logarithmic formula is based on the amplitude of seismic waves emitted by an earthquake. A tremor that causes 0.001 millimeter of ground motion at a distance of 100 kilometers (60 miles) is assigned a magnitude of 3, which is barely felt. Every tenfold increase in ground motion corresponds to an increment of 1 in the Richter scale. Although there is no theoretical limit, an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale would be massive and likely to cause major, widespread damage.

Theor y and Study The complex and largely unpredictable dynamics of plate tectonics determine the causes, frequency, location, and intensity of earthquakes. Harry Hess, a professor of geology at Princeton University in New Jersey, theorized in 1960 that Earth’s crust moves laterally away from the underwater ridges of active volcanoes—a movement that can cause earthquakes. Robert Dietz, a professor of geology at Arizona State University, expanded on this idea, pointing out that the seafloor is spreading in some places and being destroyed in others. Dietz

argued that earthquakes result when volcanoes create, while plate collisions destroy, the floor of the sea. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) was established by Congress in 1879 to manage lands, develop maps, and perform research on a range of geological issues, including earthquakes. Today, the agency includes the Earthquake Hazards Program, which conducts scientific research, runs an educational awareness program, and tracks seismic events throughout the world. Each event, from the slightest tremor to the strongest quake, is recorded, measured, and indicated on a map with its respective intensity.

Major U.S. Events The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. Measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, with its epicenter 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) offshore, the quake struck early in the morning of April 18. Seismologists concluded that the cause was a massive rupture between the Pacific plate and North American plate in a location called the San Andreas Fault, running almost 300 miles (480 kilometers) in length, north to south. In places, researchers measured a 20-foot (6-meter) displacement along the fault line. At least 3,000 people died in the earthquake and resulting fires. The earthquake destroyed tens of thousands of homes and businesses, damaged much of the city’s infrastructure (such as water and sewer lines), and left almost 300,000 people homeless. The Great Alaska earthquake of March 27, 1964—caused by a collision of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates—was the most powerful ever recorded in the United States and the third most powerful ever measured on a seismograph. The epicenter of the quake, which measured 9.2 on the Richter scale, was about 100 miles (160 kilometers) east of Anchorage. The event, which lasted more than four minutes, killed 131 people, created a series of tidal waves more than 70 feet (21 meters) high, and caused massive land and property damage in an area measuring over 100,000 square miles (9,300 square meters). The port town of Valdez on Prince William Sound was completely destroyed

432 Section 6: Earthquakes and Seismology by a combination of seismic damage, tsunamis, and fires. More than 10,000 aftershocks were associated with the quake.

Ear thquake Storms Earthquakes often occur in clusters; one major event can be followed by thousands of smaller ones. In 1992, as seismologist Ross Stein of the USGS monitored an earthquake in the town of Landers, California, another quake occurred roughly 50 miles (80 kilometers) away, followed by a series of smaller tremors. These events, Stein theorized, were part of an “earthquake storm,” created when a single impact causes a chain of collisions along the tectonic plates. Despite the unpredictability of seismic events, the scientific monitoring of an initial earthquake can help scientists in predicting subsequent threatening tremors. The USGS National Earthquake Information Center, based in Golden, Colorado, maintains the government’s central tracking system for the locations and magnitudes of earthquakes. During one week in March 2007, a total of 684 earthquakes were recorded in the United States (most measuring less than 3 on the Richter scale). A majority occur in California and Alaska along major fault lines. Recent efforts have focused on developing and implementing technology to predict earthquakes more reliably and farther in advance. Another focus has been on improving the designs of buildings to effectively withstand tremors. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has been placing buoys at strategic locations off the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts to provide warnings of impending tsunamis caused by seismic events. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Bolt, B.A. Inside the Earth. New York: Freeman, 1982. Bozorgnia, Yousef. Earthquake Engineering. Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 2004. Lay, Thorne. Modern Global Seismology. Burlington, VT: Academic Press, 1995. Milne, John. Seismology. London: Read Books, 2006. Udias, Augustin. Principles of Seismology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Yeats, R.S. Geology of Earthquakes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

E AT O N , A M O S (1776–1842) The early American geologist and botanist Amos Eaton was born on a farm in Columbia County, New York, on May 17, 1776, the eldest of ten children. After graduating from Williams College in 1799, he studied law and was admitted to the bar. In 1811, however, he was convicted of forgery while working as a land agent and was imprisoned in New York City, where he gave attention to his long-standing interest in natural science. A talented teacher, he imparted some of his enthusiasm for botany to John Torrey, the son of a prison official. Eaton turned to science full-time after Governor De Witt Clinton pardoned Eaton, upon the condition that he could no longer practice law. Following his release, Eaton studied for a time under Benjamin Silliman and Eli Ives at Yale, then lectured on natural history, first at Williams College, then to the public in surrounding towns, and for a year at Castleton Medical Academy. In 1817, he published a Manual of Botany for the Northern States. The father of twelve children, Eaton was married four times; among his children were three sons named after Linnaeus, Cuvier, and Humboldt. A turning point in Eaton’s life occurred in 1820, when he carried out a geological survey of New York’s Albany and Rensselaer counties, followed by a survey of the region in upstate New York to be crossed by the Erie Canal. His surveys made the first crude attempts to chart the stratigraphy needed to understand structural geology. Eaton’s geological surveys were sponsored by Steven Van Rensselaer, patroon of Rensselaerwyck, who also arranged for Eaton’s appointment as a senior professor at the Rensselaer School. At this school, forerunner of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Eaton transformed science education. In his curriculum, students no longer passively observed experiments and listened to lectures; rather, under the supervision of a professor, they performed experiments and researched assigned topics upon which they earned the opportunity to lecture to the class. Students also engaged in fieldwork; the

Section 6: Espy, James Pollard 433 first Rensselaer expedition, in 1826, was a geological tour during which faculty and students traveled the entire length of the Erie Canal. The students gave free science lectures to townspeople along the way, thus spreading awareness of the school and advancing their own skills at the same time. Eaton’s influence extended beyond the Rensselaer School. Many of his pedagogical innovations were reflected in the Troy Female Seminary, a nearby school managed by his friend Emma Willard, and he wrote widely used textbooks in botany, zoology, chemistry, and geology. Between 1817 and 1840, his Manual of Botany went through eight editions. Many of the graduates of Rensselaer and Troy Female Seminary became schoolteachers who encouraged science curriculums in the schools where they taught. Eaton’s own public lectures also promoted a wider interest in science, while his lobbying the state legislature helped to bring about the New York Natural History Survey from 1836 to 1842, an extensive tracing of the geological and natural land formations and resources of the state. Eaton died on May 10, 1842, in Troy, New York. Charles Boewe

Sources McAllister, Ethel M. Amos Eaton, Scientist and Educator. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1941. Rezneck, Samuel. Education for a Technological Society: A Sesquicentennial History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Troy, NY: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1968. Smallwood, W.M. “Amos Eaton, Naturalist.” New York History 18:2 (1937): 167–88.

E S P Y, J A M E S P O L L A R D (1785–1860) Known as the “Storm King” or “Storm Breeder” for his request to the U.S. government for funds to conduct rainmaking experiments (he was turned down), the meteorologist James Pollard Espy contributed significantly to the early understanding of thermodynamics, cloud formation, and movement of air within storms. Born on May 9, 1785, in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and raised in Kentucky and Ohio, Espy initially studied classical languages and law. In

1817, he moved to Philadelphia and began working at the Franklin Institute, where his interests and work shifted to meteorology. In 1834, while serving as chair of a joint committee of the American Philosophical Society at the Franklin Institute, Espy established a network of weather stations, which, by 1843, grew to 110 in number. In 1842, Espy unsuccessfully lobbied Congress for a national weather service. He was, however, appointed meteorologist for the U.S. government under the office of the U.S. Army surgeon general and, later, the U.S. Navy. (The first national weather service was formed in 1870 as part of the U.S. Army Signal Service, after petitioning by Increase A. Lapham, who had been one of Espy’s observers.) In 1835, Espy co-founded the Franklin Kite Club, whose members met weekly to conduct scientific kite-flying experiments. Espy was known among his peers as being steadfast and outspoken. In 1838, he made a formal request before Congress for funding to conduct rainmaking experiments that would involve setting a series of controlled wildfires in the western United States in the hope of spawning rain over the eastern portion of the country. Congress did not approve the request, not for logistical or scientific reasons but due to a lack of funds. Espy was one of the first to conduct scientific surveys of storm damage. In 1835, along with fellow meteorologist and rival theorist William Redfield, he surveyed the damage caused by a tornado that struck New Brunswick, New Jersey. Espy theorized that, based on the alignment of trees uprooted by the tornado, its winds must have spiraled inward. The differing views of Espy and Redfield on the nature of wind rotation in storms made them the focus of an ongoing public debate during the 1830s known as the “storm controversy.” While Redfield claimed that storm systems consisted of winds that rotate counterclockwise in a circular manner around the storm’s center, Espy argued that storms were driven by thermodynamics, acting like large chimneys with air rushing toward the center from all directions and then rising upward. While some aspects of Espy’s theory were flawed, others were correct, including his concept of convection: warm rising air cooling, condensing, and releasing latent heat to form clouds and promote storm development. Espy described

434 Section 6: Espy, James Pollard his theory in his seminal work The Philosophy of Storms, published in 1841. Later in the decade, Espy was instrumental in establishing a “Circular on Meteorology,” which proposed a plan to use the telegraph to warn of approaching storms. Espy died in Cincinnati, Ohio, on January 26, 1860. Sean Potter

Sources Cox, John D. Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin’s Kite to El Niño. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2002. Fleming, James R. Meteorology in America, 1800–1870. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

G E O LO G I C T I M E Geologic time is a chronological concept invented by European scientists and refined by geologists from the United States and around the world as a means of describing Earth’s history. Often shown in the form of a time scale, this scientific tool is continuously modified as increments of geologic time are more precisely defined. The concept of geologic time was chiefly the work of the nineteenth-century British Earth scientist Charles Lyell; he relied heavily on ideas developed in the preceding two centuries by Danish scholar Nicholas Steno and Scottish scientist James Hutton. Steno and Hutton proposed the theories of stratigraphic superposition, which posits that the deepest layers of sediment are the oldest, and uniformitarianism, which posits that geological phenomena have the same causes and effects throughout natural history. In 1913, British geologist Arthur Holmes created the first geologic time scale based on radiometric dating, which is the estimate of the age of a geologic sample based on the rate of decay of chemical isotopes. The geologic time scale divides Earth’s roughly 4.5 billion years of existence into increments known as eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages. The longest of these divisions are the four eons––the Hadean, Archaen, Proterozoic, and Phanerozoic. Within the most recent 500 million years, increments called eras span hundreds of millions of years. Periods are subdivisions lasting tens of millions of years. The shortest of the in-

crements are epochs, which are stratigraphic units of time, and ages, which cover periods in the development and evolution of life. The divisions or subdivisions of the geologic time scale are named after specific geographic locations where archetypal rocks of a particular age were first studied, or where certain rock units, often fossil bearing, that exemplify a particular phase of geologic history are found. The original elements of the geologic time scale were named principally after important British and European geologic locations. With the growth of geological science in the United States during the nineteenth century, American scientists began to have a greater influence on the geologic time scale and added several epochs and stages that were representative of the North American geologic landscape. In 1869, Alexander Winchell, a geologist and University of Michigan professor, formally proposed a new epoch within the existing Carboniferous Period: the Mississippian, represented by a thick layer of limestone laid down in a shallow sea that existed roughly 340 million years ago in what is now the Mississippi River Valley region. Henry Shaler Williams, a Cornell University professor of paleontology, divided the Carboniferous Period into the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian Epochs in 1891. Throughout the nineteenth century, other American scientists added North American names to the geological time scale, until it differed quite markedly from the European version. In 1977, the International Union of Geological Sciences created the International Commission on Stratigraphy. With the aim of making the geologic time scale more descriptive, more precise, and more international in scope, the commission set about establishing a globally applicable stratigraphic scale. It periodically publishes updates on the standard geologic time scale and maintains a detailed Web site on the subject. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Gradstein, Felix M., et al. A Geologic Time Scale 2004. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. International Commission on Stratigraphy. http://www. stratigraphy.org. Repcheck, Jack. The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of Earth’s Antiquity. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2003.

Section 6: Geological Surveys 435

G E O LO G I C A L S O C I E T Y

OF

AMERICA

Founded in 1888 in New York City, the Geological Society of America (GSA) is a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to the advancement of the geosciences in the United States. With nearly 21,000 members in eighty-five countries, the GSA—based in Boulder, Colorado, since 1968—provides scientists from U.S. industry, government, and academia with a vehicle to interact, share knowledge and research, and express the values and opinions of the professional community. At the turn of the twentieth century, geology was a thriving and well-funded discipline in America, with exciting new discoveries in the expanding West. An estimated 200 trained professional geologists were at work, largely in the employ of Eastern universities and the federal government. The GSA originated in two predecessor organizations: The Association of American Geologists, founded in 1840, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), created in 1848. Members of the latter organization observed a particular lack of scientific exchange in the field of geology. The attendance of geologists at the annual meeting was meager, as it was often held during the summer when geologists are in the field. In 1881, a handful of geologists gathered at the annual meeting of the AAAS and called for change. Among them were Alexander Winchell of the University of Michigan, Newton Winchell of the University of Minnesota, and Charles Hitchcock, the state geologist of New Hampshire. The group eventually succeeded in forming a dedicated professional organization. The first meeting of the Geological Society of America was held at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, on December 27, 1888. The declared purpose of the organization was “the promotion of the science of geology by the issuance of scholarly publications, the holding of meetings, the provision of assistance to research, and other appropriate means.” The GSA soon had 191 paying members (dues were $10 a year); membership was limited strictly to geology professionals. The first GSA president was James Hall, the state geologist of New York and director of the Museum of Natural History in Albany.

The GSA remained a small but committed organization for the first four decades of its existence. By 1930, it was still housed in two rooms at Columbia University in New York City. In 1931, with 600 members, the GSA received an endowment of almost $4 million from the estate of Richard Penrose, Jr., a mining geologist who had accumulated considerable wealth from claims in the western United States. The offices of the GSA were transferred to a house at Columbia, and the organization began a major, ongoing expansion. Membership has increased significantly in the decades since—individuals today are allowed to join as professionals, students, teachers, and affiliates. The GSA today comprises six regional sections in North America and seventeen specialty divisions: archeological geology, coal geology, engineering geology, geobiology and geomicrobiology, geoinformatics, geology and health, geology and society, geophysics, geoscience education, history of geology, hydrogeology, international geology, limnogeology, planetary geology, quaternary geology and geomorphology, sedimentary geology, and structural geology and tectonics. An operations and research staff of fifty-five implements a four-point mission: to publish scientific research and information in journals (GSA Bulletin, GSA Today, Geology, Geosphere, Environmental & Engineering Geoscience, and Abstracts with Programs) and books; to conduct scientific meetings on the latest research; to assist the public in understanding geology issues related to a range of topics; and to support the professional development of members. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Drake, Ellen. Geologists and Ideas: A History of North American Geology. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America, 1985. Eckel, Edwin. The Geological Society of America: Life History of a Learned Society. Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America, 1982. Geological Society of America. http://www.geosociety.org.

G E O LO G I C A L S U R V E Y S The first geological surveys in the United States were conducted in the 1820s, when several states in the Southeast, such as South Carolina, began

436 Section 6: Geological Surveys mineralogical surveys to discover available precious metals and minerals in the earth. Other states followed in the 1830s, particularly in New England. Amherst geologist Edward Hitchcock headed the Massachusetts state survey beginning in 1830, and James Percival inaugurated the Connecticut survey in 1835. Physician Charles Jackson wore several hats as the state geologist for New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island during the 1830s and 1840s. Other states conducting geological surveys during the mid-nineteenth century were Maryland and Pennsylvania in the 1830s; Wisconsin, Illinois, and Kentucky in the 1850s; and California in the 1860s. In general, these state surveys examined soil, minerals, topography, water resources, and natural history. Edward Hitchcock’s Final Report on the Geology of Massachusetts (1841) included evidence of fossilized dinosaur footprints discovered along the Connecticut River. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), founded in 1879 as part of the Department of the Interior, initially focused on surveying millions of acres of the public domain (held by the federal government). Geologist Clarence King, who had participated in the California survey, became the first director of the USGS, serving until 1881, when he was replaced by the noted explorer John Wesley Powell. Under the leadership of Powell’s successor, Charles Doolittle Walcott, the USGS made notable fossil discoveries from the Cambrian geological period. During the mid-twentieth century, the USGS provided hydrographic studies for the National Defense Highway System (the interstate highways) and inaugurated its most widely known activity, the creation and publication of a series of topographic maps covering the entire United States. In the 1960s, its scientists partnered with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to train Project Apollo astronauts in conducting geologic investigations on the moon. The USGS also led an effort involving eighty federal agencies plus nongovernment specialists and consultants to compile the National Atlas of the United States of America. Published in 1970, the Atlas contains 700 maps covering geology, history, economics, culture, and politics.

A technician at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) uses a photo alidade device, used for computing elevations, to make a topographic map during the 1940s. The USGS has been collecting and disseminating information on the physical landscape since 1879. (Library of Congress, LC-USW3–031922-D)

The modern USGS operates 400 offices around the country and employs about 10,000 scientists, technicians, and administrative personnel who study climatology, environmental science, geologic and hydrologic processes, cartography, natural disaster preparation, natural resources, oceanography, planetary science, ecosystems, and water resources. The survey works in partnership with public and private agencies in the United States and other countries and maintains a library of 300,000 books, maps, photographs, and other resources. Phoenix Roberts

Sources Socolow, Arthur A. The State Geological Surveys: A History. Grand Forks, ND: Association of State Geologists, 1988. U.S. Geological Survey. http://www.usgs.gov.

GEOMAGNETISM Geomagnetism is a geophysical phenomenon created by the flow of electrical currents within and around Earth. American scientists have con-

Section 6: Glaciers 437 tributed to knowledge about the daily variations and long-term historical reversals in Earth’s magnetic field. Geomagnetism is most obvious to humans through the tendency for compass needles to align themselves with magnetic field lines and point toward the magnetic poles. An electromagnetic force created by the planet’s solid iron inner core rotating within a liquid iron outer core generates most of Earth’s magnetic field. The resulting global magnetic field forms an invisible bubble of magnetic energy in space, called the magnetosphere, that completely envelops the planet. The magnetic field of Earth is pushed into a comet-like shape by the solar wind, a stream of supersonic charged particles that emanates from the sun. The history of geomagnetism research began when English physician William Gilbert published De Magnete in 1600. Gilbert’s book proposed the theory that Earth is a giant magnet, but that theory was not verified until the 1830s, when German mathematician Johann Gauss invented a magnetometer for measuring the horizontal intensity of Earth’s magnetic field. Gauss is recognized for his role by the continued use of the term gauss for the units used in measuring magnetic field strength. In 1840, Johann von Lamont, director of the Royal Bavarian Astronomical Observatory, began making regular measurements of Earth’s magnetic field; by the 1850s, he had mapped its varying strength in locations across Europe. American scientists began studying geomagnetism in the nineteenth century, but the United States would not become a real leader in the field until the twentieth century, and then principally because of America’s role in space travel. In 1958, University of Chicago astrophysicist Eugene Parker theorized the existence of the solar wind and its effects on Earth’s magnetosphere. The following year, Thomas Gold of Cornell University coined the term “magnetosphere.” By the early 1960s, American satellites and spacecraft were helping advance knowledge of the magnetosphere, including the discovery that the magnetosphere was not spherical but possessed a large “bow shock” caused by the solar wind on Earth’s sunlit side. This bow shock resembles the bow of a seagoing ship against

which oncoming ocean waves break. On the nighttime side of the planet, the magnetosphere extends out with a long, cometlike, magnetic tail. This diurnal rotation of the magnetosphere is now known to cause daily variations in Earth’s magnetic field. In 1964, American geophysicists Richard Doell, Allan Cox, and Brent Dalrymple experimentally verified a theory that had been previously proposed by British scientist Drummond Matthews. While towing a magnetometer underwater over the Indian Ocean seafloor, Matthews had discovered a series of alternating magnetic bands. He proposed that Earth’s magnetic field had reversed its polarity at least once in its geologic history. Doell, Cox, and Dalrymple provided the first proof of long-term geomagnetic field reversals, including a shift that occurred 780,000 years ago. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Backus, George, et al. Foundations of Geomagnetism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Multhauf, Robert P., and Gregory Good. A Brief History of Geomagnetism and a Catalog of the Collections of the National Museum of American History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1987.

GLACIERS Glaciers are tongues or ribbons of ice that flow downslope on land. They comprise accumulations of snow, or firn, that has recrystalized and compacted into dense ice in depressions above the snow line. Ice accumulation occurs, because the rate of snowfall exceeds the rate of melting seasonally or annually. As ice accumulates, its mass increases; this, combined with gravity, causes movement downslope. The shape and direction of glaciers are generally controlled by topographic features. Movement downslope often follows preexisting features, notably river valleys, which restrict glacier width. This is in contrast to the extensive ice sheets and ice caps that cover large areas and may mask underlying topography. As indicated in the table on page 439, glaciers can be classified

438 Section 6: Glaciers

A chunk of the Columbia Glacier falls into Prince William Sound off the coast of Alaska in 2004. As a result of global warming, the glacier has retreated by 10 miles (16 kilometers) and lost half its height since 1982. (David McNew/Getty Images)

according to their sources of origin, location in terms of topography, and climatological status (i.e., melting or growing). In North America, a considerable proportion of the land area is occupied by ice, especially in northern Canada, Alaska, and the alpine regions of the Rocky Mountains. In modern times, North American glaciers are predominant in high mountain regions. Eighteenth-century American scientists who journeyed through the Appalachian Mountains, particularly the White Mountains of New Hampshire, were convinced that a cataclysmic past had carved the peaks and valleys. The mountain ranges of Alaska and the Rocky Mountains inspired the nineteenth-century American naturalist Louis Agassiz to advocate the theory that ice had been more extensive on Earth’s surface during ice ages. American naturalist John Muir proposed that the Yosemite Valley in California once had been glaciated. There is much geological evidence of past glaciations throughout North America. For ex-

ample, glaciers shape landscapes through the power of erosion, leaving behind U-shaped valleys. Glaciers may cause the formation of substantial lakes through the meltwater they produce and the damming effect of a large ice body. They also deposit material eroded from their upstream regions. This is called glacial moraine, which also shapes landscapes and gives evidence of the former limits of glacial ice. Where it is possible to date such materials, a chronology of events can be constructed. Such information also contributes to studies of past climatic change. Many American scientists have been involved in studying glaciers and changes in their spatial and temporal dimensions. Today, the major U.S. agency for collecting and providing information on glaciers is the National Snow and Ice Data Center, located at the University of Colorado and funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A.M. Mannion

Section 6: Global Warming 439 Types of Glaciers Hanging glacier

A river of ice that protrudes over a rock lip.

Cirque glacier

A river of ice extending from an upland rock basin with steep-sided walls.

Mountain glacier

A river of ice developing in a high mountain region from ice fields covering several peaks.

Valley glacier

A river of ice occupying a valley.

Piedmont glacier

A river of ice that extends from a mountainous region onto flat plains, where it spreads out.

Tidewater glacier

A river of ice flowing from a valley into the sea.

Ablation glacier

A melting glacier.

Accumulation glacier

A growing glacier.

Temperate or warm glacier

A glacier in a temperate or warm region where ice is at or close to the pressure melting point temperature for most of the year.

Polar or cold glacier

A glacier in a polar region where temperatures are below the pressure melting point all year.

Source Christopherson, Robert W. Geosystems. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.

G LO B A L W A R M I N G Global warming refers to the gradual increase in the average temperature of Earth’s surface and its oceans. The phenomenon is related to, but not the same as, the greenhouse effect, which is a natural process that helps regulate the surface temperature of Earth. Certain gases in Earth’s atmosphere— commonly referred to as “greenhouse gases”— including water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane (CH4)—are transparent to incoming short-wave solar radiation, but these same gases effectively absorb outgoing long-wave radiation emitted by Earth’s surface. Some of the absorbed long-wave radiation is emitted downward toward Earth’s surface, thereby warming it. The concept of surface temperatures on Earth being raised because of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere was first suggested in 1827 by the French mathematician Jean-Baptiste Fourier, who referred to un effet de verre (“an effect of glass”). In 1896 the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius compared such warming to that of a “hothouse.” However, the physical process by which a greenhouse warms is somewhat different from that of

the greenhouse effect on Earth’s atmosphere. Without this natural greenhouse effect, Earth’s average surface temperature would be about 19°C (-2°F), 34°C (61°F) cooler than its present value of approximately 15°C (59°F). During the twentieth century, climate scientists began to focus increasing attention on the possibility of an enhanced greenhouse effect, resulting from an increase in greenhouse gas emissions attributed to anthropogenic, or human-induced, activities since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Specifically, the combustion of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and natural gas, has elevated the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) prior to the Industrial Revolution to approximately 372 ppmv currently. As the concentration of CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere increases, the average altitude at which it releases energy to space is increasing as well. Because of the colder temperatures present at higher altitudes, the CO2 is transmitting less radiation to space overall, resulting in a warming of the lower atmosphere. According to a report issued in 2001 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a multinational panel established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), “the global average surface temperature has increased by 0.6 ± 0.2°C since the late 19th century.” The IPCC also concluded that “the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the

440 Section 6: Global Warming warmest year in the instrumental record, since 1861.” Subsequent data compiled by the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies indicate that 2005 ranked near or just above 1998 as the warmest year since instrumental records began. Because of its potential effects on government policy, business infrastructure, the global economy, and the environment itself, global warming remains one of the most scrutinized of all contemporary scientific issues. Much of the debate centers on the uncertainties associated with the computer models used to simulate how various components of Earth’s climate will change over time. The extent to which natural factors and human activities contribute to rising global temperatures and the effects of such warming on various regions pose some of the greatest challenges for scientists and policy makers. Despite these uncertainties, the IPCC reported in 2001, “there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.” Concern over the potential effects of global warming led to the introduction in 1997 of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that requires industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to pre-1990 levels by 2012. The agreement went into force on February 16, 2005, following ratification by Russia on November 18, 2004, but the Kyoto Protocol applies only to countries that formally ratified it. As of the beginning of 2007, the United States, a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, had not ratified the treaty. At the time the treaty was drafted, the Clinton Administration cited lack of participation by developing nations as a reason for not submitting the protocol to the Senate for ratification. More recently, President George W. Bush claimed that ratification of the Kyoto Protocol would hurt the U.S. economy and that its goals are unrealistic. Sean Potter

Sources Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis. Ed. J.T. Houghton, et al. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. National Aeronautics and Space Administration GISS

Surface Temperature Analysis. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/ gistemp. National Research Council. Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2001. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. http://unfccc.int/2860.php.

G O D F R E Y, T H O M A S (1704–1749) Thomas Godfrey, the inventor of the sextant, was born on January 10, 1704, at Bristol, Pennsylvania, to a farm family. His father died when Thomas was an infant, and his mother remarried. As an adult, Thomas Godfrey worked as a glazier, setting the windows of the State House (Independence Hall) and the home of James Logan, the governor of Pennsylvania, among other buildings. While working at Governor Logan’s house, he engaged the governor in conversation, revealing his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. Logan, a mathematician, astronomer, and patron of science, encouraged Godfrey to act on his natural talents. In 1727, Godfrey joined with Benjamin Franklin in establishing the Leather Apron Club of artisans engaged in thought and science. Franklin rented part of his house to Godfrey in Philadelphia. Godfrey did not have any formal education, but his inquisitiveness, intuition, and precise mind took him to the realm of mathematics, astronomy, and optics. Fondness for these subjects led Godfrey to read books such as Isaac Newton’s Principia, for which he had to master Latin. He also calculated planetary positions for publication in Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack. Godfrey associated with sailors in the taverns of the Philadelphia waterfront, which led to many rounds of discussion about navigation. One of the problems faced by sailors was calculating the degree of latitude. The archaic backstaff method of determining a ship’s latitude in relation to the North Star was not always accurate. While Godfrey was glazing windows one day, a pane of glass fell to the ground; he noticed the double reflection from the glass in relation to the rays of the sun. The sun, he deduced, could be

Section 6: Hitchcock, Edward 441 reflected in two mirrors, one fixed and another mobile, giving the appearance that it was on the horizon. When the sun was aligned with the axis of Earth, latitude could be calculated by the sailor. This apparatus, which Godfrey invented in 1730 and called the sextant, was tested successfully during voyages in Delaware Bay and south along the American coast to Jamaica. Instrument manufactures contacted Godfrey to make and sell the instrument, which he did beginning in 1734. The sextant, using the double reflection principle, measured angles up to 120 degrees. Godfrey’s invention made obsolete earlier devices such as the astrolabe, backstaff, and common quadrant. The sea horizon is the horizontal reference point in the modern marine sextant. Air sextants are now used in flight. Around the same time that Godfrey developed his sextant, British scientist John Hadley invented a similar device. Hadley, the vice president of the Royal Society of London, patented his sextant in 1732. Godfrey, with the support of Governor James Logan, wrote to the society about his claim as the original inventor. The Royal Society refused to spurn Hadley but sent Godfrey £200 worth of furniture in compensation. Historians of science agree that Godfrey and Hadley invented the sextant independently at approximately the same time. Godfrey died at his family farm in Bristol in December 1749. Patit Paban Mishra

Source Coulson, Thomas. “Godfrey’s Invention of the Reflecting Quadrant.” Journal of the Franklin Institute 266:5 (1958): 336–37.

H I T C H C O C K , E D WA R D (1793–1864) Edward Hitchcock was an early ichnologist (a paleontologist specializing in plant and animal traces) who directed the geological survey of the state of Massachusetts in the 1830s. He argued for the commensurability of religion and science. He was born on May 24, 1793, in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and was educated at Deerfield Academy. Although Hitchcock was ordained to the Congregational ministry, he became a

professor at Amherst College. A natural history and chemistry professor, and later a professor of natural theology and geology, Hitchcock was named president of the college in 1845. In addition to directing the Massachusetts state geological survey from 1830 to 1833 and 1837 to 1839, he served on the geological surveys of New York and Vermont. Hitchcock also published the textbook Elementary Geology in 1840. Speculating on fossils and the many strata of soil and rock that reflected different epochs over time, Hitchcock theorized that Earth is much older than the 6,000 to 7,000 years then postulated in conformity with the Bible. “While it has been the usual interpretation of the Mosaic account,” he wrote, “that the world was brought into existence nearly at the same time with man and the other existing animals, geology throws back its creation to a period indefinitely but immeasurably remote.” Hitchcock reasoned that had the creation of humans occurred at the same time as the creation of Earth, human remains would be found in all of Earth’s strata—which is not the case. Hitchcock also hypothesized that the climate of Earth had changed over time, from warmer to cooler, which explained the changes in life over time. Humans, he believed, appeared toward the end of a vast period during which other lifeforms developed and thrived on Earth. He believed that throughout time there were constant forces—heat and water—at work in creating and changing Earth. He argued that the core of the planet was extremely hot and that there was evidence that Earth was once completely covered by water. In The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences (1851), Hitchcock contended that science and divine revelation are complementary, and that geological inquiry reveals evidence of “divine benevolence.” Scripture and science, he maintained, use different language to describe the same phenomenon of a divine creation. “Revelation may describe phenomena according to apparent truth,” he wrote in the Religion of Geology, “as when it speaks of the rising and setting of the sun, and the immobility of the earth; but science describes the same according to the actual truth, as when it gives a real motion to the earth, and only an apparent motion to the heavens.” According to Hitchcock, “The word of

442 Section 6: Hitchcock, Edward God . . . is only purified, but not shaken, by all the discoveries of modern science.” One of the first paleontologists in America, Hitchcock also argued in Religion of Geology that “the smallest fragment of bone, even the most apparently insignificant apophysis, possesses a fixed and determinate character relative to the class, order, genus, and species of the animal to which it belonged; insomuch that when we find merely the extremity of a well-preserved bone, we are able, by a careful examination, assisted by analogy and exact comparison, to determine the species to which it once belonged, as certainly as if we had the entire animal before us.” In his Final Report on the Geology of Massachusetts (1841), he hypothesized that fossils discovered in the Connecticut Valley were the remains of ancient creatures, which he believed to be ancestors of birds. Anticipating Darwin, Hitchcock wrote: the true theory of animal and vegetable existence on our globe appears to be this: Such natures were placed upon the earth as were adapted to its varying condition. When the earliest group was created, such were the climate, the atmosphere, the waters, and the means of subsistence, that the lower tribes were best adapted to the condition of things. That group occupied the earth till such changes had occurred as to make it unsuited to their natures, and consequently they died out, and new races were brought in . . . by divine benevolence, power, and wisdom. These tribes also passed away, when the condition of things was so changed as to be uncongenial to their natures, to give place to a third group, and these again to a fourth, and so on to the present races, which, in their turn, perhaps, are destined to become extinct. From the first, however, the changes which the earth has undergone, as to temperature, soil, and climate, have been an improvement of its condition; so that each successive group of animals and plants could be more and more complicated and perfect; and therefore we find an increase and development of flowering plants and vertebral animals. And yet, from the beginning, all the great classes seem to have existed, so that the changes have been only in the proportion of the more and less perfect at different periods. In short, we have only to suppose that the Creator exactly adapted organic natures to the several geological periods, and we perfectly explain the phenomena of organic remains.

The age of Earth, the relatively recent appearance of humans, and the apparent evolution of life over time, Hitchcock believed, are not objects of concern for the religious mind. As he concluded in Religion of Geology, “scientific truth, rightly understood, is religious truth.” Hitchcock, who believed that “geology proves violent and painful death to have existed in the world long before man’s creation,” died on February 27, 1864. Russell Lawson

Sources Hitchcock, Edward. The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences. 1851. Hicksville, NY: Regina, 1975. Socolow, Arthur A., ed. The State Geological Surveys: A History. Grand Forks, ND: Association of American State Geologists, 1988.

H Y D R O LO G Y Hydrology is the study of the distribution, movement, and quality of water on and close to Earth’s surface and in the atmosphere. The movement of water is cyclical, comprising shifts to and from the atmosphere in the processes of precipitation, runoff, evaporation, and evapotranspiration (the loss of water to the atmosphere from plants). The components of water storage on Earth’s surface include oceans, rivers, lakes, streams, reservoirs, wetlands, ice caps, and glaciers. The oceans contain about 97 percent of the world’s water, to and from which most evaporation and precipitation occur. Approximately 20 percent of the moisture evaporated from the oceans is precipitated on land annually, along with some of the water evaporated directly from the land. This feeds surface terrestrial waters and wetlands and provides the water necessary to sustain life and human activity. Other storage components are the water vapor in the atmosphere and groundwater in geological strata. Many factors influence the quantity, quality, and movement of water within and between the stores. Some relate to the natural world, such as soil type, vegetation cover, geology, topography, and climate. Others are caused by human activity and include land-use type, dam construction, canalization, flood defenses, water extraction for a range of activities, pollution, and climatic change.

Section 6: Ionosphere 443 Robert E. Horton (1875–1945), who has been called “the father of American hydrology,” did extensive studies on runoff and resulting erosion, groundwater, rainfall, and flooding. American scientists have studied the hydrological cycle on local, regional, and global scales. Its measurement has become increasingly sophisticated, involving high-tech instrumentation in the field, such as satellite imagery for remote sensing of river flow and precipitation, as well as computer modeling for predictive and planning purposes. When precipitation (snow, rain, sleet, hail, fog) reaches the ground, it may be intercepted by ground cover (usually vegetation), or it may infiltrate into the soil to percolate into bedrock if the volume is high, or it may produce runoff over the soil surface when the soil is saturated. Some of the water evaporates from the land surface or evapotranspirates from vegetation, while the remainder enters rivers, lakes, and bedrock; eventually much of the water returns to the oceans. The quality and availability of water are particularly pressing environmental issues in America today, especially in the desert Southwest. Effective water management is critical. In the United States, hydrology research and management of water resources is the responsibility of several government agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC), and Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC), part of the Army Corps of Engineers. A.M. Mannion

Source American Society of Civil Engineers. http://www.asce.org. American Society of Civil Engineers. Hydrology Handbook. 2nd ed., Reston, VA: ASCE Publications, 1996. Christopherson, Robert W. Geosystems. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. Horton, Robert E. “Rainfall Interception.” Monthly Weather Review 47 (September 1919): 608–23.

IONOSPHERE The ionosphere, or thermosphere, is the heavily ionized (dense in electrically charged atoms) layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Surrounding Earth, the ionosphere extends about 56 to 373 miles (90 to 600

kilometers) above sea level to where it meets the edge of outer space (the magnetopause). Based on a combination of factors—ion concentrations, temperature, chemical composition of the air, and methods of ionization (including cosmic radiation, X-rays, ultraviolet light, and meteoric residue)—scientists have subdivided the ionosphere into D, E, and F regions. Such a structured model is somewhat misleading, however, as the ionosphere, particularly in its upper reaches, changes constantly. Not surprisingly, given its impact on global communications, discovery of the ionosphere coincided with the beginning of the long-distance wireless radio era initiated by Guglielmo Marconi’s successful transmission across the Atlantic Ocean (about 1,864 miles or 3,000 kilometers) in 1901. The test succeeded, even though radio signals at the Marconi wavelengths could cover only about 100 miles (160 kilometers) in a straight line between transmitter and receiver. This conundrum led physicists Oliver Heaviside of England and Arthur E. Kennelly of the United States to postulate in 1902 that long-distance transmissions must be bouncing off an atmospheric barrier (later called the Heaviside-Kennelly or E layer of the ionosphere) before returning to Earth’s surface. Their theory would not be confirmed until the 1920s, however, when British physicist Edward Appleton established through radio-wave modeling the existence of the several regions of the ionosphere, including the uppermost F or Appleton layer. (Appleton would go on to win the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research.) The term ionosphere was coined by British scientist Robert Watson-Watt in 1926 as an appropriate companion to troposphere and stratosphere, newly minted terms for the lower layers of the atmosphere. The vast expansion of commercial broadcasting after World War I, and the growing awareness of the strategic value of radio communications, did much to spur ionosphere research in the 1920s and beyond. Both commercial and military wireless communications were afflicted by periodic fade-outs and atmospheric static, caused in part by the ionosphere. All groups that depended on wireless radio transmission and reception, including a large body of amateur radio operators, desired a

444 Section 6: Ionosphere greater degree of predictability in determining the optimum times and wavelengths for radio communications. Even before the war, Great Britain, with its far-flung empire and dependence on naval communications, had initiated substantial funding for ionosphere research through the Admiralty and the Marconi Wireless Company. In the 1920s and 1930s, British efforts were joined by the Naval Research Laboratory and the National Bureau of Standards in the United States, in addition to several U.S. corporate research projects underwritten by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), Bell Labs, and General Electric (GE). Using variations on the ionosonde—an instrument for sending pulsed radio transmissions into the atmosphere and measuring their rebound back to Earth’s surface (the “echo method”)—scientists and amateur radio enthusiasts in the International Union for Scientific Radio (URSI) were able to more effectively map the ionosphere’s regions, as well as its geographic, seasonal, and diurnal variations. They also used the information gleaned from ionosonde readings to postulate on the physical composition of this atmospheric belt, the causes of its formation and change, and the impact of ultraviolet light and sunspot activity on the ionosphere and, therefore, radio communications. One of the many outgrowths of this work was the development of the magnetron tube, which, in turn, contributed to the development of high-power radar and television. British scientist Robert Watson-Watt noted in the mid1930s that high-frequency ionosonde signals bounced back earlier than expected when they encountered airplanes flying overhead. The subsequent development of high-speed radar would give the British a crucial advantage in the air war against the Nazis during the Battle of Britain in 1940. World War II greatly accelerated the need for accurate maps of the ionosphere for scheduling radio communications among far-flung military units. The Allied powers, building on their prewar lead in the field, established ionosonde stations across much of the world (forty-four by war’s end). They used readings from these out-

posts to develop both geographically and seasonally adjusted radio communications charts as well as “maximum usable frequency” (muf ) recommendations for use by their widely distributed forces. After the war, the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory of the United States National Bureau of Standards would use the same information to develop monthly bulletins on transmission paths and “mufs” for all interested parties. The postwar period witnessed a significant expansion of ionosphere research, including discoveries in closely related fields such as geomagnetism, polar auroras (caused by magnetic storms in the ionosphere), plasma physics, and radio and radar astronomy. The breadth of ionosphere-related research, and its potential for defense-related applications, resulted in substantially increased funding by the U.S. government. Millions of research dollars were directed through the military and the National Science Foundation to university-based labs across the country throughout the Cold War. Washington’s largesse allowed ionosphere researchers access to rockets, satellites, and giant antenna arrays (such as the installation at Arecibo, Puerto Rico) for their work. Where once they had been blind, they were now able to see into the boundary between the upper F layer of the ionosphere and near-space, an area swept by powerful winds driven by extreme ultraviolet and X-ray energy from the sun and extraordinary day–night temperature differentials. In recent decades, scientists have used these same research platforms to further expand their vision into space itself. Jacob Jones

Sources Dellinger, J.H. “The Ionosphere.” Scientific Monthly 65:2 (August 1947): 115–26. Gilmor, C. Stewart. “Federal Funding and Knowledge Growth in Ionospheric Physics, 1945–1981.” Social Studies of Science 16:1 (February 1986): 105–33. Hugill, Peter J. Global Communications Since 1844: Geopolitics and Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. ———.“Technology, Its Innovation and Diffusion as the Motor of Capitalism.” Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 1:1 (April 2003): 89–113.

Section 6: Mariner’s Quadrant 445

M AC LU R E, W I L L I A M (1763–1840) The nineteenth-century geologist William Maclure, one of three sons of David and Ann McClure, was born on October 27, 1763, in Ayr, Scotland. His early education in Ayr—apparently all he had—stressed the classics and mathematics. After the family moved to Liverpool, he learned the merchant’s trade as an apprentice in his father’s firm, which sent him at age nineteen to the United States. He returned to London as a partner in the American firm of Miller, Hart, and Co., where he began to acquire the fortune that in less than two decades enabled him to retire and devote the rest of his life to travel, philanthropy, and geology. He never married. From 1799 to 1808, Maclure made geological observations from France to Russia and from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. He traveled to the United States in 1808 and completed a one-man geological survey of the region east of the Mississippi River. The following year, this information was published in the form of a map with accompanying observations in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. Maclure returned to Europe. In 1815, he took the French ichthyologist C.A. Lesueur first to England, then to the West Indies, and finally to the United States, where Lesueur remained, pursuing his dream, with Maclure’s financial backing, of writing the definitive monograph on the fishes of North America. While in Philadelphia, Maclure was elected president of the Academy of Natural Sciences—a position he held until his death, whether resident there or not, as his financial contributions kept the academy alive and subsidized its publications. At this time, he also was financing the work of such naturalists as entomologist Thomas Say and botanist Thomas Nuttall. In 1818, Maclure published an enlarged and corrected version of his geological observations with a new map, and he was elected first president of the American Geological Society in 1819. In all his studies, however, Maclure’s understanding of Earth was lithological, concerned only with the surface distribution of rocks, not

with Earth’s structure. It remained for later investigators to undertake stratigraphy. Visiting Scotland in 1824, Maclure was impressed by Robert Owen’s model factory town and school in New Lanark. In 1825, he assisted Owen in founding a communitarian experiment in New Harmony, Indiana. In addition to his purchase of some of the land for the colony, Maclure brought to New Harmony the naturalists and educators he expected would make the settlement into the intellectual capital of the frontier. The printing press of the School of Industry he set up there printed part of Lesueur’s American Ichthyology (1827), continued Say’s American Conchology (1830–1838), reprinted François André Michaux’s North American Sylva (1841), and published Maclure’s own Opinions on Various Subjects (1831–1837). When the New Harmony venture failed, Owen returned to Scotland in 1826, but Maclure soldiered on for another two years, until his declining health caused him to seek a milder climate in Mexico. Maclure died at San Angel, near Mexico City, on March 23, 1840, but the effects of his philanthropy continued. In the last year of his life, he contributed $15,000 to the building fund of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and, by the terms of his will, his remaining estate financed the stocking of 160 libraries in Indiana and Illinois. Charles Boewe

Sources Doskey, John S., ed. The European Journals of William Maclure. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 171. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988. Elliott, Josephine Mirabella, ed. Partnership for Posterity: The Correspondence of William Maclure and Marie Duclos Fretageot, 1820–1833. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1994. Moore, J. Percy. “William Maclure—Scientist and Humanitarian.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 91:3 (1947): 234–49.

MARINER ’S QUADR ANT A quadrant is a quarter-circle-shaped instrument divided into angles, which may be further divided into minutes and seconds. Pinhole sights

446 Section 6: Mariner’s Quadrant on one edge allow the user to point the quadrant at the sun or a star; a weighted plumb bob then falls along one of the divisions and permits the altitude of the heavenly object to be measured and read. Astronomers have employed quadrants for more than 1,500 years to locate latitude and determine time. By the sixteenth century, they were constructing wall-mounted or mural quadrants that rotated along a radius of up to 6 feet. The quadrant’s basic form was relatively simple and so practical that mathematical practitioners used smaller versions in other contexts as well. Although the first mention in print is dated 1450, it is likely that quadrants already had been used on ships for at least two centuries. In navigation, the quadrant is typically aimed at Polaris, the North Star. By measuring from this star’s angle of elevation, the ship’s latitude, or north–south location, can be determined. This information is combined with the ship’s rate of speed, taken by a method such as trailing a log line behind the ship for a period of time, measured by a minute glass, and then recording the length of line that has unspooled. With latitude and speed, an approximate course can be charted. Mariner’s quadrants are fashioned from wood or iron and are 6 to 8 inches in radius. Because they are difficult to hold steady on a moving ship, and because it was not possible to produce precise angle markings or truly flat instruments before the late eighteenth century, several variations of mariner’s quadrants were devised. The cross staff consists of two bars placed at right angles, with both arms marked for angle reading. Adopted in the sixteenth century, it required the user to sight both the horizon and the sun at once. The Davis quadrant, invented at the turn of the seventeenth century, casts a shadow on one of the sighting pieces to solve the two directions problem. It is made of a 30-degree arc and a 60-degree arc, placed next to each other. The Gunter quadrant was first described by Edmund Gunter in 1618; like earlier quadrants, it used a plumb bob. In the 1730s, John Hadley of England and Thomas Godfrey of Philadelphia nearly simultaneously developed the octant into workable form. They both reduced the arc of the instrument to 45 degrees and replaced pinhole and shadow sights with a small telescope that reflected the observation onto double mirrors. By

the nineteenth century, all of these types of mariner’s quadrants were gradually being replaced by the more precise sextant. Its arc was 60 degrees, its achromatic telescope was refined, it was contained in a stable brass frame, and it could be read to one-half second. The mariner’s quadrant was a vital part of daily life for a nation dependent on sea navigation, such as colonial and early republican America, but it also was a key product in the emergence of an American scientific instrument industry. Makers often placed a mariner’s quadrant on their store sign and in newspaper advertisements as a symbol of their abilities. Perhaps most notable was Anthony Lamb, who built his New York shop’s reputation in the 1730s on the quality of his quadrants, which were comparable to those of European makers. In 1749, he started to make Godfrey’s octants, and he was still a leading craftsman when he died in 1784. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Sources Bedini, Silvio A. Thinkers and Tinkers: Early American Men of Science. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975. Randier, Jean. Marine Navigation Instruments. London: John Murray, 1980. Turner, Gerard L’Estrange. Scientific Instruments 1500–1900: An Introduction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

M AU R Y, M AT T H E W (1806–1873) Matthew Fontaine Maury grew up near the western frontier town of Franklin, Tennessee. In 1825, at the age of nineteen, he followed a brother into the U.S. Navy and spent much of the next decade cruising the world’s oceans on various warships. He turned his onboard experience into a wellregarded textbook, A New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation (1836), which soon became the U.S. Navy’s standard manual on the subject. Maury’s prospects took a sharp turn for the worse after a stagecoach accident in 1839 left him unfit for anything other than shore duty. Supporters, however, encouraged him to apply for the position of superintendent at the U.S. Navy’s

Section 6: Maury, Matthew 447 Depot of Charts and Instruments in Washington. Maury became director of that institution in 1842. When the new Naval Observatory in Washington absorbed the depot two years later, Maury became its chief as well, a position he would hold until he opted to join the Confederacy in 1861. Besides developing accurate ocean charts for use by U.S. Navy vessels, the Naval Observatory was charged with maintaining the precision of ship-borne chronometers necessary to precisely gauge longitude at sea. Both tasks required a thorough knowledge of astronomy, a particular passion of Maury’s, and the Observatory under his leadership developed a solid international reputation in the field. It was, for example, the first institution to plot the solar orbit of Neptune. That reputation would grow even stronger as Maury expanded the Observatory’s work into the nascent field of oceanography, then referred to as the “physical geography of the sea.” Maury wanted the Naval Observatory to be a clearinghouse of information on all aspects of the sea, including not just winds, tides, and currents, but temperature, salinity, and underwater geography as well. To this end, he enlisted navy captains to provide the observatory with all manner of data from each of their voyages, and he developed a standard log form so that the data could be more easily compared. Then, he set his observatory staff the task of collating and analyzing the data sets to produce the comprehensive Wind and Currents Charts and Sailing Directions for the world’s oceans. Maury’s name still appears on U.S. Navy hydrographic charts. Although some of Maury’s contemporaries doubted the reliability of his data—particularly his arch-rival Alexander Dallas Bache of the Coast Survey—sea captains who began using the new charts found sailing times vastly reduced. One commander cut more than a month from his roundtrip journey to Brazil by using Maury’s charts. And when the California Gold Rush started in 1849, Maury’s maps helped sailing vessels save as many as six weeks on the long voyage to San Francisco. His approach proved so successful that the navies and merchant marines of several foreign powers agreed at a 1853 International Maritime Meteorological Conference, convened by Maury in Belgium, to adopt his standard log and cooperate in data collection in return for U.S. willingness to share the results.

Building on this success, Maury convinced the U.S. Navy to begin charting the underwater geography of the ocean, including not just land contours but salinity and temperature as well. The first two efforts at sounding the Atlantic floor proved failures, but, on the third try in 1852, the Dolphin managed to take the first sediment sample from a deep ocean floor using a device designed by young naval officer named John M. Broke (part of the first graduating class from the U.S. Naval Academy, an institution Maury helped establish). Within two years, Maury was able to use data from the North Atlantic gathered by this and subsequent voyages to publish what Goetzmann refers to as “the world’s first map of an ocean floor,” which, not long thereafter, would be used by Cyrus Field (in consultation with Maury) in laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable. Maury also used the information gathered at the Naval Observatory over the preceding decade to publish the first textbook on oceanography, The Physical Geography of the Sea (1855). The Physical Geography went through numerous editions and was translated into several foreign languages, solidifying Maury’s scientific reputation, but he did not escape controversy. When the Civil War broke out in 1861 and Maury’s birth state of Virginia seceded, he resigned his post at the Naval Observatory and accepted a commission as commander with the Confederate Navy. He spent most of the war in England, outfitting Confederate warships, working on the design of an electric mine to support the rebel naval effort, and in general using his international reputation to build support for the Confederacy. At the end of the war, Maury led an unsuccessful effort to resettle former Confederates in Mexico. After returning to Virginia in 1868, he spent his last years as a professor at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. Besides his teaching duties, he published several popular textbooks of geography and supervised a preliminary Physical Survey of Virginia (1869). Jacob Jones

Sources Dupree, A. Hunter. Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

448 Section 6: Maury, Matthew Goetzmann, William H. New Lands, New Men: America and the Second Great Age of Discovery. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. Williams, Frances Leigh. Matthew Fontaine Maury, Scientist of the Sea. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963.

M O U N T WA S H I N G T O N O B S E R VAT O R Y Of the four types of mountaintop observatories (astronomical, meteorological, volcanic, and high-altitude research stations), those devoted to the weather are the least common. In fact, the only well-known example is the facility located on the summit of Mount Washington in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. At 6,288 feet (1,971 meters), Mount Washington is New England’s highest peak. Founded in 1932, the Mount Washington Observatory is a nonprofit educational institution that operates yearround. Mount Washington has one of the most severe alpine climates in the world. On April 10,

1934, the world’s highest wind velocity—231 miles per hour—was recorded on the summit. The mountain receives a great deal of precipitation: During the 1968–1969 season, 566.4 inches of snow were recorded; during July and August 2004, a total of 18.63 inches of rain fell. A warm August day can bring a snowstorm, and the winter blizzards are devastating. The observatory is coated with ice during the severest periods, and those who live inside often have to chop their way out. In the early 1990s, the accumulated ice actually crushed the building in which the thermometers were kept. There have been more deaths on Mount Washington (well over 100) than on any other American peak, including Denali in Alaska. Nevertheless, the observatory has many visitors. There are three ways to reach the popular summit: by car or bus on the steep and winding mountain road; on the cog railway, which was built in 1869; and on foot along the Appalachian Trail, which runs up one side of the mountain and then down the other. The observatory consists of weather equipment and research rooms, a kitchen, and sleeping quarters. The people who live here are interested in technical research concerning the subarctic environment, meteorology, and the human history of the region. Their observations and data are shared with the public through educational programs (workshops, seminars), an onsite museum, summer internship programs, publications such as Windswept (formerly the Mount Washington Observatory Bulletin), and the Weather Notebook Radio Show. Research projects include the design and testing of instrumentation; climate variability; neutron measurement (which has been going on for forty-eight years); and icing sensors for aviation. The observatory collaborates with such institutions as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the universities of New Hampshire and Hawaii. Robert Hauptman

The Mount Washington Observatory, founded in 1932, is a year-round weather station atop the highest peak in the northeastern United States. The observatory has measured some of the most severe conditions anywhere in the world. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/ Department of Commerce)

Sources Mount Washington Observatory. http://www.mount washington.org. Rimer, Sara. “Relishing Ice, Fog and Brrr! Factor on a Mountain.” The New York Times, February 20, 1995, A8.

Section 6: National Hurricane Center 449

N AT I O N A L H U R R I C A N E C E N T E R The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is responsible for preparing and issuing official forecasts, watches, and warnings for storms affecting the tropical and subtropical regions of the North Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico (collectively known as the Atlantic basin), as well as the eastern Pacific Ocean. The NCH operates as one of three branches of the Tropical Prediction Center (TPC), one of the National Weather Service’s (NWS) nine National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), and is colocated with the NWS Miami Forecast Office on the campus of Florida International University. The other branches of the TPC, the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch (TAFB) and the Technical Support Branch (TSB), provide support to the NHC during hurricane season, which officially begins on May 15 in the eastern Pacific and on June 1 in the Atlantic basin and lasts through November 30 for both areas. The NHC developed from the long-standing need of the U.S. government to coordinate monitoring, forecasting, and warning of tropical storms and hurricanes. In 1898, during the SpanishAmerican War, President William McKinley called for the creation of a national hurricane warning network. McKinley reportedly said that he feared a hurricane more than the entire Spanish navy. A series of observing stations was established throughout the central and eastern Caribbean, but hurricane warnings for the continental United States were issued from Washington, D.C. A 1935 reorganization of the hurricane warning system ultimately created new hurricane forecasts centers in Jacksonville, Florida; New Orleans, Louisiana; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and

Boston, Massachusetts. In 1943, the forecast center in Jacksonville was relocated to Miami, under the direction of Grady Norton. The Miami office was officially designated as the NHC in 1955, with Gordon Dunn as its first director. (Although he was never officially designated as such, Dunn and others considered Norton the first director of the NHC.) Further reorganization in 1965 granted the NHC sole responsibility for issuing track and intensity forecasts and warnings for tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic Basin. This period of growth for the NHC also saw the addition of new staff, heightened public awareness of the threat of hurricanes, and increased international cooperation, including assisting with the training and upgrading of meteorological services throughout the Caribbean. Following the 1967 hurricane season, Dunn was succeeded as NHC director by Robert Simpson, whose tenure saw increased research efforts and applications of satellite imagery and statistical and dynamical models to hurricane forecasting. Since Simpson, the directors of NHC have been Neil Frank (1973–1987), Robert Sheets (1988–1995), Robert Burpee (1996–1997), Jerry Jarrell (1998–2000), Max Mayfield (2000–2007), Bill Proenza (2007–), and Ed Rappaport (Acting Director as of autumn 2007). Forecasters at the NHC monitor conditions of tropical systems as they develop from tropical waves into tropical depressions, which have maximum sustained surface wind speeds of 38 mph (62 kph) or less. Once wind speeds have increased to between 39 mph (63 kph) and 73 mph (118 kph), a system is reclassified as a tropical storm. At this point, it is assigned a name, based on alphabetical lists of alternating female and male names that rotate every six years and are approved by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale Hurricane Category 1 2 3 4 5

Pressure mb

kph

Wind Speed mph

Storm Surge m ft

≥980 965–979 945–964 920–944 < 920

119–153 154–177 178–209 210–250 > 250

74–95 96–110 111–130 131–155 > 155

1–2 2–3 3–4 4–6 >6

4–5 6–8 9–12 13–18 > 18

Minimal Moderate Extensive Extreme Catastrophic

450 Section 6: National Hurricane Center If the maximum sustained wind speed of a tropical storm reaches 74 mph (119 kph), it becomes a hurricane and its intensity is designated by a 1–5 category ranking. This ranking is based on the Saffir-Simpson scale, named for structural engineer Herbert Saffir and Robert Simpson, the former NHC director. Various products issued by the NHC inform forecasters, emergency managers, and the public of general conditions in tropical and subtropical areas, as well as the location, movement, and potential hazards of active storms. The NHC issues a Tropical Weather Outlook four times a day during hurricane season, regardless of whether any active storms are occurring. The Tropical Weather Outlook describes the general state of weather in the tropics and includes a discussion of any areas of expected development over the next forty-eight hours. When a tropical cyclone is active, the NHC issues a suite of forecast products every six hours. These include a general Public Advisory, a more technical Forecast/Advisory, a detailed Discussion (intended primarily for other forecasters), and Strike Probability Forecasts, which indicate the chance that a storm’s center will pass within 65 nautical miles (75 statute miles) of various locations within seventy-two hours. These products also include any tropical storm and hurricane watches and warnings that have been issued by the NHC. Watches are issued when tropical storm or hurricane conditions pose a possible threat to coastal areas within thirty-six hours, while warnings indicate that tropical storm or hurricane conditions are expected along coastal areas within twenty-four hours or less. Other products, such as Hurricane Local Statements and Tropical Cyclone Updates, are issued on an as-needed basis. Although its most visible role comes during hurricane season, the NHC assumes a yearround operation. It conducts public outreach and training of state and local emergency managers and officials from foreign countries affected by tropical cyclones. Sean Potter

Sources National Hurricane Center. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov. Sheets, Bob, and Jack Williams. Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth. New York: Vintage Books, 2001.

N AT I O N A L O C E A N I C A N D A T M O S P H E R I C A D M I N I S T R AT I O N The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a U.S. government agency, the goal of which is to understand, predict, and conserve Earth’s atmosphere and oceans to sustain the social, economic, and environmental needs of the United States. The agency was established in the U.S. Department of Commerce on October 3, 1970, by President Richard M. Nixon. Along with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), NOAA was formed to strengthen and centralize the already existing bureaus that provided the government with knowledge on the monitoring of ocean, atmosphere, and space exploration. NOAA combined some of the oldest federal agencies, among them the Coast and Geodetic Survey (established 1807), the Weather Bureau (established 1870), and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (established 1871). Today, NOAA is divided into seven lines in order to manage all of the major federal services under its jurisdiction: Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS), National Ocean Service (NOS), National Weather Service (NWS), Program Planning and Integration (PPI), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), and NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations (NMAO). Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is the driving force of scientific research in NOAA’s study of Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. It strives to provide a better understanding of the environment and relationships between the atmosphere and ocean in hopes of predicting threatening conditions and problems. OAR is a broad network of twelve internal research laboratories providing cooperative research with thirty Sea Grant university research programs, additional research grant programs through academic institutions, and six underwater research centers. Climates are a major focus of OAR, which has done significant work on El Niño, an occurrence of increasing water temperatures that takes place in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. OAR works to study, predict, and

Section 6: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 451

In 1970, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) consolidated federal programs dedicated to monitoring climate, weather, and the environment. This NOAA satellite image shows Hurricane Jeanne off the Florida coast in 2004. (NOAA via Getty Images)

alleviate the effects of El Niño and related phenomena. The National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service provides constant updates on Earth’s environmental conditions. NESDIS collects data from two kinds of satellites. Geostationary (or GOES) satellites orbit with Earth’s rotation and are important for predicting the locations of severe weather developments. Pole-orbiting satellites travel between the poles while circling Earth. They are responsible for daily monitoring of atmospheric winds as well as determining polar ocean temperatures. NESDIS is also responsible for archiving satellite data for future referencing. The satellite imagery and data provided by NESDIS serves society in a variety of ways, including local weather forecasting, civil engineer planning, and many other uses by educational and private organizations.

The National Ocean Service is responsible for the many services involving the science and technology of the nation’s coasts. NOS plays a major role in conserving and maintaining the ecosystems that make up these areas of the United States. Since 1984, NOAA has been recognized as providing the most extensive monitoring of U.S. coastal marine environments, including estuaries, bays, saltwater marshes, and the Great Lakes. NOS pairs with state and local governments, private organizations, and academic institutions to work to balance the benefits of coastal areas to society while preventing their deterioration and abuse. Hydrographic surveying for nautical charts is a service NOS provides to commerce within its Office of Coast Survey (OCS). These charts must be continuously updated in order to ensure safe passage for ships. In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant established the first organized weather service under the

452 Section 6: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration War Department in Washington, D.C. Weather observations were taken primarily by observer sergeants in the Army Signal Service. From 1891 to 1940, the Weather Bureau was under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture. In 1905, the first wireless weather telegraph was received by a ship at sea. Kite experiments and eventually airplane stations became new sources for recording temperature, humidity, and winds. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Weather Bureau to its more appropriate home under the Department of Commerce. When NOAA was formed in 1970, the Weather Bureau took on the new name National Weather Service. Today, the National Weather Service uses some of the most technologically advanced equipment and procedures for forecasting weather. NWS relies on satellites, radar, highly developed communication and information systems, and automated weather forecasting to provide the United States with accurate weather predictions and observations. Program Planning and Integration (PPI) was formed as a result of a structural realignment of NOAA’s administration in 2002. PPI is in charge of NOAA’s decision-making responsibilities on a corporate level, including overseeing budgets, providing a strategic plan, maintaining an inventory on current plans, and ensuring that all programs within the matrix of NOAA are following its mission. The National Marine Fisheries Service originated as the Office of Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries on February 9, 1871, when President Grant recognized a need for fisheries conservation. Spencer Fullerton Baird, assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was appointed commissioner. He established a headquarters for the Fish Commission at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1885. This became the first federal fishery research laboratory, and it was in a town that was quickly becoming world famous for its growing community of elite oceanographers and marine biologists. Fisheries research continued until the organization adopted its current name, National Marine Fisheries Service on October 3, 1970, when it became a division of NOAA. The NMFS oversees many major aspects of oceanic fisheries within the coastal and offshore areas of the United States. Its focus is on the rela-

tionship between marine animals, their environment, and humans. Much of its work is based on resource management, seeking to conserve and maintain existing stocks of important commercial and game fish, and ensuring fair allocation among fishers. NMFS scientists conduct biological research on systematics, habitat, physical oceanography, ecology, biodiversity, and pathology. NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations operates all NOAA ships and aircraft used in aiding ongoing environmental research. NOAA’s fleet of ships carries out many marine duties, including hydrographic surveys, fishing surveys, and other oceanographic and atmospheric research expeditions. NOAA pilots aid in aerial ocean surveys and collection of weather data and atmospheric conditions. NMAO also oversees the NOAA Diving Program, a rigorous training that provides NOAA with expert divers for all underwater duties. The NOAA Commissioned Corps, a direct descendant of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, is a division of NMAO. NOAA Corps is one of the seven uniformed services of the United States, and its officers are responsible for operating NOAA ships and aircraft, as well as managing other research interests and working as divers. Along with NOAA Corps officers, wage marine and civilian employees manage and operate all of the ships and aircraft. Scientific research and advanced technology remain NOAA’s highest priority. NOAA continues to serve the United States by focusing on ecosystem conservation, climate, weather and water, and commerce and transportation. Alicia S. Long

Sources National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http:// www.noaa.gov. U.S. Department of Commerce. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA Story. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973.

N AT I O N A L W E AT H E R S E R V I C E The National Weather Service (NWS) is the official government agency responsible for providing weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and

Section 6: Oil Drilling and Exploration 453 warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters, and ocean areas. The NWS traces its roots back to 1870, when a joint resolution was passed by Congress requiring the secretary of war “to provide for taking meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the States and Territories.” President Ulysses S. Grant signed the resolution into law on February 9, 1870, creating the nation’s first government weather service, under the auspices of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. On October 1, 1890, Congress transferred the weather operations of the Signal Corps to the Department of Agriculture, and the new civilian agency was officially renamed the U.S. Weather Bureau. The Weather Bureau remained in the Department of Agriculture until 1940, when it was transferred to the Department of Commerce. A 1965 reorganization act moved the Weather Bureau to a new Commerce Department agency known as the Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA). In 1970, the ESSA was replaced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the name of the Weather Bureau was officially changed to the National Weather Service. During the 1990s, the NWS underwent a $4.5 billion modernization program that resulted in a restructuring of the organization. In addition to consolidating a network of more than 300 field offices, such new technologies as Doppler-based Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD), the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS), and the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) were implemented to improve forecast accuracy and increase the lead times of severe-weather warnings. Presently, the NWS maintains 122 Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs), supported by thirteen River Forecast Centers (RFCs), six Regional Headquarters, and nine National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), including the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), Tropical Prediction Center (TPC), and Climate Prediction Center (CPC). The NWS has a staff of more than 4,500 full-time employees. In addition to data collected via automated networks, the NWS relies on more than 12,000 Cooperative Observers to record daily maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation amounts from locations across the United

States. Data collected by surface-based networks are augmented by upper-air observations conducted twice daily at more than 100 locations, as well as data collected by networks of river and stream gauges, marine buoys, and geostationary and polar-orbiting satellites. The NWS produces an average of 25 million forecasts, 41,000 warnings, and 2,200 flood watches each year. Besides monitoring current conditions and issuing forecasts, watches, and warnings, the NWS conducts applied meteorological and hydrological research and educational outreach. Sean Potter

Sources National Weather Service. http://www.nws.noaa.gov. Whitnah, Donald R. A History of the United States Weather Bureau. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961.

OIL DRILLING

AND

E X P LO R AT I O N

Oil forms in sedimentary rock as the result of a process in which organic deposits are buried deep in the earth and mature at prolonged pressure and high temperatures into petroleum, a compound of hydrogen and carbon. Oil is the portion of petroleum that is liquid at standard temperatures, the other portion being gas. The oil and gas rise from the source rock toward Earth’s surface. The geologic conditions required for the formation of an oil reservoir are the presence of rock that is both porous enough to hold the oil and permeable enough that the oil can move easily through the rock. For oil to collect in a sedimentary basin, it must be capped by a seal, generally of fine-grained rock, that arrests the further movement of the oil and completes the oil trap. Oil exploration is the process of trying to determine where these traps are located, both on land and offshore, and then estimating the extent of the reservoir and the difficulty of its extraction. Sometimes oil advertises its presence at the surface, seeping from sedimentary rock as a black, tarlike substance. In this form, it has long been used by local people for fuel and other

454 Section 6: Oil Drilling and Exploration

An oil rig on Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, spews “black gold” in January 1901. The gusher at Spindletop tapped a major oil field and marked the beginning of the Texas petroleum industry. In less than a year, 285 wells were pumping at the site. (Texas Energy Museum/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

products. In Eastern Europe in the 1850s, a small kerosene oil industry developed, using handdug shafts to extract the oil. Drilling technology was borrowed from methods used to drill into salt deposits. The inspiration for transferring the process came from an American, George Bissell. In the late 1850s, he joined forces with Edwin Drake, and with the investment of the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company, they struck the first oil field in Titusville, Pennsylvania, on August 27, 1859. The oil drilling industry grew with successive strikes in Texas, Kansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma. Oil was used initially in oil lamps and for medicinal and lubrication purposes. The development of the internal combustion engine at the end of the nineteenth century resulted in increased demand for oil products, particularly gasoline. Where early exploration for oil depended on visible surface phenomenon such as oil seeps and observation of telltale geologic formations, contemporary exploration uses a number of sophisticated geophysical analysis methods, including geologic mapping and seismic surveys. Identification of a potential site is followed by drilling an exploratory well. If oil is found, the exploratory drilling provides data with which to estimate the extent and retrieval parameters of the reservoir.

Modern-day oil exploration and drilling are very costly processes. Not only are the methods and equipment expensive, but they are frequently deployed in remote and environmentally hostile environments. Petroleum licensing agreements must be negotiated, and environmental impacts must be assessed. Even when oil is located, it must be available under the conditions and in the volume that make retrieval both practical and commercially profitable. Estimating world oil reserves is a controversial process, due to a lack of standardization in the ways that different countries measure, produce, report, and forecast their oil resources. In general, however, more than 65 percent of the world’s proven reserves are located in the Middle East. Central and South America, Europe, and Eurasia, each region having about 9 percent. North America has almost 5 percent, and the Asian Pacific region has almost 4 percent. Oil is a finite geophysical resource. Based on current recovery technologies, estimates of recoverable reserves range between 1.5 and 3.8 trillion barrels. World consumption, determined by geopolitical and economic variables, ultimately will determine how long the supply lasts. Karen Hovde

Sources Conaway, Charles F. The Petroleum Industry: A Nontechnical Guide. Tulsa, OK: PennWell, 1999. The Future of Oil as a Source of Energy. Abu Dhabi: Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 2003. McCaslin, John C. Petroleum Exploration Worldwide. Tulsa, OK: PennWell, 1983.

OZONE Ozone is the highly reactive form of oxygen composed of three atoms per molecule (O3). The more common form of oxygen that life depends on for respiration contains two atoms (O2). Natural turbulence in the air prevents ozone from becoming concentrated, but if all of Earth’s ozone were to settle in a single layer, it would be about one-eighth of an inch thick. Ozone amounts in different parts of the atmosphere have been the subject of environmental research, concern, and controversy since the 1950s.

Section 6: Red River Meteorite 455 When sunlight interacts with smog, photochemical reactions create tropospheric ozone near Earth’s surface, which can harm plants and animals. Tropospheric ozone makes up only about 10 percent of the total ozone in the atmosphere. Of greater popular and scientific concern is the 90 percent dispersed in the stratosphere, principally in the region 10 to 20 miles above the surface. Stratospheric ozone occurs naturally when O2 interacts with certain wavelengths of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, causing it to combine with another oxygen atom to create O3. These O3 molecules in turn break down when absorbing other wavelengths of ultraviolet radiation, producing O2 and an oxygen atom. Naturally occurring nitrogen oxides and other chemicals also contribute to ozone destruction. This cycle of ozone creation and destruction is a normal process in the stratosphere. Stratospheric ozone serves the important role of absorbing the sun’s ultraviolet radiation as it passes through the upper atmosphere, so most of it never reaches Earth’s surface. While sunlight is essential for life on Earth, ultraviolet radiation, one component of sunlight, can be harmful. Sustained exposure to normal levels of ultraviolet radiation over a lifetime or brief exposure to higher levels is one cause of skin cancer. Generally, the closer one moves to the equator, the higher the exposure to ultraviolet radiation and the higher the incidence of skin cancer, especially skin cancer’s most dangerous form, melanoma. Epidemiological studies and scientific theories strongly support the connection. The critical importance of stratospheric ozone and the human impact on its stability thus has led to ongoing debate. Concern about the effects of atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in the 1950s focused attention on stratospheric ozone in that period. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was thought that emissions from a projected fleet of supersonic jet aircraft would introduce harmful ice crystals and nitrogen oxides into the stratosphere. Studying the possible chemical reactions led some scientists to realize that synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) released at ground level eventually find their way to the stratosphere. Ultraviolet radiation then breaks

down these normally stable compounds, freeing ozone-destructive chlorine atoms. CFCs have been used for decades as refrigerants, as propellants in aerosol cans, and for other commercial and industrial purposes. Initially, they were thought to present no danger to the environment. The theories and evidence for stratospheric ozone depletion were hotly debated throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Worldwide levels of stratospheric ozone have been decreasing since the mid-1970s, yet whether this is due primarily to natural or human factors has been contested. A large and unexpected decrease in stratospheric ozone levels above the Antarctic during the polar winter and early spring caused alarm in 1984. Satellite measurements confirmed the presence of chlorine compounds in the polar stratosphere whose likely source was CFCs. Although the controversy continued, scientific consensus led policymakers to conclude that the risks of widespread use of CFCs were too great. In 1987, the Montreal Protocols phased out the continued production of CFCs and related chemicals in industrialized countries. For their pioneering work in this field, F. Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina of the United States and Paul Crutzen of the Netherlands were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995. Mark R. Jorgensen

Sources Barry, Roger G., and Richard J. Chorley. Atmosphere, Weather and Climate. 8th ed. New York: Routledge, 2003. Christie, Maureen. The Ozone Layer: A Philosophy of Science Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

RED RIVER METEORITE The Red River Meteorite, also known as the Texas or Red River Iron, is estimated to have fallen to Earth in the year 1206 between the Brazos and Red rivers in what is now Texas. It was discovered in 1808 by Anthony Glass and a party of explorers. The 1,365 pound rock remained the largest collected meteorite in the world for most of the nineteenth century, and it is still the

456 Section 6: Red River Meteorite largest preserved find from Texas. There is some evidence that this meteorite, with several others recovered from central Texas, is the origin of the stories of silver and precious metals that once drew adventurers to the southern Plains. In 1809, George Schamp, Ezra McCall, and other traders examined the meteorite and believed it to be platinum. Rival groups intent on cashing in on the treasure tried to drag the stone away. During the course of their efforts, American Indians repeatedly attacked them. Finally, the meteorite was transported by boat down the Red River to New Orleans and then shipped to New York. There, Benjamin Silliman of Yale University recognized its true nature based on its high nickel content. The rock was eventually donated to Yale as the largest meteorite in any collection at the time. The early history of the Red River Meteorite explains why Native Americans attacked those who tried to move it. Several tribes claimed ownership of the rock. In the earliest definite mention of the meteorite, in 1772, Athanase de Mezieres wrote of the Tawakoni Indians’ excitement over it. A Taovaya Indian asserted in 1808 that he had discovered it. A Comanche band claimed the land where it had fallen, and the Skidi Pawnee believed it was sacred. The Skidi Pawnee valued the meteorite for its supposed curing powers, and they made regular pilgrimages to its site. The Pawnee tell the story of Pahokatawa, who was killed by an enemy, eaten by animals, but then brought back to life by the gods. He came to Earth as a meteor and told his people that when meteors were seen falling in great numbers, it was not a sign that the world would end. When the Pawnee tribe witnessed the time “the stars fell upon the earth” in 1833, there was a panic. But the tribal leader spoke up and said, “Remember the words of Pahokatawa,” and the people were no longer afraid.

RICHTER, CHARLES (1900–1985) The seismologist Charles F. Richter—the namesake of one of the scales that measure the magnitude of earthquakes—was born on April 26, 1900, near Hamilton, Ohio. When he was nine years old, the family moved to Los Angeles, and at sixteen he enrolled at the University of Southern California. A year later he entered Stanford University, from which he graduated in 1920 with a bachelor’s degree in physics. Richter’s talent earned him a research post at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), where he was awarded a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in 1928. He was married that same year. Originally, Richter aspired to a career in astronomy, but he was persuaded to pursue seismology (the study of earthquakes) by his mentor, Robert A. Millikan. Richter worked at a seismological laboratory run by the Carnegie Institute until 1936, when he accepted a post at the Seismology Laboratory at Cal Tech. Apart from a Fulbright scholarship, which he spent in Japan in 1959–1960, Richter was employed continuously at Cal Tech until his retirement as emeritus professor in 1970. His best-known and most enduring contribution to seismology is the now widely accepted scale of earthquake strength known as the Richter scale. Richter Values

Earthquake Characteristics

Less than 3.5 3.5 to 5.4

Not felt but recorded. Usually felt but with little damage. Slight damage to purposeconstructed buildings but significant damage to nonseismic-aware buildings. Considerable damage within an area of 100 kilometers (62 miles). Major impact with damage over wide areas. A huge earthquake with serious repercussions over an area in excess of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles).

5.4 to 6.0

6.1 to 6.9

Stephanie Michelle Jackson

Sources Flores, Dan. Journal of an Indian Trader: Anthony Glass and the Texas Trading Frontier, 1790–1810. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1985. ———. “The Saga of the Texas Iron.” Red River Valley Historical Review 6 (Winter 1981): 58–70.

7.0 to 7.9 Greater than 8

Section 6: San Francisco Earthquake (1906) 457 Devised in 1935, the Richter scale superseded the previous one developed by the Italian geologist Giuseppe Mercalli in the late 1800s, which measured the strength of the earthquake at the point of measurement rather than the point of origin. While the Mercalli scale is a relatively subjective linear scale, the Richter scale is based on logarithms. This allows the identification of an earthquake’s point of origin, or epicenter, and provides a measure of the amount of energy generated by Earth’s movements. The Richter scale records measurements of seismic waves on seismographs. It has found worldwide acceptance through the efforts of Beno Gutenberg, the head of Cal Tech’s seismological laboratory. Throughout his career, Richter made important contributions to the field of seismology as a teacher, mentor, and writer of more than 200 scientific papers and several books, including Seismicity of the Earth (with Gutenberg, 1954) and Elementary Seismology (1958), a landmark introductory text. Richter was the recipient of a number of professional honors and awards, including the medal of the Seismological Society of America, for which he served as president from 1959 to 1960. A.M. Mannion

Sources Richter, Charles F. Elementary Seismology. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1995. Spall, Henry. “Charles F. Richter: An Interview.” U. S. Geological Survey. http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/seismology.

S A N F R A N C I S CO E A RT H Q UA K E (1906) On the morning of April 18, 1906, the city of San Francisco, California, then the largest metropolis on the western coast of North America, was struck by an earthquake later determined to be 7.8 on the Richter scale. Among the deadliest and most destructive natural disasters in American history, the earthquake and the fires it triggered killed more than 3,000 persons, destroyed some 28,000 structures, and left roughly half of the city of nearly 400,000 people

homeless. Yet, as devastating as it was in terms of lives lost and property damaged, the event led to some of the most important early research into the causes and consequences of seismic activity. Just three days after the quake, Governor George Pardee set up a commission of scientists, headed by Andrew Lawson, chair of the Geology Department at the University of California, to conduct an investigation into seismic activity in the state. Their findings were published two years later in The California Earthquake of April 18, 1906: Report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission. The Lawson Report, as it came to be called, was the first integrated, governmentcommissioned earthquake investigation in U.S. history, and it is regarded by historians of science as one of the most important studies in the history of seismology. Perhaps the most critical discovery revealed in the report was the connection between fault lines and earthquakes, a finding made by Johns Hopkins University Professor H.F. Reid. While seismologists in the nineteenth century were aware of fault lines, they had never made the connection between earthquakes and those fractures in Earth’s surface. In the Lawson Report, Reid propounded what came to be called the “theory of elastic rebound.” According to this theory, motion in Earth’s crust, later associated with huge plates riding atop the molten mantle within the planet’s interior, creates accumulated energy just beneath the surface, thereby distorting the crust. When the tension builds to an unsustainable degree, the sections on either side of the fault slip, releasing seismic waves that cause earthquakes. The elastic rebound theory provides the underlying principles of earthquake science through the present day. The Lawson Report also emphasized the need for geological observation. One of the tasks the commission set for itself was mapping the massive San Andreas Fault, which it correctly suspected was responsible for the San Francisco quake. The study provided the first map of an entire fault line. Another important scientific response to the San Francisco earthquake was the establishment, later in 1906, of the Seismological Society

458 Section 6: San Francisco Earthquake (1906)

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, later estimated at 7.8 on the Richter scale, leveled whole sections of the city and started fires that destroyed even more. The event did lead to important advances in the science of seismology and steps to ensure public safety. (Arnold Genthe/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

of America, a nonprofit scientific association engaged in seismic study, as well as serving as a public information resource. Despite the society’s efforts, California government officials and business leaders frowned upon discussing earthquakes, fearing that such negative publicity would hurt the regional economy. Indeed, when Lawson introduced the first course in seismology at the University of California in 1911, he felt compelled to present the information in a less controversial light by calling it a geology course. James Ciment

Sources Kurzman, Dan. Disaster! The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. New York: William Morrow, 2001. Lawson, Andrew C., et al. The California Earthquake of April 18, 1906: Report of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission. Publication 87, 2 vols. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1908. Winchester, Simon. A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906. New York: HarperCollins, 2005.

S E D I M E N TA R Y R O C K S Sedimentary rocks—formed from broken pieces, or “sediments,” of other rocks—cover much of Earth’s surface but constitute only a small percentage of its total volume. The study of sedimentary rocks aids in reconstructing the geologic events of the planet’s history because of the manner in which these rocks are deposited and by the fact that they contain fossils. Certain fossils are found in similar types of rock strata. Sedimentary rocks bearing the same kinds of fossils are of a similar age, even when they are found in different locations throughout the world. Weathering, the first step in the formation of sedimentary rocks, reduces larger masses of rock into sediments. Rain, heat, freezing, or frost cause physical weathering. Chemical weathering also causes rocks to decompose: chemicals in the air or water react with rocks so that they crumble. Erosion by wind, water, ice,

Section 6: Time Zones 459 and gravity physically moves the weathered sediments to new locations, where they are deposited. The transported deposits may be sorted into gravel, sand, silt, or mud. Sediments are deposited at the deltas of rivers, along an ocean bed, or at the foot of mountains as sand, gravel, or mud. Sandstone, for example, was previously sand most likely deposited by ocean waves or desert winds. Glaciers leave sediments in unsorted deposits. The lithification, or changing to stone, of sediments happens through the processes of compaction and cementation. Compaction occurs when loose sediments are squeezed into solid rocks. As new layers of sediments are deposited, the growing weight compacts the sediments into sedimentary rocks. Cementation occurs when chemical precipitates fill the pores or spaces between the sediments to bind the sediments into rock. Calcite and silica are materials that chemically cement sediments into rocks. Organic sedimentary rocks are formed from deposits of plants and animal remains. The material is eventually cemented into a cohesive body. The process can be observed in a peat bog. The vegetable material is pressed into solid material that can eventually become low-grade coal. Beds of anthracite coal are the products of enormous geologic forces. Another type of organic sedimentary rock is limestone. Much of the science of sedimentary rocks, indeed of geology itself, began in Europe during the nineteenth century. American contributions to the science include the work of Amos Eaton during the 1800s and C.K. Wentworth in the 1900s. Wentworth devised the Wentworth scale to determine the size of sediment particles in Earth’s geological strata. This scale is still used in the petroleum industry. Andrew J. Waskey

Sources Levins, Harold L. The Earth Through Time. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Saunders College Publishing, 1983. Pettijohn, Francis John. Sedimentary Rocks. 3rd ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1983. Plummer, Charles C., and David McGeary. Physical Geology. Dubuque, IA: W.C. Brown, 1979.

TIME ZONES Since the 1880s, the world has been divided, according to international convention, into twentyfour time zones, each representing one hour of the day. For centuries, noon in a particular locale was defined as the time when the sun was directly overhead. That meant, of course, that two places at different longitudes would be at different times. This system worked reasonably well while transportation was slow. But with the advent of faster transport, especially railroads, in the nineteenth century, the need for more uniform time became apparent. Differing times at railroad stations caused great confusion among the traveling public with regard to when a train might depart; more significantly, train dispatchers could easily become confused and send trains on a collision course toward each other. Great Britain, where railroads had first developed, led the way in the implementation of standardized time. In 1847, the major railroads agreed to set their schedules according to Greenwich Mean Time—that is, according to noon at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, London. Standardized time and time zones in America also came about in relation to the railroad industry. William F. Allen, secretary of the railroad’s General Time Convention, put forward a specific proposal for standard time that was adopted by the industry. On Sunday, November 18, 1883, “the day of two noons,” standard time became a reality, with many communities across the country that day switching from local time to standard time. In the 1870s, Sanford Fleming, chief engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway, championed the idea of worldwide time zones—twenty-four zones identified by letters of the alphabet. In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference adopted Fleming’s plan. Rather than adopting Fleming’s idea of setting the prime meridian in the middle of the Pacific, however, Greenwich, England, was selected as the prime meridian, with longitude being figured east and west, 180 degrees in each direction. While the conference had no enforcement authority, its plan eventually gained universal acceptance.

460 Section 6: Time Zones On March 19, 1918, the U.S. Congress approved “an act to save daylight and provide standard time for the United States.” The legislation, adopted as a wartime measure, implemented daylight saving time, but it also marked the first official national standard for time in the United States. Five time zones—Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, and Alaska—were established. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 established eight time zones (Atlantic, Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Yukon, Alaska-Hawaii, and Bering), and required uniformity among the states that observe daylight saving time. Over the years, the time zone boundaries have tended to be moved westward, in order to allow communities on the borders of time zones to have more productive daylight hours. Daylight saving time also has been adopted for the same reason. However, although largely accepted today, daylight saving time continues to be a controversial measure for some Americans, especially farmers, who insist that cows and other livestock refuse to change their internal clocks. Frank J. Smith

Sources Bartky, Ian R., and Elizabeth Harrison. “Standard and Daylight-Saving Time.” Scientific American 240:5 (1979): 46–53. Earle, William H. “November 18, 1883: The Day That Noon Showed Up on Time.” Smithsonian Magazine (November 1983): 193–208. O’Malley, Michael. Keeping Watch: A History of American Time. New York: Viking, 1990. Stephens, Carlene E. Inventing Standard Time. Washington, DC: National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1983.

V O LC A N O E S

AND

V U LC A N O LO G Y

A volcano is a function of multiple geologic events. The collision between two tectonic plates creates a forced opening in Earth’s surface. The enormous pressure from a subterranean magma chamber then pushes molten rock and gasses upward through a channel toward the surface. As the superheated lava spills from a newly formed volcano, it creates altered and new landmasses. Volcanoes are generally found where

The explosive eruption of Mount Saint Helens in southwest Washington State in May 1980 was the most violent volcanic event ever recorded in the continental United States. (Roger Werth/Woodfin Camp/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

two tectonic plates either pull apart or collide, causing a rift. The study of volcanoes and their geologic impacts is called vulcanology (from Vulcan, the Roman god of fire). Among the pioneering figures in American vulcanology was Thomas Jaggar, the founding director of the Hawaii Volcano Observatory in 1912 on Mount Kilauea—site of the world’s largest active volcano crater. A geologist by training, Jaggar traveled throughout the world to study the activity of volcanoes, including eruptions in Italy, the Aleutian Islands, Central America, and Japan. During the course of his travels, he witnessed massive casualties due to volcanic eruptions and devoted much of his life to developing early

Section 6: Volcanoes and Vulcanology 461 warning technology, such as earthquake and heat sensors. Jaggar convinced the U.S. government to take a more active role in volcano research. The Hawaii Observatory has been under the authority of the U.S. Geological Survey since 1947.

Hawaii and the R ing of Fire The Hawaiian Islands sit at the center of the Ring of Fire—a chain of active volcanoes that encircles the Pacific Ocean. The volcanoes in the Ring of Fire are categorized as “hot spot” volcanoes, in which a plume of molten lava remains in place, spewing steadily for decades or even centuries, beneath a tectonic plate. The constant churning of lava can be seen on Mount Kilauea (the Hawaiian word for “spewing” or “much spreading”), on the Big Island of Hawaii. This 4,100 foot (1,250 meter) mountain is a shield volcano with a broad top that has continuously flowed lava of low viscosity—which moves quickly—for several decades. The lava flows have destroyed several hundred structures and leveled whole towns, while the buildup of hardened rock has added hundreds of acres of new land to the island.

Mount S aint Helens The eruption of Mount Saint Helens in Washington State on May 18, 1980, was the most violent volcanic event ever witnessed in U.S. history. David Johnston, a vulcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, had studied the volcano for several years and had seen a rock bulge forming on the north side of the mountain, which indicated that a massive eruption was imminent. His prediction was correct. The event began with an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, followed by the eruption itself. The volcano’s 123 years of dormancy came to an end with a blast equal to 350 tons of TNT. In the eruption, fifty-seven people were killed, 250 homes were destroyed, and 185 miles (300 kilometers) of roads, bridges, and railway were demolished. The initial blast blew away the entire north face of the mountain, setting off an avalanche that wiped out hundreds of square miles of forest. The plume of ash rose 15 miles (24 kilometers) in the air. Although there have been

no major eruptions of the volcano since 1980, several smaller events occurred in 1989 and 2004.

Yellowstone National Park and a Super volcano Another type of volcanic event occurs when a magma chamber forms over a very large area and, instead of erupting through a mountain crater, engulfs a broader landmass in a more dispersed but still tremendous explosion. Yellowstone National Park in northwestern Wyoming is the site of a volcanic caldera, a feature formed by the collapse of land after a volcanic eruption. USGS geologist Bob Christiansen did extensive fieldwork at this site beginning in the 1970s. He estimated the caldera to be a 34 mile (54 kilometer) by 45 mile (72 kilometer) valley depression formed some 2.2 million years ago. A massive underground eruption was so widespread that, instead of pushing skyward, it pulled a section of Earth’s crust downward into an empty magma chamber. Evidence of a similar occurrence was found in 1995 by vulcanologists in La Garita Caldera basin, formed some 26 million years ago in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Scientists estimate the volume of volcanic output to be enough to fill all of Lake Erie—evidence of the largest measured eruption in Earth’s history. Measuring approximately 22 miles (35 kilometers) by 47 miles (75 kilometers), the area erupted at least seven times over a 1.5-million-year span. The “kill zone” from this violent “supervolcanic” activity, extended up to 500 miles (800 kilometers) in every direction. Recent advances in the study of volcanoes include the use of satellite-based radar to produce detailed images of volcanic buildup and eruption, measuring surface motion with accuracy of within less than an inch. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Arnold, Eric. Volcanoes: Mountains of Fire. New York: Random House, 1997. MacDonald, Gordon. Volcanoes. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972. Sigurdsson, Haraldur. Encyclopedia of Volcanoes. London: Academic Press, 2000.

462 Section 6: Weather Forecasting

W E AT H E R F O R E C A S T I N G Weather forecasting is the process of predicting the future state of atmospheric conditions— typically precipitation, cloud cover, wind, and temperature—and is usually done for a specific time period and location. Weather forecasting can involve a variety of techniques, whose sophistication and accuracy have evolved greatly since humans first tried to predict the weather. The earliest weather forecasts were based on local rules of thumb, natural clues (such as the behavior of animals), and folklore or proverbs. Compared to modern forecasting techniques, these early attempts at weather prediction lacked wide areas of coverage and extended timeframes, and they generally were not very accurate. Improvements in the scope and accuracy of weather forecasting relied on advances in technology and the science of meteorology, as well as the organization of large-scale (usually national) observation networks. Although weather records and journals had been kept on the American continent since colonial times, it was not until the invention of the telegraph, in 1844, that the practical application of collected weather observations for forecasting became viable. In 1869, Cleveland Abbe, then director of the Cincinnati Observatory, began the first systematic, daily public weather forecasts in the United States, based on reports he received via telegraph from a small network of observers. The establishment by an act of Congress in 1870 of a national weather service as part of the U.S. Army Signal Service (later a civilian agency known as the U.S. Weather Bureau and, eventually, the National Weather Service) led to the widespread collection, analysis, and dissemination of weather information. This made possible the synchronous observations across the country necessary for the accurate analysis and prediction of large-scale weather systems. In January 1871, Abbe began work supervising the forecasting efforts of the burgeoning weather service. His first published forecast for the service, or “probabilities,” as it was known, was issued on February 19, 1871. Despite the technological and bureaucratic developments that led to a national system of

issuing forecasts, weather forecasting in the United State remained in many ways more of an art than a science through the first half of the twentieth century. Weather predictions were chiefly based on observation of the changes in barometric pressure and wind direction, and on comparisons of the current weather map with similar past situations—a process known as the analog method of forecasting. As a 1916 U.S. Weather Bureau publication, Weather Forecasting in the United States, stated in its preface, “The consensus of opinion seems to be that the only road to successful forecasting lies in the patient and consistent study of the daily weather maps.” Modern forecasting techniques grew out of the theoretical understandings of the atmosphere that were developed during the 1920s by a small group of scientists working at the Geophysical Institute in Bergen, Norway. Through the discovery of such principles as fronts and air masses, forecasters eventually gained a better understanding of the large-scale weather systems that produce much of the day-to-day weather experienced in the midlatitudes. It would take more than a decade before the techniques developed in Bergen were adopted by the U.S. Weather Bureau. In 1939, Francis Reichelderfer, who had recently been appointed chief of the Weather Bureau, hired meteorologist Carl-Gustaf Rossby— one of the scientists from Bergen—as his assistant chief. Under Reichelderfer and Rossby’s direction, the Weather Bureau entered a new era, in which forecasts were based more on scientific principles and less on rules of thumb. Official weather forecasts today are the result of numerical weather prediction, which uses powerful supercomputers to simulate future weather conditions by solving complex mathematical equations that govern the physics of the atmosphere. The first successful example of such computerized forecasting techniques was carried out in April 1950 by a small team at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and led by mathematician John von Neumann. Although crude by today’s standards, the programs used to make the first numerical weather predictions were the forerunners to modern computer forecast models. Numerical weather forecasting became operational with the creation of the Joint Numerical

Section 6: Weather Forecasting 463 Weather Prediction Unit (JNWPU), which began operation on July 1, 1954, in Suitland, Maryland. Staffed by members of the U.S. Weather Bureau, the U.S. Air Force, and the U.S. Navy, the JNWPU became the centralized location where numerical weather forecasting was performed. In 1958, the JNWPU merged with the National Weather Analysis Center (NAWAC) to become the National Meteorological Center (NMC). In 1995, the NMC was reorganized and became the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), part of the National Weather Service. Forecasters today use the computer model output created by NCEP and other centers around the world as the basis of the forecasts they issue. One limitation of computer forecast models is that they are highly dependent on the accuracy and number of data taken from observations of initial weather conditions (in other words, small variations in the initial weather observations can produce large changes in the computer model’s output). For this reason, as well as the fact that the atmosphere behaves in a chaotic and nonlinear fashion, forecasts made using numerical weather prediction are accurate at the most for seven days. To make more accurate predictions, forecasters often compare the results of several runs of the same model, using slightly different initial

conditions for each run, or several different computer models that rely on the same initial conditions. Known as “ensemble forecasting,” this method gives forecasters greater or lesser certainty about the model and forecast. If several runs of the same model or several different models produce a similar output, the meteorologist will have greater confidence in the forecast. Another forecasting technique is persistence forecasting, which assumes that weather conditions for a given location will not change during the time period of the forecast. For example, a prediction that a location experiencing warm and sunny weather today will be warm and sunny tomorrow would be a persistence forecast. Forecasts are based on the statistical averages of weather conditions for a given location. This method works well for short time periods and for locations and times of the year that are not subject to frequent changes in weather. Sean Potter

Sources Aguado, Edward, and James E. Burt. Understanding Weather and Climate. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. National Weather Service. http://www.nws.noaa.gov. Vasquez, Tim. Weather Forecasting Handbook. 5th ed. Garland, TX: Weather Graphics Technologies, 2002.

DOCUMENTS John Josselyn’s Account of the Mineral Wealth of New England The following is seventeenth-century scientist John Josselyn’s account “Of Stones, Minerals, Metals and Earths,” from New-Englands Rarities Discovered (1672). First, the Emrald which grows in flat Rocks, and is very good. Rubies, which here are very watry. I have heard a story of an Indian, that found a stone, up in the Country, by a great Pond as big as an Egg, that in a dark Night would give a light to read by; but I take it to be but a story. Diamond, which are very brittle, and therefore of little worth. Crystal, called by our West Country men the Kenning Stone; by Sebegug Pond is found in considerable quantity, not far from thence is a Rock of Crystal called the Moose Rock, because in shape like a Moose, and Muscovy Glass, both white and purple of reasonable content. . . . Iron, in abundance, and as good bog Iron as any in the World. Copper. It is reported that the French have a Copper Mine at Port Royal, that yielded them twelve Ounces of pure Copper out of a Pound of Oar. Source: John Josselyn, New-Englands Rarities Discovered (London: Widdowes, 1672).

Thomas Nuttall’s Description of Mississippi Hydrology Although he was not considered a hydrologist, the Harvard professor, botanist, and explorer Thomas Nuttall made a complete study of the geology and the movements of water on Earth’s surface. The following excerpt, taken from his Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory, discusses the hydrologic power of the Mississippi River as he experienced it in the late autumn of 1818. [T]he river appears singularly meandering, sweeping along in vast elliptic curves, some of them from six to eight miles round, and constantly presenting themselves in opposite direc-

tions. The principal current pressing against the centre of the bend, at the rate of about five miles per hour, gradually diminishes in force as it approaches the extremity of the curve. Having attained the point or promontory, the current proceeds with accumulating velocity to the opposite bank, leaving, consequently, to the eddy water, an extensive deposition in the form of a vast bed of sand, nearly destitute of vegetation, but flanked commonly by an island or peninsula of willows. These beds of sand, for the most part of the year under water, are what the boatmen term bars. The river, as it sweeps along the curve, according to its force and magnitude, produces excavations in the banks; which, consisting of friable materials, are perpetually washing away and leaving broken and perpendicular ledges, often lined with fallen trees, so as to be very dangerous to the approach of boats, which would be dashed to pieces by the velocity of the current. These slips in the banks are almost perpetual, and by the undermining of eddies often remarkable in their extent. . . . The encroachments in the centre of the curves of the meanders, proceeding to a certain extent, at length break through and form islands, in time the islands also disappear, and so the river continually augmenting its uncontroulable dominion over the friable soil, alternately fills up one channel, and more deeply excavates or forms another, in proportion to the caprice of the current. Source: Thomas Nuttall, “Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory, During the Year 1819,” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 13, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: A.H. Clark, 1905).

Edward Hitchcock’s Pious Geology Edward Hitchcock was a nineteenth-century theologian and scientist who sought to reconcile geological science with the traditional teachings of Judaism and Christianity regarding the Creation. The following is an excerpt from his Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences (1851).

464

Section 6: Documents 465 The history of opinions respecting the deluge of Noah is one of the most curious and instructive in the annals of man. . . . Almost every geological change which the earth has undergone, from its centre to its circumference, has, at one time or another, been ascribed to this deluge. And so plain has this seemed to those who had only a partial view of the facts, that those who doubted it were often denounced as enemies of revelation. But most of these opinions and this dogmatism are now abandoned, because both Nature and Scripture are better understood. And among well-informed geologists, at least, the opinion is almost universal, that there are no facts in their science which can be clearly referred to the Noachian deluge; that is, no traces in nature of that event; and on the other hand, that there is nothing in the Mosaic account of the deluge which would necessarily lead us to expect permanent marks of such a catastrophe within or upon the earth. . . . [T]he facts of geology forbid the idea that our present continents formed the bed of the ocean at so recent a date as that of Noah’s deluge, and that the supposition that all organic remains were deposited during the two thousand years between the six days’ work and the deluge is totally irreconcilable with all correct philosophy. . . . [The Flood] could not have deposited the fossil remains in the rocks. This position is too plain to the practical geologist to need a formal argument to sustain it. But there are many intelligent men, who do not see clearly why the remains of marine animals and plants may not be referred to the deluge. And if they could be, then all the demands of the geologist for long periods anterior to man are without foundation. But they cannot be, for the following reasons: First. On this supposition the organic remains ought to be confusedly mingled together, since they must have been brought over the land promiscuously by the waters of the deluge; but they are in fact arranged in as much order as the specimens of a well-regulated cabinet. . . . Secondly. On this theory, at least, a part of the organic remains ought to correspond with living animals and plants, since the deluge took place so long after the six days of creation. But with the exception of a few species near the top of the series, the fossil species are wholly unlike those now alive.

Thirdly. How, by this theory, can we explain the fact, that there are found in the rocks at least five distinct races of animals and plants, so unlike that they could not have been contemporaries? or for the fact, that most of them are of a highly tropical character? or for the fact, that as we rise higher in the rocks, there is a nearer and nearer approach to existing species? Fourthly. This theory requires us to admit, that in three hundred and eighty days the waters of the deluge deposited rocks at least six miles in thickness, over half or two thirds of our existing continents; and these rocks made up of hundreds of thick beds, exceedingly unlike one another in composition and organic contents. Will any reasonable man believe this possible without a miracle? But I need not multiply arguments on this point. It is a theory which no reasonable man can long maintain after studying the subject. . . . There are no facts in geology that afford any presumption against the occurrence of the Noachian deluge, but rather the contrary. . . . In all ages and nations, and especially among ancient ones, universal terms are often used to signify only a very large amount in number or quantity. . . . It is, indeed, very humiliating to human nature to find so many of the wise, the talented, and the religious so confident and zealous, yet so erroneous. . . . The subject of the present lecture is the divine benevolence, as taught by geology. . . . When we learn from the records of geology, as they are inscribed upon the rocks, how numerous and thorough have been the revolutions of the surface and the crust of the globe in past ages; how often and how long the present dry land has been alternately above and beneath the ocean; how frequently the crust of the globe has been fractured, bent, and dislocated; now lifted upward, and now thrown downward, and now folded by lateral pressure; how frequently melted matter has been forced through its strata and through its fissures to the surface; in short, how every particle of the accessible portions of the globe has undergone entire metamorphoses; and especially when we recollect what strong evidence there is that oceans of liquid matter exist beneath the solid crust, and that probably the whole interior of the earth is in that condition,

466 Section 6: Documents with expansive energy sufficient to rend the globe into fragments; when we review all these facts, we cannot but feel that the condition of the surface of the globe must be one of great insecurity and liability to change. But it is not so. On the contrary, the present state of the globe is one of permanent uniformity and entire security, except those comparatively slight catastrophes which result from earthquakes, volcanoes, and local deluges. . . . My chief object in this lecture is to show what accessions to our knowledge of the divine plans have been derived from science, especially from geology. . . . We will first look at man in the rudest condition in society, in which he has any idea of the existence of beings superior to himself. . . . In the second place, polytheism, especially among nations somewhat civilized, is an advance in man’s conceptions of the Supreme Being. . . . The next step in man’s knowledge of God was an immeasurable advance upon polytheism. I refer to the revelation which God made of himself to the Jews in the Old Testament. . . . The revelations of Christianity have brought to light so much respecting the moral character and moral government of Jehovah, as to leave little further to be desired or expected in this world. . . .

The discoveries in modern astronomy constitute the fifth step in man’s knowledge of God. . . . The sixth step in man’s knowledge of Jehovah has been made by the microscope. . . . In the seventh and last place, geology has given great enlargement to our knowledge of the divine plans and operations in the universe, and in the following particulars. 1. It expands our ideas of the time in which the material universe has been in existence as much as astronomy does in regard to its extent. . . . 2. In the second place, geology gives us impressive examples of the extent of organic life on the globe since its creation. . . . 3. In the third place, geology shows us that the present system of organic life on the globe is but one link of a series, extending very far backward and infinitely forward. . . . 4. In the fourth place, geology reveals to us a curious series of improvements in the condition of worlds, as they pass through successive changes. . . . 5. Finally, geology discloses to us chemical change as a great animating, controlling, and conservative principle of the material universe. Source: Edward Hitchcock, The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences (London: Collins, 1851).

Section 7

SOCIAL SCIENCES

ESSAYS Discovering the Human Past: Anthropology in Early America A

nthropology, the study of humans, began as the pursuit of early American naturalists, some of whom recorded their observations of various Native American tribes. Thomas Nuttall, for example, in A Journal of Travels in the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819 (1821), stated his aim to preserve the remnants of language and custom of a people vanishing from the Great Plains. Explorers and scientists like Nuttall (a botanist) were ad hoc anthropologists in their fascination with the Native American tribes and the European American settlers of the Appalachian region, west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi, and beyond to the Rocky Mountains. Nuttall, Jeremy Belknap, John Bradbury, and others recorded the folk customs and beliefs of native peoples such as the Algonquian, Osage, Sioux, Mandan, Aricara, Pawnee, and Cherokee. From the beginning of the exploration and colonization of North America, a few perceptive inquirers were willing to accept Native American culture on its own terms. John Smith, in his works on Virginia and New England, was a sensitive observer of Indian customs. The Puritan minister Roger Williams—unlike such Puritans as Increase Mather and his son, Cotton, who only spit vitriol at the Indians—embraced the Narragansetts of Rhode Island and sought to learn as much as he could from them, including their language. Belknap added a section on Indian “Monuments and Relicts” to his History of New-Hampshire (1784, 1791, 1792), portraying the Indians as tragic figures, destined by providence and their own limitations to succumb to European settlement. “It must be acknowledged,” he wrote, “that human depravity appeared in these unhappy crea-

tures in a most shocking view. The principles of education and the refinements of civilized life either lay a check upon our vicious propensities, or disguise our crimes; but among them human wickedness was seen in its naked deformity. Yet, bad as they were, it will be difficult to find them guilty of any crime which cannot be paralleled among civilized nations.” Belknap, a Protestant minister, saw Native Americans and European Americans as equally subject to sin.

Native American Religious B eliefs As more scientists in early America observed and recorded the customs of the native peoples, they discovered that the American Indians generally held a common belief in the Great Spirit or Author of Life and shared interesting theories of the creation and emergence of specific Indian tribes and customs. The Great Spirit was invisible, all powerful, yet not quite alone among spiritual beings. The sun and moon were to some tribes “superior beings of the creation.” Native Americans believed in a spirit-filled, animistic, and pantheistic world where spirits—some good, some bad— intervene to help or hinder human existence. Centuries ago, the Osages, in the early morning hours, would cry aloud their fears and lamentations to the Great Spirit. “About sunrise,” wrote Nuttall in his Journal, “the whole village re-echoes with the most plaintive tones of distress, uttered at the doors of their lodges, or at the tombs of those whom they loved and esteemed while living.” One morning in August 1819, Nuttall was awakened “about day-break” by the Indians in a nearby encampment, who “broke out into their

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470 Section 7: Essays

George Catlin was the foremost artist-chronicler of Native American life in the first half of the nineteenth century. His hundreds of paintings and sketches provide a valuable ethnographic record of Indian life, ritual, and custom in the Plains and Northwest. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

usual lamentations and complaints to the Great Spirit. Their mourning was truly pathetic, and uttered in a peculiar tone. Amongst those who first broke forth into lamentation and aroused the rest to their melancholy orisons, was the pious Tà-lai,” a leader of the Osages. “The commencing tones was exceedingly loud, and gradually fell off into a low, long continued, and almost monotonous base. To this tone of lamentation was modulated, the subject of their distress or petition. Those who had experienced any recent distress or misfortune, previously blackened their faces with coal, or besmeared them with ashes.” Bradbury, who explored the northern Great Plains in 1810, recorded the Osages’ belief regarding the manitou, an object associated with the Great Spirit. He wrote in his Travels, “On or near these Manitous, they chiefly deposit their offerings to the Great Spirit or Father of Life. This has caused some to believe that these manitous are the objects that they worship; but this opinion is erroneous. The Indians believe that the Great Spirit either inhabits, or frequently

visits, these manifestations of his power; and that offerings deposited there, will sooner attract his notice, and gain his auspices, than in any other place. These offerings are propitiatory, either for success in war or in hunting, and consist of various articles, of which the feather of the war eagle are in the greatest estimation. On these rocks several rude figures have been drawn by the Indians with red paint: they are chiefly in imitation of buffaloe, deer, &c. One of these, according with the idea of the Great Spirit, is not unlike our common representation of the devil.” Meriwether Lewis and William Clark recorded their observations of the North Dakota Sioux, who exposed their dead to the elements on a wooden scaffold about six feet off the ground. The blankets that one woman had used in life followed her in death, being “tightly laced around her.” The items of her daily existence, such as a wooden sleigh on which she carried family goods pulled by her dog, were placed with her body, as was paint she used and claws of a beaver. A blue

Section 7: Essays 471 jay and a dog had been ritually killed and placed next to her body. All of these items prepared the dead for the paradise to come. Lewis and Clark in August 1804, journeying up the Missouri as it wound along the southern edge of South Dakota, heard from the local tribes of a hill inhabited by “Deavels,” who “are in human form with remarkabl[y] large heads, and about 18 Inches High.” They jealously protect the hill, and using “Sharp arrows” they “kill all persons who are So hardy as to attempt to approach the hill.” Thus, for the Sioux, Omahas, Mahars, and Otos, “no Consideration is Sufficient to induce them to approach.”

Folk Customs Among the recorded customs of many Native American tribes is smoking the calumet (peace pipe), an important religious, diplomatic, and hospitality ritual. Early American scientists found that the Great Plains custom of sharing the calumet was part of a ceremony expressing piety and friendship. Bradbury reported that the calumet held a mixture called kinnikineck, made up of the bark of the dogwood tree and the leaves of the sweet sumac. In addition to a narcotic effect, such ingredients were beneficial for the sufferer of malaria. Indians who grew tobacco would add its dried leaves to the calumet bowl. The naturalist John Kirk Townsend, on his 1834 journey across the Great Plains, smoked the peace pipe with Kaw Indians, who used tobacco and “the dried leaves of the poke plant” in the calumet. The custom of the Great Plains tribes was to share the calumet while seated on a buffalo robe in a lodge or tepee, sometimes waited on by women of the tribe. Such was Bradbury’s experience in 1809. He was entertained by a chief of the Arikaras, who puffed smoke toward heaven, earth, and all directions—the realm of the Great Spirit. Ritual and ceremony in frontier communities along the Missouri River frequently included food, drink, and dance. During the 1800s, squirrels were so numerous in the lowland forests of the Great Plains that special squirrel hunts were organized, often netting thousands of squirrels. Hunters brought not only their rifles but their jugs as well, and after concluding their work, they

sat down to a barbique, which involved a hog roast and the consumption of plenty of whiskey. “The hog,” noted Bradbury, “is killed, dressed, and roasted after the Indian method; this consists in digging a hole, the bottom of which they cover with hot stones; on these the hog is laid, and covered over also with heated stones.” Some folk customs involved salt, which was important not only for flavoring food but for health reasons as well. Residents of the Great Plains were constantly on the lookout for salt springs; salt was produced by collecting this water and boiling it down to a fine grain. The salt plains of the upper Arkansas River were prized by Native Americans and European Americans alike. Hunters and trappers heard of the vast salt plains, which formed pyrites that were easily mistaken for silver. Indians, unconcerned about stories of precious metals, journeyed to the salt plains to garner a year ’s supply of salt. When James Wilkinson descended the Arkansas River in 1806, he learned from the local Osages that they collected salt at the Great Salt Plain by using turkey feathers to delicately scrape the salt from the ground “into a wooden trencher.” The Osages annually celebrated the Green Corn Dance, a festival during which they feasted on “the usual commodities of the season,” according to Nuttall, “tallow [bison fat], dried bison meat, and sweet corn, being dried while in the milk, and thus forming an agreeable ingredient in the soup of the prepared bison beef.” Bison jerky was prepared “in a very commodious way, without the use of salt, by cutting it up into broad and thin slices, which are dried on a scaffold over a slow fire, and afterwards folded up in the manner of peltries, so as to be equally portable.” Some Plains tribes made pemmican, a trail food made of jerky, berries, buffalo fat, and bone marrow. Sacajawea, the wife of Charbonneau, the guide on the Lewis and Clark expedition through North Dakota, provided the company with wild artichokes, which she claimed mice gathered and deposited in large underground caches. She used a pointed stick to penetrate the soil in various places until she discovered the cache. Body paint and ornaments were also among the customs of Native American tribes. Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail (1849) describes one

472 Section 7: Essays Kansas Indian who was “a man of distinction” among his tribe. “His head was shaved and painted red, and from the tuft of hair remaining on the crown dangled several eagle’s feathers, and the tails of two or three rattlesnakes. His cheeks, too, were daubed with vermilion; his ears were adorned with green glass pendants; a collar of grizzly bears’ claws surrounded his neck, and several large necklaces of wampum hung on his breast.” An old Delaware at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, “rode a tough shaggy pony, with mane and tail well knotted with burrs, and a rusty Spanish bit in its mouth, to which, by way of reins, was attached a string of raw hide. His saddle . . . had no covering, being merely a tree of the Spanish form, with a piece of grizzly bear’s skin laid over it, a pair of rude wooden stirrups attached, and, in the absence of girth, a thong of hide passing around the horse’s belly. . . . He wore a buckskin frock, which, like his fringed leggings, was well polished and blackened by grease and long service, and an old handkerchief was tied around his head.” The tribes of North Dakota that Lewis and Clark met on their journey informed them that sometimes they went north on hunting expeditions in search of polar bears. Meriwether Lewis recorded in his journal that “previous to their departure, they paint themselves and perform all those supersticious rights commonly observed when they are about to make war uppon a neighbouring nation.” The Osages of the Arkansas River Valley, according to Nuttall, remove all of their hair, “even pluck out their eyebrows, shave their heads, and leave only a small scalp upon the crown. Of this, two locks left long, are plaited and ornamented with silver, wampum, and eagle’s feathers. The tonsure and ears, as well as the eye-lashes, are painted with vermillion on ordinary occasions, but blackened to express grief or misfortune. Sometimes, apparently out of fancy, they fantastically decorate their faces with white, black, or green stripes. The use of calico or shirts is yet unknown among them, and their present fashions and mode of dress have been so long stationary, as now to be by themselves considered characteristic.” The Indian maiden, Nuttall reported, “is distinguished from the matron by the method she

employs in braiding her hair into two cylindrical rolls, which are ornamented with beads, silver, or wampum, and inclined to either side of the head near the ears. After marriage the hair is unloosed and brought together behind.” Women of the Plains tribes generally wore leather dresses decorated with beads and embroidered with porcupine quills. Men wore breechcloths in summer and leggings and large leather shirts in winter. Warriors wore eagle feathers in their hair or war bonnets to distinguish their bravery and military exploits. Moccasins were the footwear of choice; they were easily repaired, warm in winter, and sturdy. Townsend, who crossed the prairies in 1834 in the company of Nuttall and Nathaniel Wyeth, observed members of the Sauk tribe: “Each man was furnished with a good blanket, and some had an under dress of calico, but the greater number were entirely naked to the waist. The faces and bodies of the men were, almost without an exception, fantastically painted, the predominant color being deep red, with occasionally a few stripes of dull clay white around the eyes and mouth. I observed one whose body was smeared with light colored clay, interspersed with black streaks.” Townsend described the chief as “a large dignified looking man, of perhaps fifty-five years of age, distinguished from the rest, by his richer habiliments, a more profuse display of trinkets in his ears, (which were cut and gashed in a frightful manner to receive them) and above all, by a huge necklace made of the claws of the grizzly bear.” The women of the tribe, according to Townsend, “were dressed very much like the men, and at a little distance could scarcely be distinguished from them.” He also described how the Sauk applied paint to their faces: “the dry paint is folded in a thin muslin or gauze cloth, tied tightly and beaten against the face, and a small looking-glass is held in the other hand to direct them where to apply it.” Visiting with the Kaw tribe, Townsend noted that the warriors wore “woollen pantaloons,” covering their chest with a robe or blanket. Many wore ear decorations that had horribly scarred the ear. On his travels, Nuttall met Clermont, the chief of the southern Osages of the Arkansas Valley. Nuttall remarked on the “degree of urbanity,

Section 7: Essays 473 though nothing at first very prepossessing, in the appearance of Clarmont. He wore a hat ornamented with a band of silver lace, with a sort of livery or regimental coat, and appeared proud of the artificial distinctions bestowed on him by the [U.S.] government. He asked, familiarly, if I had ever heard of him before, and appeared gratified at my answering in the affirmative.” In The Oregon Trail, Parkman’s descriptions of life on the Plains in the nineteenth century included the French Canadian trappers and traders who lived among the Indian tribes. Canadian voyageurs were some of the most knowledgeable sources of information about the native peoples of North America. Their information

enabled Bradbury, Nuttall, and others to act as America’s early anthropologists. Russell Lawson

Sources Bradbury, John. Travels in the Interior of American in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811. London: 1819. Lawson, Russell M. The Land Between the Rivers: Thomas Nuttall’s Ascent of the Arkansas, 1819. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Nuttall, Thomas. A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819. Philadelphia: T.H. Palmer, 1821. Townsend, John Kirk. Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978.

From Modernization to Globalization M

odernization theory emerged in the 1950s among social scientists to explain different levels of development in the world’s societies. Although its roots can be seen in the response of nineteenth-century American and European intellectuals to industrialization, social scientists in the decades immediately following World War II developed modernization theory to explain the transformation throughout the world, past and present, from traditional agrarian society to modern urban society. Modernization theory reached its peak in the 1970s and then declined; critics complained of the theory’s ethnocentrism and tendency to associate modernization with Westernization. Moreover, they said, the theory lacked empirical evidence, was too abstract, and simplified the diversity and complexity of change in both contemporary and historical societies. In the 1980s, the world systems theory of Immanuel Wallerstein replaced the emphasis on modernization among social scientists. Recent scholars have developed a globalization paradigm that attempts to explain the relationship of modern developing and developed societies in terms of economic dependence and interdependence.

European Background Modernization theory derived from the writings of Karl Marx, Jacob Burkhardt, Ferdinand Tönnies, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Marx set the stage with his arguments in the Communist Manifesto (1848), Capital (1867–1894), and other works, such that economic and social forces, especially those engaged in production, direct human institutions and behavior more than ideas and human consciousness do. Burkhardt, a German historian, argued in The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) that modernity was the result of individualism brought about by the origins of capitalism in Europe, rather than feudal, communitarian thinking. Tönnies argued in Community and Association (1887) that the Industrial Revolution in Europe resulted in the diminution of traditional values and relationships; the community was replaced by the impersonal relationships and values of the association. Weber echoed Tönnies’s lament of a deteriorating traditionalism in a modern context, citing rationalism as the prime culprit for the change. Durkheim adapted Tönnies’s thought to social change and believed that the traditional community would transform into a great community in the modern world.

474 Section 7: Essays By the beginning of the twentieth century, then, European social theorists had identified a change in the West during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: a form of society based on community and farming had changed to one based on artificial associations and urban existence. The dichotomy seemed self-evident. At one extreme was the peasant society, characterized by a static existence focused on continuity and tradition—the product of a rural, agrarian existence where keeping the family name tied to the same parcel of land was of utmost importance. Religion and superstition gave meaning to everyday life. Organic institutions such as family and community united and oriented the people; the group was more important than the individual. At the opposite extreme was a modern society where family was disrupted and community lost as the past was forgotten; tradition gave way to individuality and new kinds of association. The quest for progress, scientific knowledge, and the latest technology came at the expense of the old ways of doing things, old beliefs, and reliance on the natural environment. Social hierarchy gave way to social and geographic mobility. The modern society was fragmented, specialized, bureaucratic, urban, industrial, and secular.

American Modernization American social theorists, students of urbanization and community, political scientists, and sociologists such as Jane Addams, Robert Park, Louis Wirth, and Talcott Parsons embraced modernization theory as a way to explain changes in American society from 1850 to 1950. Wirth studied the city and discovered the replacement of “primary relationships,” such as would be found in a traditional agrarian community, with “secondary relationships,” those of a modern, anonymous, mass society. Parsons, in several books published in the 1950s, developed a theoretical framework for analyzing social systems, expanding on Tönnies’s dichotomy of community and association. Parsons argued in The Social System (1951) that a traditional society is characterized by a willingness to express feelings (affectivity), a focus on self, a belief in moral and religious absolutes (universalism), and personal strength and individual achievement. A modern society, by contrast, demands a rational approach to feelings

(affective neutrality), group orientation, relative morals and beliefs (particularism), and behavior prescribed by society. During the 1960s and 1970s, social scientists attempted to bring empirical substance and more concrete definitions to Parsons’s theoretical construct. Walt Rostow, for example, examined modernization according to stages of economic growth. Alex Inkeles used a survey of thousands of men in third world countries to determine characteristics of a modern personality. Cyril Black, in The Dynamics of Modernization (1966), discussed the transition of a traditional to a modern society in terms of a transfer of leadership, as the entire social structure changes and the economy changes from rural-agrarian to urban-industrial. Samuel Huntington, in “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics” (1971), wrote that the “essential difference” between the traditional and the modern “lies in the greater control which modern man has over his natural and social environment. This control, in turn, is based on the expansion of scientific and technological knowledge.” Increasingly during these years, American historians began to embrace modernization as a means of describing and analyzing American history. The “new social history,” the “new urban history,” and the community studies movement advocated by scholars such as Darrett Rutman, Kenneth Lockridge, and John Demos provided social-scientific theory along with empirical evidence based on statistical analysis of tax, land, census, and town records to document the transition from traditional to modern society from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Richard Brown epitomized this synthesizing approach toward early American history in Modernization: The Transformation of American Life, 1600–1865 (1976). The community studies movement among social scientists in the 1960s and 1970s was a reflection of the concern that traditional American values of community and reliance on the natural environment were being lost to urbanization and artificial relationships and the mindset of environmental exploitation. To study the early American community was to capture the material and spiritual bases of a way of life rapidly fading into the distant past. The longing for the

Section 7: Essays 475 ideal traditional community reflected fear that modernization was bringing irrevocable, undesirable changes.

World Systems Theor y and Globalization The increasing development of the economies and technological sophistication of Third World developing countries added to the revolution in communications inaugurated by digital technology and the Internet, along with the fall of the Soviet Union and the apparent triumph of capitalism, led many scholars to question the legitimacy of a theory of development dependent on the traditional-modern model as well as a WestEast dichotomy. Immanuel Wallerstein inaugurated a revolution of sorts among social theorists with the publication of The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1974). In this and in two subsequent volumes, Wallerstein argued

that the developing systems led eventually to one capitalist world system in which core regions exploit economically peripheral regions. Although Wallerstein predicted that a socialist system will eventually dominate the world’s economic, political, and social structures, others argue that capitalism will continue to be an integrative, universal force. Many see globalization as the realization of Adam Smith’s dream in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that free trade might dominate the world’s peoples, bringing enlightened political ideas in its wake. Russell Lawson

Sources Nisbet, Robert A. The Sociological Tradition. New York: Basic Books, 1966. Parsons, Talcott. The Social System. New York: Free Press, 1951. Roberts, J. Timmons, and Amy Hite. From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change. Ames, IA: Blackwell, 2000. Wirth, Louis. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology 44:1 (July 1938): 1–24.

Social Sciences T

he social sciences entail observation of human behavior, motivation, and responses to environmental stimuli. Based on these observations, social scientists arrive at theories applicable to the human community without respect to place or time. Social science theory developed in the nineteenth century because of the dramatic changes occurring as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century had argued that human reason and scientific analysis could solve most problems of government, society, and behavior. This progressive, positivist attitude was embraced by nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, August Comte, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Emile Durkheim in Europe and Jane Addams, Henry Adams, Robert Park, Charles Cooley, and Talcott Parsons in America. Over the years, social scientists became increasingly organized in professional organizations and

academic communities. The dominance of amateurs in the social sciences waned, particularly due to the rise of the university system, which trained specialists in this discipline and oriented the process of the accumulation and systematization of knowledge. In America, professional social scientists joined the faculties of universities such as Johns Hopkins, which was on the vanguard of developing graduate programs in the social sciences based on empirical methodology.

Communit y Studies Among the themes that have fascinated social scientists over the last two centuries are power relationships, social status and class struggle, acceptance and alienation, individual and collective behavior, and the systems and structures of society. Often, these themes are incorporated in the study of family and community, which

476 Section 7: Essays examines the relationship of the individual to the community, the impact of modernization on the community, and other changes in the community. Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists concern themselves with topics such as the social and physical boundaries of the community, the cohesion of the community, the network of relationships within and exterior to the community, and the clusters of people according to status, ethnicity, occupation, and religion within the community. Some social scientists, such as Helen and Robert Lynd during the 1920s, focused on the American community, while other anthropologists, such as Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Robert Redfield, examined developing cultures throughout the world. Redfield, who taught at the University of Chicago and trained under the mentorship of Robert Park, studied Indians of the Yucatán in Mexico, which led him to posit a dichotomy between the traditional folk community and modern urban society. The nineteenth-century social scientific focus on the loss of the traditional, rural community to the urban complexity of the modern world was replaced during the twentieth century by an awareness of communities within the city and an attempt to define community according to emotional and psychological relationships rather than spatial and geographic boundaries. Social scientists involved in this transition included Jane Addams, Jacob Riis, Charles Cooley, Mary Parker Follett, John Dewey, Josiah Royce, Frederick Howe, Franklin Giddings, Robert Park, Lewis Wirth, and Lewis Mumford. Many of these American social scientists were progressives—part of the social, cultural, and political movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Progressive reformers such as Jane Addams and Jacob Riis tried to understand the effects of the city on human behavior and thought, and they sought to stimulate a revival of traditional organic values in an urban environment. Addams did this with Hull-House (founded 1889), a settlement house in Chicago that was a private social agency instituted to help the immigrant poor of the neighborhood. Riis published books on the poor of the cities, such as How the Other Half Lives (1890). Robert Park believed that the community could be found in urban ghettos, suburbs, and

the inner city. Rather than try to find the traditional community in a modern society, Park altered his perception of community, coming to believe that the city has special and nonspatial forms of community. Lewis Mumford also discovered community in an urban environment. He argued that traditional forms of community life, such as the neighborhood, the face-to-face quality of communal life, solidarity, and spontaneity, all are possible in the city. Mumford advocated urban planning involving slum clearance, low-cost housing, planned neighborhoods, and parks and playgrounds to encourage group interaction among people of different status, ethnicity, and belief. A socialist and humanist, Mumford believed that the impulse behind modern, urban change is the competitive nature of humans (a part of capitalism) wedded with the machine age, in which humans seek to control the environment by artificial, mechanistic means. A major focus of study among American social scientists has been the transition from an agrarian to a modern society. Sociologist Talcott Parsons, in books such as The Social System (1951), developed theories to explain the distinctions between the organic structure of traditional societies and modern social systems. He posited dichotomies such as: “affectivity” and “affective neutrality,” which is the emotionalism of traditional society countered by the institutionalization of feelings in modern society; “selforientation” and “collectivity orientation,” which is the private versus the collective in the transition from traditional to modern society; “particularism” and “universalism,” which is the familiar social situation of a locality compared to the broad, vague, and anonymous relations of a modern society; and “ascription” and “achievement,” which contrasts quality and exactitude with performance and efficiency. In his 1960 book Family, Socialization, and Interaction Process (1960), co-authored with Robert Bales, Parsons also examined the role of the family in society at large.

New Histor y and Cliometrics The Vietnam War had a profound impact on the social sciences in America, as seen in the emergence of new approaches to the study of history.

Section 7: Essays 477 The “new history” sought to provide a quantitative, scientific approach to the study of the past. A “new economic history” was practiced by “cliometricians,” who brought elements of economics and statistical analysis to the discipline of history. Two leaders of cliometric history are Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman. They describe the new approach in their book Time on a Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974): “The reexamination of slavery is part of a more ambitious effort to reconstruct the entire history of American economic development on a sound quantitative basis.” Fogel and Engerman think of cliometricians as iconoclasts who “have downgraded the role of technological change in American economic advance; they have controverted the claim that railroads were necessary to the settlement and exploitation of the West; they have contended that the boom and bust of the 1830s and early 1840s were the consequences of developments in Mexico and Britain rather than the policies of Andrew Jackson; and they have rejected the contention that the Civil War greatly accelerated the industrialization of the nation.” Fogel, a Nobel Prize winner in economics (1993), further describes his vision of cliometric history in Which Road to the Past? Two Views of History (1983, with G.R. Elton). In that work, Fogel argues that cliometricians create behavioral, social, and economic models based on data collected from primary source documents. They treat his-

torical inquiry as a scientific enterprise involving collection of data by a variety of researchers, communication of data and preliminary findings in journals, and colleagues checking facts and interpretations according to verifiable methodology and standards of research. The cliometrician desires not to tell a story about the past, but to “discover warranted generalizations about human behavior that have force in the present and will continue to do so in the future.” Their audience is not the general educated reader, Fogel maintains, but those who “are capable of assessing and validating the fruits of scientific labors—not a broad public, but a narrow group of highly trained specialists.” This view of historical inquiry—quantifiable, verifiable, seeking scientific models to enhance the research of humans at specific times and places—is the essence of social science inquiry. Russell Lawson

Sources Goist, Park Dixon. From Main Street to State Street: Town, City, and Community in America. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1977. Kammen, Michael, ed. The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. Nisbet, Robert A. The Sociological Tradition. New York: Basic Books, 1966. Quandt, Jean. From Small Town to the Great Community: The Social Thought of Progressive Intellectuals. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970.

Economics E

arly American economists included Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and similar thinkers who contemplated and wrote about trade, manufacturing, and agriculture. Jefferson advocated the liberal economic theories of Scottish economist Adam Smith, who published The Wealth of Nations in 1776. Hamilton, the first U.S. secretary of the treasury, published a Report on Manufacturing in 1791. While Hamilton believed that Americans should invest money in trade and domestic improvements, including manufacturing, Jefferson was suspicious of the Indus-

trial Revolution and advocated pure capitalism among entrepreneurial farmers. America’s statesmen, taking the lead in economic thought in the late 1700s, set a trend among subsequent economic thinkers, such that economics and politics are closely related. Thus, trade, manufacturing, consumption, and prices are national concerns of private individuals working in concert with government. At times, however, the American economic focus has been more on the private individual than on the national economic health. During

478 Section 7: Essays the late 1800s, for example, conservative theorists advocated the principle of laissez-faire economics, in which the government takes little role in directing the economy or in economic issues involving debtors and creditors, producers and consumers. The Industrial Revolution brought about a change in the American economy. As production increased, so did the inequality between income and wealth. The results of this economic trend included increases in the numbers of the poor, the homeless, and destitute orphans and widows; the emergence of ghettos; and a rise in foreclosures on small businesses, especially farms. The negative consequences of the Industrial Revolution led to the Populist and Progressive movements. These political and social movements, lasting from 1890 to 1920, pushed the government to abandon laissez-faire economics and take a more active role in the economy. The first professional economists working at American universities, like other late nineteenthcentury social scientists, were heavily influenced by the research taking place at European universities. The founding of the American Economic Association in 1886 was stimulated by European and British advances in economic science. John Bates Clark, one of the first academic economists in America, was influenced by the English utilitarian economist John Stuart Mill. Clark taught at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and theorized on the importance of value (quantitative and qualitative) in an economy. In 1899, he wrote The Distribution of Wealth, in which he developed his ideas on marginal productivity—that is, the value a worker contributes to a product. One of Clark’s students at Johns Hopkins, Thorstein Veblen, who went on to teach at the University of Chicago, was an iconoclast who produced a number of scathing attacks on American economic and social theory and practice. Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, attacked middle- and upper-class Americans for their “conspicuous consumption” and leisure. He described the leisure class as completely unproductive members of society, living like parasites on the work and productivity of the lower classes. The expansion of the American economy and conspicuous consumption of the 1920s led to

overproduction and underconsumption, resulting in the Great Depression beginning in 1929. The Depression in America worsened during the early 1930s, leading to the unemployment of 25 percent of the workforce. Attempts by American economists to explain the Depression and to advise the government were heavily influenced by the theories of British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes’s reputation was based on several important books analyzing modern state economies, including The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) and the Treatise on Money (1930). He conferred with President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the mid-1930s and suggested that the United States alter its view of the relationship between the federal government and the private sector. Keynes argued that government investment stimulates private investment and the demand for products, which in turn stimulates production. The practical result of Keynes’s idea was the deficit spending of the New Deal, in which the Roosevelt Administration created a variety of federal agencies that pumped government funds into the economy via loans, public works monies, subsidies for farmers, and other forms of assistance for unemployed, aged, and lowincome groups. After World War II, American economic thought continued to emphasize the importance of economic theories on public policy. Canadianborn liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith argued in such works as The Affluent Society (1958) that government should, even in an affluent society, continue to work on behalf of the people against big business. Another liberal economist, Paul A. Samuelson, a Nobel laureate in 1970, emphasized individual decision making as important in the overall economy. Arguing that rising inflation would result in high unemployment and recession, Samuelson recommended increasing government expenditures on defense, education, health, welfare programs, unemployment compensation, and public works programs to reverse an economic recession. As an adviser to John F. Kennedy, he helped influence the New Frontier and Great Society programs of the 1960s. Conservative economists such as Milton Friedman advocated limited involvement of the government in the economy, restricted to programs

Section 7: Essays 479 aimed at achieving price and currency stability. In A Monetary History of the United States: 1867– 1960 (1963), Friedman argued that an increase in the supply of money in circulation results in inflation. Friedman received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976 for his work. Other conservative economists, such as Canadian-born Nobel laureate Robert Mundell, advocated “supply-side” economics. This theory advises increased production, brought about in particular by lower tax rates, to stimulate the economy. Other American Nobel Prize winners in economics include Theodore Schultz, who was recognized in 1979 for his observations on the higher returns on human capital in comparison to physical capital in the American economy, in which expansion on educational investments dominates other types of investment. Laurence R. Klein, the 1980 Nobel laureate, developed models of business fluctuations that are useful for making short-term forecasts.

Robert W. Fogel, the 1993 Nobel Prize winner, examined the role of the railroad in the economic development of the United States, as well as the economic implications of slavery on the nineteenth-century American economy. Fogel was also a founder of the academic movement of cliometrics, which combines quantitative historical analysis with economic theory. Russell Lawson

Sources Ekelund, Robert B., Jr., and Robert F. Hebert. A History of Economic Theory and Method. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. Fogel, Robert W., and Stanley L. Engerman. The Reinterpretation of American Economic History. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Affluent Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953. Marshall, Alfred. Principles of Economics. London: Macmillan, 1959.

A–Z AMERICAN INDIAN SCIENCE The American Indians’ intimate knowledge of the flora and fauna and the geographical and astronomical features of their environments came from systematic observation and accumulated knowledge. Moreover, their keen understanding of cycles in the environment allowed them to predict the course of many events in their surroundings. Native American practices thus share certain characteristics with the science that emerged in Western Europe in the early modern period and culminated in the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Systematic observation is a key element in scientific practice, and it is demonstrated most dramatically in the field known as archeoastronomy, which studies the artifacts of early peoples’ use of astronomy. Some early societies, for example, used medicine wheels—circles of stones with spokes radiating from a central cairn—to create sight lines to celestial events on the horizon, most often the solstice points of the sun’s path. The Hopi in the central part of Arizona had specially designated men who watched the horizon at sunrise and sunset for the months before the solstices and announced the times for beginning key ceremonies that marked them. In the ruins of Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, in eastern New Mexico, where one culture flourished about 1000 C.E., windows set into the corners of some rooms have been interpreted as solstice markers that caught the direct rays of the rising sun on the day of the summer solstice. At Fajada Butte in the canyon, three stone slabs leaning against the face of the butte form a “sun dagger,” so that a shaft of sunlight on the day of the solstice exactly bisects a spiral carved into the face. Early American astronomy reached its greatest sophistication in sixth- to eighth-century C.E. Mesoamerica, at sites in Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula such as Chichen Itza, Palenque, Tikal, Copan, Peten, and Uxmal. At these sites, the

alignment of structures is often guided by sight lines to solstices. The caracole tower at Chichen Itza has windows through which solstices and extreme points of the rising and setting of the planet Venus can be observed. Medicine wheels and sun daggers are permanent markers of celestial events and thus records of information, but the hieroglyphic writing system of the Mayan culture is a more elaborate permanent record, and the Mayan mathematical system, using base 20, evolved to record astronomical information. The study of ethnobotany reveals another similarity between American Indian science and European science: knowledge of categories of plants and animals. Categorizing flora and fauna is based on observation of affinities that create certain groupings. The Navajo in the American Southwest, for instance, classify plants (as well as rain) as male and female. Woody plants are male, while pliable plants are female, and this categorization is based on physical characteristics associated with behavioral characteristics. The saying that “Eskimos have fifty names for snow” acknowledges the ability of native peoples in arctic regions to make fine discriminations among kinds of snow—a skill often necessary to their survival and often predictive of changing environmental conditions. The ability to categorize and to recognize subcategories is based on sustained and consistent observation of the environment. Using herbal remedies indicates knowledge of the effects of plants on the human body. Willow bark, for example, widely used by Native Americans in teas for curing fevers, contains the same active component as aspirin. The efficacy of such herbal medicines by modern medical standards is sometimes considered evidence of native scientific knowledge. The premise of American Indian medicine, however, is not that plants contain certain chemical components but that as living beings they have certain powers that can affect the human body. The gathering of plants for medicines is accompanied by prayers to the plants. Knowledge of the effects, however, is the result of observation

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Section 7: American Indian Science 481

In Piegan Blackfoot tradition, the medicine pipe is used to heal sickness, establish peace, and trade for property. According to myth, the first medicine pipe was created by Thunder. “When I first come in spring,” the figure commanded, “fill and light this pipe.” (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-117604)

and experience. The knowledge may be acquired in part through watching the behavior of animals and observing which plants they eat. The development of agriculture depends on altering the relationship between plants and humans. Wild plants bear seeds that are loosely attached to the parent and are relatively thinskinned. The seeds depend on wind and animals for their dispersal. When early native peoples gathered plants for food, they tended to select plants with tighter and more compact seed heads. Ultimately, this selection favors more tightly attached and thicker-skinned seeds, which means the plants cannot shed their own seeds and instead come to depend on humans to disperse them. Corn, generally considered the major American Indian domesticate, evolved from a wild grass, teosinte, about 7,000 years ago in the highlands of Guatemala. In North America, the earliest domesticates, appearing about 3,000 years

ago, were the sunflower, sumpweed, goosefoot, maygrass, and giant ragweed. Although today they would be considered weeds, their ability to withstand a wide range of environmental conditions made them good candidates for domestication. In what is now the southwestern United States, these plants predated corn, which appeared there about 200 C.E. Selection and manipulation of plant environments through irrigation and cultivation are evidence of systematic control of natural forces, although corn, as it became a staple of subsistence through North America, was still perceived as a spiritual being with whom Indians had a special relationship. Where American Indian science diverges from Western European science is in the practice of experimentation. The rise of European science is generally linked to experiments conducted by Galileo Galilei to test his theories of falling bodies and to his insistence on the physical reality of the sun-centered universe. By connecting the theoretical with the real and deliberately creating the circumstances to test the validity of cause and effect relationships, Galileo fostered the rise of experimental science. Native Americans, however, viewed themselves as existing in dynamic relationship to forces in the natural environment that had their own wills. For the Hopi, the sun was a being who made his journey across the sky from north to south and back on a yearly basis, and the solstice was the point at either end of the journey where he stopped to rest. The solstice ceremonies performed by the Hopi were intended to give the sun the energy he needed to resume his journey. They would not presume to test their beliefs by not performing the ceremonies, because then the sun would not rise from his resting place and seasonal cycles would cease, thus effectively ending the Hopi world. American Indians practiced science in the Western sense in their ability to observe and develop their own explanations for the cycles and patterns in the natural world around them. Where Western science inherited from the Greeks a sense of questioning and skepticism about the nature of physical reality and ultimately reduced the world to a system of laws, Native Americans had deeply held beliefs in the willful aspects of spiritual beings who constituted the reality of their worlds. Many of their practices may not be

482 Section 7: American Indian Science judged as science by modern standards, but their observations and explanations are similar in important ways to those that gave rise to modern science. Clara Sue Kidwell

Sources Eddy, J.A. “Astronomical Alignment of the Big Horn Medicine Wheel.” Science (June 7, 1974): 1035–43. Malmstrom, Vincent H. Cycles of the Sun, Mysteries of the Moon. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. McCluskey, Stephen C. “Historical Archaeoastronomy: The Hopi Example.” In Archaeoastronomy in the New World: American Primitive Astronomy, ed. A.F. Aveni. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Smith, Bruce D., ed. Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1992. Vogel, Virgil. American Indian Medicine. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

AMERICAN INDIANS The origins of Native Americans have long been the subject of inquiry and speculation. During the period of European exploration and settlement, European philosophers, politicians, and colonists debated the issue, often drawing on scripture to formulate their views. Initially, Christian theologians debated the very humanness of American Indians, arguing over their possession of a soul and capacity for human culture. The Europeans generally agreed that the indigenous peoples were savages, but they differed as to whether the Indians were unrefined heathens or social exemplars. Gradually, science allowed anatomists, anthropologists, archeologists, physicians, sociologists, and others to ask increasingly sophisticated questions about America’s indigenous peoples, cultures, and histories. Setting aside wild speculations (for example, that American Indians came from Egypt or Atlantis) and biblical interpretations, scientists used archeological techniques to argue for a migration out of Asia into the Americas. Over time, linguistic, cultural, dental, and genetic tools would be marshaled to support this thesis, suggesting a series of movements across a land bridge at least 15,000 years before the present.

Archeology and Native Peoples Beginning in the early nineteenth century, scientists sought to better understand the nature and history of American Indians through careful study of their remains. Skulls were particularly attractive to physicians, naturalists, and anthropologists intent on establishing the differences between Native Americans and European Americans. Scientists such as Samuel G. Morton measured the size, shape, and capacity of Indian skulls in an effort to support the belief that indigenous peoples were not only different but inferior as well. The intellectual interests and political objectives associated with scientific racism encouraged the collection of Native American remains that rapidly became an illicit trade in bodies. To build their holdings, scientists in the eastern United States solicited soldiers and physicians on the frontier to collect skulls, often paying them for their troubles. In turn, agents in the West at times robbed graves or battlefields. Scientists collected material culture as well. Archeologists, both lay and professional, would conduct digs, varying in their adherence to the standards and methods of archeology. Scholars and others began to purchase, or steal, objects used in ritual and more mundane native practices. The treasure trove resulting from these ventures routinely found its way into museums, academic collections, and private holdings, where they were cataloged, studied, and put on display. During the nineteenth century, such collections, especially when paired with research methods emerging in cultural anthropology, assisted scientists in their efforts to make sense of social evolution, particularly its course in the Americas. Accounts of the development and adaptation of native cultures, however, were marked by racial bias. Consequently, many early anthropological interpretations were neither fair nor objective. Scientists contended that human groups passed through stages of development, from “savage” and “barbaric” to “civilized.” Cultural elements, such as technology, kinship, legal systems, and subsistence patterns, were used to place native peoples within a chain of being. And while Western cultures were always seen

Section 7: American Indians 483 as occupying the apex of the evolutionary scale, those of America’s native peoples were located near the base. For a time, scientists theorized that, in the right environment, Native Americans would evolve, advancing themselves and refining their societies. By the late nineteenth century, however, a gloomier take on evolution led them to conclude that indigenous peoples would either assimilate or become extinct in the face of civilization. By the late nineteenth century, the collecting of Native Americana and spread of evolutionary theory combined to foster popular scientific interpretations of American Indians. Museums and world’s fairs became contexts in which scientists, educators, and entertainers offered accounts of the humanity, history, and development of indigenous cultures. Frequently, objects and even living people were put on display to illustrate the supposed savagery of Native Americans. While popular understandings of American Indians increasingly were formulated in movies, not museums, after the turn of the twentieth century, scientists still endeavored to account for the uniqueness and purported inferiority of the native peoples. In conjunction with the eugenics movement, measuring intelligence became an important means to express and rank the capacity of various human groups. In fact, a subfield of psychology called “racial psychology” proved extremely influential for a time. Researchers administered intelligence tests to American Indians, using the resulting IQ score to assess character traits, a range of aptitudes, and life prospects. In some cases, they went so far as to contrast how subsistence, settlement, and other social patterns affected intelligence, explaining the difference between native cultures rooted in agriculture and those committed to hunting and gathering. Racial psychology began falling out of favor in the 1930s.

Cultural Anthropology In the twentieth century, anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Margaret Mead began to offer important alternative theories about cultures. They accepted the humanity and sophistication of Native Americans, rejecting notions of racial inferiority, while embracing their beliefs and behaviors as valuable and meaningful. They re-

placed race with culture, thinking of each native group as a bounded community sharing a distinct way of life. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, anthropologists, concerned about the future of indigenous cultures, dedicated themselves to salvaging the unique histories and traditions of American Indians through the study of language, folklore, rituals, and kinship, often collected through participant observation. Later, attention turned toward questions of acculturation and the functions of institutions as cultural adaptations. Throughout, anthropologists stressed cultural relativism, or the necessity of understanding a culture on its own terms and without reference to outside values. The trend toward cultural anthropology slowed after World War II in response to the Cold War, shifting intellectual trends, and, most important, a social and political resurgence within native communities. Simultaneously, genetics became a powerful line of scientific inquiry. Consequently, physical anthropologists drew on emergent biotechnology techniques to answer their questions about the origins of Native Americans and to explain vexing social problems such as alcoholism. In the process, scientists repeated many bad patterns of the past, including a neglect of indigenous ways of knowing, a tendency to treat American Indians as objects, and a failure to give back to the peoples under study. Even as physical anthropologists were repeating the past, Native American activists began to voice opposition to the ways in which scientists interacted with them, interpreted their cultures and histories, and treated their ancestors. They protested racism, the tendency of scientists to treat them as objects of study rather than as people, and the failure of scientists to consider indigenous knowledge as legitimate. They demanded greater involvement in, influence on, and return from the research process. After much struggle, Native Americans have been able to alter the research process. More applied research is conducted than in the past, scientists are more likely to collaborate with community members, and tribal councils now approve research in reservation communities. Of greater importance, American Indians have lobbied successfully for the return of objects and

484 Section 7: American Indians remains once held in public collections, and for the protection of those discovered in the future. C. Richard King

Sources Bieder, Robert E. Science Encounters the Indian, 1820–1880: Early Years of American Ethnology. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. Deloria, Vine, Jr. Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. New York: Scribner’s, 1995

A M E R I C A N S O C I O LO G I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a nonprofit organization with a membership of approximately 13,000 sociologists, including academic faculty, researchers, practitioners, students, and others interested in the advancement of the professional discipline of sociology. The organization includes more than forty subdiscipline sections, hosts an annual convention, and supports a number of publications—scholarly journals, books, a quarterly magazine, an organizational newsletter, and an employment bulletin. The organization began in 1905 as the American Sociological Society, resulting from the intention of social scientists to advance the discipline of sociology in the United States. The first meeting was held in 1906 in Providence, Rhode Island, with 115 members and Lester Frank Ward as the first president. Among the accomplishments of the society in its early years were the development of a social science encyclopedia, the production of a biographical dictionary, the introduction of a social science honor society, and the publication of the journal Social Science Abstracts. In 1918, the association expanded to international status. During the 1930s, sociologists responded to the Great Depression in support of the New Deal. The society increasingly supported activities in applied sociology. In 1936, the American Sociological Review was established as the organization’s official journal. E. Franklin Frazier became the first African American president of the organization in 1948, and Dorothy Swaine Thomas became the first female president in 1952. The society

officially changed its name to the American Sociological Association in 1959. From the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, the pressing issues of the era, including the Vietnam War and racial, ethnic, and gender inequality, were reflected in the focus of the organizational meetings and policy initiatives. The economic recession of the 1970s and 1980s, which resulted in cuts in federal funding for social research, inspired the ASA to assist sociologists adversely affected by the fiscal situation. Cuts in federal funding for social research also contributed to the general decline experienced in the discipline of sociology during the 1980s. In the 1990s, an emphasis on diversity was promoted, and the decade saw a marked increase in communication and publication due to dramatic technological changes that were occurring globally. In keeping with these advances, the ASA launched a Web site in 1995. Matters pertaining to professional growth and advancement have continued to be a prominent focus. The organization continues to grow and promote itself as the premier professional society in the field of sociology. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources American Sociological Association. http://www.asanet.org. Rhoades, Lawrence. A History of the American Sociological Association 1905–1980. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association, 1981.

A R C H E O LO G Y The history of archeology in America has followed closely parallel developments in the physical, natural, and social sciences. After several centuries of amateur speculation about the origins of American prehistory, professional archeologists during the nineteenth century were associated with the rise of universities and the formation of museum collections. By the twentieth century, archeological research in America increasingly took into account the historic preservation of cultural artifacts. For the better part of five centuries, American archeology focused primarily on Native American prehistory. Columbus’s landing in 1492 sparked

Section 7: Archeology 485 a continuing debate over the origins and history of Native American peoples. The earthwork mounds of the Mississippi Valley and the pyramids of Central America required an explanation for their origin. Many commentators questioned whether Native Americans were capable of producing these monuments, and the myth of a “lost race,” perhaps the “Lost Tribe of Israel,” pervaded early archeological investigation. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, scientists such as Thomas Jefferson began investigating American Indian antiquities by actual inspection and digs. Mounds along the Ohio River Valley were frequently discussed in the pages of the American Philosophical Society’s Transactions. Travelers such as Thomas Nuttall described Indian mounds such as those at Cahokia, east of St. Louis. With the creation of the Smithsonian Institution in the 1850s, archeological investigation accelerated. The Smithsonian sponsored the first descriptive work of American archeology, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley (1848) by Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis. This attempt to classify the earthen mounds foreshadowed the use of geological theories of stratigraphy—the calculation of age by order of layered deposit— in archeology. Stratigraphy became a methodological tool employed to explain cultural changes over time.

Archeologists in the Mississippi River Valley east of St. Louis excavate a site at Cahokia, the ancient “City of the Sun,” which flourished from about 1100 to 1200 C.E. American archeology has long focused on native prehistory. (UNIVERSITY/AFP/Getty Images)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Congress passed the Antiquities Act (1906) to preserve land for archeological purposes. The National Park Service was created in 1916 to protect natural, historical, and cultural sites. Twenty years later, during the New Deal era, Congress passed the Historic Sites Act of 1935, which authorized the federal government to oversee important cultural and historical sites in America. Many New Deal public works programs, such as the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), involved archeological research. In addition, such public works programs as the TVA damming American rivers for flood control and power generation led to efforts to control the potential damage to historic sites. These concerns culminated in the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966, which required the federal government to oversee the impact of building projects on historic sites and to preserve such sites through a national historical register. During the 1960s, the new field of natural resource management linked the work of government bureaucrats with that of academic archeologists, anthropologists, and historians. During the mid-twentieth century, a “New Archeology” developed among American researchers. Archeologists, inspired by new theories on the cultural evolution of peoples in specific environments, advanced by anthropologists Leslie White and Julian Steward, embraced a functional approach to organizing artifacts, categorizing them according to technological, social, and ideological rubrics. Archeologists also addressed cultural heritage issues through historic preservation legislation, which resulted in a sometimes conflicting relationship with Native Americans. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 required that skeletal material and associated cultural objects at federally funded institutions be returned to native communities. As a result, the authority of university archeologists has been contested by Native American experts with a different cultural tradition and point of view. Brian Daniels

Sources Murtagh, William J. Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America. New York: Wiley, 2005.

486 Section 7: Archeology National Park Service Archeology Program. http://www.cr. nps.gov/archeology. Thomas, David H. Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

B E N E D I C T, R U T H (1887–1948) One of America’s most influential and socially committed cultural anthropologists, Ruth Fulton Benedict was born on June 5, 1887, in New York City. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vassar College in 1909 with a degree in English literature and earned a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University in 1923; her dissertation was titled “The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America.” Benedict trained with and befriended some of the most influential figures in the field, including Franz Boas, for whom she worked as an assistant during her graduate training, and Margaret Mead, whom she first taught in 1922 at Barnard College and in whom she later found a close friend and colleague. As one of the first prominent female anthropologists in American academia, Benedict gained a reputation for encouraging tolerance and acceptance of the diversity of human cultures. Her first major published work, Patterns of Culture (1934), based on a comparative study of three different cultures, garnered widespread acclaim, primarily for its articulation of cultural relativism—the belief that cultures produce different hierarchies of moral codes and practices, and that the customs of other cultures should not be measured against the standard of a particular moral framework. Benedict’s professional triumphs were soon matched by work that was more directly political and social in nature, particularly in 1943 when she joined the Office of War Information and initiated projects designed to look at contemporary cultures through the lens of “national character.” Among the studies she produced in this regard was The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), an account of Japanese culture, written not only to encourage greater understanding of the Japanese but also to aid the U.S. government

in designing policies to encourage Japanese recovery from World War II. Although Benedict would invite criticism for her inability to speak Japanese and her lack of fieldwork in Japan while researching and writing the book, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, like many of her other works, remains a classic. Although she taught anthropology at Columbia University from 1922 to 1948, Benedict was not appointed to a full professorship until two months before her death, on September 17, 1948. Her influential work through the Columbia University Research in Contemporary Cultures project, which she initiated in 1947 to bring anthropological methods to the study of modern cultures and nations, was carried to completion in 1951 by former student, colleague, and biographer Margaret Mead. Benedict is remembered as a pioneering woman and a socially committed scholar in the maledominated field of cultural anthropology. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Caffrey, Margaret M. Ruth Benedict: Stranger in This Land. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. Mead, Margaret. Ruth Benedict. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974.

BOAS, FR ANZ (1858–1942) Franz Boas, often referred to as “the father of American anthropology,” was born on July 9, 1858, in Westphalia, Germany. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Bonn, and Kiel, earning a doctorate in geography from the latter in 1881. Emigrating to the United States in 1884 to escape anti-Semitism, Boas accepted a professorship at Columbia University in New York City, where he founded the first anthropology program in the country and became a mentor to such future scholars as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. His research challenged nineteenthcentury models of culture that had dominated the profession during his own training and planted the seeds for the development of cul-

Section 7: Cooley, Charles 487

The groundbreaking anthropologist Franz Boas encouraged a scientific approach to ethnology, emphasizing fieldwork, meticulous observation, and quantification of data. He rejected the conventional distinction between primitive and civilized cultures. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-36743)

tural and physical anthropology, archeology, and linguistics as legitimate areas of specialization within the field. Boas laid the groundwork for modern cultural anthropology through a conscientious attempt to liberate the notion of culture from the unilineal model of evolution. In a universalizing model developed by E.B. Tylor, all cultures, regardless of distinguishing features, were thought to progress from savagery to civilization. Boas argued instead that a culture must be conceived within a constellation of historic and geographic tensions and forces unique to it. His “historical particularism” was accompanied by a commitment to “cultural relativism,” a specific theoretical outlook insisting that all societies were equally developed and should be examined on their own terms. He espoused this particular outlook in Handbook of American Languages (1941), a comparative analysis of native languages in the United

States and northern Canada that revealed cross-cultural differences in the relationship between language and thought. More important, it concluded with an enthusiastic call for linguistic analysis in the study of culture, as well as a need to examine languages according to their internal logic rather than a Eurocentric template. Boas redefined culture as a complex network of social associations and learned behaviors, as opposed to a set of phenotypes that create a fallacious sense of purity and superiority of the “civilized” over the “savage.” In fact, a long-term statistical study of the changes in the cranial size of immigrant children led Boas to conclude in 1912 that people who were once thought to belong to the same race displayed a wide array of physical characteristics that could, in fact, be influenced by environmental factors such as climate and diet. His study helped dismantle the implicit supremacy of nineteenth-century evolutionism by characterizing “race” as a social construction instead of a naturally occurring phenomenon—a conclusion that undermined Nazi propaganda and led the Nazis to burn Boas’s first book, The Mind of Primitive Man (1911). Boas’s reinterpretation of culture secured the future of physical and cultural anthropology. He spoke out against the growing menace of racism and Nazism and helped refugee scientists find work via his newly formed Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom. Boas also encouraged future anthropologists to obey a similar imperative to act as public intellectuals. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Boas, Franz. Race, Language, and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Darnell, Regna. And Along Came Boas: Continuity and Revolution in Americanist Anthropology. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1998.

C O O L E Y, C H A R L E S (1864–1929) Charles Horton Cooley was a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan whose analysis of human interaction, concerned with the relationship between the individual and society,

488 Section 7: Cooley, Charles illustrated a unique conception of social psychology supplemented with insights from the discipline of philosophy. Cooley was born on August 17, 1864, and reared in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His father was an influential state Supreme Court justice, and the family wealth allowed Cooley to develop his intellectual ability without financial constraints. He studied engineering, worked in a variety of different occupations, and, in 1894, earned a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Michigan. His primary interest during his graduate studies was an unusual subject: the social significance of transportation. Cooley was highly influenced by the pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James, the social theorist Herbert Spencer, and the naturalist Charles Darwin. His primary concern was the connection between the individual and society and how this relationship evolved over time. He is most noted for his concept of the “lookingglass self,” which refers to how a person’s selfconcept is shaped by the perceived opinions of others. Cooley conceived of three types of awareness between individuals and society: (1) selfconsciousness, what one thinks of oneself; (2) social consciousness, what one thinks of others; and (3) public consciousness, a collective view of the self and social consciousness of other groups. Another of Cooley’s major contributions is the concept of the “primary group,” defined as a collectivity of people who regularly interact on a face-to-face basis, who are cooperative, and who possess intimate, affectionate ties. This type of group normally promotes a “we” feeling of identification and results in a high level of cohesion among members. Examples of primary groups are families, cliques, play groups, and close-knit neighborhoods. Primary groups stand in contrast to secondary groups—collectivities that develop to pursue shared goals or objectives and that are time limited, less personal, and have fewer affectionate ties. Examples of secondary groups are work teams, juries, and students in a college class. Cooley believed that primary groups form the basis of human behavior and that adequate socialization obtained within this context brings about more holistic individual development. Cooley, like Herbert Spencer and other Social Darwinists, believed in the organic, evolutionary

process of society. However, he differed from Spencer in that he adopted a systems perspective, stressing the interconnectedness of the social systems in people’s lives. Cooley also believed that social researchers should employ empathy when making observations about social life and attempt to understand the social forces that shape the lives of other people. Cooley’s work influenced many sociologists and social psychologists and helped formulate the “symbolic interactionist paradigm” in sociology: To understand society, one must observe and analyze individuals in small-group interaction. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Cooley, Charles Horton. Human Nature and Society. 1902. Reprint ed., New York: Schocken, 1964. ———. Social Organization. 1909. Reprint ed., New York: Schocken, 1962. ———. Social Process. 1918. Reprint ed., Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966. Coser, Lewis A. Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1971. Kivisto, Peter. Key Ideas in Sociology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge, 1998.

C U LT U R A L A N T H R O P O LO G Y Anthropology is a science that combines the fields of biology, history, language, and society to understand human universals and diversity. Cultural anthropology, one of its primary subfields, examines beliefs and behaviors within and between societies, studying everything that people think, make, and do. Historically, cultural anthropologists have researched groups in less developed regions often characterized as “primitive.” Wherever they have studied, cultural anthropologists have sought to understand peoples unlike themselves, striving to map the varieties of human experience. Indeed, they have endeavored to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Cultural anthropology in America is the child of the Enlightenment, romanticism, and imperialism. Missionaries, merchants, travelers, and other curious lay scientists from 1500 to

Section 7: Cultural Relativism 489 1800 tried to make sense of the variation of ideas and institutions in America and elsewhere; however, cultural anthropology was not institutionalized until the nineteenth century, when local and regional scientific organizations were superceded by the establishment of museums and university departments. During this period, as the field coalesced, the reliance on remote correspondents gave way to anthropologists traveling to conduct primary research themselves. There have been two primary approaches to cultural anthropology: ethnology and ethnography. Ethnology is the comparative study of different cultures, seeking to account for how and why cultures differ. This approach also examines one or more cultures over time. For instance, an ethnologist might study the institution of marriage, the incest taboo, or property ownership in different cultures and over time. Ethnography, by contrast, is the detailed study of one culture or community through direct observation and participation. Initially, this mode of inquiry, commonly referred to as fieldwork, sought firsthand accounts and comprehensive understandings of cultures thought to be on the verge of disappearing. Over the past half-century or so, cultural anthropologists have tended to be more selective, investigating a single problem, ritual, or hypothesis. Cultural anthropology has validated individuals, ideas, and institutions that many have devalued or dismissed as savage, primitive, or alien. Cultural anthropologists have demonstrated the significance of everything from cockfights and animistic spirituality to kinship systems and rites of passage. Central to both the investigation and interpretation of different societies has been the tenet of cultural relativism. This approach encourages the evaluation of practices and precepts in their own context and on their own terms, setting aside preconceived notions and ethnocentric biases. C. Richard King

Sources Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, and Finn Sivert Nielsen. A History of Anthropology. London: Pluto, 2001. McCurdy, David W., ed. Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2005.

C U LT U R A L R E L AT I V I S M According to the theory of cultural relativism, societies and cultures ought to be understood on their own terms and not those of the viewer. Cultural relativists believe that while the cultures of others may seem alien, distasteful, or even objectionable to an observer, they possess an inherent integrity and meaningfulness to their members. The intellectual antecedents of cultural relativism can be found in ancient Greek philosophy, and there is a distinct tradition of relativistic thought among later philosophers as well. But the modern developers and strongest proponents of cultural relativism were late nineteenthand twentieth-century American and European anthropologists. The German American anthropologist Franz Boas espoused cultural relativism as a remedy for the hierarchical view that regarded white European and American societies and their cultures as superior and at the forefront of human progress compared to non-Western cultures. The separation of cultures into civilized and primitive, advanced and backward, superior and inferior, was precisely the sort of subjective and unscientific evaluation that many anthropologists wished to eliminate. Such thinking, it came to be seen, had supported the imperial expansion of the Western powers and intolerance toward indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Boas advocated both cultural relativism and historical particularism—that is, the detailed field study of the conditions and unique history of each society. He also wanted to discredit the idea of biology as the basis of racial difference rather than environmental and cultural factors. Boas and his colleagues, followed by a generation of their students in America—notably Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Melville Herskovits—thus promoted cultural relativism, in part, as a corrective to the pervasive ethnocentrism of their era and to further knowledge and understanding of the societies they studied. Ethnocentrism is the reliance on one’s own cultural values and assumptions in evaluating the beliefs, values, and behaviors of other cultures. While some degree of ethnocentrism is inherent

490 Section 7: Cultural Relativism and perhaps inevitable in all cultures, its more malevolent consequences are to regard one’s own culture as superior to that of others and to support intolerance. While anthropologists recognize that all knowledge is culturally mediated by the culture of one’s birth, socialization, and education, proponents of cultural relativism have sought to suspend those beliefs and values as they studied and attempted to understand indigenous societies and their cultures—often those that had been subjugated by Europeans and Americans in Africa, North America, and the islands of the South Pacific. A common misconception about cultural relativism is that it necessarily leads to a kind of moral and ethical relativism—the acceptance of any human or societal behavior as a benign expression of local culture. Such practices as infanticide, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, for example, present many anthropologists with a dilemma. Barring such practices, however, the general diffusion of cultural relativism from anthropology into the mainstream culture of Western societies has promoted an increased respect for and tolerance of other peoples and cultures. Mark R. Jorgensen

Sources Geertz, Clifford. “Anti Anti-Relativism.” American Anthropologist 86:2 (1984): 263–78. Patterson, Thomas C. A Social History of Anthropology in the United States. New York: Berg, 2001. Spiro, Melford E. “Cultural Relativism and the Future of Anthropology.” Cultural Anthropology 1:3 (1986): 259–86.

D E W E Y, J O H N (1859–1952) John Dewey was one of America’s most influential thinkers of the early twentieth century, a proponent of the American philosophy of pragmatism, and an advocate for progressive secularism in education and ethics. A native of Vermont, Dewey attended the University of Vermont and went to graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1884. He taught for years at Columbia

A founder of the American philosophy of pragmatism, John Dewey was at the forefront of the educational reform movement in the early twentieth century. His writings also had an enduring influence in psychology, political science, law, and ethics. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan, and he founded the American Association of University Professors in 1915. His published works included Psychology (1887), The School and Society (1899), Ethics (1908), How We Think (1910), Essays in Experimental Logic (1916), Democracy and Education (1916), Experience and Nature (1925), and The Quest for Certainty (1929). Dewey believed in the practical approach to education and knowledge, and he was one of the founders (along with William James and Charles Sanders Peirce) of the philosophy of pragmatism. Dewey was also a committed atheist and founder of the modern humanist movement. As a philosopher of education, Dewey stressed the importance of educating the whole person, addressing the needs of the individual without sacrificing pedagogical standards, and putting equal emphasis on science and art. He advocated

Section 7: Dix, Dorothea Lynde 491 a broad, universal education to overcome the specialization of knowledge. As a psychologist, he believed in the power of experience to form human personality and behavior. He understood education as a means to overcome the fragmentation and alienation of modern, urban society, helping to bring about a “great community.” Dewey’s liberal philosophy sought the wellbeing of the greatest number of people. He believed in democracy operating within commonly accepted social values and codes of behavior. He tempered his belief in capitalism with a growing awareness that the Great Depression required a government leaning toward socialism. Dewey took a pragmatic, secular approach to ethics and decision making. He believed that the key to truth and consequent behavior was experience. Distrustful of authority in all its forms, including religious and moral authority, he believed that the road of experience led to relativity and uncertainty, yet hope and freedom as well. The most precise utilization of experience was by means of the scientific method, which gives its practitioners not meaning in the singular but multiple meanings and multiple truths. Although humans are not traditionally comfortable with multiple truths, Dewey believed that such practical meanings that reflect reality are better than a single meaning that distorts reality. As he wrote in an essay on his personal philosophy in 1931, “adherence to any body of doctrines and dogmas based upon a specific authority signifies distrust in the power of experience to provide, in its own ongoing movement, the needed principles of belief and action. Faith in its newer sense signifies that experience itself is the sole ultimate authority.” Russell Lawson

Sources Alexander, Thomas M., and Larry Hickman, eds. The Essential Dewey. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Quandt, Jean. From Small Town to the Great Community: The Social Thought of Progressive Intellectuals. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970.

D I X , D O R O T H E A LY N D E (1802–1887) Dorothea Lynde Dix was one of the most renowned social reformers and successful lobbyists of the pre–Civil War era. Her unstinting efforts on behalf of people classified as “the indigent insane” resulted in the establishment of more than fifty mental hospitals and schools for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled across the United States. Toward the latter part of her career, she pursued projects in prison reform and served as superintendent of women nurses during the American Civil War. Her legislative “memorials,” the documents presented to promote passage of state legislation, furthered public recognition of and the government’s assumption of responsibility for mentally ill persons who were without resources or advocates. Dix was born in Hampden, Maine, on April 4, 1802. Alienated from her family, she left home in her early teens. She established a strong reputation as a teacher and author in Boston during the 1820s and 1830s. Opening her own school in 1836, she forged a network of ties with leading educators and pastors of the Unitarian faith. Her focus was the traditional preparation of young women in morals and comportment, rather than a rigorously academic curriculum, and her popular writings were in a similar vein. In 1841, on a chance visit to an East Cambridge jail that also housed people deemed insane, Dix encountered the population that would consume both her personal and professional energies for the rest of her life. She began a series of visits to houses of correction, almshouses, and poorhouses in Massachusetts and neighboring states, documenting the deplorable conditions of neglect and abuse in which the mentally ill were held. The positive response to her first petition, the Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts (1843), formed the basis for Dix’s many subsequent journeys to thousands of institutions, primarily in the Eastern, Midwestern, and Southern states. Dix’s strongest success, in the late 1840s and early 1850s, coincided with a period of enthusiasm for social reform in the United States. She

492 Section 7: Dix, Dorothea Lynde individuals. Her public relations and lobbying talents benefited the discipline that would become psychology by promoting societal concern for the support of mental illness. Dix died on July 18, 1887, in Trenton, New Jersey, of arteriosclerosis. Karen Hovde

Sources Brown, Thomas J. Dorothea Dix: New England Reformer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Dix, Dorothea L. On Behalf of the Insane Poor: Selected Reports. New York: Arno, 1971. Viney, Wayne, and Steven Zorich. “Contributions to the History of Psychology 29: Dorothea Dix and the History of Psychology.” Psychological Reports 50 (1982): 211–18.

E T H N O LO G Y

Dorothea Lynde Dix conducted systematic surveys of prisons, insane asylums, and almshouses in the 1840s. Her accounts and data were instrumental in securing reforms on behalf of the indigent, the mentally ill, and the incarcerated in Massachusetts and other states. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

promoted the improvement of material conditions and treatment for the mentally ill. The capstone of her efforts was a proposed federal public land bill that would have established a network of federally funded state mental hospitals; however, “Miss Dix’s bill” was vetoed by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. With the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, Dix, a longtime admirer of Florence Nightingale, offered her services to the War Department as coordinator of volunteer nurses. Ultimately, her lack of administrative skills and poor understanding of the military and medical establishments undermined her effectiveness; her authority was severely curtailed in 1863. In the last years of her life, Dix returned to various asylum campaigns, but the mental health field was becoming increasingly complex, and her influence waned. Nevertheless, her efforts over the years had directly improved the condition of thousands of

Ethnology is the comparative study of cultures. It is a subdiscipline of cultural anthropology, itself one of the major four divisions in anthropology (with archeology, physical anthropology, and linguistics). An ethnologist typically visits other cultures, establishes a relationship, and optimally lives with a family or in a group as a participant observer. After a certain period of time, when enough information is gathered regarding some aspect of the culture, he or she writes an ethnography: a formal story that tells about the people and their habits, beliefs, language, food, economy, childrearing, birth and burial customs, dwelling, behavior, and way of dress. Although the word has been in the American vocabulary since 1828, the approach to studying cultures has changed through the decades. Early ethnologists such as Margaret Mead and Franz Boas visited faraway cultures in Africa, Asia, or the Pacific islands. The people they studied were referred to as “exotic” or “savage,” because they differed radically in appearance from Westerners. As anthropologists learned more about the lives of these people, they hypothesized some general commonalities and found more similarities than differences. For example, there are no cultures without rules, even if such rules differ according to moral and behavioral standards. Ethnologists have grouped cultures into six basic arrangements: bands, tribes, chiefdoms,

Section 7: Fogel, Robert 493 primitive states, modern folk societies, and state formations. Ethnologists such as Robert Redfield have categorized societies according to the level of their technological sophistication and acceptance of or resistance to change. In books such as The Primitive World and Its Transformation (1953) and Peasant Society and Culture (1956), Redfield compared primitive, traditional, folk societies with sophisticated, modern societies. He influenced a generation of social scientists to think of historical social change according to the dichotomy of “traditional” and “modern.” More recently, ethnologists have focused on modern state formations. W. Lloyd Warner, for example, using information he garnered while working with Australian aborigines, studied a group of contemporary people in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and published a series of Yankee City studies from 1941 to 1959. Conrad Arensburg went to Ireland and recorded his observations in The Irish Countryman (1959). During the 1930s and 1940s, American ethnologists facilitated an awareness of civil rights. During the 1960s, upper-middle-class college graduates chose to go to inner-city environments and live as participant observers in hopes of finding answers to why so many children in minority groups were failing in school. After the Vietnam War, various large immigrant groups began to establish themselves in the United States, providing a new opportunity for ethnologists. Asian groups such as the Hmong shared fascinating aspects of their culture with those who studied them. One challenge was how to assist these people with medical decisions, because their concept of the body was so different from that of Westerners. For example, a liver transplant could not be negotiated because of a belief that the soul of the donor would gain entrance to the recipient’s body. In a customary ritual before a wedding, the groom-to-be kidnaps the bride-to-be, a practice that many Westerners find shocking. Although ethnology has changed in its cultural focuses, it remains an essential element of anthropological fieldwork and a vibrant field of American scholarship. Lana Thompson

Sources Fadiman, Anne. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. Lewis, Oscar. Five Families. New York: Basic Books, 1959. Service, Elman Rogers. Profiles in Ethnology. New York: Harper and Row, 1963.

FOGEL, ROBERT (1926– ) Robert Fogel, an influential twentieth-century cliometrician (one who combines economic and statistical analysis in the study of history), was born in New York City and attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he received a B.A. in 1948. Initially interested in physics and chemistry, he shifted to economics and history in the hope of finding solutions for social problems during the Great Depression. He earned his M.A. in statistics from Columbia University in New York City in 1960 and his Ph.D. under the economist Simon Kuznets at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1963. Fogel went to the University of Chicago in 1963 as a Ford Foundation visiting research professor and was named associate professor in 1964. He taught economics at the University of Rochester in New York (1960–1964), the University of Chicago (1965–1974), and Harvard University (1975–1981). He rejoined the Graduate School of Business of the University of Chicago in 1981. Fogel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1993 for his application of economics and statistics to the analysis of how economies performed in the historical past; he shared the honor with Douglas North of Washington University. Fogel and North used cliometrics, combining economic theory, statistical studies, and hypothesis testing in the study of historical economies. The methodology helped them resurrect lost data and, in some cases, create new data on past economies. Fogel and North were cited by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.” Fogel’s most recognized work incorporates the study of the economic roles and the significance

494 Section 7: Fogel, Robert of the railways and slavery in the development of the U.S. economy. He is the author and co-author of numerous articles and books, including the two-volume Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (with Stanley L. Engerman, 1974), the four-volume Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (1989–1992), and The Escape from Hunger and Early Death: Europe, America, and the Third World 1750–2100 (2004). In Railroads and American Economic Growth (1964), he argues that the spread of the railroad was not as important to the opening of the West or the growth of the nation’s economy as others (such as Joseph Schumpeter and Walt Rostow) have suggested. In Time on the Cross, he argues that the institution of slavery had been more profitable and economically efficient than traditional understandings of slave labor have recognized. Some have mistaken his views as an apology for slavery, which he answered even as he extended his argument in Without Consent or Contract, arguing forcefully that slavery ended not because it was economically inefficient but because it was morally repugnant. More recently, Fogel has conducted research on nutrition, longevity, the changing patterns of aging in the United States, and life profiles of Civil War veterans. At the time of this writing, Fogel is the Charles R. Walgreen Professor at the University of Chicago. His predecessor in the Walgreen professorship was George Stigler, who won the Nobel Prize in 1982 and whom Fogel called “one of my principal teachers in economics.” In addition to teaching economics, Fogel participates in the committee on social thought and serves as director of the university’s Center for Population Economics. Alfredo Manuel Coelho

Sources Fogel, Robert W. Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964. ———. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. Fogel, Robert W., and Stanley L. Engerman. The Reinterpretation of American Economic History. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. ———. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974. Nobel Foundation. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes.

H O O T O N , E A R N E S T A. (1887–1954) A pioneering criminologist and physical anthropologist, Earnest A. Hooten was born on November 27, 1887, in Clemansville, Wisconsin, and educated at Lawrence University. He won a Rhodes Scholarship, and he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1911. Hooton was a physical anthropologist and professor of anthropology at Harvard University, as well as director of the Peabody Museum there, but his most salient work was in the budding field of criminology. His ideas about the biological determinants of criminal behavior were the source of contention and debate in the 1930s and 1940s. Until the 1870s, criminology was based on the assumption that people use reason to calculate the consequences of their behavior. In 1876, the publication of Criminal Man by Italian physician Cesare Lombroso heralded a new period in criminology by introducing the biological theory of behavior, which posits that criminals behave in a deviant manner due to biological anomalies. Lombroso’s concept of atavism suggested that some people are “born criminals.” British physician Charles Goring challenged atavism theory in 1913 with a detailed study of prison inmates, reporting no statistical significance in criminality between the inmates and civilians. Anthropologist Hooten joined the fray in support of Lombroso and published his own study of inmate populations in 1939. He reported that there were indeed biological differences between inmate and civilian populations and that the inmate group was biologically inferior (he termed the group the “lower order ”). In particular, Hooten grouped his subjects by an extensive typology based on physical features, ethnicity, geographic location, and other factors. Hooten’s study was quickly critiqued by a number of reviewers on several grounds: the differences between the inmate and civilian groups were not very significant; the civilian population contained people from occupations that required physical agility; there was less variation in traits between the two groups than from within the inmate group; only the most recent

Section 7: Humanism 495 crimes from personal histories of the inmates were used; and Hooten was biased in assuming the inferiority of the inmate group. Hooten believed that efforts at criminal rehabilitation were futile because of the innate inferiority of those who commit crimes. He also believed that those who commit criminal acts should be banished to remote areas, away from law-abiding citizens. The idea of biological determinism later extended beyond studies of criminal behavior and found its way into the eugenics movement, in which people were sterilized in an attempt to stop the continuation of a faulty gene pool. The ideas of Hooten and other biological theorists in criminology saw their halcyon period of the 1930s and 1940s give way to sociological theories in the 1950s. With new findings about the human genome and biochemistry, however, biological theories of criminality, as evolved from the works of Hooten and others, appear to be receiving renewed interest in the early twenty-first century. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Akers, Ronald A. Criminological Theories: Introduction, Evaluation, and Application. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Roxbury, 2000. Hooten, Earnest A. The American Criminal. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939. ———. Apes, Men, and Morons. New York: G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1937. ———. Crimes and the Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939.

HUMANISM Humanism—a philosophy focused on human experience and its expression in the arts and humanities—has gone through several metamorphoses during the course of American history. Many leading colonial intellectuals of the 1700s, for example, were humanists in that they accepted the intellectual assumptions of the European Renaissance and looked to the ancient Greco-Roman world for inspiration and knowledge. Thomas Jefferson was particularly notable in this regard, being not only a classical scholar

but also an advocate of the Stoic and Epicurean ways of thinking. Henry David Thoreau was a representative example of the nineteenth-century American humanist. His Walden (1854) and Civil Disobedience (1849) exemplify the emphasis on literary expression that explores the depths of human emotion and intuition. William James, the Harvard philosopher and psychologist, was a self-proclaimed humanist. He claimed that his philosophy of pragmatism was humanist because it relied exclusively on human experience as the basis of knowledge and the foundation for action. James adopted Darwin’s theory of natural selection to help explain human epistemology—the forms and expressions of knowing. A small group of intellectuals in the 1920s led by Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More reacted to James’s scientific humanism, creating their own brand, which they called New Humanism. The New Humanism of the 1920s and 1930s, however, was elitist, focusing on cultivated aspects of life such as decorum, order, and sophistication. At the same time, another expression of humanism was gathering strength: secular humanism, which emphasizes nonreligious human values. The educator John Dewey and the philosopher Corliss Lamont advocated a particularly progressive, liberal expression of secular humanism. In 1933, some leading humanists, including Dewey, issued the “Humanist Manifesto” rejecting religious beliefs based in the supernatural and promoting instead a rational worldview based on the assumption that human reason and science are the ultimate tools for discovering truth. A later group of humanists issued “Humanist Manifesto II” in 1973. They also rejected traditional religious beliefs, and they promoted the typically American view of using applied science to solve many problems facing humans, such as hunger, ignorance, poverty, disease, crime, pollution, substance abuse, and war. These humanists had the same optimistic view as Enlightenment thinkers such that a secular, material, and temporal utopia was just around the corner—all that was needed was further research, more science, the elimination of superstition, and the universal application of a rational, empirical mindset. Secular humanists do not constitute as distinct a group or movement today because their philosophy seems more mainstream, blending

496 Section 7: Humanism into society at large. In this sense, the secular humanist ideology is increasingly that of American society, and secular humanism merely reflects trends occurring in American culture. Russell Lawson

Sources Lamont, Corliss. The Philosophy of Humanism. 6th ed. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1982. Lehmann, Karl. Thomas Jefferson, American Humanist. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1991.

INDIAN ORIGINS Archeologists and anthropologists have developed a working consensus that American Indians migrated from Asia across a land bridge at least 15,000 years ago. Ongoing debates in scientific circles, the popular media, and Native American communities promise to refine accepted understandings in coming years. Well into the nineteenth century, however, spirituality and speculation held greater sway than science, and biblical explanations remained predominant. Such accounts were based on the story of creation in the book of Genesis, tracing humanity to the Garden of Eden some 6,000 years ago. How American Indians fit into this biblical scenario was unclear. While many argued that the first Americans must have dispersed from Noah’s ark following the great flood, others contended that native peoples of the Americas descended, in fact, from the Lost Tribes of Israel. Less literal interpretations of scripture held that Europeans, Asians, or even individuals from mythical lands had peopled the American continent. The seafaring peoples of the Mediterranean were favored candidates in such accounts. Into the nineteenth century, writers speculated that American Indians had descended from Carthaginians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Romans. Less often, Asian origins were theorized. The mythical lands of Atlantis and Mu also were proposed as possible homelands for those who populated the Americas. The scientific study of the origins of Native Americans began in the eighteenth century. Thomas Jefferson, for example, held that the similarities among American Indian peoples, partic-

ularly in language, beliefs, and customs, pointed toward a common origin. Comparison between the peoples of Asia and America, moreover, suggested to Jefferson that American Indians originally came from Asia. The nineteenth-century archeologist Samuel Haven concurred, arguing that American Indians had migrated from Asia. Despite these early endeavors, racist beliefs that regarded American Indians as inferior, barbarous, and incapable of civilization would continue to hamper the development of unbiased interpretations of the origins of the first Americans. Slowly archeologists, anthropologists, geologists, and others began to develop a set of concepts that would establish a foundation for rethinking the origins of these early peoples. Studies of burial mounds and other archeological sites along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers would begin to complicate prevailing understandings of Native Americans. Rather than primitive and inferior, they had to be appreciated as peoples with an engaging history who were sophisticated occupants of the Americas. The prehistory of the Americas came to be seen in the late nineteenth century as a parallel to the prehistory of Europe: America had a distant past as well, a Paleolithic period comparable to what scientists were finding in Europe. At the same time, the rise of evolutionary theory provided scientists with a language to describe the development and diversity of prehistoric America. While many scholars spoke in ethnocentric terms about stages of civilization during this period, thinking about evolution allowed archeologists and anthropologists to explain similarities and differences in culture and technology. Increasingly, this would direct attention to the Asian origins of American Indians. Contemporary scientists largely agree that the first Americans migrated to the Americas from Asia. They have not, however, reached a consensus as to the exact details of this great migration. In fact, they regularly debate the precise timing, mode, and geographic origins of the dispersal of early migrants. The most conservative estimates place the migration at 15,000 years ago. More commonly, archeologists have asserted a longer time horizon, often pushing the earliest date of arrival to 30,000 years ago. A number of scholars have even proposed a much longer presence, pointing to settlements more than 70,000 years old.

Section 7: Inkeles, Alex 497 A handful of scientists have theorized a migration via the sea. Norwegian explorer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl endeavored to demonstrate that ancient Egyptian mariners could have navigated papyrus boats across the Atlantic Ocean. Others have suggested that the Americas were peopled from Asia or Polynesia by boat. The most common theory is that people crossed a land bridge or ice sheet, dubbed Beringia, that had joined Siberia and North America. It is not clear whether the migration was a purposeful colonization or the chance pursuit of big game. Importantly for the debate, archeologists have discerned not merely one dispersal into the Americas, but rather a series of distinct migrations. Indeed, integrating linguistic, archeological, genetic, and dental evidence, they have pieced together three waves from Siberia into the Americas. Even as archeological understandings of the past seem to paint an increasingly complex portrait of the American people, some Native Americans insist that scientific accounts of Indian origins are inaccurate. Perhaps most famously, Vine Deloria, Jr., charged that scientists too often dismiss American Indian creation stories and that archeological explanations of their origins are flawed at best. Such critics insist that American Indians are native to the land and that theories of migration are little more than a mythology designed to justify past and present exploitation of indigenous peoples. C. Richard King

Sources Deloria, Vine, Jr. Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact. New York: Scribner’s, 1995. Fagan, Brian. The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987.

INKELES, ALEX (1920– ) Alex Inkeles, known primarily for his contributions in political sociology, has pursued interests as varied as Russian social life, social psychology, modernization, national character, legal systems, education, and human development.

Inkeles was born on March 4, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York, to parents who had recently immigrated from Poland. He grew up listening to stories of the social and political life of his native land prior to World War I, and he developed an intense interest in Eastern European and Russian culture. With the outbreak of World War II, there was a renewed interest in Russia, America’s putative ally, in academic and government circles. Inkeles had learned Russian at Cornell University, where he received his B.A. in 1941. When the war began, he was assigned to the Internal Affairs Section of the USSR Division of the Research and Analysis Branch, a division of the Office of Strategic Services. Their mission was to provide information about the social and political aspects of Russian society. Inkeles was the only sociologist on the staff of the Internal Affairs Section. He studied mass communication and the effects of propaganda, family issues, the educational system, stratification, and social aspects of the Communist Party. While commissioned to provide research findings on Soviet life, the section was also inundated with tasks related to political and military policy development and maintenance. The work of these social scientists over the years culminated in several books on Russian life. Meanwhile, Inkeles earned a master’s degree from Cornell (1946) and a Ph.D. from Columbia (1949). His first book, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia (1950), was followed by a series of other respected works on the Soviet system, such as How the Soviet System Works (1957), The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society (1968), and Social Change in Soviet Russia (1968). Inkeles emerged in the 1960s as a leader among social scientists in modernization studies. A key to modernization theory is the idea of a modern personality—a modern society should produce modern personalities and modern ideas distinct from traditional personalities and ideas. To find empirical support for the theory of a modern personality, Inkeles studied 6,000 individuals in six developing nations and concluded that there is, in fact, such a thing as the modern personality. [The modern personality] identifies with the newer, larger entities of region and state, takes

498 Section 7: Inkeles, Alex an interest in public affairs, national and international as well as local, joins organizations, keeps himself informed about major events in the news, and votes or otherwise takes some part in the political process. The modern man’s sense of efficacy is reflected in his belief that, either alone or in concert with others, he may take actions which can affect the course of his life and that of his community; in his active efforts to improve his own condition and that of his family; and in his rejection of passivity, resignation, and fatalism toward the course of life’s events.

Inkeles is professor emeritus of sociology and education at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Inkeles, Alex. One World Emerging? Convergence and Divergence in Industrial Societies. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998. ———. Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950. Inkeles, Alex, and David H. Smith. Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.

I N T E R N AT I O N A L E N C YC LO P E D I A OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Published in 1968, the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences represents the accumulated efforts of many scholars to present the development of the social sciences through the 1960s. The work spans seventeen volumes and 9,750 pages, serving as a follow-up to the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, which was published by Macmillan between 1930 and 1935. More recently, the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, published by Elsevier in 2001, provides a further update of the field. The three encyclopedias are unique for the social sciences, bringing together contributions by the preeminent scholars and experts of their times to create an overview of accumulated knowledge. Thus, the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences provides an important link in the evolution of the social sciences as a branch of intellectual inquiry.

An examination of the disciplines included in the encyclopedia illustrates issues and concerns thought to be important by scholars of the time. In alphabetical order, articles are included in the disciplines of anthropology, economics, geography, history, law, political science, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, and statistics. The 1968 work extended Edwin Seligman’s 1930s definition of the social sciences by adding the categories of geography, history, psychiatry, psychology, and statistics. The decision to include the first four revolved around continuing debates concerning the interests of scholars, the direction of study, and how best to categorize them. The inclusion of statistics, on the other hand, represented the increasing reliance of the social sciences on quantitative methods to analyze data and conduct surveys. Categories from the 1930s work that were dropped in the 1968 edition include penology (the study of the punishment of crime) and social work. The newer edition provides an opportunity to discuss the evolution of social science research and methods throughout history, including those since the 1930s. Editor David Sills recognized that the expansion of knowledge naturally led scholars to specialize in subfields and to rely on more rigorous methodologies. This left little time to study the history of their own specialties or to consider the related research conducted in other disciplines. Sills addressed this problem by providing scholars with a history of social science developments, as well as by linking together the research conducted in separate fields for a particular topic. The inclusion of such history focused more on the approaches of analysis and less on pure description. Sills also sought to standardize terminology and procedures so that scholars in related subdisciplines would be able to understand one another. In addition to articles on specific subjects, the encyclopedia includes about 600 biographies of leading contributors to the social sciences to provide a deeper historical context and more details about important works. The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences remains a valuable tool for students and researchers who seek an understanding of the historical development of modern ideas and theories in a range of disciplines. Wade D. Pfau

Section 7: Laissez-Faire Economics 499 Sources Seligman, Edwin R.A., and Alvin Johnson, eds. Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, 1930– 1935. Sills, David L., ed. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1968. Smelser, Neil J., and Paul B. Baltes, eds. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 2001.

KUZNETS, SIMON (1901–1985) The economist Simon Smith Kuznets won the Nobel Prize in 1971 for his studies of the impact of modern economic growth on established countries such as the United States, as well as on developing countries throughout the world. Kuznets was born on April 30, 1901, in Kharkov, Russia (now Ukraine), but moved to the United States in 1922. He attended Columbia University in New York City, where he earned a B.S. in 1923, an M.A. in 1924, and a Ph.D. in 1926. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1930–1954), Johns Hopkins University (1954– 1960), and Harvard University (1960–1971). In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Kuznets served as president of the American Statistical Association and the American Economic Association, from which he received the prestigious Francis A. Walker Award in 1977. In 1950, he received the first of his many honorary degrees, from Princeton University. Kuznets began his career at the Social Science Research Council in the 1920s; his research led to the publication of his first book, Secular Movements in Production and Prices (1930). Kuznets also studied business cycles, arguing that cycles of prosperity followed by recession occurred every fifteen to twenty years (the Kuznets Cycle). In the 1930s and 1940s, he was concerned with American economic production and the yearly amount of national goods and services. His work led to the development of a national economic measure, the gross national product (GNP), which he analyzed in National Income and Its Composition, 1919–1938 (1941). He spent the postwar years studying national income and examining in detail income inequality.

Kuznets was a leader in development economics, the study of how developing countries modernize. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics “for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development.” In his work, Kuznets identified a significant period in economic history—the era of “modern economic growth”—which began in northwestern Europe in the last half of the eighteenth century. In Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, and Spread (1966), Kuznets defined modern economic growth as “a sustained increase in per capita or per worker product, most often accompanied by an increase in population and usually by sweeping structural changes” in science and technology, society, production, trade, and urbanization. Kuznets also analyzed the relative inequality in developing and developed countries. He argued that in developing countries an expanding economy leads to greater inequality, whereas an expanding economy in developed countries reduces income inequality. Simon Kuznets died on July 8, 1985. Alfredo Manuel Coelho

Sources Kapuria-Foreman, Vibha, and Mark Perlman. “An Economic Historian’s Perspective: Remembering Simon Kuznets.” Economic Journal 105:433 (1995): 1524–47. Kuznets, Simon. Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, and Spread. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966. Street, James H. “The Contribution of Simon S. Kuznets to Institutionalist Development Theory.” Journal of Economic Issues 22:2 (1988): 499–509.

L A I S S E Z -F A I R E E C O N O M I C S Laissez faire (French for “leave be”) is a theory of political economy drawn from the writings of British thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill and widely discussed in Britain and America since the early nineteenth century. At its core, laissez faire holds that the optimal society is one in which individuals are free to act according to their own self-interest. The economic doctrine holds that it is in the best interest of society to let

500 Section 7: Laissez-Faire Economics businesses make their own decisions and operate freely, without government interference or regulation. The theory emerged from the Enlightenment’s celebration of free will and the British business community’s resistance to mercantilism, in which heavy regulations were imposed by the government to strengthen itself, often at the expense of others. According to Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), an “invisible hand” enforces the law of supply and demand to determine the value of goods and services in the marketplace. This in turn affects people’s behavior—what products they make, what professions they follow, how much they charge for goods—as individuals, driven by self-interest, in trying to make a profit. Theoretically, this creates a highly efficient society, unfettered by government control, in which competition for customers and profit keeps prices low, quality high, and the community’s basic and luxury needs met. During the nineteenth century, American capitalists, eager to avoid government regulation, championed laissez-faire theories as the best model for the national economy. By the time the Industrial Revolution was in full swing at the turn of the twentieth century, however, laissez-faire theories seemed to be backfiring. Competition—a crucial component of laissez-faire theory—began disappearing, as industries, including railroads, steel, and oil, engaged in pools, trusts, and mergers to maximize their profits. Moreover, while a few capitalists such as John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were becoming fantastically wealthy, an increasingly visible underclass of impoverished workers, women, and children developed whose needs were not being met by the laissez-faire system. The legacy of laissez faire can largely be found in four movements that arose in response to the shortcomings of laissez-faire policies. The organized labor movement, represented by the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, and the Industrial Workers of the World, used strikes and negotiation to force industrialists to improve working conditions. The Progressive movement, including such figures as Jane Addams and Theodore Roosevelt, gave private assistance to the downtrodden and advocated government regulations to encourage more com-

petitive and conscientious business practices. The corporate liberal movement saw the American business community adopt its own reforms, such as dealing in better faith with some labor unions and showing more concern for community interests; this, they hoped, would mitigate the influence of a potentially radical labor movement and minimize the need for government regulations. Finally, the social science movement in academia, including the growth of disciplines such as sociology, political science, and economics, studied ways to replace or reform laissez-faire policies and thereby generated ideas that helped guide the first three movements. After the Great Depression of the 1930s, laissez-faire theories generally lost credibility. But the neoconservative movement that began in the 1980s brought some of them back into vogue. David G. Schuster

Sources Faulkner, Harold. The Decline of Laissez Faire, 1897–1917. New York: Rinehart, 1951. Sklansky, Jeffrey. The Soul’s Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

M A L I N O W S K I , B R O N I S L AW (1884–1942) One of the world’s foremost social anthropologists, Bronislaw Malinowski’s contribution to the field of ethnography, or the systematic study and description of culture, helped rescue the discipline from its arid, nineteenth-century bourgeois trappings. Malinowski was born on April 7, 1884, in Krakow, Poland. His father was a professor of Slavonic philology; Bronislaw spent much of his childhood under the care of his mother, who attended to his education after a series of illnesses compelled him to withdraw from the King Jan Sobieski gymnasium. His scholastic aptitude, coupled with restorative trips abroad, prepared him for a successful career as a social anthropologist, writer, theorist, and master of several languages.

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Bronislaw Malinowski’s classic studies of the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea exemplified his methodology of “participant observation.” Malinowski took a functionalist approach to the study of social institutions and their interrelationships. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Although he received his Ph.D. from Jagiellonian University in 1908 in philosophy, physics, and mathematics, Malinowski’s dissertation “On the Principle of the Economy of Thought” laid the intellectual foundations of “functionalism,” a protostructural school of anthropology in which culture was understood as a delicate network of interrelated components. Dispensing with more traditional interpretations of culture—such as James Frazer’s theory of philosophical evolution, which traced the civilization of “savage” cultures through a gradual abandonment of magic and a growing acceptance of science—Malinowski insisted that cultural phenomena should be explained synchronically, based on human needs that can be observed in the here and now, and not on things inferred from a remote past that needs to be reconstructed. Such devotion to empiricism set the tone for Malinowski’s future ethnographic research into the lives of the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea, whom he visited twice during World

War I and whose Kula exchange system became the focus of his famous study Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922). The “Kula ring” was a circular trade route Malinowski observed during his fieldwork among the Trobriands. The route was initiated by various senior members of Trobriand society, who would repeatedly undertake dangerous voyages from island to island, exchanging gifts of necklaces (soulava) and armbands (mwali) made of shells. The exchange system was undertaken more for social gain and less for economic gain, and it helped establish peaceful communications and reciprocity among the islands. The exchange system and the gifts themselves conferred social status onto the participants. Malinowski’s observations of this system led him to develop his functionalist view of culture, in which all aspects of a culture serve particular needs. As a direct affront to the armchair anthropologists of the late nineteenth century, he argued for the necessity of “participant observation” in order to capture the native’s point of view—a task that entailed living among indigenous cultures for extended periods of time, learning their language, and participating in their daily routines. Malinowski’s methodological upheaval changed the way future anthropologists such as Margaret Mead would perform their fieldwork. It also helped him secure an appointment as first chair of the Department of Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics in 1927, as well as prestigious lectureships at Cornell, Harvard, and Yale throughout the 1930s. Malinowski died suddenly on May 16, 1942, in New Haven, Connecticut. His Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term, kept during an expedition in southern New Guinea and published posthumously in 1967, helped usher in yet another paradigm shift in the history of professional anthropology. Riddled with moments of candid sexual frustration and self-imposed isolation that contradicted the more proactive field methods he had championed, Malinowski’s diary evoked heated debates over the need for ethnographers to acknowledge their subjective biases and to “position” themselves with respect to the cultures they observe. He thus prompted ethnographers to reconsider the relationships they cultivated with

502 Section 7: Malinowski, Bronislaw the cultures they encountered as well as the manner in which they went about studying them. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Ellen, Roy, Ernest Gellner, Grazyna Kubica, and Janusz Mucha, eds. Malinowski Between Two Worlds: The Polish Roots of an Anthropological Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. 1922. Reprint ed., Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 1984. ———. The Dynamics of Culture Change. Ed. P.M. Kaberry. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1945. Stocking, George W. The Ethnographer’s Magic and Other Essays in the History of Anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.

MARXISM Marxism, a philosophical system of political economy named for the nineteenth-century German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, has had a profound impact on world thought, culture, society, and government during the past century and a half. Marx believed that class conflict directs history and society, ensures that the majority of humans are exploited by a ruling minority, and can be eradicated only by violent revolution. Marx’s ideas stimulated revolution in Europe during the 1800s, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the communist revolution in China, and other political conflicts throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Marxism also had an impact on the methods and philosophy of the social sciences in the United States and other Western nations. Marx earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841. An activist journalist in several European countries during the midnineteenth century, he was forced to flee Europe because of his revolutionary stance. He relocated to England, where he spent his life writing books on economics, politics, and society. His most famous works were The German Ideology (1845), The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), Capital (1867), and The Communist Manifesto, written with Friedrich Engels in 1848. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx argued that history is driven by class conflict between the bourgeoisie (those who control the wealth, power, and superstructure of society) and the

proletariat (those who perform the labor but lack wealth and power). The bourgeoisie are in the minority but control and exploit the majority proletariat. In Marxist theory, workers are called on by history to act to end class conflict and the exploitation of one group by another. Marx called for revolution that would yield the destruction of the bourgeoisie and the elevation to power of the proletariat. The proletariat would establish a state in which all aspects of society would be under the control of the working class; the bourgeoisie would change or be eliminated. The proletariat regime would be a single-class society and government. Capitalism, the competition for wealth and resources on which bourgeois society is based, would be replaced by a planned economy. The needs of all would be met. At first, the government would control the economy and superstructure of society (schools, banks, transportation networks, factories), but only for a time. Marx meant for the socialist government and society imposed by the “dictatorship of the proletariat” to be transitional. The final end of all society would be a communist society. Communism, according to Marxist theory, is a classless, propertyless social system, without distinctions in wealth or status, without career choices and distinctions in jobs, where all people work together to achieve a common goal. Communism is a society without government, where the reasons for the existence of government— conflict between classes—have been eliminated. A key component to Marxist philosophy is the principle of education. The proletariat socialist regime would ensure that all children were educated to live a life without private possessions and the greed that accompanies such possessions. Without private property, without greed, without the desire to acquire and to distinguish oneself according to one’s possessions, sameness would set in—with sameness would come contentment and peace. Another component of Marxist thought is “historical materialism,” which is based on the dialectic theory of the nineteenth-century philosopher Georg Hegel. The dialectic theory holds that opposing historical forces meet and are reconciled in synthesis. Inherent in Marx’s thought is a sense of the inevitability of the historical process brought about by the dialectic. The conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat would occur, Marx claimed,

Section 7: Mead, Margaret 503 and it was the role of the philosopher to act and to direct this conflict to an appropriate end. In his belief in class conflict and exploitation, Marx provided a fundamental critique of capitalism. Free enterprise does not mean freedom for the mass of workers, Marx argued; rather, capitalism turns people into commodities and resources to use and exploit. Marxism had the greatest impact on social scientific thought by assuming that ideas, even human consciousness, are molded by the social and economic conditions of society. There is nothing metaphysical or spiritual that is independent from economic production and social institutions. All great ideas—Christianity, liberty, freedom, and democracy—occur at a certain time and place, and reflect the “forces of production,” the social and economic structure, of that time and place. No idea is absolute and eternal; all is relative. Marxism is therefore by its very nature atheistic. Marxist ideas have had a varying effect on American politics and thought. American socialism, which originated in the mid-nineteenth century, was inspired by Marx. The Midwestern farm movement of the 1890s, Populism, had socialist leanings and received encouragement from Daniel DeLeon, editor of The People, the journal of the Socialist Labor Party. Early in the twentieth century, Eugene Debs led socialists in opposition to World War I and labor in quest of changes to working conditions in industrial America. During the 1920s and 1930s, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Communist Party gained adherents in America, particularly among intellectuals. Although the Red Scare of the 1950s and the Cold War effectively diminished political Marxism in America, Marxism as an academic philosophy and methodology became quite popular among the New Left scholars of the 1960s and thereafter. Marxist philosophers, writers, historians, and social scientists have embraced Marx’s assumption that the environment—be it the political, economic, social, or natural—shapes human consciousness. Such an idea challenges the idealist assumption that each human has a unique consciousness that is unchanging throughout time and place. Russell Lawson

Sources Berlin, Isaiah. Karl Marx: His Life and Environment. New York: Time, 1963. Buhle, Paul. Marxism in the United States: Remapping the History of the American Left. London: Verson, 1987. Diggins, John P. Up from Communism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Trans. Samuel Moore. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1967. McMurtry, John. The Structure of Marx’s World-View. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.

M E A D, M A R G A R E T (1901–1978) Margaret Mead was one of the most renowned anthropologists and public intellectuals in the United States. Although she based herself at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where she worked as assistant and then curator in the Department of Anthropology from 1926 until her death in 1978, Mead pioneered the study of human psychosocial development in a strictly comparative context. She parlayed her anthropological studies of childbearing customs, courtship rituals, educational systems, and attitudes about sex and power into an analysis of the apparently ethnocentric attitudes of the “civilized” world toward native populations, the culturally constructed basis of what often pass as natural truths, and the imperative for social change. Mead was born in Philadelphia on December 16, 1901, and her family moved frequently during her childhood. She studied at DePauw University and Barnard Collage. Married to Luther Cressman in 1923, she earned her Ph.D. in 1929 from Columbia University. At Columbia, she studied under Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. Mead developed a holistic view of social dynamics, examining a host of cultural practices within the context of larger ceremonial traditions and belief and value systems. Her best-selling first ethnography, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), documented the sexual maturation of adolescent girls as part of the natural cycle, unencumbered by the tensions or embarrassments characterizing prevailing attitudes about sexual development in the United States.

504 Section 7: Mead, Margaret

Based on extensive fieldwork in Samoa and elsewhere in the South Pacific, the famous cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead examined psychosocial development and its relationship to cultural practices, beliefs, and value systems. (John Loengard/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Divorced from Cressman, Mead continued fieldwork in New Guinea in 1931 with her second husband, psychologist Reo Fortune. This allowed her to study contrasting gender roles in three separate societies and led her to the conclusion that power relationships between men and women are determined by cultural and not biological variables. She continued to push the field of ethnography even further when, in 1942, after having divorced Fortune and married fellow anthropologist Gregory Bateson, she published a photographic study of Balinese culture—a methodological innovation that quickly cemented her already increasing public appeal. She and Bateson had one daughter, born in 1939. World War II made traveling abroad increasingly difficult, but Mead maintained a firm commitment to the advancement of the profession and the promotion of cultural diversity in the United States. In the years after the war, she cofounded the anthropology departments at New York University and Fordham. She delivered a

series of lectures and radio interviews and contributed monthly articles to Redbook magazine, in which she spoke out against common sociological problems such as sexism and racism, warfare and technology. She also served as president of the American Anthropological Association. In 1944, Mead and her mentor, Ruth Benedict, established the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York City, which to this day houses notes and writings by Mead, Bateson, and other anthropologists. In addition, the institute sponsors youth-oriented workshops designed to educate students about the very ideas Mead spent her entire professional life exploring and publicizing. Mead’s contributions to American anthropology are immeasurable. The Library of Congress, in celebrating the centennial of her birth in 2001, showcased her legacy with an exhibit of photographs, drawings, notes, letters, and sound recordings. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Section 7: Mumford, Lewis 505 Sources Cassidy, Robert. Margaret Mead: A Voice for the Century. New York: Universe, 1982. Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. 1928. Reprint ed., New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

MORGAN, LEWIS (1818–1881) Lewis Henry Morgan was known primarily for his research on evolutionary patterns in human development, based on his observation of Native American groups. His findings and theories about the effect of kinship groups on other social institutions, such as political and economic systems, heavily influenced theorists in the fields of sociology, political science, and economics, as well as anthropology. Morgan was born in a farmhouse in rural central New York on November 21, 1818. As a young man he was able to see how societies change due to technological advances, because the area in which he lived (inhabited by Native Americans until a few decades earlier) was economically transformed by the Erie Canal. He graduated from Union College in 1840 and became an attorney. His insatiable interest in American Indian culture was reflected in his membership in an organization called the Grand Order of the Iroquois (previously called the Gordian Knot), based on social patterns of the Iroquois Confederacy. Morgan interrupted his legal practice in the 1840s to study the Iroquois tribe. His research culminated in The League of the Ho-de-sau-nee, or Iroquois (1851). This work incorporated earlier published accounts and became a groundbreaking study of Native American society. Morgan’s next major work departed from the study of human societies. After years of studying beavers in Michigan, Morgan produced The American Beaver and His Works (1868). Although this would seem an insignificant work in the career of one of America’s early leading ethnographers, it had the distinction of being mentioned in Charles Darwin’s 1871 The Descent of Man. Morgan’s seminal work was a study that attempted to show a common evolutionary trend

from ancient to contemporary human communities. In Ancient Society (1877), he posited that all societies—he gave specific examples of the Iroquois, Aztecs, and ancient Greeks and Romans, among others—evolved from basic social collectivities (societas) into tribal groupings (populus) and later into governmental organizations (civitas). The stages of development he posited were labeled “savagery,” “barbarism,” and “civilization,” with the first two having three substages each: lower status, middle status, and upper status. The uniqueness of his stage model was not so much in the typology as in his suggestion that each stage was influenced by technological advancements, a concept that would be found in the works of later social theorists. Morgan’s prominence in the social sciences was evident in his election to the National Academy of Science in 1875 and to the position of president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1879. His work would have an enduring influence on anthropology in America and help lay the groundwork for much discourse on human social development. Franz Boas and other leading anthropologists attacked his theories; many others, such as sociologists Emile Durkheim and Friedrich Engels, strongly supported them. Morgan continued to study and record his ideas until his death on December 17, 1881, in Rochester, New York. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Moore, Jerry D. Visions of Culture. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 1997. Tooker, Elisabeth. Lewis H. Morgan on Iroquois Material Culture. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994. White, Leslie A. The Indian Journals 1859–1862. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1859; reprint ed., New York: Dover, 1993.

M U M F O R D, L E W I S (1895–1990) Lewis Mumford was a social commentator, cultural historian, and architectural critic whose works spanned much of the twentieth century.

506 Section 7: Mumford, Lewis As an author, he is best known for his books The Culture of Cities (1938), The City in History (1962), and Sketches from Life (1982), an autobiography. He advocated restraint in the development of the atomic bomb after World War II and argued against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Both of these protests were fueled by the death of his son, Geddes, in Europe during World War II. Born on October 19, 1895, in Flushing, New York, Mumford received his education at City College of New York and the New School for Social Research before joining the U.S. Navy in 1918. As a young writer for the New York magazine The Dial, he married colleague Sophia Wittenberg in 1921. Mumford was a proponent of the garden city, a popular notion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in England, which sought a rethinking of urban development in concert with green spaces such as parks. In The Culture of Cities, he argued for the implementation of regional planning in the United States and the creation of cities that were ecologically sound. The City in History was a study of the architecture and status of the city throughout world history. His ideal cities were those of medieval times—self-contained, built at lower levels, and with many public spaces. He thought cities became unwieldy during the eighteenth century in Europe, when the city walls and boundaries of the Middle Ages gave way to sprawling, poorly managed development into the countryside. Mumford continued his advocacy for regional development and green spaces throughout his life. This interest drove his books, his regular architectural critiques in the New Yorker magazine, and his assistance in founding the Regional Planners Association of America (RPAA) in 1923. The RPAA was an organization that redefined the scope of urban development as a regional issue and urged a greater incorporation of green spaces with urban development. Mumford held professorships in urban studies and humanities throughout his professional life, including positions at Dartmouth, Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California at Berkeley. These

The social philosopher Lewis Mumford, a critic of modern technological society, advocated regional planning and ecologically sound urban development featuring ample parkland and other green spaces. (Eric Schaal/Pix, Inc./ Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

teaching positions allowed him both financial freedom to write and the ability to lecture on topics that would become integral to his writing. His book The Myth of the Machine (1967) comprised lectures given at MIT, and The Pentagon of Power (1971) included lectures given at Berkeley. Toward the end of Mumford’s life, his literary works received the attention he had long hoped for. In 1972, he was awarded the National Medal for Literature for the sum of his works to that point. In 1986, he received the National Medal for Arts for contributions to architectural and urban design. Mumford died on January 26, 1990, at the age of ninety-five. Nicholas Katers

Sources Miller, Donald L. Lewis Mumford: A Life. New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. Mumford, Lewis. The Culture of Cities. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938. ———. Sketches from Life: The Autobiography of Lewis Mumford: The Early Years. New York: Dial, 1982.

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P A R S O N S , T A LC O T T (1902–1979) Talcott Parsons was a leading theorist in American sociology whose work garnered considerable attention from the years following World War II until the social upheavals of the 1960s. He was born on December 13, 1902, in Colorado Springs, the son of a college dean who later became president of Marietta College in Ohio. Parsons was educated at a series of prestigious institutions: Amherst College in Massachusetts, the London School of Economics, and the University of Heidelberg in Germany. His major influences were the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, economist Alfred Marshall, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and sociologists Max Weber (Parsons translated The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism), Emile Durkheim, and Vilfredo Pareto. This diversity of influences reflects Parson’s multidisciplinary approach to sociological theory, which combined the perspectives of sociology, economics, anthropology, history, medicine, and biology. In addition, his work featured aspects of both European and American sociology. Parsons created a structural-functionalist theory that could explain any social phenomenon. His first published work, The Structure of Social Action (1937), established the foundation of his theory of action, which would be many years in development. Formally known as the “voluntaristic theory of action,” this approach sees human action as based on freedom and rational choice occurring within the constraints of the social milieu. People are free, rational actors in life. Parsons also argued that society has three systems: the personality system of the individual; the cultural system of shared cultural beliefs and values; and the social system of norms and expectations. The social system has four distinct functions: adaptation through the acquisition of material needs; goal attainment through the use of social resources; integration of social solidarity through the use of the justice system; and pattern maintenance through the forces of socialization. In addition, Parsons posited that social subsystems, such as families,

must maintain these elements to preserve their functionality. Parsons continued to develop his grand theory throughout the 1940s and 1950s, but its appeal declined during the civil unrest of the 1960s, when theories of social conflict (including those of Karl Marx and the neo-Marxists) came into prominence. His abstract theorizing was made all the more difficult to grasp by a somewhat cumbersome and intellectually laborious writing style. He was often criticized for not using empirical data to guide his theory, and his work became synonymous with a conservative status-quo ideology. After his death on May 8, 1979, social scholars began to review Parsons’s life and work and revise some of the earlier criticisms. His academic career was spent attempting to establish American sociology as a distinctly scientific endeavor through his grand theory, which he believed would explain all of human social action. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Black, Max, ed. The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1961. Bourricaud, François, ed. The Sociology of Talcott Parsons. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Parsons, Talcott. Essays in Sociological Theory. New York: Free Press, 1949. ———. Social Systems and the Evolution of Action Theory. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1977. ———. The Structure of Social Action. New York: McGrawHill, 1937.

P H Y S I C A L A N T H R O P O LO G Y Physical anthropology is the study of the physical evidence of human development and the analysis of the adaptations, variability, and evolution of human beings and their living and fossil relatives. Physical anthropology is both a biological and a social science, as it examines the changing physical structure of human beings (and related species) within a cultural and behavioral context. Since the latter half of the twentieth century, as many of its practitioners have eschewed fossil study for work in the field

508 Section 7: Physical Anthropology of genetics, the discipline also has been called biological anthropology. Physical anthropology developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the wake of the evolutionary theories first propounded by the British naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. The first focus of American physical anthropologists was anthropometry, the scientific study of human physical traits such as size, mobility, and strength. Much of the early work was tainted, however, by racist ideas; it was presumed by many anthropometrists that various races existed in a kind of hierarchy of evolutionary development, with Caucasians at the top. Among the first Americans to reject such ideas and turn physical anthropology into a true science, untainted by social dogma, was Franz Boas, a German-born anthropologist who established the United States’s first Ph.D. program in anthropology at Columbia University in New York City in the late 1890s. Conducting research in the early 1900s on thousands of immigrants and their children from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, Boas found that environmental factors played a major role in cranial capacity, indicating that racial characteristics were not immutable, as many scientists of the day believed. The study confirmed Boas’s theories on the importance of migration in human evolutionary development. Another pioneer in physical anthropology was Czech immigrant Ales Hrdlicka, who worked at the U.S. National Museum (now the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History). Also interested in the role of migration in human prehistory, Hrdlicka conducted field research both on fossils and on living peoples around the world in the early 1900s. He concluded that human beings had first evolved in the eastern hemisphere and later migrated, across the Bering Strait, to the Americas. Like Boas, Hrdlicka forwarded the professionalization of physical anthropology in the United States by founding the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1918) and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (1930). For all of Boas’s and Hrdlicka’s efforts, however, much of American physical anthropology remained mired in theories of racial superiority and inferiority, largely through the influence of Earnest Hooten, a professor at Harvard University from the 1910s through the 1950s, and a sub-

scriber to the ideas of racial immutability and hierarchy. Only after World War II would American physical anthropologists turn away from their focus on determining racial origins and hierarchies and their near-exclusive reliance on anthropometry as a methodology. From the second half of the twentieth century to the present day, American physical anthropologists have continued to expand their field of research to include all aspects of human evolution. With breakthroughs in the understanding of genetics since the 1950s, many physical anthropologists have focused on understanding human evolution at the molecular and cellular level as well. James Ciment

Sources Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. Race and Racism: An Introduction. Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 2006. Williams, Vernon J., Jr. Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and His Contemporaries. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996.

R ACE Although often taken to be a natural fact, race is better understood as a way of reckoning human variation that classifies and ranks groups on the basis of observable differences. Importantly, science has profoundly shaped understandings of race, and race and racism have shaped the course of scientific inquiry over the past three centuries. Science first began to seriously address the subject of race in the eighteenth century. The classification of human diversity preoccupied American physicians, philosophers, and naturalists through the Civil War. Seizing upon visible differences, including skin color, hair, and facial features, early scientists formulated taxonomies that largely reflected folk interpretations, dividing humans into a number of distinct groups. Few disputed the logic of classification or that there were a number of human types in the world. Scientists did, however, debate two key questions. Did all of these groups share a common origin or were they distinct species? Did these different races possess the same capacities

Section 7: Race 509 for intelligence, achievement, and evolution, and by extension, the same claims to equal rights? Most Americans and many scientists at the time would have suggested a shared beginning— the Garden of Eden. And, at least through the Civil War, if not the civil rights era, many would assert that the races were not equal and that whites were superior. Well into the twentieth century, scientific racism played a prominent role in American culture, as scientific inquiry frequently was both informed by and supportive of white supremacy. Not surprisingly, modern science has been a white-dominated vocation, shaping not only the questions that scientists have asked, but also the participation of African Americans, Asian Americans, and other members of minority groups in scientific teaching and research. Even as they were denied entry to science, people of color were studied in ways that whites never were. As late as the twentieth century, anthropologists displayed living people at world fairs to impart lessons about civilization and savagery. Scientists exploited such people to advance their careers as much as human understanding. For example, naturalists, physicians, and anthropologists collected the skeletal remains of indigenous peoples, often stealing bodies from native burial grounds. Equally horrifying, notions of racial difference enabled medical researchers to conduct experiments on people of color. In the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, for example, held at the Tuskegee Institute beginning in 1932, African American men were denied treatment for syphilis so that scientists could study the disease’s long-term effects on the human body. Because whiteness has been taken as the norm in society and science, people of color have often been excluded and their unique health concerns neglected, if not ignored, by researchers and practitioners alike. A legacy of this sad history is the unequal treatment many people of color have received from the health care system and how this negatively impacts their quality of life and life expectancy. Increasingly, over the past half-century, scientists have come to question the utility and validity of the concept of race. Public and academic reactions to the horrors of Nazi Germany, and, later, the struggles for racial equality, have compelled many in the scientific community to rethink race. Of equal importance, advances in

human genetics began to undermine accepted understandings. Scientists have found that folk conceptions of race have no biological basis: race is phenotypic and social, while the differences that matter are genotypic and highly nuanced. That is, while some individuals may share common observable features (such as skin color), they are not necessarily the same genetically, and individuals grouped together in the same racial category can actually have more in common genetically with individuals in other racial categories. Moreover, race mistakenly homogenizes as it classifies, suggesting that racial groups are pure. Individuals within racial groups actually exhibit great diversity. Recent studies suggest that the vast majority of African Americans and a large plurality of white Americans would be classified as mixed race if their ancestry were known and embraced. These findings have complicated scientific understandings of human variation. On the one hand, they have forced scientists to recognize the profound similarities and interconnections between seemingly different groups of people. On the other hand, they have prompted them to devise more nuanced models attentive to genetic diversity. Even as theory and practice have changed over the past fifty years, race has retained a powerful hold on scientific research and medical treatment. Some have clung to the notion of race, because they accept the simple, yet spurious, connections between observable differences, individual capacities such as intelligence, and existing social arrangements. Many others advocate the continued focus on race and racial difference, because American society continues to rely on race to allocate resources, determine status, and fashion identity. Most recently, pharmaceutical companies have begun studying possible correlations between physical ailments and observable racial differences. Some researchers suggest that race-specific drugs soon can be patented and produced. The prospect has sparked great hope and controversy. Undoubtedly, science will continue to play a key role in understandings of human variation. Less certain, at present, is whether scientific inquiry and medical care will continue to support race as a construct or will encourage a more

510 Section 7: Race complex appreciation of the differences between groups. C. Richard King

Sources Graves, Joseph L., Jr. The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Harding, Sandra, ed. The “Racial” Economy of Science. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

SCIENTIFIC R ACISM Scientific methods and theories routinely have been seized upon to advance racial prejudice and social inequality. The use of science in this manner has been dubbed scientific racism, even though many of the precepts and practices are more accurately described as pseudoscientific. At root, scientific racism advances three arguments. First, there are fundamental biological differences among human populations. Second, these differences manifest themselves in traits and talents, such as intelligence, that can be measured. Third, these differences have implications for the rights, opportunities, and privileges open to individuals in these groups. Not surprisingly, this logic has been used to support numerous racial injustices, including slavery, forced sterilization, and the Holocaust. Scientific racism began to take shape in the early nineteenth century. From the start, advocates were obsessed with ranking human populations. Almost invariably, scientific studies asserted that whites were a superior race and that people of color were inherently inferior. Nineteenthcentury scientists such as Samuel Morton and Josiah Nott, both trained as physicians, believed that physiological differences such as brain size correspond to differences in cultural development, as well as individual attributes and aptitudes, including intelligence, morality, and work ethic. Examples of nineteenth-century scientific racism include the pseudoscience of craniometry, which claimed that racial groups could be ranked on the basis of skull capacity; criminal anthropology, a field of study that explored purported links between deviant (often racial) features and social transgressions; and evolutionary theories that

sought to justify the legitimacy of colonialism and “the white man’s burden.” The rise of genetics shifted the language and practice of scientific racism. Eugenics emerged as a popular movement intent on improving society by managing deviant bodies and inferior populations. In 1904, Francis Galton defined eugenics as “the study of human agencies under the social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.” A form of racial cleansing, eugenics proposed regulating reproduction so as to breed out negative traits and breed in acceptable societal qualities deemed worthy by the race in power. The “racial hygiene” movement in the United States not only promoted its ideals through “better baby” and “fitter family” competitions and intelligence testing but also through the passage of legislation that encouraged the sterilization of populations deemed deviant. While eugenics arguably reached its climax in Nazi Germany, its less extreme expression in the United States legitimated ideas about racial inferiority. Although tempered, scientific racism is still evident in some discussions of race in contemporary American society. Examples include the continued assertion that race and intelligence are statistically correlated and quantified in IQ testing, the suggestion that blacks are naturally better athletes than whites, and the search for a criminal gene to explain high rates of deviance in communities of color. C. Richard King

Sources Graves, Joseph L., Jr. The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Tucker, William H. The Science and Politics of Racial Research. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

S TAT I S T I C A L P A C K A G E FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Social scientists working today can choose from a variety of computer programs to aid in data analysis. Examples include EViews, Microsoft Excel, and Stata. A pioneering type of such software

Section 7: Strachey, William 511 is the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Three graduate students at Stanford University first developed the software in 1968. Their goal was to create a program that could harness the power of computers to analyze social science data, including surveys and other data sets that illuminate the choices and preferences of people. They sought to develop intuitive software that could be used by practitioners who were not specifically trained in computer programming methods. This would make the processing power of computers available for new users at a practical level. The three students, Norman H. Nie, C. Hadlai Hull, and Dale H. Bent, quickly found that they had developed a product with worldwide appeal, so they set to work creating a business model. In 1969, Nie and Hull joined the University of Chicago, where they could continue to develop SPSS at the National Opinion Research Center, as they otherwise began their academic careers. McGraw-Hill published the first manual for SPSS in 1970, which accelerated its use in academia throughout the world and simplified the process of analyzing data for social scientists. In SPSS, intuitive commands allow users to sort, organize, and transform their data, to develop frequency distributions and crosstabulations, and to use specific statistical tools such as multiple regression analysis. Computer programming skills are not necessary, because commands follow intuitive English, and because the instruction manuals explain how to use the commands of SPSS in a simple way. According to a 1976 review, “the SPSS instruction manual is one of the best that has been written for packaged computer programs.” In 1975, SPSS became incorporated. Since then, the company has continued to produce pioneer applications of statistical analysis for each new computer innovation, including the shift to personal computers in the 1980s and the shift to Microsoft Windows in the 1990s. Today, the program is still widely used by social scientists, though the company has moved toward developing tools for business applications, such as those utilizing “predictive analytics” techniques. Programs such as SPSS have played an essential role in the social sciences by vastly sim-

plifying the process of data analysis. Prior to SPSS, computer programmers were needed to help social scientists use computers. SPSS helped shift the power to social scientists and spread the tools to a wider group of scholars, which helped to expand the scope and sophistication of quantitative social science studies. At present, almost anyone with a computer and the software can easily produce statistical analyses that hardly would have been possible fifty years ago. Wade D. Pfau

Sources Bryman, Alan, and Duncan Cramer. Quantitative Analysis with SPSS 12 and 13: A Guide for Social Scientists. New York: Routledge, 2005. Sinquefield, Jeanne Cairns. “A Review of Small Canned Computer Programs for Survey Research and Demographic Analysis.” Studies in Family Planning 7:12 (1976): 340–48.

S T R A C H E Y, W I L L I A M (1572–1621) William Strachey, the historian, ethnographer, and first secretary of the Virginia colony, was born in England in 1572. Strachey matriculated at Cambridge, wrote verse, and was a friend of the poet John Donne. He contributed a sonnet to the commendatory verses of Ben Johnson’s Sejanus (1604). In 1606, Strachey accompanied British ambassador Thomas Glover to Constantinople. This arrangement did not last long, however, as Glover became upset with Strachey’s friendly correspondence with Henry Lello, whom Glover had been sent to replace. Strachey was sent home to England, where he stayed until he purchased a charter to the London Company of Virginia. Strachey sailed for Virginia on June 2, 1609, on the Sea Adventure, along with the new Virginia governor, Thomas Gates, and George Somers, admiral of the small fleet. In the middle of the journey, the Sea Adventure was separated from the rest of the fleet in a severe storm and was wrecked in the Bermudas. The party wintered there and, in the spring, constructed two small vessels, on

512 Section 7: Strachey, William which they safely reached Jamestown on May 23, 1610. Upon arriving in Virginia, the group found the colony in disorder. This was alleviated, in large part, by the arrival of Lord De La Warr, the new governor, who reorganized the colony, appointing Strachey as his secretary and recorder. When De La Warr returned to England, he carried with him a letter written by Strachey that described the wreck of the Sea Adventure, the party’s journey to Jamestown, and the state of the Jamestown colony. This letter was an inspiration for William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Strachey returned to London late in 1611, where he published the first written law code for the Virginia settlement, For the Colony in Virginia Brittania: Lawes Divine, Morall, and Martiall (1612). In 1613, Strachey commenced work on The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, Expressing the Cosmographie and Commodities of the Country, Together with the Manners and Customes of the People. Although the text was originally dedicated to Sir Allen Apsley, who may have used the manuscript to encourage Puritan emigration to America, Strachey received no encouragement from him to publish it, nor from the Virginia Company or Francis Bacon, the text’s subsequent dedicatee. Strachey described Jamestown as surrounded by a fence, with orderly streets and houses, a marketplace, and a church. The indigenous people, according to Strachey, had a monarchical government, in which one emperor ruled over many kings. In the royal succession, the heirs of the eldest sister succeeded to the throne. There were no laws, and everyday conduct was governed by tradition. Strachey praised the beauty of the Indian dwellings, said to be like the cottages of English shepherds. The dwellings had walls made of tree bark and mat roofs; smoke exited through a louver in the ceiling. Cooking, eating, and sleeping were done in the same room. The natives’ fishing boats, called quintans, were dug out of a single tree. The Indians followed a code of hospitality in dealing with other peoples. Strachey’s The Historie was unfinished at his death in 1621, and it was not published in any form until 1849. Since that time, however, The Historie has come to be regarded as one of the most authoritative contemporary histories of

the region and is considered especially valuable for its ethnological account of the Virginia Indians and early American discoveries. Walter H. Keithley and Patit Paban Mishra

Source Culliford, S.G. William Strachey 1572–1621. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1965.

S U T H E R L A N D, E D W I N H A R D I N (1883–1950) The criminologist Edwin Hardin Sutherland is often referred to as the dean of criminology due to his initial and prevailing influence. Sutherland, whose father was a college president, was born on August 13, 1883, in Gibbon, Nebraska. In 1904, he received his B.A. from Grand Island College, with a major in history and a minor in sociology, and commenced teaching Latin, Greek, history, and shorthand at Sioux Falls College in South Dakota, where he remained until 1906. After earning his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1913, he taught at several Midwest institutions, including the University of Minnesota, the University of Chicago, and Indiana University, where he served as chair of the Sociology Department and founded the Bloomington School of Criminology. Among his students were such notables in the field as Albert Cohen, Lloyd Ohlin, Karl Schuessler, and Donald Cressey. According to Sutherland, criminology comprised three areas: (1) criminalization, the analysis of circumstances engendering criminal laws and the processes by which they are operationalized; (2) criminality, the study of criminal acts and actors; and (3) corrections, the study of the methods used to deter and rehabilitate criminal offenders. He is most remembered for coining the term “white-collar crime” and developing the differential association theory. White-collar crime refers to criminal acts committed by business and professional persons. Criminological research had previously focused exclusively on street crimes such as murder, rape, and robbery, and on the demographics of the persons who commit them. The notion of

Section 7: Urbanization 513 white-collar crime thus prompted a sweeping reconstruction of theoretical criminology, which in turn repudiated the causal relationship between criminal behavior and attributes of lower classes such as poverty, slum conditions, and urban ecology. The differential association theory explained crime and deviance through their social context, locality, and culture. Specifically, antisocial behavior is achieved through a learned, interplaying process. Sutherland’s conjecture incorporated nine fundamental principles: (1) criminal behavior is learned; (2) criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication; (3) the principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs in intimate personal groups; (4) when criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes both the techniques of committing the crime and the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes; (5) the specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal codes as favorable or unfavorable; (6) a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violations of law; (7) differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity; (8) the process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anticriminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning; and (9) while criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by them because the same needs and values are also expressed by noncriminal behavior. Sutherland wrote more than fifty journal articles and several texts, including Unemployment and Public Employment Agencies (1913), Criminology (1924), An Ecological Study of Crime and Delinquency in Bloomington (1937), Principles of Criminology (1939), Twenty Thousand Homeless Men (1936), The Professional Thief (1937), and White Collar Crime (1949). He also served as president of the American Sociological Society, the Indiana University Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, the American Prison Association, the Chicago Academy of Criminology, and the Sociological Research Association. Giuseppe M. Fazari

Sources Odum, Howard W. “Edwin H. Sutherland—1883–1950.” Journal of Social Forces 29 (1951): 348–49. Sutherland, Edwin H. The Professional Thief. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. ———. White Collar Crime: The Uncut Version. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.

U R B A N I Z AT I O N Urbanization became a dominant socioeconomic phenomenon of nineteenth-century America as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The factory system required the centralization of human, economic, material, and production resources at crossroads of transportation and communication. Cities during the onset of industrialization grew rapidly and haphazardly, characterized by social and geographic mobility. Huge numbers of immigrants to the American city in the 1800s and 1900s resulted in an especially dynamic process of change. The American city became a unique environment of population diversity, institutional change, and physical transformation, yielding a distinct urban personality. The American city went through phases of spatial change from the late eighteenth century to the twentieth. Historians of urbanization explain that the physical nature of cities has changed from the early population and spatial clusters that were common up to 1800. The city emerged as a centralized marketplace in the early nineteenth century, developed into a “radial center” from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and then became the “vital fringe” of the twentieth century. Early American cities had little spatial structure, as they emerged as a consequence of colonial immigration and an influx of trade into places without distinct neighborhoods or planned development. With the coming of the factory system in the 1800s, distinct factory centers emerged in cities. Class distinctions led increasingly to a division between affluent and impoverished neighborhoods. This trend of spatial development continued throughout the nineteenth century into the twentieth century: Suburbs inhabited by the wealthy middle class were isolated from poorer ethnic, racial, and proletariat neighborhoods.

514 Section 7: Urbanization

As American cities became “radial centers” of culture and commerce, the demand for downtown office and residential space—combined with the technological innovation of all-metal skeletal frames—gave rise in the 1880s to the first skyscrapers, including several in Chicago. (Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A distinct downtown became a phenomenon of the 1800s. In the twentieth century, the American city became largely decentralized, because energy, communication, technology, and commerce were less apt to be centralized in the city center.

Urban Theories The scientific study of urbanization began in the early 1900s, with social scientists at the University of Chicago, such as Robert Park and Louis Wirth, taking the lead. Urban theorists were concerned with the phenomenon of the apparent loss of the traditional community in the face of urbanization. Park believed that community life within the city could be found in ghettos, suburbs, and the inner city. Rather than attempt to find the traditional community in a modern society, Park was willing to alter his perception of community. He came to believe that the city had both spatial and nonspatial forms of community;

the physical and spiritual united to provide community within the city. Wirth, Park’s student, likewise examined the city from the perspective of a transition from a traditional to modern society. In “Urbanism as a Way of Life” (1938), Wirth argued that the city is a diverse place that lacks a “common folk tradition.” Instead, “competition and formal control mechanisms furnish the substitutes for the bonds of solidarity that are relied upon to hold a folk society together.” Urbanites, according to Wirth, are segmented, atomized, transitory, and anonymous, and they experience anomie— alienation and loneliness. City dwellers have a “relativistic perspective” and experience “secularization of life.” Urban planning to mold the structure of a city according to scientific concepts was advanced during the 1930s under the influence of the New Deal. Student of the city Lewis Mumford argued that traditional forms of community life, such as neighborhoods, the face-to-face quality of communal life, solidarity, and spontaneity, were possible in the city, and he set out to prove it. He advocated city planning to achieve these community goals. Slum clearance, low-cost housing, neighborhood planning, and a more advantageous distribution of playgrounds, parks, and promenades were essential to provide neighborhoods with fresh air, group interaction, and primary, traditional relationships. Recent urban studies have abandoned the traditional/modern dichotomy. Urban theorists now use an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on the different cultural, ethnic, and linguistic expressions of the city. This postmodern approach to studying the city sees urban places as combining both traditional and modern phenomena at the same time, rather than explaining urban change as going from one extreme (traditional) to another (modern). Russell Lawson

Sources Goist, Park Dixon. From Main Street to State Street: Town, City, and Community in America. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1977. Goldfield, David R., and Blaine A. Brownell. Urban America: From Downtown to No Town. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

Section 7: Veblen, Thorstein 515 Hershberg, Theodore. “The New Urban History: Toward an Interdisciplinary History of the City.” Journal of Urban History 5 (1978): 3–40. Quandt, Jean. From Small Town to the Great Community: The Social Thought of Progressive Intellectuals. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970. Wirth, Louis. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology 44:1 (1938): 1–24.

VEBLEN, THORSTEIN (1857–1929) Thorstein Veblen was a social scientist and writer whose biting critique of modern society, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), became a classic of American social theory. Veblen was born on July 30, 1857, to Norwegian parents who maintained their old world customs. Reared in a small town in Wisconsin, he learned Norwegian, German, and English. He studied at Carleton College in Minnesota and later attended Yale University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1884. He was said to be confrontational, inquisitive, distant, and brilliant. Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class caught many readers off guard with its sardonic view, especially in reference to the “barbaric” actions of the wealthy elites. Veblen used a historical foundation to explain how certain people obtain levels of prestige. The present stage of elites, argued Veblen, are leisure-class “barbarians” who gain social status by demonstrating that they are more important than the working class, a process he called “pecuniary emulation.” The elites show their superiority in three major ways: conspicuous leisure, where activities are done only with the help of servants and accomplish nothing worthwhile; conspicuous consumption, the purchase and use of extravagant and expensive luxuries; and conspicuous waste, the frivolous discarding of valuable items. In other words, the leisure class shows that through wasting time, effort, and material things, they are a higher order of humanity and worthy of the adulation of the masses. Veblen saw the leisure class as “parasitic” to those who are truly productive in the economic institution. The leisure class is remarkably similar to the ancient warrior class. “In order to stand well in

the eyes of the community,” he wrote, “it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite conventional standard of wealth; just as in the earlier predatory state it is necessary for the barbarian man to come up to his tribe’s standard of physical endurance, cunning, and skill at arms.” Although he wrote with derision about the upper class, Veblen had great faith in engineers and technical experts to bring about better social and economic conditions, if they were able to stop the exploitation of their ideas and labor by the leisure class. In The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), Veblen argued that the modern economy works with machine-like efficiency; the entrepreneur, to make money, must periodically upset the efficiency of the modern economy. Fascinated by the idea of the machine, Veblen wrote The Technicians and Revolution (1922), arguing that the machine and its facilitator, the engineer, were taking over the modern economy and society. In The Higher Learning in America (1924), Veblen critiqued the use of universities as pageants for the well-to-do. His desire to have higher education focus solely on learning, sans athletic or fraternal organization, culminated in his cofounding the New School for Social Research in New York. Veblen was regarded as a less than outstanding teacher, and his continued extramarital affairs, radical ideas, and eccentric behavior left him in conflict with university administrators; this resulted in his varied academic appointments to different universities. Nevertheless, his influence on the academic disciplines of sociology and economics was so great that the popularity of his ideas has continued to grow. His theories are still discussed and debated by sociologists and economists. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Fernandez, Ronald. Mappers of Society: The Lives, Times, and Legacies of Great Sociologists. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003. Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953. Reisman, David. Thorstein Veblen: A Critical Interpretation. New York: Charles Scriber’s Sons, 1953. Veblen, Thorstein. The Higher Learning in America. 1924. Reprint ed., New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1993. ———. The Theory of the Leisure Class. 1899. Reprint ed., New York: Penguin, 1994.

516 Section 7: Williams, Roger

In A Key into the Language of America (1643)—a guide to the culture and history of the Narragansett Indians—Puritan Roger Williams focused on the linguistic codes representative of their way of life. It was a seminal work of social science in America. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Section 7: Wirth, Louis 517

WILLIAMS, ROGER ( C A . 1603–1683) Roger Williams, who founded the state of Rhode Island and the first Baptist church in America, was an early proponent of the separation of church and state. Although he is known primarily for his separatist writings and activities, his work in establishing a guide to the language and customs of Native Americans would influence later social scientists in the study of native cultures. Williams was born in London around 1603 and spent a portion of his youth as an apprentice of sorts to Chief Justice Edward Coke. He received a bachelor ’s degree at Pembroke College and was ordained in the Church of England, but he became interested in Puritanism and soon became a member of the clergy. Williams and his wife went to America in 1631 to the new colony at Massachusetts, where he was pastor of the first parish at Salem. He refused to accept the authority of the Puritan theocracy, however, and he condemned the colonists for illegally taking land from Native Americans in the area. The relationship between Williams and the Puritans grew increasingly tenuous, and, in 1635, he was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He moved to an area inhabited by hospitable Native Americans and established a colony that would later be known as Rhode Island. He intended to create a truly democratic society for dissidents who were seeking freedom of religion. Williams produced a number of publications, the most salient of which was a work called The Bloudy Tenet (1644), in which he used a historical foundation to describe the disastrous (and “bloody”) consequences of religious involvement in political affairs. This work inspired much discourse about the relationship between church and state. Much less controversial was A Key into the Language of America or, An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America, called New-England (1643), which was written at sea as Williams was returning from a trip to England. Intended as a guide to the language and customs of the Narragansett Indians, the work recorded the history of

this group of people, who maintained no written records of their past. In his diminutive book, Williams focused on the linguistic codes that represented the culture of the native people. In line with his rebellious character, he was clear in his assertion that the Indians had their own unique civilization, one that existed prior to European arrival. The book became popular with intrigued Europeans and was a seminal work in the study of Native American culture. Williams held a number of leadership positions in the new colony, including president. Wars and conflicts erupted at different times, and, during one conflict, Narragansetts burned his home in retaliation for an earlier attack by colonists. In March 1683, an aging Williams, suffering from various ailments, died in the beloved settlement he had founded some forty years earlier. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Guild, Reuben Aldridge. “Biographical Introduction.” In The Complete Writings of Roger Williams. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963. Rubertone, Patricia E. Grave Undertakings: An Archaeology of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2001.

W I R T H , LO U I S (1897–1952) Sociologist Louis Wirth’s primary contributions were in the areas of urban sociology, race relations, and urban planning. Wirth was born on August 28, 1897, in a small town in Germany and raised in a close-knit Jewish community. He moved with an uncle to Omaha, Nebraska, and later enrolled at the University of Chicago. While still attending college, he married and began employment as a social worker with a Jewish charity organization. Wirth enrolled full-time in graduate school at Chicago and received his Ph.D. in 1926. His master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation both were based on ethnographic studies of the Jewish community of Chicago and the adjustment process experienced by immigrants in their new urban milieu. The work would result in his only published book, The Ghetto (1928).

518 Section 7: Wirth, Louis Wirth was granted a faculty position at the University of Chicago, where he applied the Chicago School method of sociological analysis, using the city as a “natural laboratory” of human interaction. His focus on the Jewish community waned over time, as he became increasingly interested in how urbanism affects people in general. Wirth is perhaps best known for an essay published in 1938, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” in which he described, in a manner similar to that of classical sociologist Georg Simmel, how city life affects people. Wirth explained how the variables of population, density, and heterogeneity contribute to the urban experience. Race relations was another area of concern, possibly due to the influence of his mentor, sociologist and activist Robert Park. Wirth was an activist for civil rights before activism in this area became popular. He was a founder and president of the American Council on Race Relations, a group that sought to improve conditions for African Americans in a number of different areas. His work to alleviate racial tensions and violence gained international attention when the United

Nations asked him to create a model for preventing global conflict. Wirth also developed an interest in urban planning. He became involved with policy planning on different governmental levels and introduced the social aspects of urbanization into the planning process. Throughout his career, Wirth devoted his time to social activism rather than to theory construction or book publishing. He had wideranging interests and a keen and independent mind. He was in numerous civic organizations and continually addressed groups when requested. It was just after such a presentation on social change that he died of a heart attack on May 3, 1952, at the age of fifty-four. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Salerno, Roger D. Louis Wirth: A Bio-bibliography. New York: Greenwood, 1987. Wirth, Louis. The Ghetto. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1928. ———. “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” American Journal of Sociology 44:1 (1938): 1–24.

DOCUMENTS John Gyles’s Description of the Abenaki Indians

Thomas Nuttall’s Description of the Osage

While a captive of the Abenaki Indians of Maine in the late 1600s, John Gyles recorded his observations of their customs, including this one of an Abenaki feast.

Thomas Nuttall, the botanist and explorer, was a sensitive observer of Native American customs. His account of Osage society and beliefs appeared in 1821. The first village of the Osages lies about 60 miles from the mouth of the Verdigris, and is said to contain 7 or 800 men and their families. . . . At this time nearly the whole town, men and women, were engaged in their summer hunt, collecting bison tallow and meat. The principal chief is called by the French Clarmont [Clermont], although his proper name is the Iron bird, a species of Eagle. The right of governing is commonly hereditary, but not always directed by primogeniture. Tálai, the son of the last chief, being considered too young at the decease of his father, the rule was conferred on Clarmont, son of the chief of White hair’s village, on the Osage river, and his behaviour as regent for many years, secured to him the undivided controul of the village. Like most of the ruler[s] among the aborigines, he neither affects nor supports any shadow of pomp or distinction beyond that of his office as supreme commander, and leader of the council. His influence is, however, so great as to be prudentially courted by all who would obtain any object with the village. He appeared to be shrewd and sagacious, and no way deficient in Indian bravery and cunning. . . . I learned that, in common with many other Indians, as might be supposed from their wandering habits and exposure to the elements, they are not unacquainted with some peculiar characters and configurations of the stars. Habitual observation had taught them that the pole star remains stationary, and that all the others appear to revolve around it; they were acquainted with the Pleiades, for which they had a peculiar name, and remarked the three stars of Orion’s belt. The planet Venus they recognised as the Lucifier [sic] or harbinger of

The ingredients are fish, flesh, or Indian corn, and beans boiled together; sometimes hasty pudding made of pounded corn, whenever and as often as these are plenty. An Indian boils four or five large kettles full, and sends a messenger to each wigwam door, who exclaims, “Kuh menscoorebah!” that is, “I come to conduct you to a Feast.” The man within demands whether he must take a spoon or a knife in his dish, which he always carries with him. They appoint two or three young men to mess it out, to each man his portion, according to the number of his family at home. This is done with the utmost exactness. When they have done eating, a young fellow stands without the door, and cries aloud, “Mensecommook,” “come and fetch,” immediately each squaw goes to her husband and takes what he has left, which she carries home and eats with her children. For neither married women nor any youth under twenty, are allowed to be present; but old widow-squaws and captive men may sit by the door. The Indian men continue in the wigwam; some relating their warlike exploits, others something comical. others narrating their hunting exploits; the seniors give maxims of prudence and grave counsel to the young men; and though every one’s speech be agreeable to the run of his own fancy, yet they confine themselves to rule, and but one speaks at a time. After every man has told his story, one rises up, sings a feast song, and others succeed alternately as the company sees fit. Source: John Gyles, Memoirs of Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, &c. in the Captivity of John Gyles, Esq., Commander of the Garrison on St. George’s River (Boston: S. Knesland and T. Green, 1736).

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520 Section 7: Documents day; and, as well as the Europeans, they called the Galaxy the heavenly path or celestial road. The filling and waning of the moon regulated their minor periods of time, and the number of moons, accompanied by the concomitant phenomena of the seasons, pointed out the natural duration of the year. The superstitions of the Osages differ but little from those which have so often been described, as practised by the other natives. The importance of smoking, as a religious ceremony, is such as to be often accompanied by invocations for every aid or necessary of life. Before going out to war they raise the pipe towards heaven or the sun, and implore the assistance of the Great Spirit to favour them in their reprisals, in the stealing of horses, and the destruction of their enemies, &c &c. . . . At their festivals, as among most of the other natives, the warriors recount their actions of bravery, and number them by throwing down a stick upon the ground for every exploit, or striking at a post fixed for the purpose. On such occasions, they sometimes challenge each other with a mutual emulation, to recount a like number of warlike deeds. Yet this ostentation is rarely suffered to degenerate into insult or envious combat; vulgarity is unknown amongst the aborigines of America; and the crest-fallen warrior, superceded by a competitor, only seeks an equal share of honour in the claims of patriotism, in the wars of his nation. Source: Thomas Nuttall, “Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory, During the Year 1819,” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 13, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: A.H. Clark, 1905).

John Bradbury’s Account of the Songs of French Voyageurs English scientists traveling through trans-Mississippi America in the early 1800s were fascinated by the Native Americans, hunters, frontiersmen, and French voyageurs (boatmen). John Bradbury recorded his observations of the French voyageurs who rowed the big pirogues up the Missouri River in 1810. He listened to French Canadian voyageurs sing one of their many songs as they bent their oars to move the large keel boat

upriver. The song was in French, but Bradbury provided a translation. Behind our house there is a pond, Fal lal de ra. There came three ducks to swim thereon: All along the river clear, Lightly my shepherdess dear, Lightly, fal de ra. There came three ducks to swim thereon, Fal lal de ra. The prince to chase them he did run All along the river clear, Lightly my shepherdess dear, Lightly, fal de ra. The prince to chase them he did run, Fal lal de ra. And he had his great silver gun All along the river clear, Lightly my shepherdess dear, Lightly, fal de ra. Source: John Bradbury, “Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811,” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 5, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: A.H. Clark, 1905).

John Bradbury on the Beliefs and Customs of North American Indians John Bradbury was not only a botanist but also an ethnologist of note, recording data on many of the tribes of the Great Plains. There is nothing relating to the Indians so difficult to understand as their religion. They believe in a Supreme Being, in a future state, and in supernatural agency. Of the Great Spirit they do not pretend to give any account, but believe him to be the author and giver of all good. They believe in bad spirits, but seem to consider them rather as little wicked beings, who can only gratify their malignity by driving away the game, preventing the efficacy of medicine, or such petty mischief. The belief in a future state seems to be general, as it extends even to the Nodowessies or Sioux, who are the furthest removed from civilization, and who do not even cultivate the soil. It is known, that frequently when an Indian has shot down

Section 7: Documents 521 his enemy, and is preparing to scalp him, with the tomahawk uplifted to give the fatal stroke, he will address him in words to this effect: “My name is Cashegra. I am a famous warrior, and am now going to kill you. When you arrive at the land of spirits, you will see the ghost of my father; tell him it was Cashegra that sent you there.” He then gives the blow. In respect to laws, I could never find that any code is established, or that any crime against society becomes a subject of inquiry amongst the chiefs, excepting cowardice or murder. The last is, for the most part, punished with death, and the nearest of kin is deputed by the council to act the part of executioner. In some tribes, I am told, this crime may be commuted. It scarcely requires to be observed, that chastity in females is not a virtue, nor that a deviation from it is considered a crime, when sanctioned by the consent of their husbands, fathers, or brothers: but in some tribes, as the Potowatomies, Saukies, Foxes, &c. the breach of it, without the consent of the husband, is punished severely, as he may bite off the nose of his squaw if she is found guilty. No people on earth discharge the duties of hospitality with more cordial good-will than the Indians. On entering a lodge I was always met by the master, who first shook hands with me, and immediately looked for his pipe: before he had time to light it, a bear-skin, or that of a buffalo, was spread for me to sit on, although they sat on the bare ground. When the pipe was lighted, he smoked a few whiffs, and then handed it to me; after which it went round to all the men in the lodge. Whilst this was going on, the squaw prepared something to eat, which, when ready, was placed before me on the ground. The squaw, in some instances, examined my dress, and in particular my mockasons: if any repair was wanting, she brought a small leather bag, in which she kept her awls and split sinew, and put it to rights. After conversing as well as we could by signs, if it was near night, I was made to understand that a bed was at my service; and in general this offer was accompanied by that of a bedfellow. Source: John Bradbury, “Travels in the Interior of America, in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811,” in Early Western Travels, 1748–1846, vol. 5, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: A.H. Clark, 1905).

Thomas Jefferson on the Origins of Indians in America Thomas Jefferson wrote on a variety of anthropological and paleontological topics in his Notes on the State of Virginia, published in French in 1782. The following excerpt describes Jefferson’s views on the origins of the inhabitants of America. Query XI. Great question has arisen from whence came those aboriginal inhabitants of America? Discoveries, long ago made, were sufficient to shew that a passage from Europe to America was always practicable, even to the imperfect navigation of ancient times. In going from Norway to Iceland, from Iceland to Groenland, from Groenland to Labrador, the first traject is the widest: and this having been practised from the earliest times of which we have any account of that part of the earth, it is not difficult to suppose that the subsequent trajects may have been sometimes passed. . . . [I]f the two continents of Asia and America be separated at all, it is only by a narrow streight. So that from this side also, inhabitants may have passed into America: and the resemblance between the Indians of America and the Eastern inhabitants of Asia, would induce us to conjecture, that the former are the descendants of the latter, or the latter of the former: excepting indeed the Eskimaux, who, from the same circumstance of resemblance, and from identity of language, must be derived from the Groenlanders, and these probably from some of the northern parts of the old continent. A knowledge of their several languages would be the most certain evidence of their derivation which could be produced. . . . It is to be lamented, then, very much to be lamented, that we have suffered so many of the Indian tribes already to extinguish, without our having previously collected and deposited in the records of literature, the general rudiments at least of the languages they spoke. Source: Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, (Richmond, VA: Randolph, 1853).

Section 8

B E H AV I O R A L S C I E N C E S

ESSAYS The Puritan Understanding of Self T

he struggle between subjectivity and objectivity, between the feelings of the inner self and the demands of the reality outside of self, can be seen in the first colonists and throughout American history. William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth colony, chronicled the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. His Of Plymouth Plantation (not published until 1856) reveals the psychological trauma of a people trying to deny themselves for the good of the community. Yet the more they struggle against the evil of arrogance and vanity, the more they suffer because of it. Much pen and paper went to describe the Puritan dilemma of trying to fulfill oneself by denying oneself. The American Puritan, a follower of the Protestant theologian John Calvin, experienced a personal identity tied to a larger group, to theology, and to America itself. The writings of Puritans such as William Bradford, John Winthrop, Increase Mather, and Cotton Mather show the different foundations of the Puritan identity. On the one hand, Puritans believed they were “the Elect,” that God had predestined a few to enjoy the gift of God’s grace and eternal salvation and had damned the majority of humans to eternal punishment. An individual’s sense of salvation derived from personal experiences and feelings, but these were insufficient even for a devout Puritan to know for certain if he or she was saved. Calvin taught that no one could know for sure whether he or she was saved or damned. A Puritan thus sought support and encouragement from the community of believers. In the experience of the meetinghouse, joining together with other Puritans in praise and thanksgiving, the individual gained a sense of identity with an elect group of the saved, Christian soldiers fighting for God’s kingdom against the forces of the American wilderness.

Puritans such as Cotton Mather believed that God had a purpose in bringing the Puritans to America. Sent on an “errand into the wilderness” of America, they would inaugurate God’s kingdom, a model “city upon a hill,” in John Winthrop’s words, showing the rest of the world the wonders of the New Jerusalem in this new land. The Puritans therefore formed an identity associated with America, God’s chosen continent. In works such as A Relation of the Troubles Which Have Hapned in New England (1677) and A Brief History of the War with the Indians in New England (1676), Increase Mather declared America to be a chosen land for a chosen people. “This land,” he wrote in A Brief History of the War, “the lord God of our Fathers hath given to us for a rightful possession.” Mather saw Native Americans as enemies not only of the Puritans but of God as well. The native peoples, he wrote in A Relation of the Troubles, threatened “the Interest of Christ, who had . . . taken Possession of this Land, and gloriously began to erect his own Kingdom here.” For Increase Mather, the Puritans in New England were on a historical mission to fulfill God’s historical plan. One of the themes of Increase Mather ’s histories of King Philip’s War (1676–1677) was that the Puritans had brought the conflict upon themselves by making God angry. The Puritans had given in to “such notorious Self seeking, reigning Pride, . . . wofull Apostacy, the blessed Design of our Fathers in coming into this Wilderness not being minded and attended as ought to be.” Puritan ministers repeatedly tried to persuade a people who came to America for personal reasons to subordinate their wills to divine providence. The psychology of conforming one’s will to the environment became a standard motif among American thinkers. Always preventing the complete identifica-

525

526 Section 8: Essays tion with God (or truth) was sin. To the Connecticut clergyman Jonathan Edwards, original sin prevented a complete love of and identification with God. In the Great Awakening of the 1740s, a widespread movement of intense emotions and conflict that swept through the American colonies, thousands of people faced their own personal guilt and gave themselves in remorse and frenzy to God. This subordination of personal will to a higher being and purpose, whether God or America itself, became an important part of the national character. The Puritan identification of self with America became an important psychological foundation for the American Revolution, inspired the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s, and influenced the Transcendentalists of the early nineteenth century.

Henry David Thoreau, for example, believed that the American social environment of materialism, slavery, and conformity kept one from a complete identification with nature. Common to early American thinkers from the 1600s to the 1800s was the assumption that something grander exists outside the self. To most, this meant a being of love, transcendence, and benevolence, and a place—America—created by and reflective of that being. Russell Lawson

Sources Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977. Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana, or the Ecclesiastical History of New England. Ed. Raymond J. Cunningham. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1970.

The Developing Science of the Mind T

he science of the mind did not develop in America as a single unified, monolithic discipline. It was shaped by a wide array of transatlantic theories and philosophies such as functionalism, empiricism, evolution, and degeneration theory, as well as diverse scientific studies on animals, children and childhood, and human madness, motor functions, and social behavior. The study of the mind was the pursuit of philosophers until the eighteenth century, when the influence of physiology introduced biological approaches to exploration of the mind–body relationship. By the late nineteenth century, the human sciences had developed several new branches of study, such as comparative psychology, phrenology, experimental psychology, physiognomy, craniology, and psychological medicine. Each attempted to account for consciousness and the human mind in new ways.

The M ind and B ody Benjamin Rush—professor of medicine, army surgeon general during the Revolutionary War,

and head of the Pennsylvania Hospital’s ward for the insane—was an early leader in research on the mind. Prompted by Benjamin Franklin, Rush gave a lecture at the American Philosophical Association in 1786, published as An Enquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes upon the Moral Faculty, in which he argued that physical causes such as fever, diet, climate, heredity, and the size of the brain affect moral capacities. Rush proposed that a diseased mind, not supernatural causes, is the root of mental disorder. His Observations and Inquiries upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812) was the first psychiatric textbook printed in the United States. Research in phrenology conducted by Franz Joseph Gall, a Viennese physician studying brain physiology, and his associate Johann Gaspar Spurzheim began influencing American thinkers in the 1830s, as seen in the writings of John C. Warren of the Harvard Medical School and Charles Caldwell of Transylvania University. From their perspective, all mental differences among human beings were due to physical differences that could be localized in the brain and skull. Phrenology posited that the

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Brain scans and other technological tools have given neuroscientists major new insights into the mysteries of the human mind. Here, brain scans of twin brothers—one healthy, the other schizophrenic—are compared. (Joe McNally/ Getty Images)

divisions of the brain could be compartmentalized into separate and distinct organs, each responsible for a particular mental faculty or operation. Lorenzo Niles Fowler opened a phrenological establishment in 1836 to provide practical instruction on character readings in New York City. That same year, he founded the American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany. William James was an empirical psychologist who combined philosophy and biology. His textbook Principles of Psychology (1890) firmly placed psychology on the academic stage as an empirical science with a biological foundation. The physiological approach was common at the time and did not imply a strong commitment to materialism. James opposed the traditional mind–body distinction, arguing that consciousness exists as a process rather than an object or

thing. He viewed consciousness as private, fluid, and fluctuating, where the will is a key factor and guide. James disposed of metaphysical theories of the mind and instead focused on brain processes and states of consciousness as two aspects of the same natural phenomenon. Mental life was thus a function of physiological organization generally, and more specifically of the nervous system. Physical activities such as sensory functions and muscle contractions provide the conditions for transitive states of consciousness. G. Stanley Hall studied under James at Harvard University and received the first American doctorate in psychology in 1878. His approach to the mind emphasized developmental and educational factors from an evolutionary perspective. He established the

528 Section 8: Essays American Journal of Psychology in 1887 and founded the American Psychological Association in 1892. Hall performed research on bilateral asymmetry, motor sensations, and movement as the basis for space perception, and he studied genetics in relation to human and animal adaptations. James McKeen Cattell greatly influenced the developmental approach to human psychology, emphasizing the importance of statistical formulations to compare and measure individual differences in temporal perception, memory span, sensory perception, and quickness of movement. Cattell was an American pioneer in the measurement of intelligence and the study of scientific genius. He trained Edward Lee Thorndike, who became a leading figure in the field of intelligence testing. Thorndike argued that the mind is simultaneously the servant, co-worker, and master of the body.

Func tionalism, B ehaviorism, and Psychoanalysis American functionalism was an approach based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer in which consciousness was seen as a crucial factor in understanding human behavior. Functionalism was in use during most of the nineteenth century and was influenced in large part by the commonsense philosophy of Scottish moralists such as Thomas Reid, who popularized the idea that mind encompasses three powers (or faculties): emotions, the will, and intellect. This approach focused on the acts and functions of the mind rather than its internal contents. Prominent advocates of functionalism included John Dewey, Hugo Münsterberg, Edward Wheeler Scripture, George Trumbull Ladd, and James Mark Baldwin. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, functionalist psychology became dominated by behaviorism, an approach that virtually denied the existence of mind. Edward Bradford Titchener, a leading proponent of structuralism and the author of Outline of Psychology (1896), argued that all mental experience can be understood as a combination of simple elements or events. In contrast to functionalism, this perspective fo-

cused on the contents of the mind to explain mental operations such as sensation, precepts, recall, judgment, and imagery. The goal was to describe and measure mental experiences. The empirical study of human consciousness was impersonal, detached, objective, and abstract in its methods, seeking to discover universal laws of the mind. The psychoanalytic movement first received public recognition in the United States in 1909, when Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung were invited by G. Stanley Hall to give a series of lectures at Clark University in Massachusetts. American psychoanalysis developed as an extension of medical practices by psychiatrists and neurologists, most notably Abraham Arden Brill, Isador Coriat, Smith Ely Jeliffe, and James Jackson Putnam. Psychoanalytic theory posited that individuals are motivated by strong and dynamic unconscious drives and conflicts rather than biological functions of the brain and central nervous system. According to behaviorists such as John B. Watson, psychology should restrict itself to examining the relation between observable stimuli and responses. His Behavior: A Textbook of Comparative Psychology (1914) rejected introspection in favor of the scientific study of behavior, also referred to as positivism. Discussions on consciousness and mental representations were banished from respectable scientific dialogue and endeavors. Behaviorists were dedicated to the use of objective methodology and the practical application of psychological knowledge to the prediction and control of behavior. Measurement, causality, and determinism were the only valid and reliable means of understanding human nature. Behaviorism dominated the American psychological scene from the 1920s to the 1950s. The scientific understanding of behavior for the purpose of prediction and control rejects any notion of a nonmaterial, psychical determinism or mentalism that is implied in the traditional concept of “consciousness.” Behaviorists believed that the operations of the mind can only be known through observable behavior, which they defined as the individual’s organized response to external stimulation. Both John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner claimed that all behavior is the result of conditioning.

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Cognitive Science The focus in psychology in the latter half of the twentieth century was on cognitive science. Cognitive scientists examine the function and capacity of the mind and intelligence, and see the process of thought as representing simultaneous physical and mental activities, some apparent and others tacit. One of the first cognitive psychologists was George Armitage Miller, whose 1956 paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” was the starting point for cognitive studies of memory. Miller argued that human memory is limited to selected chunks, or mental representations. Miller’s theories, along with the work of John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Herbert Simon, and Noam Chomsky, formed the basis for much research in artificial intelligence. Chomsky rejected behaviorist assumptions about language as a learned habit and instead explained language comprehension in terms of innate mental grammars. Information theory, cybernetics, neuroscience, computers, and artificial intelligence provide a mathematical basis to account for mental operations.

Areas of specialization today include conceptions of knowledge, memory, understanding, inference, development, self-consciousness, motivation, attitude, and emotions, as well as transformations in the concepts and philosophical assumptions related to these conceptions. Key issues focus on the distinction between body and mind, the abilities and operations of the mind, and normal and abnormal mental functions and conditions. Heidi Rimke

Sources Hale, Nathan G. The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Rimke, Heidi, and Alan Hunt. “From Sinners to Degenerates: The Medicalization of Morality in the Nineteenth Century.” History of the Human Sciences 15:1 (2002): 59–88. Schwartz, Harold. “Samuel Gridley Howe as Phrenologist.” American Historical Review 57 (1952): 644–51. Thomson, Robert. The Pelican History of Psychology. Baltimore: Penguin, 1968. Westheimer, Michael. A Brief History of Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. Wozniak, Robert H. Classics in Psychology, 1855–1914: Historical Essays. Tokyo: Thoemmes, 1999.

Psychoanalysis in America A

theory of human psychology and an approach to the treatment of mental disorders, psychoanalysis originated in the work of Viennese physician and neurologist Sigmund Freud in the late 1890s and was further developed by him and followers in Europe and North America over the course of subsequent decades. The system is predicated on the existence of the human unconscious, a layer of experience “below the surface” containing perceptions and ideas of which humans are mostly unaware because of the mind’s defensive repression. According to Freud, our conscious thoughts and feelings constitute only a

small part of our mental and emotional experiences. Indeed, he maintained, we are only rarely conscious of our primal motives, impulses, feelings, and needs. In psychoanalytic therapy, then, the task of the analyst is to help patients unearth and understand the unconscious factors that are the sources of their neurotic symptoms and dysfunctional behaviors. Psychoanalysis focuses on a patient’s thoughts, feelings, dreams, fantasies, and other inner experiences. In addition to providing a treatment approach for neuroses or other behavioral problems, psychoanalysis revolutionized Western theories of childrearing,

530 Section 8: Essays

Sigmund Freud (front, left) introduced psychoanalysis to America in a 1909 lecture series at Clark University in Massachusetts. With him are (front row, center and right): G. Stanley Hall and Carl Jung; (back row, left to right): Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, and Sandor Ferenczi. (Imagno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

art, literature, and culture in the twentieth century.

Tak ing Root The arrival of psychoanalysis in America is generally associated with a single event, the delivery by Sigmund Freud of a lecture series—collectively titled “The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis”—as part of a scholarly conference at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in September 1909. Organized by G. Stanley Hall, the president of Clark, who helped establish psychology as an academic discipline and organized field of study in the United States, the conference also brought together Freud’s major followers, including the Swiss Carl Jung, his foremost early disciple; the British Ernest Jones, later

Freud’s authorized biographer; the Hungarian Sandor Ferenczi; and the American Abraham A. Brill, who translated Freud’s seminal work on hysteria (as well as a number of later writings) into English. The so-called “Boston School” of psychotherapy had been established in America decades earlier by such figures as William James, James Jackson Putnam, and Richard C. Cabot, and the American Psychological Association had been founded in 1892 (with G. Stanley Hall as its first president). Freud’s 1909 lectures, however, marked the true beginning of psychotherapy as a discipline and profession in the United States, with the psychoanalytic approach as its theoretical foundation. American disciples soon were calling themselves “psychoanalysts,” and the New York Psychoanalytic Society was founded by Brill and others in 1911.

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Flowering: The 1920s and 1930s

Transformations

During the 1920s, Freudian concepts became fashionable among artists, intellectuals, and bohemian elements in American society. Psychoanalytic theory was embraced as a liberating influence among many progressives and moderns. Although theoretical differences between Freud and Jung brought a rift in the psychoanalytic community between Freudians and Jungians in America as in Europe, the terminology of psychoanalysis—such as “libido,” “repression,” “complex”—was becoming commonplace in the press, literature, and popular usage. Conservative Americans, however, bemoaned radical ideas such as those expressed in Freudian psychology. For the mentally ill, little changed at first. Psychoanalytic methods had yet to be standardized, and they were not in widespread use, particularly in state-run hospitals. But the number of psychiatrists began to increase. Some practitioners found employment in new outpatient clinics and the psychiatric wards established at some general hospitals. New kinds of mental health professionals—such as psychiatric social workers and clinical psychologists—also were needed to staff these facilities. Along with expansion and diversification came new professional organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association in 1921. One of the group’s first actions was to establish guidelines for professional standards and practices. In the realm of classical psychoanalysis, in particular, many of those patients analyzed by Freud or his disciples in the 1920s and 1930s became analysts themselves. By the latter decade, psychoanalysis represented the prevailing theory and dominant approach to treatment in American psychiatry. It brought the establishment of new teaching institutes, journals, and standards. Above all, it brought a major influx of theorists and practitioners fleeing the antiSemitism of Nazi Germany—among them Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney. The integration of these figures into the academic and professional communities further secured the dominance of psychoanalysis in the United States and made the country the world center of psychoanalytic psychiatry.

Although psychoanalytic theory and treatment remained the dominant force in American psychiatry through the 1950s, radically different approaches had been present since before Freud’s 1909 lectures at Clark University. Experimental psychology—which treats human thinking and behavior as a natural science, best understood by rigorous testing and experimentation— followed a tradition dating back to the nineteenth century. The closely associated approach of behaviorism, which views mental processes and human behavior as conditioned responses to outside stimuli, was advanced by such American researchers as Edward L. Thorndike and John B. Watson in the early twentieth century, and later by B.F. Skinner. In the late 1950s and 1960s, another group of thinkers— including Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Rollo May—began advocating humanistic psychology as an alternative to both traditional psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Still, Freud’s assumption that mental disorders are symptoms of internal unconscious conflicts continued to hold sway in many therapeutic circles. Therapists who use a “psychodynamic” approach seek to discover unresolved conflicts in a patient’s life, transfer these conflicts to the relationship with the therapist, and overcome them by various means. Dream interpretation and free association are used to reveal unconscious associations in classical Freudian analysis. Variations of psychodynamic therapy include Jung’s analytic psychology, Karen Horney’s holistic therapy, and Eric Berne’s transactional analysis. Although classical Freudianism ultimately fell into disfavor—largely for its pessimistic and sexist understandings of neurosis and the effects of civilization on human experience—subsequent generations of analysts have forged more optimistic, integrative, growth-oriented theories. While the “talking therapy” is now frequently combined with medication and behavior modification approaches to controlling the mind and emotions, much is owed to the revolutionary— and often misunderstood—insights of Sigmund Freud. William Hughes and Fabio Lopez-Lazaro

532 Section 8: Essays Sources Burnham, John C. Psychoanalysis and American Medicine, 1894– 1918. New York: International Universities Press, 1967. Hale, Nathan G. The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

———. The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States: Freud and the Americans, 1917–1985. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Shorter, Edward. A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997.

A–Z AMERICAN JOURNAL O F P S YC H O LO G Y The American Journal of Psychology is the oldest professional journal of psychology in the United States. It was founded in 1887 by G. Stanley Hall, a pioneering figure in American experimental psychology. Hall contributed greatly to elevating psychology as a science and a profession, and he wanted to create a publication that would do the same. In 1878, Hall received the first American Ph.D. ever awarded in psychology from Harvard University, and he was one of the organizers of the American Psychological Association. The American Journal of Psychology, one of several journals that Hall founded throughout his career, was the first to focus on experimental psychology, including his own research in both evolutionary and child developmental psychology. The journal was founded almost by accident. While Hall was a professor of psychology and pedagogy at Johns Hopkins University, he was given a check by an anonymous benefactor to start a journal. Rather than focus on psychic research, as the benefactor had interpreted experimental psychology, the journal focused instead on scientific research. The first issue was published in November 1887, at a time when psychology was shifting away from its emphasis on theology and philosophy and becoming more scientific, relying more on the use of experimentation and the scientific method. The first issue reflected the emphasis on scientific method by including such articles as “Dermal Changes to Gradual Pressure Changes,” by G. Stanley Hall and Yuzero Motora, and “A Method for the Experimental Determination of the Horopter,” by Christine Ladd-Franklin. Other articles during the journal’s first decade focused on the effectiveness of the scientific method, primarily by reporting on experimental psychology being conducted at prominent universities, such

as the University of Wisconsin, and by highlighting the experiments being done in areas ranging from attentiveness to musical expressiveness. Throughout the twentieth century, the journal was shaped by some of the most influential American psychologists, who published some of the field’s groundbreaking research papers. Among the journal’s editors were such leading figures as E.B. Titchener and Cornell University psychologist and historian of psychology E.G. Boring. One of the most enduring and influential was Cornell University and University of Texas professor Karl Dallenbach, the editor from 1926 to 1967. Today, articles in the journal focus on cognitive science, the interdisciplinary field that studies perception, thinking, and learning. Experimentation is still regarded as the core of psychological study, and journal articles include reports on original approaches to research and experimental methodology, as well as combined theoretical and experimental analyses. Also included are historical commentaries, obituaries of prominent psychologists, and in-depth reviews of significant books. Topics range from the role of consciousness and nonconscious processes, memory, and the senses, to rational thought, the relationship of language to thought, symbolic representation, and introspection. Judith B. Gerber

Sources American Journal of Psychology. http://www.press.uillinois. edu/journals/ajp.html. Koch, Sigmund, and David E. Leary. A Century of Psychology as Science. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1992.

A M E R I C A N P S YC H O LO G I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N Prior to the late 1800s, psychology in America was largely based on philosophy and theological

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534 Section 8: American Psychological Association theory rather than scientific inquiry. When psychology became more empirical, however, psychologists demanded a scientific organization to advance psychology as a science and profession and to promote psychology in scientific and educational institutions. The American Psychological Association (APA) was founded in 1892 by Granville Stanley Hall, a leading figure in experimental psychology. He and seven colleagues, including Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James, met on July 8, 1892, to create the first professional association in the field. The first annual meeting of the APA took place on December 27, 1892; forty-two members were present. During the organization’s first decade, APA committees focused on standardization of psychological methods and terminology. By 1900, the organization had about 150 members. Until 1906, the only qualification of membership was to be involved in “the advancement of psychology as science” and to be voted in by the membership. After 1906, psychologists in education and philosophy were excluded from membership, unless they were actively involved in psychological research. Temporary or graduate students were also excluded. This exclusionary policy was the result of an ongoing debate among the founders of the APA as to the exact nature of the discipline of psychology and what precisely made psychology a science. By the 1920s, membership criteria included completion of a psychological dissertation, a Ph.D., professional publications, and employment in the field. During this time, the APA added an “associates” membership, allowing other professionals and graduate students to join the organization and attend annual meetings, but not vote. Beginning in the 1920s, the APA published the Psychological Review, Psychological Bulletin, Psychological Index, Psychological Monographs, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, and Psychological Abstracts. By 1940, the APA was a large organization with three times as many associates as full members. Over the course of the next thirty years, APA membership grew rapidly, from 4,183 in 1945 to 30,839 by 1970. During World War I and World War II, the APA assisted in psychological testing of U.S. military recruits; on this basis, they were enlisted or rejected. The psychological stresses experienced

by military personnel during World War II led to an increased need for clinical psychologists, which continued after the war; there was an influx of federal funding to match the need. Following World War II, the APA reorganized to a divisional structure that allowed more psychologists to be included in the association. The APA also set standards for certification and accreditation of doctoral programs in clinical, school, and counseling psychology. During the past fifty years, there has been a rapid growth in applied psychology, especially clinical psychology. The APA focused on societal issues and public legislative policy in the 1970s. In the 1980s, most of the organization’s focus went to dissemination of psychological information by expanding its journal offerings. As professional psychology continues to grow in the United States in the twenty-first century, APA programs and membership grow as well. Judith B. Gerber

Sources American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org. Evans, R.B., V. Staudt Sexton, and T.C. Cadwallader. The American Psychological Association: A Historical Perspective. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1992.

B E A R D , G E O R G E M. (1839–1883) George Miller Beard was one of America’s first generation of neurologists and is best known for his work to disprove spiritualism and for his pioneering studies of the disease neurasthenia. Beard, the youngest of four children, was born on May 8, 1839, in Montville, Connecticut. His father was a Congregational minister. Beard attended Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, took classes at Yale (he was editor of the Yale Literary Magazine), spent eighteen months in the U.S. Navy as an assistant surgeon, and, in 1866, received his M.D. specializing in neurology from the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons. He bought the large practice of another doctor and formed a partnership with Alphonso D. Rockwell, with whom he built a career in electrotherapeutics.

Section 8: Behaviorism 535 By today’s standards, Beard was a social scientist as much as he was a physician. He dedicated himself to debunking spiritualism and sought to use psychology to explain séances and mind reading. Spiritualists, he claimed, were more adept at reading people’s expectations and unconscious movements than they were at communicating with the dead. He thought science would eventually dispel superstition, reveal truth, and solve the world’s problems. In 1869 his article “Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion” appeared in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. The work garnered him widespread credit as the first person to diagnose neurasthenia, an illness characterized by chronic pain, lethargy, insomnia, and mental breakdowns. Even so, the psychiatrist and asylum administrator Edwin H. Van Deusen had scooped Beard a few weeks before in an article published in the American Journal of Insanity. Beard does deserve credit, however, for popularizing the diagnosis in two books: Nervous Exhaustion (Neurasthenia), which was written for physicians and published in 1880, and his American Nervousness, a popular health opus published in 1881. In the latter work, Beard claimed that steam power, the telegraph, the press, railroads, and women’s education made the United States quintessentially modern and created so much anxiety that illnesses among citizens evolved from “inflammatory” conditions such as gout, rheumatism, and fever to “nervous” illnesses such as neurasthenia. This was more than a health issue; Beard argued that nervousness was part of social evolution and accounted for the beauty of American women, the nation’s ribald humor, and its gifted orators. If experts could better understand nervousness, Beard contended, it would help guide modern reforms in education, politics, religion, and labor. Beard died abruptly on January 23, 1883, from pneumonia aggravated by an infected tooth. David G. Schuster

Sources Beard, George M., and A.D. Rockwell. A Practical Treatise on the Medical and Surgical uses of Electricity including Localized and General Electrization. New York: W. Wood, 1871. Ellerbroek, W.C. “Dr. George Beard: Pioneer in Psychosomatic Medicine.” Psychosomatics 13 (1972): 57–60.

Rosenberg, Charles E. “The Place of George M. Beard in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 36 (May/June 1962): 245–59.

B E H AV I O R I S M Behaviorism, a field of psychology that rejects mind–body dualism, was influential in American science during the twentieth century. Behaviorists such as John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner rejected theories about the metaphysical or spiritual basis of the mind for a purely physical, mechanistic approach to the brain. Indeed, behaviorists eschewed the study of the mind or mental events and focused on observable behavior. Behaviorism has its roots in European intellectual developments of the Enlightenment and nineteenth century. In the 1600s, John Locke argued that the mind is a blank slate and that experience forms the individual identity. David Hume in the 1700s argued for an extreme empiricism in which only what is experienced and observed can be considered in discussing reality. In the 1800s, German scientists E.H. Weber and G.T. Fechner pioneered the field of psychophysics, wherein they recorded stimuli and responses in laboratory experiments that involved sensations associated with the lifting of varied quantities of weights. Another German, Hermann Ebbinghaus, attempted to scientifically study memory processes with experiments that recorded physical events interacting with mental events. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov conducted studies on the digestive glands in dogs. His studies evolved into the study of conditioned reflexes after Pavlov observed that ringing a bell while feeding the dogs conditioned them to salivate when the bell was rung but food was not present. Pavlov’s studies influenced the American psychologist John B. Watson, who rejected the study of mental operations, because they could not be observed by an objective scientist, nor could the processes of the mind be repeated under laboratory conditions. For Watson and other behaviorists, such as B.F. Skinner, the mind was too private for rigorous science. Focusing their

536 Section 8: Behaviorism studies on behavior, then, the behaviorists studied human conditioning and behavioral determinism, employing Pavlov’s experiments with humans. Skinner used his daughter as the subject of behavioral experiments. Skinner advocated using behavioral conditioning in public schools to train students to behave better, and with juvenile delinquents and criminals to condition more appropriate responses to stimuli. His novel Walden Two (1948) reveals the extremes and limitations of behaviorism. In the book, Skinner describes the ideal planned society in which the principles of incremental learning lead to programmed instruction methods. In this way, the results of the laboratory are applied to classroom teaching and to the control of society. Positive and negative reinforcements are used as procedures in behavior modification. Skinner followed up Walden Two with Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), in which he argued for restricting human freedoms that hinder the development of the ideal planned society. Skinner’s views on politics and ethics generated much controversy. Behaviorism ultimately developed a number of subfields in which research actively continues, and it has contributed to understandings of cognitive psychology and behavior modification. The field is supported and complemented by research in neuroscience and brain physiology. Andrew J. Waskey

Sources O’Donnell, John M. The Origins of Behaviorism: American Psychology, 1987–1920. New York: New York University Press, 1985. Rachlin, Howard. Introduction to Modern Behaviorism. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1970. Skinner, B.F. About Behaviorism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. Smith, Lawrence D., and William Ray Woodward. B.F. Skinner and Behaviorism in American Culture. Cranbury, NJ: Lehigh University Press, 1996.

BETTELHEIM, BRUNO (1903–1990) An influential child psychologist and Holocaust survivor, Bruno Bettelheim emerged as one of

the most fascinating figures in twentieth-century psychoanalysis. He explored strictly theoretical topics, such as the psychological basis of emotional disturbances in children and differences in individual versus mass psychology during moments of intense duress, and he applied the tenets of Freudian theory to the fields of anthropology and literary analysis. He described the psychological underpinnings of certain rites of initiation such as genital mutilation, prevalent among boys in other cultures, as well as children’s fairy tales circulating in Western culture. One of his greatest contributions came in 1976 when he published what was essentially a work of literary criticism, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, in which he argued that the best-known fairy tales play a crucial instructional role in the socialization of children. The work won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976 and the National Book Award in 1977. Born in Vienna, Austria, on August 28, 1903, Bettelheim displayed a scholarly aptitude in both psychology and aesthetics at a young age. Although he was compelled to put his education on hold and take over his father ’s lumber business after the latter ’s death in 1926, Bettelheim returned to the University of Vienna and claimed to have earned a doctorate in psychology in 1938 under the tutelage of Sigmund Freud. Politics soon intervened, however, as the Nazis arrested Bettelheim when they invaded Austria and interned him in the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. In 1939, he was allowed to emigrate to the United States. Bettelheim later wrote one of the first scholarly accounts of life in the camps by a former prisoner, “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology in 1943. Although influential in its time, the essay angered other survivors after it was revealed that Bettelheim’s experiences in the concentration camps were tempered by his family’s wealth, which allowed him to bribe officials in exchange for more appealing work assignments. After teaching philosophy and literature at a women’s college outside of Chicago, Bettelheim was hired by the University of Chicago. There, in 1944, he became director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, a research center that treated

Section 8: Collective Behavior 537 young and adolescent children with severe emotional disturbances. He developed a controversial and now discredited theory of autism, in which he held the mother accountable for creating an environment that did not stimulate proper language and motor development. Bettelheim’s own work at the school and his professional reputation have been the subject of intense scrutiny since his suicide on March 13, 1990. Accusations of his abusing young patients, plagiarizing significant portions of his awardwinning book about fairy tales, and failing to receive his doctorate have threatened to tarnish his reputation. His legacy continues to inspire new adherents and research in some professional circles, and doubt and skepticism in others. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Szajnberg, Nathan M., ed. Educating the Emotions: Bruno Bettelheim and Psychoanalytic Development. New York: Plenum, 1992.

C O L L E C T I V E B E H AV I O R Collective behavior is an umbrella term in modern psychology that refers to the study of interpersonal behavior and the constant negotiation between individual and group identity that often animates group dynamics. The field of inquiry seeks to explore the psychological underpinnings of cultural phenomena that fall on all points along the spectrum—from quotidian occurrences such as the birth of fads and fashions and the spread of rumors, to more unusual and rarefied outbursts of communal activity such as the organization of cults and political movements and the eruption of mob violence. Consequently, through the study of collective behavior, psychologists take on the role of anthropologists, transforming certain rituals and events such as stadium games, social protests, and riots into “texts” that reinforce the status quo and simultaneously undermine or threaten it.

Perhaps one of the earliest interpreters of interpersonal dynamics was Gustave Le Bon, who observed crowds in France in 1908. Among the most important qualities of collective behavior Le Bon observed were the progressive loss of personal identity in a group, and thus the loss of direct accountability for the outcome of the group’s behavior, and the rapid spread of ideas among members of the community, due largely to the hypnotic effects of a leader who somehow taps into a collective unconscious. The implications of Le Bon’s analysis were far-reaching and touched off widespread debate among social psychologists. He argued that the individual psyche relinquishes its faculties of reason once immersed in the crowd and, lured by the charms of its leader, surrenders to the chaotic temptations of the subconscious. Although Freud shared an intellectual interest in Le Bon’s exposition on the influence of leaders on crowds and their continuity with other influential centers of social organization—such as the family and church—he rejected Le Bon’s claim that participants in a crowd could fall into an abyss of unthinking. Instead, Freud argued that the presence of a crowd merely loosens the restraints of normal repressive operations that usually prevent an individual’s libidinal impulses from finding particular expression. Freud’s insistence on the individual within the mass laid the groundwork for future forays into the field, particularly after World War II. Many European intellectuals fled to the United States and ushered in a second wave of social psychology, in which the basic debate between individual and group identity was reevaluated from the perspective of empirical behaviorism—based on gestures and other observables, rather than opinions and mental states, which can only be inferred. This more experimentally based school of social psychology continues to coexist alongside the more intellectual orientation of psychoanalytic discourse. Its proponents collect field evidence to advance the ideas that crowds behave in a manner that often can indicate a member ’s individual identity, and that crowds allow heterogeneous behaviors among members. Dragoslav Momcilovic

538 Section 8: Collective Behavior Sources Hogg, Michael A., and Dominic Abrams. Social Identifications: A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes. New York: Routledge, 1988. Locher, David A. Collective Behavior. Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.

EGO Originally identified by Sigmund Freud as one of three fundamental components of the human psychic apparatus (alongside the id and the superego), the ego represents that part of personality that monitors and often enlists the aid of several different psychoanalytic mechanisms, such as repression and denial, in order to disguise, reduce, or redirect socially inappropriate or chaotic libidinal impulses emanating from the id. For this reason, the ego—which Freud labeled in German as das Ich, or “the ‘I,’ ” and which American psychoanalysts have translated according to the Latin first-person pronoun, ego—maintains a strong tie to the unconscious realm. This marks a refinement of Freud’s initial thinking, in which he described the ego as a conscious experience of one’s total psychic self. The ego is often said to operate in a regulatory manner, obeying what is commonly known as the reality principle. Unlike the pleasure principle, which in Freudian psychoanalysis dominates the id through a series of behaviors designed to reduce psychic tensions and by extension to enhance pleasure, the reality principle is constituted by the limitations and restrictions of the “real” environment to which the individual must learn to submit. That knowledge slowly accrues during the first three years of life, by which point the infant begins to interact with the outside world and to hatch a more pragmatic way of reconciling the primordial drives of humanity with the possibilities provided by the immediate external situation. The ego also comes to recognize and adapt to the moralizing functions of the superego, which develops subsequent to it and with which the individual polices his or her behavior. In its own maturation, the ego aids the individual in the acquisition and refinement of speech, perception, and motor skills. It also allows the individual to

foster a stronger sense of himself or herself as a conscious being, capable of maintaining a pragmatic relationship with reality and remembering the behaviors he or she has enlisted to that end. The concept of the ego has been subject to several different reevaluations, which have helped to shape and shift the aims and assumptions of classical psychoanalysis as practiced by Freud. Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, a former follower of Freud, challenged his mentor’s earlier conception that the ego was somehow equated with the self. He argued that the conscious aspect of the ego is a differentiated, private center of the personality that maintains close contact with a persona, or public face, that the individual chooses to reveal to others. This distinction laid the groundwork for Jung’s own theory of the evolution of human personality, which proceeds according to a progressive individuation of the self. Melanie Klein likewise reformulated the concept of the ego by tracing its maturation not as a series of successive stages but rather according to a series of introjections and projections of external objects. Her focus on objects such as the mother’s breast helped shift professional attention from the operation of internal instincts to the psychic apprehension of external objects. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1960. Kahn, Michael. Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

ERIKSON, ERIK (1902–1994) Erik Erikson was a world-renowned child psychologist whose work had an enduring effect on the behavioral and social sciences in general. His open demeanor, his willingness to share personal experiences with young patients, and the casual atmosphere of his treatments allowed him to shift his role from a detached observer to a participant in analysis itself. His integration of physical observations, psychological insights, and historical knowledge enabled him to advance

Section 8: Erikson, Erik 539

German-born psychologist Erik Erikson specialized in personal identity and human development, proposing a series of psychosocial stages from birth to old age. He is credited with coining the term “identity crisis.” (Ted Streshinsky/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

certain theories of ego development and psychosocial identity formation that became more relativistic in nature and exposed his unique strengths as a social scientist. Born to Danish parents on June 15, 1902, Erikson went to Vienna at the age of twenty-five. There, he received his training with Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud. He also attended several lectures at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. Emigrating to the United States in 1933, he found no shortage of academic and research positions, including ones at the Harvard Psychological Clinic and the Yale University Institute of Human Relations. His work at the University of California at Berkeley allowed him not only to engage in a long-term study of childhood development but also to work on side projects such as the analysis of German propaganda and the study of the Yurok Indians in Northern California alongside noted anthropologist Alfred

Kroeber—research opportunities that reflected his diverse interests in psychology, anthropology, and culture. Erikson lost his teaching position at the University of California over his refusal to officially declare himself innocent of any involvement with the Communist Party—charges of which he was, in fact, innocent. Subsequently, he lectured in psychiatry at Harvard University and completed renowned psychohistorical biographies of Martin Luther and Mohandas Gandhi. Professionally, Erikson was perhaps most remembered for his work on ego development. His first and most important book, Childhood and Society (1950), examines the effect of culturally specific childrearing traditions and educational systems on the growth and development of children. The book outlines the foundations of what would become his famous eight-stage model of human development. Although Erikson was a strict proponent of Freudian psychoanalysis and was never very interested in overturning its tenets, he challenged the notions that the ego develops free of any influence from the immediate social environment and reaches its maturity at adolescence. Instead, Erikson traced the evolution of the ego through eight stages of human development according to a series of unique conflicts, beginning in infancy and extending into old age. After passing through each stage, the successful human triumphs with a particular strength—hope, will, purpose, competence, fidelity, love, care, wisdom—as a result of a specific conflict whose emergence and subsequent resolution are in many ways conditioned by the larger social milieu. With this model, Erikson heralded a new and exciting view of human personality as the progressive accumulation of experiences and struggle—biological, psychological, and cultural—that continues to impinge on the individual with each successive stage, endowing the ego with a sense of continuous dynamic renewal. The idea of renewal also is found in Erikson’s concept of identity. He likewise described identity as an entity in process, a constant negotiation between the progressive evolution of an individual’s character and the continuous stream of encounters between that individual and the social network or networks to which he or she belongs—or fails to belong.

540 Section 8: Erikson, Erik Erikson was one of the first ego psychologists to use the phrase “identity crisis.” He described the stages of ego formation as playing an instrumental role in the negative and positive identification of the individual with other groups—such as socioeconomic classes, nationalities, religious groups—that precipitated such “crises” in the first place, and he invited the individual to make a successful transition from one phase to the next. Perhaps his most notable attempt at articulating a psychosocial identity was Toys and Reason (1977), in which he described what might be regarded as a quintessentially American identity. This identity is founded on such principles as the freedom to become what one wills and the diligence with which one might achieve it, both in the industrial workplace and on the periphery, such as the American Indian reservation he had observed with Kroeber. Erikson’s work in psychobiography proved to be methodologically influential, particularly to historians who had been working under the notion that a particular historical figure’s childhood has little to no bearing on the heroic or notorious deeds of adulthood. Implementing an arsenal of psychological terms such as “mutuality,” or the childhood recognition that individuals themselves matter to their parents and vice versa, Erikson mounted a compelling thesis in which he applauded Gandhi for applying that formative principle in the political sphere and setting a normative example for others to follow. He likewise transposed his notion of ritualization—or the performance of rituals that reaffirm the parent–child bond and the distinctions between what is good and what is not—into a glowing account of Gandhi’s nonviolent politics and interpersonal conflict resolutions. Erikson’s brand of psychoanalysis compelled him not only to reformulate the notions of identity formation and ego development in terms of a lifelong series of “crises” that beset the individual at all stages of life, but to identify those psychic operations as governing forces in the culture at large, which consists of a collectivity of individuals. His work is heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, which many practitioners of late have roundly dismissed, but it nevertheless relies on a holistic view and relativistic interpretation of the human psyche that

exists not in isolation but in a social network that affects and is effected by it. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963. ———. Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History. New York: W.W. Norton, 1958. Welchman, Kit. Erik Erikson: His Life, Work, and Significance. Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2000.

GESELL, ARNOLD (1880–1961) Arnold Gesell was a prominent theorist and researcher during the infancy of the field of child psychology. He is best known for his research on maturational factors in the developing child. His emphasis on biology and changes in bodily structure was in direct contrast to the other major perspectives in child psychology during the first half of the twentieth century, such as psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Gesell was born in Alma, Wisconsin, and he earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Wisconsin. He earned a Ph.D. in 1906 at Clark University, where he worked with psychologist G. Stanley Hall, and an M.D. in 1915 from Yale University. Gesell taught at Yale University from 1911 to 1948, where he founded the Clinic of Child Development. Thereafter, he did much of his work at the Gesell Institute of Human Development, founded in 1950 by Yale colleagues in New Haven, Connecticut. Gesell maintained that all humans develop (through genetic inheritance) a series of orderly events that can be anticipated by parents or caregivers but cannot be fundamentally changed or completed out of order. As an example, the developmental sequence that results in a toddler throwing a ball requires many different events to take place first. Such events, including, in this case, the development of the necessary arm strength and the coordination of the appropriate muscles, occur in a predetermined order. A child cannot coordinate muscles that have not yet been

Section 8: Hall, G. Stanley 541 developed. While the order of the events and the events themselves do not vary from child to child, each child develops at his or her own pace. Gesell acknowledged that the pace of biological maturation can be modified by the environment of the developing child. For instance, the length of time needed to achieve certain maturational events may be affected by environmental conditions such as social interaction, adequate diet or malnutrition, and wellness or illness. Biological maturation, Gesell argued, is the most crucial aspect of a child’s development, which, in turn, determines the pace of development in language use, intelligence, and learned social behavior. Gesell elaborated the maturational approach in three popular and influential books on childrearing practices: The First Five Years of Life (1940), The Child from Five to Ten (1946), and Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen (1956). Each gives detailed descriptions of what to expect during specific years in a child’s development. Pushing children to develop beyond their years is useless, Gesell maintained, because the pace of maturation is a product not only of the environment but of inheritance as well. He was a pioneer in the use of film and photography to record behavioral changes and the development of posture. He was also the first school psychologist in the United States and a leading proponent of testing children to determine their readiness for public education. Gesell’s work has had a lasting influence on the understanding of child development. His systematic descriptions of the observable behavior of children at various stages of development, combined with his theory of the importance of maturational processes, provided child psychologists and parents with a comprehensive model of child development. Dave D. Hochstein

Sources Ames, Louise Bates. Arnold Gesell: Themes of His Work. New York: Human Sciences, 1989. Gesell, Arnold, Frances L. Ilg, and Louise Bates Ames. The First Five Years of Life. New York: Harper, 1940. ———. Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen. New York: Harper, 1956. Gesell, Arnold, Frances L. Ilg, Louise Bates Ames, and Glenna E. Bullis. The Child from Five to Ten. New York: Harper, 1946.

H A L L , G. S TA N L E Y (1844–1924) Granville Stanley Hall helped establish psychology as a research science and formal academic discipline in America, and he did groundbreaking work in the study of child and adolescent development. A founder and the first president (1892–1924) of the American Psychological Association, he started several publications in the field, including the American Journal of Psychology (1887). He served as the first president of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts (1887–1920), and arranged the introduction of psychoanalysis in America by organizing an international conference and lecture series by Sigmund Freud at Clark in 1909. Born on a farm near Ashfield, Massachusetts, on February 1, 1844, Hall attended Williams College, graduating in 1867. He continued his studies at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City but soon gave up his preparation for the ministry and traveled to Leipzig, Germany, to work under the famed experimental psychologist Wilhelm Wundt. After returning to America and teaching English and philosophy at Antioch College in Ohio from 1872 to 1876, he entered Harvard College; working under William James, Hall earned the first doctorate in psychology in the United States in 1878. As professor of psychology and pedagogics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore from 1882 to 1888—the first American professorship in the field—he opened what is believed to be the nation’s first psychology laboratory. Hall’s research focused on child and adolescent psychology, applying the experimental method to the study of development and learning. He was heavily influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution and the hereditarian philosophy, which regards the human psyche as a product of genetic inheritance rather than environment. He believed that each individual human experiences the evolutionary stages of the species. One of the first to apply psychological theory to education, Hall formulated specific recommendations for instruction methods and curriculum

542 Section 8: Hall, G. Stanley in the different stages of childhood and adolescence. His views on development and education found an audience in the general public through popular magazines of the time. Although the theoretical underpinnings of Hall’s work were said to support a rigorous scientific approach, critics argued that his work lacked objectivity and failed to explain the behaviors being observed. Hall’s most notable published works were Adolescence (two volumes, 1904) and Aspects of Child Life and Education (1921). Hall died on April 24, 1924, in Worcester, Massachusetts. David C. Miank

Sources Pruette, Lorine. G. Stanley Hall: A Biography of a Mind. New York: D. Appleton, 1926. Ross, Dorothy. G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Wilson, Louis N. G. Stanley Hall: A Sketch. New York: G.E. Stechert, 1914.

H O R N E Y, K A R E N (1885–1952) The German American psychoanalyst Karen Horney was among the most influential figures of the neo-Freudian school. She was born Karen Clementina Theodora Danielsen on September 16, 1885, in Blankenese, Germany. The second of two children, she later reported feelings of separation and rejection during her childhood; she felt especially neglected by her sea captain father, who was often gone for periods of six months or more. On occasion, however, he took her with him on voyages to faraway places, where she had unique opportunities to observe other cultures and languages. As a girl, she read incessantly and fantasized that she would become a physician, although German universities at the turn of the century rarely admitted women. She felt physically unattractive and was jealous of the attention her brother received. At the same time, she was strongly attracted to him, which led to a depression beginning at age nine that she later described as a gray ghost that crushed the nerves of her life with its bony hand. In her professional life many years later, Horney hypothesized that

cultural influences such as competition create feelings of hostility and isolation, which exacerbate an unrealistic desire for affection and love. She entered the Realgymnasium in Hamburg, a newly opened school for girls, and graduated in 1906. Shortly thereafter, she matriculated at the University of Freiburg-am-Breisgau, the first institution of higher learning in Germany to graduate a woman. While there, she met Oskar Horney, a doctoral student in business whom she married in 1909. The couple moved to Berlin, where Horney was able to continue her medical studies and received her medical degree in 1911. After completing a two-year internship at the Berlin Urban Hospital, she did two residencies, one in neurology with Hermann Oppenheim (1914) and the other in psychiatry with Karl Bonhoeffer at Berlin Charity Hospital (1915). It was during this period that the new field of psychoanalysis piqued her interest. Since she had suffered from emotional turmoil for most of her life, she decided to undergo psychoanalysis and consulted Freud’s disciple in Berlin, Karl Abraham. Impressed with the personal insight she gained and the promise of this approach to therapy, she participated in seminars as a professional, opened a psychiatric practice of her own, joined the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, and lectured for the next twelve years. In 1932, Horney, now divorced, moved to the United States and became the associate director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis for two years. She then moved to New York City and taught at the New School for Social Research. In the United States, Horney aligned herself with the group of psychoanalysts known as the “neo-Freudians,” among them Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan. One of Horney’s main contributions to the field of psychiatry was the introduction of a female perspective to a profession and a theoretical framework that had been predominantly male. Many of her views, therefore, were heretical to the Freudian school. For example, she deviated from classical Freudian theory by emphasizing environmental and cultural predispositions (rather than biological ones) for neurosis and stressed the fallacy of the Freudian concepts of “penis envy” and “castration complex.” Freud had theorized that little

Section 8: Id 543 girls, after seeing what little boys look like without clothing, are envious of their external genitalia and that such envy has a profound effect on their self-image. Horney pointed out the onesided male bias of this theory and suggested that boys (and men) might just as profoundly envy a woman’s ability to produce children (though she did not posit the phrase “womb envy”). During her later years, Horney’s interests turned primarily to writing. In the early 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, she was suspected of being a Communist sympathizer and was denied a passport to visit Japan. A friend came to her defense, however, and she was finally allowed to leave the country. Shortly after her return, she was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer that had metastasized to her lungs. She died two weeks later, on December 4, 1952. Horney’s work gained new attention in the 1970s with the prominence of the feminist and self-help movements. Her books include The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), Self-Analysis (1942), Our Inner Conflicts (1945), and Are You Considering Psychoanalysis? (1946). Lana Thompson

Sources Paris, Bernard. Karen Horney: A Psychoanalyst’s Search for SelfUnderstanding. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1994. Quinn, Susan. A Mind of Her Own: The Life of Karen Horney. New York: Summit, 1987.

ID The id is the grounding force of the hypothetical three-tiered structure of human personality (with the ego and superego) that Sigmund Freud first formulated in 1923, after revising his topographical model of the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. Designated in the original German as das Es, or “the ‘It,’ ” and translated into English via the equivalent Latin neuter pronoun, id, the id is often described as a kind of undifferentiated repository of humanity’s most basic urges, including hunger, sleep, aggression, and pleasure. It is said to exist within the realm of the unconscious mind and, consequently, to house several biologically “primitive” instincts. These

instincts are susceptible to scrutiny only by virtue of their perceptible manifestations, their effects on our immediate environment and physical constitution, and the arsenal of psychological distortions we have learned to deploy in mastering them. According to Freud, the id is the only segment of the psychic apparatus that is inherited automatically. In fact, it guides the behavior of the newborn infant, whose own temporary incapacity to understand itself as it is—or, more importantly, as it will be—allows the basic drives of the id to find uninterrupted expression. Unencumbered by the faculties of language and understanding, and failing to heed the restrictions of time and space, the id allows emotions to reign supreme and asks the individual merely to allow its basic desires to be satisfied. As the infant develops, it gradually learns to “tame” or regulate its libidinal and biological drives through a sense of rational agency and an awareness of the restrictions and limitations imposed on it by the immediate environment— functions that are eventually undertaken by the ego, which develops out of and in response to the normal functions of the id. Therefore, the impulses that emanate from the id are not all innate or automatically inherited; some are gained through an infant’s experiences and consequently must be repressed. Freud wrote in 1911 and again in 1917 that the instincts of the id function according to the “pleasure principle,” in which the human subject unconsciously behaves in a manner geared toward the alleviation of brimming psychic tensions that would otherwise create “unpleasure.” Freud would surpass and essentially contradict this position with the publication in 1920 of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Citing clinical evidence provided by masochists seeking punishment from dominant partners, infants reenacting abandonment by the mother as a game, and war veterans plagued by the compulsion to repeat and revivify past traumas, Freud put his finger on an oppositional tendency in human nature that is geared toward the increase of psychic tension, almost to the peril of the individual. Although Freud’s formulation of the id and his discussion of the libidinal instincts were speculative at best, their allegiance to the pleasure and death drives allowed him to draw significant

544 Section 8: Id attention to the importance of unconscious drives. This applies not only in clinical studies but also in academic commentaries about collective cultural experience. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1960. Kahn, Michael. Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

INSANITY Insanity, the loss of reason or sanity, has long been presumed to follow from an environmental or organic defect that causes the mind to make false associations or delusions that impair an individual’s ability to cope with life, self, and the community.

Until the nineteenth century, disturbed individuals were cared for at home by family members, but care for the insane shifted from the family to the community when the first asylums and hospitals were built in the late 1700s and during the 1800s. Benjamin Rush, sometimes referred to as the “father of American psychiatry,” wrote the first American textbook on insanity, Diseases of the Mind (1812); in it, he identified a number of sources of insanity, including life stresses and organic causes. The creation of the nineteenth-century asylum, however, signaled a belief that the main cause of insanity was environmental—thus, the earliest institutions epitomized respite from the world as the main therapeutic regimen. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, insanity was believed to occur from an injury to the central nervous system or a lesion on the brain or spine. Thus, loss of reason was ascribed to a disturbance of nerves that in turn generated thoughts and ideas incongruent with

Published exposés of abuses in the psychiatric care system brought sweeping reforms in treatment, facilities, and attitudes during the 1940s and 1950s—leading to the de-institutionalization movement of the 1960s. (Jerry Cooke/ Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Section 8: IQ 545 reality. Treatments included electricity, hydrotherapy, rest, massage, and a combination of drugs and confinement. State institutions for the insane were built prior to the Civil War, but these institutions multiplied rapidly in the late nineteenth century, as care for the insane shifted from the local community to the state. Wealthier patients had recourse to private “nerve doctors,” also known as neurologists. Ultimately, the insane asylum became associated with the incurable and chronically ill, while neurologists dealt with individuals suffering from transient ailments. In the twentieth century, insanity lost its medical connotation when psychiatrists rejected the distinction between normal and abnormal mental states. Mental illness was no longer believed to be a break with reality but conceived as a failure to cope with everyday life. People were no longer regarded as sane or insane but as evincing greater or lesser ability to cope with everyday life. The term “insanity” remained in popular culture a pejorative for mental illness, but the medical profession abandoned it. Even the term “insane asylum” was discarded, as such institutions were officially renamed “mental hospitals.” Regardless of changes in the theory and study of psychiatry, these hospitals were often overcrowded with the severely ill who in the past would have been classified as insane but were now labeled schizophrenic. Despite its rejection by the psychiatric profession, “insanity” remains a vital concept in American jurisprudence. During the mid-nineteenth century, judges recognized that the loss of reason meant the inability to think clearly about right and wrong. Most jurisdictions in the United States adopted the mid-nineteenth-century English legal principle called the McNaughton Rule, which states that if a crime is committed by an individual lacking the ability to discern right from wrong, then the person is innocent by reason of insanity. The McNaughton Rule gave rise to the “insanity defense” and remains the legal standard for most states and the federal government. In 1984, Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which reasserted the McNaughton standard following the assassination attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan and the sub-

sequent acquittal of the would-be assassin by reason of insanity. Timothy W. Kneeland

Sources Grob, Gerald N. The Mad Among Us: A History of America’s Care of the Mentally Ill. New York: Free Press, 1994. Jimenez, Mary Ann. Changing Faces of Madness: Early American Attitudes and Treatment of the Insane. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1987. Rosenberg, Charles E. The Trail of the Assassin Guiteau: Psychiatry and Law in the Gilded Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Shorter, Edward. A History of Psychiatry from the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997. Tomes, Nancy. The Art of Asylum Keeping: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Origins of American Psychiatry. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

IQ IQ stands for “intelligence quotient,” a number derived from a person’s mental age divided by chronological age. Mental age is determined by a series of tasks that include memory, reasoning, definitions, numerical ability, and fact recall. An IQ of 100 means that an average child at the age of twelve is able to perform certain mental tasks in three basic fields. Charted on a graph, the distribution of IQ scores in a large population forms a bell curve, a statistical representation with the highest and lowest scores in equal quantity at each end and a majority of scores in the middle range. The concept of IQ was created by William Stern, a German psychologist who attempted to classify people according to types, norms, and individual idiosyncrasies. In 1905, the French psychologists Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon published the first IQ test. Binet, who was originally a physician, worked with schoolchildren to devise a test that would classify individuals on the basis of learning ability. In 1916, Lewis Terman and his graduate students at Stanford University in California modified the Binet-Simon test, adding new questions and dropping others. His book on the revised scale, The Measurement of Intelligence (1916), became a classic in the field of psychology and IQ

546 Section 8: IQ testing. In 1937, Terman and Maude Merrill tested 3,000 children between the ages of two and eighteen, leading to further revisions of the test and scale. The revised test came to be called the Stanford-Binet, and the revised scale included an additional four levels of adult intelligence. The initial Stanford-Binet test gained so much acceptance among psychologists that Robert Yerkes, the president of the American Psychological Association, used it during World War I as the foundation for the Army Alpha and Army Beta intelligence tests. Army A consisted of eight sets of questions: following directions, math problems, practical judgment, synonyms and antonyms, disarranged sentences, number series, completion, analogies, and general information. Army B was designed for the illiterate and included questions in seven nonverbal skills: maze drawing, cube analysis, series completion, digit symbol substitution, number checking, picture completion, and geometric construction. The testing project was used to classify recruits for the armed forces. On the basis of the scores, recruits were either enlisted or rejected. In 1938, David Wechsler, a psychologist assigned to assist in testing army recruits, felt that the intelligence tests developed for educational assessment or as academic predictors in children had no application to real-life situations. He created a battery of tests for adults in the areas of information, comprehension, arithmetic, similarities, digit span, vocabulary, digit symbol, picture completion, block design, picture arrangement, and object assembly. WechslerBellevue (after Bellevue Hospital, where he worked) became the most commonly used test in the United States. It was revised in 1942 and again in 1949, this time for children. Many professionals have questioned the value and reliability of IQ tests. As early as 1901, Clark Wissler, an anthropologist and student of James McKeen Cattell (a pioneering figure in educational measurement), did not agree with early anthropometric correlations of intelligence with individual characteristics. During the development of the concept of intelligence and intelligence testing, many nonscientists had attempted to tie racial or sex differences to intelligence, often using physical

characteristics such as brain size or physiognomy as evidence. Their conclusions had a regressive influence on public policy, as a number of people during the early decades of the twentieth century were sterilized for “feeblemindedness.” A more recent IQ controversy surrounded a book titled The Bell Curve (1994), in which the authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, attempted to demonstrate that African Americans have a gene or gene set that accounts for lower scores on standardized IQ tests. Herrnstein and Murray, however, completely disregarded the role of environment, experience, and cultural bias on the part of the test makers. Intelligence measurement is now believed to be largely dependent on culture and prior learning, two variables that were ignored in prior research. Lana Thompson

Sources Fancher, Raymond E. The Intelligence Men: Makers of the I.Q. Controversy. New York. W.W. Norton, 1985. Herrnstein, Richard, and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press, 1994. Hothersall, David. History of Psychology. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990. Wechsler, David. The Measurement and Appraisal of Adult Intelligence. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1985.

JAMES, WILLIAM (1842–1910) The brother of novelist Henry James and son of noted theologian and philosopher William James, Sr., the young William James came to be regarded as a pioneering figure in American psychology. His theories of the self and consciousness, which garnered him international acclaim as a scientist, emerged out of a long-standing and ever-increasing interest in philosophical debates over free will, the meaning of truth, and the relationship between the mind and body. The oldest of five children, James was born in New York City on January 11, 1842. He spent much of his young adult life suffering from neurasthenia and depression, which punctuated

Section 8: James, William 547

In his monumental text The Principles of Psychology (1890), William James theorized that human consciousness functions purposefully to organize thoughts. His theory of mind is called functionalism: Mental states are determined by their functional role. (Paul Thompson/ FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

an otherwise illustrious academic career, both in the United States and abroad. Professionally, however, James initially struggled to find his place. His repeated bouts of psychosomatic distress prevented him from serving in the Civil War, and a brief career in painting in 1860 ended in failure when he confessed that did not have the skill he needed to transform a lifelong passion into a means of living. Eventually, science beckoned to him. He received his M.D. from Harvard University in 1869 and joined the faculty with a prestigious professorship in physiology—a position that allowed him to set up one of the country’s first experimental laboratories, where he would explore the connection between biology and psychology.

Principles of Psychology His best-known work, which many regarded as his masterpiece, is The Principles of Psychology

(1890), a conscientious interrogation of subjectivity and self-knowledge approached from the vantage points of psychology and philosophy, which maintains to this day a strong appeal among popular and academic readerships. An abridged version of Principles appeared two years later, including only excerpts of his otherwise considerable examinations of philosophical concerns; students affectionately referred to this edition as “Jimmy,” as opposed to the original, unedited version, “James.” The two-volume Principles of Psychology heralded a holistic view of psychology through the study of daily life in all its minutiae and the mechanisms of selective attention it consequently engenders. James’s work marked a departure from the experimental psychology of Wilhelm Wundt, who studied the human mind in tightly controlled environments by observing and measuring what appeared to be automatic, quantifiable reactions to simple mental processes. James, however, held that psychology should not reduce people to mere automatons whose actions provide direct access to deeper psychological states. His book presents a series of sophisticated accounts of the dialectical nature of the self. He distinguished between a thinking “I” and a phenomenal “me,” whose dialogue was enacted and steered by the daily operations of a discriminating and personalized consciousness. Among the most notable of James’s meditations on the self was his idea of the “stream of consciousness,” which was predicated in many ways in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Described as a mode of existence that allowed people to cope with and adapt to an ever changing environment, the “stream of consciousness” characterized human experience as a continuous stream of thoughts and perceptions that interact with their stimuli and with one another, changing their individual resonances with each appearance. James’s metaphor of the stream came to be regarded as one of his most important contributions to American psychology—one that enabled him to endow human consciousness with a strictly personal coloring that Wundt’s experimental approach seemed to disallow. The theory was soon co-opted, in both spirit and name, by modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf, whose literary innovations attempted to

548 Section 8: James, William capture the continuity and flux of human experience in a modern capitalist milieu. Although influential for its time, Principles of Psychology is nevertheless a collection of scholarly articles that James had been revising for more than a decade, and that consequently reflected an intellectual position on which he had already begun to expand by the time of its official publication. James stepped down from his post as head of the psychology lab he helped create, and he extended his teaching repertoire to include philosophy—professional changes that foretold a growing interest in ethical, religious, and epistemological concerns.

Philosophy The first glimpse of James’s increasing fascination with philosophy came in 1897 with The Will to Believe, a collection of essays that took as its point of departure the assumption that the scientific method, in which he had for years been steeped as a psychologist, offered the luxury to await the results of a particular investigation before coming to a conclusion about the veracity of a particular hypothesis. In contrast to English mathematician and philosopher W.K. Clifford, who argued that belief must be based on clear evidence, James argued that faith, which was defined according to a distinct lack of proof and thus had no rational or scientific basis, was a justifiable phenomenon, for it compelled individuals to choose whether or not to embrace that faith and await the consequences of that decision. The implications of his essays were significant, as they allowed him to circumvent the fashionable atheism that had gripped many of his students at Harvard and to reaffirm humanity not only as rational but also as a complex of spiritual, moral, and sentimental dimensions. In a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in 1906 and Columbia University in 1907, James outlined the premises of his notion of “pragmatism,” a hermeneutic application of sorts that had supported his discussion of faith in The Will to Believe. Taking inspiration from logician Charles Sanders Peirce’s notion that an object should be understood in terms of the range of practical consequences it might have on thought or behavior, James argued that the true value of thoughts is constituted in their utility—their

ability to alert us to the range of possible effects on either our understanding of a particular concept or our manner of response to that concept. James’s scholastic forays into psychology and philosophy have endured for over a century. His theories have influenced many philosophers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein and Edmund Husserl. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Brennan, Bernard P. William James. New Haven, CT: Twayne, 1968. McDermott, John J., ed. The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

L I F T O N , R O B E R T J AY (1926- ) A scholar of psychiatry and psychology, Robert Jay Lifton has produced works exploring brainwashing, terrorism, the psychological effects of war, and the methods that cult organizations use to control their members. Although his research covers many topics, it maintains an underlying framework of examining the psychological situations of people coping with extreme circumstances of life and death. His work is also related to psychohistory: Lifton, whose mentor was the psychoanalyst and biographer Erik Erikson, has used psychological methods to explore the causes and consequences of traumatic historical events, such as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, medical experiments under the Nazis, and the experiences of soldiers in Vietnam. Lifton was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 16, 1926. He attended Cornell University and obtained his medical degree from New York Medical College in 1948. In 1951, he was drafted into the U.S. Air Force and served in the Korean War as a psychiatrist in Japan and South Korea for two years. Lifton’s career includes stints as a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, a professor of psychology and senior fellow of the Center on Terrorism at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New

Section 8: Maslow, Abraham 549 York, and a professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. He undertook his first substantial research project while living in Hong Kong during the mid-1950s. He became interested in the process of brainwashing used by the Communist government in post–World War II China, and he interviewed Westerners and Chinese who had been subjected to this technique. His research resulted in the book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China (1961), in which he argued that brainwashing works by attacking people’s sense of identity and exploiting their insecurities and inner feelings of guilt. Lifton returned to this issue in Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism (2000). Another substantial work by Lifton, for which he won the National Book Award, is Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1968). In this book, he examined the psychological effects of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, Japan, of August 6, 1945. The severity of what he observed made him an opponent of nuclear weapons, a view he expressed in a book with Richard Falk, Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case Against Nuclearism (1982). Regarding America’s attitude toward the atomic bomb, he wrote with Greg Mitchell Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (1995). Another important area of research for Lifton is the subject of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986). Here, he explored the phenomenon of “doubling,” whereby people create a kind of second self to justify their participation in evil practices. This process, Lifton argued, explains how Nazi doctors at the Auschwitz concentration camp, who were otherwise seemingly normal people, could rationalize their participation in the Holocaust. Wade D. Pfau

Sources Flynn, Michael. “An Interview with Robert Jay Lifton.” International Journal of Group Tensions 28:1–2 (1999): 27–58. Lifton, Robert Jay. Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Random House, 1968. ———. Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism. New York: Owl, 2000. ———. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 1986.

———. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China. New York: W.W. Norton, 1961. Lifton, Robert Jay, and Greg Mitchell. Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995.

M A S LO W , A B R A H A M (1908–1970) Abraham Maslow was a founder of the humanistic movement in American psychology, which he advanced as an alternative to psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Maslow was especially known for his concept of a hierarchy of human needs and his self-actualization theory of growth, whereby individuals are driven to fulfill a series of instinctual and high-order needs to achieve their full individual potential. The eldest of seven children, Abraham Harold Maslow was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 1, 1908, to unschooled Russian Jewish immigrants. Lonely as a boy and pushed to succeed by his parents, he found escape in reading and enrolled at the City College of New York (CCNY) to study law. Maslow left after three semesters to attend Cornell University, only to transfer back to CCNY shortly thereafter. Defying his parents’ wishes, he married his first cousin, Bertha Goodman, and the couple moved away from New York to attend the University of Wisconsin. Maslow earned his degrees in psychology (B.A., 1930; M.A., 1931; Ph.D. 1934), studying with Harry Harlow, who was known for his controversial experiments with rhesus monkeys on isolation and maternal deprivation. After obtaining his doctorate, Maslow returned to New York City for further study of behavior with E.L. Thorndike at Columbia University. Taking a teaching position in 1937 at Brooklyn College, he came into contact with some of the leading European psychologists of the time, many of whom had left Nazi Germany for the United States. Among this group were leaders of the psychoanalytic and Gestalt movements—such as Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney—and others studying nonbehavioral, nonexperimental approaches. Maslow moved to Brandeis University in 1951 as chair of the psychology department, and he

550 Section 8: Maslow, Abraham would continue teaching there until his retirement in 1969. At Brandeis, he met the German neurologist and Gestalt theorist Kurt Goldstein, who introduced him to the concept of selfactualization, and he began promoting the humanistic movement as an alternative to behaviorism and psychoanalysis. In his major published works, Motivation and Personality (1954) and Toward a Psychology of Being (1962), Maslow advanced a theory of human motivation based on the observation that individuals progress through an ordered succession of needs and desires, beginning with the physiological necessities of survival (such as food and water). No sooner is one set of needs satisfied than a new and higher one—with its own motivational imperatives—presents itself. The ascending order of motivation constitutes Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in pyramidal layers rising from physiological needs to safety and security needs, the need for love and belonging, the need for esteem and respect, and, finally, self-actualization—a rarely achieved state of psychological well-being, creative expression, selfless behavior, freedom from stereotypes, and acceptance of reality. Maslow’s The Farther Reaches in Human Nature (1971), published posthumously, argues that the attainment of self-actualization, or the realization of one’s fullest potential, brings with it the occasional experience of “transcendence”—peak experiences of joy, insight, and an awareness of the full potential of humanity—as well as a recurring sense of “cosmic sadness” at the failure of most of humanity to achieve this level of growth. Maslow advocated group therapy to help climb the hierarchy of needs and rise to the state of self-actualization. After his retirement from teaching in 1969, Maslow served as a resident fellow at the Laughlin Institute in California. He died of a heart attack on June 8, 1970. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Frank, G. Goble. The Third Force: The Psychology of Abraham Maslow. New York: Viking, 1970. Hoffman, Edward. The Right to Be Human: A Biography of Abraham Maslow. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. Maslow, Abraham. The Journals of A.H. Maslow. 2 vols. Belmont, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 1979.

M E A D, G E O R G E H E R B E R T (1863–1931) George Herbert Mead was a social theorist who combined sociology, social psychology, and philosophy in his theories of social life. His ideas provided the impetus for a variety of innovative concepts in these disciplines, including symbolic interactionism, which is a micro-level sociological perspective that seeks to find meaning in everyday social behavior and an understanding of how social influences affect an individual’s self-concept. Mead was born on February 27, 1863, in South Hadley, Massachusetts, the son of a Congregational minister. His father, Hiram Mead, was a descendant of a long line of Puritan ministers and farmers, and the younger Mead was raised in a family that was highly influenced by New England Puritanism. The family moved to Oberlin, Ohio, where Mead’s father accepted a position in the new theological seminary at Oberlin College. Mead attended Oberlin College and, in time, began to question the strict religious beliefs of his upbringing. After graduating from Oberlin in 1883, he worked as a teacher and later as a surveyor with a railroad company. In the fall of 1887, he entered Harvard University, where he studied philosophy and psychology. At Harvard, philosopher and psychologist William James became a major influence on Mead, especially his conception of pragmatism. Pragmatism was a new American philosophical movement, originated by James and Charles Sanders Peirce, which understood human thought and action in terms of their outcomes and advocated the empirical testing of principles. Continuing his studies in Europe at the University of Leipzig, Mead came under the influence of psychologists Wilhelm Wundt and G. Stanley Hall. Although he never completed his Ph.D., Mead in 1891 became a professor at the University of Michigan, where he taught physiological psychology and evolutionary theory. He did not stay in Michigan for long, however, as he accepted a professorship at the newly opened University of Chicago in 1893. Mead’s interests in social concerns such as education

Section 8: Mental Health 551 and urban problems mixed well with the emphasis on social activism that was a focal point of the University of Chicago. Mead’s work focused primarily on the relationship between individuals and society. His conceptualization of the self was his most notable accomplishment. This concept, which found theoretical support from William James and sociologist Charles Horton Cooley, refers to a person understanding individuality, based on social experience. Mead, departing from theories of contemporary psychologists, formulated a theory of human development based on the prominent role of social interaction and experience, rather than on primarily internal factors. He posited that people pass through three stages of development: the play stage, when children model their behavior on that of others; the game stage, when children learn not only their own role expectations but also those of others; and the generalized other stage, when a person has successfully internalized the norms of society into his or her sense of self. Mead is also known for his concept of the relationship between two components of the self: the “I” and the “me.” The “I” refers to the part of the self that is subjective, spontaneous, and creative; it develops through the influence of primary relationships with family and friends. The “me” is the objective component of the self that seeks personal identity and understanding through the observation of others in society at large. Mead was a gifted speaker who did not often put his ideas on paper. Some of his students compiled his lectures posthumously to create such classic works as Mind, Self, and Society (1934) and Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century (1936). Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Collins, Randall, and Michael Makosky. The Discovery of Society. New York: Random House, 1972. Coser, Lewis A. Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context. 2nd ed. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1977. Levine, Donald N. Visions of the Sociological Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Strauss, Anselm, ed. The Social Psychology of George Herbert Mead. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1956.

M E N TA L H E A LT H Mental health issues in American history were marked by centuries of misunderstanding and mistreatment of the mentally ill, followed by a reconsideration of mental illness in the nineteenth century and new approaches to helping people achieve psychological well-being in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Mental health care today encompasses a variety of approaches, including recreation, prevention and awareness, counseling and outpatient therapy, prophylactic (drug) therapy, residential care, and inpatient treatment. In the United States, the bulk of public health funding and resources is devoted to the treatment of severe, chronic mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Colonial American views on mental health derived from centuries of speculation by European thinkers. The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates attributed abnormal behavior to natural causes, which challenged the typical contemporary belief of the supernatural origins of human behavior. Medieval and Renaissance thinkers struggled with conflicting ideas of spirituality and nature in determining the sources of abnormal behavior. The sixteenth-century Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus assigned biological and psychological reasons for certain maladies, though he maintained the traditional belief that the movements of heavenly bodies influenced human behavior. Sixteenth-century Dutch physician Johann Weyer condemned contemporary assumptions of the role of demons in abnormal behavior. Many historians of science consider Weyer to be one of the first therapists because of his detailed descriptions of abnormal behavior and his use of therapeutic methods to heal the mentally ill. Ignorance, fear, and superstition initially shaped public attitudes toward mental illness in America. Colonial Americans, heavily indebted to beliefs in superstition and the supernatural, believed abnormal behavior to involve black magic, witchcraft, or demons. Even so brilliant a scientist as the Puritan minister Cotton Mather thought that witchcraft and the invisible forces of the supernatural influenced abnormal behavior. The mentally ill were thus confined in almshouses,

552 Section 8: Mental Health

Psychopharmacology—the use of drugs to alter mood, thinking, or behavior—plays a prominent role in contemporary mental health care. Alone or in combination with psychotherapy, drugs are used to manage anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

workhouses, and prisons. Social fear of the darkness of mental illness meant that the mentally ill were subject to mental and physical abuse. American physician Benjamin Rush, a leader in the development of psychiatry in America and author of Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812), was a proponent of the moral treatment movement, in which he sought to reform asylums by eliminating harsh treatments arbitrarily imposed on the mentally ill. Other reformers, such as Dorothea Lynde Dix in the nineteenth century, called attention to the mistreatment of the mentally ill at penal institutions and asylums and succeeded in initiating changes in the treatment of the insane. After Clifford Beers suffered a nervous breakdown, was hospitalized in mental asylums, and experienced firsthand the incompetence and misunderstanding of physicians and nurses, he wrote A Mind That Found Itself (1908), a severe critique of the treatment of mental illness in America. Beers became a leader in the mental health reform movement and established the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in 1909. He was also instrumental in founding the First International Congress for Mental Hygiene in 1930. After Beers’s death in 1943, the National Committee for Mental Hygiene merged with

the National Mental Health Foundation and the Psychiatric Foundation to form, in 1950, the National Mental Health Association. Notwithstanding the creation of such institutions, the mentally ill continued to be housed in asylums during most of the twentieth century. Over time, however, these institutions shifted their focus from simply warehousing the mentally ill to attempting to treat them in settings that increasingly resembled conventional hospitals. New techniques in psychoanalysis and recreational therapy resulted in more humane and effective treatments. Some treatment methods employed in these hospitals, however, remained unpleasant and debilitating, such as electric shock treatments and lobotomy, in which the frontal lobe of the brain is disconnected, rendering the patient virtually emotionless. The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century, moreover, resulted in the sterilization of people considered too incompetent to have children. Efforts to cut costs combined with increasing concern for the rights of mental health consumers precipitated a move away from hospitalization toward community-based treatment in the latter half of the twentieth century. This shift resulted in increased reliance on therapeutic day

Section 8: Mitchell, S. Weir 553 programs, residential care facilities, and intensive outpatient therapy. More conventional therapies gave way to a greater emphasis on prophylactic treatments as more effective drugs with fewer side effects became available. This trend reflected a general movement in the health care sector toward managed care, in which cost containment took precedence over intensive, individualized treatment of patients. Scientific research and development in mental health care since the mid-twentieth century has focused heavily on diagnosis and medication. The American Psychiatric Association published the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952, establishing standards for the diagnosis of mental illnesses. The DSM has undergone several revisions as classifications of and criteria for certain illnesses have evolved. Thorazine, the first antipsychotic drug, was introduced in the early 1950s, and, by the 1960s, health care providers were prescribing Valium and other tranquilizers to treat anxiety disorders. The development of serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs such as Prozac and Zoloft in the 1980s and 1990s revolutionized the treatment of depression and anxiety; the development of new antipsychotic drugs exerted a similar effect on the treatment of major mental illnesses, further stimulating the move toward managed care in mental health services. Michael H. Burchett and Nicholas Katers

Sources Fancher, Robert T. Health and Suffering in America: The Context and Content of Mental Health Care. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 2003. Farina, Amerigo. Abnormal Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1976. Freedheim, Donald K., and Irving Weiner. History of Psychology. New York: Wiley, 2003. Liebel-Weckowicz, Helen, and Thaddeus Weckowicz. A History of Great Ideas in Abnormal Psychology. New York: Elsevier, 1990.

M I T C H E L L , S. W E I R (1829–1914) Silas Weir Mitchell was a neurologist, poet, and novelist known for his leadership in the devel-

opment of professional medicine and his “rest cure” for nervous disorders. In his long career, Mitchell wrote more than 170 scientific papers and numerous medical texts, as well as seventeen novels and a great many poems, short stories, and plays. By the end of the nineteenth century, he had become an elder statesman of medicine and one of the most eminent American neurologists of his time. Born in Philadelphia on February 15, 1829, Mitchell earned his medical degree specializing in neurology from Jefferson College in Philadelphia. He completed a European internship under the renowned physiologist Claude Bernard, served as a physician during the Civil War, and emerged as one of the nation’s foremost nerve specialists. Mitchell spent the first part of his career as a scientist. Before the Civil War, he had performed important laboratory work with William Hammond on the nature of rattlesnake poison. During the war, working at Turner’s Lane Hospital in Philadelphia, he focused on reflex paralysis and wrote Gunshot Wounds and Other Injuries of Nerves (1864) with George Morehouse and W.W. Keen. After the war, when he began treating civilians, Mitchell made his contributions to the treatment of neurasthenia and hysteria with his popular health books Wear and Tear (1871) and Doctor and Patient (1888). He also published the more professionally oriented Fat and Blood (1877). In the latter work, Mitchell detailed his trademark “rest cure,” a treatment regime reserved mainly, but not exclusively, for women. The treatment called for six to eight weeks of complete bed rest and a diet of rich foods to replenish exhausted nerves. Physicians since have attributed the rest cure’s success more to the power of suggestion than to the efficacy of fat and blood in producing energetic health and peace of mind. Mitchell was the last of the nineteenthcentury’s poet-physicians, an elite group typified by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who had access to the upper echelons of American society. Mitchell used his position to channel money and influence into the medical profession by fund-raising, aiding the careers of such consequential figures as William Osler, John Shaw Billings, and Simon Flexner, and politicking as a

554 Section 8: Mitchell, S. Weir member and sometimes president of over fifty professional organizations. He was also a University of Pennsylvania trustee for thirty-five years and a founding trustee of the Carnegie Institute. Mitchell’s reputation has suffered over the years, largely due to revelations of his paternalistic treatment of the feminist author and economist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was nearly driven insane by Mitchell’s advice to “live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time. . . . Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours’ intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live.” Gilman’s experience with Mitchell became the basis of her 1893 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” During his own time, however, Mitchell had a reputation for respecting and befriending talented, intelligent women. These included the Radcliffe educator Agnes Irwin, essayist Agnes Repplier, and novelist Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. David G. Schuster

Sources Earnest, Ernest. S. Weir Mitchell, Novelist and Physician. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950. Mitchell, S. Weir. Wear and Tear (or Hints for the Overworked). Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1887; reprint, New York: Arno, 1973.

NEURASTHENIA Neurasthenia—also known as nervous prostration, nervous exhaustion, Americanitis, and the American disease—rose to national attention in 1869 with articles by the alienist (psychiatrist) and asylum administrator Edwin H. Van Deusen and neurologist George M. Beard. It remained one of the nation’s most commonly diagnosed— even fashionable—illnesses until the 1920s. Unlike tuberculosis, which consumed the lungs, neurasthenia lacked a clear physiological pathology. Akin to George Cheyne’s “English malady” of the eighteenth century and Thomas Trotter’s “nervous temperament” at the turn of the nineteenth century, neurasthenia was a cultural construct cobbled together from medical science and popular anxieties peculiar to the

period, named to identify a set of disparate but highly prevalent symptoms. Indigestion, insomnia, back pain, headaches, depression, fatigue, irritability, an inability to concentrate, impotence, and infertility all were potential signs of neurasthenia. Physicians today have compared the disease with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, mononucleosis, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Influenced by the work of European scientists such as Emil du Bois-Reymond, Robert von Mayer, and Hermann von Helmholtz, American neurologists predicated neurasthenia on the existence of “nervous energy” produced by digestion and distributed throughout the body via the nervous system. Neurasthenia signaled the depletion of this energy. Physicians typically blamed neurasthenia on cultural stresses associated with modernization: Families left mythically idyllic countrysides for burgeoning cities; men left the plough and field for the office and business; women left the family and parlor for university and careers; speeding trains, rattling stock tickers, and clacking telegraphs created a fast-paced, anxiety-plagued world that supposedly drained people of energy. As theorists believed the United States to be the most modern of nations, neurasthenia was initially seen as a uniquely American phenomenon. By the 1880s, however, European countries, especially Germany, were also reporting cases of neurasthenia. Treatments sought to replenish a body’s supply of nervous energy through a variety of methods, including the application of gentle electric currents, exercise, vacations, and Weir Mitchell’s “rest cure” of prolonged bed rest combined with a diet of rich foods. Books such as Beard’s American Nervousness (1881) and Mitchell’s Wear and Tear (1871) highlighted the links between health and society and the importance of lifestyles and attitude. By the turn of the twentieth century, Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, Elwood Worcester’s Emmanuel Movement, and Bernarr MacFadden’s Physical Culture all were marketed toward neurasthenics. By the 1930s, however, American physicians rarely diagnosed neurasthenia. There had been a paradigm shift toward psychological explanations for health, typified by Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, rather than “nervous energy.”

Section 8: Neurosis 555 Moreover, physicians had found the diagnosis too broad and unwieldy, and it had lost its fashionable attractiveness for patients. David G. Schuster

Sources Gosling, Francis. Before Freud: Neurasthenia and the American Medical Community, 1870–1910. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Lutz, Tom. American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.

NEUROSIS In the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, nervous conditions such as neurasthenia and hysteria were the leading examples of the neuroses, considered at that time to be organic in origin and pertaining to the nerves. The term “neurasthenia” had been coined by George Miller Beard, a neurologist who studied the nervous exhaustion that plagued middleclass, white-collar workers who sought treatment for a variety of physiological ills such as dyspepsia, sexual disorder, headaches, and general fatigue. Beard and his counterparts used a mild form of electrical treatment to stimulate and refresh the nerves of patients who came to his office for daily treatment for weeks or months as a time. Hysteria was conceived of as the female counterpart to neurasthenia. Although women suffering hysterical symptoms often received electrical treatments, they might also be prescribed the rest cure invented by S. Weir Mitchell. In this treatment, the women were confined to complete bed rest, discouraged from intellectual activity, and fed upwards of five meals a day. At the beginning of the twentieth century, psychiatrists reclassified mental illness into two broad categories: neuroses, now associated with nonhereditary nervous conditions such as anxiety, mild depression, and other adjustment disorders; and psychoses, which were seen as inherited, organic, and often incurable ailments. The reclassification of neuroses came about because of the growing suspicion among neurologists and others that hysteria and neurasthenia

had no organic origin and were instead psychosomatic—physical symptoms caused by mental conflict or stress. Through the investigation of such disorders, a new psychological understanding of mental illness was formulated that led Americans to embrace Freudian psychology and the idea that many mental illnesses were treatable. Further evidence came from the life of Clifford Beers, who recovered from his own psychic pain to write A Mind That Found Itself in 1908 and to launch the mental hygiene movement in 1909. Both Freudian psychiatry and the mental hygiene movement offered hope for middle-class patients, such as those treated by Beard, who suffered from anxiety manifested by an inability to fit into their everyday environment. Rather than attempt to restore the nerves, professionals urged such patients to gain insight into their problems through talk therapy and techniques of psychoanalysis, such as Rorschach inkblots and free association. When patients complained of physical ailments, they were urged to understand that the pains or other symptoms were psychosomatic manifestations of underlying problems associated with unconscious conflicts that needed to be recognized before they could be resolved. Just as neurasthenia and hysteria were reclassified at the turn of the century and then dropped as recognized disease entities in psychiatry, so neuroses disappeared after 1980, when the American Psychiatric Association published the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM III). In this revision, the general classification of neuroses was abandoned, and mental disease was categorized by symptoms rather than etiology. Patients who in the past would have been diagnosed as neurotic would be assigned a specific ailment, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder, or adjustment disorder. Treatment became primarily pharmacological, with drugs designated for the specific symptoms associated with the disorder. The term “neuroses” was completely abandoned in DSM IV in 1994. Timothy W. Kneeland

Sources American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994.

556 Section 8: Neurosis Dain, Norman. Clifford Beers: Advocate for the Insane. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980. Gosling, Francis. Before Freud: Neurasthenia and the American Medical Community, 1870–1910. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Lunbeck, Elizabeth. The Psychiatric Persuasion: Knowledge, Gender, and Power in Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Shorter, Edward. From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era. New York: Free Press, 1992.

P R A G M AT I S M Perhaps the most inherently American of philosophies, pragmatism is often associated with the sweeping changes affecting American society and culture in the nineteenth century. From 1800 to 1870, the nation moved steadily away from a bucolic and agricultural past toward an industrial and commercial future. By the 1870s, America was characterized by adventure, invention, and an experimental “give it a try” attitude that departed sharply from the harsher doctrinal strictures of Calvinism and Puritanism. From the social and cultural perspective, the ground lay open for a new philosophy consonant with change. Unlike many other branches of philosophy, pragmatism’s origin can be delimited in time and place: the 1870s meetings of the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This discussion group numbered among its members three powerful thinkers: Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., later to become a Supreme Court justice. The three founders of pragmatism were soon joined by a fourth, Chicago educator John Dewey, who continued the extension and explication of pragmatic ideas until his death in 1952. Although each of these men formulated pragmatism in slightly different terms (with Holmes applying it specifically in the realm of law), there is a remarkable coherence of central ideas among them, as well as a generosity of spirit in giving credit to others. It is tempting to understand pragmatism as a philosophy of “pragmatic thinking” in the colloquial sense—but this would be far from accurate. Pragmatism’s reach and power go far

behind the colloquial meaning of “pragmatic.” Central to the philosophy of pragmatism is the idea that all human ideas and beliefs must be tested in action, not merely bandied about in conversation. The truth of a proposition, therefore, is assessed by looking at its real-world consequences. Ideas and concepts that conform well to experience may be said to be closer to the truth than those that do not. In pragmatism, inquiry—rather than armchair speculation or logical constructs—takes the central role, and, in this sense, pragmatism takes on the character of the scientific method. The founders of this school believed that anchoring a philosophy in practical inquiry had equal validity in the moral, ethical, and legal spheres. In their view, human conduct should be guided by a spirit of open-mindedness and eagerness to try things out and learn from the consequences of those trials. Dewey, in particular, stressed the connection between the scientific method of inquiry and the more general pragmatic method applied in the larger arena of human life. He also developed the notion that knowledge is fundamentally instrumental: It should be used to organize experience and to lay the basis for further inquiry and action. While the formal school of pragmatism did not outlive its founders, the ideas it encompasses continue to influence many other branches of philosophy, as well as American education, political theory, ethics, and jurisprudence. In an age dominated by the ideas and methods of science, the tenets of pragmatism remain surprisingly fresh and useful. As a consequence, the legacy of Peirce, James, Holmes, and Dewey continues to be studied and applied in America and throughout the world. William M. Shields

Sources Buchler, Justus, ed. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York: Dover, 1955. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. The Common Law and Other Writings. Reprint ed. New York: Legal Classics Library, 1981. James, William. Pragmatism and the Meaning of Truth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. McDermott, John J., ed. The Philosophy of John Dewey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Section 8: Psychiatry 557

P S YC H I AT R Y The origins of American psychiatry can be traced to the formation of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII) in October 1844. This organization evolved to become, in the twentieth century, the American Psychiatric Association. The journal adopted as the official organ of the AMSAII, the Journal of Insanity, became the American Journal of Psychiatry. The medical directors of AMSAII were physicians who believed that mental illness was caused by environmental stresses that led to irrational thinking and loss of sanity. Asylums were created as refuges from the world and as habitats to eliminate the environmental effects that led to mental breakdown. Thus, early American psychiatry reflected the prevailing European regimen known as moral therapy. Initially, asylums provided a high level of care for patients, many of whom were eventually deemed cured. After the Civil War, however, the number of cured patients fell and institutions increasingly became custodians of the chronically mentally ill, the aged, and those suffering from drug and alcohol addictions. In response to the growing number of institutionally bound patients, local and state governments built institutions to provide custodial care to those with a chronic or incurable illness. The Civil War spawned a new branch of medicine, neurology, which dealt with diseases of the nerves. Neurologists, assuming that mental disease had an organic rather than environmental origin, looked for lesions and injuries to the central nervous system to explain mental illness. Neurologists were associated with private practice and served a largely middle-class clientele suffering from a variety of disorders, including neurasthenia and hysteria. This two-tiered system, whereby the poor and chronically ill went into institutions and the middle class went to private practitioners, caused a professional rivalry between the alienists (institutional psychiatrists) and neurologists. As an outgrowth of this rivalry, the alienists, led by Adolph Meyer, began increasingly to rely on scientific practices and techniques to investigate

mental disease; in this way, they transformed the profession into modern psychiatry. During the early twentieth century, there was a renewed interest in the environmental causes of mental illness, as well as in the newly discovered concept of the “unconscious” mind. The field of neuropsychiatry was born, with physicians trained in both the nervous system and psychological theories. Asylums continued to house the chronically ill, and conditions in these institutions deteriorated during the Great Depression and the wartime shortages of World War II. In response, psychiatrists tried a series of measures to cure or alleviate the symptoms of institutionalized mentally ill patients, including insulin shock and electroshock. Another treatment was frontal leucotomy, psychosurgery in which an incision is made in the white matter of the brain, near the frontal lobes. Leucotomy, like frontal lobotomy, in which the frontal lobes are separated from the brain by cutting the connecting nerves, was intended to relieve symptoms of severe depression and psychosis. Outside of these institutions, now designated as mental hospitals, private practice physicians brought Freudian psychiatry to prominence in the period 1940–1970. Psychoanalytic psychiatry

Psychiatric care has undergone major transformations in recent decades. Electroshock therapy, out of favor in the wake of abuses in the mid-twentieth century, has been revived for many cases of depression. (Herbert Gehr/ Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

558 Section 8: Psychiatry dominated the American Psychiatric Association, and leading medical schools specialized in psychiatry. Using psychodynamic techniques to elicit insight, psychoanalysts treated patients in both public institutions and private practice, though analysis proved ineffective in cases of intractable disorders such as schizophrenia. A new phase in psychiatry began in 1952 with the release of the drug chlorpromazine (Thorazine), which launched the psychopharmacological revolution that provided treatments for schizophrenia, manic depression, and a host of ailments once thought incurable. These tools, which increasingly focused on the symptoms of mental illness, led psychiatrists to redefine the diagnosis of these ailments. Beginning with the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), mental health professionals began to diagnose disease-based symptoms of an illness, rather than approaching diagnosis through the presumptive cause, or etiology, of the disorder. Behaviors once thought to be aspects of personality are now identified as discrete disorders. During the last few decades, psychiatrists have largely abandoned Freudian psychoanalysis. Instead of patients receiving treatment at large institutions, they are more often treated on an outpatient basis, relying on a host of psychopharmacological tools to control the symptoms of mental illness. Timothy W. Kneeland

Sources Grob, Gerald. The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America’s Mentally Ill. New York: Free Press, 1994. Horwitz, Allan. Creating Mental Illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Shorter, Edward. A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997.

R H I N E , J.B. (1895–1980) Joseph Banks Rhine, the leading parapsychologist of the twentieth century who sought to elevate parapsychology to the status of science, was

born on September 29, 1895, in Waterloo, Pennsylvania. The Rhine family made several moves during his childhood, including periods spent in New Jersey and Ohio. In 1914, Rhine matriculated at Ohio Northern College and after two years moved to the College of Wooster. His intention was to become a minister, but he disliked theological education and gradually lost his faith. In December 1917, he dropped out of the College of Wooster and joined the U.S. Marine Corps during the early days of America’s involvement in World War I. Following the war, Rhine attended the University of Chicago, where he majored in biology. He married fellow student Louisa Weckesser in 1920. Rhine obtained his B.S. degree in 1922, his M.S. in 1923, and his Ph.D. in plant physiology in 1925. During the 1920s, Rhine became interested in the age-old debate over the relationship between the mind and the body. After two years spent teaching biology at West Virginia University, he resigned his position and went to Harvard and then Duke to study with William McDougall, who believed that parapsychological research could reveal the existence and nature of the mind. In 1927, McDougall, the chair of the psychology department, found a position for Rhine teaching psychology and philosophy. At Duke, Rhine began experimentation in parapsychology. For decades, researchers had attempted to document the existence and nature of psychic phenomena. In Great Britain, the Society for Psychical Research had subjected famous mediums to (sometimes) tightly controlled observation, exposing some as frauds. The claims of psychic mediums as well as the scientific analysis of their behavior were in part a response to modern science, which tended to question the religious concept of the soul. Rhine attempted to bring rigorous scientific experimentation to the study of parapsychology and extrasensory perception. Rather than study the behavior of a small number of selfproclaimed psychic mediums, he searched for parapsychological abilities in a broad range of persons, including a large number of Duke undergraduates. His research sought evidence of clairvoyance, precognition, and other manifestations of psychic ability. Subjects were studied under laboratory conditions, with blind tests and statistical analysis of results. Rhine’s research

Section 8: Rogers, Carl 559 satisfied him that some subjects, whom he dubbed “sensitives,” had greater than random abilities in these areas. Then as now, however, mainstream psychological researchers were largely hostile to parapsychological studies, finding fault with the rigor of research design, selfreported phenomena, and statistical analyses. In 1937, Rhine became a full professor in Duke’s psychology department and, with McDougall, founded and edited the Journal of Parapsychology; in 1942, he became its senior editor. From 1934 on, Rhine became increasingly famous as the leading American expert on parapsychology, a field that had much greater acceptance outside academe than within. His many popular publications provided the scientific foundation of the field. In 1948, the Duke Parapsychological Laboratory was created, and, in 1962, Rhine changed the lab’s name to the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man. A few years earlier, in 1957, he had founded the Parapsychological Association, an international society for scientific researchers in the field, on the model of the American Psychological Association. Rhine’s major publications include New Frontiers of the Mind (1937), Extra-sensory Perception After Sixty Years (with others; 1940), The Reach of the Mind (1947), New World of the Mind (1953), and Parapsychology: Frontier Science of the Mind (with J.G. Pratt; 1957). In October 1979, Rhine was elected president of the Society for Psychical Research. He died in Hillsborough, North Carolina, on February 20, 1980, at the age of eighty-four. David Lonergan

Sources Brian, Denis. The Enchanted Voyager: The Life of J.B. Rhine. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1982. Mauskopf, Seymour, and Michael McVaugh. “Joseph Banks Rhine (1895–1980).” American Psychologist 36:3 (1981): 310–11. Rhine, Louisa E. Something Hidden. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1983.

ROGERS, CARL (1902–1987) The American psychologist Carl Rogers was the creator of a client-centered therapy known as

A founder of the humanistic movement in modern psychology, Carl Rogers (second from right, pointing) is known specifically for his client-centered approach to therapy—whereby the individual draws on inner resources to resolve problems. (Michael Rougier/Time & Life Pictures/ Getty Images)

the person-centered approach (PCA). He was a pioneer of humanistic psychology and of the human potential movement, typified by encounter groups. Rogers was born January 8, 1902, in Oak Park, Illinois, attended the University of Wisconsin and the Union Theological Seminary, and graduated with a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University in 1931. He taught at Ohio State University and the University of Chicago in the 1940s and the University of Wisconsin in the 1950s. He wrote more than 200 articles and sixteen books, the most important being Client-Centered Therapy (1951). Rogers argued that human nature is essentially positive when individuals are in a climate of safety and have complete freedom to be and to choose, without the restrictions of “conditions of worth.” Rogers’s self-actualization theory developed in contrast to traditional psychotherapy. His central hypothesis is that individuals have within them vast resources for self-understanding and self-directed behavior to alter their basic attitudes about self. Self-actualization is activated in a therapeutic environment of trust and love characterized specifically by the therapist’s “genuineness and congruence,” “unconditional positive regard” toward the client, and “empathetic understanding.” A peace activist, Rogers visited Ireland, South Africa, and the Soviet Union in the 1980s to

560 Section 8: Rogers, Carl encourage cooperation and communication between rival groups. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, and his many awards included the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award (1956) and the Distinguished Professional Contribution Award (1972) by the American Psychological Association. He also won an Academy Award for Best Features for Journey into Self (1969), a film about an encounter group he led. Rogers died on February 4, 1987. Grigoris Mouladoudis

Sources Kirschenbaum, Howard, and Valerie Land Henderson, eds. Carl Rogers: Dialogues. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. ———. The Carl Rogers Reader. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Rogers, Carl R. On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. ———. On Personal Power. New York: Delacorte, 1977. ———. A Way of Being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980. Thorne, Brian. Carl Rogers. London: Sage, 1992.

SHELDON, WILLIAM (1898–1977) American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon studied how individual body types affect personality. His somatotype perspective, which relates body type to temperament, hypothesized a link between physiology and criminal behavior. William Sheldon was born in rural Rhode Island. He attended Warwick High School and Brown University, and he served in the U.S. Army during World War I. After the war, he attended the University of Chicago, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1925 and an M.D. in 1933. Sheldon was influenced by the psychologists William James and Sigmund Freud and by the social scientists Cesare Lombroso, Earnest Hooten, and Ernst Kretschmer. Lombroso was an Italian physician who believed that deviant people have not progressed or evolved to levels achieved by the society as a whole; deviants are identified by physical traits that reflect a throwback to an early stage of evolution. Hooten, an American anthropologist, posited that body shape and behavior correspond with the geographic region of origin. Kretschmer, a German

psychiatrist, maintained that body build correlates with psychological dispositions: “cycloid” types are characterized by an obese body shape and alternately normal and abnormal behavior; “schizoids” have an athletic body shape and are prone to violence and schizophrenia; “displastics” have mixed body types and impulsive behavior patterns. Unlike Kretschmer, who focused on a wide range of ages in his subjects, Sheldon conducted a study of younger offenders (age fifteen to twenty-one) at a Boston juvenile reformatory. From this study Sheldon developed his theory of typology. He concluded that three distinct physiological types—endomorphs, ectomorphs, and mesomorphs—have a corresponding set of personality traits, including inclinations toward criminality. Endomorphs are characterized by small stature, soft muscles, and obesity, and they are relaxed and friendly with others. Ectomorphs are thin and frail, and they are reserved and unpredictable. Mesomorphs are muscular and angular, and they are behaviorally controlling, dominant, and competitive. Sheldon reported that the mesomorph was the most common type in the reformatory, and he concluded that this body style relates most to criminal behavior. He published his biocriminological theory in Varieties in Delinquent Youth (1949), among other writings. Sheldon’s theory received much attention. Two Harvard researchers, Sheldon Gluek and Eleanor Gluek, used his ideas to complete a large-scale study of delinquent boys (published in 1950 as Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency), which reinforced the credibility of Sheldon’s theories. Although somatotype psychology enjoyed popularity at mid-century, the theory has been refuted by critics who argue that biopsychological traits do not alone, or even primarily, cause juvenile delinquency. Social influences, they maintain, have an equal or greater effect on human behavior. Sheldon taught at the University of Chicago and Harvard University in the 1930s and early 1940s; he briefly served as a major in the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the war, Sheldon became director of the Constitutional Clinic in New York City. In 1950, he took a position at the Gesell Institute of Child Development

Section 8: Skinner, B.F. 561 in New Haven, Connecticut. He worked at the institute until 1971, when he retired and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sheldon was also an expert numismatic, and he published Early American Cents 1793–1814: An Exercise in Descriptive Classification with Tables of Rarity and Value in 1949. He died in Cambridge on September 16, 1977. Leonard A. Steverson

Sources Arraj, Tyra. Tracking the Elusive Human, Volume 2: An Advanced Guide to the Typological Worlds of C.G. Jung, W.H. Sheldon, Their Integration, and the Biochemical Typology of the Future. Chiloquin, OR: Inner Growth, 1990. Bierne, Piers, and James Messerschmit. Criminology. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991. Brown, Stephanie, Finn-Aage Esbensen, and Gibber Geis. Criminology: Explaining Crime and Its Context. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, 1991. Sheldon, William H. Varieties of Delinquent Youth. New York: Harper, 1949. ———. Varieties of Temperament: A Psychology of Constitutional Differences. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1942.

research at Harvard under a National Research Fellowship and as a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows. As a fellow, he chose a mentor in the physiology department rather than the psychology department because of his interest in studying behavior rather than mental processes. During his time as a Harvard fellow, Skinner made what many consider his most important contribution to behavioral psychology: the discovery of what he called “operant conditioning,” the process of arranging how a specific reinforcement is administered to produce a new kind of behavior. To conduct his behavioral research, he designed a special soundproof box— now known as a “Skinner Box”—that allowed him to control the environment of pigeons or rats. Inside was a food dispenser that a rat could operate by pressing a lever, or that a pigeon could operate by pecking a key. Skinner used the box to condition the animals by giving them a

S K I N N E R , B.F. (1904–1990) Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner was a pioneer of behaviorist psychology and behavior modification research. Building on the early work of nineteenth-century behaviorists such as John Watson, Skinner made behavioral psychology the most popular form of psychology in the midtwentieth century. He argued that animal and human behavior could be shaped by almost any stimulus and negative or positive reinforcement. He advocated the theory that observable, measurable behavior is the most appropriate subject for scientific psychological research. B.F. Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, and attended Hamilton College in New York, where he studied English. After graduating, he embarked on a brief career as a writer, during which time he discovered the works of Ivan Pavlov and Watson and wanted to learn more about their theories. At the age of twenty-four, he enrolled in Harvard’s psychology program, earning his Ph.D. in 1931. For the next five years, he did laboratory

An experimental behaviorist, B.F. Skinner used his famous Skinner box for studying learning processes and responses to stimuli in laboratory mice and other animals. (Nina Leen/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

562 Section 8: Skinner, B.F. positive reinforcement, or reward, in the form of a food pellet for learning a particular behavior. Using the device, he was able to condition rats to press levers and pigeons to play table tennis. During his work with the Skinner Box, he discovered that the rate at which a rat pressed the bar did not depend on any stimulus that came before it, but on what came after: the reward. This was the direct opposite of what both Pavlov and Watson had argued in their theory of behaviorism. According to Skinner’s studies, the behavior “operates” on the environment and is controlled by its effects. Thus, it came to be known as “operant conditioning.” The findings were published in his first book, The Behavior of Organisms (1938), the foundation of the Skinnerian brand of behaviorism. In 1936, Skinner took his first teaching job, in Minnesota. He stayed there until 1945, when he became chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Indiana. Skinner returned to Harvard in 1947 to deliver a William James Lecture series. The following year, he joined the Psychology Department full-time, where he gave a course for over 400 undergraduates. As World War II was coming to an end, Skinner wrote what many consider his most influential book, Walden Two (1948). In this fictional depiction of a utopian society, peoples’ behavior has been carefully shaped by behavioral conditioning. They give up individual liberties, and a Utopia based on his social engineering theories is created. During the 1950s and 1960s, while teaching full-time, Skinner was also a prolific writer and researcher, producing the psychology textbooks Science and Human Behavior (1953), Verbal Behavior (1957), and Schedules of Reinforcement (1957). He also conducted research that led to the development of several psychological specialties such as behavior therapy and psychopharmacology. It was also during this time that he applied his concept of learned behavior to classroom teaching. He did this through the construction of machines for programmed learning; by this method, students were feds bits of information in small, sequential steps rather than being required to learn all the material at once. The machines were designed to improve students’ reading and math skills through positive reinforcement in the form of praise. Skinner de-

scribed his work with programmed instruction in The Technology of Teaching (1968). Skinner continued to write throughout the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the effects of behavioral science on society at large and on moral and philosophical issues. Works in this vein include Contingencies of Reinforcement (1969), Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), and About Behaviorism (1974). B.F. Skinner died of leukemia on August 18, 1990, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 86. Judith B. Gerber

Sources Bjork, Daniel. B.F. Skinner: A Life. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1997. Skinner, B.F. About Behaviorism. New York: Vintage Books, 1976. ———. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002. ———. Walden Two. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1948, 1976.

S U L L I VA N , H A R R Y S TA C K (1892–1949) Although Harry Stack Sullivan published only one book during his lifetime—a collection of public lectures called Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry (1947)—his theoretical and therapeutic contributions to interpersonal psychology and the treatment of severe disorders marked him as an important figure in American behavioral sciences. He was a founder of the Washington (D.C.) School of Psychiatry (1936); the William Alanson White Institute (1946), a leading training institution for psychotherapists in New York City; and the journal Psychiatry (1937), which he also edited. Herbert (Harry) Stack Sullivan was born on February 21, 1892, to a poor Irish Catholic farm family in Norwich, New York. He received a scholarship to attend Cornell University in the fall of 1908, but failing grades during the second semester of undergraduate study led to his suspension. In 1911, he entered the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery, an institution that accepted candidates with only a high school education, and he received his medical degree in 1917. He began working at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital

Section 8: Superego 563 in Washington, D.C., under the pioneering neurologist and psychotherapist William Alanson White. In 1922, Sullivan was appointed liaison officer between the hospital and the Veterans Administration. In that capacity, he treated World War I veterans who suffered from psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. Sullivan earned his reputation for the innovative and humane treatment of schizophrenic patients— long thought to be untreatable—at St. Elizabeth’s and Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Baltimore. He also held a professorship at the University of Maryland Medical School from 1925 to 1930. Sullivan’s theory of psychiatry and his approach to treatment were based on the complexity of interpersonal relationships and cultural dynamics experienced by the individual. Although he adhered to the traditional psychodynamic view that psychological disorders are symptoms of underlying conflict between components of the individual psyche, Sullivan diverged from Freudian psychoanalysis in several key respects. The critical factor, in his view, is “interactional” rather than “intrapsychic” dynamics. Thus, for example, the early parent–child relationship is not significant for its psychosexual implications but as an expression of the child’s need for security. In therapy as well, his work reflected a rejection of traditional psychoanalytic tools, such as dream analysis and free association, which produce characterizations of the patient’s mental state that cannot be scientifically verified. Instead, Sullivan advanced a view of the analyst as one who cannot remain neutral toward the patient and who creates an open, tolerant, social environment to facilitate the treatment process. He understood personality as a function of the interaction between people, believed that even severe psychiatric disorders could not be properly understood except through the lens of interpersonal relationships, and, in the same spirit, devised creative approaches to treatment. Sullivan required that ward attendants for schizophrenic patients under his supervision be specially trained to maintain peer relationships. Sullivan also devoted his energies to international commissions for peace and mental health. He lectured on behalf of the World Health Organization and other organizations on the merits of interpersonal theory in the alleviation of in-

ternational disputes as well as in psychiatric treatment. He died in Paris on January 14, 1949, after attending a meeting of the World Federation for Mental Health. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Chapman, Arthur H. Harry Stack Sullivan: His Life and His Work. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976. ———. The Treatment Techniques of Harry Stack Sullivan. London. Brunner-Routledge, 1978. Perry, Helen Swick. Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Harry Stack Sullivan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.

SUPEREGO In the terms developed by Sigmund Freud, the superego (in Latin, the “above ‘I’ ”) is the moral arm of the ego, which is itself a differentiated facet of the id. It has become closely associated with a kind of self-imposed monitoring system through which an individual behaves according to what he or she has internalized unconsciously as his or her predominant moral code. The superego does not develop or take root until after the infant’s ego has successfully begun to form and cultivate a productive relationship with the external world—usually toward the end of the phallic stage, near the age of five. The superego takes shape as the child interacts with people and the environment, internalizing the moral and ethical edicts offered by influences such as parents and the general system of values embraced by the society in which the child is being raised. In Freudian psychoanalysis, the superego finds one of its clearest and perhaps most definitive expressions in boys who struggle to resolve their unconscious Oedipal conflicts. The boy will usually forsake his mother-object and internalize his father’s prohibitive edict and accompanying threat of castration as a way of transforming the nature of unconscious wishes for incest and aggression, and thus of developing a healthy relationship with his parents. Later revisions of Freudian psychoanalysis such as Melanie Klein’s object theory—which places more emphasis on

564 Section 8: Superego an individual’s relationships with people and their unconscious impressions of them, and less emphasis on the determining influence of biological instincts—locate the development of the superego much earlier, during the infant’s oral stage. In addition to its role in the transformation of socially unacceptable wishes, the superego functions as a kind of primordial conscience. It bears a strong connection with the unconscious realm, where the edicts and taboos it comes to internalize during the phallic stage might stand in direct conflict with the conscious moral imperatives the individual might assume simultaneously or later in life. But the superego develops in response to a conflict between the ego and the id in a way that counterbalances the potentially destructive impulses the individual has had to repress. In many instances, the superego strives to override those impulses by drawing some of the energy of its prohibitions and taboos directly from the id itself. The superego allows people to punish themselves with reproaches, guilt, and self-criticisms when their behavior fails to uphold the values they unconsciously maintain—or, alternatively, to reward themselves with pride and satisfaction when their actions firmly uphold their belief in what is good and what is acceptable. The superego also consists of an ego ideal, or an idealized and fully potentiated ego that the self posits for itself as a kind of end goal in an otherwise normal process of socialization and identity formation. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1960. Kahn, Michael. Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

W AT S O N , J O H N B. (1878–1958) Born in Greenville, South Carolina, on January 9, 1878, John Broadus Watson went on to become one of America’s foremost behavioral psychologists. His research on animal and human behavior laid the groundwork for a new branch of

American psychology known as behaviorism— an objective focus on the conditioning of human behavior by external stimuli rather than a subjective focus on feelings and unconscious motivations. After attending Furman University in his native Greenville, Watson earned his doctorate in psychology from the University of Chicago in 1903, writing a dissertation on the increasingly complex behavior he observed in rats as their nervous systems aged. After continuing his research in Chicago on sensory input, learning, and behavior, he was appointed professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University in 1908. In a famous lecture at New York’s Columbia University in 1913, titled “Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It,” Watson outlined what he regarded as one of the fundamental goals of contemporary psychology: the need to move away from Freudian theories of the human psyche and the subconscious, and to embrace a more objective and experimentally based science that allows psychologists to quantify human behavior and predict what people might do under specific environmental conditions. His major early works include Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology (1914) and Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist (1919). He became president of the American Psychological Association in 1915. Taking his procedural cues from Ivan Pavlov, the Russian physiologist who had been studying conditioned reflexes in dogs, Watson in 1920 published the results of one of his more famous studies involving a human subject, the “Little Albert” experiment. In this controversial experiment, an eleven-month-old boy was conditioned to fear rats—and later, other furry objects resembling rats, including a Santa Claus mask—by exposing him simultaneously to loud and unexpected noises. Watson believed the experiment supported his claim that he could condition healthy infants to be any type of person he wished. In the 1920s, Watson became embroiled in a widely publicized scandal when a romantic affair with a research associate was revealed, forcing him to resign his post at Johns Hopkins. He continued publishing groundbreaking works, including Behaviorism (1924) and Psychological Care of Infant and Child (1928), which together delineated some of the most fundamental theories

Section 8: Watson, John B. 565 and methods in the fields of behavioral and child psychology. Watson inaugurated the second major phase of his career in 1924, when he became a vice president of the J. Walter Thompson Company, a prestigious advertising agency. His foray into the business world enabled him to work on advertising campaigns that put his research on human behavior—and the possibility of human behavior to be predicted and controlled—to commercial use. Upon his death on September 25, 1958, Watson left behind academic and professional legacies that reflected his desire to elevate psychology to the level of a natural science with

practical applications. His scholarship influenced the research of later behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner, who relied on Watson’s work on conditioned responses to develop his own theory of operant conditioning, and Watson’s ideas also helped shape future corporate advertising strategies. Dragoslav Momcilovic

Sources Buckley, Kerry W. Mechanical Man: John Broadus Watson and the Beginnings of Behaviorism. New York: Guilford, 1989. Todd, James T., and Edward K. Morris, eds. Modern Perspectives on John B. Watson and Classical Behaviorism. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994.

DOCUMENTS Source: William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902).

William James’s Identity Crisis According to an old adage, the most able psychologists engage in intensive self-examination to discover their own personality types and neuroses. This was certainly true for psychologist and philosopher William James, as indicated by the following excerpt from The Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1902. [O]ne evening . . . there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum, a black-haired youth with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, who used to sit all day on one of the benches, or rather shelves against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his chin, and the coarse gray undershirt, which was his only garment, drawn over them inclosing his entire figure. He sat there like a sort of sculptured Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. This image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other. That shape am I, I felt, potentially. Nothing that I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for it should strike for me as it struck for him. There was such a horror of him, and such a perception of my own merely momentary discrepancy from him, that it was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. After this the universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never felt since. It was like a revelation; and although the immediate feelings passed away, the experience has made me sympathetic with the morbid feelings of others ever since. It gradually faded, but for months I was unable to go out into the dark alone.

Jonathan Edwards’s Portrait of Christian Guilt Jonathan Edwards was America’s greatest theologian, and hence he was a student of the human psyche. The following excerpt from his 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” provides a fascinating discourse on the nature of human guilt and the search for redemption. How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh that you would consider it, whether you be young or old! There is reason to think, that there are many in this congregation now hearing this discourse, that will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising themselves that they shall escape. If we knew that there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation, that was to be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing would it be to think of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a person! How might all the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him! But, alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell? And it would be a wonder, if some that are now present should not be in hell in a very short time, even before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some person that now sits here in some seat of this meeting-house in health, and

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Section 8: Documents 567 quiet and secure, should be there before tomorrow morning. Those of you that finally continue in a natural condition, that shall keep out of hell longest, will be there in a little time! your damnation don’t slumber; it will come swiftly, and in all probability very suddenly upon many of you. You have reason to wonder, that you are not already in hell. ’Tis doubtless the case of some that heretofore you have seen and known, that never deserved hell more than you, and that heretofore appeared as likely to have been now alive as you: their case is past all hope; they are crying in extreme misery and perfect despair; but here you are in the land of the living, and in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation. What would not those poor damned, hopeless souls give for one day’s such opportunity as you now enjoy! And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to him, and pressing into the kingdom of God; many are daily coming from the east, west, north and south; many that were very lately in the same miserable condition that you are in, are in now an happy state, with their hearts filled with love to him that has loved them and washed them from their sins in his own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. How awful is it to be left behind at such a day! To see so many others feasting, while you are pining and perishing! To see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart, while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of heart, and howl for vexation of spirit! How can you rest one moment in such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of the people at Suffield [the neighboring town], where they are flocking from day to day to Christ? Are there not many here that have lived long in the world, and that are not to this day born again, and so are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and have done nothing ever since they have lived, but treasure up wrath against the day of wrath? Oh, sirs, your case in an especial manner is extremely dangerous; your guilt and hardness of heart is extremely great. Do you not see how generally persons of your years are

passed over and left, in the present remarkable and wonderful dispensation of God’s mercy? You had need to consider yourselves, and awake thoroughly out of sleep; you cannot bear the fierceness and wrath of the infinite God. And you that are young men, and young women, will you neglect this precious season which you now enjoy, when so many others of your age are renouncing all youthful vanities, and flocking to Christ? You especially have now an extraordinary opportunity; but if you neglect it, it will soon be with you as it is with those persons that spent away all the precious days of youth in sin, and are now come to such a dreadful pass in blindness and hardness. And you children that are unconverted, don’t you know that you are going down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of that God that is now angry with you every day, and every night? Will you be content to be the children of the devil, when so many other children in the land are converted, and are become the holy and happy children of the King of Kings? And let every one that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle aged, or young people, or little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God’s word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, that is a day of such great favor to some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to others. Men’s hearts harden, and their guilt increases apace at such a day as this, if they neglect their souls: and never was there so great danger of such persons being given up to hardness of heart, and blindness of mind. God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the greater part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on the great outpouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostles’ days, the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded. If this should be the case with you, you will eternally curse this day, and will curse the day that ever you was born, to see such a season of the pouring out of God’s Spirit; and will wish that you had died and gone to hell before you had seen it. Now undoubtedly it is, as it was in the days of John the Baptist: the ax is in an extraordinary manner laid at the root of the trees,

568 Section 8: Documents that every tree which brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down and cast into the fire. Source: H. Norman Gardiner, Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1904).

George Beard’s Description of Spiritism George Beard was a leader in the scientific investigation of parapsychology, as reflected in the following excerpt from his 1879 essay “The Psychology of Spiritism.” Modern spiritism is an attempt to apply the inductive method to religion; to make faith scientific; to confirm the longings of the heart by the evidence of the senses. . . . It is ignorance of the nature and phenomena of trance, and of the involuntary life of which trance is the supreme expression, and the unscientific state of the principles of evidence as derived from human testimony, that made spiritism a possibility and a power in these modern days, just as ignorance of astronomy gave birth to astrology, of chemistry to alchemy, of general pathology to witchcraft. Ten years ago trance was a realm as dark and

mysterious and unexplained as chemistry in the sixteenth century; the recent demonstration of the fact that it is a subjective, not . . . an objective state, is . . . a revolution as radical as the displacement of the Hipparchian by the Copernican theories of the universe. If trance, the involuntary life, and human testimony, were understood universal as they are now beginning to be understood by students of the nervous system, there would not, could not be a spiritist on our planet; for all would know that spirits only dwell in the cerebral cells—that not our houses but our brains are haunted. Trance is a very frequently occurring functional disease of the nervous system, in which the cerebral activity is concentrated in some limited region of the brain, the activity of the rest of the brain being for the time suspended. It matters not what is done to induce this state nor who does it, nor in what way, provided the brain be in a condition to enter it—physiologically or pathologically prepared for it; there is not a fact, or shape, or influence, of phenomenon, real or professed on earth, in the air, or sky, that may not act as an exciting cause. Source: George M. Beard, “The Psychology of Spiritism,” North American Review 129:272 (July 1879).

Section 9

ASTRONOMY

ESSAYS The New Science and Puritanism T

he Puritans of seventeenth-century New England, because of their Calvinist theology of taking an active approach to the world and its peoples, were inquisitive about the nature of the universe. They held it to be a window, if not entirely clear, through which to view the world’s creator at work. Science was a means to discover God. When the “new science” arrived from Europe during the seventeenth century, it was seen as a means of enlightenment in the ways of the divine. Puritan divines such as Cotton Mather advocated that Christians embrace science and philosophy. It was not until the eighteenth century that fallout from the widening gap between science and religion became apparent.

European Background to American Astronomy The “new science” was the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century term to describe the Scientific Revolution that began with the Copernican theory of the universe. The publication of On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres upon Nicolaus Copernicus’s death in 1543 brought about a slow movement of thought that later generations perceived somewhat inaccurately as a revolution. The change was from a geocentric view of the universe, in which the planet Earth was seen as the unmovable center of the cosmos, to a heliocentric view, in which the sun was the center around which Earth revolved. Copernicus was not the first to propose a heliocentric universe. Aristarchus of Samos anticipated Copernicus by 1,500 years, but he had been largely forgotten through the course of the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. The dominant system of astronomy was that of Claudius Ptolemy, an Alexandrian Greek who lived in the first century. Ptolemy’s

system was an intricate spherical universe with planets moving on epicycles around Earth. Copernicus, a Polish member of the clergy and a mathematician, believed that Ptolemy was in error in assuming that Earth was the center of the universe. The system worked more efficiently and elegantly with the sun in the center. In the century after Copernicus’s death, the greatest advocate of his theory was the Italian Galileo Galilei, whose book Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (1632) used mathematical as well as empirical evidence to outline his defense of the heliocentric universe. Galileo spent years exploring the heavens with a telescope and discovered that the old system of Aristotle and Ptolemy was inaccurate on several points. The geocentric system posited seven—and only seven—heavenly bodies moving in perfect spherical orbits. At the limits of the universe was the starry vault, beyond which was nothingness. The endless number of stars revealed to Galileo by his use of the telescope taught him the limitations of Aristotle’s starry vault. The Milky Way suggested the possibilities of an infinite universe. Galileo also discovered sunspots, the moons of Jupiter, and lunar craters, all of which convinced him that the ancient geocentric theory of the universe was erroneous. If the Copernican system was not completely accurate, it was a step in the direction of discovering the truth. The German Johannes Kepler also contributed to the understanding of the heliocentric universe. Kepler showed that the planets orbit the sun in an elliptical orbit, that as they move toward the sun they accelerate, and that their direction and place in the cosmos can be determined by mathematics. The new science had other apostles as well, such as the mathematician René Descartes, the chemist Robert Boyle, the philosopher Francis Bacon, and the physicist Isaac Newton. Descartes

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572 Section 9: Essays developed analytical geometry and proposed a new system of thought where all assumptions of the past should be discarded, replaced by a new empiricism, an epistemology of knowledge based on rational deduction, induction, mathematics, and empiricism. Descartes proposed a universe that operates like a machine based on natural laws. Boyle developed a theory that corpuscles— similar to the concept of atoms—are infinite and indestructible, comprising all things, coming together and dissipating over time. Boyle’s theory fit the idea of a mechanistic universe. Bacon was a synthesizer of ideas and a promoter of the new science. He envisioned a world based on the empirical pursuit and application of knowledge. Newton used Bacon’s empiricism and Boyle’s corpuscle theory to develop his idea of a mechanical universe: an orderly and harmonious system of natural laws that ensure constancy and regularity. Newton believed that God has benevolently provided a rational system and rational humans who have the ability by means of the exercise of their minds to uncover the laws of the universe.

The Puritans The Puritans who came to America in the early 1600s—the pilgrims of Plymouth and those who followed John Winthrop to Massachusetts Bay— were much too preoccupied with establishing communities and engaging in an “errand into the wilderness” to spend much time speculating on the nature of motion and the system of the universe. But they were highly literate thinkers, and the new science of astronomy influenced their ideas about cosmology and eschatology. The Puritans were obsessed with the nature and origins of all things, the ultimate causes and consequences of life, the interaction of humans with the divine, and the Puritans’ role as the chosen people of the omnipotent and omniscient God. The Puritans found nothing wrong with science helping humans discover those truths God chose to reveal. There was in Calvinism, hence Puritanism, the overwhelming sense that God is inscrutable, that the distance is vast between humans living brief corporeal lives and God, the eternal and infinite. Traditional Protestant Christianity taught that humans are ignorant of the great truths, unless these truths are revealed by God. But the new science assumed that rational

humans had the ability to discover the rational truths of the universe. If humans could gain knowledge of the universe and hence power over its workings, some wondered, what role then would God have? Another problem facing the Puritans was that the new science advocated an infinite universe. Infinity—unlimited quantity and unlimited space—assumes eternity, unlimited time. If the universe is infinite and eternal, how can the account in Genesis be true, that God created the heavens and the earth in six days? If God is so separate from his creation, if he is infinite and eternal but his creation is finite and bound by time, then how can God be involved in human affairs? How can God know time when he is timeless? A further problem for the Puritan embracing the new science was that the universe of Descartes and Newton was akin to an eternal machine, operating without hindrance according to set laws of order and regularity. If the creation was so perfect, what was the role of providence, God’s active will working in time? Was there a need for providence in a universe already made perfect by natural law? Was there a need for a chosen people to build a New Jerusalem if the universe offered all people of all times the same perfect regularity and order?

The Christian Philosopher The active center of Puritan science was Boston, where clergy such as Increase and Cotton Mather, astronomers such as Thomas Brattle and Thomas Robie, and physicists and mathematicians such as Isaac Greenwood and Charles Morton engaged in the study of physics, mathematics, and astronomy. They led the way in the acceptance of the new science in America. Mather, who embraced equally science and theology, set himself the task of reconciling the new science with Protestant (Calvinist) thinking. He accepted the rational universe of the new science, yet he believed that Satan was at work in this universe and that natural laws were sometimes disrupted by witches, the agents of Satan. He also knew that rational humans were continually confronted with the irrational. The human intellect and will were great, but not as great as God. Mather tried to reconcile providence with natural law; revelation with reason; God’s will with

Section 9: Essays 573 human will; ignorance and dependence with knowledge and independence; and faith with reason. Mather explored these contradictions in his book The Christian Philosopher (1721). He argued that scientists study the second causes that result from the first cause, God. Science was a second form of scripture—a scripture revealed in the works of God in nature. Mather regarded science as a legitimate human activity, because it is God’s will that humans use their reason to explore the hints God has placed in natural phenomena to tell us who God is and what he wants. Science therefore is a means of exercising piety. The pious scientist is one who studies nature and engages in science for the sake of knowing God and praising him and his works. Mather railed against deists, who believed that God’s providence was limited to the creation, when God ordained all things to work according to constant natural laws that will never change. God might be eternally present, deists believed, but only as an observer. Why should a master craftsman tinker with a perfect creation? God’s passivity was required by the new science. Increasingly in the eighteenth century in Europe and America, the logic of the new science

challenged Protestant theology. The Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s in America was a sign of the crisis in religious belief brought about by the new science. The New Lights, led by Jonathan Edwards, believed that God required Americans to embrace once again the Puritan worldview. Old Lights such as Charles Chauncy, however, embraced the natural theology of the new science. The splintering of Protestant Christianity into different denominations, the presence of Arminians believing in reason rather than revelation, and the growth of deism and secularism made it more difficult for the Christian philosopher to work comfortably in America. The new science swept aside all in its path—one of the first to go was the Puritan and his belief in the providential, godly universe. Russell Lawson

Sources Cohen, I. Bernard. The Birth of the New Physics. New York: W.W. Norton, 1980. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Copernican Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957. Stearns, Raymond. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

The American Astronomer A

merican astronomers during the colonial period were beholden to European theories. During the nineteenth century, they focused on practical results to support American navigation. During the twentieth century, they emerged as world leaders in the investigation of astronomical phenomena. American astronomers initially were slow to embrace the Copernican system. Puritan astronomers and Harvard scientists, however, embraced the new science of Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton as part of the emerging Enlightenment in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. As trade and navigation grew in importance to the American colonies and, after 1776, the independent United States, the focus of astronomers turned increasingly to providing accurate ephemerides—charts of the

positions of astronomical phenomena—to aid in coastal and transoceanic navigation. American astronomical observatories were founded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They became the most powerful instruments for discovering information about the solar system, galaxy, and universe.

Almanacs During the colonial period, almanacs were the most important instruments of disseminating astronomical information. American almanac publishers borrowed the idea from their counterparts in England, where almanacs had been published for centuries. English almanacs were primarily ephemerides; likewise, the first American almanacs provided

574 Section 9: Essays information on solar, lunar, planetary, and other celestial phenomena. Typical was the almanac of Samuel Danforth, a Massachusetts cleric who published MDCXLVII: An Almanack for the Year of Our Lord 1647, in which he described eclipses, phases of the moon, and the Julian calendar, which was used in colonial America until 1752. The first discussion of the Copernican system— the heliocentric system, which overturned the Ptolemaic geocentric system—occurred in Zechariah Brigden’s 1659 An Almanack of the Coelestial Motions for This Present Year of the Christian Aera. Brigden’s almanac included discussions of eclipses, stars, and constellations. Harvard graduate Henry Newman published two almanacs, Harvard’s Ephemeris (1690) and News from the Stars (1691), which were based on the Copernican system. Newman, like other Puritan almanac publishers, argued that the ideas of the new science (such as heliocentrism) were compatible with Christian theology. Nathan Bowen, for example, in The New-England Diary, or Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord Christ, 1726, calculated that it was 5,675 years since the creation of the world. In addition to weather predictions, Bowen included the phases of the moon and planets and how they affect the human body. Indeed, most almanacs included astrological information as a complement to astronomical data. Even so incredulous a scientist as Benjamin Franklin included the Man of Signs, a human diagram indicating what parts of the body are influenced by the movement of celestial bodies. Franklin began publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732. Besides astrological charts, his almanac discussed the movements of planets and phases of the moon. Franklin provided tables on planetary motions—the distances, positions, and orbits of planets—and discussed Newton’s ideas on planetary motion. The title page for his almanac of 1753 reads: Poor Richard improved: Being an Almanack and Ephemeris of the Motions of the Sun and Moon, the True Places and Aspects of the Planets; The Rising and Setting of the Sun; and the Rising, Setting, and Southing of the Moon, For the Year of our Lord 1753; Being the First after Leap-Year. Containing also, The Lunations, Conjunctions, Eclipses, Judgment of the Weather, Rising and Setting of the Planets, Length of Days and Nights, Fairs, Courts, Roads, &c. Together with

useful Tables, chronological Observations, and entertaining Remarks. Fitted to the Latitude of Forty Degrees, and a Meridian of near five Hours West from London; but may, without sensible Error, serve all the Northern Colonies.

Planets and comets particularly interested Franklin. In 1753, along with many of his fellow colonial Americans, he intended to observe the transit of Mercury across the disk of the sun, but he was prevented by cloudy weather. Franklin knew that Mercury, like Venus and unlike Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, never appears in the western sky when the sun is in the east, and vice versa. He knew how to calculate the distances between planets and the length of the year (or time of orbit around the sun) for each planet. He realized that the diameter of a single sunspot is much greater than the diameter of Earth. Franklin believed there was intelligent life in the solar system besides that of Earth. He realized the tremendous heat that existed on the surface of Mercury but was confident that life could still exist there, though it would be completely unlike anything experienced on Earth. “It does not follow,” he wrote, “that Mercury is therefore uninhabitable; since it can be no Difficulty for the Divine Power and Wisdom to accommodate the Inhabitants to the place they are to inhabit; as the Cold we see Frogs and Fishes bear very well, would soon deprive any of our Species of Life.” He believed that Jupiter and its moons had life as well. In his almanac for the years 1753 and 1754, Franklin speculated what it would be like to live on another planet. An inhabitant of Saturn would perceive the rings at quite a distance from the planet, in outer space. Inhabitants of one of Jupiter’s moons would perceive Jupiter the same way an inhabitant of Earth’s moon would perceive Earth. Earth would appear to Martians as would Mars to Earthlings. Martians would never see Mercury, and rarely Venus. Through a Martian telescope, Earth would appear the size of a large moon. “The Earth and Moon will appear to them,” he wrote in Poor Richard’s Almanack, “thro’ Telescopes if they have any such Instruments, like two Moons, a larger and a smaller, sometimes horned, sometimes Half or three Quarters illuminated, but never full.” Franklin, who had tremendous confidence in the intelligent order of the universe wrought by the creator,

Section 9: Essays 575 even conceived of the possibility of comets being inhabited, but he surmised that comet dwellers would be “wholly inconceivable to us.”

Calendar and Ephemeris The particular concerns of American almanac publishers, amateur astronomers, and the growing number of professional astronomers were accurate calendars upon which to base planting and trade, and accurate ephemerides upon which to base navigation at sea. Early American scientists sought practical information on coastal waters and harbors along the eastern coast. The Philadelphia glazier Thomas Godfrey in 1730 invented a sextant for use in determining latitude by American navigators. Even so, eighteenth-century Americans had to rely on British ephemerides, such as John Robertson’s Elements of Navigation (1755). Notwithstanding that Massachusetts mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch in 1802 published the American Practical Navigator, nineteenth-century American navigators continued to rely on The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, an annual that was first published by the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1766. In 1852, the Nautical Almanac Office of the U.S. Naval Observatory published The American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. The U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey also provided information for mariners, such as nautical charts. Simon Newcomb, the Nova Scotia native and mathematician, worked during the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s as an astronomer for the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac and U.S. Naval Observatory. Newcomb made accurate determinations of the distances, mass, and orbits of ce-

lestial bodies; his charts and calculations became the world standard for navigators at the end of the nineteenth century. By the turn of the century, the observations of American astronomers were advanced by the establishment in the United States of the most sophisticated observatories in the world. Astronomer George Hale was responsible for two of the first, the Yerkes Observatory (at Williams Bay, Wisconsin) in 1897, and the Mount Wilson (near Pasadena, California) in 1904; he later helped to establish an observatory at nearby Palomar (California). Percival Lowell established the Lowell Observatory (at Flagstaff, Arizona) in 1894; Pluto was discovered at this facility in 1930. More recently, American observatories have provided a staggering amount of information on our solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, and the universe. The Hubble Telescope and Chandra X, both in Earth orbit, and the radio and optical telescopes of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which includes Kitt Peak, Cerro Tololo, Gemini, and the National Solar Observatory, continue the American tradition of scientific observation to yield practical results. Russell Lawson

Sources Bell, Whitfield J., Jr., ed. The Complete Poor Richard Almanacks, published by Benjamin Franklin. 2 vols. Barre, MA: Imprint Society, 1970. Bowditch, Nathaniel. The New American Practical Navigator. 1802. Arcata, CA: Paradise Cay, 2002. Lankford, John. American Astronomy: Community, Careers, and Power, 1859–1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Lawson, Russell M. “Science and Medicine.” In American Eras: The Colonial Era, 1600–1754, ed. Jessica Kross. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

American Women in Astronomy U

ntil the mid-nineteenth century, the ranks of professional astronomers in America included precious few women. During the 1860s, however, Maria Mitchell, a professor of astronomy at Vassar College, began introducing a new generation of American women to the field. As a result,

an increasing number of women became engaged in astronomy as teachers and researchers. Gender restricted women’s career opportunities, but many took part in institutional research programs, most notably at the Harvard College Observatory. Gender distinctions in the field of

576 Section 9: Essays astronomy gradually disappeared over the course of the twentieth century, although women continued to be a minority in the profession.

Pioneers Maria Mitchell (1818–1889), a young librarian in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and her father, William, a bank clerk, spent their nights making observations for the U.S. Coast Survey from a telescope installed on the roof of a local bank. Their lives changed when Maria Mitchell identified a previously unknown comet on October 1, 1847. Her discovery immediately made her one of the most famous, if still amateur, astronomers in the United States. Ultimately, she became the first female professor at Vassar, the first American women’s college, founded in 1865. As an instructor, Mitchell maintained high standards for her students and provided them opportunities for observation and field trips, especially to view comets. Her own research resulted in original papers on such topics as double stars, photographing sunspots, and Jupiter’s and Saturn’s moons. Mitchell hoped that the women she trained would be able to work in academia as well, but, given societal norms and the limited opportunities available to women at that time, she expected that most would remain amateur astronomers. One student who was able to benefit directly from Mitchell’s model as a professor and astronomer was Mary Whitney (1847–1920). Whitney graduated from Vassar in 1868 and then attended the lectures of mathematician Benjamin Peirce at Harvard in 1869, 1870, and 1872. She studied in Zurich from 1874 to 1876 and became Mitchell’s assistant in 1881. She took over as professor of astronomy and director of the Vassar College Observatory when Mitchell retired in 1888. From 1894, when Whitney had more personal time to devote to research, she studied the minor planets. Her assistant, Caroline Furness, succeeded her and used professional relationships to find jobs for other women. Vassar was the leading institution for women involved in astronomy before 1900, although there were also strong programs at other women’s colleges. Professors at Radcliffe and Wellesley had teaching loads too heavy to leave time for re-

Maria Mitchell, whose discovery of a comet at age twenty-nine set her on course to become the first professional woman astronomer in America, taught and inspired the next generation of women in the field. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

search, but Elizabeth M. Bardwell of Mount Holyoke had at her disposal the last 8 inch equatorial telescope manufactured by the famous instrument maker Alvin Clark. Mary Emma Boyd of Smith College wrote two astronomy textbooks and guided her students through the observation of comet positions. Still, of the 306 Americans who entered the profession of astronomy between 1860 and 1900, only fifty-six were women, and the majority of them worked as low-level, poorly paid “computers” for the male astronomers who managed the large observatories then being founded. Computers made detailed records of observations, performed routine calculations to complete mathematical and astronomical tables, and measured photographic plates.

Variable Stars at the Har vard Obser vator y An area that provided research opportunities at the turn of the twentieth century was the study of the changing of the light of variable stars.

Section 9: Essays 577 Women astronomers had done some early work on variable stars. For instance, Mitchell charted the star Algol from 1853 to 1856 and the star Mira from 1857 to 1858. Opportunities increased when Edward Charles Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory, created a project that exploited the availability of photographic technology. In 1886, the widow of New York doctor Henry Draper offered funds to the observatory for continuing her husband’s efforts to sort through thousands of photographs of the spectra given off by stars and to develop a classification system for those spectra. Pickering thought the repetitive, detail-oriented work was ideal for women. Several women were already employed at the observatory, and Pickering hired others. By 1900, he supervised a staff of nineteen women, whom he viewed with a mixture of pride and paternalism. Williamina Paton Fleming (1857–1911), Pickering’s former maid and a single mother, became one of the most significant laborers for the Draper project. In addition to recording data from the photographic plates, she discovered 300 variable stars, ten novae, and fifty-nine nebulae. She served as curator of astronomical photographs from 1899 to 1911, the first woman appointed to such a position by the Harvard corporation. All of her scientific training occurred on the job. Antonia Maury (1866–1952), a niece of Draper, graduated from Vassar in 1887 and joined the Harvard Observatory in 1888. She had a strong, outgoing personality and clashed with Pickering. She quit the observatory in 1892 but returned occasionally from 1894 to 1935. Maury developed a complex, theoretical system for classifying stars according to their spectra. Although Pickering believed Maury’s system was too complicated and too prone to error to be adopted as an international standard, it influenced scholars elsewhere. Also at the Harvard Observatory was Annie Jump Cannon (1863–1941), who completed a practical classification system that Pickering hoped would bring fame to the observatory. Cannon graduated from Wellesley in 1884, but she spent the next decade caring for her parents in Dover, Delaware. She began to work in astronomy in 1894 and joined the observatory staff in 1896. While Maury had concentrated on the stars visible in the northern hemisphere, Cannon studied the plates

from the southern hemisphere. Cannon was also exceptionally good at cataloging; over the course of her career, she increased the collection of bibliographic cards documenting published references to variable stars from 15,000 to the 225,300 entries that appeared in the nine-volume Henry Draper Catalogue (1918–1924). From these activities, Cannon developed a simple and efficient classification system, which she first published in 1901. She correlated types of stars to the alphabet, establishing that the oldest and most numerous classes of stars were A (white), B (blue-white), F (between white and yellow), G (yellow), K (between yellow and red), and M (red). Cannon served as the first female treasurer of the American Astronomical Society from 1912 to 1919. Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921) graduated from Radcliffe in 1892, volunteered at the Harvard Observatory, traveled, then returned home to Wisconsin, when she became partially deaf. Pickering encouraged her to move back to Cambridge in 1902, and she worked at the observatory until her death. Leavitt discovered 1,777 new variable stars. She then worked on a subfield of variable stars, ascertaining a star’s brightness from photographs. She made some progress on this challenging problem by setting up a sequence of standard stars for comparison. The time she spent on this effort prevented her from following up on a relationship between period and luminosity that emerged from her observations. Variable stars, women, and the Harvard Observatory continued to be linked long after Pickering’s death in 1919. Helen Sawyer Hogg (1905–1993) graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1926 and earned a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1931 while working on the period-luminosity relationship at the observatory. Between 1931 and 1951, she carried on research into globular clusters. She and her husband relocated to Canada, working for the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in British Columbia and the David Dunlap Observatory at the University of Toronto. A widow from 1951, Hogg rose to the rank of professor at the University of Toronto and was elected president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in 1957. Dorrit Hoffleit (1907– ), a Radcliffe graduate, also began a career interest in variable stars as an assistant at the Harvard Observatory, which she

578 Section 9: Essays joined in 1929. She received a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1938. During World War II, Hoffleit worked on ballistics at the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. After the war, she was an astronomer at the Harvard Observatory and the Yale Observatory. In 1956, she was appointed director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory in Nantucket.

Increasing Oppor tunities After 1920, gender restrictions were gradually eliminated in the field of astronomy. In 1925, Cecilia Payne (1900–1979) became the first student at Harvard College Observatory to earn a Ph.D. Her dissertation used Cannon’s classification system and Maury’s observations, along with Niels Bohr’s atomic theory and Indian astronomer Meghnad Saha’s ionization theory, to determine a temperature scale for almost all spectral classes of stars. She also concluded that helium was the most abundant element in stars. Payne and Russian immigrant and fellow astronomer Sergei Gaposchkin married in 1934. They collaborated throughout their careers, but he devoted himself to the greater share of home and family responsibilities. Payne-Gaposchkin remained at the observatory conducting research, teaching classes, and writing books, though she was sometimes frustrated by a lack of recognition for her achievements. Even as more male astronomers took up variable stars and became a larger presence at the Harvard Observatory, Payne-Gaposchkin’s leadership role continued to increase. She served on the Observatory Council that directed observatory business from its establishment in 1946. In 1956, she was appointed to the first full professorship at Harvard that was not designated specifically for a woman, and she was chair of the Astronomy Department. Women astronomers branched out into new fields of research. Vera Rubin (1928– ) graduated from Vassar in 1948 and earned a Ph.D. at Georgetown University in 1954. Her work focused on galaxies and galactic dynamics, as well

as spectroscopy. By the 1980s, her theory that the universe is mainly dark matter clustered around galaxies had resulted in new branches of astronomy. Rubin taught at Georgetown until 1965, when she joined the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. As late as 1965, women were not allowed to make observations at the enormous mountainside observatories on the West Coast, such as Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar in California, but Rubin broke this barrier. Still, the percentage of women astronomers in America declined over the course of the twentieth century. Women earned 25 percent of the doctorates awarded between 1923 and 1930, but only 10 percent of those awarded in the 1950s and 1960s; in 1973, 8 percent of the members of the American Astronomical Society were women. Women tended to have brief careers in the field, with half working fewer than five years. Jobs as computers disappeared with the advent of electronic computers, while many academic and research jobs were closed to women. With conscious effort made to address such inequalities, women’s participation began to increase after 1970. By 2003, women earned 40 percent of bachelor’s degrees in astronomy and 25 percent of doctorates. The stage was set for a new generation of women to follow Mitchell and the pioneers she trained at Vassar. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Sources Greenstein, George. “The Ladies of Observatory Hill: Annie Jump Cannon and Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.” American Scholar 62 (1993): 437–46. Hoffleit, Dorrit. Women in the History of Variable Star Astronomy. Cambridge, MA: American Association of Variable Star Observers, 1993. Lankford, John, and Rickey L. Slavings. “Gender and Science: Women in American Astronomy, 1859–1940.” Physics Today 43:3 (March 1990): 58–65. Mack, Pamela E. “Straying from Their Orbits: Women in Astronomy in America.” In Women of Science: Righting the Record, ed. Gabriele Kass-Simon and Patricia Farnes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Warner, Deborah Jean. “Women Astronomers.” Natural History 88:5 (May 1979): 12–26.

A–Z ALMANACS Almanacs were one of the most widely available reading materials in colonial America, second only to the Bible. The first American almanac was published in 1639, and the audience expanded significantly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The most popular almanacs, such as Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, sold more than 10,000 copies annually. Most almanacs touched on scientific topics in one way or another, and their wide dissemination thus assured that some science was part of the everyday life of early Americans. Almanacs came in many different shapes and sizes. Some were printed as broadsides, but most in early America were bound books, the dimensions of which ranged from large folios to small pocket volumes. Their contents varied, but almost all included a wide range of content, intended for both entertainment and instruction. Most included a preface of some kind, as well as religious and secular calendars noting important days, such as those for courts, fairs, feasts, and markets. Many also featured chronologies, tables, poems, short essays (some serious, others humorous), and maxims of one sort or another. The amount and nature of the science-related material varied substantially between almanacs and over time. Medicines and “cure-alls” were common features in almanacs, as were discussions of agriculture, livestock care, pest control, food preservation, and household recipes. Seventeenthcentury almanacs frequently celebrated astrology and astrometeorology. The signs of the zodiac were often identified, as well as the homo signorum, or Man of Signs, a guide to bloodletting, among other things. Eighteenth-century almanacs increasingly departed from an emphasis on astrology. Instead, the focus turned more to observational astronomy, such as cataloging the lengths of days and nights, marking the solstices, and calculating eclipses, lunations, and tides. They provided a

source of income to early American scientists, such as David Rittenhouse and Theophilus Grew, who were hired to work up the calculations. Eighteenth-century almanacs also posed mathematical questions, provided geographical information, and estimated populations. The meetings of scientific and medical societies were noted, too. Others popularized Newtonian mechanics and Copernican science, depicting the cosmos in engravings and woodcuts. By the end of the eighteenth century, illustrations of natural history subjects were common. Mark G. Spencer

Sources Bell, Whitfield J., Jr., ed. The Complete Poor Richard Almanacks, published by Benjamin Franklin. 2 vols. Barre, MA: Imprint Society, 1970. Dodge, Robert K., comp. A Topical Index of Early U.S. Almanacs, 1776–1800. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997. Lisboa, Joa Luis. “Popular Knowledge in the 18th Century Almanacs.” History of European Ideas 11 (1989): 509–13. Sagendorph, Robb Hansell. America and Her Almanacs: Wit, Wisdom, and Weather, 1639–1970. Boston: Yankee, 1970. Stowell, Marion Barber. Early American Almanacs: The Colonial Weekday Bible. New York: Burt Franklin, 1977.

A S T R O LO G Y Astrology is the study of heavenly bodies to determine their influence on life on Earth. Early humans believed that the gods placed signs in the heavens that indicated events to come. People thought that by learning how to decode these signs, they could better prepare for the future and perhaps even influence their destiny. This became of particular importance to monarchs and other rulers, who would employ astrologers to read the signs and advise them on the best course of action. Thus, astrology was considered a science, and early astrologers were among the most influential and powerful figures in the ancient world. To read the signs provided in the heavens, an astrologer casts a horoscope, a chart of the heavens

579

580 Section 9: Astrology that shows the relative positions of the sun, moon, and planets at a particular time. The word horoscope comes from the Greek word horoskopos, meaning “hour-watcher.” The positions of the heavenly bodies in the horoscope are then analyzed with mathematical models that explore their geometric relations. Many astrologers believe that the time of a person’s birth is the most important factor in determining that individual’s personality and fate. Thus, much of astrological forecasting is based on the interpretation of a person’s natal chart: a horoscope that records the planetary positions at the exact moment of his or her birth. The Eastern zodiac is the oldest-known astrological system in the world. Its origins date to about 2600 B.C.E. Chinese astrology is organized around twelve animal signs that each rule for an entire year: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig. One Chinese legend attributes the animal signs to the twelve animals that came to bid Buddha farewell before he departed from Earth. As a reward, it is said, he named a year after each animal in the order they arrived. The astrological system used most often in Western culture was developed by the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that the sun orbited the planet Earth and that on its journey through the heavens it passed through constellations representing the twelve signs of the zodiac: Aries the ram, Taurus the bull, Gemini the twins, Cancer the crab, Leo the lion, Virgo the virgin, Scorpio the scorpion, Sagittarius the archer, Capricorn the goat, Aquarius the water-bearer, and Pisces the fish. In Western astrology, each sign rules approximately thirty days of the year and the cycle begins with Aries on March 21. Colonial Americans considered astrology to be associated with astronomy. The study of the movements of the stars and planets indicated not only the physical science of the universe but the influence of the heavenly bodies on human destiny as well. No less a scientist than Benjamin Franklin regularly provided astrological charts and information in Poor Richard’s Almanack alongside more concrete astronomical data about eclipses, transits of planets, and phases of the moon. Today, astrology is no longer considered a true science. Since its tenets cannot be proven by mod-

ern scientific methods, it is referred to as a pseudoscience at best. Many still use astrology for entertainment purposes, however, and horoscopes can be found in newspapers and other periodicals. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources Hewitt, William W. Astrology for Beginners: An Easy Guide to Understanding and Interpreting Your Chart. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1992. Whitfield, Peter. Astrology: A History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001.

BIG BANG THEORY The big bang theory posits that the universe came into being after a massive explosion about 13.7 billion years ago. The originator of the theory was the Belgian priest and physicist Georges Lemaître, who in 1927 argued—based on Edwin Hubble’s 1924 proof that the universe was expanding by observing galaxies moving away from Earth— that there was an explosion of a “primeval atom” that led to the origin of the universe. British scientist Fred Hoyle gave the theory its popular name when he satirically referred to “this ‘big bang’ idea” during a 1949 BBC radio program. Disagreeing with Lemaître and Hubble, Hoyle argued that the universe is eternal, in a “steady state” of change within galaxies that does not result in expansion, which is impossible in an infinite universe. Subsequent research in radio astronomy and cosmic radiation proved that the structure of the universe is changing. In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson, working at the famous Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, were observing radio waves in the galaxy with a radio telescope. The two researchers found a small signal pervading in every direction while working with a microwave receiver. This cosmic background radiation, they believed, was produced by the big bang itself. The radiation was left over from the birth pangs of the universe, when it was 300,000 years old. Penzias and Wilson found as well that the cosmic background radiation is 2.725 degrees Kelvin, indicating tremendous heat. For their discovery, Penzias and Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in 1978.

Section 9: Black Holes 581 Sources

Radio astronomers Arno Penzias (right) and Robert Wilson (left) pose in front of the antenna/receiver with which, in 1965, they detected cosmic microwave background radiation—a remnant of the big bang. (Ted Thai/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

According to the theory, the big bang occurred when all matter and energy were created instantaneously from an initial point devoid of physical laws. This point, or singularity, exploded in tremendous heat and density and quickly expanded, producing subatomic particles called quarks and leptons. In the first second after the big bang, neutrons and protons derived from the subatomic particles. Hydrogen and helium nuclei were produced in the first few minutes. After the expansion, the cooling process started, forming forces such as gravity and electromagnetism. Within several hundred thousand years after the big bang, the universe was cool enough that energy and matter separated. The first stars were born 200 million years after the big bang, when massive energy was released by the fusion of hydrogen atoms. The stars supplied energy, creating different elements, and solar systems and planets gradually emerged. The big bang theory added a new dimension to the millennia-old debate about whether the universe is infinite and eternal or created and changing. Scientists have not yet resolved the issue. They are still seeking further evidence of the nature of matter, and they continue to debate different scenarios of the universe, its beginnings, current state, and future. Patit Paban Mishra

Christian, David. Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Guth, Alan H. The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins. New York: Perseus, 1997. Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. New York: Bantam, 1998. Silk, Joseph. A Short History of the Universe. New York: Scientific American Library, 1994. Singh, Simon. Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe. New York: Fourth Estate, 2005. Taylor, John. When the Clock Struck Zero. New York: St. Martin’s, 1993. Wald, Robert M. Space, Time, and Gravity: The Theory of the Big Bang and Black Holes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Wilson, Robert. Astronomy Through the Ages: The Story of the Human Attempt to Understand the Universe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

BLACK HOLES Black holes are collapsed stars with an intense gravitational field that attract nearby objects, including light. The collapse begins when a star depletes its source of nuclear fuel, resulting in a great shrinking and cooling of its core, continuing in its course of collapse to the point where light cannot be reflected from its surface. The collapsing process continues for big stars until they become so dense, with such a powerful gravitational force, that light cannot escape— hence the name “black hole.” A star of 1 million kilometers in diameter, for example, will become a black hole of about 10 kilometers in diameter. Scientists have speculated about and searched for evidence of the existence of black holes for centuries. Eighteenth-century British astronomer John Michell hypothesized the existence of a phenomenon with such dense gravitational force that light would disappear in it. In 1916, the German astronomer Karl Schwarzchild estimated the possible size of such a phenomenon. The Indian American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983) in 1928 postulated the relationship between the radius and the mass of a star in the creation of black holes. He developed the measurement known as Chandrasekhar’s limit of density. At or above Chandrasekhar’s limit (three times the density of the sun), a collapsing

582 Section 9: Black Holes star forms a black hole; under the limit, it becomes a white dwarf (1.44 times the density of the sun), which continues to radiate light. Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland S. Snyder in 1939 hypothesized that a black hole would bend light, eventually encompassing it entirely; they termed this point of gravitational density a “singularity.” The American theoretical physicist John A. Wheeler in 1967 coined the term “black hole” to describe this phenomenon. The existence of black holes has been confirmed by precise astronomical instruments such as X-rays and radio frequency signals. The discovery of Cygnus X-1, a dense object emitting X-rays, in the mid-1960s indicated the presence of a black hole. The Hubble Telescope in 1994 discovered the presence of black holes in the M87 galaxy in the constellation Virgo. The Chandra X-ray Observatory found the first proof of a binary black hole in 2002 in the galaxy NGC6240. Two years later, a massive black hole was found in the Ursa Major constellation. In February 2005, a high-velocity, blue-colored, massive star was found moving away from the Milky Way, proving the presence of a big black hole in the center of our galaxy. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan. The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1998. Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. New York: Bantam, 1998. Luminet, Jean-Pierre. Black Holes. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Wald, Robert M. Space, Time, and Gravity: The Theory of the Big Bang and Black Holes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

B O N D, W I L L I A M (1789–1859) William Bond, one of America’s first professional astronomers and the first director of the Harvard College Observatory, was born on September 9, 1789, in Falmouth, Maine. His father, William, a silversmith and watchmaker, moved the family to Boston after a failed business venture. In Boston, the firm of William Bond and Son was

established in 1793, and the elder Bond taught his son the watch and jewelry trade. In 1806, at the age of seventeen, Bond witnessed a total solar eclipse, which inspired him to learn all he could about astronomy. As a practiced amateur, Bond discovered the Great Comet of 1811, an accomplishment that caught the eye of Harvard mathematics professor John Farrar, who became a friend. When in 1815 Bond journeyed to England on company and family business, Farrar recommended that he survey British observatories and gather information that might be useful in building a Harvard campus facility. Bond returned to Cambridge with details from trips to Greenwich and William Herschel’s observatory in Slough, but the college lacked the financial resources to construct the facility. In 1838, Bond took his first professional job as an astronomer through a contract with the U.S. Navy to provide meteorological and astronomical observations for Charles Wilkes’s U.S. Exploring Expedition. In late 1839, Harvard President Josiah Quincy became aware of Bond’s work for the Wilkes Expedition and convinced him to become the school astronomer. While Bond received no salary for his position as “Astronomical Observer to the University,” his living quarters and space for astronomical instruments were provided for free. By the time Harvard’s first observatory was finally completed in 1847, Bond was being paid a modest salary and was named the observatory’s first director. Ever the watchmaker and determined to make the observatory useful to the general public, Bond established the world’s first public time service in December 1851. Based on data telegraphed from the observatory to New England railroad clients, the process established a standard time in the region. During his twenty-year tenure as director, Bond and his son, George Phillips Bond, who worked with him, expanded astronomical knowledge of the physical features of comets, planets, and nebulae. Of particular note were their discoveries of Hyperion, the eighth satellite of Saturn, and Saturn’s crepe ring. When Bond died in Cambridge on January 29, 1859, George succeeded him as director of the observatory. Todd A. Hanson

Section 9: Bowditch, Nathaniel 583 Sources Bailey, Solon I. The History and Work of Harvard Observatory, 1839–1927. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931. Jones, Bessie, and Lyle Boyd. The Harvard College Observatory: The First Four Directorships. Foreword by Donald H. Menzel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

B O S T O N P H I LO S O P H I C A L S O C I E T Y At the initiative of Puritan minister Increase Mather and others, the Boston Philosophical Society—the first of its kind in America—was established in 1683, modeled after the Royal Society of London. An organizational meeting was held on April 23, 1683, at the house of the Reverend Samuel Willard, Mather’s friend and ally. The society’s first official meeting was held on April 30. Meetings were to take place every two weeks. The society’s history is largely unknown, but its rapid demise, according to the account of Cotton Mather (son of Increase), was connected to the political crisis that enveloped New England beginning with the English government’s suspension of the Massachusetts Charter in 1684. The society was still in existence in late 1685, but it had ceased to function by 1687, at the latest. Although none of its manuscripts survives, the Boston Philosophical Society seems to have operated as a typical seventeenth-century scientific society, gathering and circulating accounts of natural events with a focus on unusual ones. Indeed, the founding of the society may have been connected with Increase Mather’s scheme for gathering accounts of “illustrious providences.” Like other provincial scientific societies in the British Empire (including the Dublin Philosophical Society and the Oxford Philosophical Society), the Boston Philosophical Society was an amateur and voluntary organization of individuals interested in natural science, rather than a collection of professional scientists (who were rare in seventeenth-century New England anyway). Beyond the Mathers and Willard, little of the society’s membership is known, although it seems to have been dominated by ministers. One person connected with it was the Boston physician William Avery, one of the first university-educated medical doctors in New En-

gland. Avery was a follower of the Flemish alchemist Johannes Baptista van Helmont and a friend and correspondent of Cotton Mather, who was still wavering between medicine and divinity as a career. Avery also corresponded with the great English chemist and physicist Robert Boyle and may have served as a liaison between Boyle and the Boston Philosophical Society. The Mathers and Avery signed a petition to the General Court of Massachusetts in 1684 requesting an eight mile area of land for carrying out experiments in “improvement.” The society had at least one European correspondent, the University of Leyden professor Wolferdus Senguerdius. The society’s accounts of a double rainbow and a parhelion were included in the second edition of his textbook Philosophia Naturalis (1685). Some of the materials the society gathered may have been included in Cotton Mather’s later series of letters addressed to the Royal Society of London, “Curiosa Americana.” William E. Burns

Sources Beall, Otto T., Jr. “Cotton Mather’s Early ‘Curiosa Americana’ and the Boston Philosophical Society of 1683.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 18 (1961): 360–72. Hunter, Michael, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe, eds. The Correspondence of Robert Boyle. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2001. Silverman, Kenneth. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. New York: Harper and Row, 1984.

B O W D I T C H , N AT H A N I E L (1773–1838) Seaman, astronomer, mathematician, and chronicler of faraway places, Nathaniel Bowditch ranks among early America’s foremost intellectuals. Born on March 26, 1773, in Salem, Massachusetts, a city in the forefront of America’s international trade, he spent much of his early adulthood on the seas. Self-taught, he made his strongest contributions to the field of navigation, while doing much else to advance the science and international perspective of the new nation. On a 1796 voyage to Manila, the main port of the Philippines, Bowditch, serving as supercargo,

584 Section 9: Bowditch, Nathaniel or commerce officer, kept a journal of the experience. His account includes descriptions of wild animals, such as venomous snakes and monkeys, a comparison of the Chinese alphabet to the English alphabet, a summary of Chinese trade in Manila, and general descriptions of the voyage and the difficulties encountered. Bowditch’s journal provides rich documentation of the first planned American expedition to the Philippines and one of the first expeditions to the islands of Southeast Asia. Above all, Bowditch’s importance rests on his treatise The New American Practical Navigator (1802), which served as a badly needed update of earlier publications on navigation. The text began as an update of the work of John Hamilton Moore, two editions of which had appeared in America, but Bowditch found Moore’s errors so numerous that he decided to “take up the subject anew.” Consulting previous treatises on navigation, such as John Robertson’s Elements of Navigation (1750) and Nevil Maskelyne’s Requisite Tables (1766) in addition to Moore’s work, and performing his own calculations to “ensure the accuracy of the Tables,” Bowditch succeeded in creating a much needed system of determining location on the high seas. The importance of his new work may be summed up in his statement of finding “no less than eight thousand errors” in Moore’s work and “above two thousand in Maskelyne’s Requisite Tables.” The majority of Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator is taken up by mathematical proofs and calculations, many of which were of more interest to the mathematician than the seaman. The final section, however, provides a lengthy discussion of sea terms, rigging and sailing techniques, and the benefits of marine insurance. Bowditch gave many practical suggestions for sailing, ranging from the best way to drop anchor, to the most effective way of loading cargo to balance the weight of the ship, thus ensuring greater stability. He stated, for example, that “a narrow-built vessel requires the most weighty materials to be stowed down low . . . that the centre of gravity may be kept low, to enable her to carry sail and to prevent her from oversetting.” Despite the importance of the American Practical Navigator, Bowditch’s scientific reputation rested on his English translation of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste (1799–1825), Celestial

Mechanics (1829–1839), in which the stated object was to “reduce all known phenomena of the system of the world to the law of gravity, by strict mathematical principles; and to complete the investigations of the motions of the planets, satellites, and comets, begun by Newton in his Principia.” Bowditch’s translation served to make the treatise accessible to Americans unable to read the French, furthering the scientific knowledge of his country. Benjamin Lawson

Sources Bowditch, Nathaniel. The New American Practical Navigator. 1802. Arcata, CA: Paradise Cay, 2002. McHale, Thomas R., and Mary C. McHale. Early American– Philippine Trade: The Journal of Nathaniel Bowditch in Manila, 1796. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962. Rink, Paul. To Steer by the Stars: The Story of Nathaniel Bowditch. New York: Doubleday, 1969. Stanford, Alfred. Navigator: The Story of Nathaniel Bowditch. Kila, MT: Kessinger, 2004.

CANNON, ANNIE JUMP (1863–1941) Annie Jump Cannon was one of America’s first women astronomers. Her tireless work in classifying and cataloging stars according to types of stellar spectra was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification schemes. She was born on December 11, 1863, in Dover, Delaware, to state senator Wilson Lee Cannon and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Jump. She attended Wellesley College in Massachusetts and graduated in 1884 with a degree in physics. In 1894, Cannon returned to Wellesley to work as an assistant to her former physics and astronomy professor, Sarah Frances Whiting. While at Wellesley, Cannon began taking graduate classes in astronomy. As her interest grew, she enrolled as a special student at Radcliffe Women’s College at Harvard to gain access to the superior telescopes at the Harvard College Observatory. In 1896, Edward C. Pickering, the director of the Harvard Observatory, hired Cannon as an assistant. She worked there until 1941. Cannon’s efforts focused almost exclusively on the classification and cataloging of stars according to their spectra. Using a magnifying

Section 9: Clark, Alvan 585 ever, linked amounts of hydrogen to stars’ physical properties and reordered the alphabetical scheme, eliminating many redundant classes and rearranging others. The new classification system had only seven stellar spectra types—O, B, A, F, G, K, M—which inspired the mnemonic “Oh Be a Fine Girl, Kiss Me,” a phrase still popular among astronomy students learning the system. Cannon was the recipient of many honors during her lifetime. She was the first woman ever to receive an honorary doctorate from Oxford University and, in 1931, the first woman to receive the Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. In 1925, Cannon began an extension of the Henry Draper Catalogue; the work was continued by others after her retirement in 1940. She died on April 13, 1941. Todd A. Hanson

Sources

Annie Jump Cannon worked at the Harvard College Observatory from 1896 until her death in 1941. She was instrumental in developing the standard Harvard classification system of stars. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

glass to examine the spectral images of the night sky captured on glass plates, she classified stars at a rate of roughly three stars per minute. Most of this work was for the Henry Draper Catalogue, a large-scale project to classify and document the spectra of 225,300 stars. In the course of her examinations of stellar spectra photographic plates, however, Cannon also discovered five novae and more than 300 variable stars. When she began her work at Harvard, Cannon worked under the supervision of Williamina Fleming, another famous woman astronomer. When Fleming died in 1911, Cannon succeeded her as the observatory’s curator of astronomical photographs. By the end of Cannon’s tenure as curator, the photographic plate collection had grown to roughly 500,000 plates. Cannon also refined Fleming’s scheme for the classification of stellar spectra. Fleming had assigned stars a letter (A, B, C, and so on) based on the amount of hydrogen visible in their spectra, for a total of twenty-two types. Cannon, how-

Greenstein, George. “The Ladies of Observatory Hill: Annie Jump Cannon and Celia Payne-Gaposchkin.” American Scholar 62 (1993): 437–46. Mack, Pamela E. “Straying from Their Orbits: Women in Astronomy in America.” In Women of Science: Righting the Record, ed. Gabriele Kass-Simon and Patricia Farnes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

C L A R K , A LVA N (1804–1887) Alvan Clark was one of America’s first and foremost telescope lens makers. Assisted by his two sons, he was responsible for grinding the glass lenses for several of the world’s most famous telescopes. Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, on March 8, 1804, Clark was one of ten children. Although he worked in various occupations throughout his career, he supported himself and family for much of his life by painting portrait miniatures, a popular form of portraiture at the time. In 1826, Clark married Maria Pease. They were together for more than sixty years, and from the marriage came four children: two daughters and two sons. Inspired by his elder son’s attempts to build a telescope in 1844, Clark formed Alvan Clark and Sons, Lens Makers, in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, with his sons, George Bassett

586 Section 9: Clark, Alvan Clark and Alvan Graham Clark. While the two Alvans focused on the optics work, George worked as the company’s lead machinist. The Clarks’ factory produced the first achromatic lenses in the United States. Although Alvan Clark and Sons would create a number of astronomical instruments and smaller telescopes, including instruments for the Dearborn Observatory in Illinois, the McCormick Observatory in Virginia, and the Chabot Observatory in California, the company’s stellar reputation was built on the lenses it created for many of the world’s leading refractor telescopes. In 1873, Clark created a 26 inch lens for what was at the time the world’s largest refractor telescope at the U.S. Naval Observatory, located in the Foggy Bottom section of Washington, D.C. Clark and Sons also built telescopes and a number of the instruments for expedition parties that in 1874 and 1882 were sent to various locations around the world to observe the transit of Venus. By 1883, Alvan Clark’s fame had grown to international proportions and he was hired to grind the 30 inch refractor lens for the Pulkovo Observatory near St. Petersburg, Russia. For this achievement, he received the Medal of Russia in 1885. Although the observatory was destroyed in World War II during the siege of Leningrad, the lens that Clark built was rescued by several of the few Russian astronomers who had not been executed or imprisoned during Joseph Stalin’s regime. In 1887, Alvan Clark and Sons set yet another world record when they produced the 36 inch lens for the Lick Observatory in California. Although Alvan Clark died on August 19 of that year, before the lens could be installed, his sons carried on the business with the help of Clark’s assistant, Carl Lundin. After the death of his brother George in 1891, Alvan Graham Clark continued operating the company with Lundin’s help. Together, they ground the 24 inch lens for the Lowell Observatory telescope in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1896. The following year, they created a 40 inch lens for the world’s largest refracting telescope at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin. Todd A. Hanson

Source Warner, Deborah Jean. Alvan Clark and Sons, Artists in Optics. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1968.

COMETS Comets are bodies of rocky debris and ice, left over from the formation of a solar system, that travel around outer space in variable and highly elliptical orbits. When comets enter an inner solar system, a large tail becomes visible due to solar radiation vaporizing the comet’s volatile gases. The word “comet” is derived from a Greek word meaning “long-haired.” The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle described comets as “stars with hair.” In ancient civilizations, comets were widely regarded as harbingers of disaster because of their unexpected and spectacular appearances. For centuries, comets were classified as planets. A more accurate account emerged in 1577, when the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe demonstrated that a particularly brilliant comet had passed through the orbits of several planets. The English astronomer Edmund Halley advanced the understanding of comets during the eighteenth century, when he applied Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation to their patterns of movement. A renowned comet, which reappears on average every seventy-six years, was named after Halley in 1758. Lewis Swift, an astronomer at the Mount Lowe Observatory in California, discovered a bright, fast-moving object in the night sky on July 16, 1862. It was later named Comet SwiftTuttle, after Swift and Horace Tuttle, an astronomer at the Harvard University Observatory, who saw the same object three days later. The two astronomers predicted that the comet would return to view in 120 years, and their estimate was just a few years off: Swift-Tuttle reappeared in 1992.

Composition and Types Comets range in diameter from a few feet to 113 miles. The head of a comet is composed of a nucleus surrounded by luminous gases that form what is called a coma. American astronomer Fred Whipple, who worked as director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Washington, D.C., issued “A Comet Model” in 1950, a groundbreaking paper explaining how comets

Section 9: Draper, Henry 587 were constructed. Whipple’s “icy conglomerate” or “dirty snowball” model was confirmed by several robotic spacecraft that visited Halley’s Comet in 1986. Whipple described the nucleus of a comet as made mostly of ice (composed of water and such other compounds as chlorine, hydrogen, and carbon) and a “conglomerate of meteoric materials” that have “little structural strength.” A comet’s tail is the extended atmosphere of gas and dust that does not form until a comet approaches a sun, after which it may extend for hundreds of thousands of miles due to evaporation, whereby jets of gas erupt like geysers from vents on the nucleus. Such outgassing can affect a comet’s trajectory. A nearly straight “ion tail” is formed by a solar wind, while the broader “dust tail” is gently curved, resulting from a combination of solar radiation pressure and a comet’s orbital motion. Comets are classified by their orbits into two types: long-period or short-period. Long-period comets have nearly parabolic orbits that take thousands or possibly millions of years. Shortperiod comets are dominated by the gravitational pull of giant planets, particularly Jupiter, and their orbits have much smaller eccentricities, with orbits that take under 200 years. The source of longperiod comets is thought to be the Oort Cloud, a hypothetical shell of material surrounding the sun at the extreme outer edge of the solar system. The origin of short-period comets is believed to be the Kuiper Belt, a disc-shaped region roughly between Pluto’s orbit and the inner Oort Cloud.

Comet Hunters Carolyn Shoemaker, who began her astronomy career in 1980 at the age of fifty-one at the Palomar Observatory in California, used new searching methods to locate over 300 asteroids and thirty-two comets in her almost three decades of work. Shoemaker worked with astronomer David Levy to locate a rare chain of comets in 1993. This “string of pearls” had been pulled into the gravitational force of Jupiter. The collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994 was captured by nearby space satellites, producing dramatic photographs of the event. In 1995, astronomer Alan Hale, of the Southwest Institute for Space Research in New Mexico,

and Thomas Bopp, an amateur astronomer from Arizona, observed an unusually bright and large comet outside Jupiter’s orbit. Using the Hubble Telescope, they measured the object, which was 25 miles in diameter. Named Comet Hale-Bopp, it was visible to the naked eye for up to nineteen months, revealing spectacular images and plentiful scientific data. This comet will not appear again for 2,400 years. The National Aeronautics and Space Agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California maintains a list of up to seventy comets and meteors that have a chance of colliding with Earth or its moon. Comets that are large enough and come within 1 million miles of Earth are tracked by the laboratory. Comet Swift-Tuttle is one of the possible threats; it is estimated to be headed in the direction of Earth sometime in August 2126. Roughly 6 miles in diameter, it is expected to pass approximately 15 million miles away; if its orbit changes and it does impact the planet, however, it would have the strength of 1,000 million atomic bombs. Comets have been photographed by landbased telescopes, but the most detailed and revealing research has been performed by a number of space satellites, including the Hubble Telescope, and deep-space exploration spacecraft, including the Pioneer and Voyager series (launched in the 1970s) and the Cassini Probe (1977). James Fargo Balliett and Matthew C. Aberman

Sources Brandt, John C., and Robert D. Chapman. Rendezvous in Space: The Science of Comets. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1992. Burnham, Robert. Great Comets. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Crovisier, Jacques, and Thérèse Encrenaz. Comet Science: The Study of Remnants from the Birth of the Solar System. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

DRAPER, HENRY (1837–1882) The physician and astronomer Henry Draper cared for the sick and injured while serving as dean of medicine and a professor at New York University. As an amateur astronomer, he took the first photographs of the spectrum of a star.

588 Section 9: Draper, Henry Draper was born on March 7, 1837, in Virginia. Schooled as a doctor, he was the middle child in a wealthy family whose sprawling estate provided a location for Draper to build his own personal observatory while working as a physician at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. In 1867, Draper married Anna Palmer, who also came from a wealthy American family. Anna shared his passion for astronomy and served as his observatory assistant throughout his career. Draper was a pioneer in the field of astrophotography. He is best known for his 1872 recording of the first stellar spectrum image of Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. He also took numerous photographs of the moon, comets, and other celestial objects. In 1874, he served as a photographic consultant to the eight expedition parties being sent by the U.S. Naval Observatory to various locations around the world to observe and document the transit of Venus. In September 1880, he created the first photograph of an astronomical nebula—the Great Nebula of Orion. His greatest legacy was his spectral images of Earth’s moon, Mars, Jupiter, and several prominent stars. Although stellar spectra had been observed long before Draper took his photos, Draper’s method was novel: He attached a spectroscope to the eyepiece of a telescope, which allowed him to make direct images of a single star’s spectrum. Henry Draper died in New York on November 20, 1882. Anna Draper sought to carry on her husband’s research, but the work had advanced to a point that required the facilities and efforts of a major observatory. Her creation of an endowment at Harvard University in 1886 allowed spectra photography research to continue and flourish. The establishment of the Henry Draper Memorial brought a surge in opportunities for women in astronomical work at Harvard. Women were hired in unprecedented numbers to help complete the Henry Draper Catalogue—a large-scale project to classify and catalog the spectra of stars—but they also participated in other astronomical research as well. In 1918, the first volume of the Henry Draper Catalogue was published as the product of such noted women astronomers as Annie Jump Cannon, Williamina Fleming, and Antonia Maury. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Jones, Bessie, and Lyle Boyd. The Harvard College Observatory: The First Four Directorships. Foreword by Donald H. Menzel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Reinhold, Nathan, ed. Science in the Nineteenth Century: A Documentary History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

E X T R AT E R R E S T R I A L S The possibility that there might exist life forms on planets other than Earth has intrigued people for centuries. The ancient Stoics considered the possibility of other worlds. In the wake of Galileo’s hypothesis of an infinite universe in the early seventeenth century, Europeans and Americans contemplated the possibility of other planets and other life forms. Cotton Mather believed that other planets with life existed in the universe. Benjamin Franklin discussed the possibility at length in Poor Richard’s Almanack. Franklin believed any of the planets of the solar system could support life, even the hot planet Mercury. He even considered the possibility of inhabitants of comets. There have been many modern reports of sightings of and contact with extraterrestrials. People claim to have seen space vehicles shaped like disks or cigars. These objects are commonly referred to as “flying saucers” or “unidentified flying objects” (UFOs). People who believe they have seen extraterrestrial beings most often describe these beings as having a long, thin body, large head, and large, black, oval-shaped eyes. They are said to have a small slit where the mouth should be and to communicate by telepathy rather than through speaking. They are sometimes referred to as “grays,” in reference to their frequently reported color. Some people believe that extraterrestrials crash-landed near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947 but that the U.S. government has concealed evidence of the event ever since. A number of people report that they have been abducted by extraterrestrials, taken inside a spaceship, and subjected to various probes and physical experiments. One well-known claim is that of Barney and Betty Hill, who allege they were abducted on September 19, 1961, near the village of Lancaster, New Hampshire. The Hills

Section 9: Gregorian Calendar 589 were driving home after a vacation in Canada when they saw a moving light in the sky. After that, according to their account, they experienced a lapse in time and were not aware of their surroundings again until two hours later, when they found themselves driving near Ashland, twenty minutes down the road. Later, Betty Hill began to have nightmares in which she and Barney were led into a disk-shaped craft by strange-looking creatures who proceeded to physically examine them. After reporting their story, the Hills were subjected to a great deal of scientific study and became minor celebrities. From 1947 until 1969, the U.S. Air Force actively investigated reports and sightings of unidentified flying objects under a program called Project Blue Book, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. In addition to investigation, the organization’s mission was to keep reports of UFOs out of the public eye, since they were considered a threat to national security. Today, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1984, continues to investigate the possibility of other life in the universe. SETI and similar groups attempt to detect extraterrestrial civilizations by listening for radio signals that might be deliberately beamed to Earth or inadvertently transmitted from another planet. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources Huyghe, Patrick. The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials: A Complete Overview of Alien Lifeforms—Based on Actual Accounts and Sightings. New York: Avon, 1996. Mitton, Jacqueline. Informania: Aliens. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2000. Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute. http:// setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu. Webb, Stephen. If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens . . . Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to Fermi’s Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. New York: Copernicus, 2002.

GREGORIAN CALENDAR The Gregorian calendar is the one that is commonly used throughout the world today. It was proposed in the sixteenth century by Aloysius Lilius, a physician from Naples, in response to

concerns from the Council of Trent (1545–1563) about the problems created by the Julian calendar then in use throughout Christendom. The year of the Julian calendar was eleven minutes, fourteen seconds too long. This miscalculation had accrued over a number of years so that, by the sixteenth century, the difference amounted to ten days. This was posing a great problem in trying to set the time of Christian feasts and holy days. For example, it had been decreed that Easter was to be celebrated on the Sunday following the vernal equinox. Because of the mistake in the Julian calendar, however, the vernal equinox was occurring earlier and earlier each year, and Easter was slowly moving into a different season. Lilius’s new calendar corrected the error so that the holy days were celebrated during the correct season. On February 24, 1582, Pope Gregory XIII signed a papal bull that decreed the new calendar be adopted. He also ordered that the cumulative error be corrected by eliminating ten days from the calendar in October 1582. Thus in 1582, Thursday, October 4, was followed by Friday, October 15. Pope Gregory also decreed that a year begins on January 1, the holy day of the circumcision of Christ. The Gregorian calendar aroused a great deal of controversy. Protestants opposed it, because they considered it a sign of Catholic control. Protestant nations refused to adopt it, choosing instead to continue using the Julian calendar until the 1700s. The British Empire and the American colonies eventually adopted the Gregorian calendar in September 1752, when September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, 1752. The Julian calendar came to be called the “Old Style,” while the Gregorian calendar was dubbed the “New Style.” Eastern European churches remained opposed to the Gregorian calendar until 1923, when a congress of Orthodox clergy met in Constantinople to discuss this and other issues. After the meeting, several Orthodox churches adopted portions of the new calendar, including the switch to the Gregorian solar year. Many were unwilling to adopt the Gregorian calendar for their high holy days, however, and maintain a dual calendar system to this day. In the Gregorian calendar, a year is approximately 365.2425 days. In order to correct for the extra fraction of a day and keep the calendar in synchronization with the solar cycle, the calendar employs the device of a leap year, in which

590 Section 9: Gregorian Calendar an extra day is added. In the Gregorian calendar, the leap year is held quadrennially in years divisible by 4; the exceptions are years divisible by 100, but not by 400. Therefore, the years 2000 and 2400 are leap years, but 1900 and 2100 are not. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources De Bourgeoing, Jacqueline. The Calendar: History, Lore, and Legend. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. Richards, E.G. Mapping Time: The Calendar and Its History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

HALE, GEORGE ELLERY (1868–1938) George Ellery Hale was an American solar astronomer and one of the leaders of the American scientific community until his death in 1938. A seminal figure in the field of solar observational astronomy and astrophysics, he also lobbied tirelessly for the construction of several major observatories and was a talented organizer and fund-raiser. Born in Chicago on June 29, 1868, Hale became interested in science at an early age. He entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1886 and, three years later, while still an undergraduate, invented the spectroheliograph, an apparatus used to photograph the solar surface in monochromatic light. After graduating in 1890 with a degree in physics, Hale returned to his private Kenwood Observatory in Chicago, located behind the family residence. In 1892, at the age of twenty-four, Hale was appointed associate professor of astrophysics at the new University of Chicago. Later that year, with financial assistance from local businessman Charles T. Yerkes, he obtained for the university a 40 inch lens from the American telescope manufacturer Alvan G. Clark. The lens outfitted a refracting telescope built at Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Hale became the first director of the Yerkes Observatory which opened in 1897. Two years later, the Yerkes Observatory hosted the first meeting of what became the American Astronomical Society. In 1896, Hale’s father obtained a 60 inch glass

disc for the construction of a large reflecting telescope. George Hale approached the newly created Carnegie Institution for funding in 1902, and he traveled to Pasadena, California, the following year to scout locations. It was there that Hale founded the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory in 1904, financed by Carnegie money. In 1908, Hale made his greatest scientific discovery at the Pasadena observatory, becoming the first astronomer to demonstrate the presence of magnetic fields in sunspots. That same year, the 60 inch telescope was completed, briefly becoming the largest telescope in the world. As early as 1906, however, Hale had begun planning for a more ambitious, 100 inch reflector, soliciting money from Los Angeles hardware tycoon John Hooker. By 1917, the 100 inch Hooker telescope was also operating at Mount Wilson. In 1928, Hale approached the Rockefeller Foundation for money to begin construction of his most grandiose telescope yet, a massive 200 inch reflector. Eventually, $6 million was granted to the California Institute of Technology for the project, and, in 1934, Palomar Mountain was chosen as the site. While the telescope was still under construction, Hale died on February 21, 1938. When Palomar Observatory was dedicated ten years later, the telescope was named in his honor. In addition to three prominent U.S. observatories, Hale also founded the Astrophysical Journal. Begun with fellow American astrophysicist James Keeler in 1895, it remains the foremost academic publication in the field today, published by the American Astronomical Society and the University of Chicago Press. Hale chaired the committee that formed the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in 1916, and he was influential in the creation of the International Astronomical Union in 1919. He was largely responsible for transforming Throop Polytechnic Institute into the prestigious California Institute of Technology in 1920. Matthew C. Aberman

Sources Wright, Helen. Explorer of the Universe: A Biography of George Ellery Hale. Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics, 1994. Wright, Helen, Joan N. Warnow, and Charles Weiner, eds. The Legacy of George Ellery Hale: Evolution of Astronomy and Scientific Institutions in Pictures and Documents. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972.

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HALL, ASAPH (1829–1907) One of the most prominent observational astronomers of the nineteenth century, Asaph Hall is best known as the discoverer of the two moons of Mars. He did important work in other areas of astronomy as well, and he had a long and distinguished career with the U.S. Naval Observatory. The son of a clock manufacturer, he was born on October 15, 1829, in Goshen, Connecticut. His father’s death in 1842 left the family in financial difficulty, and Hall was apprenticed to a carpenter. He saved enough money to enroll in 1854 at Central College in McGrawville, New York, where he met fellow student Chloe Angeline Stickney, who taught him mathematics. They married in 1856 and eventually had four children. The young couple went to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where Hall briefly stud-

Using a 26 inch refractor telescope, then the largest in the world, Asaph Hall of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., discovered the two moons of Mars— Phobos and Deimos—in August 1877. (U.S. Naval Observatory Library)

ied observational astronomy. Lacking the funds for him to continue, however, the couple took teaching positions at the Shalerville Institute in Ohio before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hall took a low-paying job, working for William C. Bond at the Harvard College Observatory, where his chief responsibility was the observation of star positions and where he became adept at the computation of cometary orbits. In 1862, Hall took a position with the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., where he also became a professor of mathematics with the U.S. Navy. From 1862 to 1875, he worked with the 9.6 inch equatorial telescope, determining the orbits of asteroids and comets. In 1875, he was placed in charge of the 26 inch equatorial telescope, then the largest refractor in the world. His first major discovery came in December 1876, when his observations of a white spot on the surface of Saturn led him to a more accurate determination of that planet’s orbital rotation. Aided by the techniques he used in observing Saturn and by an unusually close approach of the planet Mars, he began a systematic search for Martian satellites in 1877. Urged on by his wife, Hall briefly observed the first of two moons on August 11 and confirmed the discovery on August 16. While looking for that moon again the next night, he discovered the second. He named the two tiny moons (less than twelve miles at their longest axis) Phobos and Deimos. Hall’s later astronomical work included further study of the moons of Mars, as well as those of Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. His studies of Saturn’s moons Hyperion and Iapetus were particularly well respected. Hall also did research into other significant problems of the day, leading field expeditions to observe lunar eclipses and the transits of Venus and Mercury, working on the problem of stellar parallax, and observing double star systems. Hall was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Lalande and Arago prizes of the French Academy of Science. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1875, later serving six years as its vice president, and, in 1902, he served as the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

592 Section 9: Hall, Asaph After his retirement in 1891 and the death of his wife the following year, Hall left Washington and returned to Goshen. Beginning in 1896, he spent five years teaching celestial mechanics at Harvard, living there when classes were in session. He remarried in 1901 and died on November 22, 1907, in Annapolis, Maryland. Although his lifelong work would have marked him as an important figure in astronomy, the discovery of the Martian moons was a singular feat that instantly gave Hall an international reputation. During the period when observational astronomy was at its peak, before the rise of astrophysics, Hall stood out as one of its most significant practitioners. George R. Ehrhardt

Sources Corbin, B.G. “Asaph Hall And The Moons Of Mars, An Exhibition At The U.S. Naval Observatory.” Vistas in Astronomy 22 (1978): 211. Hill, George W. Biographical Memoir of Asaph Hall. Biographical Memoirs 6. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1908.

H A R VA R D O B S E R VAT O R Y Harvard College positioned itself as a leader of astronomical research in early America by constructing an advanced astronomical observatory, the Harvard College Observatory, in 1839 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now known as the Harvard Observatory, the facility has been at the forefront of academic research related to astronomy and astrophysics. Its primary partners today are the Harvard Center for Astrophysics and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Together, they employ several hundred scientists and perform research in six areas: atomic and molecular physics; high-energy astrophysics; optical and infrared astronomy; radio and geoastronomy; solar, stellar, and planetary sciences; and theoretical astrophysics.

Early Histor y A 15 inch telescope known as “The Great Refractor” was constructed at the observatory in 1847. For the next twenty years, it was the largest tele-

scope in North America. William Bond, a Boston clockmaker who had been appointed the first director of the observatory in 1839, made significant observations of detailed features of the moon’s surface in 1847. He studied Hyperion, the eighth moon of the planet Saturn, in 1848. In 1850, Bond discovered Saturn’s inner ring. In 1857, he took one of the earliest photographs of a double star, Mizar and Alcor, in the handle of the Big Dipper. Upon Bond’s death in 1859, his son George Bond became director of the observatory. In 1855, the observatory began issuing its Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, providing a documentary history of observatory activities. The publication spans the course of 130 editions and a century of research. Included in these volumes are the positions, photographic and photo-visual magnitude specifications, and dimensions of more than 270,000 stars and galaxies. The Annals was the first catalog to include spectral classification, and the most extensive source on the temperature and size of stars. The publication was discontinued in 1954. MIT professor Edward Pickering became head of the observatory in 1877. Pickering advanced the method of using special cameras with lenses set to capture very small amounts of light, or spectra. William Pickering, his brother, discovered Saturn’s ninth moon, which he named Phoebe, in 1899 while working at the Harvard Observatory. Annie Jump Cannon laid the foundation for a generation of female scientists at the observatory. First hired as a staff assistant in 1898, she worked her way up to the most advanced research of the time. Cannon specialized in using the spectra visible at various settings on the telescopes to identify 300 variable stars, five novae, and a binary star. In the course of her work at the observatory, she cataloged nearly 350,000 stars, a spectacular number for an individual of that time.

Expansion and Advances Harvard expanded the observatory in 1927, adding a building for a 61 inch telescope, then the fourth-largest in the world. Because population growth had led to extensive light pollution in Cambridge, the new building was located in the small town of Harvard, 27 miles to the north. By this time, the observatory also had established

Section 9: Hubble, Edwin Powell 593 substations for space viewing on the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean, on Mount Wilson in Southern California, and in Arequipa, Peru. These remote locations allowed for better viewing during key times of the year. With the development of advanced computers in the 1980s, observatory researchers turned to complex software programs to fine-tune telescopes and cameras looking skyward. By the early 1990s, the scientists sought space-based opportunities, using satellites and long-range spacecraft. The Harvard Observatory was a partner in the launch and maintenance of the Chandra spacecraft in 1999, which performs astronomical observations using a powerful X-ray telescope with nearly fifty times the pixel resolution of Earth-based telescopes. Chandra has revealed sharp images of stars, planets, and space objects never before seen, measuring these objects by their X-ray output. Today, the observatory’s primary optical telescope is a 61 inch reflector, the largest east of the Mississippi. The observatory also has an 84 foot (26 meter) radio telescope. Nearly 400 scientists carry out their research at the Harvard Observatory complex based in Cambridge. David Charbonneau, for example, led the team of international astronomers who in 2004 discovered the first orbiting planet in another solar system, roughly 512 light-years away (or 32,256 times the distance between Earth and the sun, which is 93 million miles). This planet, TrES-1, is a gas giant similar to Jupiter. One unique aspect of this discovery is that it was accomplished with a network of small, powerful, 4 inch telescopes. The discovery was then confirmed with the largest land- and space-based equipment. James Fargo Balliett and Steven Napier

Sources Annals of Harvard College Observatory. Vols. 1–120. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1856–1956. Bailey, Solon I. The History and Work of Harvard Observatory, 1839 to 1927. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931. Cohen, I. Bernard. Some Early Tools of American Science: An Account of the Early Scientific Instruments and Mineralogical and Biological Collections in Harvard University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950. Jones, Bessie, and Lyle Boyd. The Harvard College Observatory: The First Four Directorships. Foreword by Donald H. Menzel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.

HUBBLE, EDWIN POWELL (1889–1953) Edwin Powell Hubble profoundly shaped the way humans view the universe. His work led to evidence of the existence of other galaxies, an expanding universe, and a determination of the age of the universe. Albert Einstein attributed his change of view of the universe—from static to dynamic—to Hubble. Einstein’s theoretical physics defined the conceptualization of an expanding universe, and Hubble’s observations provided confirmation. Born in Marshfield, Missouri, on November 20, 1889, Hubble was educated at the University of Chicago. In 1910, he won a Rhodes scholarship to continue his studies at Queen’s College in Oxford, England. After obtaining a law degree, he returned to the United States in 1913 and practiced law in Kentucky. Hubble’s passion, however, was astronomy, so he returned to the University of Chicago in 1914. Hubble published his doctoral dissertation on the classification of nebulae and then served in the U.S. Army infantry in France during World War I. At the conclusion of the war, Hubble went to Pasadena, California, and worked at the Mount Wilson Observatory under George Ellery Hale, the American astronomer who founded and directed three astronomical observatories. Soon after his arrival, Hubble trained the powerful 100 inch Hooker telescope on the Andromeda Nebula. Hubble was able to resolve what were previously faint images into individual stars, thereby showing that Andromeda is its own galaxy. Plate number H335H became the most famous astronomical photograph ever taken. It captured M31, the Andromeda galaxy, on October 5–6, 1923, and proved Hubble’s assertion that Andromeda is almost one million light-years away (more sophisticated measurement techniques later indicated a distance of 2.3 million light-years)—far beyond the boundaries of our own Milky Way galaxy. With these observations, Hubble proved that the universe is at least twice as large, and much older, than previous theories suggested. Hubble convinced scientists that the Milky Way, rather than being the entire universe, is one of many galaxies in the larger universe.

594 Section 9: Hubble, Edwin Powell Hubble also classified nebulae according to physical evolution of the universe and published his work in the Astrophysical Journal. His system became the foundation for classifications still used today. A key insight revealed in Hubble’s A General Study of Diffuse Galactic Nebulae (1922) is the property of nebula intensity. Nebulosity not only fades with increasing separation from stars, but it does so following the inverse-square law, used by Newton in defining his gravitational equations. Hubble’s success in measuring the distance of nebulae led to his next major discovery. In 1924, his observational work, again using the Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson, provided the first proof of the universe’s expansion. Hubble showed that galaxies are regions of stars, like the Milky Way, and that most of them are hurtling away from Earth at several thousand miles per second. The universe is growing ever larger, in a manner similar to an inflating rubber balloon. Each galaxy moves away from its neighbors; the farther apart the galaxies, the faster their separation. Furthermore, the Milky Way is not the only center of expansion; every other galaxy is its own center of expansion. Hubble surmised the universe would double its diameter every 1.4 billion years; this rate of expansion led to “Hubble’s law,” which states that the farther a galaxy is from an observer, the faster it is moving away from the observer. Hubble based this linear result on a relationship between the distance of a galaxy and the red shift of its spectral lines, a phenomenon whereby the wavelength of light increases as an object moves farther away from its observer. Hubble’s law provides support for the big bang theory, which suggests that the universe exploded into being and constant expansion from a singularity. In the past, the entire universe was located at a single point. Hubble’s law predicts the time that has passed since the big bang, assuming constant galactic speeds during the expansion. Hubble assigned a radius of 18 billion light-years to the size of the universe. Both figures have since been revised due to advanced computer-aided measuring techniques, but the process Hubble used to measure the size and age of the universe remains unchanged. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Christianson, Gale E. Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995. Hubble, Edwin. The Realm of the Nebulae. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1936. Magueijo, Joao. Faster than the Speed of Light. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2003. Perkowitz, Sidney. Empire of Light. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

H U B B L E T E L E S CO P E Launched on April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery, the Hubble Telescope, named in honor of astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble, represented an enormous step forward in astronomical research. The Hubble Telescope made it possible to unlock many secrets of the universe, providing observations so that distances of neighboring galaxies could be calculated with precision. The idea of basing a telescope in Earth orbit was proposed by astronomer Lyman Spitzer in the 1940s. During the 1960s, Spitzer was involved in the development and deployment of NASA’s Orbital Astronomical Observatory, which studied the universe from Earth’s orbit during a period from 1968 to 1972. A successor, the Apollo telescope mount, launched on board the U.S. space station Skylab in 1973, was used to observe the sun. At the same time, studies began on what would become the Hubble Telescope, also known as the Hubble Space Telescope. The goal was to define a tool that could observe galaxies billions of light-years away from Earth. The gestation of the project was long and arduous, but the Hubble Telescope, which measured fortythree feet long and was intended to last twenty years in Earth orbit, was ready for launch in 1986. The explosion of the shuttle Challenger in 1986, however, delayed the installation of the telescope in space for four years. When the Hubble Telescope began operation, the clarity of the images was stunning, lacking the atmospheric distortion of an Earth-based telescope. Soon, however, controllers based at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland determined that the telescope’s mirror was suffering from a “spherical aberration” (it was ground too flat on the outer edge by 2.2 microns) that prevented a perfect focus. Computer-assisted

Section 9: Jansky, Karl 595 verse and contributed to the discovery of massive black holes at the center of many galaxies, key evidence for the accelerating expansion of the universe. The telescope’s discoveries include the big “black eye” left by comet Shoemaker-Levy’s direct hit on Jupiter, which alerted the public to the dangers of asteroids impacting Earth; a series of planetary nebulae; portraits of planets in the solar system, including auroras on Jupiter and Saturn; and such astronomical phenomena as the “pillars of dust” in the Eagle Nebula, which appeared on nearly every front page in America and became iconic for the Hubble Telescope itself. Guillaume de Syon

Sources Free of atmospheric fluctuations and ambient light, the Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers startlingly clear images of distant space objects—such as these gaseous pillars in the Eagle Nebula (M16)—and new understandings of astrophysical phenomena. (NASA/Buyenlarge/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

corrections helped mitigate the problem, at least until a repair mission could be sent. Servicing Mission-1 was part of the space shuttle Endeavour’s mission, launched in December 1993, which brought new instruments and an axial replacement package about the size of a telephone booth to the Hubble Telescope. The repairs helped remedy the blurred images by placing five mirrors in front of instruments in use on the telescope. The adjusted resolution set the standard for subsequent servicing missions in 1997, 1999, and 2002. The destruction of the space shuttle Columbia during reentry in 2003 raised questions about the safety of astronauts, and NASA announced the cancellation of a fourth servicing mission in 2004 in favor of a robotic servicing mission. This decision caused a storm of protest within scientific communities worldwide, for it would mean an early end to the Hubble Telescope’s projected twenty-year career. Scientists and engineers have sought options to extend the telescope’s operational life. Shuttle Servicing Mission 4, scheduled for August 2008, will update the Hubble Telescope, installing new batteries and gyroscopes, extending the life of the telescope for another five years. The Hubble Telescope’s direct observation of the universe helped establish the age of the uni-

Chaisson, Eric. The Hubble Wars: Astrophysics Meets Astropolitics in the Two-Billion-Dollar Struggle over the Hubble Space Telescope. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Hubble Space Telescope. http://hubble.nasa.gov. Petersen, Carolyn Collins, and John C. Brandt. Hubble Vision: Astronomy with the Hubble Space Telescope. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

J A N S K Y, K A R L (1905–1950) Regarded by many as the father of American radio astronomy, Karl Jansky was the first person to discover that certain interstellar objects produce electromagnetic radiation in the form of cosmic radio waves. In an era when optical astronomy and radio communications were completely unconnected technical endeavors, Jansky’s discovery eventually led others to use radio antennae as tools for exploring the universe. Karl Guthe Jansky was born in Norman, Oklahoma, on October 22, 1905. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in physics, Jansky went to work for Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. His job was to determine what radio sources might interfere with transatlantic telephone calls. To carry out his research, Jansky built a rotating antenna at a Bell field station in Holmdel, where he could receive radio waves at a frequency of 20.5 MHz. By slowly rotating the antenna, Jansky could pinpoint the directional origins of various

596 Section 9: Jansky, Karl radio signals. In the autumn of 1930, Jansky begin taking radio signal data, eventually learning to discriminate between three distinct types of radio static: noise from distant thunderstorms being reflected from the ionosphere, noise from nearby thunderstorms, and a third form of static that he received as a faint but steady hiss from an unknown source. In April 1932, Jansky presented a paper before a meeting of the International Scientific Radio Union in which he discussed the design of his antenna and his research findings. Jansky spent the next year investigating the third form of static. He determined that the source moved across the sky once a day with the sun. This initially led him to conclude that the cause of the static was solar radiation. After several more months of tracking and studying the static, however, he found that Earth’s movement changed the point of strongest signal from a position close to the sun to a fixed point in the constellation Sagittarius in the Milky Way galaxy. This new data seemed to prove that the signals were not from the sun but were of cosmic origin. Jansky asked Bell for resources to study the cosmic radio waves in more detail, but the company already had all the information about the phenomenon it needed. Jansky was assigned another research project and, after writing a paper on the source of interstellar interference for the Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1935, he did no further work on the subject. Jansky died in New Jersey on February 14, 1950, having never received formal recognition of his achievement from the scientific community. Nonetheless, his discovery led to a number of landmark discoveries in radio astronomy, including the detection of pulsars, quasars, and black holes. In 1998, Bell Labs erected a monument to mark the site of Jansky’s original radio antenna. Radio astronomers today use the Jansky unit as a measure of the strength, or flux density, of celestial radio sources. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Malphrus, Benjamin K. The History of Radio Astronomy and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory: Evolution Toward Big Science. Melbourne, FL: Krieger, 1996. Sullivan, Woodruff Turner, ed. Early Years of Radio Astronomy: Reflections Fifty Years After Jansky’s Discovery. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

KEELER, JAMES (1857–1900) James Edward Keeler was the leading American astrophysicist until his untimely death, at age forty-two, on August 12, 1900. The previous year he had been awarded the Henry Draper medal for his contributions to astrophysics. Keeler’s precise spectroscopic wavelength measurements were often used to settle disputes between astrophysicists at observatories around the world. Keeler was born in Illinois on September 10, 1857, but he spent much of his childhood in Florida. Largely self-taught, he entered Johns Hopkins University in 1877, where he majored in physics and German, with minors in astronomy, chemistry, and mathematics. At the end of his first year, Keeler traveled to Colorado on a Naval Observatory expedition to observe a total solar eclipse. His sketch of the solar corona was later published in the U.S. Naval Observatory Washington Observations. Shortly before receiving his B.A. in 1881, Keeler accepted a position as research assistant for Samuel P. Langley, director of the Allegheny Observatory at the Western University of Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh. In 1886, Keeler left Allegheny to become the first professional astronomer at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, California, joining the University of California faculty in 1888. When it opened, the Lick Observatory boasted a 36 inch refracting telescope, the largest of its kind in the world. Keeler used this telescope in 1888 to observe a narrow division in the outer edge of Saturn’s A-ring, now known as Encke’s Division but sometimes referred to as “Keeler’s gap.” Keeler’s most important work at Lick, measuring the wavelengths of the brightest emission lines of nebular spectra, combined with his accurate determination of radial velocities for both stars and nebulae, firmly established his professional reputation. Keeler’s first stay at Lick did not last long. He seized an opportunity in 1891 to succeed his mentor Langley and become the new director at Allegheny. It was there in 1895 that Keeler measured the rotational velocity of Saturn’s rings, noting the difference in Doppler shift between the inner and outer ones. Keeler’s observation was the first

Section 9: Lowell, Percival 597 confirmation of James Clerk Maxwell’s 1857 theory that Saturn’s rings are not continuous solid objects but are composed of individual particles. That same year, Keeler co-founded the Astrophysical Journal with fellow astronomer George Ellery Hale. Keeler returned to the Lick Observatory in 1898 to become its second director, and he soon established the first American graduate program in astrophysics at the University of California. Keeler also established a program of nebular photography with the previously unused Crossley reflector, discovering thousands of formerly unseen nebulae in the sky, which suggested that there are thousands more yet to be discovered with improved telescopic magnification. In his observations, Keeler discovered a puzzling abundance of “spiral nebulae.” Astronomers now recognize those spiral nebulae as spiral galaxies, lying far outside the Milky Way, but this was not understood in Keeler’s time. Keeler’s photographs thus helped to lay the foundation for the study of galaxies during the early twentieth century, a development that Keeler himself did not live to witness. Matthew C. Aberman

Sources Campbell, W.W. “James Edward Keeler.” Astrophysical Journal 12:4 (1900): 239–53. Osterbrock, Donald E. James E. Keeler: Pioneer American Astrophysicist. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

L O W E L L , P E R C I VA L (1855–1916) The amateur astronomer and writer Percival Lowell is best known for his belief in intelligent life on Mars. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 13, 1855, Lowell came from a background of wealth, culture, and self-conscious propriety. After graduating from Harvard in 1876 and touring Europe for over a year, he returned to Boston in 1877 and went to work in his grandfather’s business. By 1883, shrewd investment of inherited wealth left Lowell a wealthy man, thereafter free from the need to earn a living. During the course of the next decade, his many travels included five long visits to Asia. His four books and numerous articles on

various aspects of life in Japan and Korea made something of a reputation for Lowell as a writer. In 1893, Lowell returned to an early interest, astronomy, and began a study of the planet Mars, which would occupy much of the remainder of his life. Giovanni Schiaparelli, astronomer at the Milan Observatory in Italy, had mapped Mars in 1877. Schiaparelli’s maps indicated canals or channels connecting various regions of the Martian landscape. When, in 1894, Mars was in opposition to the sun, Lowell founded an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona—roughly 7,000 feet above sea level, with excellent conditions for astronomical viewing—to exploit the opportunity. The observatory was staffed by professional astronomers who produced an enviable body of planetary studies under Lowell’s direction and long after his lifetime. Lowell became convinced of the existence of intelligent life on Mars. From what appeared to be canals on the surface of Mars, he extrapolated the need for widespread cooperation in their construction and maintenance and thus the existence of Martian beings who were peaceful and cooperative—and therefore the superiors of Earth humans. In addition to numerous lectures and magazine articles, he put forth his theories in a series of popular books: Mars (1895), The Solar System (1903), Mars and Its Canals (1906), Mars as the Abode of Life (1908), and The Evolution of Worlds (1909). Lowell was far from the only scholar of his time who speculated on the existence of other worlds and the possibility of extraterrestrial life and intelligence, but many astronomers objected to the lack of scientific rigor in Lowell’s studies. Perhaps in an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of his observatory, and of himself as a gentleman scientist, Lowell retreated from Mars as a research focus after 1908. Instead, he began an intensive search for a hypothesized ninth planet, beyond the orbit of Neptune. The existence of such a planet had been predicted, as had that of Neptune, based on perceived perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. Having studied astronomy and mathematics at Harvard, and employing professional planetary astronomers at his high-altitude observatory, Lowell was in a good position to pursue the hypothetical world he called Planet X. Like others involved in the search, Lowell calculated potential locations for Planet X by assuming a large,

598 Section 9: Lowell, Percival highly reflective ninth planet and following the method used in finding Neptune decades earlier. Repeated efforts by Lowell and by his rivals in the search all failed. The ninth planet was no mighty gas giant, as he believed, and the basic assumptions under which Lowell and others operated were clearly mistaken. Lowell died at the observatory on November 12, 1916. The decade-long attempt by his widow, Constance Savage Keith, to break his will and seize the observatory’s million-dollar endowment plunged Lowell Observatory into years of frustration and inaction, as much of the income from the endowment had to be spent on legal fees. Only in the late 1920s was the observatory once again active in the search for Planet X. Using better equipment and making no grand assumptions as to the location of a ninth planet, the staff of the Lowell Observatory identified the small ice world of Pluto in 1930, justifying at one stroke the observatory and its activities over so many years. David Lonergan

Sources Hoyt, William Graves. Lowell and Mars. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976. Strauss, David. Percival Lowell: The Culture and Science of a Boston Brahmin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

MITCHELL, MARIA (1818–1889) Considered America’s first woman astronomer, Maria Mitchell was born on August 1, 1818, in Nantucket, Massachusetts. She was educated by her father, William, a teacher and astronomical observer with contacts at Harvard College. Together, they timed star transits across the night sky for the United States Coast Survey. Mitchell worked during the day as the librarian of the Nantucket Athenaeum, and she studied the skies on clear nights. On October 1, 1847, she discovered a comet and calculated its position. The achievement immediately brought fame and scientific recognition. She received a medal from the king of Denmark, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was cited by the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848.

In 1849, the Nautical Almanac Office hired Mitchell to compute the ephemerides of the planet Venus. She also traveled regularly to meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she toured Europe in 1857, spending time with British astronomers John and Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville. Supporters purchased a high-quality telescope for her in 1859. In 1865, she became a professor of astronomy and director of the observatory at the newly founded Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was so busy at Vassar that she had to resign from the Nautical Almanac Office in 1868. Mitchell focused on teaching rather than research, sacrificing her own potential scientific achievements to involve more women in science. She demanded high standards of her students, requiring them to pass a mathematics examination before enrolling in her astronomy course, to attend lectures on the history and philosophy of science, and to participate in field observations. When she toured Europe again in 1873, she shared ideas with leaders in the women’s higher education movement. She then took her campaign to build women’s confidence into a national organization, the Association for the Advancement of Women, serving as its president from 1875 to 1877. Mitchell often spoke publicly about the importance of women working together to improve educational opportunities and create conditions that would afford women the time to do scientific research. She headed the association’s committee on science after it was formed in 1876, conducting surveys on women’s roles in the scientific community. Mitchell continued to teach at Vassar until her death on June 28, 1889. In 1902, the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association was established to recognize Mitchell’s role as the leading American woman scientist of the nineteenth century; a working observatory was added in 1908. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Sources Kidwell, Peggy A. “Three Women of American Astronomy.” American Scientist 78 (1990): 244–51. Kohlstedt, Sally G. “Maria Mitchell and the Advancement of Women in Science.” In Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, ed. Prina G. Abir-Am and Dorinda Outram. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

Section 9: Moons of Other Planets 599

MOONS

OF

OT H E R P L A N E TS

Prior to the seventeenth century, scientists who subscribed to the Copernican system of the heavens believed that, of the six known planets, only Earth had a planetary satellite, or moon, about which little was known except for the periodicity of its orbit. It was only in 1610, when Galileo Galilei turned the newly invented telescope to the heavens, that more moons were discovered. Galileo observed that four objects unseen by the naked eye orbited Jupiter. Later that century, improved telescopes allowed the Dutch Christiaan Huygens and Italian G.D. Cassini to find five moons of Saturn (along with its ring system). The still more powerful telescopes constructed by Britain’s William Herschel allowed him to discover the planet Uranus in 1781, its two largest moons in 1787, and two more moons of Saturn in 1789. Shortly after Neptune was discovered in September 1846, William Lassell discovered its largest moon. In the next few years, Lassell would discover (simultaneously with the American astronomer William C. Bond) an eighth satellite of Saturn, and he would find two more moons of Uranus. In 1877, thanks to a near approach of the planet Mars, American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered its two small moons. A fifth moon of Jupiter was discovered by American Edward Emerson Barnard in 1892. And in 1898, American William Henry Pickering discovered a seventh moon of Saturn, the first to be discovered photographically. These discoveries brought the total number of known planetary satellites to twenty-two, including Earth’s moon. Continued efforts by twentieth-century astronomers with more powerful telescopes yielded twelve more moons— eight of Jupiter and one each of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the dwarf planet Pluto—bringing the total known in 1978 to thirty-four. The Voyager planetary probes, launched in 1977 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), would greatly increase this number. From 1979, when Voyager I first reached Jupiter, to 1989, when Voyager II at last visited Neptune, the probes either confirmed the existence or led to the discovery of nearly thirty moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune,

along with the first real information about the features and characteristics of many previously discovered moons. Since the Voyager missions, dozens more small moons have been found using large, groundbased telescopes and CCD (charge-coupled device) cameras, as well as the Cassini-Huygens probe orbiting Saturn. This brought the total number of planetary satellites in the solar system to more than 100, with several dozen more awaiting confirmation and naming. The search for planetary satellites and their study is important for several reasons. The orbits of planetary satellites can be used to help determine the mass of the planets about which they orbit, which can then be used to help determine the planets’ composition. Often, these orbits can cause astronomers to seek other undiscovered bodies that might explain any orbital irregularities. Planetary satellites also help us understand the physical characteristics of their fellow satellites and of the planets they orbit. For example, many of the small moons found about the outer planets are believed to help give planetary ring systems their stability; these are called “shepherd moons.” Planetary satellites and their origins also provide information about the development of the solar system. Some moons, such as Mars’s two small ones, appear to have been asteroids captured by a planet’s gravitational field. Others, like Pluto’s moon Charon (and perhaps even Pluto itself ) and many of the smaller moons, may have originally been Kuiper Belt objects from the far outer reaches of the solar system where comets originate. There is also some belief that Neptune’s great moon Triton at one time may have been a planet whose orbit took it too close to Neptune. Finally, many of these moons possess complex geologies, and are among the most interesting candidates in the search for life beyond Earth. Two moons are larger than the planet Mercury (Jupiter’s Ganymede and Saturn’s Titan), and five others are larger than Pluto (Earth’s moon; Jupiter’s Callisto, Io, and Europa; and Neptune’s Triton). Five moons have atmospheres (Io, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, and Triton). Io and Triton are, besides Venus and Earth, the only objects in the solar system to feature volcanic activity—eruptions of sulfur and ice, respectively.

600 Section 9: Moons of Other Planets And the complex chemistries and potential for liquid water on Jupiter’s Europa, Enceladus, and Io and on Saturn’s Titan make them intriguing. The relatively recent discoveries of so many moons have changed our view of the solar system and opened new avenues of scientific research. With the knowledge gained from the Voyager missions and other probes, our understanding of the solar system’s past, present, and future is growing faster than ever before. George R. Ehrhardt

Sources Galilei, Galileo. Sidereus Nuncius, or the Sidereal Messenger. Trans. Albert Van Helden. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Leverington, David. Babylon to Voyager and Beyond: A History of Planetary Astronomy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Taton, Rene, and Curtis Wilson, eds. The General History of Astronomy. Vol. 2, Part B, Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

M O U N T W I L S O N O B S E R VAT O R Y The Mount Wilson Observatory in California traces its history to 1896, when founder George Ellery Hale convinced his father to purchase a 60 inch reflecting telescope disk to be mounted at an observatory to serve the emerging field of astrophysics. Located in the San Gabriel Mountains outside Pasadena, Mount Wilson offered outstanding atmospheric clarity for astronomical research. Hale founded the observatory on December 20, 1904, with a grant from the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Mount Wilson’s first telescope was the Snow solar telescope, installed in 1904. The Snow telescope was a horizontally mounted instrument designed to study the processes at work in the sun. Later tests showed that better results could be obtained by mounting the telescope vertically, and 60 foot and 150 foot tower telescopes were built in 1908 and 1912, respectively. Using the 60 foot telescope, Hale found that the sun has a magnetic field, one of the most important discoveries of his career. In addition to these three solar telescopes, Mount Wilson boasts several world-renowned

In 1931, the renowned German physicist Albert Einstein (far left) visited California’s Mount Wilson Observatory, whose 100 inch Hooker reflecting telescope was the world’s largest at the time. (Imagno/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

night telescopes. Hale’s 60 inch disk, mounted there in 1908, was the world’s largest instrument until 1917. In that year, the Hooker 100 inch reflecting telescope, named after Pasadena businessperson and Mount Wilson benefactor John D. Hooker, was completed; it reigned as the world’s largest telescope until 1948. An important factor in Mount Wilson’s success has been the use of innovative equipment. Hale was an important booster of the use of spectral analysis to understand astronomical processes, and he designed Mount Wilson for this purpose. Mount Wilson is home to two instruments devoted to interferometery, a technique invented there by Albert Michelson during the 1920s. An interferometer collects light from two or more locations and combines it to emulate a much larger telescope. The Infrared Spatial Interferometer, established in 1988, uses three 65 inch telescopes to study objects on the infrared wavelength. The CHARA array (Center for High Angular Research Astronomy) was dedicated in

Section 9: Navigation 601 2000 as the world’s largest interferometer and fields six 40 inch telescopes. Mount Wilson is notable not only for its impressive array of equipment and its excellent conditions but also for the breakthrough discoveries made by its early generation of scientists. Using his interferometer attached to the Hooker telescope, Michelson was able to measure the speed of light in 1920. Using the Hooker telescope and spectral analysis, Edwin Hubble discovered in 1923 the Andromeda galaxy, proving that the Milky Way is not the only galaxy, but one of many in the universe. Within four years, Hubble had discovered that the galaxies are receding from us, leading to the conclusion that the universe is expanding, which is the foundation for the big bang theory. The Mount Wilson Observatory helped the United States become the leader in astronomical facilities during the early twentieth century. Its primary instruments were surpassed by 1948, and light pollution has grown with Los Angeles. However, nearly 100 years later, the instruments and conditions at Mount Wilson remain superb, and this historic observatory remains at the forefront of astronomical innovation and research in the United States. Charles Delgadillo

Sources Good, Gregory A., ed. The Earth, the Heavens, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Washington, DC: American Geophysical Union, 1994. Mount Wilson Observatory. http://www.mtwilson.edu. Wright, Helen. Explorer of the Universe: A Biography of George Ellery Hale. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1966. Wright, Helen, Joan N. Warnow, and Charles Weiner, eds. The Legacy of George Ellery Hale: Evolution of Astronomy and Scientific Institutions, in Pictures and Documents. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972.

N AV I G AT I O N Finding one’s way on land and water was first accomplished by locating visible landmarks. In early Greek times, mariners learned to use the sun, moon, and stars for basic navigation. A Chinese essayist named Shen Kua wrote an account in 1086 on how a needle could be magnetized to point north, creating a compass. The compass allowed ships to have a general bearing for

long-distance travel on open water, and it proved useful when fog or clouds obscured the heavens. Alexander Neckam, an English scientist, described further compass designs around 1190. Over the next 450 years, travel was guided by a combination of star charts, more accurate compass designs, and hand-drawn ocean maps of varying scales. The next major advances in sea navigation occurred with the invention of the mariner’s astrolabe, sometime between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the back-staff and the cross-staff, during the sixteenth century. These devices used either the sun or stars to calculate a ship’s position. With this equipment, mariners also discovered how to measure latitude on the oceans. When English scientist John Harrison developed reliable marine chronometers, or nautical clocks, in 1759, longitude also could be calculated. A ship outfitted with a compass, a chronometer, and star charts could travel anywhere with good accuracy by the turn of the nineteenth century.

Simple Mathematics The first significant American contribution to the science of navigation was Nathaniel Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator in 1802. He incorporated original research and checked the work of others with his own calculations to ensure the greatest possible accuracy. Bowditch was from Salem, Massachusetts, and even though he thrived on complex mathematical calculations, he produced a treatise on celestial navigation that was usable by ordinary seaman, even the cook. The first section of Bowditch’s American Practical Navigator included the mathematical tables and astronomical charts needed to determine a location at sea. The later sections included a dictionary of sea terms, a description of sailing and rigging techniques, and information on marine insurance. Bowditch included practical examples of techniques for use on the seas, as he realized that most sailors cared more about obtaining accurate results than studying the intricacies of mathematics. In 1843, Thomas Sumner of Boston published his “line of position” technique of celestial navigation. This method, which Sumner discovered when he was lost at sea, allowed mariners to determine their position by noting the altitude of a predetermined celestial body and calculating its

602 Section 9: Navigation relation to the line of possible courses on which the ship could be directed. Sumner’s method proved highly popular, and all U.S. Navy vessels adopted it, as it required less frequent astronomical observations to make reasonably accurate calculations.

R adio and S atellite Technology Technological advances in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revolutionized American nautical navigation. Among the most important was the development of waypoint navigation with electronic radio equipment, which determines a ship’s location by matching its course with radio waves sent from a predetermined position. Radio direction finding (RDF) was developed in the 1930s for military applications, helping combat planes travel accurate flight paths. U.S. Air Force planes were equipped with receiving equipment before World War II, and networks of broadcast towers were built along the coasts, some towering over a hundred feet into the air. Ships at sea determined their positions by picking up signals from land-based radio-wave stations, although it took decades for enough stations to be built in remote areas. Among the best known of this type of radiowave transmission was the Long Range Navigation (Loran) system, which measured the flight time of radio waves sent from two stations at known locations to allow precise calculation of a ship’s position. Alfred Loomis, a lawyer who put much of his income into scientific research at his Loomis Laboratory in Tuxedo Park, New York, developed Loran in the 1940s. Loran, the first system to rely on semiautomatic equipment rather than human calculation, yielded accurate results, with a margin of error of about a half mile. Space satellites changed the way navigation was conducted, with the development of the global positioning system (GPS). The U.S. Navy implemented its Transit system in 1950, using five satellites in space orbit to ascertain one navigational position each hour. In 1978, Rockwell International, working under a military and space agency contract, launched its Block-I GPS satellite. Designed to orbit Earth at medium altitudes, such craft provided real-time navigational data for ships and planes.

Satellite navigation has become the most common method for air, water, and now land travel. More accurate than radio systems, GPS currently provides worldwide coverage with signals from three satellites. This system allows calculations with a margin of error of about 30 feet. Although the cost to maintain satellite signals exceeds $400 million a year, the information is provided free of charge to anyone with a GPS receiving unit. Technological advances have greatly altered the way Americans navigate. Modern methods rely on advanced microcomputers rather than the mathematical or nautical skill required of early navigators. Improved technology yields greater accuracy and has practically eliminated the need for human calculations. James Fargo Balliett and Benjamin Lawson

Sources American Practical Navigator: An Epitome of Navigation Originally by Nathaniel Bowditch. Bethesda, MD: National Imagery and Mapping Agency, 2002. Campbell, John F. History and Bibliography of the New American Practical Navigator and the American Coast Pilot. Salem, MA: Peabody Museum, 1964. McHale, Thomas R., and Mary C. McHale. Early American– Philippine Trade: The Journal of Nathaniel Bowditch in Manila, 1796. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962. Woodman, Richard. The History of the Ship. London: Conway Maritime, 1997.

N E WCO M B, S I M O N (1835–1909) A leading mathematical astronomer and one of the nineteenth century’s most famous scientists, Simon Newcomb was born on March 12, 1835, in Wallace, Nova Scotia, Canada. He was recognized as a child prodigy but did not fare well in formal classroom settings. Instead, Newcomb worked on neighboring farms while being tutored by his schoolteacher. At sixteen, he was apprenticed to an herbalist, but after two years of intolerable conditions, he ran away to his widower father’s new home in Maryland. In Maryland, Newcomb found a series of jobs as a teacher or tutor, and he made several visits to the Smithsonian Institution. There, he met and

Section 9: Observatories 603 impressed Joseph Henry, its secretary, whose extensive connections led in 1857 to a job at the U.S. Navy’s Nautical Almanac Office, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Newcomb’s new position left ample time for studying, so he enrolled in the nearby Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard College, where he studied under Benjamin Peirce. Newcomb graduated summa cum laude in the summer of 1858 and he continued to be a part of the Harvard intellectual scene for the next few years. In 1861, Newcomb was hired as a professor of mathematics at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., replacing a departed Southern sympathizer. He soon mastered his duties as observer and mathematical astronomer, among other things greatly improving the measurement of stellar positions and successfully lobbying for the purchase of the largest telescope in the United States, a 26 inch refractor. In 1863, Newcomb wed Mary Hassler; the couple would have three children. In 1864, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Apart from his official duties at the Naval Observatory, Newcomb took on a wide variety of administrative roles in the increasingly professionalized world of American public science. He was, over the years, the longtime editor of the American Journal of Mathematics, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, vice president of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the American Astronomical Society, founding president of the American Society for Psychical Research (as a skeptic), and president of the Philosophical Society of Washington. During this time, Newcomb’s research included precise calculations of the movements of Uranus, Neptune, and Earth’s moon. He became interested in measuring the speed of light, working for some time with a young naval officer named Albert A. Michelson. From the 1860s on, Newcomb also developed a second career as a political economist. His numerous speeches and publications argued for the adoption of scientific principles in economic and political decision making. Recognition of Newcomb’s scientific and economic achievements brought him a variety of professional offers, including director of Harvard College’s observatory, president of the University of California, and professorships at several universities. In 1877, he accepted the position of su-

perintendent at his old workplace, the U.S. Navy’s Nautical Almanac Office, which by then had moved to Washington, D.C. At various times, Newcomb served as professor of mathematics or astronomy at Johns Hopkins University and Columbian (now George Washington) University, while maintaining his superintendency of the Nautical Almanac Office. He retired at sixty-two, the required age for U.S. Navy employees, but continued active research with funding from the Carnegie Institution of Washington. His numerous honors and awards include the Gold Medal of London’s Royal Astronomical Society, the Huygens Medal of the Netherlands Academy of Sciences, the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and appointment as a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. In 1895, he was one of the first Americans to be named a foreign associate of the Paris Academy of Sciences; in 1904, he served as president of the Congress of Arts and Sciences at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Newcomb died in Washington on July 11, 1909, at the age of seventy-four. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. David Lonergan

Sources Carter, Bill, and Merri Sue Carter. Latitude: How American Astronomers Solved the Mystery of Variation. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002. Moyer, Albert E. A Scientist’s Voice in American Culture: Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Scientific Method. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

O B S E R VAT O R I E S Humans have always been entranced by the heavenly bodies, and long before lenses were ground and small telescopes built, peoples in England, Iraq, the Americas, and India built astronomical observatories. Modern facilities are located on the tops of high peaks to escape from distracting light, gegenschein (glow in the sky at dusk), dust, atmospheric disturbances, weather conditions that may exist below, and various forms of pollution.

604 Section 9: Observatories Among the most important U.S. observatories for astronomy are Lick in California (1888), the first major American facility; Yerkes in Wisconsin (1897), with a 40 inch mirror; Mount Wilson in California (1917), with a 100 inch mirror; Palomar Mountain in California (1949), with a 200 inch mirror; Kitts Peak in Arizona (1970), with a 158 inch mirror; and the nine telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which because of its excellent weather and clear atmosphere is one of the world’s finest optical installations. Mauna Kea’s Keck Observatory (1993) has the world’s largest optical instrument, at 387 inches. Telescopes are now often enormous, computercontrolled units housed in dome-shaped buildings many stories high, where the roofs slide open to reveal the night sky. In the past, images were recorded on photographic plates; today, computers control television cameras that record whatever the telescopes focus on. It can be difficult to gain access to one of these large emplacements. Nevertheless, many observatories offer tours to the general public. Some even maintain museums. With the exception of solar research, observations naturally take place at night. Observatories may specialize in or emphasize solar, lunar, planetary, galactic, spectral, and other astronomical manifestations. In addition to optical observations, installations monitor radiation such as gamma or X-rays, and the infrared spectrum. Jodrell Bank in England (1947) and Arecibo in Puerto Rico (1963; at 305 meters the world’s largest radio telescope) monitor radio waves. The work done at terrestrial observatories is supplemented by satellite-mounted equipment such as the Chandra X-ray satellite observatory (1999) and the Hubble Space Telescope, which is able to produce stunning images of distant objects unavailable to conventional optical equipment. Robert Hauptman

Sources Hearnshaw, J.B. The Analysis of Starlight: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Astronomical Spectroscopy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ———. The Measurement of Starlight: Two Centuries of Astronomical Photometry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Kirby-Smith, H.T. U.S. Observatories: A Directory and Travel Guide. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976. National Optical Astronomy Observatory. http://www.noao.edu.

P A LO M A R O B S E R VAT O R Y Located atop Mount Palomar, northeast of San Diego, California, the Palomar Observatory is best known as the home of the Hale telescope, a 200 inch reflector (nicknamed the “Big Eye”) that was the largest in the world until the late 1970s. Once managed jointly with the Carnegie Institution, the observatory today is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology. Palomar’s origins can be traced to American astronomer George Ellery Hale, a skilled administrator and master at soliciting funds from wealthy philanthropists. In 1928, Hale obtained $6 million for the facility from the Rockefeller Foundation, representing the largest private donation for a science project to that time. Unfortunately, Hale did not live to see Palomar’s completion. He died in 1938 while the telescope was still under construction. The building of Palomar was an early example of “big science” in America, requiring the development of unproven technologies, combining the efforts of numerous scientists and engineers, and costing millions of dollars. Not surprisingly, the ambitious project was burdened by a number of unforeseen difficulties. The primary mirror originally was to be cast from fused quartz by the General Electric Company, but, by 1931, after almost a million dollars had been spent with little success, this proved to be financially unrealistic. Instead, it was decided to use Pyrex glass, which scarcely expands or contracts when subjected to temperature changes, making it resistant to optical distortion. After a failed first attempt, the Corning Glass Works of New York successfully cast a Pyrex mirror blank in late 1934, which required ten additional months of annealing. The next challenge was to grind the mirror to an almost flawless concave surface. Workers at the Caltech optics laboratory painstakingly removed five tons of glass from 1936 to 1941, when World War II interrupted the job, but efforts were resumed in late 1945. In November 1947, the mirror was transported to the completed dome atop Mount Palomar. Nearly a thousand people attended the dedication ceremony in June 1948, during which the telescope was named for Hale. In January 1949, more than two decades after the original

Section 9: Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia 605 Rockefeller grant, the first photographs were taken by astronomer Edwin Hubble, although a persistent astigmatism prevented the telescope from becoming fully operational until October of that year. The Hale telescope is seven stories tall and weighs 500 tons. Portions of the tube and mounting are among the largest steel structures ever machined. The curvature of the paraboloidal mirror is polished to a precision of under a millionth of an inch, and Palomar was the first telescope to permit observers to ride in a cage at the prime focus. Scientific accomplishments at Palomar have included the doubling of the cosmic distance-scale by astronomer Walter Baade in 1952 and the first visual observations of quasars, the most distant known celestial objects, by astronomers Allan Sandage and Maarten Schmidt during the early 1960s. The Palomar Observatory is also home to a 60 inch reflecting telescope, dedicated in 1970, and two Schmidt 18 inch and 48 inch telescopes, completed in 1936 and 1948, respectively. Ideal for wide-field photography, the latter of these instruments, the Samuel Oschin telescope, was

Astronomer Edwin Hubble sits inside the seven-story Hale telescope—a 200 inch refractor at the Palomar Observatory near Pasadena, California. In 1949, Hubble became the first to use the telescope, the largest of its kind for nearly three decades. (J.R. Eyerman/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

used to conduct the Palomar Observatory sky surveys between 1948 and 2000. Matthew C. Aberman

Sources Florence, Ronald. The Perfect Machine: Building the Palomar Telescope. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Preston, Richard. First Light: The Search for the Edge of the Universe. New York: Random House, 1987.

P AY N E -G A P O S C H K I N , C E C I L I A (1900–1979) Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was a twentiethcentury pioneer in astronomy and one of the key figures in the understanding of the astrophysics of stars. She is best known for determining a temperature scale for the different types of stars that fit the stellar classification devised by astronomer Annie Jump Cannon. She also discovered the chemical composition of stars. Cecilia Payne was born on May 10, 1900, in Buckinghamshire, England. She attended Newnham College at Cambridge University, where she studied natural sciences, and received her bachelor ’s degree. Because postgraduate opportunities were limited in England, she decided to go to the United States. She was the first student to earn a Ph.D. from the Harvard College Observatory, in 1925, and she established a successful career at the observatory. In 1933, she married Russian astronomer Sergei Gaposchkin. Because Payne-Gaposchkin was a woman, Harvard’s Observatory first employed her in an unofficial capacity. It was not until 1938 that she was made an official faculty member and granted the title of astronomer. In 1956, she became the first woman to become a full tenured professor at Harvard and the first woman to chair a department, becoming head of Harvard’s Astronomy Department. She retired in 1979. While a student at Cambridge, PayneGaposchkin had been elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society. During her years at Harvard, she wrote several books, including An Introduction to Astronomy (1954) and The Galactic Novae (1957). She was a member and on the staff

606 Section 9: Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1967 to 1979. She received numerous awards for her work, including the Henry Norris Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society, the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy, and the Rittenhouse Medal from the Franklin Institute. She died on December 7, 1979, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Judith B. Gerber

Sources Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia. An Autobiography and Other Recollections. Ed. Katharine Haramundanis. 2nd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ———. Stars and Clusters. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.

P I C K E R I N G , E D WA R D (1846–1919) Astronomer and physicist Edward Charles Pickering emerged as one of the leading scientists in the field of star classification in the late nineteenth century. He contributed to the knowledge of stellar structure by refining the photometric parallax method, which uses the colors and apparent brightness of stars to calculate their distances from Earth. He also created the first instructional physics laboratory in the United States in 1869, motivating an entire generation of scientific investigators. Pickering served as director of the Harvard College Observatory for forty-two years, overseeing the implementation of new methods and technology that would allow for unprecedented discoveries in astronomy. Pickering was born on July 19, 1846, in the Beacon Hill section of Boston. His father and grandfather were Harvard College graduates, and his uncle, Charles Pickering, was a noted nineteenthcentury botanist and physician. His brother, William Henry Pickering, was also an astronomer, and the two collaborated on a number of research projects. Pickering attended the prestigious Boston Latin School, and he graduated from Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School in 1865. Pickering served as a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge from 1868 to 1877. It was at MIT in

1869 that he set up the first instructional physics laboratory in the United States, emphasizing a rigorous experimental approach to instruction as well as research. The following year, Pickering succeeded in building a machine for the electrical transmission of sounds, the principles of which were later employed in the design of the first telephone receiver. He never applied for a patent for this invention, believing that all scientific work should reside in the public domain. Pickering wrote a two-volume summary of his physics and electricity experiments, Elements of Physical Manipulations (1873–1876). On February 1, 1877, Pickering was appointed director of the Harvard College Observatory, one of the most advanced and prestigious research facilities of the time. During his tenure, he raised the endowment of the observatory from a small sum to $1 million. He also continued with scientific research. Under his direction, the magnitudes of tens of thousands of stars were determined with the meridian photometer, a device he invented that used a horizontal telescope focused on two objects—the target star and, as a standard, a star near the north celestial pole. By this method, the observatory produced more than 2 million photometric measurements and cataloged the brightness of some 80,000 stars. In 1877, only 200 variable stars were known; by 1915, the figure had reached 4,500. By means of stellar spectroscopy (examining the electro-magnetic spectrum given off by starlight), Pickering cataloged the temperature, physical condition, and composition of some 200,000 stars. To perform these and other enormous tasks, Pickering, who was sympathetic to woman’s suffrage, convinced Harvard College to hire a team of supremely qualified women as “computers” or mathematicians. Referred to at Harvard and in the broader scientific community as “Pickering’s Harem,” this team included Williamina Paton Fleming, Annie Jump Cannon, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and Antonia Maury. Pickering also used the resources of Harvard to construct an observatory at Arequipa, Peru, in 1891 to observe the southern sky. Along with German astronomer Hermann Carl Vogel, Pickering discovered the first spectroscopic binary star, Algol, which is actually two stars that orbit each

Section 9: Pluto, Discovery of 607 other at a very high velocity due to their enormous gravitational pull. Committed to documenting the work of the Harvard Observatory, Pickering edited eighty volumes of the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College from 1855 to 1919. To help popularize the field of astronomy, he joined with William Tyler Olcott in 1911 to found the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Based in Cambridge, this association has grown to include more than 1,000 professional and amateur members from forty-five countries; the membership has contributed to a catalog of more than 12.5 million observations over the years. Pickering was the recipient of such distinguished awards as the Rumford Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1891, the Henry Draper Medal from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1888, and the Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1908. He served as president of the American Astronomical Society from 1905 to 1919 and as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1912. Craters on the moon and Mars are named after him, as is a comet. He died on February 3, 1919. James Fargo Balliett and Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Bailey, Solon I. “Edward Charles Pickering, 1846–1919.” Astrophysical Journal 50:19 (1919): 233–38. Jones, Bessie, and Lyle Boyd. The Harvard College Observatory: The First Four Directorships. Foreword by Donald H. Menzel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Plotkin, Howard. “Edward Charles Pickering.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 21 (1990): 47–58.

P LU TO, D I S COV E RY

OF

Pluto, considered the ninth planet of the solar system until the International Astronomical Union demoted it in 2006 to a minor status, was discovered in February 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh, a young staff assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Although the new planet had been sought by astronomers for many years, it proved to be significantly unlike what had been predicted for a world beyond Neptune.

Discovery of planets outside the orbit of Saturn began in March 1781, when the self-taught English astronomer and telescope maker William Herschel spotted what he believed to be a comet between the constellations of Gemini and Taurus. The body was soon identified as a planet, Uranus, the first added to those known by the ancients and the first ever found with a telescope. Perturbations in the orbit of Uranus eventually led to the search for a trans-Uranian planet through astrophysical calculation. The discovery of Neptune in September 1846 helped astronomers account for part of the disturbance of Uranus’s orbit; the existence of residual perturbations created interest in a search for transNeptunian worlds as early as 1877. The solar system as then known comprised four small, dense, inner planets and four gas giants beyond the orbit of Mars. This dichotomy influenced the nature of further searches, as astronomers assumed that any additional planets would be like the other outer worlds, but attempts to find a ninth planet, predicated on its being another massive gas giant, were doomed to failure. Percival Lowell, the wealthy amateur astronomer notorious for his speculations concerning canals and intelligent life on Mars, entered the fray in 1905. Lowell sought “Planet X” from his private Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, which was staffed with professional astronomers and technicians. The search for a ninth planet was at least in part an attempt to rehabilitate his reputation after scientists ridiculed his claims regarding Mars. After Lowell’s death in 1916, the resources of the observatory were stretched thin, due to a protracted but ultimately failed attempt by Lowell’s widow to break his will and gain control of the observatory’s endowment. Only toward the end of the 1920s could Vesto M. Slipher, the Lowell Observatory director, find the funds to resume the search for the elusive ninth planet. Convinced that better instrumentation was the key to discovering Planet X, Slipher purchased a new wide-angle, 13 inch lens for astrophotography in February 1929. Tombaugh, a young amateur astronomer and telescope maker, was hired at about that time to photograph the entire zodiacal band, the region on either side of the ecliptic, where the eight known planets were located. Two or more lengthy exposures of each

608 Section 9: Pluto, Discovery of of hundreds of small quadrants were made a few days apart and examined rigorously with a blink comparator (a device used to detect changes in position or brightness by comparing photographs of an area), in an attempt to find any outer planet by checking for motion against the stable background of the stars. Tombaugh made the exposures and operated the comparator, which required remarkable technical ability and painstaking concentration. After nearly a year of work, on February 18, 1930, Tombaugh found an indication of movement for a small, star-like object on two exposed plates of a region near Delta Geminorum. The observatory’s formal announcement of the discovery of the ninth planet was put off until March 13, 1930, which was the one hundred forty-ninth anniversary of Herschel’s discovery of Uranus as well as Percival Lowell’s seventyfifth birthday. Although the announcement related the discovery directly to Lowell’s search for Planet X, Tombaugh’s search actually ignored Lowell’s calculations, relying instead on the methodical comparison of images. The new planet was named Pluto, from a suggestion by a British schoolchild in the excitement that followed the discovery. Pluto was far smaller than most astronomers expected, clearly not the gas giant they had been looking for. Subsequent research established that Pluto was a ball of ice about 1,450 miles in diameter, significantly smaller than Earth’s moon. Because of its small size and great distance from Earth, Pluto proved difficult to study and came to be understood only gradually. A hypothesis that Pluto was an escaped moon of one of the gas giants was finally quashed by the discovery in 1978 that Pluto has its own moon, named Charon after the ferryman of Hades. Many astronomers believe that Pluto and Charon are simply large members of the Kuiper Belt, a group of icy bodies circling beyond the orbit of Neptune. A similar body (UB 313) was discovered beyond Neptune’s orbit in 2003 and was not awarded planetary status. Astronomers have long held that Pluto is at best a minor planet, due to its small size, icy nature, and irregular orbit. In a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Prague on August 24, 2006, Pluto lost its status as the solar system’s ninth planet and was reclassified as a

minor planet, not unlike larger members of the asteroid belt such as Ceres. David Lonergan

Sources Levy, David H. Clyde Tombaugh: Discoverer of Planet Pluto. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991. Strauss, David. Percival Lowell: The Culture and Science of a Boston Brahmin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Tombaugh, Clyde, and Patrick Moore. Out of the Darkness: The Planet Pluto. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1980.

POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACK Poor Richard’s Almanack was one of the most important vehicles for disseminating scientific knowledge in eighteenth-century America, and it remains the most famous almanac of all times. The creation of Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s was first published in December 1732. Franklin’s Philadelphia publication was soon one of the best-selling almanacs in America; yearly sales eventually approached 10,000 copies. It appeared annually for twenty-five years, through the volume for 1758, a financial success that facilitated Franklin’s early retirement from gainful employment. Franklin did not say where he derived the name for his almanac, but “Poor Richard” was almost certainly a play off his brother’s Poor Robin almanac, itself based on a British almanac of that name, noted for its humorous content. Although Franklin’s almanac disseminated serious scientific information, it also maintained a humorous undercurrent, often employing satire. Like Jonathan Swift, who sometimes wrote under the name “Isaac Bickerstaff,” Franklin in his almanac hid behind a fictional character he invented as Poor Richard’s publisher. “Richard Saunders” may have been based on a real man by that name, an English physician who compiled his own almanac, the Apollo Anglicanus. In some ways, Poor Richard’s Almanack was not unlike other almanacs of its day. It provided readers with something of a miscellany and often borrowed from other authors without attribution. It was also like other almanacs in frequently touching on scientific topics. Perhaps no other almanac in America, however, strove to be

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In addition to maxims, poems, gossip, and other “entertainments,” Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack disseminated useful scientific knowledge— including data on the phases of the moon, transit of the planets, and eclipses—to colonial readers. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

as enlightening as did Franklin’s. Looking back at Poor Richard’s Almanack in the pages of his Autobiography, Franklin remarked that he “endeavor’d to make it both entertaining and useful,” and that he “consider’d it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books.” From 1733 through 1747, Poor Richard’s followed a set format. Each volume comprised twenty-four pages, containing a “Preface” and “The Lunations, Eclipses, Judgment of the Weather, Spring Tides, Planets Motions & mutual Aspects, Sun and

Moon’s Rising and Setting, Length of Days, Time of High Water, Fairs, Courts, and observable Days.” Each volume also depicted the “Man of Signs,” or “The Anatomy of Man’s Body as govern’d by the Twelve Constellations.” The remaining space was filled with a smattering of epigrams, maxims, essays, poems, “Profitable Observations and Notes,” advertisements for books, and even gossip. Much of the seemingly disparate material was loosely tied together with overriding moral themes of frugality, sobriety, and virtue. But there were also charts and tables, descriptions of regional roads, facts from natural history, and various chronologies. Franklin included in each almanac a detailed discussion of the year’s eclipses, pointing out which would be visible and which not, and how long they would last. Miscellaneous pieces with a bearing on science were everywhere, even in the almanac’s early years, and included, to name a few, an essay on the “RATTLE-SNAKE HERB” (1737), a description “Of the DISEASES this Year” (1739), “Dr. Tennents’ infallible Cure for the Pleurisy”(1740), and an essay on “INDIAN PHYSICK” (1741). In his almanacs for 1746 and 1747, Franklin accompanied his descriptions of eclipses with illustrative woodcuttings; other innovations soon followed. In 1748, Franklin changed the almanac’s title to Poor Richard improved. The new publication was longer and incorporated other changes in its format. The “Preface” became longer, and the “Man of Signs” was more detailed. Illustrations were added to each month’s calendar, the first American almanac to do so. Some of these changes may have been suggested by David Hall, Franklin’s partner, who was listed on the title page of each almanac from 1749. Poor Richard improved gave increased attention to scientific topics. There was, for instance, an essay on “Muschitoes, or Musketoes, a little venomous fly,” which includes the observation: “there are little animals discovered by the microscope, to whom a Musketo is an Elephant!”(1748). Important scientific dates and events were frequently noted. In December 1749, for instance, Franklin remarked: “On the 25th of this month, anno 1642, was born the great Sir ISAAC NEWTON, prince of the modern astronomers and philosophers.” Poor Richard’s for 1750 is illustrative of the importance given to scientific topics. It discussed

610 Section 9: Poor Richard’s Almanack inoculation, a subject of some debate at the time; described the 1692 earthquake that struck Jamaica (June 1750); and touched on other topics of astronomy, geography, and natural history, providing a description of bed bugs (July 1750) and comets (October 1750). A central theme of Poor Richard improved was that science could and did lead to a better understanding of the world in which phenomena were more predictable than had once been thought. Franklin remarked that, in 1680, “the great Comet appeared in England, and continued blazing near 3 Months. Of these surprising Bodies, Astronomers hitherto know very little; Time and Observation, may make us better acquainted with them, and if their Motions are really regular, as they are supposed to be, enable us hereafter to calculate with some Certainty the Periods of their Return.” With advances in the tools for scientific observation, the world could be known in more detail. In April 1751, Poor Richard provided his readers with an extended discussion of “That admirable Instrument the MICROSCOPE.” A similar essay, perhaps the longest of all in the entire run of the almanac, was written for 1753 on “that noblest of Instruments the Telescope.” Mark G. Spencer

Sources Bell, Whitfield J., Jr., ed. The Complete Poor Richard Almanacks, published by Benjamin Franklin. 2 vols. Barre, MA: Imprint Society, 1970. Stowell, Marion Barber. Early American Almanacs: The Colonial Weekday Bible. New York: Burt Franklin, 1977.

PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM The Ptolemaic system is a model of the universe that was developed by the Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer, geographer, and astrologer Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 100–170 C.E.). Ptolemy published his cosmology in Greek in his thirteenvolume Almagest (Syntaxis of Astronomy, ca. 140–150 C.E.) and his Planetary Hypotheses. The Ptolemaic system was geocentric: it postulated that the planet Earth was stationary and the center of the universe, as opposed to the heliocentric cosmology that postulated a sun-centered

solar system. Heliocentricity had been championed by Aristarchus (ca. 250–300 B.C.E.), while geocentricity had been favored by Heraclides (ca. 388–315 B.C.E.), Apollonius (ca. 261–190 B.C.E.), and Hipparchus (ca. 190–120 B.C.E.). Ancient societies and most cosmologists of the time believed a circular path to be perfect and that the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, planets, and stars) must travel in a uniform motion along this most perfect path. Plato’s dictum of “uniform, circular motion” exemplified this idea. The problem was that the observed paths of these heavenly bodies appeared neither circular nor regular. The prograde motion of a planet is the west to east motion along the background of the stars (ecliptic). It had been observed that at times the motions of the heavenly bodies would appear to retrograde— to stop, reverse direction, halt again, and resume the original motion—or so it appeared if one thought Earth was stationary. By postulating irregular movements as a combination of interdependent regular circular motions, the Ptolemaic system explained these irregularities. Ptolemy employed three basic mathematical constructions: eccentric motion, the epicycle, and the equant. According to the Ptolemaic system, each planet moves uniformly in a small orbit, called the epicycle, which is uniformly centered on the circumference of a large orbit, the deferent, around Earth. The epicycle moves on the deferent, and a planet moves on the epicycle orbiting Earth, in effect requiring each planet to have its own system of deferent and epicycle. This answered the retrograde problem—the observed variations in brightness and speed of the same planet over time. Each planet had a different deferent moving outward from Earth, the center of each deferent. To answer other anomalies, however, some epicycles had to be postulated on epicycles. At the same time that a planet orbits on the deferent, it orbits around a point on the deferent, this orbit being the epicycle. From the stationary terrestrial perspective, the planet would be, at different times, closer and farther from Earth, appearing the dimmest and fastest at its apogee (farthest point) and appearing the brightest and slowest at its perigee (nearest to Earth). This was called eccentric motion and was a concept borrowed from Hipparchus, who used as his basis his observations of the positions and brightness of 850 stars.

Section 9: Sagan, Carl 611 Each planet is said to be independent of the other planets and dependent on Earth as its orbital center, with no universal rules governing the motions of all of the heavenly bodies. Each planet has its own epicycle and deferent. This also explained the irregular motion of the sun and moon against the ecliptic, because the sun and moon orbit in their own epicycles, with Earth as the center of their variant deferents. The concepts of the eccentric motion and epicycle were alone insufficient to account for all of the observed astronomical anomalies. For example, the size of a planet’s retrograde loop was not always uniform; sometimes, it was larger and sometimes smaller. This anomaly was most easily seen in the observed motion of Mars over a long period of time. Even when Ptolemy moved deferents off center, the change in loop size did not correspond with the change in speed. In order to resolve these anomalies, Ptolemy postulated his third mathematical construction, the equant. The equant is a point near the center of a planet’s deferent orbit from which one would observe the center of the planet’s epicycle always appearing to move at a uniform speed. The equant was a slightly displaced center determined to be a point midway between the equant and Earth. These three mathematical constructions accounted for planetary motions and most of the anomalies accruing to those motions. For example, the epicycle/deferent ratios are quite compatible with the modern calculations of planet/Earth orbit ratios. In a similar vein, the equant helped Johannes Kepler in the early seventeenth century formulate an elliptical model suggested by his laws of planetary motion. Ptolemy believed that the heavenly bodies were all attached to unseen, solid, nested spheres that caused the circular motions of the heavenly bodies. These spheres were arranged per his calculations of the lunar and solar distances. Each epicycle was the “equator” of a spinning sphere wedged between two spherical shells that surrounded Earth. The celestial sphere was the largest sphere. It held the stars and formed the limit of the universe at a distance of 20,000 times the radius of Earth. These solid, nested spheres had first been proposed by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.E.

This concept of the universe composed of nested spheres was preserved through the Dark Ages as a prominent feature of medieval cosmology. The geocentric cosmology lasted thirteen centuries before it was substantially challenged, and fifteen centuries before it would be replaced by the Copernican system and Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Colonial American scientists lagged in their acceptance of Copernicus and rejection of Ptolemy, mainly due to the distance between Europe and America and the tardiness of important scientific texts reaching American shores. By the late seventeenth century, however, Copernicus’s theories were well known and came to be supported by American intellectuals, even Puritans. The Protestant and Roman Catholic churches slowed the paradigm shift, in part by their commitment to what they believed was a biblically mandated cosmology in which Earth was assumed to be the center of God’s creation. Later heliocentric cosmological formulations made Ptolemy’s invisible, nested spheres and the Ptolemaic system itself indefensible. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Butterfield, Herbert. The Origins of Modern Science. New York: Free Press, 1997. Evans, James. The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. Gribbin, John. The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors. New York: Random House, 2003.

SAGAN, C ARL (1934–1996) Carl Edward Sagan was an astronomer and astrophysicist known for his ability to present complex scientific information in a way that an ordinary person could understand. His best-known work was the 1980 television series Cosmos. In this thirteen-part program, Sagan traced the history of the universe from the big bang to the present. The series was viewed by over 500 million people in sixty countries and won the Emmy and Peabody awards. Sagan also became well known for several popular books and his regular appearances

612 Section 9: Sagan, Carl

With the television documentary series Cosmos (1980) and several best-selling books, Carl Sagan stimulated public interest in space science. His work as an astronomer focused on conditions on other planets and the search for extraterrestrial life. (Santi Visalli, Inc./Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

on television talk shows, during which he popularized the field of astronomy and discussed research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Carl Sagan was born on November 9, 1934, in New York City. He entered the University of Chicago in 1951 at age sixteen and earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts in 1954 and one in physics in 1955. He continued at the school, earning a master’s degree in physics in 1956 and a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960. In his Ph.D. dissertation, Sagan was the first to offer a quantitative explanation of the “greenhouse effect.” In 1960, Sagan took a position as a research fellow in the University of California’s Department of Astronomy. That same year, he also took a job at NASA, working on the Mariner Venus probe, the first U.S. mission to another planet. Throughout his career, Sagan would continue to work for NASA, contributing to interplanetary probe projects to Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,

Uranus, and Neptune. He also briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the moon. During the 1960s, Sagan also became interested in exobiology, the study of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. This was to remain an interest throughout his career, but it would also position Sagan as a “pop” scientist among some of the more traditional, established scholars in his field. Sagan was hired to teach astronomy at Harvard in 1963, but he was denied tenure there and took a position at Cornell University in 1968. From 1972 to 1981, he was associate director of the Center for Radio Physics and Space Research at Cornell, and until his death he was David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Science. In the 1980s, Sagan became increasingly political. He actively opposed the nuclear arms race and, in collaboration with others, proposed the theory of “nuclear winter”—a scenario in which nuclear explosions create huge dust clouds that would block the sunlight and eventually lead to the extinction of life on Earth. Sagan wrote several books, including The Dragons of Eden (1977), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. His only work of fiction, Contact (1985), which envisioned the first communication between humans and aliens, was made into a major motion picture in 1997. Sagan won numerous awards during his career, including NASA’s Apollo Achievement Award, the John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award, the 1981 Humanist of the Year Award, and the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Medal from the Soviet Cosmonauts Federation. He also received honorary degrees from twenty-two universities. Carl Sagan died of pneumonia on December 20, 1996. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources Davidson, Keay. Carl Sagan: A Life. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999. Poundstone, William. Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos. New York: Henry Holt, 1999. Sagan, Carl. Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science. 1979. Reprint ed., New York: Ballantine, 1986. ———. Cosmos. 1980. Reprint ed., New York: Ballantine, 1985. ———. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. 1977. Reprint ed., New York: Ballantine, 1986.

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F O R E X T R AT E R R E S T R I A L INTELLIGENCE

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is an international, experimental science that seeks electromagnetic emissions from alien civilizations. Although the belief in extraterrestrials predates the twentieth century, SETI was made possible by the advancement of radio telescopes during the 1950s. The first SETI paper, “Searching for Interstellar Communications,” was published in Nature by Cornell physicists Philip Morrison and Giuseppe Cocconi in 1959. Astronomer Frank Drake, at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia, began the first observations (Project Ozma) in 1960. The following year, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored an informal meeting at NRAO that gave birth to the Drake equation, which multiplies eight variables—each representing different factors in astronomical, biological, or social evolution—to estimate the number of communicative civilizations in our galaxy. In 1966, American astronomer Carl Sagan edited and republished a book by Soviet astrophysicist Iosif Shklovsky under the title Intelligent Life in the Universe. The book was read widely, drawing vital attention to the SETI concept. Five years later, John Billingham of the NASA Ames Research Center and Bernard Oliver of HewlettPackard co-chaired a Stanford University study that produced the ambitious Project Cyclops report, which proposed a giant phased array of telescopes of 100 meters, and up to sixteen kilometers in diameter, to search for signs of extraterrestrial life. Because of the cost, however, the project was never initiated. In subsequent decades, SETI gradually achieved several institutional milestones. The National Research Council’s decadal surveys of American astronomy endorsed SETI in 1972, 1982, and 1991. Modest programs were initiated at Ohio State University in 1973, the University of California at Berkeley in 1976, and Harvard University in 1983. And there were new investigations at NRAO and the National Astronomy and

Ionosphere Center at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. NASA’s 1975–1976 SETI Workshops chaired by Philip Morrison brought the now familiar acronym SETI into standard usage. In 1979, the Life in the Universe conference at Moffett Field in California formally endorsed a bimodal search strategy, surveying large patches of sky and targeting individual stars. Nevertheless, a number of scholars and lawmakers remained skeptical. After congressional hearings in 1978, an amendment was passed in 1981 prohibiting further NASA funding for SETI. Some funds were restored the following year. The nonprofit SETI Institute of Mountain View, California, founded in 1984, has since provided a haven for interested scientists. In 1992, NASA launched what was intended to be a decadelong search, the High Resolution Microwave Survey. Less than a year later, however, Congress abruptly cancelled the project, despite widespread popular interest in the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Today, private funding from organizations such as the Planetary Society (founded in 1980) continues to make SETI research possible. In the past decade, optical SETI—searching starlight for powerful laser pulses—has achieved newfound respect. Since 1999, millions of volunteers have downloaded the “SETI@Home” screensaver,

As a kind of “message in a bottle” for extraterrestrial life, a plaque with pictorial information about planet Earth and human life was attached to the Pioneer 10 space probe. Launched in 1972, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to leave the solar system. (NASA/Getty Images)

614 Section 9: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence which enlists idle computers to scan data from the Arecibo radio telescope for narrow bandwidth signals. The SETI Institute, in partnership with the University of California at Berkeley, has been building the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in Northern California. Supported by funding from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, the ATA, to be completed by 2020, will allow for an expansion in the number of star systems examined, as well as a much greater amount of time spent on the search for electromagnetic emissions—twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The ATA’s complex of radio telescopes will peer deep within the universe, searching for its beginnings and an understanding of the complexity of its formation. Matthew C. Aberman

Sources Dick, Steven J. The Biological Universe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Swift, David W. SETI Pioneers: Scientists Talk About Their Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990.

SHOEMAKER, EUGENE MERLE (1928–1997) Combining his experience as a geologist with his desire to study celestial objects, Gene Shoemaker mapped planets and tracked comets and asteroids, establishing a new field of study: astrogeology. Prior to his accidental death in 1997, he engaged in more than thirty years of discoveries about the solar system, including a decadelong survey of the heavens for Earth-crossing comets and asteroids. One of these, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (S-L9), jointly discovered by Shoemaker, his wife, Carolyn, and Canadian astronomer David H. Levy, provided a rare opportunity to witness a comet striking a planet—in this case Jupiter—and afforded rare insights about comet dynamics. Shoemaker joined the U.S. Geological Survey after graduating from the California Institute of Technology in 1948. His work included searching for uranium deposits in Colorado and Utah to use

as nuclear fuel. His field studies brought him to the site of a massive depression in northern Arizona that Shoemaker theorized had been caused by a meteor impact, not the collapse of a salt dome or ancient volcanic activity. He was intrigued by the parallels between the large structure of what came to be known as Meteor Crater and the smaller crater holes resulting from underground nuclear explosions such as Teapot ESS and Jangle U. This work led to Shoemaker ’s discovery, with Edward Chao, of coesite, a form of silica created from the high-pressure impact of a meteorite or an explosion of a nuclear device. Shoemaker transformed this learning into a doctoral thesis on Meteor Crater and received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1960. This foundational work on impact cratering set the path for his life’s work. It was Shoemaker’s dream to become the first astronaut-geologist to explore the moon, but a health problem kept him from achieving this goal. Instead, he trained Apollo astronauts to understand lunar geology and educated them on what rocks to collect during their moon walks. His energy and enthusiasm shaped many NASA projects, including Lunar Ranger and Surveyor before the Apollo program, and gave him the lead science role for the 1994 space mission Clementine to acquire further data on the moon after the Apollo program. After Eugene Shoemaker initiated the Palomar Planet-Crossing Asteroid Survey in 1973, Carolyn became involved by examining images from the Palomar films. By 1983, the first of thirty-two comets associated with the Shoemaker name was discovered. In July 1994 came the seminal event of the program. Twenty-one separate pieces of one of the comets, ShoemakerLevy 9, were observed to crash into the planet Jupiter with dramatic results, including the production of impact plumes that rose 3,000 km (1,865 miles) from the surface. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Levy, David H. Shoemaker by Levy: The Man Who Made an Impact. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Peebles, Curtis. Asteroids: A History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2000.

Section 9: Tombaugh, Clyde 615

S I R I U S B, D I S C O V E R Y

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Popularly known as the “Dog Star,” Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Bluish-white in appearance, it is found in the constellation Canis Major. At a distance of about eight and a half light-years, Sirius is also one of the closest stars to Earth. In 1844, German mathematician and astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel discovered that Sirius is actually a binary system. Bessel was the foremost positional astronomer of his day, and after analyzing precise observations of Sirius during the previous decade, he noted a wavelike proper motion as it moved through space. This seemed to indicate that the star was being affected by the gravitation of an unseen companion, producing an orbital period of about fifty years. Astronomers subsequently made many attempts to observe this companion, but the sheer brightness of Sirius made the task extraordinarily difficult. In 1862, American telescope maker Alvan G. Clark became the first individual to observe Sirius’s companion. While testing an 18.5 inch lens for a new refracting telescope, Clark pointed the instrument at Sirius on a whim, revealing a faint object several arc-seconds away from the center of mass of Sirius. The two stars have since been called Sirius A and Sirius B. It was soon shown that Sirius B weighs about half as much as Sirius A; they weigh in at roughly one and two solar masses, respectively. This was puzzling, however, as Sirius B is more than 1,000 times fainter than Sirius A. The mystery deepened in 1914–1915, when American astronomer Walter S. Adams used the 60 inch reflecting telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California to measure Sirius B’s spectrum. Adams’s results implied that Sirius B must have an extremely high surface temperature, several times greater than that of the larger, much brighter Sirius A. Moreover, from the known relationship between temperature and luminosity, Adams deduced that Sirius B is only about the size of planet Earth. Yet, with a mass approximately equal to that of the sun, this gave Sirius B a staggering density, roughly equivalent to a million times that of water. Sirius B thus

proved to be composed of an extremely exotic, previously unknown form of matter. Shortly thereafter, it was classified as a new kind of stellar object: a white dwarf. The theoretical understanding of white dwarfs was made possible only by the development of general relativity and quantum mechanics during the early twentieth century. In 1930, while still a graduate student at Cambridge University, Indian physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar realized that when a star with a mass similar to the sun’s completely burns its nuclear fuel, it will begin to collapse under its own gravitation until the “Pauli exclusion principle” halts the contraction by preventing electrons from getting any closer to one another. A star can therefore reach the phenomenal, yet stable, density of an object such as Sirius B. Chandrasekhar went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics for this concept, which also paved the way for the modern understanding of neutron stars and black holes. Matthew C. Aberman

Sources Miller, Arthur I. Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Minton, R.B. “Friedrich Bessel and the Companion of Sirius.” In Cosmic Horizons: Astronomy at the Cutting Edge, ed. Steven Soter and Neil deGrasse Tyson. New York: New Press, 2001.

T O M B AU G H , C LY D E (1906–1997) The American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, known primarily for his discovery of the planet Pluto in 1930, was born in Streator, Illinois, on February 4, 1906. Tombaugh worked on the family farm from his early adolescence, but a run of bad weather and ill fortune in the corn crop caused the Tombaughs to move to western Kansas in 1922, where they operated a wheat farm belonging to a relative. Tombaugh became an amateur astronomer as a boy, first using small refractor telescopes and later building his own larger reflectors. He also developed an impressive ability as an observer and artist.

616 Section 9: Tombaugh, Clyde After graduating from high school in 1925, Tombaugh continued to work on the family farm and on the neighborhood harvesting combine. In late 1928, however, after he sent a set of his astronomical sketches to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, the director, Vesto M. Slipher, hired him for an ambitious project. Tombaugh was to take photographs of certain areas of the night sky and systematically compare them with earlier photos, in a search for a hypothesized ninth planet. The presence of an additional planet, called Planet X, had been inferred by observatory founder Percival Lowell from perturbations in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. Several searches by Lowell during the first years of the twentieth century failed to locate Planet X, but, by the time Tombaugh was onboard, the observatory had purchased a more appropriate 13 inch telescopic camera for the search. On February 18, 1930, just over a year after he arrived at the Lowell Observatory, Tombaugh identified an image that subsequently proved to be the ninth planet. The name “Pluto” was suggested by a schoolchild and adopted by the observatory. Tombaugh was not consulted on the naming, but as the discoverer of a new planet he became famous in the astronomical community. This apparently disturbed some of the professional astronomers at Lowell, whose instructions Tombaugh had been following when he made the discovery. Nevertheless, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded the 1931 Jackson-Gwilt Medal to Tombaugh in honor of the achievement. In 1932, Tombaugh enrolled at the University of Kansas, where he had been offered a fouryear scholarship. There, he met Patricia Edson, whom he would marry in 1934; the couple would have two children. Tombaugh obtained a bachelor’s degree in astronomy in 1936 and returned in 1938–1939 to earn an M.A. in the same subject; financial difficulties prohibited further graduate work. Throughout his college days, he remained on staff at the Lowell Observatory and spent his summers there as well. During World War II, Tombaugh taught physics and navigation at Arizona State Teachers College in Flagstaff, and he spent the 1944–1945 academic year at UCLA. Upon his return to Flagstaff in 1945, he was informed that he did

Clyde Tombaugh, a twenty-four-year-old assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered the planet Pluto on photographic plates in 1930. Raised on a farm in Kansas, he had only a high school education at the time of the discovery. (Lowell Observatory Archives)

not have a future with the observatory. He found a position as a telescopic instrumentalist and team leader at White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico, where he was responsible for tracking and photographing the flights of captured German V-2 rockets and the fledgling American rocket program. Later, he used the same technology to obtain some of the earliest high-quality photographs of the first artificial satellite, the Soviet Sputnik I. In 1955, Tombaugh took a position at New Mexico State University, where his research focused on searching for naturally occurring small satellites of Earth. Three years later, he was hired as the founding professor of astronomy at the university, where he worked until his retirement in 1973, teaching both astronomy and geology. In addition to helping shape a growing department that eventually offered doctoral study in astronomy, he conducted cutting-edge research that focused largely on the planets, including a photographic survey of the surface of Mars. One of Tombaugh’s predictions, that the Martian

Section 9: Transit of Planets 617 surface would be pocked with impact craters, was verified fifteen years later by the Mariner IV probe in 1965. After retirement, Tombaugh remained in Las Cruces, New Mexico, participating in amateur astronomy as well as fund-raising and other activities for New Mexico State University. He died in Las Cruces on January 17, 1997, just short of his ninety-first birthday. David Lonergan

Sources Beebe, Reta. “Tombaugh, Clyde William.” Physics Today 50:7 (1997): 77. Levy, David H. Clyde Tombaugh: Discoverer of Planet Pluto. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991. Tombaugh, Clyde, and Patrick Moore. Out of the Darkness: The Planet Pluto. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1980.

TRANSIT

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PLANETS

The passage of a planet across the face of the sun is called a planetary transit. The transits of only two planets, Venus and Mercury, are measurable from Earth. This is due to their trajectories and orbits relative to Earth. On average, transits of Mercury occur every eight years, totaling thirteen per century. Venus’s intervals are less frequent and occur in a pattern of 8, 121.5, 8, and 105.5 years. The astronomical study of transits provides opportunities to examine the features of the particular planet, as well as to calculate Earth’s distance from the sun. It has played an important role in American astronomy from 1761 to modern times. Today, U.S. spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope allow astronomers to view transits from vantage points other than the surface of Earth. The first recorded evidence of a planetary transit was made in 1631 by the French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Gassendi, who used the calculations of German astronomer Johannes Kepler to track the movement of Mercury. Jeremiah Horrock, a British astronomer, viewed the transit of Venus on November 24, 1639, by using a handheld telescope to project an image of the sun onto a paper card. Horrock estimated the sun’s distance from Earth to be 59 million miles (95 million kilometers). Although this was the most accurate estimate to that time,

it was far off the actual distance of 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). British astronomer Edmund Halley wrote about the transit of Venus in a scientific paper in 1716, suggesting that timing the transit of Venus across the sun would provide a precise measurement of the distance between the Earth and sun. Halley’s method proved impractical, however, as timing the transit was difficult due to distortion in the viewing lens used. Researchers after Halley would be confounded by this problem for nearly three centuries. An expedition from Harvard College led by astronomer John Winthrop IV traveled to Newfoundland for the viewing of the 1761 transit of Venus. After seeing the refraction of solar rays on the surface of the planet, the scientists hypothesized that Venus had an atmosphere. In 1874, the U.S. Congress appropriated $177,000 ($2 million in current dollars) to fund a series of expeditions to study Venus further. Astronomer Simon Newcomb, working at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., took a leadership role with the National Academy of Science’s Transit of Venus Commission to organize eight expeditions to various global viewing spots, including New Zealand; San Antonio, Texas; Patagonia, Chile; and Cedar Keys, Florida. For the first time, photographs were taken of the four-hour transit, which provided the opportunity to study the results afterward. Each site used identical equipment and procedures to gather evidence. The images proved blurry and hard to reprint, but their availability to the general public provided further impetus for federal support of scientific research. In 1882, the U.S. Naval Observatory produced a book showing the ideal viewing locations for the December 6 transit of Venus. Simon Newcomb was again behind the observational expeditions; Newcomb led one to South Africa, and Asaph Hall of the U.S. Naval Observatory led another to San Antonio. However, astronomers were perplexed by their attempts to measure the distance between Earth and the sun during these transit events because of a phenomenon known as the “black-drop effect.” Each time a viewing was attempted, a small teardrop shape would appear to connect either Venus or Mercury to the sun, making it impossible to accurately measure distances.

618 Section 9: Transit of Planets In 1999, astronomers Glenn Schneider of the University of Arizona in Tucson and Jay Pasachoff of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, finally solved the black-drop mystery. To better view the transit of Mercury on November 15 without the distortion of Earth’s atmosphere, they used the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Transition Region and Coronal Explorer spacecraft, which had been sent to study the surface of the sun. The transit results showed no black drop. Schneider and Pasachoff also discovered that the distortion is greatly reduced when using a very high-powered Earth telescope. The solution of the black-drop problem thus made it possible—283 years after Edmund Halley’s theory—to accurately calculate the distance between Earth and the sun based on planetary transit. New technology has allowed scientific researchers to look outside the solar system for the first time, and transits have played a key role in planetary discoveries. In 1999, astronomer David Charbonneau of the University of California witnessed the first distant planet traveling in front of its star. Using the powerful Hubble Space Telescope, Charbonneau peered deep into space to look for an extra solar planet. A slight wobble of the HD 209458 star (150 light-years away) confirmed a transit and, ultimately, the existence of an extra solar planet about 60 percent larger than Jupiter. The travels of U.S. spacecraft to the surfaces of nearby planets also have allowed the viewing of transits between planets other than Earth. NASA’s Mars Rover program landed two spacecraft, Spirit and Opportunity, on the surface of the planet on January 12, 2005, when Mercury could be seen in transit across the sun. The next transit of Venus, viewable from Earth, will be on June 5, 2012, after which another transit will not take place for 105 years. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Dick, Steven J. “The American Transit of Venus Expeditions of 1882, Including San Antonio.” Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 27 (1995): 1331. Kurtz, D.W., ed. Transits of Venus: New Views of the Solar System and Galaxy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Sheehan, William. The Transits of Venus. New York: Prometheus, 2004.

U.S. N AVA L O B S E R VAT O R Y The primary mission of the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) is to determine the positions and motions of celestial bodies, provide navigation data to the armed forces, and maintain the world’s most accurate time device. Founded in 1830 as the Depot of Charts and Instruments and renamed in 1854 as the United States Naval Observatory and Hydrographic Office (shortened in 1866 to U.S. Naval Observatory), the USNO initially kept charts and instruments and calibrated chronometers. From the beginning, the USNO has provided a base time-point by which ship’s chronometers could be synchronized. During the midnineteenth century, a ball would drop daily at noon from the dome of the observatory, allowing observers aboard ships in port to synchronize time. After the Civil War, the USNO telegraphed the official time. During the twentieth century, a variety of improvements were made to timekeeping at the observatory, notably in 1934 the Photographic Zenith Tube, which determined time according to Earth’s rotation relative to stars at the zenith. Fluctuations in Earth’s rotation, however, required subtle changes using quartz clocks, resulting in Ephemeris Time. Further understanding of the impact of relativity on time resulted in Dynamical Time, measured by atomic clocks. More recently, the observatory began using hydrogen masers to keep the most accurate time to date. The USNO sets the official time for the United States, making possible the global positioning system (GPS) used for precise mapping by the Defense Department, law enforcement agencies, cell-phone service providers, and emergency services. The USNO has engaged in astronomical research since the mid-nineteenth century. USNO researchers viewed solar eclipses and transits of Venus across the disk of the sun, measured the speed of light, and published almanacs. Astronomer Henry Draper headed expeditions for USNO in 1874 to view the transit of Venus. Instrument maker Alvan Clark in 1873 made a 26 inch lens for USNO—then the largest in the world. Astronomer Asaph Hall used a 26 inch refractory telescope to study Saturn, and, in 1877, he discovered Phobos and Deimos, moons of

Section 9: U.S. Naval Observatory 619 Mars. While working for USNO, John Hall discovered interstellar polarization in 1948, and James Christy discovered Pluto’s moon Charon in 1978. Hindered by increasing light pollution from Washington, D.C., and having learned that higher altitudes yield better results, the U.S. Navy started searching for a new observatory site at the conclusion of World War II. The new observatory,

situated in Flagstaff, Arizona, opened in 1955 at about 7,000 feet (2,130 meters) above sea level. Phoenix Roberts

Sources Dick, Steven J. Sky and Ocean Joined: The U.S. Naval Observatory, 1830–2000. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002. U.S. Naval Observatory. http://www.usno.navy.mil.

DOCUMENTS An Eighteenth-Century Astronomical Journal Manasseh Cutler was an amateur astronomer who lived during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He kept a journal of his daily observations, excerpts of which appear below. January 3, 1766, Fri. Very cold, though clear. Mr. Dean and I viewed Jupiter’s moons in a prospective glass. Three of them visible, but very dim. January 9, Thurs. Spent the evening at Mr. Fisher’s. Viewed Jupiter. Four moons were visible. January 26, Lord’s Day. An extraordinary pleasant morning, serene and warm. . . . At 3 o’clock P.M. saw Venus very plain with my naked eye. At 7 o’clock this evening the moon was so near Jupiter that they could be both seen through a three feet prospect glass at the same time. By their situation it appeared that the moon had made a transit over Jupiter before they were above the horizon. April 10. . . . Just before the closing in of daylight I discovered the comet of which I had heard. It was a little to the N. of the Sun’s apparent path, and I found by a common quadrant that it was about 23° N.W. of the Bat’s eye. The Moon was then about 10° to the S W. of the comet, being the second day after its conjunction. Its train or tail was very long, though considerably dull. It appears to extend one foot and a half from the nucleus directly toward the zenith. Its nucleus appeared pale, much larger, though not so bright, as any of the fixed stars. It set 8 hours, 25 min. Its tail appeared after the nucleus was below the horizon. June 1769. The 3d day of this month happened the Transit of Venus over the sun’s disk. This rare phenomenon never happened, that was seen, but twice before since the Creation. . . . The Rev. Mr. Kingsbury and myself very carefully observed the beginning, both when it first touched the first part of the sun’s limb, and when it was totally immersed. We had a very good perspective glass, with a smoked glass fixed within the

case without the eyeglass, and could see both Venus and a number of Nebulæa or black spots on the sun’s surface. Venus came on to the sun’s limb on the upper or northern part, and passed west of the center, and went off at the south-west limb. We were not certain that our watches were right, as we could not set them by a meridian for some days before it happened, on the account of its being cloudy, but I imagine my watch was not far from the sun. By my observation— Began, 2 h. 50" P.M. Total immersion, 3 h. 5" Middle, 6 h. 2" One remarkable large spot near the sun’s center. January 18, 1770. A remarkable Aurora Borealis. It began some time before the daylight disappeared, and extended from near due east to due west; appeared remarkably red near N.E. or N.N.E. The red was almost as bright a crimson as blood. There were constant streamers running up from east to west. It was unusually high up in the northern board, and the light continued nearly all night. Source: Manasseh Cutler, Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, LL.D., ed. William P. Cutler and Julia P. Cutler (Cincinnati, OH: R. Clarke, 1888).

Description of Comets from a Nineteenth-Century Astronomy Textbook The following is astronomer Asa Smith’s description of comets in his 1850 astronomy textbook, Smith’s Illustrated Astronomy. Comets were anciently viewed by mankind with astonishment and fear, as being forerunners of dreadful calamities, such as war, famine, or pestilence. Many ancient philosophers considered them as only meteors in the atmosphere. Tycho Brahe was the first who showed, that they belonged to the planetary system, and revolved around the sun. The orbits of all comets are very

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Section 9: Documents 621 elliptical, so that they approach the sun almost in a direct line, and after being involved in the light of the sun for some time, depart from our solar system in nearly the same direction, in which they approached, and remain for years, or even centuries, beyond the limit of the best telescopes. Very little is known of the physical nature of comets; the smaller comets, such as are visible only with telescopes, generally have no appearance of a tail, and appear like round or somewhat oval, vaporous masses, more dense towards the centre; yet they have no distinct nucleus or solid body. Stars of the smallest magnitude are seen through the most dense parts of these bodies. It is very probable that the luminous part of a comet is something of the nature of smoke, fog or other gaseous matter. Halley’s comet, which appeared in 1456, with a tail 60 degrees in length, and spread out, like a fan, has appeared periodically every 77th year, viz; 1682, 1759, and in 1836; but it has exhibited no tail, or luminous appendage, since 1456. The comet which appeared 371 years before Christ, is said to have covered a third part of the visible heavens. A remarkable comet made its appearance 43 years before Christ, and was so bright as to be visible in the day time; it was supposed, by the superstitious, to be the ghost of Caesar, who had just been assassinated. Has the Earth Passed through the Tails of Comets? It has been asserted by some astronomers that the Earth has on several occasions passed through the Tail of a comet, and in proof of this fact several cases of a singular or peculiar kind of Fog have been noticed at several periods. The first of which any record is made was that of 1783; it began on the 18th of June and at places very remote from each other. It extended from Africa to Sweden and throughout North and South America. This fog continued more than a month. It did not appear to be carried to different places by the atmosphere; because in some places it came on with a north wind and at others with a south or east wind, it prevailed in the highest summits of the Alps as well as in the lowest valleys. The rains which were very abundant in June and July did not appear to disperse it in the least. In Languedoc its density was so great that the Sun did not become visible in the morning till it was twelve degrees above the horizon; it appeared very red during the rest of the day and might be looked at

with the naked eye. This Fog or Smoke had a disagreeable smell and was entirely destitute of any moisture, whereas most fogs are moist; besides all this there was one remarkable quality in the Fog or Smoke of 1783, it appeared to possess a phosphorio property or a light of its own; We find by the accounts of some observers, that it afforded even at mid-night a light equal to that of the full moon, and which was sufficient to enable a person to see objects distinctly at a distance of two hundred yards, and to remove all doubts as to the source of this light, it is recorded that at the time there was a New Moon. . . . If the Fogs were actually produced by the earth’s passing through any portion of a comet, we have no cause of fear from these bodies which have been for centuries a terror and dread to mankind generally. We will concede that it is the fact that these Fogs were produced by comets until we have a better explanation of their origin. Source: Asa Smith, Smith’s Illustrated Astronomy (New York: Daniel Burgess, 1855).

Percival Lowell’s Description of Mars The late nineteenth-century astronomer and writer Percival Lowell marshaled evidence and logic to argue that there must be intelligent life on Mars. The following excerpt is taken from the conclusion of his book Mars, published in 1895. To review, now, the chain of reasoning by which we have been led to regard it probable that upon the surface of Mars we see the effects of local intelligence: we find, in the first place, that the broad physical conditions of the planet are not antagonistic to some form of life; secondly, that there is an apparent dearth of water upon the planet’s surface, and therefore, if beings of sufficient intelligence inhabited it, they would have to resort to irrigation to support life; thirdly, that there turns out to be a network of markings covering the disc precisely counterparting what a system of irrigation would look like; and, lastly, that there is a set of spots placed where we should expect to find the lands thus artificially fertilized, and behaving as such constructed oases should. All this, of course, may be a set of coincidences, signifying nothing; but the probability seems the

622 Section 9: Documents other way. As to details of explanation, any we may adopt will undoubtedly be found, on closer acquaintance, to vary from the actual Martian state of things; for any Martian life must differ markedly from our own. The fundamental fact in the matter is the dearth of water. If we keep this in mind, we shall see that many of the objections that spontaneously arise answer themselves. The supposed Herculean task of constructing such canals disappears at once; for, if the canals be dug for irrigation purposes, it is evident that what we see and call, by ellipsis, the canal is not really the canal at all, but the strip of fertilized land bordering it, —the thread of water in the midst of it, the canal itself, being far too small to be perceptible. In the case of an irrigation canal seen at a distance, it is always the strip of verdure, not the canal, that is visible, as we see in looking from afar upon irrigated county on the earth. Startling as the outcome of these observations may appear at first, in truth there is nothing startling about it whatever. Such possibility has been quite on the cards ever since the existence of Mars itself was recognized by the Chaldean shepherds, or whoever the still more primeval astronomers may have been. Its strangeness is a purely subjective phenomenon, arising from the instinctive reluctance of man to admit the possibility of peers. Such would be comic were it not the inevitable consequence of the constitution of the universe. To be shy of anything resembling himself is part and parcel of man’s own individuality. Like the savage who fears nothing so much as a strange man, like Crusoe who grows pale at the sight of footprints not his own, the civilized thinker instinctively turns from the thought of mind other than the one he himself knows. To admit into his conception of the cosmos other finite minds as factors has in it something of the weird. Any hypothesis to explain the facts, no matter how improbable or even palpably absurd

it be, is better than this. Snowcaps of solid carbonic acid gas, a planet cracked in a positively monomaniacal manner, meteors ploughing tracks across its surface with such mathematical precision that they must have been educated to the performance, and so forth and so on, in hypotheses each more astounding than its predecessor, commend themselves to man, if only by such means he may escape the admission of anything approaching his kind. Surely all this is puerile, and should be outgrown as speedily as possible. It is simply an instinct like any other, the projection of the instinct of self-preservation. We ought, therefore, to rise above it, and, where probability points to other things, boldly accept the fact provisionally, as we should the presence of oxygen, or iron, or anything else. Let us not cheat ourselves with words. Conservatism sounds finely, and covers any amount of ignorance and fear. We must be just as careful not to run to the other extreme, and draw deductions of purely local outgrowth. To talk of Martian beings is not to mean Martian men. Just as the probabilities point to the one, so do they point away from the other. Even on this earth man is of the nature of an accident. He is the survival of by no means the highest physical organism. He is not even a high form of mammal. Mind has been his making. For aught we can see, some lizard or batrachian might just as well have popped into his place in the race, and been now the dominant creature of this earth. Under different physical circumstances he would have been certain to do so. Amid the physical surroundings that exist on Mars, we may be practically sure other organisms have been evolved which would strike us as exquisitely grotesque. What manner of beings they may be we have no data to conceive. Source: Percival Lowell, “Mars. IV. Oases,” Atlantic Monthly 76:454 (August 1895).

Section 10

PHYSICS

ESSAYS Aristotelian Physics in Colonial America W

hen the premier scientific institution of early America, Harvard College, was founded in 1636, the Aristotelian worldview was dominant in thought and science in Europe and America. The trials of building new communities and educating clergy to take the intellectual helm of the Massachusetts Bay Colony distracted colonial Americans from focusing on the “new science” of Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Robert Boyle that was in the process of transforming European scientific theory. Hence, Harvard’s science curriculum of arithmetic, geometry, physics, astronomy, and botany continued to be beholden to an Aristotelian worldview. Late in the seventeenth century, however, the works of the “new science” as well as the publications of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica led to the erosion of Aristotelian science. This transition made Harvard, in the words of historian Louis B. Wright, “a center for the promulgation of Copernican and presently Newtonian science.”

Aristotelian Science Aristotelian science was a composite of the work and theories of a variety of ancient Greek scientists, such as the sixth- and fifth-century B.C.E. philosophers Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Archelaus, Socrates, and Plato, Aristotle’s teacher; fourth-century B.C.E. atomists such as Epicurus and Zeno; and Hellenistic scientists of the final three centuries B.C.E. and first two centuries C.E. such as Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, Apollonius of Perga, and Claudius Ptolemy. All except Aristarchus of Samos agreed that the universe was geocentric: that is, Earth is an immovable force in the center of a finite universe, and the heavenly bodies orbit Earth in the order of the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun,

Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All planets and the sun are perfect spheres, god-like. The outer rim of the universe is the realm of the fixed stars, limited in number, forming a stellar shell to the universe. The planets were thought to move in a stellar substance called “ether,” a fifth element Aristotle added to the traditional four elements of ancient Greek science: earth, air, fire, water. Aristotle’s physics did not allow for inertial movement of bodies. In his theory, Earth is the heaviest of bodies, because it is at the center of the universe. All things tend toward the center, which explains gravity, as well as why fire leaps upward, water flows to the center, air (being lighter) forms the atmosphere, and the planets orbit through ether in their own celestial spheres.

Two World Systems During the mid-seventeenth century, the writings of European proponents of the “new science” crossed the Atlantic to Boston and Philadelphia, changing ideas about the Aristotelian model of the universe. Europeans such as the logician Peter Ramus challenged Aristotelian logic by arguing for a more simple method. Gassendi, the atomist, along with Descartes, the French philosopher and mathematician, challenged the Aristotelian assumption of the existence of ideal forms and truths that are not supported by observation and experiment. Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum (1620) presented the empirical point of view. Galileo’s studies of motion contradicted the geocentric universe and disproved the Aristotelian argument that the heavenly bodies are perfect and unchanging and that the universe is finite. Galileo’s universe is potentially infinite. Robert Boyle expanded on Gassendi’s ideas to hypothesize a mechanistic universe based on

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626 Section 10: Essays corpuscles. Johannes Kepler showed that the orbit of planets is elliptical rather than spherical. The conflict between the Aristotelian worldview and the new science of Copernicus, Galileo, Boyle, and Bacon is illustrated by Charles Morton, who was a Puritan minister, a noted dissenter in England against the royalist Anglican Church, a natural philosopher, and a physicist who believed firmly that natural law depends on divine law, or the will of God. In 1686, Morton emigrated to Massachusetts, where he became pastor at the First Parish at Charlestown, Massachusetts, and a teacher at Harvard College. His Compendium Physicae (Compendium of Physics), published in 1683, was adopted by the Cambridge scientific community in 1687, becoming the sole physical science text used at Harvard until 1728. The Compendium was also used at Yale College. Morton’s Compendium is an odd mixture of Aristotelian and Copernican science. His physics

rests on the ancient Greek four elements, which was quickly being replaced in Europe by the corpuscular system of Gassendi and Boyle. Yet Morton accepted most of the ideas of the “new science,” such as the heliocentric universe, Galileo’s laws of motion, the empirical method, and the material basis of the universe. Morton was not alone in holding conflicting views. He and Cotton Mather were two of the greatest advocates of science in colonial America, and both assumed the reality of witchcraft. Russell Lawson

Sources Cohen, I. Bernard. The Birth of a New Physics. New York: W.W. Norton, 1985. Daniels, George H. Science in American Society: A Social History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of North America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

Newtonian Physics and Early American Science T

he publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) in 1687 laid to rest the Aristotelian universe and brought to fruition the work of Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Robert Boyle into one system of explaining the universe—the Newtonian paradigm. The Principia relies on empiricism over speculation; it brings sophisticated mathematics— calculus—to bear on questions of force and motion. The Principia explores the universe, as it were, using Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, Galileo’s laws of falling bodies, Bacon’s empirical methods, Descartes’s mechanistic view of the universe, and Boyle’s corpuscle theory of matter.

Newton’s Laws The Principia outlines three laws of motion on which Newton’s physics and worldview were

based. According to the first law, “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed upon it.” According to the second law, “A change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed and takes place in the direction of the straight line along which that force is impressed.” According to the third law, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Newton’s three laws of motion resulted in his discovery of the general law of universal gravitation, which explains the mutual forces at work in the universe, specifically the multiple forces of attraction at work in the solar system, where the moon, sun, Earth, and all the other planets exert proportional forces on each other. The law of universal gravitation explains the elliptical orbits of planets, the positions of planets and satellites in the solar system, why Earth rotates on its axis inclined to the plane of the ecliptic (the precession

Section 10: Essays 627 of the equinoxes), why tides exist, and why things do not fly off Earth into space. The Newtonian universe is, in short, a universe that is rational and benevolent, fashioned by a benevolent and rational creator; a universe that operates according to natural laws that make sense and accommodate human reason; a universe that is constant and predictable; a universe that operates like a machine of absolute perfection that is eternal and without error; a universe of matter in motion that contains the subtle signature of the divine. To understand Newton’s universe, scientists needed scientific instruments such as telescopes, microscopes, electrostatic machines, air pumps, theodolites, sextants, longitudinal instruments, and chronometers to study time, space, gravity, the heavens, the unseen, friction, motion, electric charges, static, energy, pressure, inertia, elasticity, vacuums, and hydrostatics—all that involves cause and effect in the movement of matter.

Newtonian Science in America Isaac Newton never traveled to America, but his ideas did by means of his various publications, in particular the Principia and the Opticks (1704). The Principia is written in Latin and features extremely complex mathematics; few Americans could master it. The Opticks is written in English and is more for the average intelligent person interested in science. Newton’s reputation arrived in America before his books did, so that when copies of the Principia began to arrive, there was much excitement among American scientists. Jeremiah Dummer brought one of the first copies to Yale College in 1715. Not everyone could probe Newton’s mind through the medium of his books, however. Benjamin Franklin, for example, complained of the difficulty of the Principia and preferred the Opticks to inform him of Newton’s theories. The few who could understand the Principia, such as James Logan of Philadelphia, were important patrons and advocates of the Newtonian system. Although Newton’s works were not required reading at Harvard and Yale, the colleges hoped to teach students about Newton’s laws of motion

if they could not yet read them firsthand. The Hollis professorship at Harvard was established to inculcate the Newtonian paradigm in the minds of students. The Hollis Chair in the eighteenth century was directed to engage Newtonian science as follows: “The lectures which shall be delivered in the Philosophy Chamber to the resident Bachelors and the two Senior Classes, between the twenty-first of March and twentyfirst of June annually, shall contain a complete course of Experimental Philosophy, in the various branches of it; and in the progress of the experiments, the principles and construction of the various machines made use of, shall be explained.” John Winthrop IV, the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard from 1738 to 1779, relied on experimental science to impress on his students the Newtonian universe. His course was devised “to instruct students in a system of natural philosophy and a course of experimental, in which to be comprehended pneumatics, hydrostatics, mechanics, statics, optics and in the elements of geometry, together with the doctrine of proportions, the principle of algebra, conic sections, planes and solids, in the principles of astronomy and geography, viz. the doctrine of the sphere, the use of the globes, the motions of the heavenly bodies according to the different hypotheses of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe and Copernicus, with the general principles of Dialling, the division of the world into its various kingdoms, with the use of the maps, &c.” Newton was thought to be an unparalleled savant, rather like Albert Einstein today. As Alexander Pope, the author of Essays on Man, wrote at the time: Nature, and Nature’s Laws lay hid in Night. God said, Let Newton be! and All was Light. Russell Lawson

Sources Cohen, I. Bernard. The Birth of the New Physics. New York: W.W. Norton, 1985. Daniels, George H. Science in American Society: A Social History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of North America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

628 Section 10: Essays

Benjamin Franklin, American Physicist A

mericans were on the frontier of science during Benjamin Franklin’s lifetime, which spanned much of the eighteenth century. Franklin, although one of America’s leading scientists, found the theories of Isaac Newton daunting and Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687) difficult to understand because of the sophisticated mathematics and esoteric concepts. More to Franklin’s liking was Newton’s more elementary treatise Opticks (1704), which explained the same concepts covered in Principia but according to experiment and observation rather than theory. Franklin was a representative American scientist because of his ability to take a commonsense, experimental approach to science rather than a metaphysical one—that is, to take Newton’s difficult concepts and apply them to practical, realistic situations. For example, what if the strange phenomenon of lightning were produced by conditions present not just in a thunderstorm but all around, inherent in nature? Was lightning a consequence of movement and change? Franklin realized that the power that produces lightning, that charged the key in his famous kite experiment, is the same power produced by rubbing two materials together, or when one person touches another and feels the shock of static electricity. That being the case, how was this static electricity produced? Could anyone create such a charge? Franklin, using as his basis Newton’s first law of motion respecting universal conservation of energy, argued that an electric charge, such as that of static electricity, is not created but is displaced from one conductor to another. Electric charges are universal in nature, and charge is never created or destroyed, just transferred from one host to another. This was Franklin’s law of conservation of charge. For the kite experiment, Franklin constructed a silk kite with a small iron rod protruding from the top. A brass key was attached to the silk kite string that Franklin held. Flying the kite in a storm, Franklin stood on a small wooden platform within a shelter. The conduction of “electric fluid” from the charged clouds was detectable by

means of the key: When Franklin touched it, he received a sharp shock, which indicated that the key was conducting electric current. According to Franklin’s law of conservation of charge, the electric current must go somewhere, displaced from one host to another. Had Franklin been standing on the ground, he would have become a conductor of the current to the earth. (When one French experimenter made this mistake, it was his last.) By standing on the wooden platform, Franklin was not a conductor; instead, the current made its way to the key, as brass is a strong conductor of electricity. Whereas previous theory had it that electricity was comprised of two distinct forces, Franklin saw it as a unified force with positive and negative charges. Franklin used the same theories to invent the lightning rod, a long iron rod attached to the roof of a house, typically alongside the chimney. An iron filament, attached to the bottom of the rod, made its way through the house to the basement and to the earth. This way, the current was drawn from the clouds through the iron conductor to the earth, without harming the house. Franklin, who loved gadgets, contrived an extension of his lightning rod into his study. Attached to the rod was a bell. When the strong electrical current of a thunderstorm was outside his house, the scientist knew by the ringing of the bell. One night, he heard a harsh crackling sound. Going to his study, he found it bathed in light; the bell was white hot with electric current. More than a century before Thomas Edison’s inventions, Franklin accidentally discovered artificial light using electric current. Franklin’s practical approach to electricity helped to stir interest and inspire others to engage in experimentation to discover the true essence of the “electric fluid.” Joseph Priestley of England, a good friend of Franklin’s who would emigrate to America in 1794, showed how an electric force is comparable to a gravitational force, where the force is proportional to the inverse square of the distance. In Europe, Charles Augustin Coulomb illustrated how forces exist between the positive and negative poles of an electric charge according to the same inverse

Section 10: Essays 629

Benjamin Franklin’s highly influential Experiments and Observations of Electricity (1751) explains and supports his theories on the nature of electricity—perhaps his greatest contribution to pure science. (Library of Congress, LCUSZ62–58219)

square ratio. Hans Christian Oersted discovered electromagnetism, the unification of electrical and magnetic phenomena. Andre-Maria Ampere in 1820 described the force and movement of electric current. Michael Faraday in 1821 demonstrated the conversion of electrical energy into mechanical energy. Faraday had a major im-

pact on James Clark Maxwell, who introduced the concept of “electro tonic function,” which is the relationship between electromagnetic induction, force between current-carrying wires, and magnetic action. Franklin also focused on the movement of air and the relationship between masses of hot and cold air, exploring theories of meteorological phenomena as well as principles of heating air by means of fireplaces. Using theories about the interaction of hot and cold air, Franklin addressed the practical problem of heating a home in winter. He discussed his ideas in An Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Place (1744). The fireplace that Franklin devised was actually a wood-burning iron stove connected to a flue through which smoke ascended out the chimney. Franklin’s aim was to displace cool air in the room with heated air. A draft brought cool air from the room through an in-flow vent at the bottom of the stove. The heated air flowed out through vents on the sides of the stove. Smoke was carried under the stove in a pipe connected to the flue. The Franklin stove experienced mix success: On extremely cold days, the smoke tended to back up into the stove and then the room. Franklin’s work on the properties of heating air influenced Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, who invented the highly effective Rumford fireplace. Russell Lawson

Sources Cohen, I. Bernard. Benjamin Franklin’s Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Franklin, Benjamin. An Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Place. Philadelphia, 1744. ———. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Macmillan, 1962. ———. Experiments and Observations in Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America. London: E. Cave, 1751. Van Doren, Carl. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Viking, 1938.

A–Z A LVA R E Z , L U I S (1911–1988) A Nobel Prize–winning scientist and physics professor, Luis Walter Alvarez was one of the most prolific American scientists of the twentieth century. His contributions include the invention of the hydrogen bubble chamber technique, the design and development of radar systems, the invention of the detonators used in nuclear weapons, and research in archeology and paleontology. Alvarez was born in San Francisco, California, on June 13, 1911. After receiving his undergraduate degree in physics in 1932, master’s degree in 1934, and Ph.D. in 1936 from the University of Chicago, he joined the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California as a research fellow. Except for several sabbaticals, including leaves to conduct research aimed at the development of microwave beacons and antennas at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1940 to 1943 and to work on nuclear weapons detonators at Los Alamos from 1944 to 1945, Alvarez spent his entire career at the University of California, Berkeley. In applied science, Alvarez, in collaboration with Swiss physicists and fellow Nobel laureate Felix Bloch in 1939, made the first measurement of the “magnetic moment” of the neutron, which determined the direction and strength of its magnetic field. Alvarez’s avocational interest in aviation led him to develop what is now called the ground-controlled approach, an instrumentbased navigational system for landing military and civilian airplanes at night and in conditions of poor visibility. Alvarez was also responsible for the design and construction of Berkeley’s 40 foot proton linear accelerator in 1947 and, in the 1960s, he used muon detectors to look for hidden chambers inside the second pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Alvarez received the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics for his development of the hydrogen bubble chamber technique, a device for tracking the trajectories of ionized particles by photo-

graphing their trails of bubbles through superheated hydrogen, and for the development of high-speed measurement and analysis devices needed to process the millions of photographic images produced by the bubble chamber experiments. His efforts in this area made it possible to record and study the short-lived subatomic particles created by particle accelerators. In 1980, Alvarez collaborated with his son Walter, a geology professor at Berkeley, to develop the asteroid-impact theory of mass extinction in an attempt to explain the presence of a worldwide layer of the element iridium in the boundary between rocks laid down in the Cretaceous and Tertiary geological periods. According to the Alvarez theory, a giant asteroid struck Earth about 65 million years ago, killing off the dinosaurs and raising a huge cloud of iridiumbearing dust that eventually settled over the globe and into the geologic record. In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize, Alvarez was named to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was a fellow of the American Physical Society. He died on September 1, 1988, in Berkeley. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Alvarez, Luis W. Adventures of a Physicist. New York: Basic Books, 1987. Trower, Peter, ed. Discovering Alvarez: Selected Works of Luis W. Alvarez with Commentary by His Students and Colleagues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

A N D E R S O N , C A R L D AV I D (1905–1991) Experimental physicist and Nobel laureate Carl David Anderson is best known for his discovery of the positron, a subatomic particle. He was born on September 3, 1905, to Swedish immigrant parents in New York City. Almost all of

630

Section 10: Bethe, Hans Albrecht 631 Anderson’s education and professional career was connected to the California Institute of Technology. He received both his bachelor of science degree (1927) and doctorate in physics (1930) at the Pasadena institution. He worked there as a research fellow from 1930 to 1933, then as an assistant professor of physics from 1933 to 1939, and as a full professor from 1939 through his retirement in 1976. During World War II, Anderson also served with the National Defense Research Committee and the Office of Science Research and Development, working in the field of rocketry. Anderson’s early work was in X-ray research. His doctoral dissertation examined the distribution of photoelectrons ejected from various gases when subjected to X-rays. As a research fellow, he turned to the study of cosmic rays and, initially under the supervision of physics professor Robert Andrew Millikan, made the discovery of the positron that led to the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics, an award he shared with Austrian scientist Victor Hess. (Anderson and Hess did not collaborate, but both were studying the properties of cosmic rays.) The first form of antimatter ever discovered, the positron is the antiparticle of the electron. Like the electron, it is a subatomic particle that orbits the nucleus of the atom, but the positron has a positive charge rather than a negative one. When positrons and electrons collide, as in the nuclear furnace of a star, they produce a form of energy known as gamma rays. Anderson made his discovery by shooting gamma rays produced by thorium carbide through a device that combined a gas chamber, a lead plate, and a magnet, which bent differently charged particles in different directions, allowing for the separation and identification of the physical properties of each particle. The positron is critical to the working of positron emission tomography (PET), a form of nuclear imaging developed in the 1970s and used to make three-dimensional renderings of the body. The same year that he won the Nobel Prize, Anderson discovered, along with graduate student Seth Neddermeyer, the muon (originally the mumeson), another subatomic particle. The muon, with a mass over 200 times that of an electron, is critical to the understanding of the strong nuclear force. Anderson continued his research on subatomic particles as well as teaching physics at Cal

Tech for another forty years. Among his many academic honors are the Gold Medal of the American Institute of the City of New York (1935), the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute (1937), the Presidential Certificate of Merit (1945), and the John Ericsson Medal of the American Society of Swedish Engineers (1960). He died in San Marino, California, on January 11, 1991. James Ciment

Sources Anderson, Carl D. “The Positive Electron.” Physical Review 43:6 (1933): 491–94. Kevles, Daniel J. The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.

BETHE, HANS ALBRECHT (1906–2005) The German American physicist Hans Bethe contributed to the development of the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s. He is known for his work on the theory of atomic nuclei and on the nuclear reactions that supply energy in the stars and sun—work for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1967. Bethe was born on July 2, 1906, in Strasbourg, Alsace-Lorraine. In 1912, the family moved to Kiel, Germany, where his father hired a tutor for Bethe, who by age fourteen was reading books on trigonometry and calculus. At the Goethe Gymnasium in Frankfurt, Bethe immersed himself in physics and mathematics. In 1924, he enrolled in the University of Frankfurt but transferred two years later to the University of Munich, where, in 1928, he received a Ph.D. in physics. In 1930, he published in the journal Annalen der Physik what he regarded as his best paper, “The Theory of the Passage of Swift Corpuscular Rays through Matter.” In this paper, he quantified the energy released in the collision between an atom and a subatomic particle. A recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, Bethe went on to study at Cambridge University in England in 1930. The following year, he studied at the University of Rome in Italy under the tutelage of Enrico Fermi. In 1932, Bethe became assistant professor in theoretical physics at the University of Tübingen in Württemberg, Germany.

632 Section 10: Bethe, Hans Albrecht Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany drove Bethe, whose mother and maternal grandparents were Jewish, from his post at the University of Tübingen and to the University of Manchester in England in 1933. In 1935, Bethe accepted a position at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Bethe’s interest in nuclear physics stemmed from the proposal of physicists Robert Atkinson and Friedrich Georg Houtermans in 1929 that the sun derives its energy from nuclear reactions. Stimulated by a conference on the production of energy in the sun, Bethe in April 1938 began work to determine which reactions between elements yield enough energy to supply the sun. Working down the periodic table, he caused nuclear reactions from increasingly heavier elements, arriving at the reaction between carbon and nitrogen as giving the best estimate of the energy in the sun. Bethe, using his own work and that of others, charted the evolution of stars from the initial hydrogen reactions to the helium-carbon reactions of a star’s old age. The outbreak of World War II pitted the United States against Germany in a race to build an atomic bomb. Bethe’s research in nuclear physics brought him to the attention of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, who, in 1942, invited Bethe to the University of California, Berkeley, to begin work on a bomb. Upon establishing his headquarters in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Oppenheimer appointed Bethe director of the theoretical division in 1943. At the time, Bethe seems to have had few qualms about the morality of using an atomic bomb, declaring such questions the province of philosophy rather than physics. Soviet detonation of a uranium bomb in 1949 led physicist Edward Teller to approach Bethe about joining him in building a hydrogen bomb. In his research on the sun, Bethe had outlined the fusion reaction that would detonate such a bomb, but he doubted that such a weapon could be built. When President Harry S. Truman authorized the building of a hydrogen bomb in 1949, Bethe joined several members of the American Physical Society in a press conference to warn the public of the dangers of thermonuclear weapons. Between February and September 1952, however, he acquiesced in working with Teller on the bomb. Bethe’s relationship with Teller broke in 1954 over the revocation of Oppenheimer’s security

clearance by the Atomic Energy Commission. Bethe defended Oppenheimer and urged Teller to do the same, and he felt betrayed when Teller testified to the commission against Oppenheimer. Increasingly uneasy about the dangers of nuclear weapons, in 1960, Bethe urged the U.S. military not to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile, and he supported the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1967, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the thermonuclear reaction in the sun. Bethe retired from Cornell University in 1975. He continued to speak out on public issues until his death on March 6, 2005. Christopher Cumo

Sources Bernstein, Jeremy. Hans Bethe, Prophet of Energy. New York: Basic Books, 1980. Marshak, Robert E., ed. Perspectives in Modern Physics: Essays in Honor of Hans A. Bethe on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, July 1966. New York: Interscience, 1966.

COLD FUSION Cold fusion is the nuclear reaction that would occur if two atomic particles, or nuclei, were brought close enough together to fuse and form another heavier element at low temperatures. If it is ever developed, cold fusion could provide a clean and virtually inexhaustible source of energy without the extremely high temperatures required by nuclear fusion. But most scientists believe that cold fusion is impossible, or at least improbable, despite significant popular belief to the contrary. In 1989, two researchers claimed to have achieved cold fusion, causing what many in the science world consider the greatest scientific fiasco of the twentieth century. On March 23, 1989, University of Utah chemistry professor Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman, a research professor of electrochemistry at England’s University of Southampton, held a press conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, to announce that their attempt to achieve cold fusion had been successful. The duo had constructed a simple electrolytic cell containing deuterium oxide, or heavy water, into which they inserted

Section 10: Compton, Arthur Holly 633 palladium and platinum electrodes. Their intent was to cause the deuterium nuclei from the heavy water to fuse together using electrical current by forcing the nuclei into the palladium atomic lattice. The researchers asserted that a chemical reaction in the device had produced energy, in the form of heat, with an output that was four times greater than the energy input. The Pons-Fleischman announcement received considerable attention from the international news media, generating widespread public interest in cold fusion as a potential solution to world energy needs. Public anticipation of a limitless energy supply rose to a frenzy. In the weeks and months following the announcement, scientists at several other institutions around the world claimed to have achieved similar results when replicating the experiment. Few, however, were bold enough to claim with any certainty that it was the result of cold fusion. Many other scientists who tried to replicate the experiment reported no such results. Eventually, the claim that this experiment resulted in cold fusion was proven false. Some scientists suggested that the PonsFleischman experiment was an inadvertent replication of a 1924 experiment by University of Berlin researchers Fritz Paneth and Kurt Peters and Swedish scientist John Tandberg. Paneth, Peters, and Tandberg had claimed that a similar device could be used to produce helium. They, too, were proven wrong. All scientists make mistakes, and Pons and Fleischman were no different. In rushing to announce their discovery, they had circumvented the traditional peer review process that most likely would have pointed to the flaws in their conclusion and would have avoided the confusion and embarrassment that resulted from their premature announcement. Despite the doubts about cold fusion held by mainstream science, some scientists and nonscientists continue to believe that it is possible. Current knowledge in particle physics suggests that it is not. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Huizenga, John R. Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1992. Taubes, Gary. Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion. New York: Random House, 1993.

C O M P T O N , A R T H U R H O L LY (1892–1962) Arthur Holly Compton was an American physicist and Nobel laureate whose studies of X-ray scattering led to the particle concept of electromagnetic radiation. While he is best known for this physics work, Compton’s life combined work in science with service to both academia and the nation at large. He was born on September 10, 1892, in Wooster, Ohio. His father, Elias Compton, was a professor of philosophy and dean of the College of Wooster. Young Compton studied at Wooster and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1913. He received a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1916 for his studies of the angular distribution of X-ray reflection from crystals as a means of studying atomic structure. After a year of teaching physics at the University of Minnesota, Compton became a research engineer at the Westinghouse Lamp Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1919, he was appointed a National Research Council Fellow at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory. The following year, he was hired as the head of the Department of Physics and the Wayman Crow Professor of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. At Washington University, Compton continued the X-ray reflection studies he had begun in his dissertation. The research would lead to a Nobel Prize in 1927 for his discovery of the effect created when photons collide with electrons––a simultaneous increase in wavelength and decrease in energy. The discovery introduced the particle concept of electromagnetic radiation, which later become known as the Compton effect. It proved crucial to understanding the absorption of shortwave electromagnetic radiation and the newly discovered phenomenon of cosmic rays, which Compton also studied with great interest. In 1923, Compton took a job as professor of physics at the University of Chicago, where he remained for the next two decades. There, he also began a lifelong commitment to public service in government and academia. In 1934, he served as president of the American Physical Society. He was appointed chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee to Evaluate Use of

634 Section 10: Compton, Arthur Holly Atomic Energy in War in 1941. In this position, Compton appointed J. Robert Oppenheimer as the committee’s lead theorist; Oppenheimer would go on to lead the Manhattan Project. Compton also directed the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory, or Met Lab. In December 1942, he worked with Enrico Fermi, another Manhattan Project luminary, to help create the first sustainable nuclear chain reaction. That same year, Compton was named president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1946, Compton returned to Washington University as the university’s ninth chancellor, and he served in that capacity until 1953. He remained on the Washington University faculty as Distinguished Service Professor of Natural Philosophy until his retirement in 1961. Compton died in Berkeley, California, on March 15, 1962. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Compton, Arthur H. Atomic Quest: A Personal Narrative. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. ———. Cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967.

C YC LO T R O N The cyclotron is a device for accelerating subatomic particles to nearly the speed of light. In early 1930, American physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence began constructing a device at the University of California, Berkeley, that he believed could use magnetic fields in a vacuum to bend the path of charged particles emitted from a radioactive source around a semicircular trajectory. By pairing two hollow D-shaped electrodes, called “dees,” back to back under a spinning magnet and then reversing the magnetic field just as the particles completed traveling one of the half circles, Lawrence’s device accelerated the particles across the gap into the second dee and a second field to make a complete circle. As the particles cycled through the same constant magnetic fields over and over again, they accelerated in a spiral path, until they emerged from the cyclotron at speeds close to the speed of light. During the course of 1930, graduate student Milton Stanley Livingston carried out much of the

actual hardware construction under Lawrence’s direction. In January 1931, the duo had their first success. Using a device 4.5 inches (11.4 cm) in diameter, Lawrence and Livingston used a charge of 1,800 volts to accelerate hydrogen ions to energies of 80,000 electron volts (the standard units for measuring particle energy). The following year, using a larger cyclotron with an 11 inch (28 cm) diameter magnet, they achieved an output of more than 1 million volts-electrons. In the decades that followed, cyclotrons became one of the basic tools of nuclear physics research, as more were built at universities and laboratories around the world. In 1939, Lawrence received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for research results on artificial radioactive elements obtained with it. As physicists built larger cyclotrons based on Lawrence’s designs, they discovered a speed limit at which the mechanics of classical physics no longer worked as well. The machines were limited by a constraint described by Einstein’s theory of relativity, the idea that mass, length, and time change with velocities near the speed of light. To adapt to the relativistic speed of particles, larger cyclotrons had to be modified so that the frequency of the accelerating voltage changed as the particles accelerated. These frequency-modulated cyclotrons, or synchrocyclotrons, evolved into the current generation of synchrotrons, in which the magnetic fields and electric fields are carefully synchronized to produce particle beam energies of several hundred million electron volts. Synchrotrons are used in basic nuclear physics research to further understanding of atomic nuclei. Synchrotrons are also used in material analysis and to make special and rare isotopes for scientific research and medical uses. Work with cyclotrons has resulted in the positron emission tomography (PET) scans used by hospitals to create three-dimensional images of biochemical activity. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Baron, E., and M. Lieuvin. Cyclotrons and Their Applications 1998. Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Cyclotrons and Their Application. Bristol, UK: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1999. Wilson, Edmund. An Introduction to Particle Accelerators. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Section 10: Einstein, Albert 635

EINSTEIN, ALBERT (1879–1955) Widely characterized for nearly a century as the quintessential theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein is an icon of American science. His influence has surpassed that of giants of previous centuries, even as theorists continue to debate the precise implications of his theories and models. He was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879, to Hermann and Pauline Einstein. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Munich, where he attended school at the Luitpold Gymnasium. In 1894 his family moved to Pavia, Italy; Einstein joined them a year later without finishing school or getting his secondary school certificate. When he failed the entrance examination for the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, or Zurich Polytechnic, his parents sent him to the Swiss city of Aarau to finish secondary school. After receiving his diploma in 1896, he was finally able to enroll in the Zurich Polytechnic and graduated with a teaching diploma in 1900. In 1901, Einstein became a Swiss citizen; the following year, he took a job as a technical assistant examiner at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. On January 6, 1903, he married Mileva Maric, a Serbian mathematician he had met in college; a little more than a year later, the couple’s first son was born. In 1905, Einstein received his doctorate for his thesis “A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions,” but he remained employed as a patent clerk. That would soon change.

Annus M irabilis While working at the patent office, Einstein wrote and submitted four papers to the physics journal Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics) in 1905. These papers would have such a profound effect on the course of twentieth-century physics that they came to be known as the “Annus Mirabilis Papers” (from the Latin annus mirabilis, meaning “year of wonders”). In the first, “On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light,” Einstein proposed the idea of “light quanta” (now called photons) and theorized how the concept could be used to explain the photoelectric effect. The article

The work of theoretical physicist Albert Einstein (left) was nothing less than a revolution in the human understanding of physical reality. He is seen here with American Nobel laureate Arthur Compton in 1940. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

marked a momentous break with classical physics and would become one of the seminal papers of the fledgling field of quantum physics. In the second paper, “On the Motion— Required by the Molecular Kinetic Theory of Heat—of Small Particles Suspended in a Stationary Liquid,” Einstein put forth his theories of Brownian motion, the physical phenomenon named after Scottish botanist Robert Brown, who noticed in 1827 how minute pollen particles floating in water seemed to move around randomly. Relying on the kinetic theory of fluids, which asserted that gases are made up of molecules in constant random motion, Einstein theorized that molecules of water also move at random and that, in any short period of time, a small particle would receive any number of random impacts from random directions. These impacts would cause a sufficiently small particle to be in motion the way Brown described. Einstein’s theory provided the first empirical evidence for the reality of atoms. Einstein’s third paper of 1905, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” introduced the theory of relativity for which he would become widely known. The paper provided a new way of understanding the relationship between time and space that came to be called the “theory of special relativity,” in order to distinguish it from

636 Section 10: Einstein, Albert his later “theory of general relativity.” The paper was not perfect, and the paradoxes it contained earned Einstein a considerable amount of ridicule from the scientific world. Eventually, he worked out the apparent contradictions and the theory gained general acceptance. Titled “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy Content?” Einstein’s fourth paper was the one that would earn him the most recognition with the general public, putting forth the famous E=mc2 equation—or, the energy (E) of a body at rest equals its mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared. Building on the theory of special relativity, the paper contended that mass and energy are interchangeable. In 1911, Einstein was appointed extraordinary professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zurich. The following year, he was named full professor at the Zurich Polytechnic, and, in 1914, he adopted German citizenship after taking a position as a professor in the University of Berlin and the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute (now the Max Planck Institute). Einstein and his wife separated when he moved to Berlin; in 1919, they divorced, and he married his cousin Elsa Löwenthal.

B erlin Years In Berlin, Einstein built his reputation and produced a series of stunning physics theories. In 1916, he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. Many historians of physics believe that this paper was probably Einstein’s greatest intellectual achievement. In 1917, he wrote a paper in 1917 on the stimulated emission of light that laid the foundation for the invention of the laser. For his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect, Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics. Recognition of the paper’s true seminal influence had come in 1919, when British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington’s measurements during solar eclipses demonstrated how the light emanating from a distant star was bent by the sun’s gravity as it passed by. Despite the apparent evidence, many scientists were still unconvinced of the theory’s validity, for reasons ranging from simple disagreement with interpretation to intolerance for Einstein’s lack of an absolute frame of physical reference.

In 1922, Einstein published his first work on the unified field theory, which would be an enduring intellectual quest for the rest of his life, as he looked for a classically based unifying theory of gravity and electromagnetism. He also lectured on his work in venues around the world. In 1925, he received a paper from a young physicist from India named Satyendra Nath Bose. The paper described light as a gas of photons. When Einstein realized that Bose’s theory could be applied to atoms in a gas, he published an article that incorporated Bose’s model and explained its implications. Thus, “Bose-Einstein statistics” are now used to describe assemblies of elementary particles called bosons. Einstein remained in Berlin until 1933, when he renounced his German citizenship after Adolf Hitler came to power. Emigrating to the United States, Einstein took a position at the new Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Princeton Years Einstein’s years at Princeton were filled with as many political issues as scientific ones. He considered himself a pacifist and a humanitarian and had moved to the United States to be free from the nascent Nazi regime in Germany. To guarantee that Hitler did not build the first atomic bomb, Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt on August 2, 1939, urging Roosevelt to initiate a vigorous atomic bomb research program. Roosevelt responded to Einstein’s appeal by setting up a committee charged with investigating the use of uranium in a weapon. The committee’s investigation resulted in the creation of the Manhattan Project. In later years, Einstein opposed nuclear weapons development and pushed for nuclear disarmament. At the July 1955 Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in London, he and co-author Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, which called for all nations to renounce nuclear weapons. Einstein wrote a number of books, the most important of which include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Relativity (1920), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics

Section 10: Fermi, Enrico 637 (1938). He also received a number of honorary degrees from major American and European universities. Einstein spent the last decade of his life focused on the unification of the laws of physics, which he referred to as the unified field theory, while trying to develop a generalized theory of gravitation. His legacy to the world will always be his science, but, in many ways, he was more than a great physicist. To many, Albert Einstein embodied genius, intellect, compassion, and the triumph of reason over the unknown. He died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Bolles, Edmund Blair. Einstein Defiant: Genius Versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry, 2004. Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and General Theory. Trans. Robert W. Lawson. New York: Routledge, 2001. Highfield, Roger, and Paul Carter. The Private Lives of Albert Einstein. London: Faber and Faber, 1993. Pais, Abraham. Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1982. Stachel, John. Einstein’s Miraculous Year: Five Papers That Changed the Face of Physics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

During the 1930s, Fermi worked on radioactivity, methodically going through the periodical chart, bombarding elements with neutrons to see the result. In 1938, he discovered the phenomenon of slow neutrons, in which neutron bombardment actually increases radioactivity. Also in 1938, Fermi went to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize for his work with artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons and nuclear reactions caused by slow neutrons. Immediately after the award ceremony, Fermi and his family left for the United States to escape Italy’s fascist dictatorship. In New York, Fermi worked as a professor of physics at Columbia University. In 1942, Fermi left Columbia for the University of Chicago, where he supervised a team constructing the world’s first nuclear reactor. On December 2, 1942, he and his team initiated the world’s first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, which operated for twenty-eight minutes and produced roughly 200 watts of power before being shut down. Fermi became an American citizen in July 1944; shortly thereafter, he moved from Chicago

F E R M I , E N R I CO (1901–1954) Enrico Fermi was one of America’s most brilliant and best-known physicists. He received the 1938 Nobel Prize for his work on developing the experimental proof of the role of neutrons in nuclear fission and artificial radioactivity. He also played a critical role in the Manhattan Project and the development of atomic energy. Fermi was born on September 29, 1901, in Rome, Italy. At the age of seventeen, he began studies at the University of Pisa, graduating in 1922 with a doctorate in physics. After doing postdoctoral studies with Max Born in Göttingen, Germany, and then Paul Ehrenfest in Leiden, the Netherlands, Fermi returned to Italy in 1925 and spent the next two years as a lecturer in mathematical physics and mechanics at the University of Florence. In 1927, he became a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome.

Enrico Fermi fled Fascist Italy in 1938, the year he won the Nobel Prize in Physics. His theoretical and practical work led to the first sustained nuclear reaction in 1942 and the construction of the first atomic bomb in 1945. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

638 Section 10: Fermi, Enrico to Los Alamos, New Mexico, to lead the F (for “Fermi”) Division of the Manhattan Project. This division conducted both theoretical and experimental physics work in support of the development of the atomic bomb. After World War II, Fermi became a professor at the University of Chicago. There, he turned his attention to high-energy physics and cosmic rays. He taught there until his death on November 29, 1954. On May 11, 1974, the National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, was renamed the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in his honor. Also named for him are the fermion, an atomic particle, and the element fermium. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Cooper, Dan. Enrico Fermi and the Revolutions of Modern Physics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. Fermi, Laura. Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988.

FEYNMAN, RICHARD (1918–1988) Richard Feynman made a variety of notable contributions to theoretical physics and was a participant in the Manhattan Project during World War II. A prolific physicist, Feynman used mathematics to explain liquid helium at extremely cold temperatures, provided an explanation for electrons in high-energy collisions, and discovered the cause of the 1986 Challenger space shuttle tragedy. Richard Phillips Feynman was born in Far Rockaway, Long Island, New York, on May 11, 1918. Although his parents were not college educated, they recognized the value of a scientific education. His father encouraged him to play with objects and arrange them in sets or patterns, always stressing the importance of math. Richard was encouraged to experiment with chemicals, electricity, and mechanical inventions. He built a motor to rock his sister’s cradle and a burglar alarm for the house. In high school, he found algebra too easy. In geometry and trigonometry, he amused himself by challenging traditional concepts and devising his own sets of symbols. By the age of fifteen,

Feynman had already mastered what most graduating seniors find a struggle. When the Great Depression forced his family to move from their home into a small apartment, Feynman found a new project in collecting broken radios or typewriters to fix. At graduation time, his classmates named him “the mad genius.” Feynman earned his B.A. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1935 and his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton in 1942. While at Princeton, working with the isotron project, he was recruited for the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico. During the course of that endeavor, Feynman discovered that government bureaucracy had created dangerous conditions in the workplace. He systematically examined the rooms, making note of which chemicals were being stored without proper safety precautions. He reported his findings to senior U.S. Army officers, thereby averting a potential disaster in the building. At the same time, Feynman displayed a unique talent—making play of work. Unfortunately, at a time when his professional life was burgeoning, his personal life was devastated in 1945 by the death of his wife, Arline, who had been confined to a sanatorium for tuberculosis. In 1957, Feynman met Gweneth Howarth, an English librarian, and they were married shortly thereafter. They had one son, Carl, in 1962; six years later, they adopted a daughter, Michelle Catherine. After World War II, Feynman, went to Cornell University, where he studied antimatter: particles with equal mass but opposite electric charges. His diagrams demonstrated the relationship between the negatively charged electron in matter and the positively charged positron in antimatter. Intrigued by physicist Paul Dirac’s call for “some essentially new physical ideas” in the field of quantum physics, Feynman examined the behavior of atomic particles and discovered the infinite energy of interaction between electrons. The resulting “Feynman Diagram” demonstrates the interactions of particles in both space and time. In 1950, Robert Bacher, a friend from the Atomic Energy Commission at Los Alamos, recruited Feynman for the physics department at the California Institute of Technology, where he used the Feynman Diagram to teach his classes. In 1965, Feynman shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Shin-Ichiro Tomonaga and Julian

Section 10: Fission 639 Schwinger; Feynman was cited for his work on quantum electrodynamics (QED). Although QED could not predict what would happen in a given experiment, it could predict the statistical probability of what would happen. In addition, Feynman was interested in the role that subatomic particles, specifically protons, played in QED. His research with superconductors involved materials that would conduct electricity without offering resistance. This would improve the efficiency of systems where heat and light, the result of resistance, would be minimized or nonexistent. He also worked with superfluidity, the twin of superconductivity. Superfluidity is the tendency of a substance, specifically a fluid, to resist viscosity. Dry water, which sounds like an oxymoron, would be such a substance. Feynman pointed out that superfluid helium resembled such a substance. Between 1965 and 1985, he worked on a variety of projects at Cal Tech, including quantum chromodynamics, a synthesis of field theories and quark jets. During this time, many physicists came to work with him; these included Murry Gell-Mann, with whom Feynman would collaborate for the rest of his life. In 1972, at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, Feynman was given the Oersted Medal for contributions to the teaching of physics. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger burst into flames shortly after take-off, killing all seven of the astronauts onboard. Feynman was recruited to serve on the commission established to determine the cause of the disaster. After examining photographs and drawings, and meeting with engineers, Feynman turned his attention to the O-rings, made of synthetic rubber, and the seals on the field joints. The solid rocket boosters were in sections held together by joints that had to be sealed to prevent the escape of hot gasses. As Feynman questioned the members of the commission, he found that there had been a long history of problems with the O-rings. In a simple demonstration with cold water and an O-ring, he showed that lowering the temperature of the water caused the O-ring to crack. Cold weather on the day of the launch had diminished the effectiveness of the seals. The problem, it turned out, had been known for a long time but ignored. Feynman’s presentation was as succinct

as it was powerful. He concluded his findings by stating, “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” Feynman’s health declined during the last decade of his life. He experienced myxoid liposarcoma, a rare gastrointestinal cancer, during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the mid-1980s, a second rare cancer, Waldenstroms macroblobulinemia, attacked his body, further weakening him. He died on February 15, 1988. Lana Thompson

Sources Feynman, Richard P., with Ralph Leighton. Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman. New York: W.W. Norton, 1985. Gleick, James. Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.

FISSION Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of a heavy, unstable atom splits, or fissions, into two or more lighter nuclei, releasing massive amounts of energy. The discovery of fission by European scientists paved the way for technological application by American scientists, notably the development of atomic weapons. The science of fission began in Europe in the early twentieth century. Scientists such as Marie Curie, Ernst Rutherford, and Niels Bohr discovered the structure of the atom as well as the unique atomic nuclei of heavy elements such as radium and uranium. Nuclear fission occurs in nature slowly and spontaneously as radioactive decay. In 1932, English scientist James Chadwick discovered the neutron of the atom, which has a neutral charge (in contrast to the positively charged proton and the negatively charged electron). In 1934, Hungarian scientist Leo Szilard theorized that a neutron colliding with an atom of a heavy element would produce a change in the atom and the release of energy. The reaction also releases two or more additional neutrons. If the path of these neutrons is not blocked, or controlled, some of the neutrons hit other atomic nuclei, causing them to fission also. If there is enough fission fuel available—a critical mass—for the production of

640 Section 10: Fission free neutrons by fission to be greater than those lost, the result is a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. An uncontrolled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction results in an explosive release of energy. In 1938, German scientists Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner recognized and named the concept of a nuclear fission reaction. They used the “liquid drop model,” in which a spherical nucleus undergoing fission begins to elongate into a dumbbell shape until it reaches a point of no return and splits at the neck into two equal or nearly equal fragments, releasing energy in the process. The fission research of the 1930s made it possible for a team led by Enrico Fermi—who had moved from Italy to the United States in 1939— to explore fission’s potential as a source of nuclear energy. Using uranium as a neutron source and 400 tons of graphite as a neutron moderator, and working in a room that had formerly been a squash court, Fermi’s team initiated a selfsustaining nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942. Fermi’s fission research in Chicago, and then at the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, led to the development of the atomic bomb and the world’s first uncontrolled nuclear fission explosion in the New Mexican desert in July 1945. Fission research after World War II focused primarily on making smaller, more efficient, fission nuclear weapons and on the development of nuclear reactor technologies. Although the nuclear fusion weapons developed during the early years of the Cold War replaced most of the fissionbased weapons, the thermonuclear designs continued to use a nuclear fission device called a “primary” to initiate the fusion reaction. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed his Atoms for Peace program for research and development of the use of nuclear energy for electrical power generation. By 1957, the Atomic Energy Commission began operation of the Shippingport nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania. In the decades that followed, many countries built nuclear fission reactors to generate electrical power. Fission also has had many other civilian, military, and space applications. Today, fission science research in the United States continues to make important, if incremental, advances in knowledge. In 2001 physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Japanese Atomic Energy Research Institute devel-

oped a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms underlying nuclear fission, using a computer model that defined critical shapes of elongation, neck diameters, fragment deformation, and mass division in the liquid drop model. The research allowed scientists to draw a number of new conclusions about the fission process. One recent discovery is that, for some lighter actinide elements, two fission paths exist: one where the fissile particle divides into unequal fragment masses, and another with equal fragment mass divisions. Such discoveries made by ongoing fission research illustrates that even a well-known, established scientific concept can be open to new and different interpretations. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Cowan, George A. “A Natural Fission Reactor.” Scientific American (July 1976): 36–47. Graetzer, Hans, and David Anderson. The Discovery of Nuclear Fission. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1971. Mackintosh, Ray, ed. Nucleus: A Trip into the Heart of Matter. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

FUSION Nuclear fusion is the reaction that occurs when two lightweight atomic nuclei are brought together under extremely high temperatures to fuse and form a heavier element particle. The union of the atomic nuclei releases vast quantities of energy. Fusion is the underlying principle of thermonuclear weapons and stellar burning. English physicists Ernest Rutherford, Marcus Oliphant, and Paul Harteck discovered the hydrogen fusion reaction at Cambridge University in 1934 after accelerating deuterium nuclei into deuterium in the form of heavy water. Driven by the energy of acceleration, hydrogen nuclei fuse to create helium, hydrogen’s heavier neighbor in the periodic table of elements. The fusion process creates energy in the form of thermal, neutron, and gamma radiation. Because the Cambridge fusion reaction was not self-sustaining, it was not useful as an energy source. However, the discovery laid the foundation for the development

Section 10: Gell-Mann, Murray 641

Tokamak is a device use to produce a doughnut-shaped magnetic field in plasma physics research. The long-term goal of researchers is controlled nuclear fusion as a viable source of energy. (Yale Joel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

of the hydrogen bomb, which uses the energy of a fission-based nuclear device to rapidly compress and then ignite a mass of fusion fuel to create a massive uncontrolled thermonuclear reaction. Nuclear fusion research in the United States has involved research and development of uncontrolled fusion found in thermonuclear weapons. Uncontrolled nuclear fusion research in the United States began with a design proposed by Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller in 1951. Called the Teller-Ulam Configuration, the design used a fission nuclear device called a “primary” as a trigger to compress and heat a mass of fusion fuel— usually an isotope of hydrogen—through a process called radiation implosion. The fusion of the hydrogen nuclei releases large quantities of energy in the form of an explosion. The TellerUlam design was modified and refined during the Cold War through a series of thousands of aboveground and underground nuclear weapons tests.

In 1993, the United Nations General Assembly began negotiations for the creation of a comprehensive test-ban treaty prohibiting all nuclear explosions in all environments. Since that time, nuclear weapons fusion research in the United States has been restricted to subcritical nuclear tests—explosions driven by conventional explosives where no critical mass is formed and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs. Controlled nuclear fusion has become the holy grail of nuclear physics research in the United States because of its potential as an energy source. Scientists are studying magnetic confinement fusion and inertial confinement fusion as possible ways to achieve a sustained nuclear fusion reaction. Technical difficulties lie in the inability to confine or contain the extremely high temperatures (in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius) needed to achieve fusion. Controlled nuclear fusion’s association with nuclear weapons and its confusion with cold fusion have hindered research. Nuclear fusion is not cold fusion, which most scientists consider technically improbable and perhaps impossible. If nuclear fusion can be harnessed, only small amounts of material would be needed to produce vast amounts of energy. Experts estimate that a mere 10 grams of deuterium, extracted from seawater, and 15 grams of tritium, produced from lithium, would produce enough energy to meet the lifetime electricity needs of an individual. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Bromberg, Joan Lisa. Fusion: Science, Politics, and the Invention of a New Energy Source. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982. Herman, Robin. Fusion: The Search for Endless Energy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Rhodes, Richard. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Zirker, Jack B. Journey from the Center of the Sun. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

G E L L -M A N N , M U R R AY (1929– ) The American theoretical physicist Murray GellMann is known as the discoverer of the quark, an elementary particle comprising protons and

642 Section 10: Gell-Mann, Murray neutrons, which, in turn, form the nucleus of the atom. Gell-Mann also proposed the “eightfold way,” a simplification of the hierarchy of all subatomic particles, and developed a system of particle classification according to their isotopic spin (or isospin) and strangeness. This approach brought order to the more than 100 subatomic particles found lurking in the nucleus of the atom. However, unlike Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table for chemistry, based on visible properties such as mass and chemical behavior, Gell-Mann’s system has no counterparts in the world of everyday experience. In fact, for many years Gell-Mann believed that his beloved quarks were nothing more than a mathematical construct to be used to explain subatomic particle behavior. Born in New York City on September 15, 1929, Gell-Mann was recognized as a child prodigy. He obtained a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951. His first significant theory was that particles exhibit “strangeness,” an explanation of why some unstable particles disintegrate more slowly than others. This idea of a fundamental new property led to the notion that all subatomic particles fall into orderly patterns, defined by how much strangeness and electric charge they possess. Like Mendeleev’s periodic table, used to predict new elements, Gell-Mann’s “eightfold way” proposal of 1962 suggested that missing particles would be discovered. He calculated the theoretical characteristics of the missing particles, including their mass. When physicists discovered the particle omega-minus in 1964, the mass of the particle was within one-half of 1 percent of Gell-Mann’s estimate. Soon after, Gell-Mann predicted the existence of even more fundamental particles in various combinations, which he called “quarks.” Experiments bombarding hydrogen atoms with electrons soon detected three quarks of two different types comprising both protons and neutrons. In 1969, Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on subatomic particles; it was one of the few unshared Nobel awards in physics. Gell-Mann also played a key role in explaining how quarks and the force among them prevent the protons, neutrons, and atomic nucleus from pulling apart: the strong force permanently confines the quarks through

the exchange of gluons. From this, he and many other physicists developed the field theory of quantum chromodynamics. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Gell-Mann, Murray. The Quark and the Jaguar. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1994. Johnson, George. Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Koslowsky, Robert. A World Perspective Through 21st Century Eyes. Victoria, Canada: Trafford, 2004. Stehle, Philip. Physics: The Behavior of Particles. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

G R AV I T Y In the terms of the general theory of relativity, gravity is the curve of space and time that results from a concentration of mass or energy. European theorists over the space of several millennia developed an understanding of gravity, the particulars of which American physicists have illustrated through experimentation. The European search to understand gravity began with the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who believed that each thing has a natural place and motion associated with it. The natural place for objects containing large amounts of earth was at the center of things—Earth. If an Earth object was displaced from its natural spot, it attempted to return to the center. Aristotle’s concept of natural motion held until Italian scientist Galileo Galilei’s investigations toward the end of the sixteenth century. Galileo showed through experimentation that all falling objects accelerate at the same rate and that the velocity of a falling object is proportional to the square of the fall time. The observations of Galileo and others enabled English physicist Isaac Newton to determine his law of gravity in the seventeenth century. Newton proposed that any mass attracts any other mass along a line drawn between their centers. Further, the strength of attraction is proportional to the size of two masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. In the early twentieth century, Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity understood gravity according to the distortion of space-time, which

Section 10: Greenwood, Isaac 643 causes an object’s normally straight path to curve along with space-time. The European theory of gravity required experimental confirmation. In 1916, Einstein proposed three tests of his general theory of relativity: the variations in the perihelion of Mercury, the deflection of light by a gravitational field, and the red-shifting of radiation by gravity. American scientists were involved in the latter two tests. The first attempt to demonstrate that light was deflected by a gravitational field occurred during a total eclipse of the sun in 1919. English scientists Arthur Eddington, Frank W. Dyson, and Charles R. Davidson measured the position of certain stars in the sky at night and then measured the position of the same stars again during the eclipse. Presumably, the presence of the sun would cause a deflection in the light and an apparent shift in the position of the stars. The results of these observations agreed with the predictions of general relativity, but many physicists questioned the accuracy of the experiment. The controversy continued until 1976, when Americans Edward B. Fomalont and Richard A. Sramek published the results of their work at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia. The pair used radio interferometry to measure the shift in apparent position of distant quasars during an eclipse. Further confirmation of the bending of light in a gravitational field was found in the form of gravitational lensing. As light from distant stars passes massive objects, its path bends in the same manner that light is bent by a lens. The result can be a shift in apparent position or even the formation of a new image of the distant object. The first observed instant of gravitational lensing was found by Dennis Walsh, Bob Carswell, and Ray Weymann in 1979 at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Red-shifting occurs when a photon’s wavelength is lengthened by some process. Gravitational red-shifting of photons was verified by Robert V. Pound and Glen A. Rebka, Jr., in 1959 at the Lyman Laboratory at Harvard University. In the experiment, the two scientists monitored the frequency of photons emitted from unstable iron atoms located at different distances from the surface of Earth. They found that the photons emitted closer to the surface, where there is

a stronger gravitational field, experienced the red-shift predicted by general relativity. One of the most important and common applications of general relativity is found in the global positioning satellites (GPS). The GPS system, developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, is a set of twenty-four satellites in Earth orbit. Each satellite emits a time signal that is synchronized with the other satellites. A receiver that detects the signal from at least four of these satellites is able to pinpoint its longitude, latitude, and altitude with a margin of error of less than one meter. To achieve this accuracy, the atomic clocks on board the satellites must be synchronized within about four nanoseconds. Such agreement requires the extensive use of general relativity to correct for gravitational effects such as gravitational time dilation and gravitational red-shift. Without correction for general relativistic effects, positioning could drift by as much as ten kilometers per day. As is indicated by its use with the GPS system, general relativity is one of the best tested and most accurate theories of modern physics. However, the theory of general relativity is apparently incompatible with quantum physics, another modern and extremely well tested theory. It is currently not possible to produce a quantum theory of gravity, but this remains one of the most heavily investigated areas of physics. Reconciliation of gravity and quantum theory would almost certainly produce important new understandings of the world. R. Dwayne Ramey

Sources Feynman, Richard P., Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. The Feynman Lectures of Physics. Vol. 1. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977. Schutz, Bernard. Gravity from the Ground Up: An Introductory Guide to Gravity and General Relativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

G R E E N W O O D, I S A AC (1702–1745) Colonial mathematician and physicist Isaac Greenwood held the first Hollis professorship at Harvard.

644 Section 10: Greenwood, Isaac Born in Boston on May 11, 1702, the son of a merchant and shipbuilder, Greenwood attended Harvard between 1717 and 1721, studying under mathematics professor Thomas Robie, who introduced him to Newtonian science and calculus. In 1722, Greenwood became involved in the controversy in Boston over smallpox inoculation; his pamphlet A Friendly Debate supported inoculation. A Puritan minister, Greenwood traveled to England in 1723 to preach. There, he became acquainted with members of the Royal Society of London. His ability to interlace scientific knowledge with religious belief won him influential admirers, including Thomas Hollis, a London merchant who had been making donations to Harvard since 1719 and who founded a chair of divinity in 1722. Hollis established a professorship in mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard, and Greenwood became the first Hollis Professor in 1728. Greenwood was a prolific author in physics and mathematics. In 1726, he published An Experimental Course of Mechanical Philosophy, a textbook used at Harvard. He also contributed observations on meteorology, dampness in wells, and the aurora borealis to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. His 1729 textbook Arithmetick, Vulgar and Decimal was used at both Harvard and Yale. In 1731, Greenwood wrote Philosophical Discourse Concerning the Mutability and Changes of the Material World, a deist approach to Newton’s ideas, in which he examined the commensurability of science and religion. Greenwood also cataloged the scientific apparatus Hollis donated to Harvard. Hollis’s grateful nephew, also named Thomas, sent more equipment to Harvard, including an orrery (a mechanical model of the solar system), which, in part, inspired Greenwood to write Explanatory Lectures on the Orrery, Armillary Sphere, Globes and Other Machines in 1734. Four years later, Greenwood published his lecture series A Course of Mathematical Lectures and Experiments, followed in 1739 by A Course of Philosophical Lectures. An alcoholic, Greenwood was warned by the Harvard Corporation to get sober numerous times over the course of sixteen months before he was dismissed in 1738. He could not support his household on his public subscription lectures

alone, even after he sold his house and land, so he created a traveling scientific show in 1740 that was advertised by his friend Benjamin Franklin. In desperation, Greenwood served as a Royal Navy chaplain from 1742 to 1744. After his discharge, he died from the effects of alcoholism in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 12, 1745. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Further Reading Leonard, David C. “Harvard’s First Science Professor: A Sketch of Isaac Greenwood’s Life and Work.” Harvard Library Bulletin 29 (1981): 135–68. Shipton, Clifford K. Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University. Vol. 6. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1937. Simons, Lao Genevra. “Isaac Greenwood, First Hollis Professor.” Scripta Mathematica 2 (1934): 117–24.

HOLLIS PROFESSORSHIP Thomas Hollis was a wealthy London merchant who endowed chairs of theology, mathematics, and natural philosophy at Harvard College. A Baptist, he was disinclined to support the Anglican universities at Oxford and Cambridge. Believing that people in a young and rustic colony such as Massachusetts had the potential to educate boys into strong, moral men, he donated £5000 in books, scholarship funds, scientific apparatus, and professorial endowments to Harvard between 1719 and 1731. A chair designated as the Hollis Professor of Divinity was first filled in 1722 by Edward Wigglesworth, Sr. By 1727, Hollis had become convinced that education in the physical sciences was necessary and appropriate for furthering the Christian faith of leaders. He asked for suggestions about establishing a professorship from the hymn writer Isaac Watts as well as from David Neal, Jeremiah Hunt, and Isaac Greenwood. Greenwood was a twenty-five-year-old Harvard graduate who had impressed members of the Royal Society with his comprehension of experimental philosophy. He became a protégé of Jean Théophile Desaguliers and explained Newtonian physics to general audiences. Hollis appreciated the younger man’s intellect but thought his

Section 10: Kinnersley, Ebenezer 645 behavior irresponsible, as Greenwood was in debt when he left London for America. Greenwood had influential friends in Boston who lobbied on his behalf, however; in 1728, he was installed at Harvard as the first Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Early holders of the Hollis professorships made Harvard the leading center for maintaining a connection with European developments in science. Greenwood taught Newtonian science, wrote two textbooks and several treatises, and delivered popular public lectures, before he was removed for intemperance in 1738. His successor, John Winthrop IV, was a productive astronomer. He rebuilt Harvard’s instrument collection and library after a devastating fire in 1764, in part, with funds from Hollis’s nephew, a lawyer also named Thomas. By the time of his death in 1779, Winthrop was the most notable scientist in the United States. Samuel Williams continued Winthrop’s astronomical excursions between 1780 and 1788, although teaching standards fell somewhat under his leadership and that of Samuel Webber, who held the chair from 1789 to 1806. Webber did compile a widely used mathematics compendium in 1801. Instruction was revitalized by John Farrar, who during this tenure from 1807 to 1836, replaced Webber’s textbook with a series of translations of late eighteenth-century French treatises on mathematics and physics. Farrar and his successor Joseph Lovering collaborated on an 1842 publication, Electricity, Magnetism, and ElectroDynamics, which included “A Course of Natural Philosophy” by Farrar and “A New Course of Physics” by Lovering, who served as Hollis professor from 1838 to 1888. Benjamin Osgood Peirce, who succeeded Lovering and was Hollis professor from 1888 to 1914, published Elements of the Theory of the Newtonian Potential Function, as well as A Short Table of Integrals for use in mathematics classes. Recent Hollis professors have been Andrew Gleason, from 1969 to 1992, and Bertrand I. Halperin, who has served in this position since 1992. Papers for each Hollis professor are found at the Harvard Archives. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Sources Birkhoff, Garrett. “Mathematics at Harvard, 1836–1944.” In History of Mathematics: A Century of Mathematics in America. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 1989. Quincy, Josiah. The History of Harvard University. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA, 1840. “Some of Harvard’s Endowed Professorships.” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 29 (1926–1927): 65–69, 145–50, 387–93, 1026–28; 30 (1927–1928): 138–40.

K I N N E R S L E Y, E B E N E Z E R (1711–1778) Ebenezer Kinnersley was the foremost freelance scientific lecturer in mid-eighteenth-century America. Born in 1711, Gloucester, England, he immigrated with his family to America in 1714. A Baptist clergyman in the 1730s, Kinnersley was forced from his Philadelphia pulpit when he attacked the emotionalism of the New Lights (who professed a modified Calvinism) during the Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century. Kinnersley’s desire to have his polemics printed led him to make the acquaintance of the publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, Benjamin Franklin. Kinnersley became part of Franklin’s intellectual circle. With help and encouragement from Franklin, he commenced a tour of the American colonies as an electrical demonstrator, lecturer, and showman that lasted from 1749 to 1753. Franklin and Kinnersley operated in many ways as a team. In addition to performing the entertaining tricks with electricity that were the mainstay of the iterant electrical demonstrator, Kinnersley disseminated Franklin’s electrical theories. Franklin, who drew up the outline of some of Kinnersley’s presentations, helped promote the course of lectures on electricity Kinnersley offered in Philadelphia in 1751. Kinnersley’s presentations, which were advertised in colonial newspapers, featured such standard tricks as the electrified woman, the charge from whose lips would purportedly discourage anyone from kissing her, and “Electrified Money, which scarce any Body will take when offer’d to them,” as well as discussions of electrical theory. Kinnersley also offered to kill

646 Section 10: Kinnersley, Ebenezer animals instantaneously with electricity, if the audience provided the animals. More importantly, in the 1750s, Kinnersley ceaselessly promoted Franklin’s new invention, the lightning rod, using miniature buildings to show how lightning rods protected them from electricity. Most colonial American electrical demonstrators patterned their demonstrations and advertisements on Kinnersley’s, although few could rival the quality of his equipment. Kinnersley also performed independent research into such questions as the electrical charge of clouds and the relative abilities of different substances to conduct electricity. He was the most active electrical researcher in the American colonies other than Franklin, publishing scientific articles and inventing an “electrical air thermometer.” This device tested Kinnersley’s theory that electrical current generated heat. In 1758, one of Franklin’s enemies accused Franklin of having stolen his electrical theories from Kinnersley, a charge Kinnersley, then Professor of English and Oratory at Philadelphia College, indignantly denied. In 1774, in a show of patriotism at a Philadelphia demonstration against the enemies of Franklin and the independence movement, Kinnersley used electricity to set fire to effigies of unpopular Tories, such as the governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson. Kinnersley died on July 4, 1778. William E. Burns

Sources Heilbron, J.L. Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study in Early Modern Physics. 2nd ed. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999. Lemay, J.A. Leo. Ebenezer Kinnersley: Franklin’s Friend. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964.

L AW R E N C E , E R N E S T (1901–1958) The

American nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence, a Nobel laureate, was famous for inventing the cyclotron, founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and developing what has come to be known as “big science.” Born in Canton, South Dakota, on August 8, 1901, to Carl and Gunda Lawrence, Ernest Or-

lando Lawrence received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of South Dakota in 1922. The following year, he received his master’s degree from the University of Minnesota; he received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1925. In 1928, Lawrence was hired as an associate professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Two years later, he was made a full professor, the youngest at Berkeley at the time. By 1931, he had acquired an unused civil engineering laboratory building to accommodate his research. The building would later become the university’s Radiation Laboratory and serve as the precursor to today’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Lawrence remained at Berkeley as a professor and director of the Radiation Laboratory until his death on August 27, 1958, in Palo Alto. Lawrence received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for research on creating artificial radioactive elements using a cyclotron. With the help of graduate student Milton Stanley Livingston, Lawrence constructed at Berkeley the first cyclotron, a device for accelerating subatomic particles to near the speed of light by using magnetic fields to bend the path of the particles around a semicircular trajectory. Using the cyclotron, Lawrence and other scientists propelled subatomic particles into certain elements, breaking up their atomic structures and creating isotopes of the elements. In the decades that followed, cyclotrons became one of the basic tools of nuclear and particle physics research. During World War II, Lawrence contributed to the development of the atomic fission bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. Along with scientists working at Princeton University, he devised a method for the large-scale separation of uranium isotopes by electromagnetic means, a method that was later used at the Y-12 laboratory at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In September 1945, after witnessing the test of the atomic bomb and seeing evidence of the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Lawrence joined some of his physics colleagues in opposing, on moral grounds, the development of the hydrogen “superbomb.” Lawrence later served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Geneva Conference of 1958, seeking a ban on nuclear weapons tests. Lawrence has been called the “father of big science” for his role in developing large-scale

Section 10: Light 647 scientific projects grouped around a central research goal or instrument and involving numerous scientists from a number of universities or government laboratories. Lawrence employed this model at Berkeley for the use of the cyclotron in isotope research. Often, these big science teams are multidisciplinary, requiring the expertise of researchers in several different technical or scientific fields. This model of large-scale scientific projects has become the norm in many areas of physics research, particularly highenergy physics. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Childs, Herbert. An American Genius: The Life of Ernest Lawrence. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968. Heilbron, J.L., and Robert W. Seidel. Lawrence and His Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Herken, Gregg. Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: Henry Holt, 2002.

LIGHT Light is a wave of energy. It is the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the full range of which extends from high-energy cosmic radiation to low-energy radio waves. Light waves range in size from about 400 to 700 billionths of a meter (or about 0.4 to 0.7 microns). Not unlike an ocean wave, light waves vibrate at right angles to each other, carrying a variety of energy sources. Light travels at a speed of approximately 186,282.3959 miles or 299,792.4574 kilometers per second. When matter and energy interact, light is often the by-product, as when heated steel glows or a wood fire produces light. The source of the majority of light on Earth is the sun, which projects 1,370 watts of light per mile on Earth and nearly 6,000 kelvin of energy. The English mathematician Isaac Newton first used a prism in 1666 to reveal that white light (sunlight) in fact comprises the colors of the spectrum: violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. He was also able to recombine the spectrum colors back into white light. In 1704, Newton began to publish his historic four-volume Opticks,

which presented explanations of the properties of light, including color, reflection, and refraction. In 1800, English astronomer William Herschel discovered infrared light by heating red light and then heating a dark region and seeing the temperature rise much higher. The word infrared means “below red.” Infrared light is not visible to the human eye, because its wavelength is longer than that of white light. In 1877, working for the U.S. Navy as a research scientist in Washington, D.C., Albert Michelson revised a previously conducted experiment to measure the speed of light. Michelson used improved optics and equipment to determine the most accurate measure of the speed of light, documenting his findings in the 1878 article “Experimental Determination of the Velocity of Light.” For his work, Michelson became the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1907. Albert Einstein, while working at the Swiss Patent Office in 1905, theorized that light is comprised of “quanta,” indivisible entities later called photons. He studied the photoelectric effect—a quantum electronic phenomenon in which electrons are emitted from matter after it absorbs light energy. For his work, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. The increased understanding of the nature of light led to vital innovations in science, medicine, and technology. Once the relationship between electromagnetism and light was understood, for example, it became possible to produce artificial light using electricity. The inventor Thomas Edison, in Menlo Park, New Jersey, created the first electricity-powered incandescent light bulb in 1879 as a practical means of providing artificial light. X-rays were put to practical use by a number of physicists, including the Serbian American inventor Nikola Tesla at his lab in New York City in the 1890s. Tesla’s contribution to X-ray technology was the single electrode tube, in which charged particles (electrons) were passed inside a cathode tube with tungsten to emit radiation, or what he called “radiant energy.” X-rays were eventually used for making medical images of the human body and in the treatment of cancer, killing the specific cells that cause the disease. The use of radio waves in long-distance communication represented another understanding

648 Section 10: Light in the spectrum of light. In 1906, American scientist Lee De Forest invented the audion—a vacuum tube with a third electron—which could amplify radio waves. A pioneer in the modern electronics industry, De Forest was later forced by bankruptcy to sell his design to Bell Laboratories for $50,000. During the 1950s, American physicists bombarded atoms with electromagnetic radiation, forming light composed of wavelengths that formed a concentrated beam known as a laser beam. Gordon Gould, a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, came up with the design concept in 1957, and in 1960, Theodore Maiman built a laser at the Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. The laser is now widely used in medicine and communications. Discovery of the properties of light also led to advances in astronomy and the understanding of the universe. In 1912, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, an astronomer at Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, discovered a means to calculate the distance to stars based on their magnitude (brightness). This method ultimately was applied by Edwin Hubble, an astronomer working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California, in 1929. Hubble had noticed that the light from distant galaxies was shifting toward the red portion of the spectrum. This “red shift” indicated that objects emitting light are moving away from the observer and that the universe is expanding. In 1965, Bell Laboratory physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected long wavelength microwave radiation coming from all directions in space. Working out of the lab in Murray Hill, New Jersey, they were at first annoyed by the interference, then realized that this radiation represented light left over from the “big bang” that had red-shifted to the point of becoming nonvisible microwave radiation. In 1970, Corning Glass Works in Corning, New York, manufactured the first wire that could carry information via light. Set to a 17-decibel optic attenuation per kilometer, this glass, plastic, and titanium cord was later called optical fiber. Fiber optics would change communications forever by allowing high-speed transmission of voice and data over great distances. James Fargo Balliett and Ron Davis

Sources Brill, Thomas. Light: Its Interaction with Art and Antiquities. New York: Plenum, 1980. Sobel, Michael I. Light. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Wagner, David. Light and Color. New York: Wiley, 1982. Waldman, Gary. Introduction to Light: The Physics of Light, Vision, and Color. New York: Dover, 2002.

L I G H T, S P E E D

OF

The phenomenon of light was a source of intrigue for centuries among European thinkers and scientists who tried to understand its nature and determine its velocity. After repeated European attempts to determine the speed of light, it was an American, Albert Michelson, who in the late nineteenth century provided the most accurate estimate. Michelson also teamed with Edward Morley to use the speed of light to disprove the existence of ether. For centuries, scientists believed that light traveled from one point to another instantaneously. It was not until the seventeenth century that Galileo Galilei challenged conventional thinking that the speed of propagation of light could not be measured; in 1630, he used terrestrial distances and flashing lanterns to try to determine its speed. An assistant was placed on a distant hill and flashed light in response to Galileo’s lantern signals. This test was repeated on a second set of hills, located farther apart, so that the difference in interval (factoring out the assistant’s reaction time) might provide an indication of the speed of light. Galileo noted no extra time in either test, which meant that only the assistant’s reaction time was being measured. He concluded that light traveled extremely fast and could not be measured using terrestrial distances. Other Europeans following in Galileo’s footsteps, such as the Danish astronomer Olaus Roemer in the seventeenth century, used celestial distances in their calculations of the speed of light. Roemer recorded the time delay between one of Jupiter’s moons producing a shadow on the planet’s surface at different points in its orbit, and he calculated the speed of light at 132,000 miles per second. During the nineteenth century, the French physicist Armand Hippolyte Fizeau used a

Section 10: Light, Speed of 649 technique involving reflecting mirrors, instead of flashing lanterns, and a rotating toothed wheel to measure the time it took for reflected light to return to its source. This approach marked the return to terrestrial distances for calculating light speed. Using remote equipment instead of human assistants, Fizeau estimated the speed of light at 196,000 miles per second. Another nineteenth-century French scientist, Jean Bernard Leon Foucault, adopted Fizeau’s method but replaced the toothed wheel with a second mirror. His innovation enabled him to conduct light-speed experiments in a laboratory. Foucault’s adjustment allowed the reflected light from the second mirror to be deflected to a spot on a screen. Based on the displacement of a second spot on the screen, resulting from the second mirror rapidly spinning at a predetermined rate, Foucault in 1862 reported a speed of light of 185,000 miles per second. Foucault extended his laboratory setup to measure the speed of light not only in air but also in water and a variety of other materials. The higher the refraction of light moving through a medium, he demonstrated, the slower light travels. The early experiments in Europe were key to the development of the interferometer by American physicist Albert Abraham Michelson in 1881. An interferometer is a device that splits a light beam in two and sends the resulting beams down different paths until they are brought back together, so that the interference pattern is used to calculate speed. By splitting a beam of light in two and transmitting it across a 700 meter distance, Michelson measured the light’s speed at 186,355 miles or 299,895 kilometers per second, very close to James Clerk Maxwell’s predicted speed of 300,000 kilometers per second. Scientists such as Michelson believed that light propagates in an all-pervasive medium of space called ether, and that there must be a way of measuring the motion of the ubiquitous ether relative to Earth. Michelson believed that measuring the speed of light by means of an interferometer would allow him to determine the existence of the ether. In 1887, Michelson teamed with another American physicist, Edward Morley, to detect the ether by measuring relative changes in the speed of light as Earth orbits the sun. They believed their sensitive experimental setup would separate incoming light into two paths,

which would allow them to compare the distance light travels in the path moving parallel to the ether with the distance light traverses in the path perpendicular to the ether. The result would appear as a delay in the light beam moving perpendicular to the ether manifest in the interference pattern of the recombined beams. Much to the puzzlement of Michelson and Morley, however, no interference fringes were found. In 1905, Albert Einstein solved the contradiction raised by the Michelson-Morley experiments. With his theory of special relativity, Einstein showed that light travels at one speed in a vacuum, regardless of how or where it is measured. He postulated that absolute, uniform motion cannot be detected, and that the speed of light is independent of the source’s motion. If Earth and the entire testing apparatus are considered to be at rest, no time differences should be found (all directions are equivalent). Thus, there is no ether in which light propagates; rather, light and all other forms of electromagnetic radiation propagate through space without a medium. One of the implications of Einstein’s special theory of relativity is that time intervals shorten as a frame of reference moves. This means that a traveler leaving Earth at the speed of light for many years would return having experienced an elapsed time on Earth of only a few months. The invention in the 1960s of the laser, a light source with a single wavelength, allowed for more accurate measurements of the speed of light by determining the precise number of waves produced in one second. Using this technique, American physicist Kenneth Evenson, in 1972, calculated the speed of light at 186,282.3959 miles or 299,792.4574 kilometers per second. This work led to the National Institute of Standards and Technology adopting the speed of light in the redefinition of the meter. Einstein’s theories are predicated on the speed of light as a fundamental constant of nature. This suggests that nothing in the universe can travel faster. Some physicists postulate, however, that at the moment of the big bang, faster-than-light particles may have existed in a subatomic process. A hypothetical particle, called the tachyon, may never have possessed speeds below the speed of light. Consequently, the speed of light becomes a two-way speed barrier: it prevents slower-moving particles from acquiring enough

650 Section 10: Light, Speed of energy to reach the speed of light and denies faster-moving particles from releasing enough energy to decelerate to the speed of light. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Hughes, Thomas Parke. Science and the Instrument-maker. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1976. Magueijo, Joao. Faster than the Speed of Light. New York: Perseus, 2003. Perkowitz, Sidney. Empire of Light. New York: Henry Holt, 1996.

MAGNETISM Magnetism as it relates to electricity, which fascinated European theorists during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, became the focus of American applied science during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Europeans who inaugurated the modern study of electromagnetism include the sixteenthcentury English physician William Gilbert, who wrote De magnete (1600), the first treatise on magnetism, in which he discussed his work with electricity and argued that Earth is a gigantic magnet. A quantitative experiment by eighteenthcentury French physicist Charles Coulomb showed that the forces between magnetic poles vary inversely with the square root of the distance between them. The Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted, building on Gilbert’s contributions to magnetism and Coulomb’s work on electricity, developed the concept of electromagnetism, unifying the connection between electricity and magnetism. Practical applications finally appeared during the 1820s, when the English scientist William Sturgeon invented the electromagnet by wrapping copper wire around iron and applying electric current to magnetize the iron. As long as current was applied, the electromagnet could lift metal objects and move them about. Sturgeon found that by bending the iron into a horseshoe shape, effectively bringing the opposite poles closer together, the magnetic strength and hence the lifting power of the electromagnet was greatly increased. Joseph Henry, in the nineteenth century, was

the first American to contribute significantly to the field of electromagnetism. In addition to discovering the phenomenon of inductance, the magnetic strength of an electric field, Henry’s main innovation was to wind insulated wires around iron to produce powerful electromagnets. He built the largest electromagnet in the world, one that could lift 2,300 pounds, and observed large sparks when the circuit was disrupted. From this, he deduced the property of electric inductance. During his experiments, Henry found that inductance is defined by the circuit layout, especially the coiling of wire. His investigations also led to the making of noninductive windings by folding wire back on itself. The Serbian American inventor and researcher Nikola Tesla built on the ideas of Henry and discovered the rotating magnetic field in 1883, during his experiments on generators. His discovery established alternating current as an alternative to direct current for the growing electric industry. Tesla then built the induction motor, a crucial step in the spread of alternating current around the world. The trend during the twentieth century was a doubling about every decade of the maximum energy product of magnetic materials, a measure of a magnet’s ability to produce work for a given size. This progress spawned a whole new series of alloys and ceramic materials used to produce magnets for a diverse range of new applications. The American mathematical physicist John H. van Vleck shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1977 for his lifetime of research on the magnetic properties of these materials, which provided essential knowledge for the solution of practical problems and technological applications. Laser devices and magnetic resonance imaging, which produces diagnostic images of the body using a magnetic field, are just some of the products derived from his work. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Lehrman, Robert L. Physics—The Easy Way. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s, 1998. Russell, Colin A. Michael Faraday: Physics and Faith. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000. Verschuur, Gerrit L. Hidden Attraction: The Mystery and History of Magnetism. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Section 10: Michelson-Morley Experiment 651

M AY E R , M A R I A G O E P P E R T (1906–1972) Maria Goeppert Mayer, a Nobel laureate in physics, was born on June 28, 1906, in Katowice, a city that at the time was part of Germany but is now in Poland. Her parents were academics Friedrich Goeppert and Maria Wolff Goeppert, and through her father she represented a seventh generation of university professors. She grew up in Göttingen, where her father was a professor of pediatrics. In 1924, she entered the University at Göttingen, receiving her doctorate in theoretical physics in 1930. Also that year, she married Joseph Edward Mayer, an American physicist on a Rockefeller fellowship. Shortly thereafter, the couple settled in Baltimore, Maryland. Maria Goeppert Mayer became a U.S. citizen in 1932. Mayer was appointed to positions in a number of institutions, including Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Sarah Lawrence College, and she worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico during World War II. In 1946, she joined the University of Chicago as an associate professor and later became a full professor. At the same time, she worked as a senior physicist in the Theoretical Physics Division of Argonne National Laboratory, established by the federal government outside Chicago in July 1946. From 1960 to 1972, she was a professor at the University of California, San Diego. In her early career at Johns Hopkins, Mayer did research on the color of organic molecules. Later experiments focused on the separation of isotopes of uranium and nuclear shell structure. In 1955, she coauthored a book with Hans Jensen, Elementary Theory of Nuclear Shell Structure. She studied elements having the “magic numbers” of 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126 protons or neutrons: elements with these particular nucleon numbers are unusually stable, as the nucleons move in stable orbits around the nucleus. Elements with the first three magic numbers—2, 8, and 20—had already been explained, but Mayer gave a convincing explanation for the stability of elements with higher magic numbers; her model of their orbits explored new facts on the structure of atomic nu-

German-born Maria Goeppert Mayer of the University of Chicago won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics for the theory that protons and neutrons are arranged in a shell in the atomic nucleus, much as electrons are outside it. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–118262)

clei. Mayer shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics with Eugene Paul Wigner and Hans Jensen. She was the first woman to receive the prize for work in theoretical physics and the second after Marie Curie to win in physics. Mayer, who was honored with membership in the National Academy of Sciences, contributed to physics through her research in areas such as the phenomenon of changes to nucleons, atomic properties of transuranic elements (those with an atomic weight greater than 92), and opaqueness in substances. She died on February 20, 1972, in San Diego. Patit Paban Mishra and Sudhansu S. Rath

Sources Gabor, Andrea. Einstein’s Wife. New York: Viking, 1995. McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. Nobel Prize Women in Science. New York: Birch Lane, 1993. Nobel Lectures. Physics 1963–1970. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1972.

M I C H E L S O N -M O R L E Y E X P E R I M E N T Designed and carried out by Albert A. Michelson (1852–1931) and Edward Williams Morley (1838–1923), the Michelson-Morley Experiment was designed to determine the velocity of the planet Earth through space. The experiment,

652 Section 10: Michelson-Morley Experiment

Albert Michelson developed a device called the interferometer, used in his classic 1887 experiment with Edward Morley on the motion of Earth through space and the ether. Michelson’s Nobel Prize in 1907 was the first for an American in the sciences. (Boyer/Roger Viollet/Getty Images)

according to its presuppositions, resulted in the conclusion that Earth was not moving at all. In the nineteenth century, scientists widely believed that because light has a wavelike (undulatory) character, it had to be transmitted through a substance, in the same way that sound waves are carried through the air. This substance was called the luminiferous (“light-bearing”) ether. Therefore, several possibilities presented themselves with regard to the movement of Earth. Earth might drag the ether along with it or pass through the ether, or there might be some combination of these two motions. Or the ether might drift past Earth. If that were so, then the speed of light would vary according to direction. The reason for the variation in light’s velocity can be understood by thinking of two boats crossing a stream with significant current. One boat goes across the stream and back again, and the other boat goes up stream and back, both boats traversing the same distance at the same relative speed. The boat going across the stream and back will take less time than the one going up and back, since the current of the stream works against the boat’s speed at a 90 degree angle, rather than directly against and then with the boat’s speed.

Michelson, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, combined an interest in optics with his nautical expertise, which entailed the need to determine the relationship between wind and current and the movement of a ship. Morley, a Congregationalist minister and professional chemist, provided necessary technical expertise in building the device used in their experiment. The apparatus Michelson designed, later called an interferometer, consisted of a silvered mirror that would split a beam of light; two tunnel-like “arms” set at 90 degree angles and containing a series of mirrors; and an observation eyepiece, to which both beams of light would ultimately be directed. The device could be rotated 360 degrees. As it turned, one of the arms would, at some point along the compass, turn into the “stream,” or ether “wind.” Each of the two beams of light split by the silvered mirror would then be traveling at different speeds—one at 90 degrees to the ether, the other against the “stream.” Through the eyepiece, the observer would be able to detect the different speeds by means of different patterns of alternating bands of light and darkness. The change in spacing between the light and dark bands was called the “fringe shift.”

Section 10: Millikan, Robert A. 653 To everyone’s astonishment, the experiment, conducted in July 1887, failed to detect any significant fringe shift. The implication was that Earth is not moving—a geocentric conclusion repugnant to the majority of modern scientists. The experiment’s result was a significant factor in the later acceptance by most physicists of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which dismissed the existence of the ether and which maintained that the speed of light is an absolute standard. In addition, the interferometer, besides its value in astrophysics, has proved to be of tremendous use in making highly accurate measurements of microscopic distances and in high-resolution spectroscopy. Frank J. Smith

Sources Aspden, Harold. Modern Aether Science. Southampton, UK: Sabberton, 1972. Swenson, Lloyd. The Ethereal Aether: A History of the MichelsonMorley-Miller Aether-Drift Experiments. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.

M I L L I K A N , R O B E R T A. (1868–1953) One of the most influential American physicists of the twentieth century, Robert Andrews Millikan was an author, teacher, scientist, and university president. He inspired generations of American physicists and was a Nobel laureate for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and the photoelectric effect. Millikan was born on March 22, 1868, in Morrison, Illinois, the son of a Congregational minister. After attending high school in Iowa, he entered Oberlin College in Ohio in 1886. Following his graduation in 1891, he taught physics for two years until being appointed a fellow in physics at Columbia University in New York. Millikan received his Ph.D. in 1895 for research on the polarization of light emitted by incandescent surfaces. After a year of postdoctoral study in Germany, in 1896, he was hired as an assistant at the newly established Ryerson Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Millikan showed an outstanding aptitude for teaching physics and, in the process,

poured substantial amounts of time and energy into writing textbooks and improving methods of physics instruction. In 1902, he married Greta Erwin Blanchard, with whom he would have three sons. Millikan was made a professor in 1910, and, in the decades that followed, he would go on to author, or co-author with other scientists, more than a dozen influential physics texts. In 1917, Millikan joined the World War I effort as vice chair of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., where he conducted research on the detection of submarines. His experience in Washington would be a turning point in his career, as it would introduce him to the astronomer George Ellery Hale. In 1921, Hale persuaded Millikan to join the faculty of the fledgling California Institute of Technology, where he became director of the Norman Bridge Laboratory of Physics and Cal Tech’s first president. Under Millikan’s leadership, Cal Tech would become one of the leading scientific research centers in America. Also in 1921, Millikan served as the prestigious American delegate to the Solvay Congress—the International Congress of Physics at Brussels. Millikan received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 for his work on the photoelectric effect and determining the atomic structure of electricity. The latter research included a determination of the charge carried by an electron using the “falling-drop method,” which Millikan developed to provide experimental proof that the charge was a constant for all electrons. His work on the photoelectric effect, whereby matter subjected to electromagnetism absorbs photons and releases electrons, experimentally verified Einstein’s theories on the photoelectric effect and provided further evidence of the wave and particle behavior of matter. Millikan also researched cosmic radiation, the charged particles entering Earth’s atmosphere. During the course of his working life, Millikan received honorary degrees from twenty-five universities. He served as vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and as president of the American Physical Society. In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize, he was the recipient of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers Edison Medal and the Comstock Prize from the National Academy

654 Section 10: Millikan, Robert A. of Sciences. Millikan died in San Marino, California, on December 19, 1953. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Kargon, Robert. The Rise of Robert Millikan: Portrait of a Life in American Science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982. Millikan, Robert A., and I. Bernard Cohen. Autobiography of Robert A. Millikan. North Stratford, NH: Ayer, 1980.

PA R T I C L E P H Y S I C S Particle physics, the study of subatomic particles, is a relatively new science that began in the early 1900s. Europeans such as Niels Bohr, Marie Curie, Ernest Rutherford, and James Chadwick made initial discoveries on the nature of the atom and the particles that compose it, such as the electron and proton. Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932, the same year that American physicist Carl David Anderson, using a device called a cloud chamber, discovered the positive electron, or positron. In 1936, Anderson was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the positron; also in 1936, he and a graduate student, Seth Neddermeyer, discovered the muon, part of the subatomic particle family of mesons. Physicists throughout the world discovered more particles in subsequent years, and a classification system, the Standard Model, emerged based on work by researchers in quantum mechanics. The Standard Model states that particles are either fermions or bosons. Fermions are matter particles and include protons, electrons, and neutrons. Bosons include massless particles such as photons and gravitons. The four universal physical forces—gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak—are produced through a mediation process among these particles. For example, electromagnetism causes electrons to orbit an atom’s nucleus, and the weak force causes radioactivity. These four forces are responsible for all fermion interactions. In 1964, Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig were key contributors in identifying quarks and how the strong nuclear force holds the different types of quarks together in forming the proton and neutron within the atom’s nucleus. In 1973,

David J. Gross, Frank Wilczek, and H. David Politzer explained why quarks could never be seen apart from one another. In 2004, the three Americans received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in clarifying how the strong force binds the atomic nucleus together. Their efforts led to the theory of quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, whereby quarks come in six “flavors” and three “colors.” The colors interact through an exchange of energy bundles called gluons, which develop a color charge to ensure particle stability. The bubble chamber, invented and developed by 1960 Nobel laureate Donald Arthur Glaser in 1952 to uncover the existence of particles, became indispensable in tracking the paths of highenergy subatomic particles. Superheated liquid is expanded within the bubble chamber just before particles are sent through. The interactions produced by the streaming particles ionize atoms in the superheated liquid and create a bubble path along the particle trajectory. The bubbles reveal the particles tracks, which are photographed during their trip for further analysis. Extensive progress in the realm of particle physics has led to the view that all matter comprises three types of foundational objects: quarks, leptons, and bosons. Quarks are particles within the atomic nucleus. Leptons are particles outside the atom. Bosons provide the bases for forces in the universe. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Johnson, George. Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann and the Revolution in 20th-Century Physics. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Koslowsky, Robert. A World Perspective Through 21st Century Eyes. Victoria, Canada: Trafford, 2004. Stehle, Philip. Physics: The Behavior of Particles. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.

P AU L I , W O L F G A N G (1900–1958) Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli was born in Austria on April 25, 1900, to Berta and Wolfgang Joseph Pauli. His mother was an author and his father was a medical doctor and professor at the University of Vienna.

Section 10: Prince, John 655 After his early education in Austria, Pauli studied at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, earning a Ph.D. in 1921. He did postdoctoral work with the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who developed the quantum theory, before spending five years as a lecturer at the University of Hamburg. In 1928, Pauli was appointed professor of theoretical physics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Pauli spent much of the decade prior to World War II working and lecturing in the United States. In 1931, he was hired as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan; in 1935, he became a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, where he met and worked with Albert Einstein. Following the outbreak of the war in Europe, Pauli decided to stay in the United States. In 1940, he was named the chair of theoretical physics at Princeton. He returned to the University of Michigan the following year and spent time at Purdue University in 1942. At the end of the war, Pauli became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Pauli made significant contributions to the field of quantum mechanics. The Exclusion (or Pauli) Principle states that no two identical particles of an atom (electrons) can exist in the same quantum energy state at the same time. The reason that electrons do not congregate together is the electron spin, with each electron having a different quantum number. Electron spin was experimentally confirmed in 1926. Pauli was also the first to theorize the existence of a neutral, massless particle that accounts for the energy discrepancy that results when a nucleus of an atom loses an electron. Enrico Fermi would later name the particle a “neutrino.” Its observation for the first time in 1956 verified Pauli’s theory. In addition to the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physics, Pauli received a number of awards and honors during his career. In 1930, he was awarded the Lorentz Medal from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, and he received the Max Planck Medal in 1958. Wolfgang Pauli died in Zurich on December 15, 1958, of pancreatic cancer. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Enz, Charles P. No Time to Be Brief: A Scientific Biography of Wolfgang Pauli. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002. Laurikainen, K.V. Beyond the Atom: The Philosophical Thought of Wolfgang Pauli. Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag, 1989.

PRINCE, JOHN (1751–1836) The master scientific instrument maker John Prince was born in Boston on July 22, 1751, was educated at Harvard College, and became a Congregational clergyman serving the First Parish of Salem in 1779. He was at the Salem parish for forty-five years, and, in his spare time, he collected books on science and discussed science with other clergy, such as the Reverend Manasseh Cutler, from nearby Hamilton, who along with Prince and the Reverend Thomas Barnard formed the core of the Salem Philosophical Library. Prince fully embraced the eighteenth-century view that science and religion were complementary, reflecting in a 1796 letter that science is involved “in promoting a knowledge of the works of nature among men, and leading their minds through these footsteps up to their Divine Author: in making the best and noblest use of Philosophy, that of expanding the idea of the Supreme Being in the minds of men, and impressing them with proper sentiments of piety towards him.” Prince corresponded with scores of scientists and clergy on both sides of the Atlantic, and he was involved in scientific societies, such as the Salem Philosophical Library, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and Massachusetts Historical Society. He had a library of more than 3,000 volumes pertaining to science and philosophy and developed friendships with other scientists such as Nathaniel Bowditch, the Reverend William Bentley, Harvard President Joseph Willard, Benjamin Silliman, physician Edward Holyoke, and Alexander Wilson. He also contributed to science through his work as a scientific instrument maker, one of the best of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Prince made sophisticated scientific instruments through much of his long life, using a workshop adjacent to the parsonage. He was an expert with various materials, such as iron,

656 Section 10: Prince, John bronze, glass, and wood. Patronized by colleges and intellectuals throughout America and England, Prince made telescopes, microscopes, surveying and navigational instruments, electrostatic machines, electrometers, and “magic lanterns” to project enlarged images for viewing. He gained the greatest fame for his air pump, invented in the 1780s and described in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Prince’s design was simple and efficient, as Jefferson noted in a letter from 1788: “A considerable improvement in the Air pump has taken place in America. You know that the valves of that machine are it’s [sic] most embarassing parts. A clergyman in Boston has got rid of them in the simplest manner possible.” Air pumps were used by eighteenth-century scientists to investigate the qualities of air—its various volumes in different conditions—and how air pressure impacted other substances. Although Prince and many other contemporary instrument makers tried and failed to devise an air pump that created a vacuum, Prince’s air pump came closest to achieving this goal. Russell Lawson

Source Schechner, Sara J. “John Prince and Early American Scientific Instrument Making.” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 59 (1982): 431–503.

P R I N C I P I A M AT H E M AT I C A The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), commonly known as the Principia Mathematica or Principia, is considered one of the greatest treatises in the history of science. Completed by the English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton in eighteen months, it was originally published in Latin in three books, with the financial help of Edmond Halley. Although Newton laid the foundations of calculus, most of the proofs in the Principia are geometrical arguments. It would be the French physicist and mathematician Pierre Laplace in his Celestial Mechanics (1799–1825) who would translate the geometrical arguments of the Principia into calculus or physical mechanics.

Book 1 explores the mathematics of the motion of bodies. Book 2 examines motion in resistant media (physical reality). And Book 3 describes the cosmology of a physical reality based on laws Newton proposed. Newton established the validity of his formulations and conclusions by calculating the masses of the sun and of planets having satellites, the density of Earth, and the trajectory of a comet. Similarly, he explained the variations in the moon’s motion, the precession of the equinoxes, the motion of the tides, and the variation in gravitational acceleration depending on latitude. Though Newton had first begun to develop his theories of mechanics as a Cambridge University student, it was in the Principia that he stated his three universal laws of motion: (1) every object continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it; (2) the acceleration of an object is directly proportional to the net force acting on the object, is in the direction of the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass of the object; and (3) whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first. Newton used the term gravitas (weight) in the Principia, where he first stated the law of universal gravitation: gravitational attraction is directly dependent upon the masses of both objects and inversely proportional to the square of the distance that separates their centers. Newton demonstrated that gravity is universal, extending beyond Earth to the whole of physical reality. In the Principia, Newton presented the first analytical determination (based on Boyle’s law) of the speed of sound in air as 968 feet per second. Knowing the true value to be approximately 1,116 feet per second, Newton attempted to reconcile the difference by postulating a number of nonideal effects. Laplace’s application of calculus to the problem resolved the discrepancy, however, without the ancillary postulations. The title Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy summarizes the intent of the work to apply mathematics to natural philosophy, synthesizing into a single construct cosmology, history, and theology. The publication of the

Section 10: Quantum Physics 657

Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion were published together for the first time in a chapter of his Principia Mathematica (1687), titled “Axiomata sive leges motus.” The Principia is counted among the greatest achievements in the history of Western science. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-95173)

Principia was the culmination of Newton’s scientific contributions. He lost interest in scientific inquiry and suffered from depression that ended in a nervous breakdown. Therafter, Newton became a university representative to the British parliament, was appointed warden and then master of the Royal Mint, was elected president of the Royal Society, and was knighted. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Butterfield, Herbert. The Origins of Modern Science. New York: Free Press, 1997. Cohen, I. Bernard. Introduction to Newton’s Principia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Gribbin, John. The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors. New York: Random House, 2003. Newton, Isaac. Newton’s Principia: The Central Argument: Translation, Notes, and Expanded Proofs. 1687. Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion, 1995.

QUANTUM PHYSICS Quantum physics is the area of science that predicts the behavior of objects at molecular, atomic, and subatomic levels, focusing on the particlewave duality of matter and energy. Although it was initially developed by European physicists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American physicists began to take the lead in quantum physics research in the midtwentieth century. This research examines the microscopic rather than macroscopic world. The macroscopic world behaves according to classical or Newtonian physics, which is based primarily on Newton’s three laws of motion. These laws describe how and why objects move. First attempts to predict the behavior of very small objects were based on the same classical principles, but scientists encountered an impasse

658 Section 10: Quantum Physics in the nineteenth century, because classical theory predicted that a black body, which absorbs electromagnetic radiation, should radiate vastly more energy at high frequencies than could be experimentally verified. From this and other seemingly small discrepancies in classical theory emerged quantum physics. In response to the problems of black body radiation, the German physicist Max Planck proposed in 1900 that the atoms forming a black body could absorb and emit energy only in discrete packets called quanta. Further, the amount of energy present in each quanta was proportional to its frequency. In 1905, Albert Einstein used Plank’s quantum theory to posit how electric current is generated in certain light-sensitive materials—the photoelectric effect. Central to Einstein’s model was the thesis that quantization, the packaging of energy into the discrete quanta, is not a special property of a black body. All electromagnetic radiation, he argued, is naturally quantized and correctly viewed as being composed of either waves or quanta. In 1924, French physicist Louis de Broglie attempted to unite the classical view of matter as formed from particles and the new quantum view of radiation. He proposed that just as radiation could be viewed either as a wave or a particle, so matter could be viewed as either a particle or a wave. In 1926, the Americans Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer verified the wave-particle duality of matter for electrons. In 1928, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr summarized the current understanding of quantum physics in the “complementarity principle,” which states that the physical properties of matter and energy cannot be described by either a particle or a wave model alone but must incorporate both. Mathematical formulations, somewhat analogous to Newton’s laws of motion for classical physics and known as quantum mechanics, were developed in terms of matrix algebra by the German theoretician Werner Heisenberg in 1925, and in terms of wave motion by the Austrian Erwin Schrödinger in 1926. Quantum mechanics describes how matter and energy behave and interact in quantum physics. Using the wave description of quantum physics, Max Born, another German, showed in

1926 that the wave associated with a particle represents the probability that the particle will be found in a given region of space. Quantum physics then presents a world in which the outcome of physical events is probabilistic in nature rather than explicitly determined. This statistical view of the universe has profound philosophical implications and provoked a skeptical Einstein to counter, “God does not play dice with the universe.” After a prolonged debate with Bohr, Einstein eventually admitted the logical consistency of quantum physics. Quantum physics has been extensively tested since that time and no part of the theory has been disproved, though many philosophical questions remain. It was expected that quantum physics would be capable of predicting how matter and energy interact, necessitating a quantum theory of forces—a quantum field theory. Such a theory was developed for the electromagnetic field— called quantum electrodynamics, or QED—by American physicists Richard Feynman and Julian Schwinger and the Japanese physicist Shinichiro Tomonaga. QED details the interactions between matter and radiation and enables predictions about areas as diverse as atomic interactions, the properties of light, and the masses of certain subatomic particles. The trio received the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in QED, which is one of the most thoroughly tested theories of modern physics. American physicists Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg and Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam developed a quantum theory for the weak nuclear force and showed that at high energies this force and the electromagnetic force are aspects of the same object. The three won the 1979 Nobel Prize for their explanation of electroweak theory. Following the path laid out in the development of QED, a theory detailing the strong nuclear force was soon developed. Quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, detailed the quark and its behavior in mediating the strong nuclear force. David Gross, Frank Wilczek, and David Politzer showed that interactions between quarks could become extremely weak under certain conditions. This discovery allowed the use of QCD for predictive calculations and won these three American physicists the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Section 10: Rabi, I.I. 659 With the development of QCD, the only fundamental force without a quantum field theory is gravitation. The most popular of current attempts lies in the area of string theory, according to which the basic building blocks of the universe are onedimensional, vibrating strings rather than zerodimensional, point particles. Originally proposed in 1970 by Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago and Stanford University professor Leonard Susskind, along with Danish physicist Holger Bech Nielsen, to explain phenomena now covered by QCD, string theory was seen as the potential basis of a unified quantum theory of all four fundamental forces and the fundamental particles. Initially, there were a large number of string theories, all apparently sound, but there was no logically consistent method for selecting a specific theory. Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study showed that all competing theories are actually specific cases of an elevendimensional theory now known as M-theory. The extra dimensions are posited to be “rolled up” with such small cross-sections that they are undetectable in normal circumstances. While M-theory shows promise, no convincing tests have yet been proposed, let alone performed, to determine its accuracy. R. Dwayne Ramey

Sources Feynman, Richard P., Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. The Feynman Lectures of Physics. Vol. 1. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977. Zee, Anthony. Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.

R A B I , I.I. (1898–1988) Isadore Isaac Rabi was a Nobel Prize–winning physicist. His discovery of resonances within a single molecule led to a greater understanding of the internal structure of molecules, atoms, and atomic nuclei, as well as to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He also played a key role in helping create two of the world’s most eminent physics laboratories. Rabi was born in Raymanov, Austria, on July 29, 1898, to David Rabi and Janet Teig. He moved

with his family to the United States in 1899 and grew up in New York City. He graduated from Cornell University with a degree in chemistry in 1919 and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1927 for studies on the magnetic properties of crystals. After working for two years in Europe with the eminent physicists Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Wolfgang Pauli, Rabi returned to Columbia in 1929 as a lecturer in theoretical physics and became a professor in 1937. Rabi took a sabbatical from Columbia in 1940 to work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the development of radar, which he thought was crucial to an Allied victory in World War II. In 1943, Rabi helped J. Robert Oppenheimer recruit physicists for the Manhattan Project, and he later worked as a consultant at the Los Alamos, New Mexico, laboratory. For his work in developing molecular beam magnetic resonance, a method for recording the magnetic properties of a molecule, Rabi received the Nobel Prize in 1944. When Rabi returned to Columbia in 1945 after the war, he was named executive officer of the Physics Department. In that position, he was instrumental in organizing nine northeastern universities into a nonprofit organization that would build a nuclear science laboratory devoted to research on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. By 1947, Brookhaven National Laboratory for Atomic Research was being built at the former site of Camp Upton on Long Island, New York. In June 1950, Rabi was a U.S. delegate to a meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Florence, Italy. Working on behalf of the U.S. State Department, and in consultation with leading European physicists, Rabi helped get a resolution passed that called on the UN to assist and encourage the formation of regional research centers and laboratories to increase scientific collaboration among Western European countries. By pooling human and financial resources, nations could build and acquire together many of the expensive, large-scale scientific research instruments that no nation alone could afford. The resolution resulted in the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), or CERN, and the construction of the CERN laboratory on the

660 Section 10: Rabi, I.I. border of France and Switzerland, near Geneva. Later renamed the European Organization for Nuclear Research, it is still widely known by its original acronym and remains one of the world’s largest particle physics laboratories. Rabi died on January 11, 1988, in New York. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Rabi, I.I. My Life and Times as a Physicist. Claremont, CA: Friends of the Colleges at Claremont, 1960. Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Rigden, John S. Rabi: Scientist and Citizen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.

R A M S E Y, N O R M A N (1915– ) Nobel laureate Norman Foster Ramsey, known for his work on the Manhattan Project and in developing the atomic clock, was born August 27, 1915, in Washington, D.C., the son of a U.S. Army officer and a university mathematics instructor. When he graduated from high school at age fifteen, his parents expected him to follow his father to West Point, but he was too young to be admitted, so he entered Columbia College in 1931. He later wrote, “Though I started in engineering, I soon learned that I wanted a deeper understanding of nature than was then expected of engineers so I shifted to mathematics.” After graduating from Columbia in 1935 with a bachelor’s degree in physics, he was awarded a university fellowship that allowed him to earn a second bachelor’s degree at Cambridge University. At Cambridge, he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory, then one of the world’s leading physics research facilities. Becoming interested in molecular beams, he returned to Columbia to study with I.I. Rabi, who developed the atomic beam magnetic resonance (ABMR) method of measuring the atomic oscillation of electromagnet radiation (for which Rabi would win the 1944 Nobel Prize in Physics). In 1940, Ramsey joined the faculty of the University of Illinois. World War II led him to the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he consulted with the gov-

ernment on radar. He also worked on the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bombs. After the war, he returned to Columbia and became one of the founders of Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, a research center for particle physics. He served as the first head of its physics department, before joining Harvard University in 1947, where he taught and did research until his retirement in 1987. Ramsey took time away from Harvard to serve as the first science adviser (assistant secretary general for science) to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and as a visiting professor at several colleges and universities. He continued studying electromagnetic radiation of atoms but, unable to solve the problem of maintaining uniform magnetic fields in ABMR, he invented the separated oscillatory field method, which made possible much higher resolution atomic spectroscopy. This was a key step in developing the cesium atomic clock, the most accurate chronometer yet developed. With a graduate student, Daniel Kleppner, Ramsey invented the hydrogen maser (similar to a laser, it uses microwaves instead of visible light). Ramsey, the author of five books and more than 300 academic papers, has received numerous honors, including the E.O. Lawrence Award (1960), Davisson-Germer Prize (1974), presidency of the American Physical Society (1978–1979), IEEE Medal of Honor (1984), Rabi Prize (1985), Compton Medal (1986), Oersted Medal (1988), and National Medal of Science (1988). The 1989 Nobel Prize in Physics was shared by Ramsey, for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks, and by Hans Dehmelt of the University of Washington and Wolfgang Paul of the University of Bonn, for the development of the ion trap technique. Phoenix Roberts

Sources Frangsmyr, Tore, ed. The Nobel Prizes, 1989. Stockholm, Sweden: Nobel Foundation, 1990. Ramsey, Norman. Molecular Beams. Wotton-under-Edge, UK: Clarendon, 1956. ———. “Science as an Art: A Lecture.” John Hamilton Fulton Memorial Lectureship in the Liberal Arts, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, 1969.

Section 10: Relativity 661

R E L AT I V I T Y In physics, “relativity” refers to the possibility of variation in physical laws due to the observer ’s position, motion, or other variables. For most of human history, an object’s position and velocity were considered absolute values measured with respect to the unvarying and stationary Earth. This absolutist view of the universe was modified by Galileo Galilei in his 1632 treatise “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” in which he argued that physical laws of the universe are the same for all observers at rest, which is an inertial frame of reference. The popularity of “Galilean relativity” waxed and waned over the centuries, with such luminaries as Isaac Newton stating that, while physical laws made it impossible to identify, an absolutely stationary frame surely existed. The Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell contributed to the discussions of absolute reference frames in 1873 when he wondered how the speed of light can be measured when it depends on the motion of the measurer. Maxwell assumed that there is a substance of unknown composition that pervades all of space, “ether,” which allows for material objects to pass through it without resistance. Ether provided a stationary frame of reference. Americans Albert Michelson and Edward Morley attempted to identify and measure the phenomenon of ether in an 1887 experiment. If the ether exists, they reasoned, Earth’s motion around the sun should create an ether “wind,” which could be detected with a properly manipulated light beam. The experiment detected no such effect, however, implying that Earth is always stationary with respect to the ether. Albert Einstein, in his 1905 paper on the theory of special relativity, denied the existence of ether, arguing that the speed of light does not vary, but that light is the same for all observers, regardless of their velocity. Einstein’s theory also states that lengths of objects contract in their direction of motion, that time intervals change with speed, and that objects are limited to speeds less than that of light in vacuum. Special relativity deals only with inertial observers, excluding any observer experiencing a

force; yet in nature, physical objects are always subject to forces such as gravity. Moreover, for gravity, the universal speed limit of special relativity posed a serious problem. Newtonian theory required gravity to act instantaneously over distances in order to conserve angular momentum. Similar problems in electromagnetics had been solved when Maxwell and others introduced the concepts of electric and magnetic fields. Presumably, a gravitational field theory was needed. Einstein’s general theory of relativity, formulated in 1916, provided an explanatory model to show the relationship of gravity to observation, speed, and time. Einstein imagined a windowless rocket ship in which the occupant is uncertain whether he is in the idealized force-free weightlessness of special relativity, or in a free fall near the surface of Earth. The two situations must be equivalent, Einstein reasoned, and if one is inertial, both must be inertial. The easiest manner in which force-free acceleration can be produced is to suppose that it is a property of space itself: that is, to suppose that space is curved. Einstein was able to use Riemannian geometry, the theory of nonflat spaces, to formulate gravitational field theory. The result was a geometric theory in which matter and energy produce the effects of gravity by curving space and in which the laws of physics are the same for all observers. General relativity has had great success in its predictions and has been supported by all experiments designed to test it. The global positioning satellite system (GPS) routinely makes use of general relativity to determine locations of objects on Earth to within a centimeter. General relativity has made modern cosmology possible, allowing for prediction and models about the formation of the universe and its development. Among the predictions and concepts stemming from general relativity are peculiarities in the orbit of Mercury, gravitational lensing, the expansion of the universe, the big bang theory of the formation of the universe, gravitational radiation, and black holes. R. Dwayne Ramey

Sources Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and General Theory. Trans. Robert W. Lawson. New York: Routledge, 2001.

662 Section 10: Relativity Feynman, Richard P., Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands. The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Vol. 1. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1977. Schutz, Bernard. Gravity from the Ground Up: An Introductory Guide to Gravity and General Relativity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

R I T T E N H O U S E , D AV I D (1732–1796) David Rittenhouse’s many-faceted career centered on his activities as a mechanic and astronomer. He was not a rigorous, systematic scientist, but he did make significant contributions to scientific inquiry, especially as one of the foremost instrument makers in eighteenthcentury America. Rittenhouse was born to Matthias and Elizabeth Williams Rittenhouse on April 8, 1732, at Paper Mill Run, near Germantown, Pennsylvania. He had little formal education, being mostly self-taught on his father’s farm, about twenty miles north of Philadelphia. It is not known what, if any, science books Rittenhouse read as a boy, but some sources say he owned an English translation of Newton’s Principia Mathematica. We do know that he had a natural propensity for tinkering, which was put to use constructing models. As he got older, these projects became more advanced and more useful; they included clocks, barometers, thermometers, hygrometers, and surveying equipment, such as compasses, levels, and transits. Rittenhouse also built telescopes and was one of the first to use spider webs for crosshairs in the eyepiece. Early on, his abilities caught the attention of patrons in colonial Pennsylvania, such as his friend Thomas Barton (who married Rittenhouse’s sister in 1753), as well as provincial surveyor John Lukens and Richard Peters, who was the secretary to the governor of Pennsylvania. Rittenhouse worked as a surveyor and was involved with surveying many of Pennsylvania’s borders, and to a lesser extent the borders of New York. Rittenhouse’s most important scientific devices were his “orreries.” These detailed models of the solar system, named after an earlier European model constructed for the Earl of Orrery, had moving parts that represented the motion of

An eighteenth-century instrument maker, astronomer, and director of the U.S. Mint, David Rittenhouse of Pennsylvania is credited with building the first telescope in America, as well as working models of the solar system called “orreries.” (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

the planets around the sun. The orreries’ primary use was in the lecture hall, where instructors could demonstrate to their students the operation of the Newtonian universe. Rittenhouse began to construct his first orrery in 1767; it was the most intricate of those constructed in the colonies. While not as polished as British models, such as those produced by Benjamin Martin and Thomas Wright, Rittenhouse’s orreries were praised for their accuracy by American contemporaries, who also marveled at their beauty. In 1767, before his first orrery was completed, Rittenhouse was elected a corresponding member of the American Society for Promoting and Propagating Useful Knowledge. In 1768, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, reading their first scientific paper, his description of the orrery, which was subsequently published in the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1771, the College of Philadelphia appointed him to perform experiments that demonstrated the lessons students had learned in their natural philosophy lectures. It was a post he did not enjoy and did not hold long.

Section 10: Spectroscopy 663 John Witherspoon arranged, in 1771, to purchase Rittenhouse’s first orrery for the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). Another of his orreries went to the College of Philadelphia, where William Smith had arranged for Rittenhouse to be granted a master of arts degree. Thomas Jefferson did much for Rittenhouse’s standing in America when he praised his orreries and encouraged Rittenhouse to build other models, for the College of William and Mary and for King Louis XVI of France; neither of those projects was ever completed. Like many others of his day with scientific interests, Rittenhouse supplemented his income by providing astronomical calculations to almanacs, including the Universal Almanack and Father Abraham’s Almanack. His most significant scientific ideas were disseminated in periodical publications, particularly the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. By the early 1770s, Rittenhouse had gained an international reputation as an astronomer, largely through published papers on the transits of Mercury and Jupiter’s satellites, and also for his observations of the transit of Venus in 1769—observations made from the observatory he had constructed at Norriton. After 1770, Rittenhouse lived in Philadelphia, where he continued to make astronomical observations. During the years of the American Revolution, he put his scientific knowledge to work in the production of cannon and saltpeter (potassium nitrate). Rittenhouse was at various times secretary, curator, and librarian of the American Philosophical Society; in 1779, he was appointed its vice president. In 1782, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in Boston, and the College of New Jersey granted him a doctor of laws degree in 1789. In 1791, following Benjamin Franklin’s death, Rittenhouse was elected president of the American Philosophical Society, a post he held until his own death. In the 1790s, Rittenhouse continued to publish papers in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society; he contributed twenty-two papers in all. A number of these were on mathematical topics, including sines and logarithms. He also wrote about experiments he conducted on various topics, including the expansion of wood by heat, magnetism, and pendulums. Other papers, such as “Account of Several Houses

in Philadelphia Struck With Lightning,” dealt with electricity, a subject that was of great interest in the late eighteenth century. By 1795, Rittenhouse’s reputation was such that he was named a member of the Royal Society of London. He died on June 26, 1796, at his home in Philadelphia. Mark G. Spencer

Sources Ford, Edward. David Rittenhouse: Astronomer-Patriot, 1732–1796. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1946. Hindle, Brooke. David Rittenhouse. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964. Rice, Howard C. The Rittenhouse Orrery: Princeton’s EighteenthCentury Planetarium, 1767–1954. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954.

SPECTROSCOPY Spectroscopy, the study of the properties of matter as it interacts with light, is a branch of science that incorporates both visible and invisible (electromagnetic) sources of light. Research areas include ordinary light, radiation, radio waves, X-rays, sound waves, microwaves, and other sources. The fields of physical chemistry, astronomy, nuclear physics, and radiology all use spectroscopy for research and analysis. Early work in spectroscopy was done by British physicist Isaac Newton, who proposed an explanation for the spectrum of visible light. In his publication Opticks (1704), Newton addressed the reflection and refraction of light, the production of spectra by prisms, the properties of colored light, the composition and dispersion of white light, and light as distinct particles with immutable refractive properties. In 1802, British chemist William Hyde Wollaston established the existence of dark lines (not visible) in the spectrum of the sun while trying to answer the question of how many primary colors exist in the solar spectrum. Twelve years later, German optician Joseph von Fraunhofer found 574 dark solar lines while measuring the dispersive powers of glass for light and different colors. One of the most important contributors to the American science of spectroscopy was David

664 Section 10: Spectroscopy Alter, a physician and inventor from Freeport, Pennsylvania. Alter published On Certain Physical Properties of Light Produced by the Combustion of Different Metals in an Electric Spark Refracted by a Prism (1854), in which he examined the spectrum of twelve metals and six gases, including hydrogen. These findings propelled spectroscopy as a tool for chemical analysis, which was especially important to astronomers seeking to determine the chemical composition of distant stellar bodies. The development of the laser led to significant advances in spectroscopy. Gordon Gould, a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, came up with the laser design concept in 1957, suggesting the use of concentrated light beams with amplified power devices and special optical lenses. Theodore Maiman was the first to succeed in demonstrating the use of a laser, at the Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, in 1960. A more advanced laser helped discover new light frequencies deep in the ultraviolet index, and helped narrow light to better detect the composition and structure of objects. Multiple laser sources (argon, carbon dioxide, ion, and krypton) were developed by the 1990s; producing varied wavelengths, these provided a valuable new tool for spectroscopy research. Modern spectroscopy is generally divided into two main areas: 1) absorption, or the measurement of the absorption of light by a sample, and 2) emission, in which a sample radiates into light energy following a chemical reaction, irradiation, or molecular collisions at high temperatures. Common types of absorption spectroscopy include ultraviolet and infrared light, both of which provide data for molecular content and structural information. For example, it is possible to distinguish between the chemicals phenol and benzene using infrared spectrometry. Normally, however, a variety of spectrometric analyses have to be performed to determine the precise structure and identity of a sample. X-ray spectroscopy, a type of emission spectroscopy, is useful in determining the structure of crystalline samples and in the elemental analysis of solid samples. In nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, each carbon-13 atom or nonequivalent proton gives rise to a distinct peak in the spectrum because of its unique molecular environment. Unlike other spectroscopic meth-

ods, mass spectrometry measures the weight of molecular fragments or ions given off by a sample as a high-energy electron beam destroys it. NMR and mass spectroscopy remain the most widely used techniques for structure determination in modern chemistry. James Fargo Balliett and Sean Kelly

Sources Chapman, Brian. Glow Discharge Processes. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 1980. Marcus, R. Kenneth, and José A.C. Broekaert, eds. Glow Discharge Plasmas in Analytical Spectroscopy. Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 2003. McGucken, William. Nineteenth-Century Spectroscopy: Development of the Understanding of Spectra, 1802–1897. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969.

SUPERCONDUCTIVIT Y Superconductivity, the state in which a material loses all electrical resistance and expels all magnetic fields from its interior, is a growing research field that holds much promise for important technical applications of science in transportation, communications, and energy. Superconductivity was discovered and named in 1911 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes during his work with liquid helium and supercooling. Onnes found that as he reduced the temperature of certain substances to very low values, the resistance abruptly plunged to zero. Onnes was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1913. Continuing with this work, Germans Walther Meissner and Robert Ochsenfeld in 1933 determined that a substance passing into the superconducting state also expels magnetic fields from its interior. This expulsion is known today as the Meissner effect. Since Onnes’s original experiments, many elements and compounds have been found to have a superconducting state at sufficiently low temperatures. These compounds are grouped into Type I and Type II superconductors, with an additional subcategory of the high-temperature superconductor. Americans John Bardeen of the University of Illinois (already a winner of the Nobel Prize for his work in inventing the transistor), Leon Cooper of

Section 10: Teller, Edward 665 Brown University, and John Robert Schrieffer of the University of Pennsylvania won the 1972 Nobel Prize for their creation of the BCS (Bardeen Cooper Schrieffer) theory, which provided the first subatomic explanation of superconduction. BCS theory postulates an attractive force between electrons that can cause them to bind together in pairs known as Cooper pairs. In a normal conductor, as single electrons move through a material, they interact with the substance and are jostled and bumped, which causes a slowing called resistance. In a superconductor, the binding energy of the electron pairs forms an energy gap that must be surmounted before the pairs can interact with the material. At low temperatures, these interactions do not have enough energy to cross the gap, and resistance vanishes. However, as the temperature increases, these interactions become large enough to overcome the gap and produce resistance. Substances transition to a superconducting state at a temperature characteristic of the material known as the critical temperature. For most materials, the critical temperature lies below 30 kelvin. A special set of materials, known as high-temperature superconductors, has been found with critical temperatures as high as 125 kelvin. These materials are not well explained by BCS theory. A large magnetic field also can destroy a superconducting state. If an external field reaches a value known as the critical field strength, which is material dependent, superconductivity is destroyed, regardless of temperature. Type I superconductors pass into a normally conducting state as the magnetic field surpasses the critical value. Type II materials initially pass into a mixed state at a lower critical field value and then fall completely to a normally conducting state at a higher critical field value. Important applications of superconductors derive largely from their magnetic field properties, as in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and particle accelerators. The Meissner effect has been used in several prototype trains to levitate cars off their tracks and reduce friction. Superconducting quantum interface devices (SQUIDs) are used to measure magnetic fields with a high degree of precision. Electric companies have begun to experiment with superconductors in generating facilities and transmission lines. Researchers have experimented with hightemperature superconductors, but their hardness

and brittleness resist efforts to create wiring of commercially viable lengths. Research is ongoing in the manipulation of these compounds and creation of materials with higher critical temperatures. R. Dwayne Ramey

Sources Matricon, Jean, Georges Waysand, and Charles Glashausser. The Cold Wars: A History of Superconductivity. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Tinkham, Michael. Introduction to Superconductivity. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

T E L L E R , E D WA R D (1908–2003) A controversial figure in the American scientific community, the theoretical physicist Edward Teller advanced the study of nuclear fission and fusion. Teller’s career included work on the Manhattan Project, which developed the first nuclear weapons. His research on spectroscopy increased scientific understanding of the properties of light particles. Teller was born on January 15, 1908, in Budapest, Hungary, where his parents were prominent members of a thriving Jewish community. He finished an undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany but switched to physics for his doctoral work. He studied under the quantum theorist Werner Heisenberg, receiving his doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1930. With the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism in Germany, Teller emigrated to the United States in 1934. He joined the faculty at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., as a professor of physics the following year. In 1941, during World War II, he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. By 1943, Teller had moved on to the University of Chicago, where he and colleague Enrico Fermi began discussing the concept of a thermonuclear fusion reaction triggered by an atomic explosion.

Weapons D esign Teller joined the early phases of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where

666 Section 10: Teller, Edward To continue research on thermonuclear weapons, the federal government established the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near Berkeley, California, in 1952. Teller served as its first director, from 1958 to 1960. During the course of the Cold War, he was a staunch advocate of advanced weapons systems, including a nuclear-powered, space-based antimissile system. He also supported the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly referred to as “Star Wars,” the design of which was to use lasers to shoot down missiles.

Conflic t and Professional Isolation

The controversial Hungarian American physicist Edward Teller is known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb” and an advocate of other advanced weapons systems. (Nat Farbman/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

work on fission led to construction of the atomic bomb. But Teller was thinking beyond the immediate task of developing a fission bomb and pushed his idea of a more potent thermonuclear fusion weapon. The resulting research led to development of the hydrogen bomb. Pressure to develop the hydrogen bomb in the United States increased after the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in October 1949. Teller believed, as he wrote in his Memoirs, “the survival of peace depended on the ability of the United States to maintain the edge in nuclear weaponry.” Although the U.S. armed forces, congressional committees, and key members of the scientific community all favored development, the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)—chaired by the former Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer—opposed it. Following a recommendation by the National Security Council, President Harry S. Truman in January 1950 ordered work to begin. Edward Teller was placed in charge, a design was completed by 1951, and the first test was carried out in November 1952.

In the 1950s, Teller had experienced several personal and philosophical conflicts with co-workers and scientific colleagues, including Oppenheimer. A public controversy erupted in 1954 when, at a security-clearance hearing by the AEC, Teller suggested Oppenheimer might be a security risk. Teller was also criticized in various circles for his opposition to the proposed nuclear test ban in the 1960s and his support for nonmilitary uses of nuclear explosives. One such early project, Operation Plowshare in 1958, proposed the use of nuclear explosives to dig a deepwater harbor near Hope Point, Alaska. The project was shelved due to predicted radioactive fallout and the fact that the waterway would be frozen for nine months of the year. Teller was sometimes referred to in the popular press as “the real Dr. Strangelove,” referring to the unstable presidential adviser in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. After the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident in 1979, Teller testified before Congress in defense of atomic energy and to counter statements by actress Jane Fonda and consumer advocate Ralph Nader against the nuclear industry. The next day, Teller suffered a heart attack, which he later blamed on Fonda in a two-page Wall Street Journal ad. A few weeks before his death on September 9, 2003, Teller was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush for his

Section 10: Thermodynamics 667 efforts to “protect our nation and bring about the end of the Cold War.” James Fargo Balliett and William M. Shields

Sources Goodchild, Peter. Edward Teller: The Real Dr. Strangelove. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Herken, Gregg. Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: Henry Holt, 2002. Mark, Hans, and Sidney Fernbach. Properties of Matter Under Unusual Conditions (In Honor of Edward Teller’s 60th Birthday). New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1969. Teller, Edward, with Judith L. Shoolery. Memoirs: A TwentiethCentury Journey in Science and Politics. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2001. York, Herbert. The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1976, 1989.

T H E R M O DY N A M I C S The study of the nature of heat is called thermodynamics, derived from the Greek words for heat (therme) and power (dynamis). Thermodynamics is the field of physics focusing on the exchange of heat—and resulting temperature equilibrium— between hot and cold substances. Work can be extracted through this process of heat transfer. Europeans initially led the way in the study of heat, followed by Americans Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) and Josiah Gibbs. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the European scientists Galileo Galilei, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, and Isaac Newton defined heat as the movement of tiny particles inside matter. During the eighteenth century, scientists focused on the concept of the flow of heat, paralleling the flow of fluids, and determining the heat conductivity of materials, especially in metals. The late eighteenth-century French scientist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier’s empirical research resulted in a quantitative theory of heat. Benjamin Thompson of Massachusetts, who fled to Europe during the American Revolution and assumed the title of Count Rumford, revisited the kinetic theory of heat to expand on the principles of thermodynamics. His breakthrough was the realization that heat was not a fluid but a conversion of energy process.

Following on the heels of Thompson’s qualitative observation, English physicist James Prescott Joule proved that heat was not only a form of energy but equivalent to mechanical energy. He showed that, in an isolated system, work is converted to heat in a one-to-one ratio. Joule’s discovery became known as the first law of thermodynamics, often called the law of the conservation of energy. Research by French scientist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot in the early nineteenth century explored the flow of heat from hot to cold regions. His seminal work, a treatise on the motive power of heat published in 1824, later led to the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics, which involves the unidirectional movement of heat. A hot cup of cocoa, for example, cools because of heat transfer to the surroundings, but heat will not flow from the cooler surroundings to the hotter cup of cocoa. Such common observations are proof of the second law of thermodynamics. Since heat is an interaction and not a fluid flow, a heat engine or heat pump must interact with both a cold sink and a hot source for work to be produced without pause. The American scientist Josiah Gibbs explored a new area of thermodynamics and provided a strong foundation for much of the field of physical chemistry. Gibbs pioneered the field of chemical thermodynamics in the 1870s. In several papers written during the late 1870s, collectively called On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances, Gibbs introduced the phase rule, which describes the possible number of degrees of freedom in a closed system at equilibrium, including equilibrium at conditions of fixed pressure and temperature. Gibbs’s contributions broadened the field of thermodynamics to encompass all transformations between thermal, chemical, mechanical, and electrical energy. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Fenn, John B. Engines, Energy, and Entropy. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1982. Van Wylen, Gordon J., and Richard E. Sonntag. Fundamentals of Classical Thermodynamics. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1976.

668 Section 10: Thompson, Benjamin (Count Rumford)

THOMPSON, BENJAMIN (C O U N T R U M F O R D ; 1753–1814) Benjamin Thompson was a physicist, inventor, Tory, and expatriate American who was among the great thinkers of the early nineteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1753, Thompson briefly studied under John Winthrop IV, the Harvard physicist, before moving to Rumford (Concord), New Hampshire. There, he married a rich widow and established himself in polite society. Thompson became friends with Governor John Wentworth of New Hampshire, with whom he planned a mountaineering trip to the White Mountains in 1773, though at the last minute Thompson was unable to go. In 1776, Thompson’s political sympathies forced him to abandon his home and family. He fled to En-

gland and eventually ended up in Bavaria, where he was granted the title of Count of the Holy Roman Empire. Count Rumford, as he was henceforth known, engaged his mind in a variety of scientific interests, ranging from the best way to make coffee to the principles of heat and cold, the nature and uses of gunpowder, and the best means to heat a home. His Essays, Political, Economical, and Philosophical, published in 1796, contains discussions on all of these topics and more. Rumford’s studies enabled him to design the most efficient fireplace of his time. Unlike the typical rectangular model of today, Rumford’s fireplace was tall and wide, with the sides and fire back tapering elegantly in. Smoke rose up a thin throat that featured a small shelf in the flue, which helped generate a draft to bring cool air in to heat. Rumford’s fireplace had the added advantage of being quite smoke-free, hence much healthier for inhabitants. Long concerned with medicine and public health, Rumford hoped his fireplace would benefit Europe’s poor. Rumford was also engaged in the international scientific community. He was an elected member of the Royal Society of London, contributing many papers to its meetings and transactions. He contributed to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Bavarian Academy of Arts and Sciences, which he founded, and an organization in London called the Royal Institution. Count Rumford lived in several of the great capitals of Europe, including London, Munich, and Paris. He died in Paris on August 21, 1814, having recently been divorced from his second wife, Madame Lavoisier, the widow of the great chemist. Russell Lawson

Sources

Benjamin Thompson, a Massachusetts physicist and inventor whose Tory sympathies led him to move to London at the start of the American Revolution, contributed the theory that heat energy is a by-product of mechanical motion and not a substance. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Brown, Sanborn C. Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. Orton, Vrest. The Forgotten Art of Building a Good Fireplace: The Story of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, an American Genius, and His Principles of Fireplace Designs Which Have Remained Unchanged for 174 years. Collingdale, PA: Diane Publishing, 1999. Thompson, Benjamin (Count Rumford). Collected Works of Count Rumford. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

Section 10: Wheeler, John 669

U N C E R TA I N T Y P R I N C I P L E The uncertainty principle, formulated in 1927 by the German physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg, states that it is not possible to accurately determine both the position and momentum of a particle such as an electron. The theory is also known as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and as the principle of indeterminism. The uncertainty principle is not the only contribution that Heisenberg made to quantum theory. During the period 1924–1926, Heisenberg worked in Copenhagen with the great theoretical physicist Niels Bohr. At Copenhagen, Heisenberg came to the conclusion that it was pointless for physicists to conceptualize the atom in visual terms. All knowledge of the atom comes from observable phenomena, such as its emitted light, its frequency, and its intensity. Heisenberg formulated the equations that were necessary to predict these phenomena. This version of quantum theory became known as “matrix mechanics,” and it was the work for which Heisenberg received the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics. For the remainder of the 1920s, Heisenberg went on to investigate other aspects of quantum theory. In 1927, he formulated his well-known uncertainty principle. Heisenberg’s work on observable quantum phenomena led him to conclude that it is impossible to know for certain the whereabouts and speed of atomic particles. The principle maintains that to locate the exact position of a particle, the observer must subject it to rays of short wavelengths, such as gamma rays. In so doing, the observer will alter the particle’s momentum in an unpredictable way. Rays with longer wavelengths would not upset the momentum of the particle as much, but would lack the precision of the shorter wavelengths in determining the particle’s location. The uncertainty principle implies that any description in quantum mechanics may consist only of the relative probability of a value rather than exact numbers. This has important consequences for those seeking a unified field theory that unites the four known interactions: weak nuclear forces, strong nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity. Albert Einstein made one of the first attempts at formulating a unified field theory, but he re-

jected quantum theory altogether. One of the most important developments thus far has been made by the American physicist Steven Weinberg and the Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam. Their work contributed to supersymmetry theories and other concepts that are proving to be useful in cosmological models such as the inflationary theory of the universe. American scientists such as Alan Guth and Paul Steinhardt conducted much of the work in this field. Gordon Stienburg

Sources Dirac, Paul. The Principles of Quantum Mechanics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Heisenberg, Werner. The Physical Principles of Quantum Theory. New York: Dover, 1949.

WHEELER, JOHN (1911– ) John Archibald Wheeler, a pioneering figure in theoretical physics, made contributions in areas as diverse as the structure of the atomic nucleus, relativity, nuclear fission and fusion, unified field theory, and black holes. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, on July 9, 1911, to parents who were librarians, Wheeler received his Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University at the age of twenty-one. In 1938, he was hired as a professor at Princeton University, where he worked with Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. During World War II, Wheeler worked on the Manhattan Project and did extensive research on general relativity, seeking to develop a unified theory that would encompass both relativity and quantum mechanics. After the war, he worked with Edward Teller on nuclear fusion, and, in 1951, he launched a magnetic fusion research program at Princeton with the help of Lyman Spitzer, Jr., a professor of astronomy. Working at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Wheeler oversaw Project Matterhorn B (for “bombs,”), while Spitzer ran Project Matterhorn S ( for the “stellerator,” a magnetic fusion design). Matterhorn B was instrumental in helping develop calculations for the thermonuclear hydrogen bomb test “Mike” on November 1, 1952. In 1967, at a conference on supernovae

670 Section 10: Wheeler, John held at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, Wheeler coined the term “black hole” for a gravitationally collapsed stellar object. Wheeler retired from Princeton in 1976 and took a teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin, where he focused on research in quantum physics. He did pioneering work in the field of quantum gravity and, in collaboration with Bryce DeWitt, developed the WheelerDeWitt equation, also referred to as the “wave function of the universe.” At the same time that he helped advance emerging theories in quantum information physics, Wheeler spent much of his time doing what he loved most: teaching. He mentored a generation of physicists during the course of his career, including 1965 Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. After a prolific career at the University of Texas, Wheeler returned to New Jersey in 1986 to emeritus professor status at Princeton. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Taylor, Edwin F., and John Wheeler. Spacetime Physics. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1992. Wheeler, John. Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.

WIGNER, EUGENE (1902–1995) Nobelist Eugene Paul Wigner was a quantum physicist and contributor to the Manhattan Project. He was born in Budapest, Hungary, on November 17, 1902. Wigner studied chemical engineering at the Technical University of Berlin and served as a research assistant at the University of Berlin. He was lifelong friends with the mathematician and physicist John von Neumann and also was acquainted with fellow Hungarian scientists Leo Szilard and Edward Teller. During the 1920s, Wigner developed his interests in quantum mechanics and atomic symmetry. He wrote Group Theory and Its Application to the Quantum Mechanics of Atomic Spectra in 1931, the same year that he emigrated to America. Teaching at Princeton University, Wigner had a difficult time adjusting to American social cus-

toms and lifestyle, and he wished to return to Germany. But when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Wigner, a Jew, knew he could not return. So he stayed in United States, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1937. During the 1930s, Wigner’s research focused on solid-state physics and the behavior of protons and neutrons in the fission chain reaction. He worked closely with Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard and Italian physicist Enrico Fermi in theoretical and experimental research into chain reactions. Wigner joined Fermi at the University of Chicago in the early 1940s, where his work on plutonium was used in developing the reactor at Hanford, Washington, that produced the fissionable plutonium used in the first successful test of a nuclear weapon in July 1945. However, he was one of a group of scientists who opposed using the weapon against a civilian population. After the war, Wigner served as director of the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee, which focused on the development of fissionable uranium. In 1947, he returned to Princeton, where he spent several decades in research and teaching, focusing in particular on quantum physics. For his work on nucleons (neutrons and protons of atoms), their movements, forces, and symmetry, he shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics with Maria Goeppert Mayer. Wigner died on January 1, 1995. Russell Lawson

Sources Seitz, Frederick, Erich Vogt, and Alvin M. Weinberg. “Eugene Paul Wigner.” In Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, vol. 74. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1998. Wigner, Eugene P. Symmetries and Reflections. Woodbridge, CT: Ox Bow, 1979.

W I N T H R O P, J O H N , IV (1714–1779) The physicist and mathematician John Winthrop IV was a member of the famous New England family; his great-great-grandfather was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his great-granduncle was a founding member of the Royal Society of London and governor of

Section 10: Winthrop, John, IV 671 Connecticut (1660–1676). Winthrop’s reputation, though, was built on his talent and achievements more than on the family name. Born in Boston on December 19, 1714, Winthrop attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College, graduating in 1732. He spent the next six years in self-study at the home of his father, a judge. When one of his Harvard professors, Isaac Greenwood, was fired in 1738, Winthrop was appointed to replace him as the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. He supervised the mathematics tutors who provided instruction in arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, and he delivered scientific lectures to upperclassmen. Under his guidance, Harvard students studied dynamics in matter and fluids and Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica from at least 1751. Winthrop also raised funds and contracted with instrument makers to rebuild Harvard’s collection of scientific instruments after most items were destroyed by fire in 1764. While he remained Hollis Professor until his death, Winthrop’s most notable work was as an astronomical observer. He collected data on sunspots in 1739; transits of Mercury in 1740, 1743, and 1763; Halley’s comet in 1759; transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769; and several comet passages in 1769–1770. Winthrop performed computations with his 1740s Mercury data to ascertain the longitude between Cambridge and Greenwich, England. For the 1761 Venus transit, he led an expedition of enlightened amateurs and Harvard students to St. John’s, Newfoundland. The experience was so profound that he wrote two poems about the trip in addition to a scientific report. Winthrop also gave public lectures on science, including his prediction of the return of Halley’s

Comet and a report on a 1755 earthquake, in which he argued that disturbances in Earth’s crust were waves caused by heat. Between 1742 and 1774, he published a total of twelve papers in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A Baconian empiricist, Winthrop kept a weather journal for thirty-five years. He set up an experimental laboratory for exploring the physical sciences in 1746—the first in America— and Benjamin Thompson, who was later known as Count Rumford, attended his demonstrations of the instruments. He was known as a supporter of Benjamin Franklin’s one-fluid theory of electricity. The two men were also of like mind on the question of American independence, although Winthrop continued to correspond with colleagues at the Royal Society and the Royal Observatory at Greenwich after the American Revolution began. Winthrop provided support and advice to George Washington and John Adams. Winthrop was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1766 and to the American Philosophical Society in 1769. The University of Edinburgh awarded him an honorary degree in 1771; Harvard followed suit in 1773 with its first-ever honorary degree. These honors recognized that, for forty years, Winthrop set the standard for scientific, intellectual, and political involvement among colonial professors. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Sources Shute, Michael, ed. The Scientific Work of John Winthrop. New York: Arno, 1980. Winthrop, John, and John Adams. “Correspondence Between John Adams and John Winthrop.” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 5, 4 (1878): 289–313.

DOCUMENTS Count Rumford’s Experiments in Heat Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, made some of his most lasting contributions in the study of heat and motion. The following excerpt is from a paper that he presented to the Royal Society of London in 1798. Being engaged, lately, in superintending the boring of cannon, in the workshops of the military arsenal at Munich, I was struck with the very considerable degree of heat which a brass gun acquires, in a short time, in being bored; and with the still more intense heat (much greater than that of boiling water, as I found by experiment) of the metallic chips separated from it by the borer. The more I meditated on these phenomena the more they appeared to me to be curious and interesting. A thorough investigating of them seemed even to bid fair to give a farther insight into the hidden nature of heat; and to enable us to form some reasonable conjectures respecting the existence, or non-existence, of an igneous fluid: a subject on which the opinions of philosophers have, in all ages, been much divided. . . . From whence comes the heat actually produced in the mechanical operation above mentioned? Is it furnished by the metallic chips which are separated by the borer from the solid mass of metal? If this were the case, then, according to the modern doctrines of latent heat, and of caloric, the capacity for the heat of the parts of the metal, so reduced to chips, ought not only to be changed, but the change undergone by them should be sufficiently great to account for all the heat produced. But no such change had taken place; for I found, upon taking equal quantities, by weight, of these chips, and of thin slips of the same block of metal separated by means of a fine saw, and putting them at the same temperature (that of boiling water) into equal quantities of cold water (that is to say, at the temperature of 591⁄2° F), the

portion of the water into which the chips were put was not, to all appearance, heated either less or more than the other portion, in which the slips of metal were to put. This experiment being repeated several times, the results were always so nearly the same that I could not determine whether any, or what change, had been produced in the metal, in regard to its capacity for heat, by being reduced to chips by the borer. From hence it is evident that the heat produced could not possibly have been furnished at the expense of the latent heat of the metallic chips. But, not being willing to rest satisfied with these trials, however conclusive they appeared to me to be, I had resource to the following still more decisive experiment: Taking a cannon (a brass six-pounder) cast solid, and rough as it came from the foundry, and fixing it (horizontally) in the machine used for boring, and at the same time finishing the outside of the cannon by turning, I caused its extremity to be cut off; and, by turning down the metal in that part, a solid cylinder was formed, 7 3⁄4 inches in diameter, and 9 8⁄10 inches long. This short cylinder, which was supported in its horizontal position, and turned round its axis, by means of the neck by which it remained united to the cannon, was now bored with the horizontal borer used in boring cannon. This cylinder being designed for the express purpose of generating heat by friction, by having a blunt borer forced against its solid bottom at the same time that it should be turned round its axis by the force of horses, in order that the heat accumulated in the cylinder might from time to time be measured, a small round hole, 0.37 of an inch only in diameter, and 4.2 inches in depth, for the purpose of introduction a small cylindrical mercurial thermometer, was made in it. This experiment was made in order to ascertain how much heat was actually generated by friction, when a blunt steel borer being so forcibly shoved (by means of a strong screw) against the bottom of the bore of the cylinder that the pressure against it was equal to the weight of about

672

Section 10: Documents 673 10,000 pounds avoirdupois, the cylinder was turned round on its axis (by the force of horses) at the rate of about thirty-two times in a minute. . . . To prevent, as far as possible, the loss of any part the heat that was generated in the experiment, the cylinder was well covered up with a fit coating of thick and warm flannel, the cylinder was carefully wrapped round it, and defended it on every side from the cold air of the atmosphere. At the beginning of the experiment the temperature of the air in the shade, as also that of the cylinder, was just 60° F. At the end of thirty minutes, when the cylinder had made 960 revolutions about its axis, the horses being stopped, a cylindrical mercurial thermometer, whose bulb was 32 ⁄ 100 of an inch in diameter, and 31⁄4 inches in length, was introduced into the hole made to receive it, in the side of the cylinder, when the mercury rose almost instantly to 130° F. . . . Finding so much reason to conclude that the heat generated in these experiments, or excited, as I would rather choose to express it, was not furnished at the expense of the latent heat or combined caloric of the metal, I pushed my inquiries a step farther and endeavored to find out whether the air did, or did not, contribute anything in the generation of it. . . . Everything being ready, I proceeded to make the experiment I had projected in the following manner: The hollow cylinder having been previously cleaned out, and the inside of its bore wiped with a clean towel till it was quite dry, the square iron bar, with the blunt steel borer fixed to the end of it, it was put into its place; the mouth of the bore of the cylinder being closed at the same time, by means of the circular piston, through the center of which the iron bar passed. This being done, the box was put in its place, and the joining of the iron rod, and of the neck of the cylinder, with the two ends of the box, having been with cold water (viz., at the temperature of 60° F) and the machine was put in motion. The result of this beautiful experiment was very striking, and the pleasure it afforded me amply repaid me for all the trouble I had had in contriving and arranging the complicated machinery used in making it. The cylinder, revolving at the rate of about thirty-two times in a minute, had been in motion

but a short time when I perceived, by putting my hand into the water and touching the outside of the cylinder, that heat was generated; and it was not long before the water which surrounded the cylinder began to be sensibly warm. At the end of one hour I found, by plunging a thermometer into the water in the box (the quantity of which fluid amounted to 18.77 pounds avoirdupois, or 21⁄4 wine gallons) that its temperature had been raised no less than 47 degrees; being now 107° of Fahrenheit’s scale. When thirty minutes more had elapsed, or one hour and thirty minutes after the machinery had been put in motion, the heat of the water in the box was 142 F. At the end of two hours, reckoning from the beginning of the experiment, the temperature of the water was found to be raised to 178° F. At two hours twenty minutes it was 200° F; and at two hours thirty minutes it actually boiled! . . . By meditating on the results of all these experiments we are naturally brought to that great question which has so often been the subject of speculation among philosophers; namely: What is heat? Is there any such thing as an igneous fluid? Is there anything that can with propriety be called caloric? We have seen that a very considerable quantity of heat may be excited in the friction of two metallic surfaces and given off in a constant stream or flux, in all directions, without iteration or intermission, and without any signs of diminution or exhaustion. From whence came the heat which was continually given off in this manner, in the foregoing experiments? Was it furnished by the small particles of metal, detached from the larger solid masses, on their being rubbed together? This, as we have already seen, could not possibly have been the case. Was it furnished by the air? This could not have been the case; for in there of the experiments, the machinery being kept immersed in water, the access of the air of the atmosphere was completely prevented. Was it furnished by the water which surrounded the machinery? That this could not have been the case is evident: first, because this water was continually receiving heat from the machinery and could not, at the same time, be giving to, and receiving heat from, the same body; and

674 Section 10: Documents secondly, because there was no chemical decomposition of any part of this water. . . . It is in hardly necessary to add that anything which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation cannot possibly be a material substance: and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything, capable of being excited and communicated, in the manner the heat was excited and communication in these, except it be MOTION. Source: Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford), “Heat Is a Form of Motion: An Experiment in Boring Cannon,” Transactions of the Royal Society of London 88 (1798).

The Physics of Sound Nineteenth-century American scientists, in the wake of inventions in technology that allowed for the electronic transmission of the human voice, explored the physical nature of the voice, as the following journal excerpt reveals. Of all the branches of natural philosophy, there was not one for a long time, which was so much behind as acoustics—the science of sound. . . . Among the investigations of [its perception by living beings] is that of the determination of the duration of the residual sensation. It may a priori be concluded that the ear acts in this respect toward sound as the eye does toward light, and that the nervous sensation lasts longer than the actual impression. It is well known that a rapidly moving spark makes on the eye the impression of a luminous line, hence the circle of fire seen when a spark is swung around, and that two or more sparks rapidly moving the same line cannot be distinguished from each other, but appear as one single luminous line. What space is to light, time is to sound; and so in the arts based on light and sound, painting and music, the first ornaments space, the second ornaments time; therefore if rapidly moving luminous points coalesce in space, tones sounded in rapid succession will coalesce in time, and that this coalescence is greater with slow vibrations or low tones than with rapid vibrations or high tones, every attentive listener to music must have observed; the same musical phrase which sounds clear and distinct in the higher octaves will often

become muddled and indistinct when rendered in the lower octaves, and even the greatest composers have often disregarded this, when giving rapid passages to the contra-basso, which never can give satisfaction to such hearers as wish intellectually to understand the meaning. Source: “New Researches in Sound,” Manufacturer and Builder 9:6 (June 1877).

Nineteenth-Century Understanding of the Forces of Attraction and Caloric This paper, read before the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania on November 15, 1881, explored the current scientific understanding of physics. It is now a well established fact that matter, per se, is inert, and that its energy is derived from the physical forces; therefore all chemical and physical phenomena observed in the universe are caused by and due to the operations of the physical forces. . . . There are but two physical forces, i.e., the force of attraction and the force of caloric. The force of attraction is inherent in the matter, and tends to draw the particles together and hold them in a state of rest. The force of caloric accompanies the matter and tends to push the particles outward into a state of activity. The force of attraction being inherent, it abides in the matter continuously and can neither be increased nor diminished; it, however, is present in different elementary bodies in different degrees, and in compound bodies relative to the elements of which they are composed. The force of caloric is mobile, and is capable of moving from one portion of matter to another; yet under certain conditions a portion of caloric is occluded in the matter by the force of attraction. . . . The force of attraction . . . tends to draw the particles of matter together and hold them in a state of rest; but as this force is inherent, the degree of power thus exerted is in an inverse ratio to the distance of the particles from each other. The effective force so exerted is always balanced by an equivalent amount of the force of caloric, and that modicum of caloric so engaged in balancing the effective force of attraction is static, because occluded in that work.

Section 10: Documents 675 In solid or fluid bodies, where the molecules are held in a local or near relation to each other, the amount of static caloric will be in direct proportion to the effective force of attraction, but in gaseous bodies the static caloric is in an inverse ratio to the effective force of attraction; hence the amount of static caloric present in solid and fluid bodies will be greatest when the molecules are nearest each other, and greatest in gaseous bodies when the molecules are furthest apart. Caloric, whether static or dynamic, is not phenomenal; therefore the phenomena of light, temperature, incandescence, luminosity, heat, cold, and motion, as well as all other phenomena, are due to the movement of matter caused by the physical forces. Thus we find that temperature is a phenomenal measure of molecular velocity, as we consider weight to be the measure of matter. An increase of temperature denotes an increased molecular velocity, and this in solid and

liquid bodies unlocks a portion of the static caloric and converts it into dynamic caloric, while an increased temperature of gases occludes additional caloric, thus converting dynamic into static caloric; and a reduction of molecular activity reverses this action. From this we see that a change of temperature either converts static to dynamic or dynamic to static caloric. Thus we find that the amount of static caloric which a body possesses is in direct relation to its temperature, but . . . temperature is a phenomenal indication of molecular velocity, and as increased velocity separates the molecules to a greater distance, which reduces the effective force of attraction and unlocks a portion of caloric, it will be seen that the separation of the molecules from any other cause will have the same effect. Source: Jacob Reese, “Electricity: What It Is, and What May Be Expected of It,” Scientific American Supplement 312 (December 24, 1881).

Section 11

CHEMISTRY

ESSAYS The American Chemist T

he first American chemists were alchemists. John Winthrop, Jr., for example, practiced metallurgy partly out of a religious belief that there is a spiritual force inherent in nature that can be discovered by the alchemist, providing knowledge of the sum of all things. By the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Americans, influenced by European chemists, had moved beyond alchemy to forge the beginnings of a rational, empirical science. Chemistry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries increasingly became the province of the American inventor, who developed such versatile substances as nylon, vulcanized rubber, and plastic.

Alchemical Origins Modern chemistry developed from ancient and medieval chemistry, which combined observations of the physical world with speculations regarding the nature of the spiritual world. The first American colonies were founded at the end of the European Renaissance, when chemistry and alchemy were synonymous. The Renaissance alchemist was still beholden to an animistic view that there exists a spiritual, living component to Earth that the alchemist, using white magic, can understand, even manipulate. The earliest American scientists relied heavily on such white magic, believing that nature contained spiritual qualities that are unleashed by correct incantations, formulas, and words. Scientist-magicians believed that there exists an elixir of life that prevents disease. The alchemist sought to turn lead into gold through the process of transmutation. American colonists who had been trained in alchemical ways included George Starkey, Gershom Bulkeley, and John Winthrop, Jr. Starkey, who was educated at Harvard, wrote under the pseudonym Eirenaeus Philalethes; he influenced the likes of the English chemist Robert Boyle. Bulkeley, of

Connecticut, was a minister turned alchemist and physician. And Winthrop was the governor of Connecticut, a leader in alchemical work in seventeenth-century America, and the first American member of the Royal Society of London.

American Enlightenment American chemists were informed by Europeans such as the French scientist Jean Beguin, author of Beginner’s Chemistry (1610), and British scientist Robert Boyle, who argued that the first-century B.C.E. Epicurean Lucretius was correct when he wrote, in On the Nature of Things, that the universe is composed of invisible particles, atoms, or corpuscles, in constant motion. Another influence was the seventeenth-century German chemist John Becher, who formulated the phlogiston theory, based on his belief that there are five elements—air, water, vitreous earth, fatty earth, and a volatile fluid—and that fatty earth is combustible, releasing a substance called phlogiston when it burns. In the late eighteenth century, French scientist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was establishing chemistry as a science, while British chemist Joseph Priestley was discovering oxygen, and British physicist John Dalton was formulating his atomic theory. Most American chemists at this time still were amateurs who tinkered with experiments and communicated with others about the results. Two notable exceptions were Priestley, after he emigrated to America in 1794, and John Winthrop IV, a Hollis Professor at Harvard. In 1781, amateur scientist Ebenezer Hazard of Philadelphia sent his friend and fellow amateur Jeremy Belknap two small glass bubbles filled with water, explaining, “I cannot find that they are of any use but to startle people with a sudden smart explosion.” Hazard instructed Belknap to

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A gunpowder mill founded on Brandywine Creek near Wilmington, Delaware, by French émigré Eleuthère Irénée du Pont in 1802 was one of the earliest chemical production facilities in America and the birthplace of the E.I. DuPont Company. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

scrape the ashes in the fireplace to one side and “lay one of them before and pretty close to the fire; the heat will make the water evaporate, and burst the glass. If you put it in the ashes, or among the coals, it will make them fly about the house.” Belknap responded that “the glass bubbles you sent me are the same that I remember to have seen used in Dr. Winthrop’s course of Experimental Philosophy,” which Belknap took in the 1760s when he was a student at Harvard. The glass was used “to evince the elasticity of the air. One of them was put on a lighted candle, and exploded with a report equal to a pocket pistol. There is another sort made by dropping melted glass into water, which I think he told us was a ‘Nodus philosophorum,’ and could not be explained satisfactorily. On breaking the point, the whole mass falls into dust.” Winthrop had used the experiment to teach his students that air is matter in motion, corporeal and elastic, fluid and transparent, able to be measured and compressed.

Modern American Chemists The concern of the American Enlightenment scientist for practical knowledge continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 1802, chemist Eleuthère Irénée du Pont established a factory to produce gunpowder. In 1831, physician

Samuel Guthrie invented chloroform, which was eventually used as an anesthetic in surgical procedures. In 1839, Charles Goodyear invented the process of vulcanization, combining rubber latex, lead, and sulfur to form a durable and long-lasting rubber. Johns Hopkins University chemist Ira Remsen, in 1879, tasted a sweet substance accidentally produced in the laboratory and soon thereafter invented saccharin. In 1886, Charles Hall, one of the founders of Alcoa, discovered electrolysis as a means of separating aluminum from ore. Among other practical discoveries, American inventors also made a variety of discoveries in plastics, which are among the most diverse substances in use today. Leo Baekeland in 1907 invented the synthetic polymer Bakelite, a durable and versatile plastic. Wallace Carothers, working for the DuPont company in 1930, invented nylon. American chemists were also involved in the research and development of the atomic bomb. Harold Urey, for example, developed deuterium (heavy water) in 1934. The following year, Arthur Dempster discovered the uranium isotope U-235 that was used in the atomic bomb “Little Boy” that was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. In 1941, Glenn Seaborg developed plutonium, based on the uranium isotope U-238, which was used in the atomic bomb “Fat Man” that was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.

Section 11: Essays 681 In recent decades, the American chemist has been involved in the more theoretical aspects of chemistry. For example, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to Linus Pauling in 1954 for his research on chemical bonding, Robert Mulliken in 1966 for his research on molecular structure, and Roald Hoffman in 1981 for his work on chemical reactions. American chemists have also spearheaded research into DNA and RNA; recent Nobelists in this field are Paul Berg (1980), Walter Gilbert (1980), Thomas Cech (1989), and Sidney Altman (1989). American chemists also have

been preeminent in research on proteins, enzymes, and synthetic chemistry. Russell Lawson

Sources Lawson, Russell M. “Science and Medicine.” In American Eras: The Colonial Era, 1600–1754, ed. Jessica Kross. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Leicester, Henry M. The Historical Background of Chemistry. New York: Dover, 1971. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

Eighteenth-Century Chemistry in America T

he modern study of chemistry emerged in America in the eighteenth century, but its roots can be found in the alchemy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Alchemy was more than the mystical mixing and heating of various elements in a vain attempt to transform them into gold; it provided the empirical and theoretical foundations of Enlightenment “chymistry,” a quantitative analytical science. Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle were both influenced by the Harvard-educated “chymist” George Starkey, a seventeenth-century American expatriate living in England. Starkey’s primary interest was finding the “universal remedy,” a potion that could transmute substances and cure disease. Starkey was one of Boyle’s mentors, and Newton’s interest in “chymistry” was first piqued in 1687 by Starkey’s writings. The first American who actively engaged in structured chemical study was John Winthrop, Jr., the son of the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A seventeenth-century farmer, selfeducated physician, naturalist, charter member of the Royal Society of London (founded 1660), and governor of Connecticut (1659–1676), Winthrop had brought books, chemicals, instruments, laboratory apparatuses, and a love of medicine and alchemy with him when he came to America from England in 1631. He corresponded frequently with

the Royal Society on matters ranging from corn (maize) to cornbread-based beer brewing, and his paper “Of the Manner of Making Tar and Pitch in New England,” which he read before the Royal Society in 1662, marked the first scholarly presentation of an American colonial to a European scientific society. Winthrop set up the first chemical laboratory in the British colonies in America, as well as the first scientific library. With his use of herbal medicines and natural compounds as remedies, Winthrop pursued iatrochemistry—chemistry for the treatment of disease. There is no indication that he was aware of Giovanni Borelli’s understanding of the relationship of blood and disease. It is clear, however, that he was aware of Boyle’s corpuscular mechanical philosophy. The American scientist and naturalist Cadwallader Colden of New Jersey also had an interest in using chemistry for medical treatments. He advocated controlling the velocity of blood through the body by controlling “fermentation.” His methods included cooling the body, bleeding, and administering blood-thinning medications. Although eighteenth-century chemistry was a full-fledged, independent discipline, the science texts of the period placed chemistry within the natural sciences or medicine. The science curricula at American colleges reflected this as well. It

682 Section 11: Essays was not until the advent of American medical schools in the late eighteenth century that chemistry was considered a science that should be taught along with mathematics, physics, and astronomy. John Morgan’s initial lectures on chemistry (1765 and 1767), the first in the colonies, at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania Medical School), provided the impetus for the appointment in 1768 of Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia-born and University of Edinburgh–trained physician, to the first chemistry professorship in America. Rush also wrote the first American textbook on the subject, A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry (1770). As of 1800, only six American universities (Pennsylvania, William and Mary, Harvard Medical School, Dartmouth, Columbia Medical School, and Princeton) were offering chemistry as part of the science curriculum. Apart from the medical schools, chemistry’s role in the colonies was more practical and artisanal than theoretical and experimental. Chemistry was used in the manufacture of glass, dyes, waxes, salt, and other useful materials, as well as by apothecaries to produce various medicines. Even Benjamin Rush emphasized chemistry’s practical applications, especially its use in the production of gunpowder during the Revolutionary War. The latter half of the eighteenth century marked a transition in chemistry toward a quantitative analytical study emphasizing elements, elemental compositions, and their relationships and interactions. The French scientist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier defined the chemical element and compound, stated the law of conservation of mass, introduced the system foundational to chemical nomenclature, devised the “balance sheet” technique of weighing initial ingredients and final products in a chemical reaction, and explained combustion, going beyond the phlogistic chemistry of the English-American Joseph Priestley. Lavoisier’s ideas found fertile ground in America. John de Normandie’s “An Analysis of the Chalybeate Waters of Bristol in Pennsylvania,” published in 1769 in the Transactions of the

American Philosophical Society, was the first American paper to address chemical identity and composition. Samuel L. Mitchill of Columbia (editor of the journal Medical Repository) and James Woodhouse of the University of Pennsylvania (the founder in 1792 of the first society in the country devoted to the study of chemistry, the Chemical Society of Philadelphia) adopted and promoted Lavoisier’s ideas, such as his explanation of combustion. The study and science of chemistry in America lagged behind that in Europe until the midnineteenth century because of shortages in instruments, research facilities, and advanced education at the college level, as well as a lack of educated practitioners. Many more European universities actively taught chemistry and engaged in experimentation. In addition, America suffered from a relative lack of science libraries and theoretical scientific societies. These shortfalls were compounded by public disinterest in any discipline that did not have an immediate and practical application. It was not until the late nineteenth century, with the rise of the university, that Americans developed the requisite scientific knowledge, the educated base, and the commitment and funding for the modern discipline of chemistry to flourish. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Bedini, Silvio A. Thinkers and Tinkers: Early American Men of Science. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975. Friedenberg, Zachary B. The Doctor in Colonial America. Danbury, CT: Rutledge, 1998. Hindle, Brooke, ed. Early American Science. New York: Science History, 1976. ———. The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Newman, William R. Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Newman, William R., and Lawrence M. Principe. Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

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The Plastics Revolution P

lastics are moldable synthetic materials made of polymers, which are molecules consisting of many repeating units and usually made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and a number of other possible elements. The versatility of plastics makes them functional alternatives to such natural materials as stone, metal, wood, and leather. As a result, plastics represent one of the largest manufacturing industries in the United States today, even though the invention of plastics is a relatively modern technological development.

Early Breakthroughs Only in the last hundred years have scientists developed the fully synthetic polymers that are the basis of plastics manufacturing. One of the first commercially successful semisynthetic plastics resulted when John Wesley Hyatt responded to a challenge in the 1860s to develop a material to replace ivory in billiard balls. Hyatt modified cellulose to create pyroxylin, or “celluloid.” The first truly synthetic polymer, phenolic resin, was developed by Leo Baekeland in 1907 and unveiled in 1909. Phenolic resins soon found widespread use in adhesives, laminating resins, and molding compounds, and Baekeland’s trademarked name, Bakelite, became a synonym for any hard plastic. This marked the beginning of a manufacturing revolution. As materials engineers and product designers recognized the versatility and low cost of plastics, these synthetic substances came to be used in an ever widening range of products and packaging. Synthetic polymer development and the plastics industry in general flourished in the United States in the 1900s as a result of the activities of both individual researchers and corporate laboratories. Phenolics such as Bakelite are thermosets, or plastics that, once formed and cured, cannot be remelted without degradation. Next came the development of aminoplastics: thioureas (1928) could be more brightly colored than the phenolics, and melamines (1937) offered better heat and moisture resistance. These materials found decorative as well as industrial uses, from jewelry,

dinnerware, and radio cabinets to connectors, handles, and switchgear. In the 1930s, chemists began to formulate what some in the field call “true plastics,” or polymeric materials derived from a hydrocarbon base. These are known as thermoplastics and, in contrast to thermosets, can be repeatedly melted and formed into useful shapes. The majority of thermoplastics were developed between 1930 and 1965, many in the United States. Waldo Semon, a chemist at the B.F. Goodrich tire and rubber company, developed polyvinylchloride (PVC) in 1933. Later that year, Dow Chemical researcher Ralph Wiley discovered polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC, Saran). In 1938, DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett discovered polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, Teflon). Among these early plastics were nylon, first developed by the DuPont Corporation and introduced to the public at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Most of the new plastics of the 1930s, however, from acrylic to polyurethane, were invented by scientists in Germany, which has a long tradition in chemical research. Two well-known thermosets were introduced in the United States during World War II. Epoxy resins were initially used as industrial paints and linings. Polyester thermosets, which were readily molded at low pressures, were used for the encapsulation of electrical and electronic parts as well as in boat hulls, hardhats, and other reinforced plastics. Some of these plastics were put to use in the war effort—especially synthetic rubber, a critical defense material, since the sources of the natural substance in Southeast Asia were controlled by the Japanese. The war postponed the full implementation of these new plastics in consumer products.

The Postwar Explosion The global postwar boom pushed plastics into everyday life. From the end of World War II through the 1960s, U.S. companies such as DuPont and General Electric were developing new techniques and machinery to mold and extrude plastics on a mass scale. The various

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The strength of new plastic sheeting is demonstrated at a loading dock in the early 1950s. Lightweight, durable, versatile, and inexpensive, plastics have caused a global industrial revolution that continues to expand—and pose a growing environmental danger. (Andreas Feininger/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

types of polymers and the techniques for producing them allowed for the introduction of plastics with specialized consistencies and uses. Some of the new plastics in the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) family came in the form of synthetic fibers such as Dacron®, Lycra®, and polyester, which could be woven into “washand-wear” garments that needed no ironing. Another PET fiber introduced in the early 1950s was Mylar®, which came to be used in recording tape and plastic covering for glass (for shading or reducing shattering). But the most widespread use of inexpensive PET plastics was in packaging. The first plastic soda bottles were introduced in the 1950s. Such use of plastics became increasingly popular in a host of products in the 1960s and 1970s due to the material’s light weight and resistance to breakage. Teflon®, which was invented by the DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett in 1938, was derived from a different type of polymer—polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)—and it came into widespread use in the 1950s and 1960s as a nonstick coating for cookware. Derivatives of PTFE found other uses in the 1970s in everything

from dental floss to surgical implants and synthetics such as Gore-Tex®. Unlike most other synthetic fibers, Gore-Tex had the ability to “breathe,” or allow air and water vapor to pass between its interconnected fibers, while keeping out larger water molecules, making it ideal for foul-weather clothing. As outdoor sports activities gained in popularity during the last decades of the century, Gore-Tex, and similar permeable membranes, became increasingly associated with sports enthusiasts and those who wanted to appear athletic. The versatility of plastics is witnessed by the fact that, while Gore-Tex was popular for its breathability, other plastics were purchased because of their ability to keep air out. Perhaps no line of items better acquainted Americans with the potential benefits of plastic than Tupperware®, a line of polyethylene storage containers with the patented “burp” seal that provides airtight protection of food. Earl Tupper came up with the idea for a polyethylene-based airtight container while working as a chemist at DuPont in the 1930s. In 1938, he quit DuPont to form the Tupperware Company. He began marketing the product in stores in the late 1940s, but to middling success. In the early 1950s, Tupper tried a new approach. Discontinuing store sales, he launched a direct-marketing campaign in which homemakers invited their neighbors for demonstrations of the product in their living rooms. These Tupperware parties made the brand a household name, and the products became a fixture in the American kitchen. Aiding the spread of of Tupperware, and new food-preserving plastics such as Saran Wrap®, was the increase in supermarkets. Instead of buying a day’s worth of provisions at the local grocery store, consumers shopped at supermarkets and bought a week’s worth of groceries—much of it requiring longer-term storage. New materials and fibers, such as synthetic fleece (a wool substitute), Thinsulate™ (a replacement for bird down insulation), and Kevlar® (an impact- and tear-resistant fiber used in bulletproofing and other materials) have continued to come out since the golden age of plastics in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, thermoplastics are used in a wide range of products, including pipe (PVC), barrier films (Saran), rope and other twisted fibers (nylon and polypropylene), nonstick coatings

Section 11: Essays 685 (Teflon), medical implants (polyethylene and silicones), safety lenses (polycarbonate), electrical insulation (polyimide), and automotive components (polyphenylene oxide or PPO). The plastics industry is now one of the largest in the United States, with revenues estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Maureen T.F. Reitman and James Ciment

Sources Brydson, J.A. Plastics Materials. 7th ed. Burlington, VT: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999. DuBois, J. Harry. Plastics History U.S.A. Boston: Cahners, 1972. Fenichell, Stephen. Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century. New York: HarperBusiness, 1996. Meikle, Jeffrey L. American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Plastics Historical Society. http://www.plastiquarian.com.

A–Z C A LV I N , M E LV I N (1911–1997) Nobel laureate and chemist Melvin Calvin was born on April 8, 1911, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his bachelor’s degree in science from the Michigan College of Mining and Technology in 1931. Four years later, he took a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Following two years of postdoctoral study at the University of Manchester in England, where he became interested in phthalocyanines, Calvin became a chemistry instructor at the University of California, Berkeley. He rose to the rank of professor in 1947 and became a university professor of chemistry in 1971. From 1963 to 1980, Calvin also served as professor of molecular biology and director of the Laboratory of Chemical Biodynamics. From 1967 to 1980, he was associate director of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and, from 1981 to 1985, he served on the Energy Research Advisory Board of the U.S. Department of Energy. Of the numerous academic honors Calvin received during the course of his career, none was greater than his 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. At Berkeley, Calvin’s initial work with Gilbert Lewis on the photochemistry of colored porphyrin analogs and the theoretical aspects of molecular structure and behavior of organic compounds led him to the problem of photosynthesis. By the late 1940s, the process of carbon dioxide assimilation was known to involve two interdependent processes: the light and dark reactions. Using the radioactive isotope carbon 14 as a tracer, Calvin’s lab studied the dark reaction in the single-celled alga Chlorella pyrerloidosa. The researchers exposed cultures to radioactive carbon dioxide for varying lengths of time and then killed the algae. The intermediary products in the conversion of carbon dioxide and water to carbohydrates could thus be isolated and then identified via paper chromatography. Ultimately, Calvin and his associates mapped the complex cycle of reactions that have

come to be known as the Calvin cycle, by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is converted into carbohydrates and other organic compounds. Throughout his career, Calvin demonstrated a diverse range of research interests, which grew broader as he got older. He worked in hot atom chemistry, carcinogenesis, chemical evolution and the origin of life, organic geochemistry, immunochemistry, petroleum production from plants, farming, extraterrestrial geology and biology, and the feasibility of artificial photosynthetic systems. Among his more prominent publications are The Path of Carbon in Photosynthesis (1957), which served as a kind of bible for the first group of researchers that worked with radioactive carbon; Chemical Evolution: Molecular Evolution Towards the Origins of Living Systems on Earth and Elsewhere (1969); and an autobiography, Following the Trail of Light: A Scientific Odyssey (1992). Calvin maintained a research group at Berkeley until 1996. He died of a heart attack on January 8, 1997. Sean Kelly

Sources Calvin, Melvin. Following the Trail of Light: A Scientific Odyssey. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. Nobel Lectures. Chemistry 1942–1962. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1964.

C A R OT H E R S , WA L L A C E (1896–1937) Wallace Hume Carothers, scientist, teacher, and researcher, was responsible for the basic research that developed neoprene (synthetic rubber) and nylon. He was born in Burlington, Iowa, on April 27, 1896, the eldest of four children of Ira Hume Carothers and Mary Evelina McMullin. After completing his secondary education in Des Moines in 1914, he studied accounting at Capital City Com-

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Section 11: Celluloid 687 to the synthesis of vinylacetylene with chlorine, they created synthetic rubber (neoprene) in 1930. When worsening political conditions in Asia during the 1930s threatened the silk trade with China, the DuPont corporation turned its attention to the possibility of producing artificial silk. Company experiments produced a variety of polyesters and polyethers. In 1935, a polyamide was formed by combining hexamethylene diamine and adipic acid, which led to the invention of nylon. In 1936, Carothers became the first organic chemist associated with private industry to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The following January, his sister Isobel, a successful radio musician (as Lu in the musical trio Clara, Lu, and Em), died unexpectedly. Carothers fell into a depression that led to suicide on April 29, 1937. Andrew J. Waskey Organic chemist Wallace Carothers led the polymer research team at a DuPont laboratory that developed neoprene (a synthetic rubber) in 1930 and nylon (a synthetic fiber) in 1935. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

mercial College and earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Tarkio College. He earned a master’s degree from the University of Illinois in 1921 and went on to teach chemistry at the University of South Dakota. While there, he began exploring the ideas of American chemist Irving Langmuir on double bonding. Returning to the University of Illinois, he earned his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1924, writing a dissertation on hydrogenations with modified platinum-oxide-platinum-black catalysts. After remaining at Illinois for another two years as an instructor, Carothers began teaching chemistry at Harvard in 1926 and took up experiments with the chemical structure of long-chain polymers. In 1928, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company hired Carothers to head a basic research team at its central laboratory in Wilmington, Delaware. With his own lab and team of scientists, Carothers began studying the acetylene chemical family. Building on work begun by Notre Dame chemist Julius Arthur Nieuwland, the team generated a number of patents and original research papers. Turning their attention

Sources Hermes, Matthew E., ed. Enough for One Lifetime: Wallace Carothers, Inventor of Nylon. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1996. Mark, H., and G.S. Whitby, eds. Collected Papers of Wallace Hume Carothers on High Polymeric Substances. New York: Interscience, 1940.

C E L L U LO I D Celluloid is the common name for a type of synthetic plastic developed in the mid-nineteenth century, using nitrocellulose, camphor, and other materials. Believed to be the original thermoplastic, celluloid is easily shaped into a number of industrial and commercial applications, including waterproofing for clothing, billiard balls, pen bodies, toys, photographic paper, film for movies, and other products. Due to the instability and flammability of its original formula, the original celluloid was replaced in the late 1920s by more advanced materials, including the family of polyethylene plastics. For some seventy years, however, celluloid was the object of ongoing technological development and innovative design with myriad applications in everyday American life. An early form of celluloid was invented in 1856

688 Section 11: Celluloid by Alexander Parkes, a metallurgist in Birmingham, England, who did not succeed in marketing the product. In the 1860s, John Wesley Hyatt, an American printer and inventor, picked up where Parkes had left off. Hyatt was after a $10,000 prize offered by the Phelan and Collander company, a maker of billiard balls, for anyone who could develop a practical substitute for ivory. Hyatt had already developed expertise in hot-compression molding, fabricating dominoes from mixtures of cellulose (the chief component of the cell walls in wood, cotton, hemp, and other plants, and the most abundant of all naturally occurring organic compounds), and shellac. In 1870, Hyatt applied the same techniques to create celluloid, a solution of nitrocellulose and camphor, the latter added as the plasticizing agent. Hyatt and his brother, Isaiah Smith Hyatt, registered the trade name “celluloid” in 1871 and established the Celluloid Manufacturing Company in Albany, New York; the following year, they relocated the company to Newark, New Jersey. Among the many unique products that Hyatt developed were composite billiard balls and molded composites of ivory dust and cellulose nitrate. He prepared his best compositions for celluloid by evaporating aqueous mixtures of cellulose nitrate and camphor, then molding the residue with heat and pressure. Applications for celluloid during the early 1900s included knife handles, toothbrushes, combs, corset stays, shirt collars, and privacy side curtains for buggies. Later applications included privacy curtains for automobiles, piano keys, and the product for which the material is best known—photographic film. Celluloid film became an essential component of the handheld Kodak camera, which popularized photography as a hobby and art form in the 1890s. Movingpicture cameras likewise employed celluloid film and gave rise to the movie industry in the twentieth century. Other products made from celluloid included eyeglass frames, pens, toilet seats, and safety glass. In part due to the absence of competitive plastics, the celluloid industry continued to grow until about 1925. But because celluloid was highly flammable and required high-priced and toxic camphor, which was imported from Asia, it was soon replaced by cheaper, more stable synthetic polymers. Hyatt’s Newark plant closed in

1949, and celluloid is no longer manufactured on a large scale in the United States. Ping-pong balls are among the last products still made of celluloid. James Fargo Balliett and George B. Kauffman

Sources Friedel, Robert. Pioneer Plastic: The Making and Selling of Celluloid. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983. Meikle, Jeffery L. American Plastic: A Cultural History. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Seymour, Raymond B., and George B. Kauffman. “The Rise and Fall of Celluloid.” Journal of Chemical Education 69:4 (1992): 311–14.

CHEMICAL SOCIETY PHILADELPHIA

OF

The Chemical Society of Philadelphia, the world’s first chemical society to produce a substantial record of writing and publication, was founded in 1792 by James Woodhouse, who remained its senior president throughout its existence. Woodhouse, a physician like many early chemists, was appointed professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1795. Another early leader of the society with a medical background and connections to the university was the physician and medical historian John Redman Coxe. An early champion of vaccination, Coxe succeeded Woodhouse as professor of chemistry after the latter’s death in 1809. Despite the medical backgrounds of many society members, its chemical interests were not restricted to pharmacology. Inspired by a utilitarian approach to chemistry, one of its missions was encouraging the exploitation of America’s rich mineral resources. In pursuit of that end, the society maintained a laboratory and offered free analyses of mineral samples sent in by the public. Another mission was to advance the new, anti-phlogistonic chemistry of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier in America. The society published pamphlets on analysis, as well as some of the annual orations delivered before it. Thomas Peters Smith’s published 1798 oration, A Sketch of the Revolutions in Chemistry, was one of the earliest attempts at a written history of chemistry. One of the most important papers presented

Section 11: Conant, James B. 689 to the society was Robert Hare’s “Memoir of the Supply and Application of the Blow-Pipe: containing an account of a new method of supplying the blow-pipe either with common air, or oxygen gas, and also of the effects of the intense heat produced by the combustion of the hydrogen and oxygen gases,” read on December 10, 1801, and published by the society the following year. Hare’s oxyhydrogen blow-pipe, capable of producing intense heat, was the ancestor of the modern welding torch. The society had about seventy members and one corresponding member, the English experimental chemist Elizabeth Fulhame (who, as a woman, was excluded from scientific societies in her own country). The Chemical Society of Philadelphia disbanded sometime in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and it was succeeded by another short-lived group, the Columbian Chemical Society of Philadelphia. William E. Burns

Sources Greene, John C. “The Development of Mineralogy in Philadelphia, 1780–1820.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 113:4 (August 15, 1969): 283–95. Miles, Wyndham D. “John Redman Coxe and the Founding of the Chemical Society of Philadelphia in 1792.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 30 (1956): 469–72.

C O N A N T , J A M E S B. (1893–1978) James Bryant Conant was a preeminent chemist, college administrator, adviser to presidents, and contributor to the Manhattan Project. Conant was born on March 26, 1893, in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1916. During World War I, he worked in chemical weapons research, specifically on lewisite, a chemical agent similar to mustard gas that blisters and burns the skin and lungs. At the end of the war, Conant returned to Harvard, where he served as a professor of organic chemistry until 1933. He wrote more than 100 scientific papers highlighting his research on chlorophyll, polymers, radiocarbon, and organic chemical reactions. Conant became chair of the

Chemistry Department and, in 1933, president of the university. In 1940, Conant became involved in government research in preparation for possible war, serving as head of the National Defense Research Committee. During World War II, he was an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb as well as in chemical weapons research and development. Conant recruited American scientists to research chemical and nuclear weapons, synthetic rubber, and radar technology. He was a chief adviser to President Harry S. Truman regarding implementation of the atomic bomb and, in May 1945, served on the Interim Committee that recommended to Truman how, where, and when to use the bomb against Japan. At the end of the war, Conant became a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. He took a tough stance against the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War and served as ambassador to West Germany in the 1950s. Conant was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Over the years, Conant wrote numerous books. One of his research interests was the English chemist Robert Boyle’s “Experiments in Pneumatics,” but most of his publications involved more contemporary issues regarding science and public policy. He published a discussion of the nature of science, On Understanding Science: An Historical Approach, in 1947; this work was expanded in 1951, in Science and Common Sense. In the following passage from On Understanding Science, Conant anticipated science historian Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigms in the process of scientific revolutions: We can put it down as one of the principles learned from the history of science that a theory is only overthrown by a better theory, never merely by contradictory facts. Attempts are first made to reconcile the contradictory facts to the existing conceptual scheme by some modification of the concept. Only the combination of a new concept with facts contradictory to the old ideas finally brings about a scientific revolution. And when once this has taken place, then in a few short years discovery follows upon discovery and the branch of science in question progresses by leaps and bounds.

690 Section 11: Conant, James B. Conant also was involved in education and social policy, and he wrote an important book, Slums and Suburbs (1961), examining the differences between inner-city and suburban schools in America. Toward the end of his life, he penned an autobiography, My Several Lives: Memoirs of a Social Inventor (1970). Conant died in Hanover, New Hampshire, on February 11, 1978. Russell Lawson

Sources Conant, James B. On Understanding Science: An Historical Approach. New York: Mentor, 1951. ———. Science and Common Sense. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964. ———. Slums and Suburbs. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. Hershberg, James B. James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

DOW CHEMICAL The Dow Chemical Company, a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, was founded by Herbert Henry Dow in 1897 to extract chlorides and bromides from brine deposits under Midland. Dow is the world’s largest chemical company, producing calcium chloride, ethylene oxide, acrylates, surfactants, ethylcellulose resins, and agricultural chemicals such as the pesticide Lorsban. It is also the largest producer of plastics, such as polystyrene, polyurethanes, polyethylene terephthalate, polypropylene, and synthetic rubbers. Styrene, Saran Wrap, Ziploc bags, Handi-Wrap, Scrubbing Bubbles, Styrofoam, and Silly Putty are among Dow’s well-known consumer products. Herbert Dow initially envisioned the vertical integration of the production and sale of bleach. The company expanded during the first decades of the twentieth century into the production of agricultural chemicals, elemental chlorine, phenol, magnesium metal, and other dyestuffs. It became involved in thermoplastics in the 1930s and eventually in various consumer products. Dow also grew by means of acquisitions, subordinate mergers, the development of international operations, and cooperative agreements with Midland Chemical in 1900, Dow Chemical of Canada in

1942, Asahi-Dow in 1952, the pharmaceutical company Merrill Dow in 1980, Hoechst South Africa in 1999, and Union Carbide in 2001. Dow’s core chemical and plastics industries, along with its production of magnesium extracted from seawater, used in the fabrication of lightweight airplane parts, made the company strategically important to the United States during World War II. Dow’s expertise in the production of synthetic rubber, its burgeoning partnership with Corning in the production of silicone (1943), and its ability to safely produce incendiary napalm in high volumes made Dow essential to the war effort and established defense products as a core business that continued into the twenty-first century. Although many of Dow’s products are essential to industry, agriculture, and the military, a number have faced ethical and legal challenges, including Agent Orange, an herbicide produced for the Vietnam conflict; dioxin, a toxic manufacturing by-product; and Dow Corning’s silicone breast implants. To ensure the safety and propriety of its products and manufacturing processes, Dow created a number of protocols: a formal pollution control program (1936); Global Pollution Control Guidelines (1972); International Business Principles (1975); Global Ethics and Compliance (1998); and Code of Business Conduct (1999). Richard M. Edwards

Sources Brandt, E. Ned. Growth Company: Dow Chemical’s First Century. Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2003. Doyle, Jack. Trespass Against Us: Dow Chemical and the Toxic Century. Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 2004. Whitehead, Don. Dow Story: The History of the Dow Chemical Company. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.

G I AU Q U E , W I L L I A M (1895–1982) A physical chemist and educator, William Francis Giauque received the 1949 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his contributions in the field of classical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behavior of substances at extremely low temperatures.”

Section 11: Giauque, William 691 The son of railroad worker William Tecumseh Sherman Giauque and Isabella Jane Duncan, he was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on May 12, 1895. The family lived in Michigan, where Giauque attended school until age thirteen, when his father died and the family returned to Niagara Falls. Two years of work at the Hooker Electrochemical Company led Giauque to study chemical engineering. In 1916, he entered the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in chemistry. After graduating with a B.S. in 1920, he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry with a minor in physics in 1922. Giauque spent the rest of his career at Berkeley, serving as an instructor (1922–1927), assistant professor (1927–1930), associate professor (1930–1934), and professor (1934–1977). In 1932, he married Muriel Frances Ashley, a physicist and botanist. Giauque’s earliest research focused on entropy (a measure of disorder) at low temperatures and the third law of thermodynamics, the validity of which he was the first to demonstrate. He studied the properties of matter at the lowest attainable temperatures throughout his career. In 1920, he and his mentor, George Ernest Gibson, stated the third law as currently accepted: the entropy of a perfect crystal is zero at absolute zero (0 K, −273° C, −459° F). He calculated entropies and other thermodynamic properties of substances at low temperatures with ten times the accuracy of earlier researchers. These entropies, together with heats of formation, permit the calculation of free energies (the work put into a system during certain reversible processes), which can be used to predict the direction and extent of chemical reactions. Because many of his low-temperature studies were of long duration and required constant attention, he and his assistants worked as many as sixty hours straight. During the 1920s and early 1930s, Giauque and his students continued thirdlaw confirmations with a series of studies on diatomic gases (those whose molecules consist of two atoms), experiments that verified the use of quantum statistics (the statistical description of particles or systems of particles the behavior of which must be described by quantum mechanics rather than classical mechanics), and studies on the partition function (the sum over allowed states of an exponential quantity) in calculating entropy.

From 1928 to 1932, Giauque worked on the entropy of gases, showing that some crystallize with residual entropy as the temperature approaches absolute zero. His results supported physicist Werner Heisenberg’s 1927 proposal that hydrogen and other diatomic molecules of elements could exist in two forms: ortho (antisymmetrical), in which the spins of the two nuclei are parallel, and para (symmetrical), in which the spins of the two nuclei are antiparallel. Giauque’s most significant contribution, the adiabotic (involving no gain or loss of heat) magnetic cooling technique, resulted from his third-law studies. It allowed scientists to obtain temperatures close to absolute zero, to understand better the principles and mechanisms of electrical and thermal conductivity, to determine heat capacities, and to study the behavior of superconductors at very low temperatures. At these temperatures, the usual constant-volume gas thermometer was useless, so Giauque invented a highly sensitive carbon (lampblack) resistance thermometer for temperatures below 1 kelvin. In 1929, while studying the entropy of oxygen, Giauque ascribed the presence of faint lines in its spectra to small amounts of two hitherto unknown isotopes (forms of an element with the same atomic numbers but different atomic weights): oxygen-17, and oxygen-18. His discovery of oxygen-18 provided an isotopic tracer for studying the mechanisms of photosynthesis and respiration, and it led to Harold Urey’s discovery of deuterium (hydrogen-2) in 1931. Giauque published 183 articles and trained fifty-one graduate students. A cryogenics laboratory on the Berkeley campus named in his honor opened in 1966. He died on March 28, 1982, in Oakland, California. George B. Kauffman

Sources Giauque, William F. Low Temperature, Chemical, and Magneto Thermodynamics: The Scientific Papers of William F. Giauque. New York: Dover, 1969. Jeffers, William A., Jr. “William Francis Giauque (1895–1982).” In Nobel Laureates in Chemistry 1901–1992, ed. Laylin K. James. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1993. Nobel Lectures. Chemistry 1942–1962. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1964.

692 Section 11: Hall, Lloyd Augustus

H A L L , L LOY D A U G U S T U S (1894–1971) Lloyd Augustus Hall was one of the foremost scientists to have worked in the field of food chemistry. He was born on June 20, 1894, in Elgin, Illinois, and raised by his parents, Augustus and Isabel Hall, in the nearby town of Aurora. His father was a Baptist minister and the son of the pastor for the first African-American church in Chicago. His mother was the daughter of a woman who had escaped enslavement on the Underground Railroad. The lessons of perseverance and resolve were passed from his grandparents to his parents and on to him, enabling Hall to weather the trials that awaited him during his career as a scientist. Hall’s curiosity in science was piqued when he took a chemistry class at East Aid High School, where he was an honors student. By the end of high school, Hall had earned scholarships to four different colleges; he chose Northwestern University. Majoring in chemistry, Hall graduated in 1916. He landed a job with the Chicago Department of Health, rising to the post of senior chemist in just one year. During World War I, Hall was commissioned as a lieutenant and served as assistant chief inspector of explosives for the U.S. Ordnance Department. After the war, he married Myrrhene Newsome, and the couple moved to Chicago, where Hall took a job with Boyer Chemical Laboratory. At Boyer, Hall began working in food chemistry. Specifically, he researched meat preservation, exploring how different chemical compounds made from salts would keep food fresh the longest. In the course of his research, Hall discovered the process of “flash drying,” a preservation technique that revolutionized the meat-curing industry. In 1925, Hall became chief chemist and director of research at Griffith Laboratories in Illinois. From 1925 to 1959, he developed and refined processes for the sterilization and preservation of food that are still in use today. Among his innovations were methods of sterilizing spices and cereals; the development of meat-curing prod-

ucts, seasonings, and emulsions; and the development of yeast foods. Over the course of his forty-three-year career, he obtained more than 100 patents for his work. After retiring, Hall served as a consultant to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and sat on the American Food for Peace Council. He died in Pasadena, California, on January 2, 1971. Paul T. Miller

Source Carwell, Hattie. Blacks in Science: Astrophysicist to Zoologist. New York: Exposition, 1977.

INORGANIC CHEMISTRY Although the science of chemistry was of little interest to most early colonists, the history of American chemistry can be traced back to the early seventeenth century. Not long after his arrival in Boston in 1631, John Winthrop, Jr., using equipment, reagents, and literature imported from England, established the first chemical laboratory within the North American British colonies. He became the first colonial American to present a scholarly paper to a scientific organization when he read his “Of the Manner of Making Tar and Pitch in New England” before the Royal Society in 1662. For much of the ensuing century, those colonials who were interested in chemistry tended to study with apothecaries or in medical schools. It was only in the mid-eighteenth century that chemistry began to penetrate medical curricula. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier revolutionized the field. In addition to the introduction of a new nomenclature, which named chemicals according to their composition, Lavoisier differentiated organic from inorganic chemistry. Today, inorganic chemistry refers to the chemistry of all non-carbon-based compounds. Nineteenth-century chemistry within the United States came to focus primarily on identifying and analyzing the country’s untapped mineral wealth, though academic debates were

Section 11: Libby, Willard F. 693 not entirely absent. The founder of the Chemical Society of Philadelphia, James Woodhouse, for example, spent close to a decade in the 1790s debating (in the pages of the Medical Repository) Joseph Priestley over the latter’s phlogiston theory of combustion. Thomas Jefferson, in particular, encouraged scientists to focus on useful arts and sciences to further the country’s prestige, power, and interests. Trained chemists, however, remained scarce. At the turn of the nineteenth century, only six schools—Pennsylvania, William and Mary, Harvard Medical School, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Princeton—offered separate courses in chemistry. Although teachers, textbooks, and laboratory supplies remained in short supply, the number of schools that offered instruction in chemistry grew tremendously. By the late nineteenth century, almost a third of the nation’s 101 major chemists, those who were distinguished enough to appear in the Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1928–1958), worked in either industrial or agricultural chemistry. Among the more prominent nineteenth-century American chemists was Charles Eliot, who as president of Harvard from 1869 to 1909 directed the school’s transformation from a divinity school into a modern research university. Schools across the country reformed themselves along German lines between 1870 and 1910. Such changes paved the way for the tremendous achievement of American chemists in the latter half of the twentieth century. In 1914, becoming only the second American to receive a Nobel Prize for scientific research, Theodore W. Richards was honored for accurately determining the atomic weights of twenty-five elements. Among the other American chemists to win the Nobel Prize were Irving Langmuir in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry and Harold C. Urey in 1934 for the discovery of heavy hydrogen. All Nobelists are obviously illustrious, but Linus Pauling is widely considered the foremost chemist of the twentieth century, and he is the only person to receive two unshared Nobel Prizes. He was recognized first in 1954 for his work on the nature of the chemical bond and then again in 1962 with the Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless campaign on the dangers of nuclear weapons. Sean Kelly

Sources Bruce, Robert V. The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. Greene, John. American Science in the Age of Jefferson. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1984. Hindle, Brooke. The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956. Ihde, Aaron J. The Development of Modern Chemistry. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

L I B B Y, W I L L A R D F. (1908–1980) Willard Frank Libby, the discoverer of radiocarbon (carbon-14) dating, was born on December 17, 1908, to Eva May and Ora Edward Libby on a farm in Grand Valley, Colorado. He had schooling in Sebastopol, California, from 1913 to 1926. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where he became an instructor in 1933 and, later, an associate professor. Libby’s Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship at Princeton University was interrupted from 1941 to 1945, when he worked at Columbia University on the Manhattan Project for making the atomic bomb. His research on separating uranium isotopes contributed to the preparation of U-238 for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945. Libby also discovered that after evaporation, water remains in the atmosphere for nine days and subsequently precipitates as rain. Libby joined the Department of Chemistry and Institute for Nuclear Studies at the University of Chicago, where he was professor of chemistry from 1945 to 1954. While working on radioactive substances, he discovered the unstable radioactive isotope carbon-14. With a half-life of about 5,730 years, radiocarbon decays at a constant rate after the death of an organism. The age of an organism can be known by measuring the remnant C-14. Libby and his students thus developed the carbon-14 dating technique. In the first application of this carbon-dating technique, Libby calibrated the date of acacia wooden items found in the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Zoser. He also took specimens of wood and mud from the American and European continents and calculated the period of glaciation.

694 Section 11: Libby, Willard F. Libby’s technique came to be used in archeology, geology, geophysics, hydrology, and oceanography. He wrote about his discovery in Radiocarbon Dating (1952). For his work in this field, Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960. Libby was appointed a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission on October 1, 1954, and he served in that capacity for five years. He then joined the University of California as a professor of chemistry and was named director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics in 1962. Libby’s other honors include the Research Corporation Award in 1951, the Chandler Medal of Columbia University in 1954, and the Day Medal of the Geological Society of America in 1961. He died on September 8, 1980, in Los Angeles. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Aitken, Martin J. Science-Based Dating in Archaeology. London: Longman, 1990. Libby, Willard F. Radiocarbon Dating. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. Nobel Lectures. Chemistry 1942–1962. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1964.

MACLEAN, JOHN (1771–1814) The Scottish immigrant John Maclean was a founder of the discipline of chemistry and chemical education in the early American republic. The son of a surgeon, he was a student of the great Scottish chemist Joseph Black at the University of Edinburgh, which he entered at the age of thirteen. Like many early chemists, Maclean was a medical student who became a physician. He studied in London and revolutionary Paris, where he was exposed to the new chemical ideas of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his followers. Maclean became a convert to the Lavoisier school and its denial of the existence of “phlogiston,” a substance believed to be given off during burning, in favor of the theory of combustion where oxygen is absorbed by substances. Sympathetic to American republicanism and hoping that America would offer a wider

field for professional advancement, Maclean migrated in 1795. On the advice of Benjamin Rush, he established himself as a physician in Princeton, New Jersey, offering a course of lectures on chemistry. At this time, few Americans were aware of Lavoisier’s chemistry, and Maclean’s lectures were popular. On the strength of them, the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) hired Maclean as a professor of chemistry and natural history beginning with the fall term in 1795. Maclean’s was the first appointment of a chemistry professor outside a medical school at an American university. (He later added mathematics and natural philosophy to his portfolio.) As an instructor, Maclean pioneered the use of laboratory work in chemical teaching, demanding that his pupils perform experiments rather than simply observe the teacher’s demonstrations. He taught applied as well as theoretical chemistry. Devoting himself full-time to teaching, he abandoned his medical practice. Maclean engaged in a controversy with America’s leading chemist, the recent immigrant from England, Joseph Priestley. Priestley was virtually the last leading chemist to advocate the phlogiston theory, a position he defended in Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston, and the Decomposition of Water (1796). Maclean’s Two Lectures on Combustion: Supplementary to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry (1797) was a forthright attack on Priestley’s position. Its two main subjects, the composition of metals and the decomposition of water, are the same as those of Priestley’s work. The resulting dispute between Priestley and Maclean was carried on in the pages of the Medical Repository. Maclean left the College of New Jersey in 1812 for the College of William and Mary in Virginia, but the breakdown of his health forced him to retire from teaching and return to Princeton. He died two years later at age forty-three. William E. Burns

Source Maclean, John. Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston, and the Decomposition of Water, by Joseph Priestley; and Two Lectures on Combustion and an Examination of Doctor Priestley’s Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston, by John Maclean; edited, with a sketch of the life and letters of Doctor Maclean. Ed. William Foster. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1929.

Section 11: Nylon 695

N Y LO N Nylon is a synthetic fabric developed by Wallace H. Carothers and his team at the DuPont corporation in the 1930s. Nylon resulted from the company’s decision to invest in a program of research into mechanisms of polymerization. By 1930, some of that work had suggested the possibility of a fiber that could compete with natural silk and its principal artificial rival, the cellulosebased rayon. In the summer of 1931, DuPont filed a patent application, establishing priority of claim. After DuPont had solved a host of production and quality problems, it publicly announced its development of nylon in late 1938 and displayed the material at the New York World’s Fair the following year. When nylon stockings finally went on sale nationally in May 1940, they were greeted with unrestrained enthusiasm. Nylon soon became an essential wartime material— used, for example, for parachutes. Many members of the DuPont nylon team went on to the Manhattan Project. The resumption of civilian production in 1945 created “nylon riots” when the stockings, with which “nylons” soon became synonymous, again became available in stores. Chemically, nylon is a family of synthetic, linear polyamides. The Federal Trade Commission defines the substance as a “manufactured fiber in which the fiber-forming substance is a longchain synthetic polyamide in which less than 85 percent of the amide linkages are attached directly to two aromatic rings.” Nylon is a generic rather than trade name. A specific form called nylon 6,6 (due to the two stretches of six carbon atoms on the backbone chain of the polymer) is covered by DuPont’s nylon patent. Nylon 6, created first by chemist Paul Schlak at the I.G. Farben company in Germany in 1938, while chemically distinct, has essentially the same properties and now accounts for over 60 percent of the world’s nylon. In production, polyamide flakes are melted and then forced through the small holes of a spinneret, somewhat similar to the way water comes through a showerhead. As the material cools, it solidifies into fibers.

The introduction of stockings made of nylon in 1940 created a public sensation. The new synthetic material found a myriad of industrial, engineering, and commercial applications during World War II and the consumer products boom of the postwar era. (Walter Sanders/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Nylon’s characteristics include its strength, elasticity, luster, excellent abrasion resistance, and ease of maintenance. It also can be combined with a wide range of other fibers and included in composite materials. In consumer use, nylon is most familiar in a variety of apparel, including hosiery and outdoor wear, as well as in carpets. The material also has industrial applications, ranging from tire cord to parachutes to fishing line. Although many synthetics have been developed to compete with nylon, worldwide production and consumption of the material continues to grow. Production currently is more than 4 million metric tons, increasing by about 2 percent per year. While U.S. production has remained constant in recent years, the percentage manufactured by new Asian producers such as Taiwan and Korea has grown. DuPont remains the largest single producer of nylon. James Hull

Sources Handley, Susannah. Nylon: The Story of a Fashion Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Hounshell, David A., and John Kenly Smith, Jr. Science and Corporate Strategy: DuPont R & D, 1902—1980. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

696 Section 11: Onsager, Lars

ONSAGER, LARS (1903–1976) A Norwegian American theoretical chemist and physicist, Lars Onsager carried out extensive research on the properties of liquids and solids, thermodynamics, and low-temperature physics. He was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theoretical studies of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes. In the field of lowtemperature physics, he predicted and explained the occurrence of vortexes in superfluid helium. The son of Norwegian supreme court barrister Erling Onsager and teacher Ingrid Onsager (née Kirkeby), Onsager was born on November 27, 1903, in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway. In 1920, he became a chemical engineering student at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (now the Norwegian University of Science and Technology), where he studied Brownian motion, the random movement of small particles in liquids or gases. In 1925, the year he received his chemical engineering degree, Onsager challenged the Dutch chemist Peter Debye on the Debye-Hückel theory of electrolytic solutions. Debye was so impressed that he offered Onsager a position in Zurich as his assistant. Onsager worked with Debye for two years, studying the behaviors of electrolytes. His revision of the Debye-Hückel theory laid the groundwork for a comprehensive theory of ion movement in electrified solutions. After immigrating to the United States in 1928, Onsanger became a teaching associate in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. His students complained that he was a poor instructor, however, and he was dismissed after one semester. In the fall of 1929, he became a research instructor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he taught statistical mechanics. Onsager’s students called his class “Advanced Norwegian I” or “Sadistical Mechanics,” because of his accent and obscure lecturing style. In 1929, Onsager presented his ideas on reciprocal relations at a meeting of the Scandinavian Physical Society at Copenhagen. The fully formed theory was published in two parts in 1931 as “Reciprocal Relations in Irreversible Pro-

cesses.” While it received little attention from other scientists until after World War II, it was this work that ultimately earned Onsager the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His theory introduced a new law to the study of thermodynamics: the law of reciprocal relations. A general mathematical formula regarding the behavior of substances in fluids, it represented a major breakthrough in theoretical chemistry. Onsager received a Sterling postdoctoral fellowship in 1933 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. To their embarrassment, the chemistry faculty realized upon his arrival that Onsager did not possess a doctorate. Waiving the course requirements, the Yale faculty awarded him a Ph.D. in 1935 on the basis of a recent paper he had written on deviations from Ohm’s law in weak electrolytes. The subject was so complex that the chemistry and physics faculty had to seek help from the mathematics department to understand it; the mathematicians openly applauded the work. In total, Onsager spent thirty-nine years at Yale, holding the J. Willard Gibbs professorship of theoretical chemistry, from 1945 to 1972. After his retirement from Yale, he served as a distinguished university professor at the University of Miami’s Center for Theoretical Studies. He was found dead of an aneurysm at the age of seventy-two in his home in Coral Gables, Florida, on October 5, 1976. James Fargo Balliett and George B. Kauffman

Sources Kirkwood, John G. “The Scientific Work of Lars Onsager.” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 82 (1953): 298–300. Longuet-Higgins, H. Christopher, and Michael E. Fisher. “Lars Onsager, 27 November 1903–5 October 1976.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 24 (1978): 442–71. Nobel Lectures. Chemistry 1963–1970. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1972. Onsager, Lars. The Collected Work of Lars Onsager. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific, 1996.

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY Although the French chemists Claude Berthollet and Antoine Lavoisier undertook the first systematic study of organic composition in the last

Section 11: Patent Medicine 697 decades of the eighteenth century, a tentative definition of organic chemistry as the chemistry of carbon-based compounds was not proposed until the mid-nineteenth century. Until this point, chemistry had been primarily a science of discovery and analysis. The first American paper that addressed chemical identity and composition was published in 1771 by Dr. John de Normandie. The subject of the paper was a mineral spring near Bristol, Pennsylvania. Throughout the nineteenth century, American chemists focused largely on industrial and agricultural chemistry. This focus was directed by the belief, held by Thomas Jefferson and others, that science had to be practical, as well as by the demands of an increasingly industrialized economy. By the time a workable theory of chemical structure emerged, which paved the way for the golden age of organic synthesis in the latter half of the nineteenth century, American chemists had fallen way behind their German and British counterparts. Ira Remsen, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen in 1870 and subsequently became one of the original faculty members at Johns Hopkins (where he and a colleague in 1878 discovered the artificial sweetener saccharin), believed most of his American-trained colleagues did not know enough even to appreciate their own ignorance. At the time, only three American schools offered lab instruction in organic chemistry. Many schools still saw their task as one of imparting culture, not practical knowledge. Furthermore, the concerns of private capital, which funded most scientific activity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, also contributed to keeping the focus on applied chemistry. The number of Americans studying chemical engineering rose almost tenfold between 1900 and 1918, and American universities continued to reform themselves along German lines. Americans did not, however, copy the German industrial research lab, so that before 1914 a domestic chemical industry had not developed in the United States. In the aftermath of World War I, universities and companies such as DuPont were able to lure large numbers of German scientists to the United States. The number of companies with in-house research labs and the number of indus-

trial researchers tripled during the 1920s. Simultaneously, the expansion of graduate education, which had begun in the latter half of the nineteenth century, finally began to produce enough chemistry Ph.D.s to staff American universities. The results of these processes proved remarkable. Lured away from Harvard in 1928, for example, Wallace Carothers at DuPont stumbled onto the world’s first synthetic fiber, neoprene rubber, in 1930. Four years later, his lab synthesized the first polyamide, later named nylon. Within the academic world, American Nobelists tended to be inorganic chemists before. Melvin Calvin won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1961 for his work on carbon dioxide assimilation in plants. Calvin’s research was typical of the increasing convergence of organic chemistry and biochemistry in the second half of the twentieth century. Sean Kelly

Sources Bruce, Robert V. The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. Hounshell, David. “DuPont and the Management of LargeScale Research and Development.” In Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research, ed. Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Hugill, Peter, and Veit Bachmann. “The Route to the Techno-Industrial World Economy and the Transfer of German Organic Chemistry to America Before, During, and Immediately After World War I.” Comparative Technology Transfer and Society 3:2 (August 2005): 159–86. Ihde, Aaron J. The Development of Modern Chemistry. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

P AT E N T M E D I C I N E Patent or proprietary medicine refers to a class of unregulated elixirs, nostrums, and curatives of dubious quality produced and marketed directly to the public by private companies and individuals of questionable reputation. While virtually all contemporary prescription and overthe-counter medications are patented by their developers or manufacturers, the term “patent medicine” is used almost exclusively as a synonym for quack cures, few of which have actually ever been patented.

698 Section 11: Patent Medicine The heyday of patent medicine in North America, the second half of the nineteenth century, mirrored both the rise of mass-media advertising and the regulation and legitimization of the medical profession. The popularity of patent medicines reflected both the desire for a quick, simple cure and the lingering suspicion of modern medical practice. Patent medicines flourished in an age when the line between quackery and legitimate medicine was still difficult to discern. The causes, and therefore cures, of most diseases were poorly understood prior to the germ theory and bacteriology of the nineteenth century. Such medical practices as bleeding, cupping, and blistering were commonly used until well into the nineteenth century, and regulated medical education was a rarity in the

United States prior to the 1890s. Most doctors served only brief apprenticeships before going into practice for themselves. While the nascent medical profession waged a constant war of words with the purveyors of questionable tonics and practices, to the average patient with a complaint, there often seemed little difference between the two. Prior to the passing of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, there were few restraints on the contents of patent medicines, which routinely contained alcohol, opium, and chloroform, among other ingredients. Many a parent soothed their child’s teething pain with patent medications containing morphine. Other patent medicines were little more than sugar water. Though some were created and sold by sincere individuals believing they were passing along valuable cures, most patent medicines were concocted for the sole purpose of making money. A few of what Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to as the “Toadstool Millionaires” became wealthy and famous, building not only manufacturing plants for their medicines, but also glassworks to make the bottles they were sold in and shops to build the boxes in which they were shipped. Some developed nationwide distribution networks, employing dozens of salespeople. The popularity and success of patent medicines was the result, at least in part, of the shrewd use of modern advertising. Without regulation, manufacturers made outlandish claims for their products and pioneered such advertising tools as color printing, billboards, mass-produced fliers, and sworn testimonials. Many claimed that their goods were “secret” cures from “exotic” cultures such as the Chinese, Egyptian, and, most often, Native American. During their golden age in the nineteenth century, patent medicines were a part of a larger pattern of alternative and quack treatments such as phrenology and homeopathy. These served as precursors to later fads such as electrical treatments, magnetism, and crystal healing. John P. Hundley

Patent medicines—unregulated, secret formulas for the treatment of everyday maladies and serious illnesses— thrived in the latter half of the nineteenth century on the strength of advertising, packaging, and the public desire for simple cures. (Library of Congress, LCUSZ62–47350)

Sources Hecthlinger, Adelaide. The Great Patent Medicine Era, or Without Benefit of Doctor. New York: Galahad, 1970. Young, James Harvey. The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.

Section 11: Pauling, Linus 699

P AU L I N G , L I N U S (1901–1994) A Nobel laureate and a leading quantum chemist and biochemist of the twentieth century, Linus Pauling applied concepts of quantum mechanics to chemistry. His research helped found a new discipline in the field of biology— molecular biology—and his studies on crystal and protein structures within cells contributed significantly to the discovery of DNA. Linus Carl Pauling was born on February 28, 1901, in Portland, Oregon, to Lucy Darling and Herman Pauling, a pharmacist whose lack of success in business forced the family to move to several different Western cities between 1903 and 1909. Shortly after returning to Portland in 1910, Herman Pauling died of a perforated ulcer, leaving his wife to care for their three children. In grammar school, Linus Pauling often visited a friend who had a chemistry set, which triggered his interest in the field and his desire to become a researcher. By his sophomore year in high school, Pauling had assembled a classroom laboratory from parts he had collected at an abandoned steel company where his grandfather worked as a night watchman. Before finishing his senior year, however, Pauling dropped out of school to protest courses he thought were useless; he did not receive a high school diploma until 1962.

Theoretical Chemistr y In 1917, Pauling was accepted at the Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis. To support himself and his family, he taught quantitative analysis beginning in his second year. In 1922, he was awarded his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and was accepted for graduate study at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Pauling’s research—under the direction of Roscoe Dickinson, a chemist known for his work on X-ray crystallography, and Richard Tolman, a physicist and chemist who worked in statistical mechanics—focused on ways to use X-ray technology to determine the crystal structure of minerals. After three years, which included the

Linus Pauling won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on the nature of chemical bonds and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against nuclear testing. He gained further attention in his later years for advocating large doses of Vitamin C to fight colds. (Pictorial Parade/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

publication of seven papers, Pauling received his doctorate in physical chemistry and mathematical physics. In the mid-1920s, advanced research in the new field of quantum mechanics was being performed in Europe. Through a Guggenheim Fellowship, Pauling joined those efforts in 1926–1927, working under a number of researchers. Among them was the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, in Zurich, who worked on the space and time dependence of quantum mechanical equations. Another was the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, in Munich, who pioneered atomic research. Working with these scientists in the emerging field of quantum mechanics and atomic structure, Pauling discovered a theoretical approach to molecular structure and chemical properties and functions that would serve him well in his career. Returning to the United States in 1927, he accepted a position at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) as a professor of theoretical chemistry. Pauling became known as a versatile and driven researcher. In his first five years at Cal

700 Section 11: Pauling, Linus Tech, he wrote fifty papers on X-ray crystal studies and articulated five new scientific principles, known as Pauling’s Rules, on the molecular and chemical structure of complex crystals. In 1932, he introduced the concept of electronegativity— the ability of an atom or molecule to attract electrons to itself—and the Pauling Electronegativity Scale to measure it. His 1939 textbook The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structures of Molecules and Crystals changed the way scientists thought about chemistry. In the book, Pauling explained chemical processes as a function of quantum mechanics operating on the chemical bond at the molecular level. He detailed the concept of orbital hybridization, the relationship between ionic and covalent bonding, and the structure of aromatic hydrocarbons.

Opposition to Nuclear Weapons and War In 1942, theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer invited Pauling to head the chemistry division of the Manhattan Project, working to develop the atomic bomb. Pauling refused. During the course of World War II, however, he contributed to the U.S. war effort by working on rocket propellants, explosives, oxygen meters in submarines, and a synthetic form of blood plasma for battlefield medical treatment. In 1948, he was awarded the Presidential Medal for Merit by President Harry S. Truman for his accomplishments during the war. After World War II, Pauling became active in political and peace issues. He joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists (chaired by Albert Einstein) in 1946 to raise awareness of the threats associated with nuclear weapons. He also gave a number of public lectures with other committee scientists on the dangers of nuclear war. In 1949, Pauling joined with civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois, actress Uta Hagen, and others in organizing the American Continental Congress for Peace, which met in Mexico City. His participation in that event, the American Peace Crusade, and other left-wing organizations and activities drew the attention of government officials during the Cold War. Senator Joseph McCarthy accused him of being a Communist, and, in 1952, the State Department denied Pauling a passport to travel

to London for a peace conference. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, had announced that Pauling’s chemistry work was “pseudo-scientific” and “hostile to the Marxist view.” In 1954, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on the nature of chemical bonds, the energy that gives atoms the ability to form molecules that become the foundation for physical matter. Four years later, still active in the campaign against nuclear testing and the dangers of radioactive fallout, he organized a petition of 11,000 “concerned scientists” and presented the signed document to the United Nations. In 1962, at the age of 61, he became the only person ever to be awarded a second undivided Nobel Prize, this time for peace. During the 1950s, Pauling had conducted research on diverse topics pertaining to abnormal cell molecules, including the causes of schizophrenia, hereditary faults in body chemistry, and the role of nucleic acids in cell development. His later career focused on medical issues. He discovered that sickle-cell anemia is a hereditary molecular disease, the first association of a specific protein with human disease. And he pioneered the field of megavitamin therapy, generating heavy publicity—and debate in the scientific community—by advocating large doses of vitamin C to combat the common cold and diseases such as cancer. Pauling died of prostate cancer at the age of ninety-three in California on August 19, 1994. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Goertzel, Ted, and Ben Goertzel. Linus Pauling: A Life in Science and Politics. New York: Basic Books, 1995. Hager, Thomas. Linus Pauling and the Chemistry of Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Marinacci, Barbara, ed. Linus Pauling in His Own Words. New York: Touchstone, 1995. Pauling, Linus. General Chemistry. North Chelmsford, MA: Courier Dover, 1988. ———. Selected Scientific Papers. New York: World Scientific, 1999.

PHARMACEUTIC AL INDUSTRY The American pharmaceutical industry was born during the Revolutionary War era and became a major business in the years after the

Section 11: Pharmaceutical Industry 701 American Civil War. Following World War I, the industry was a significant scientific innovator, equaling and sometimes surpassing its European counterparts in the development of new drugs. By the years after World War II, American pharmaceutical companies dominated the global marketplace. America’s first pharmaceutical manufacturing establishment was founded in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1778, under the Continental Army’s apothecary general, Andrew Craigie, to supply medicines to the troops. The first U.S. commercial operation—the firm of Christopher and Charles Marshall—was founded eight years later in Philadelphia, producing muriate of ammonia, an expectorant used in the treatment of bronchitis, and the laxative Glauber ’s salt, a form of sodium sulfate. During the early part of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia became the center of the embryonic American pharmaceutical industry and included such firms as John Farr, which was founded in 1818. Another Philadelphia firm, Rosengarten and Sons, founded in 1822, was the first American manufacturer to extract quinine sulfate, an early medicine for the treatment of malaria, then a prevalent disease in the United States. As the nation expanded to the west, so did the pharmaceutical industry. One of the key firms was the company founded by Frederick Stearns in Detroit, Michigan, in 1855. A harsh critic of the widespread medical quackery of his day, Stearns invented the term “ethical pharmaceuticals” to describe products, such as his own, that had undergone the most up-to-date testing for purity and efficacy. The American Civil War, with its rampant epidemics and battlefield carnage, provided a major impetus for the domestic pharmaceutical industry. Quinine was the “miracle drug” of the war, used to treat not only malaria but also venereal disease and diarrhea. The most lasting innovation produced during the war years was the drug tablet, first produced by the Philadelphia druggist John Dunton in 1863, whereby the active ingredients of a medicine were compressed into a portable and long-lasting pill form that could be easily swallowed. The last half of the nineteenth century saw dramatic growth in the drug industry, with the establishment of numerous pharmaceutical companies.

Some, such as Parke Davis (established in 1871), Smith Kline (1875), and Eli Lilly (1876), still dominate the American and global trade. While many of these firms practiced “ethical” pharmacology, useless nostrums continued to be peddled by untrained individuals who claimed their drugs could cure everything from headaches to cancer. Even drugs considered efficacious, such as opium, used in the treatment of pain, were often adulterated with ingredients that rendered them ineffective and even dangerous. To stop this practice, the federal government passed the Food and Drug Law of 1906, “for preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors.” This was followed in 1914 by the Harrison Narcotic Act, restricting commerce in opiates and coca products, then commonly found in all kinds of patent medicines, and the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1938, which required manufacturers to submit new drugs to the Food and Drug Administration for approval. With these regulatory mechanisms in place, and with the astounding pharmacological advances of the twentieth century, American firms advanced to the forefront of the world’s pharmaceutical industry, with more than $200 billion in annual revenues by the beginning of the twenty-first century. In recent years, the industry also has undergone rapid consolidation. The modern-day pharmaceutical industry has been criticized for maintaining high prices on medications. It also is under scrutiny for its emphasis on creating profitable “lifestyle drugs” for the developed world (such as the erectile dysfunction medication Viagra), rather than medications to treat diseases rampant in the developing world. James Ciment

Sources Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Liebenau, Jonathan. Medical Science and Medical Industry: The Formation of the American Pharmaceutical Industry. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1987.

702 Section 11: Pharmacology

P H A R M A C O LO G Y Modern pharmacology is the science of determining the therapeutic effects of synthesized compounds on the body. Originally, the term referred to the study of all aspects of drugs, from their origins to their chemical properties to their physiological effects, but the meaning gradually changed over the course of the nineteenth century. Pharmacology is nearly as old as human civilization itself. Records from ancient Greece and China, among other civilizations, discuss experimentation with the effect of natural compounds on the body. Modern pharmacology, however, only arose with the discovery that organic compounds could be synthesized artificially, a breakthrough first achieved by German scientist Friedrich Wohler in the early nineteenth century. Until that time, it was believed that organic substances could be created only through what was called the “vital force,” a form of energy said to exist only in living plants and animals. In the United States, the science got its start at the University of Michigan, where the first chair in pharmacology was established in 1891 under John Jacob Abel, a chemist who had studied at the University of Strasbourg under Oswald Schmiedeberg, widely considered the founder of modern pharmacology. In 1893, Abel was hired as a professor of pharmacology by the justopened Johns Hopkins University medical school. Until his retirement from that institution in 1933, Abel trained many of the leading American pharmacologists of the twentieth century. Abel was also a highly accomplished researcher. His pioneering work in isolating epinephrine, a hormone produced by the adrenal gland, and histamine, an ammonia-based compound created in the pituitary gland, rank among the first great American achievements in pharmacology. By the early 1900s, many of the nation’s major medical schools had established pharmacology departments. Some of the finest were those at Western Reserve University in Ohio, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. At the same time, various government agencies at the federal level, including the Department of Agriculture and the Public Health

Service, had hired pharmacologists and established laboratories to do research on new and existing drugs. The private sector was also active, with Parke-Davis among the first pharmaceutical companies to hire professionally trained pharmacologists to discover new medicines and test the efficacy of existing ones. Professionalization of the field was proceeding as well. In 1908, Abel helped organize the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the nation’s first professional organization for pharmacologists. The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, America’s first professional journal in the field, was established the following year. Pharmacology’s acceptance as a serious field of research science—rather than a purely technical field or applied science—became evident in the first half of the twentieth century, as pharmacology departments were shifted from medical schools to academic health science programs. As a result, an increasing number of pharmacologists began to earn Ph.D.s rather than medical degrees. New subdisciplines, such as toxicology and molecular pharmacology, emerged after World War II. By the early 2000s, more than 200 American universities offered Ph.D. programs in pharmacology, up from fewer than a dozen in 1930. James Ciment

Sources Chen, Ko Kuei, ed. The American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Incorporated: The First Sixty Years. Bethesda, MD: American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, 1969. Parascandola, John. The Development of American Pharmacology: John J. Abel and the Shaping of a Discipline. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

P H LO G I S T O N “Phlogiston,” a word coined in the early eighteenth century by the German physician and chemist Georg Ernst Stahl from the Greek phlogistos, meaning “burned,” refers to a hypothetical substance believed to be present in all combustible matter. It was thought that the liberation of phlogiston caused burning. When hydrogen was dis-

Section 11: Pinkham, Lydia 703 covered, it was at first believed to be pure phlogiston because of its low weight and flammability. Johann Joachim Becher had postulated in 1669 that substances are composed of three kinds of earth—vitrifiable, mercurial, and combustible—and that burning liberated the combustible earth. Stahl’s theory involved “phlogisticated” substances, that is, substances containing phlogiston, which Stahl asserted was colorless, odorless, tasteless, and weightless. On burning, phlogisticated substances were said to be “dephlogisticated.” The ash or residue of the burned material was believed to be the essential substance, a theory that explained burning, oxidation, calcination (post-combustion metal residue called calx), and breathing. Support for the hypothesis was drawn by observing the burning of charcoal, heating of metals, and suffocation of mice, but the total residual products of these processes were never quantified. When the hypothesis was tested quantitatively, however, questions arose. Why did dephlogisticated organic substances (ash) appear to weigh less than the original phlogisticated substances, while some metals, such as magnesium, gained weight when burned? If phlogiston was given off when a metal formed a calx, why did the calx weigh more than the phlogisticated metal? Theoretically it should weigh less, since phlogiston had been liberated. Stahl responded with the unverifiable postulation that air was entering the metal and filling the vacuum left by the liberated phlogiston. He eventually retreated to the argument that phlogiston was not an actual substance but an immaterial principle. The French chemist Antoine Lavoisier and his followers (antiphlogistians) discredited the phlogiston theory in a series of experiments from the 1770s to 1790s. They studied the weight gain or loss of the oxidation (combustion) or deoxidation (reduction) of lead, tin, sulfur, iron, phosphorus, and other substances. These laboratory experiments allowed the quantification of all residual substances, including the gases produced. Unlike earlier nonlaboratory experiments that did not quantify all residual substances, these experiments demonstrated that the total weight of all the residual products of oxidation and deoxidation always exceeded the original weight, even

though the phlogiston theory projected a loss of weight or no change at all. When iron rusted completely, the rust weighed more than the original iron, and when charcoal burned completely, the carbon dioxide produced weighed more than the original charcoal. The antiphlogistians demonstrated through these experiments that oxygen, recently discovered by Joseph Priestley in 1774, was part of the chemical process. Lavoisier’s oxygen combustion theory was generally accepted by 1800, with the notable exception of Priestley. When Priestley discovered oxygen by heating red oxide of mercury, he initially named it dephlogiscated air. He also discovered nitrous oxide in 1776 and, after emigrating to America, discovered carbon monoxide in 1779. Ironically, Priestley never abandoned the phlogiston theory. With every new question or anomaly, he adjusted the theory to account for the question or anomaly. At the time of his death, Priestley was the sole defender of the phlogiston theory. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Gribbin, John. The Scientists: A History of Science Told Through the Lives of Its Greatest Inventors. New York: Random House, 2003. Partington, James Riddick. Historical Studies on the Phlogiston Theory. New York: Arno, 1981.

P I N K H A M , LY D I A (1819–1883) Lydia Estes Pinkham’s name is associated with one of America’s most successful patent medicine companies in the nineteenth century. She was born on February 9, 1819, in Lynn, Massachusetts, to a Quaker family that was dedicated to reform movements, including abolition, temperance, and woman suffrage. After marrying Isaac Pinkham in 1843, she spent the next thirty years of her life tending to her husband, daughter, and three sons, until an economic downturn threatened the family with poverty. To make ends meet, Pinkham began what turned out to be a highly lucrative career, manufacturing and marketing her trademarked remedy, Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.

704 Section 11: Pinkham, Lydia It is unclear why Pinkham’s tincture—touted as the “Greatest Cure in the World” for “female complaints”—was so effective. Studies by the American Medical Association in the early twentieth century concluded that the remedy, composed of various herbs and roots suspended in a solution of 18 percent alcohol, had little pharmaceutical value and owed its efficacy to what today might be called the “placebo effect.” In the mid-twentieth century, however, scientists found that the compound contained estrogens that could have actually helped relieve the symptoms of menopause. Initially, the family business—which relied heavily on the business acumen of Pinkham’s sons—began selling the Vegetable Compound locally around Lynn, until they registered the label at the Patent Office and began paying for advertising space in large metropolitan newspapers. Advertising proved to be a wise investment, as Pinkham’s cure quickly became a national commodity. The company’s advertising relied heavily on testimonials sent in from satisfied customers, a grandmotherly photo of Lydia E. Pinkham herself, and inflated claims as to what the Vegetable Compound could cure, including prolapsed uteruses, leucorrhoea (vaginal infections), irregular and painful menstruation, kidney diseases, neurasthenia, and discomforts associated with menopause. Pinkham’s marketing, which played off the hesitation of many women to discuss private issues with male physicians, celebrated the remedy as “A medicine for women. Invented by a woman. Prepared by a woman.” She supported this claim—and helped develop a market niche—by personally responding to thousands of letters sent by women asking for medical advice. By the time of Pinkham’s death in 1883, the product earned the family $300,000 a year. The company continued to grow, despite turn-ofthe-century progressive reforms aimed at checking the sales of patent medicine. Muckraking journalists, seeking to uncover fraud, reported in 1905 that the company misled customers into thinking that Pinkham was still alive and answering letters, when, in fact, she had been dead for decades. The American Medical Association also ran a series of reports aimed at discrediting

Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound and other patent medicines. Legislation supported by the Food and Drug Administration in 1906 forced medicine manufactures to print ingredients on labels, which exposed the tincture’s high alcohol content and shocked many customers dedicated to temperance. This may have actually been a boon for the company, however, as profits reached $3 million in 1925, when Prohibition had made most other forms of alcohol illegal. The family-owned business finally sold the rights to Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound to Cooper Laboratories in 1968. David G. Schuster

Sources Burton, Jean. Lydia Pinkham Is Her Name. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1949. Stage, Sarah. Female Complaints: Lydia Pinkham and the Business of Women’s Medicine. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.

P R I E S T L E Y, J O S E P H (1733–1804) Renowned as a Unitarian minister, scientist, theologian, and educator, Joseph Priestley was a founder of modern chemistry, best remembered for his discovery of oxygen and carbon monoxide. He was greatly respected for his views on science, educational philosophy, political theory, and Christian theology. His published works on these and other topics fill twenty-six volumes. Born in Fieldhead, England, on March 13, 1733, Priestley demonstrated a prodigious intellect and was set on a course of study for the Presbyterian ministry. At age nineteen, he enrolled at the liberal, nonconformist Daventry Academy, where he ultimately rejected the Calvinist orthodoxy of his youth in favor of Arianism, an early Christian heresy which denied that Christ was “of the same substance” as God the father. At Daventry, he was profoundly influenced by David Hartley’s Observations on Man (1740), a work that became Priestley’s philosophical foundation. A pioneer in the field of psychology, Hartley, in the empiricist tradition of John Locke, introduced the doctrine of Associationism,

Section 11: Priestley, Joseph 705 wherein ideas are derived from sense experience and all mental phenomena are governed by physical laws. For Hartley, this meant that education was of crucial importance and could lead to unlimited progress, a central tenet of the Enlightenment. Under Hartley’s influence, Priestley resolved that he could at once be a materialist, a necessarian (or determinist), and a Christian, despite his unorthodox theology. Aligned with nonconformist churches (diverse Protestant congregations that did not conform to the Church of England), Priestley became a minister and schoolmaster in Suffolk, England. There, he began to nourish an insatiable interest in science, and he procured for the school such instruments as an air pump and a static generator for electrical demonstrations. Priestley’s teaching career advanced in 1761, when he was hired as a tutor of languages for the Nonconformist Academy at Warrington, Lancashire. He taught courses in oratory, criticism, grammar, history, and law; wrote Rudiments of English Grammar (1761) and A Chart of Biography (1765); earned an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh; and was elected to the Royal Society of London. During the 1760s, he met and befriended Benjamin Franklin, who inspired Priestley to write History and Present State of Electricity (1767), a book that would evolve beyond a mere historical work to include notes on his own electrical experiments. Among his discoveries, Priestley demonstrated that charcoal was an effective conductor of electricity, disproving the established belief that only water and metals could conduct electricity. He also contributed new insight into the relationship between electrical and chemical change. Describing one of his chief contributions, Priestley stated that “the attraction of electricity is subject to the same laws as that of gravitation,” a discovery that helped establish electrical theory as an exact science. Convinced that ministry was his highest calling, Priestley took the pastorate at the church of Mill Hill, Leeds, from 1767 to 1772. The congregation was congenial to his unorthodox theology, and his light ministerial duties afforded him leisure time to pursue science. Reflecting on this time, Priestley noted, “nothing engaged my attention while at Leeds so much as the

prosecution of my experiments relating to electricity, and especially the doctrine of air.” His experiments with air were aided by the good fortune of living next to a brewery from which he acquired generous quantities of carbon dioxide. In 1772, he discovered soda water (then called windy water) by dissolving in water the carbon dioxide produced by fermentation; the discovery earned him the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. Also in 1772, he read his paper “On Different Kinds of Air” to the Royal Society and was established as a leading chemist. He had discovered four previously unknown gases during his years at Leeds and would later bring five more to light. In 1772, William Fitzmaurice Petty, Second Earl of Shelburne, hired Priestley as his librarian and literary companion, and tutor to his children. (Shelburne would later negotiate the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution.) Priestley set up a laboratory at Shelburne’s estate and on August 1, 1774, he discovered that by heating red mercuric oxide he liberated a gas (oxygen), which he called “dephlogisticated air” in adherence to the then-popular but errant phlogiston theory. (Nearly three years before, the Swedish scientist Carl Scheele independently discovered oxygen and also called it dephlogisticated air.) An invitation to Paris by the distinguished chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier allowed Priestley to present his findings on gases before eminent French scientists. Lavoisier began his own experiments on Priestley’s dephlogisticated air, eventually proving it to be an element and calling it oxygen. Priestley’s public support for the French Revolution inflamed the passions of a royalist mob that in 1791 burned down his house and laboratory in Birmingham. Forced to flee England in 1794, he migrated to Pennsylvania. He refused the offer of a chair in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and chose instead to settle in the small town of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he built a home and set up the first scientifically equipped laboratory in the United States. It was there that he made his major contribution to science during his American years: the identification of carbon monoxide as a distinctive gas, which he called “heavy inflammable air.”

706 Section 11: Priestley, Joseph Priestley’s scientific contributions also included a description of photosynthesis, the invention of the gum eraser, the use of compressed gases to produce refrigeration, and an understanding of oscillatory discharge that would later prove crucial to the development of radio and television. In addition to his scientific work, Priestley established a Unitarian Society in Philadelphia and wrote a History of the Christian Church in six volumes. He maintained close ties with Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson; his correspondence with Jefferson influenced the philosophical design of the American liberal arts curriculum. Priestley died of yellow fever in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, on February 6, 1804. Stephen Peterson

Sources Brown, Ira, ed. Joseph Priestley: Selections from His Writings. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962. Davis, Kenneth S. The Cautionary Scientists: Priestley, Lavoisier, and the Founding of Modern Chemistry. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1966. Gibbs, F.W. Joseph Priestley: Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967. Passmore, John A., ed. Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science, and Politics. New York: Collier, 1965.

R A D I O C A R B O N D AT I N G The development of radiocarbon dating represented a major breakthrough in the establishment of absolute age determination as opposed to relative age scales. It remains a widely used technique, but it is only applicable to organic materials such as peat, plant remains, wood, bone, and teeth that are less than 60,000 years old. The element carbon is present in the environment as three isotopes: C-12, C-13, and C-14; only C-14 is radioactive. It is produced in the upper atmosphere when the nuclei of nitrogen atoms are bombarded by cosmic radiation. Once formed, C-14 enters the biogeochemical cycle of carbon and behaves like the nonradioactive carbon isotopes. Thus, C-14 is oxidized to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is absorbed by plants in photosynthesis, and enters animals through their links with plants in the food chain. Upon

death, organisms no longer exchange C-14, because they no longer feed or respire; the amount of C-14 in the tissues therefore begins to decline. In 1949, University of Chicago scientist Willard F. Libby discovered the rate at which C-14 decays, notably the time required for decay to half the original C-14 present. This is the halflife, established by Libby as 5,568 ± 30 years (since corrected to 5,730 ± 40 years). To determine the age of a sample, the C-14 content is measured and compared with that of a modern sample; the difference represents the passage of time since death. The chemical analysis is reliable up to approximately 60,000 years; if the fossil is older, the method does not work. Older objects have limited C-14 residue, and the background radiation affects it considerably. C-14 can be measured in two ways. Conventional measurement involves the counting of beta particles emitted as the C-14 decays. They are usually measured when C-14 is released from a sample as a gas, such as carbon dioxide or methane. Innovations in recent decades have resulted in accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS), which allows the direct measurement of C-14 atoms by passing charged particles at high speeds through a magnetic field. The major advantage over beta particle measurements is that AMS requires only small samples of a few milligrams. Radiocarbon dating has revolutionized historical, archeological, and scientific understandings of past cultures and the temporal framework of cultural evolution. The technique has had a major impact on such disciplines as geology, geophysics, hydrology, atmospheric science, oceanography, and biomedicine. Patit Paban Mishra and A.M. Mannion

Sources Aitken, Martin J. Science-Based Dating in Archaeology. London: Longman, 1990. Geyh, Mebus A., and Helmut Schleicher. Absolute Age Determination: Physical and Chemical Dating Methods and Their Application. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990. Greene, Kevin. Archaeology: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. Libby, Willard F. Radiocarbon Dating. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. Taylor, R.E. and Martin J. Aitken, eds. Chronometric Dating in Archaeology: Advances in Archaeological and Museum Science. Vol. 2. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Section 11: Seaborg, Glenn T. 707

REMSEN, IRA (1846–1927) Ira Remsen, a professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, was instrumental in establishing the academic discipline of chemistry in the United States. He was born in New York City on February 10, 1846, the only child of James Vanderbilt Remsen, a merchant, and Rosanna Secor. At the age of fourteen, he entered the Free Academy (later the City College of New York), but instead of finishing the four-year course, he was apprenticed at his father ’s urging to a physician. Dissatisfied with the apprenticeship, he enrolled in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and received his M.D. in 1867. Attracted to the study of chemistry, Remsen attended the University of Göttingen in Germany from 1867 to 1870, earning a Ph.D. in 1870 for his research, under Rudolph Fittig’s supervision, on the structure of piperic and piperonylic acids. Remsen accompanied Fittig to the University of Tübingen, where he remained until 1872 as Fittig’s lecture and laboratory assistant. Upon his return to the United States, Remsen became a professor of chemistry and physics at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. There, despite an atmosphere indifferent to chemistry, he pursued his research and developed a simple, lucid lecturing style. In 1876, he wrote The Principles of Theoretical Chemistry, an influential text that provided a consistent scale of atomic and molecular weights. That same year, Remsen became professor of chemistry at the newly established Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He served as head of the chemistry laboratory until 1908 and as president of the university from 1901 to 1913. He helped to build the institution on a continental European model, making it a place for discovery rather than merely transmission of knowledge. He introduced many of the teaching methods of Germany, which influenced chemistry instruction throughout the United States, especially at the graduate level. By the end of the century, more than half of the leading American chemists had been educated at Johns Hopkins.

Remsen founded the American Chemical Journal in 1879, the first continuing periodical devoted to American chemical research. He served as its chief editor until 1911, when it was incorporated into the Journal of the American Chemical Society. In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Remsen head of the advisory commission established by the Food and Drug Act of 1906. In addition to serving as the twenty-third president (1902) of the American Chemical Society, he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Society of Chemical Industry, and the National Academy of Sciences. Although Remsen and his students published more than 170 articles, he is best known as a teacher, mentor of students, textbook writer (his seven texts went through twenty-eight editions and fifteen translations), and builder of one of America’s most distinguished universities. In 1923, Remsen became the first recipient of the Priestley Medal, the American Chemical Society’s highest honor. He died on March 4, 1927, in Carmel, California. George B. Kauffman

Sources Getman, Frederick H. The Life of Ira Remsen. Easton, PA: Journal of Chemical Education, 1940. Harrow, Benjamin. Eminent Chemists of Our Time. New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1927. Hawthorne, R.M., Jr. “Ira Remsen.” In American Chemists and Chemical Engineers, ed. Wyndham D. Miles. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1976.

S E A B O R G , G L E N N T. (1912–1999) American nuclear chemist Glenn Theodore Seaborg is best known for his work in isolating and identifying most of the transuranium elements—those heavier than uranium, with an atomic weight of 93 and higher. His work resulted in a significant expansion of the periodic table and earned him the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with Edwin Mattison McMillan. Seaborg was also a member of the Manhattan Project, an adviser to ten U.S. presidents on nuclear and science issues, and chair of

708 Section 11: Seaborg, Glenn T.

Chemist Glenn Seaborg contributed to the discovery of most transuranium elements, one of which is named for him (seaborgium). He was also a professor, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. (Fritz Goro/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission under three presidents. The son of Selma Ericksson and Herman Theodore Seaborg, poor Swedish immigrants, he was born on April 19, 1912, in Ishpeming, Michigan, a small iron mining town. When he was ten, the family moved to Home Gardens (now South Gate), California, a suburb of Los Angeles. An avid reader who kept a journal from 1927 to 1998, Seaborg was not a particularly motivated student until his junior year in high school, when he was inspired by his chemistry and physics teacher. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received his undergraduate degree in chemistry in 1934, and the University of California, Berkeley, where he was awarded his Ph.D. in 1937. One event of his student days that left a strong impression was a brief meeting with Albert Einstein. As a graduate student and research associate at Berkeley from 1936 to 1939, Seaborg focused on the isolation of radioisotopes. Hired as a member of the faculty in 1939, he rose through the ranks and became a full professor of chemistry in 1945. He served as chancellor of the university from 1958 to 1961. On February 23, 1941, with colleagues Arthur C. Wahl and Joseph W. Kennedy, Seaborg pro-

duced and identified plutonium, element 94 on the periodic table, a discovery that would change the course of science. By 1955, the “radioisotope hunter,” as he was called, had identified ten new elements: numbers 94–102 and 106 on the periodic table. The last, seaborgium, was named in his honor, making him the only person for whom a chemical element was named during his lifetime. Seaborg spent World War II as “chemistry chief ” at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, a cover name for one of the most important sections of the Manhattan Project. At the “Met Lab” as it was known, he was responsible for isolating plutonium and extracting ultramicroscopic amounts for potential use in an atomic bomb. In 1945, Seaborg went against his colleagues’ advice by proposing the most significant change to the periodic table since its conception by Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev in 1869. In Mendeleyev’s periodic table, the elements are arranged in vertical rows (groups) and horizontal columns (periods). Each element generally resembles the element directly above it in the same group. Thus, the elements thorium (90) through lawrencium (103) would be expected to resemble the elements hafnium (72) through astatine (85). Seaborg proposed that the fourteen closely related elements heavier than actinium (89), rather than resembling the elements immediately above them, belong to a separate family in the table—the actinides. These, he argued, are analogous to the fourteen elements heavier than lanthanum (57)— cerium (58) through lutetium (71)—called the lanthanides, or rare earths. Elements 90 through 103 were henceforth called the actinide series. His addition was accepted by the scientific community as an important clarification and restructuring. As Seaborg recalled in his Memoirs, “I showed my new table to the two leading inorganic chemists in the world before publishing it. The idea went over like a lead balloon. ‘Don’t do it, Glenn,’ they warned me, ‘it will ruin your scientific reputation.’ It was just so hard to conceive that the periodic table had been this wrong. I didn’t have any scientific reputation, so I published it anyway.” According to Seaborg, it was “the key to the subsequent discovery of a number of transuranium elements.” In 1961, Seaborg moved to Washington, D.C., at the request of President John F. Kennedy, who appointed him chair of the Atomic Energy

Section 11: Silliman, Benjamin 709 Commission, a federal agency established in 1948 to oversee atomic policy and development. Seaborg was the first scientist to serve as chair of the commission, holding the position until 1971. He was also a leader in the movement to improve scientific education in the United States and was a member of federal advisory committees that revamped high school and college chemistry curricula. As an adviser to American presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George H.W. Bush, Seaborg visited sixty-three countries to promote international scientific cooperation and nuclear arms control. He considered the control of nuclear weapons the most critical problem of the times and made a number of substantive contributions to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, eventually signed by 188 countries. In 1971, he returned to the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as university professor, associate director at large of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and chair of the Lawrence Hall of Science. A prolific writer, Seaborg co-authored approximately 500 scientific papers and nearly fifty books. He held more than forty U.S. patents, most of them for his discoveries of chemical elements, and he was awarded more than fifty honorary degrees. He died on February 25, 1999, in Lafayette, California, of complications from a stroke. James Fargo Balliett and George B. Kauffman

Sources Kauffman, George B. “Beyond Uranium.” Chemical and Engineering News, November 19, 1990, 18–23, 26–29. ———. “In Memoriam Glenn T. Seaborg (1912–1999).” Chemical Educator 4:2 (1999): 1–6. ———. “Transuranium Pioneer: Glenn T. Seaborg.” Today’s Chemist 4:3 (1991): 18–20, 23, 24, 32. Seaborg, Glenn T. A Chemist in the White House: From the Manhattan Project to the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1998. ———. The Transuranium People: The Inside Story. Singapore: World Scientific, 1999.

SILLIMAN, BENJAMIN (1779–1864) Benjamin Silliman, an early American chemist and founder of the American Journal of Science and

Arts, was born in Trumbull, Connecticut, on August 8, 1779, of parents who traced their lineage to seventeenth-century Puritans. Like his father and paternal grandfather, Silliman expected to follow the law as a profession. He entered Yale College at age thirteen; after his four years there, he studied law privately and was admitted to the bar in 1802. In the same year, he was offered a professorship of chemistry and natural history at Yale, where he had been serving as a tutor. For the next two years, he spent most of his time learning what he was supposed to teach. This took him to Philadelphia and Princeton and, after his earliest lectures on chemistry in 1804, to Great Britain and Holland. Upon his return from Europe, Silliman added lectures on mineralogy and geology to his teaching repertoire. He continued to teach at Yale until his retirement in 1853. Silliman’s scientific discoveries were less important than his advocacy activities. He offered public lectures on science in New Haven, inviting women to attend, and he continued to widen his outreach to other audiences eager to learn about natural science. After he gave enormously popular lectures on chemistry and geology at Boston’s Lowell Institute, the demand for his talents took him as far west as St. Louis and as far south as New Orleans. He was instrumental in founding Yale Medical School in 1801, where he lectured on chemistry and pharmacy. He also edited textbooks on chemistry and geology that were used at Yale and elsewhere. Perhaps Silliman’s greatest contribution to the advancement of American science was the journal he founded in 1818. The American Journal of Science and Arts was not the first periodical in the country devoted entirely to science, but, from the beginning, it embraced the widest areas of interest. It has also proved to be the longest lasting, though its editorial content today is restricted to the earth sciences. Under Silliman’s editorship, about a third of the journal’s pages were devoted to geology and mineralogy, often written by the editor himself. The remainder of the contents depended on what he could persuade his wide circle of acquaintances to produce, including articles on botany, zoology, chemistry, mathematics, and natural philosophy. Silliman was the sole editor of the journal for two decades and, during its early years, when

710 Section 11: Silliman, Benjamin readers were delinquent in paying for their subscriptions, he helped pay for the printing out of his own pocket. So identified with the publication did he become that it was familiarly referred to as “Silliman’s Journal.” His triumph was to see it become the best-known and most respected American periodical devoted to science on either side of the Atlantic. Silliman died in New Haven on November 24, 1864. His son, Benjamin Silliman, Jr., carried on his work, eventually bringing about the establishment of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. Charles Boewe

Sources Brown, Chandos Michael. Benjamin Silliman: A Life in the Young Republic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. Dana, Edward Salisbury. “The American Journal of Science from 1818 to 1918.” In A Century of Science in America with Special Reference to the American Journal of Science 1818–1918, ed. Edward Salisbury Dana. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1918. Wilson, Leonard G., ed. Benjamin Silliman and His Circle: Studies on the Influence of Benjamin Silliman on Science in America. New York: Science History, 1979.

S Q U I B B , E D WA R D R. (1819–1900) The physician, pharmacist, scientist, inventor, author, and entrepreneur Edward Robinson Squibb was one of the earliest and most influential nineteenth-century voices on behalf of drug purity in the United States. His death on October 25, 1900, came six years before passage of the Federal Food and Drug Act, which brought his aspirations and efforts to fruition. Born on July 5, 1819, in Wilmington, Delaware, Squibb graduated in 1845 from Philadelphia’s prestigious Jefferson Medical College. Contrary to the antiwar doctrine of his Quaker upbringing, Squibb served until 1857 as an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Navy after receiving his M.D. degree. During the latter part of his navy years, he established the Brooklyn Naval Laboratory, initially devoted to research that led to the purification and standardization of ether. One of his early publications describing the apparatus for prepar-

ing ether appeared in the September 1856 issue of the American Journal of Pharmacy. After leaving the navy, Squibb became involved in a drug manufacturing partnership in Louisville, Kentucky. He was soon motivated to start a business of his own, building a small laboratory in Brooklyn for the purpose of manufacturing pure drug products for sale to physicians and pharmacists. As a member of the Committee of Revision for the 1860 United States Pharmacopoeia, Squibb was able to wield substantial influence in his lifelong crusade for drug-product purity backed by sound scientific research. His precise and direct manner of attacking problems gained him widespread support and prestige. As a prominent figure in American medicine, pharmacy, and chemistry, he provided important leadership in favor of high drug-quality standards and research throughout his life. He was always ready to share research results and patentable information, as it was his belief that such knowledge belonged to the world. The outbreak of the Civil War in 1860 provided substantial incentive for Squibb to expand his manufacturing facility to meet Union Army demands for anesthetics and bandaging supplies. Like many Americans of the day, Squibb, with friends residing in the South, had divided emotions about the war. Nevertheless, his support for the Union and scrupulous adherence to its laws helped his business grow during those turbulent years. Despite time spent attending to a waning business and family illness in postbellum Brooklyn, Squibb continued his scientific interests in drug purity, publishing frequently and attending relevant local and national meetings. Improvement in the general business climate and the reputation of his company led to greater financial success. The name of the company was changed from Edward R. Squibb, M. D., to E.R. Squibb and Sons in 1892, in recognition of his successors, Edward Hamilton Squibb and Charles Fellows Squibb. They continued to manage the business after their father’s death in 1900. In 1989, the company became part of Bristol-Meyers Squibb as a result of a major international merger. Carl Buckner

Section 11: Urey, Harold Clayton 711 Sources Blochman, Lawrence G. Doctor Squibb: The Life and Times of a Rugged Idealist. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958. Florey, Klaus, ed. The Collected Papers of Edward Robinson Squibb, M.D. (1819–1900). Princeton, NJ: Squibb Institute, 1988.

S TA R K E Y, G E O R G E (1627–1665) The seventeenth-century alchemist George Starkey, son of a Scottish minister, was born in Bermuda and educated at Harvard. There, he learned a version of Aristotelian natural philosophy that emphasized “corpuscles,” the smallest particles into which matter could be divided. He later criticized the Harvard curriculum as given to empty scholastic dispute rather than the teaching of true philosophy, although many of his own later writings were organized in an academic question-and-response form. Starkey began the independent study of chemistry under the tutelage of the Charlestown, Massachusetts, physician Richard Palgrave in 1644. He also was associated with the circle around John Winthrop, Jr., as well as with Winthrop’s efforts to establish an ironworks in New England. Another associate was the physician and metallurgist Robert Child. Although Starkey lacked a medical degree, in physician-poor New England he was able to practice medicine successfully upon his graduation with a B.A. in 1646. Difficulties obtaining good laboratory equipment in New England caused him to move to England in 1650. Starkey wrote several alchemical tracts, some published during his lifetime and others posthumously. Some appeared under his own name, and others were attributed to a pseudonym, Eirenaeus Philalethes, Latin for “peaceful lover of truth.” Starkey claimed that Philalethes was an alchemist living in America who performed wonders such as restoring an old woman’s hair and teeth. Philalethes assumed an existence independent of his creator—the English natural philosopher Kenelm Digby claimed to have met him, and he was believed to have been alive as late as the mid-eighteenth century. Starkey’s alchemy, principally based on the ideas of the Belgian Johannes Baptista van Hel-

mont, was expressed in the traditionally obscure alchemical style. He sought to achieve both traditional goals of alchemy—to make gold and to cure diseases. As an alchemist, he emphasized the use of mercury to prepare the Philosopher’s Stone, unlike many other seventeenth-century alchemists who emphasized salts. Starkey got along well with England’s Puritan rulers in the 1650s, but, upon the restoration of Charles II in 1660, he attempted to ingratiate himself with the Royalists by publishing monarchical tracts. His hopes of patronage were disappointed, and the last years of his life were spent in desperate poverty. Starkey joined with others in forming the Society of Chemical Physicians in London to advance Helmontian medicine, but he died while tending the sick during the great London plague of 1665. His corpuscular alchemy was a major influence on the chemistry of Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, and the German physician Georg Stahl, the originator of the phlogiston theory. Starkey’s works were reprinted into the eighteenth century. William E. Burns

Sources Newman, William R. Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Newman, William R., and Lawrence M. Principe. Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

U R E Y, H A R O L D C L AY T O N (1893–1981) The chemist and 1934 Nobel laureate Harold Clayton Urey was born on April 29, 1893, in Walkerton, Indiana, one of the three children of Reverend Samuel Clayton Urey, a schoolteacher and lay minister, who died when Harold was six, and Cora Rebecca Reinsehl. After graduation from high school in 1911, Urey taught for three years in country schools in Indiana and then Montana, where his family had moved. He entered the University of Montana in 1914, and in 1917 he received his B.S. degree in zoology with a minor in chemistry.

712 Section 11: Urey, Harold Clayton Although Urey intended to be a biologist, the U.S. entry into World War I led him to spend two years as an industrial research chemist before returning to Montana in 1919 as an instructor. In 1921, he entered the University of California, Berkeley, to work under Gilbert N. Lewis on calculating thermodynamic properties from molecular spectra and the distribution of electrons among the orbits of excited hydrogen atoms. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1923. Urey spent the next year in Copenhagen at Niels Bohr’s Institute for Theoretical Physics as an American-Scandinavian Foundation fellow and then spent five years as an associate in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. In 1926, he married Frieda Daum, with whom he had three daughters and one son. He became an associate professor of chemistry at Columbia University in 1929 and a professor in 1934. During this time, he co-authored the book Atoms, Molecules, and Quanta (1930), describing re-

Harold Urey won the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). He later headed a division of the Manhattan Project and worked in such diverse fields as geochemistry, planetary evolution, and the origin of life. (George Karger/Pix, Inc./Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

cent advances in quantum mechanics. He also was the founding editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics, serving in that capacity from 1933 to 1940. In the 1930s, Urey developed a method for concentrating heavy hydrogen isotopes (forms of an element with the same atomic numbers but different atomic weights) by fractionally distilling liquid hydrogen, which led to the discovery of deuterium (hydrogen with atomic weight 2, in contrast to common hydrogen with atomic weight 1). With Edward W. Washburn, he devised an electrolytic method for the separation of hydrogen isotopes and carried out detailed investigations of their properties, especially the vapor pressure of hydrogen and deuterium and the equilibrium constants of exchange reactions. In 1934, Urey received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his discovery of heavy hydrogen.” Urey remained at Columbia through World War II. In 1945, he became distinguished service professor of chemistry at the Institute for Nuclear Studies, University of Chicago, and then the Martin A. Ryerson Professor in 1952. In 1956–1957, he was the George Eastman Visiting Professor at Oxford, and, in 1958, he became a professor-at-large of the University of California, San Diego. Urey had worked on the separation of uranium isotopes for the nuclear bomb, but believing that the U.S. government intended to produce nuclear weapons beyond those needed for the war, he began to work for the control of nuclear energy. Other, later interests included the measurement of temperatures of ancient oceans, the origin of the planets, and the chemical problems of the origin of Earth. His book The Planets: Their Origin and Development (1952) was the first to systematically apply chemical principles to the origin of the solar system. Urey’s research showed a strongly quantitative approach, a consideration of the entire problem rather than only a part of it, and a willingness to follow his conclusions into areas beyond his initial expertise. He received numerous honors, awards, and honorary degrees. Urey retired in 1970. He died at age eightyseven on January 5, 1981, in La Jolla, California. In 1984, the Harold C. Urey Prize in Planetary Science was established by the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. George B. Kauffman

Section 11: Vulcanization 713 Sources Cohen, K.P., S.K. Runcorn, H.E. Suess, and H.G. Thode. “Harold Clayton Urey.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 29 (1983): 623–59. Nobel Lectures. Chemistry 1922–1941. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Elsevier, 1966. Ruark, Arthur Edward, and Harold Clayton Urey. Atoms, Molecules, and Quanta. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1930. Urey, Harold Clayton. The Planets: Their Origin and Development. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952. Urey, Harold Clayton, Ferdinand G. Brickwedde, and George M. Murphy. “Hydrogen Isotope of Mass 2 and Its Concentration.” Physical Review 40 (1932): 1–15.

V U LC A N I Z AT I O N Vulcanization, also called “curing,” is a process used in the production of commercial rubber to improve its quality. The term “rubber” can refer to the finished product as well as to the coagulated natural gum (latex) from the sap of more than 200 species of plants popularly called rubber trees. The name is derived from the substance’s use as an eraser for “rubbing out” pencil marks. Vulcanization uses pressure and heat in conjunction with a curative agent, most commonly sulfur (though peroxide, gamma radiation, and other organic additives such as aniline are also used), to irreversibly link rubber molecules. This process creates a stronger, more flexible, and more durable rubber that is less affected by temperature variations. The rubber molecule has a number of “cure sites” to which sulfur atoms attach and from which chains of two to ten sulfur atoms form molecular bridges that join the rubber molecules (monomers) into chains creating larger molecules (polymers) with elastic properties (elastomers). As the ratio of sulfur atoms to rubber molecules increases, the number of these bridges increases, resulting in a harder rubber. A lower sulfur atom to rubber molecule ratio produces a softer rubber. This variation in consistency permits vulcanized rubber to be formulated for applications ranging from surgical gloves to rubber mallets. Rubber was usable only within a narrow temperature gradient until Charles Goodyear accidentally discovered the vulcanization process in

1839, when he dropped an experimental rubber and sulfur mixture on a hot stove. The use of thermoset (vulcanized) rubber greatly improved the efficiency, durability, and performance of machines and engines. Previously, when heated engine and machine parts expanded and separated, gases and lubricants escaped, resulting in both a diminished compression that decreased power output and increased friction that more rapidly degraded the components. Leather soaked in oil had been used to stem the leakage by filling the potential gaps, but the more tightly the oiled leather was compacted, the greater the friction and the more rapid the degradation of the seal. Vulcanized rubber could maintain an elasticity range within temperature tolerances, and it could be molded and conformed into gaskets, washers, and other parts that filled the gaps that needed to be sealed. This not only increased the efficiency, durability, and performance of existing engines and machines but also made possible the development of higher-performance engines and machines capable of sustained operations over longer periods at substantially wider temperature and pressure ranges. Goodyear applied for a patent in 1844, once he felt he had perfected his process. By then, however, several others, most notably Horace H. Day, also claimed the discovery. The U.S. Circuit Court in Trenton, New Jersey, declared Goodyear the sole inventor of vulcanization when the court adjudicated his patent infringement case against Day in 1852. A cold vulcanization process using a sulfur bath was later developed by Alexander Parkes (1846), but the end product was less moldable than the product created by Goodyear’s hot vulcanization. Vulcanized rubber has multitudinous uses in industries ranging from health care to space exploration. Today, it is found commonly in products such as shoes, engines, vehicle tires, and much more. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Alliger, Glen, and Irvin Julian Sjothun. Vulcanization of Elastomers: Principles and Practice of Vulcanization of Commercial Rubbers. Melbourne, FL: Krieger, 1978. Korman, Richard. The Goodyear Story: An Inventor’s Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly. New York: Encounter, 2002.

714 Section 11: Vulcanization Peirce, Bradford. Trials of an Inventor: Life and Discoveries of Charles Goodyear. Seattle, WA: University Press of the Pacific, 2003. Slack, Charles. Noble Obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the Race to Unlock the Greatest Industrial Secret of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hyperion, 2003.

W I N T H R O P, J O H N , J R . (1605–1676) John Winthrop, Jr., had wide-ranging interests in multiple branches of the natural sciences, applied his scientific expertise to the development of industry and commerce, practiced medicine, knew several languages, had one of the largest libraries in the New World, and communicated regularly with major European scholars of the day. Winthrop was an alchemist associated with Richard Starkey. Some scholars have argued that Winthrop was Eirenaeus Philalethes (“Peaceful Lover of Truth”), the pen name for a midseventeenth century alchemical writer, but Starkey has the better claim. Alchemy was considered an honorable and scientific pursuit in Winthrop’s time, practiced not only by colonials such as Winthrop and Starkey but also by English savants such as Isaac Newton. Winthrop (also known as John Winthrop the Younger) was born in 1605 in Groton, England. He entered Trinity College in Dublin, then studied law in London and became a barrister. He soon gave up a career in law, however. Having gained an appointment as secretary to a navy captain in 1627, Winthrop sailed on a disastrous mission to support the Huguenot garrison at La Rochelle, France. After this debacle, he left the navy and traveled across Europe for more than a year. Upon his return to England in 1629, his father, John Winthrop, Sr., who was to become the first governor of Massachusetts, decided to emigrate to America. The elder Winthrop left for the colonies in 1630. John Winthrop, Jr., followed with his wife in 1631 and helped found the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts. He remained there until the death of his wife and infant daughter in 1634 and then returned to England. In 1635, Winthrop received a one-year commission as governor of a new plantation on the

Connecticut River, and he returned to America with his second wife. He again settled in Ipswich and spent part of 1636 (until his commission expired) overseeing construction of the plantation at Saybrook. Winthrop believed that establishing an industrial base was necessary for the colony’s survival, and he returned to England in 1641 with the goal of attracting capital and skilled workers for an ironworks and other industrial initiatives. In 1644, he established two furnaces in Massachusetts and founded a settlement in Connecticut for the same purpose. He moved his family to what is now New London, and later to the colony of New Haven. After being elected to several local government offices, he was elected governor of Connecticut in 1659, moved to Hartford, and served in that capacity until his death in 1676. Although raised as a Puritan, Winthrop was not devoutly religious and as governor was tolerant of many who were harshly treated in Massachusetts. His commercial endeavors— including iron, lead, and salt works as well as various other ventures—were largely unsuccessful. Concerned about his financial status, he attempted to resign as governor three times, but each time he was refused. Winthrop’s most important act as governor was likely his return to England from 1661 to 1663 to gain a charter for Connecticut. He received a broad and liberal charter incorporating the former colony of New Haven within Connecticut’s borders. During this visit to England, Winthrop was elected to the Royal Society (in 1662), becoming the first member from America. He presented papers to the society on tar and pitch making, shipbuilding, and Indian corn (maize). He returned to Connecticut in 1663, acting as the Royal Society’s correspondent for North America. Over the next fourteen years, Winthrop shipped a wide range of natural specimens back to the Royal Society, including an unusual species of starfish, horseshoe crabs, hummingbirds’ nests, barnacles, milkweed fibers, and a sealed box of poison ivy. He also engaged in extensive communications with society members on topics including tides, comets, and agriculture. Winthrop was interested in a wide range of applied scientific issues. He studied various agricultural diseases and pests, including wheat

Section 11: Winthrop, John, Jr. 715 blights and tent caterpillars, and discussed possible modifications of Indian corn. He found that cornstalks yielded a “syrup sweet as sugar,” known today as corn syrup. Among the industrial processes of interest to him were metallurgy, charcoal production, and mining. Winthrop was also a self-trained physician, and he carried out an extensive medical practice. For his time, Winthrop can be considered a “modern” physician, in that he abandoned the concept described by Galen of bodily humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile), and used chemicals and herbs in his treatments. His favorite treatment was “rubila,” a mixture of nitre and antimony, which he prescribed for many illnesses. An avid astronomer, Winthrop imported the first telescope to the colonies and tentatively reported viewing Jupiter’s fifth satellite. However, once this satellite’s existence was confirmed more than 200 years later, his telescope was demonstrated not to have been powerful enough for

such a sighting; Winthrop likely mistook a star for this satellite. He presented his telescope to Harvard in the winter of 1671–1672. At times Winthrop appeared to regret being “so greatly separated from happy Europe,” and he appreciated his extensive correspondence with scientists and other notables in England, including Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Oliver Cromwell, Charles II, and Milton. Many of his contacts sent him books, and Winthrop’s library was perhaps the largest in the colonies, described as having well over a thousand books in Latin, French, Italian, English, German, and Dutch. Winthrop died in 1676 in Boston. Michael T. Halpern

Sources Benton, Robert M. “The John Winthrops and Developing Scientific Thought in New England.” Early American Literature 7:3 (1973): 272–90. Black, Robert C. The Younger John Winthrop. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.

DOCUMENTS Poison Gas in World War I German scientists developed the first chemical weapons of mass destruction during World War I, as this excerpt from the official U.S. history of the Great War describes. The first use of asphyxiating gas was by the Germans during the first battle of Ypres. There the deadly compound was mixed in huge reservoirs back of the German lines. From these extended a system of pipes with vents pointed toward the British and Canadian lines. Waiting until air currents were moving steadily westward, the Germans opened the stop-cocks shortly after midnight and the poisonous fumes swept slowly, relentlessly forward in a greenish cloud that moved close to the earth. The result of that fiendish and cowardly act was that thousands of men died in horrible agony without a chance for their lives. Besides that first asphyxiating gas, there soon developed others even more deadly. The base of most of these was chlorine. Then came the lachrymatory of “tear-compelling” gases, calculated to produce temporary or permanent blindness. Another German “triumph” was mustard gas. This is spread in gas shells, as are all the modern gases. The Germans abandoned the cumbersome gas-distributing system after the invention of the gas shell. These make a peculiar gobbling sound as they rush overhead. They explode with a very slight noise and scatter their contents broadcast. The liquids carried by them are usually of the sort that decompose rapidly when exposed to the air and give off the acrid gases dreaded by the soldiers. They are directed against the artillery as well as against intrenched troops. Every command, no matter how small, has its warning signal in the shape of a gong or a siren warning of approaching gas. Gas masks were speedily discovered to offset the dangers of poison gases of all kinds. These were worn not only by troops in the field, but by

artillery horses, pack mules, liaison dogs, and by the civilian inhabitants in back of the battle lines. Where used quickly and in accordance with instructions, these masks were a complete protection against attacks by gas. The perfected gas masks used by both sides contained a chamber filled with a specially prepared charcoal. Peach pits were collected by the millions in all the belligerent countries to make this charcoal, and other vegetable substances of similar density were also used. Anti-gas chemicals were mixed with the charcoal. The wearer of the mask breathed entirely through the mouth, gripping a rubber mouthpiece while his nose was pinched shut by a clamp attached to the mask. In training, soldiers were required to hold their breath for six seconds while the mask was being adjusted. It was explained to them that four breaths of the deadly chlorine gas was sufficient to kill; the first breath produced a spasm of the glottis; the second brought mental confusion and delirium; the third produced unconsciousness; and the fourth, death. The bag containing the gas mask and respirator was carried always by the soldier. Source: Francis A. March, in collaboration with Richard J. Beamish. History of the World War: An Authentic Narrative of the World’s Greatest War (Philadelphia: United Publishers of the United States and Canada, 1919).

Joseph Priestley’s Observations on the Theory of Oxygen Joseph Priestley, the British chemist, wrote this treatise after emigrating to America in 1794. He stubbornly refused to accept the new theory of oxygen advocated by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his protégés, whom he labeled “Antiphlogistians,” or opponents of the theory of phlogiston. There have been few, if any, revolutions in science so great, so sudden, and so general, as the prevalence of what is now usually termed the new system

716

Section 11: Documents 717 of chemistry, or that of the Antiphlogistians. . . . Though there had been some who occasionally expressed doubts of the existence of such a principle as that of phlogiston, nothing had been advanced that could have laid the foundation of another system before the labours of Mr. Lavoisier and his friends, from whom this new system is often called that of the French. . . . It is no doubt time, and of course opportunity of examination and discussion, that gives stability to any principles. But this new theory has not only kept its ground, but has been constantly and uniformly advancing in reputation, more than ten years, which, as the attention of so many persons, the best judges of everything relating to the subject has been unremittingly given to it, is no inconsiderable period. Every year of the last twenty or thirty has been of more importance to science, and especially to chemistry, than any ten in the preceding century. So firmly established has this new theory been considered, that a new nomenclature, entirely founded upon it, has been invented, and is now almost in universal use; so that, whether we adopt the new system or not, we are under the necessity of learning the new language, if we would understand some of the most valuable of modern publications. In this state of things, an advocate for the old system has but little prospect of obtaining a patient hearing. And yet, not having seen sufficient reason to change my opinion, and knowing that free discussion must always be favourable to the cause of truth, I wish to make one appeal more to the philosophical world on the subject, though I have nothing materially new to advance. For I cannot help thinking that what I have observed in several of my publications has not been duly attended to, or well understood. I shall therefore endeavour to bring into one view what appears to me of the greatest weight, avoiding all extraneous and unimportant matter; and perhaps it may be the means of bringing out something more decisive in point of fact, or of argument, than has hitherto appeared. No person acquainted with my philosophical publications can say that I appear to have been particularly attached to any hypothesis, as I have frequently avowed a change of opinion, and have more than once expressed an inclination for the new theory, especially that very important

part of it the decomposition of water, for which I was an advocate when I published the sixth volume of my experiments; though farther reflection on the subject has led me to revert to the creed of the school in which I was educated, if in this respect I can be said to have been educated in any school. However, whether this new theory shall appear to be well founded or not, the advancing of it will always be considered as having been of great importance in chemistry, from the attention which it has excited, and the many new experiments which it has occasioned, owing to the just celebrity of its patrons and admirers. Source: Joseph Priestley, Considerations on the Doctrine of Phlogiston and the Decomposition of Water (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1796).

The Home Chemist Henry Hartshorne, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, published The Household Cyclopedia of General Information, a do-it-yourself handbook for the practical American, in 1881. The following selections provide guidelines for cooling and dyeing materials. (For historical interest only—do not attempt.)

Ar tificial Cold When a solid body becomes liquid, a liquid vapor, or, when a gas or vapor expands, heat is abstracted from neighboring bodies, and the phenomena or sensation of cold is produced. Evaporation produces cold, as is seen familiarly in the chilliness caused by a draught of air blowing on the moist skin. Water may be cooled to 30°, in warm climates, by keeping it in jars of porous earthenware; a flower-pot, moistened and kept in a draught of air, will keep butter, placed beneath it, hard in warm weather. In India water is exposed at night in shallow pans, placed on straw in trenches, and freezes even when the thermometer does not fall below 40°. Water may be frozen by its own evaporation under the receiver of an air-pump over sulphuric acid; the process is a delicate one, and not adapted for use on the large scale. Compressed Air. Air, when compressed, gives out heat which is reabsorbed when it is allowed to expand. By forcing the air into a strong

718 Section 11: Documents receiver and carrying off the heat developed by a stream of water, it may, on expanding, reabsorb enough to reduce the temperature below 32°. It is thus used in the paraffine works in England, and would be an excellent method of at once ventilating and cooling large buildings. Freezing Mixtures. Depend upon the conversion of solid bodies into liquids. There are two classes, those used without ice and those in which it is employed. Where extreme cold is required, the body to be frozen should be first cooled as much as possible by one portion of the mixture, and then by a succeeding one. Without Ice.—Four oz. each of nitre and sal ammoniac in 8 of water will reduce the temperature from 50° to 10°. Equal parts of nitrate of ammonia and water, from 50° to 4°. The salt may be recovered by evaporation and used over again. Equal parts of water, crystallized nitrate of ammonia, carbonate of soda, crystallized and in powder, from 50° to 7°. Five parts of commercial muriatic acid and 8 of Glauber’s salt in powder, from 50° to 0°. With Ice.—Snow is always preferable. Ice is best powdered by shaving with a plane like a carpenter’s, or it may be put into a canvas bag and beaten fine with a wooden mallet. Equal parts of snow and common salt will produce a temperature of –4°, which may be maintained for hours. This is the best mixture for ordinary use. Three parts of crystallized chloride of calcium and 2 of snow will produce a cold sufficient to freeze mercury, and to reduce a spirit thermometer from 32° to –50°. The chloride may be recovered by evaporation. There are many other freezing mixtures given in the books, but none are so cheap and efficient as the above.

D yeing

stuffs. The stuffs are animal, as silk wool, and feathers, or vegetable, as cotton and linen. The former take the colors much more readily, and they are more brilliant. In some cases, as in dyeing silk and wool with coaltar colors, the color at once unites with the fiber; generally, however, a process of preparation is necessary. In certain other cases, as in dyeing silk and wool yellow by nitric acid, the color is due to a change in the stuff, and is not properly dyeing. Insoluble colors are managed by taking advantage of known chemical changes; thus chromate of lead (chrome yellow) is precipitated by dipping the stuff into solutions, first of acetate of lead, and then of bichromate of potassa. Mordants (bindermittle, middle binder of the Germans) are bodies which, by their attraction for organic matter, adhere to the fibre of the stuff, and also to the coloring matter. They are applied first, but in domestic dyeing they are often mixed with the dye-stuff. By the use of a mordant, a dye which would wash out is rendered permanent. Some mordants modify the color; thus alum brightens madder, giving a light-red, while iron darkens it, giving a purple. Mordants. The principal mordants are alum, cubic-alum, acetate of alumina, protochloride of tin, bichloride of tin, sulphate of iron, acetate of iron, tannin, stannate of soda. Dye-Stuffs. The materials used in dyeing are numerous; the following are the most important: Madder, indigo, logwood, quercitron, or oakbark, Brazil wood, sumach, galls, weld, annato, turmeric, alkanet, red launders, litmus or archil, cudbear, cochineal, lac; and the following mineral substances: ferrocyanide of potassium, bichromate of potash, cream of tartar, lime-water, and verdigris.

The art of dyeing has for its object the fixing permanently of a color of a definite shade upon

Source: Henry Hartshorne, The Household Cyclopedia of General Information (New York: Thomas Kelly, 1881).

Section 12

M AT H E M AT I C S A N D CO M P U T E R S C I E N C E

ESSAYS Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry A

fter years of being overshadowed by Europeans, American mathematicians of the twentieth century made important contributions to the field of non-Euclidean geometry. Euclidean geometry, commonly taught in U.S. secondary schools and institutions of higher education as a system of logic, was developed by the Greek mathematician Euclid during the fourth century B.C.E. Euclid’s Elements provides a set of self-evident ideas and definitions as well as self-evident assumptions: axioms or postulates. One example of a postulate is the statement that a straight line may be drawn between any two given points. Postulates and definitions, along with previously proven theorems, are then used to construct proofs of additional theorems, creating a system of logic. During the subsequent two millennia, Euclidean geometry served as an accurate description of the nature of the space. Nineteenth-century mathematicians, however, challenged the role of Euclidean geometry, developing a system known collectively as non-Euclidean geometry. The key to understanding these new geometries is Euclid’s fifth postulate—the parallel postulate—which describes a flat space on which, given a line and a point not on that line, there is only one possible line that can be drawn parallel to the given line through the given point. For mathematicians such as John Playfair of Scotland in the late eighteenth century, who were seeking to make Euclidean geometry more rigorous, the parallel postulate was not selfevident. Over the course of centuries, various mathematicians had tried unsuccessfully to prove the postulate as a theorem. If Euclid’s fifth postulate could not be proved as a theorem, then perhaps

it is not an absolute, and additional spaces could be defined by a different parallel postulate. By the early 1800s, some mathematicians took the intellectual leap and began to study what would result if there were either an infinite number of parallel lines or no parallel lines at all. This endeavor marked the beginning of non-Euclidean geometry. There are two general types of non-Euclidean geometry. The first kind explored a curved space in which there are an infinite number of possible parallel lines. This is called hyperbolic geometry. Work in this area is credited to the nineteenthcentury Russian Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky. The second kind is called elliptical or spherical geometry. Developed by the German mathematician G.F. Bernhard Riemann in the 1850s, it describes a curved space where there are no parallel lines. After Riemann, non-Euclidean geometry as an acceptable field of study expanded and the old work of Lobachevsky and others was recovered and translated. George B. Halsted, a professor at the University of Texas, translated the Hungarian Janos Bolyai’s paper “The Science of Absolute Space” (1832) and Lobachevsky’s “Theory of Parallels” (1840). Thus Halsted is credited with introducing the field of non-Euclidean geometry to the United States. By the early twentieth century, new research in physics showed that the world of nonEuclidean geometry was very real. Given Riemann’s insight, Euclidean geometry was shown to be only an approximation of the true space, locally accurate, but still an approximation. Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity demonstrated that space was actually curved and thus could be accurately described only by

721

722 Section 12: Essays non-Euclidean geometry. In explaining his general theory, Einstein drew heavily on geometry, especially the insights of Riemann. Ultimately, Einstein’s work suggested space was both Euclidean and non-Euclidean. As mass increases in an area of space, it curves space, creating gravity, making the spatial geometry less Euclidean and more non-Euclidean. Einstein brought geometry back to its beginning as a description—albeit a much more complicated description—of the world around us. Research into non-Euclidean geometry during the first four decades of the twentieth century moved American mathematics beyond translations and commentaries to seminal contributions. The primary American contributions to geometry came in the area of differential geometry and a related branch of mathematics called topology. Differential geometry is a subfield of geometry that studies the nature of curved surfaces (such as the curved space-time described by Einstein) by using the tools of calculus. Princeton University was the center of this research in the United States. Besides Einstein, Princeton mathematicians such as Luther Eisenhart and Oswald Veblen developed work in areas of geometry that furthered the mathematical understanding of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Veblen contributed to various forms of geometry, eventually publishing work that first defined the differentiable manifold, a concept in geometry where a surface seems flat locally but is, in reality, curved (like our experience of Earth). Mathematics, like many fields of science in the United States, tended to focus on applications rather than theory. But during and after World War II, Chinese mathematicians who emigrated to the United States energized the study of mathematics, especially theory. Shying-shen Chern, for example, joined the faculty at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study in 1943. In 1949, he moved to the University of Chicago, where he began the first large-scale training of graduate students in geometry. In 1960, he established another center of mathematics research at the University of California, Berkeley. While contributing to various areas of geometry, including differential geometry and manifold theory, Chern also trained a new generation of geometers who helped integrate

various fields of geometry, topology, and differential equations. Other important centers of geometry developed during the 1960s and 1970s. These include the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1980, the first Fields Medal awarded for work in differential geometry was awarded to Shing Tung Yau and William Thurston, both graduates of Berkeley. With this prestigious award, American contributions clearly rose to worldclass levels. Geometric science in the twenty-first century is returning to its roots as a tool for better understanding the world around us. Developments in fields such as computational geometry marry the methods of geometers to the needs of geographers, molecular biologists, astrophysicists, and product designers; geometry is used for constructing and understanding digital images in tomography and digital mapping. Thus, geometry, a tool as old the Neolithic Age, has become vital in hundreds of ways in the information age. Paul Buckingham

Sources Bonola, Roberto. Non-Euclidean Geometry: A Critical and Historical Study of Its Developments. Trans. H.S. Carslaw. New York: Dover, 1955. Duren, Peter, Richard A. Askey, and Uta C. Merzbach, eds. A Century of Mathematics in America. 3 vols. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 1988–1989. Gray, Jeremy. Ideas of Space: Euclidean, Non-Euclidean, and Relativistic. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1989. Greenberg, Marvin J. Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry: Development and History. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1993. Halsted, George. “Biography: Lobachevsky.” American Mathematical Monthly 2:5 (1895): 136–9. Heilbron, J.L. Geometry Civilized: History, Culture, and Technique. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Honsberger, Ross. Episodes in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Euclidean Geometry. Washington, DC: Mathematical Association of America, 1996. Rosenfeld, Boris A. A History of Non-Euclidean Geometry: Evolution of the Concept of a Geometric Space. Trans. Hardy Grant, with Abe Shenitzer. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1988. Ryan, Patrick J. Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Tarwater, Dalton, ed. The Bicentennial Tribute to American Mathematics, 1776–1976. Papers presented at the fiftyninth annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America commemorating the nation’s bicentennial, Buffalo, New York, 1977.

Section 12: Essays 723

The Computer Revolution T

he computer is a programmable electronic machine that uses transistor technology (“hardware”) to perform a number of mathematical tasks (“software”). The precursors to modern computers date back thousands of years, developing from simple devices such as the abacus to more technically advanced calculators. In America, the foundations of modern computer technology were established in the late 1800s with the work of such mathematicians as Herman Hollerith, who invented calculating machines. World War II and the subsequent Cold War encouraged the rapid development of electronic computers for military purposes; systems and complex software programs were devised to complete enormous mathematical tasks in a fraction of the time humans would take to perform the same functions. Computers remained large and expensive until the 1970s, when American inventors introduced microcomputers, the memory chip, and speedy computer processors. The computer science field, which has expanded greatly in the last two decades, involves the study of numerical and theoretical information, as it relates to computation, including human calculation or computation by electronic computer systems.

Protot ypes Nineteenth-century British inventor Charles Babbage was first to discover how to construct a programmable computer. After years spent studying mathematical calculation tables that often produced erroneous results, he envisioned a fixed device, which he called a “difference engine,” that would deliver accurate results. In 1822, Babbage devised a machine with large metal, steam-driven gears that required roughly 25,000 parts; however, he never completed his machines due to the complexity involved. He designed his last model shortly before his death in 1871. The bulky machine, which he called an “analytical engine,” measured 60 feet by 30 feet. It was able to hold 1,000 numbers of fifty digits each, and it could make a difficult calculation using a series of programmed punch

cards as the programming input. Although Babbage died before he could complete the analytical engine, his ideas would inspire the creation of the first electronic computers a century later. William Bundy, a clockmaker and jeweler, and Herman Hollerith, a statistician, combined ideas and inventions to fuel the development of mechanical computers. Bundy invented a device in 1888 that was both a clock and a tool to measure employee hours; it later became the punch clock. Bundy’s company began mass-producing these clocks in 1889, along with other measurement machines. Hollerith invented the Electric Tabulating Machine, which proved highly successful in calculating 1890 U.S. Census results. Hollerith founded the Tabulation Machine Company, which merged with Bundy’s company to form the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation in 1911 in Endicott, New York. The company produced a range of mechanical devices, including voting punch-card readers, typing machines, scales for weight measurement, and employee punch-card systems for payroll. When CTR expanded into Canadian markets in 1917, it became International Business Machines (IBM). Over the next few decades, the company designed engine parts, tabulating equipment, and high-technology weapons components. In the 1930s, IBM scientists researched an advanced electronic machine to do more than perform simple mathematical calculations. Working with Harvard’s Howard Aiken, in 1944, the company constructed the Mark I. Standing 6 feet tall by 5 feet wide, the Mark I could process limited programs to calculate logarithms and trigonometric functions. It was slow, requiring five seconds for simple multiplication, but once programmed, it could complete long computations. Aiken ultimately built a series of these machines, each surpassing the previous model in its capabilities. In 1940, George Stibitz of Bell Labs developed the Complex Number Calculator, which could be operated remotely via the telephone. Two University of Pennsylvania researchers, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, built a massive computer in 1945 called the Electrical Numerical Integrator and

724 Section 12: Essays Computer (ENIAC); it took up nearly 1,800 square feet and used more than 18,000 vacuum tubes and multiple electronic units that sent or routed computations with a series of switches and settable tables. ENIAC was the first “wire your own” technology, as it was able to handle various mathematical formulas, versus the common “fixed design” machine that handled only one or a few fixed tasks. The ENIAC used ten decimal digits, punch-card input and output, one multiplier machine, a divider-square rooter, and twenty adding machines. It could store limited information, and it could count at a speed of 0.0002 seconds per number.

Sof tware John von Neumann, a leading mathematician who worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, conceptualized a computer that had “variable hardware components” capable of executing thousands of software configurations. In 1945, he designed computer concepts with programs that could be stored and accessed, so that the information was not in sequence. Von Neumann’s contributions allowed the next generation of computer builders to put data and instruction programs together in the same place and have these elements function cooperatively. By 1947, computer designs included the first random access memory program, which von Neumann designed. By this time, computers were down to the size of a grand piano and had fewer than 2,500 vacuum tubes, but these machines still required extensive maintenance and upkeep. Many colleges and universities began to open computer science programs and departments, investing in new faculty and research programs to develop new machines and software. One of the first commercial software programs was the Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC), written by Thomas Kurtz and John Kemeny in 1963 at the Dartmouth Mathematics Lab in Hanover, New Hampshire. Kurtz and Kemeny created an understandable software language for simple applications, such as a code written to make a message appear repeatedly on a monitor screen. The applications were limitless but required individual programming.

Around the same time, other software languages were written. IBM produced FORTRAN for mathematical calculations. A collective of computer programmers in Zurich, Germany, developed C, which became the standard language for business computing in the 1960s.

The Home Computer In 1968, Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore, two computer design engineers, formed a small company called Intel in Santa Clara, California, to design and manufacture computer components. Intel raised over $2.5 million in venture capital and, in 1971, released its first computer brain, or microprocessor. This microprocessor was an integrated electronic circuit board that could process four bits of data at a time. Previously, only the military, government agencies, and universities could afford to design and manage a computer system. But now Intel was designing “consumer” components such as processors and memory chips that could process and save data. Another company, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), used the Intel processor in a new computer called the Altair 8800. Released in 1975, and the first machine to be referred to as a “personal computer” (PC), the Altair 8800 sold for $397. It came with no software; the users had to write their own software, using a series of switches on the machine. During the 1980s, the personal computer became widespread because of developments in microprocessors, silicon data chips, keyboards, monitors, and a handheld control device called a “mouse.” IBM released the IBM PC in 1981, which had a 16,000-character memory and cost $1,265. IBM also began installing the first version of “servers” in businesses, which included multiple computers sharing information. Apple, a computer company formed by Steve Jobs and others in 1976, took computing to the next consumer level in 1984 when the company released the Macintosh line of desktops. This computer looked like a small television set; the unit had all the components built in, with plugs for a mouse, keyboard, and printer. Microsoft, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, devised the MS-DOS operating system. This system dominated the software market

Section 12: Essays 725 in the 1980s. DOS was eventually replaced by Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which, by 1990, had captured almost 90 percent of the PC market. Advances in the 1990s included Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system, which was able to run multiple word processing, data analysis, communication, and other programs at the same time. On the hardware side, Intel experienced parallel success, growing into the largest chip manufacturer, producing a range of semiconductor products, including computer processor motherboard chips, network cards, memory chips, graphic chips, and other communications devices. Intel released the Pentium chip in 1993, which was made up of over 4 million individual transistors and allowed users to perform tasks more than two times faster than previous chips. By the late 1990s, the platform for processor chips was advanced from 32-bit to 64-bit, providing a substantial increase in a computer’s capacity and ability to handle simultaneous mathematical calculations. In 2000, Intel released the Pentium 4 chip, featuring 42 million transistors and running at a speed of 1.5 gigahertz. The Intel Pentium 4 processor was able to run multiple computer applications, communicate via video conferencing, deliver television programs

and movies, and be connected to the Internet— all at the same time. Modern computer technology—especially the personal computer, the Internet, and the World Wide Web—has spurred the development of a global economy, changed the speed and efficiency by which humans communicate, and become an essential part of academic, government, and consumer communications and data management. Computers have become the backbone of modern technology. The speed by which information can be stored, analyzed, and transmitted has resulted in a worldwide society, able to quickly share information. Especially in America, people have come to expect technological change and to anticipate future advances with increasing eagerness. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Allan, Roy. A History of the Personal Computer. London, Ontario, Canada: Allan, 2001. Burks, Alice. Who Invented the Computer? New York: Prometheus, 2003. Campbell-Kelly, Martin, and William Aspray. Computer: A History of the Information Machine. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Cringely, Robert. Accidental Empires. New York: Perseus, 1992. Kaplan, David. The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

The Internet T

he Internet, which links millions of computers around the world, is arguably the most powerful medium of communication ever devised. Like the telegraph, the telephone, and the radio, the Internet has dramatically reduced the significance of geographical distance, while facilitating commerce, the sharing of resources, and the exchange of information. Some elements of the Internet—most notably uniform resource locators (URLs) and hypertext markup language (HTML)—were developed by European computer scientists. But most of the theoretical underpinnings and practical applications that made the Internet possible were developed in the United States.

L ANs, WANs, and ARPANET The roots of the Internet date to the 1940s, when the first computer network was constructed by George Stibitz and a team of Bell Laboratories scientists in New Jersey. The Stibitz network was composed of a small handful of computers linked by telephone lines and housed entirely in the Bell offices. Small networks like this would soon come to be known as local area networks (LANs). They remain the most common type of computer network in use today. Stibitz’s team laid the groundwork for the Internet only in a general sense, because the Internet is not a LAN but a wide area network (WAN).

726 Section 12: Essays WANs differ from LANs in two critical ways. First, LANs tend to be highly centralized, organized around one or more powerful central computers called servers. WANs, on the other hand, tend to be decentralized. Second, and more important, LANs are much smaller than WANs. LANs are confined to a limited geographical area, usually a single building; their reach is sometimes defined as a maximum of one square kilometer. WANs are spread across a much broader geographical area—a city, a country, even the entire world. The first major WAN, and the direct predecessor of the Internet, was the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). Node 1 of ARPANET went online at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1969. It was soon followed by nodes at Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. By the end of the year, twenty universities were part of the network; three years later, another forty-six universities and research institutions were added. In the 1960s and 1970s, computing resources were scarce and very valuable. ARPANET allowed researchers working on Department of Defense (DOD) projects to share these resources. It was not long, however, before the members of the network discovered other uses for the interconnectivity of ARPANET. In 1971, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson developed a system for exchanging electronic mail messages between different nodes of the network. E-mail soon became a significant part of ARPANET traffic. Shortly thereafter, development began on a system of posting messages to topical “news groups.” In 1979, this system became formalized with the establishment of Usenet. Early Usenet groups soon strayed from news to discussions of topics such as sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Sharing information about sex, drugs, and rock and roll was not what the Department of Defense had envisioned as the use of its computer network. So by the mid-1980s, with the original purpose of ARPANET largely lost and e-mail and newsgroup postings making up nearly all of the traffic on the network, the DOD began to distance itself from the project. Control

of ARPANET passed to the federal National Science Foundation (NSF). At roughly the same time, a number of other WANs were established. Some of these, such as BITNET and CSNET, were based at universities. Others, such as PSINet, Commercial Internet Exchange, Portal, and Netcom, were privately owned and accessible to the general public, which was increasingly wired, thanks to the personal computer revolution. The Internet was born when the NSF allowed these networks to be connected to ARPANET in the late 1980s. By 1990, it was clear that ARPANET’s use was evolving in different directions from the DOD’s original plan. This led to a major change in the federal government’s approach to the Internet. ARPANET was taken off-line, and the Defense Department shifted its resources to a different WAN called MILNET. The rest of ARPANET’s traffic was moved to a new and more robust backbone called NSFNet. The High Performance Computing Act of 1991, sponsored by Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, extended the Internet’s reach into community colleges, high schools, and elementary schools. No longer was the Internet envisioned as a means of sharing computer power; instead, it had become a means of sharing information.

World Wide Web The government’s reorganization of the Internet came just as a new phase in the Internet’s development was getting under way. As popular as e-mail and Usenet are, their significance pales in comparison to that of the World Wide Web, which came into being in the early 1990s. The Web’s existence is dependent on three basic innovations. The first was hypertext, credited to American computer engineers Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart, who worked independently of one another in the 1960s. The basic concept of hypertext is that information in other texts and on other computers can be instantly accessed by clicking on a link in the original text or on the original computer, a particularly effective and dynamic way of organizing content. The second and third innovations that made the Internet possible were both developed in 1989 by researcher Tim Berners-Lee at the European

Section 12: Essays 727 Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. His uniform resource locators (URLs) allow computer files to be uniquely identified, and his hypertext markup language (HTML) provide a means for combining text and hyperlinks into a single document readable by any computer. Even with the creation of URLs and HTML, however, the World Wide Web was not quite fully realized. For the first several years after BernersLee’s groundbreaking work, the Web was made up entirely of text. While HTML has the capacity to accommodate pictures and graphics, the software necessary to display those elements took additional time to develop. In 1992, two graphical Web browsers, Viola and Mosaic, were made available to the public. Viola, the work of the University of California, Berkeley, was not successful, but Mosaic, developed by the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, soon found its way onto millions of computers. Mosaic project leader Marc Andreesen went into business for himself, forming the Netscape Corporation. Netscape’s Navigator software, released in 1994, was the first successful commercial browser, followed a year later by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The importance of graphical browsers cannot be overstated. When Mosaic was first released, the World Wide Web comprised only fifty sites. Three years later, when Microsoft entered the fray, the number of sites had jumped to 25,000. With such rapid growth, it is no surprise that the Internet quickly drew the attention of corporations such as Microsoft. Perhaps the most salient Internet trend of the mid-1990s was the increased presence of businesses in cyberspace. The most obvious manifestation of this trend was the rise of Web-based commerce, but there were other important ways in which corporate interests asserted themselves. Before 1995, the software that drove the Internet was generally created by public entities. The University of Minnesota’s Gopher, Dartmouth University’s Fetch, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Telnet and Mosaic are but a few examples. These programs, and their source codes, were given away freely. But beginning with Netscape, the software driving the Web was created largely by private businesses.

This gave corporations a great deal of control over the direction of the Internet—sometimes too much. In 2001, for example, the Microsoft Corporation faced a major antitrust lawsuit because of its manipulation of the Web browser market. The infrastructure that makes up the Internet also became privatized. ARPANET was under the control of the federal government, as was NSFNet. Shortly after the NSFNet backbone was created, however, it began to be broken up and sold off to private telecommunications companies. By 1994, what had been NSFNet was entirely in the hands of corporations, including MCI, Sprint, AT&T, and Netcom. Connections to these privately held networks were provided mostly by large companies such as Microsoft and America Online (AOL). By the year 1996, AOL controlled some 55 percent of the market. Meanwhile, the withdrawal of NSF left management of the Internet in the hands of public entities such as the Internet Engineering Task Force and private companies such as Network Solutions.

Broadband High-speed, or broadband, access to the Internet was becoming increasingly crucial as Web sites became more elaborate and more data heavy, and thus slower to download by conventional dial-up telephone line access. American scientists and corporations pioneered the way. The earliest work on one form of broadband—digital subscriber lines (DSL)—was conducted in the late 1980s by computer technologist Joe Lechleider at Bell Communications Research, the research consortium of the regional Bell telephone companies. Around the same time, scientists at the American-owned corporation Motorola were helping to perfect the other main type of wired broadband access, the cable modem. While DSL works over telephone lines, the cable modem provides a connection via the same wiring that brings consumers their cable television. However, the future of broadband access, most computer experts say, is wireless. The precursor to current high-speed wireless Internet access, or WiFi, was invented in 1991 by scientists

728 Section 12: Essays working for Lucent, the manufacturing wing of AT&T. Christopher Bates

Sources Bronson, Po. The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley. New York: Random House, 1999. Cassidy, John. Dot.con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

Hafner, Katie, and Matthew Lyon. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. New York: Touchstone, 1998. Kaplan, Philip J. F’d Companies: Spectacular Dot-Com Flameouts. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002. Kuo, J. David. dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath. New York: Little, Brown, 2001. Stoll, Clifford. Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage. New York: Pocket Books, 2000. ———. Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway. New York: Anchor, 1996.

A–Z A I K E N , H O WA R D (1900–1973) Electrical engineer Howard Aiken designed the Mark I, the first large-scale automatic computer capable of performing thousands of complex mathematical calculations. The Mark I was built for Harvard University by International Business Machines (IBM), and Aiken went on to design several more advanced computers, all housed at Harvard. Howard Hathaway Aiken was born on March 8, 1900, in Hoboken, New Jersey. Aiken was an only child, and he and his parents moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, when he was a teenager. After his father deserted the family, Aiken dropped out of school and got a job installing telephones. He later completed correspondent courses and graduated from Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis in 1919. The family then moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where Aiken took a job with a utility company and attended the University of Wisconsin. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1923, he held a string of jobs with various electric companies over the next decade. At the age of thirty-three, and with more experience than most graduate students, Aiken was accepted into the graduate physics program at Harvard University, where he did research on the engineering of antennas and the thermionic emissions of electrons. His thesis was on the conductivity of vacuum tubes, which used power to amplify a signal by controlling the movement of electrons. After earning his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1939, he was hired by Harvard as an assistant professor. He would teach there for the next twenty-two years. One of Aiken’s goals was to build a computer. He had been fascinated with Charles Babbage’s 1822 concept of a mechanical “difference engine” to perform complex mathematical calculations. In his thesis research, Aiken had performed extensive differential equations in cylindrical coordi-

nates, which had taken large amounts of time and energy. He had completed his design for a computing device as a graduate student but did not have the funding or facilities to begin building it. Although the physics department at Harvard did not really see the need for what it regarded as a large calculator, it eventually agreed to fund the “computing machine.” Aiken picked IBM to build it. Construction began in 1939 at the IBM facilities in Endicott, New York. The project would take five years to complete, at a cost of $250,000. When Aiken was called to active duty in the U.S. Navy in the spring of 1941, he appointed Harvard graduate student Robert Campbell to oversee the project in his absence. The five-ton device was finished in early 1944 and shipped in boxes to Harvard for reassembly. The navy released Aiken to work on the final assembly and initial programming at Harvard. Originally called the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (ASCC), the machine was renamed the Mark I. It measured 51 feet (15.5 meters) long, 8 feet (2.4 meters) high, and 3 feet (9 meters) deep. It used 530 miles (850 kilometers) of copper wire and contained 760,000 electrical parts. Although it was the property of the U.S. Navy, the computer was housed at Harvard with a large support staff. Aiken was closely involved in the first tasks of the Mark I, which ran twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The initial problem-solving tasks pertained to military matters, such as protecting ships from mines with magnetic fields and the operation of radar technology. Aiken also brought the Mark I to bear on problems encountered by scientists working on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. At Harvard, a new academic department (called “computer science”) was created and Aiken developed a series of courses based on the Mark I. He created the Harvard Computation Laboratory in 1947 and served as its director until his retirement in 1961. The Mark I remained in active use for fourteen years, until 1959. Using the experience from his first machine, Aiken designed the Mark II—commissioned by

729

730 Section 12: Aiken, Howard the navy—with more advanced electromagnetic relays and built-in hardware for a diversity of trigonometric, reciprocal, square root, and exponential functions. During an early test, a moth was found trapped between two relay points— this “bug in the system” led to the now common term for any computer problem. Aiken’s next computer design, for the Mark III, pioneered the use of magnetic drum memory to store commands and data. The Mark IV, developed for the U.S. Air Force, employed a fully magnetic core memory that was completely electronic. Completed in 1952, the Mark IV was the first computer to integrate metal circuitry (ferrite) to improve the core memory. Aiken’s computer science program at Harvard flourished in the 1950s, turning out an all-star roster of computer experts for the federal government and cutting-edge private companies such as IBM, Intel, Texas Instruments, and Hewlett Packard. He continued teaching until his retirement in 1961. In 1970, Aiken received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Edison Medal for his “pioneering contributions to the development and application of large-scale digital computers and important contributions to education in the digital computer field.” He died in his sleep on March 14, 1973. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Aiken, Howard. Synthesis of Electronic Computing and Control Circuits. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952. Campbell-Kelly, Martin, and William Aspray. Computer: A History of the Information Machine. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Cohen, Bernard I. Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. ———. Makin’ Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

A M E R I C A N M AT H E M AT I C A L SOCIETY The American Mathematical Society (AMS) was founded in New York City on November 24, 1888, for the purpose of promoting cooperation between mathematicians and advancing mathe-

matical scholarship and research. The AMS continues to accomplish these goals today through regular meetings and publications. It has nearly 30,000 members (about 7,300 outside the United States) and maintains offices in Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Washington, D.C.; and Ann Arbor, Michigan. The AMS was envisioned by Thomas S. Fiske, Harold Jacoby, and Edward L. Stabler of Columbia College (Columbia University from 1896). They proposed an organized society for American mathematicians and announced their intention through the publication of a notice of an impending meeting in November 1888, on the morning of Thanksgiving Day. In attendance were Fiske, Jacoby, Stabler, J.H. Van Amringe, John K. Rees, and James Maclay. During the second meeting, on November 29, a constitution was adopted and the New York Mathematical Society (NYMS) was formally established. Van Amringe was elected president, and Fiske was designated secretary. Constitutional amendments passed on July 1, 1894, transformed the NYMS into the AMS. A further reorganization on May 3, 1923, incorporated the AMS under the laws of the District of Columbia. Membership in the AMS grew progressively. By the end of 1889, there were sixteen chartered members, and, at the time of incorporation, membership had grown to 1,250. The expansion of the membership network coincided with the publication of the first journal of the AMS. During a meeting on December 5, 1890, Van Amringe, retiring as president, proposed that the AMS should publish a society bulletin. The realization of his vision hinged on adequate increases in membership subscriptions, but the increases depended on the publication of a journal. Several publishing houses, notably Macmillan and John Wiley and Sons, helped breach the impasse by providing lists of people with an interest in mathematics. Fiske sent them prospectuses of the bulletin along with an invitation to join the AMS. Having expanded its membership and subscription base, the society began publication of the AMS Bulletin in 1891 with Fiske as editor-in-chief. By 2005, the AMS Bulletin and Notices circulated to more mathematicians throughout the world than any other mathematical journal. The AMS publishes more than 100 books and nine research journals annually, containing more than

Section 12: Apple Computers 731 1,000 articles. It has more than 3,000 research monographs, collected works, proceedings, and textbooks in print; it also maintains the Mathematical Reviews database, facilitating online searching of more than 1.7 million reviews and citations. More than 200 people are employed by the AMS in publishing, setting fiscal and scientific policies, organizing the profession, advancing education, establishing prizes and awards, and arranging national and international meetings and conferences. Santi S. Chanthaphavong

Sources American Mathematical Society. http://www.ams.org. Archibald, R.C. A Semicentennial History of the American Mathematical Society, 1888–1938. New York: American Mathematical Society, 1938. Pitcher, Everett. A History of the Second Fifty Years, American Mathematical Society, 1939–1988. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 1988.

and Jobs assumed the chairmanship. Intensifying competition in the industry combined with a national economic recession to cause the first decline in Apple sales and the first employee layoffs in the company’s history. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Apple’s major competitor was IBM, which, in 1981, introduced its PC, using Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system. Jobs oversaw the development of the Macintosh PC, which featured a graphical user interface (GUI) that greatly simplified the process of initiating program commands. To market the Macintosh, Jobs recruited John Sculley, the president of Pepsi-Cola, to become president and CEO of Apple. Although the Macintosh had promising initial sales, several deficiencies eroded its appeal. Jobs and Sculley blamed each other for the declining sales. In

APPLE COMPUTERS Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak were high school friends, both of whom dropped out of college and began working for firms in Silicon Valley (on the peninsula south of San Francisco), then emerging as the design center of the computer industry. The two men had ambitions of starting a computer firm that would transform the personal computer into the dominant platform within the industry. In the mid-1970s, Wozniak developed a personal computer that Jobs would eventually help him market as the Apple 1. On April 1, 1976, Apple Computers was formally incorporated. The company did not become profitable until 1977, when the Apple II, the first PC to feature color graphics and to be contained in a plastic casing, was introduced. It gained a firm footing the following year, after the release of the Apple Disk II, the first PC to feature an affordable and readily accessible floppy drive. By 1980, when the Apple III was introduced, the company had thousands of employees and a formal corporate structure. Thereafter, the company faced several crises. Seriously injured in a plane crash, Wozniak took a leave of absence,

Computer engineer and entrepreneur Steve Jobs cofounded Apple Computer with Steve Wozniak in the mid-1970s. The Apple II, introduced in 1977, was the company’s first popular microcomputer and the most successful of all early personal desktops. (Ralph Morse/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

732 Section 12: Apple Computers May 1985, after dramatic behind-the-scenes corporate scheming, Sculley managed to oust Jobs from the corporate hierarchy. Under Sculley’s leadership, Apple experienced a dramatic change in fortune. The company became involved in a protracted legal battle with Microsoft over the latter’s alleged incorporation of the Macintosh GUI in the Windows operating system. The dispute shook consumer and industry confidence in the company and led to declines in both its stock price and sales. In 1985, Apple was forced to lay off about 20 percent of its workforce, or more than 1,200 employees. In the midst of this crisis, however, Apple designers developed PageMaker, the first desktop publishing program, and LaserWriter, the first relatively inexpensive laser printer, for use with the company’s new PC, the Mac II. In the late 1980s, the company’s profits regularly exceeded Wall Street expectations. Apple’s success was short-lived, because Microsoft had begun marketing its Windows 3.0 operating system to the increasing number of companies marketing clones of the IBM PC. In attempting to maintain proprietary control of its hardware and software, Apple had become an anachronism in the industry. In 1991, the company successfully introduced the PowerBooks line of lightweight laptop computers, but the Newton Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), introduced in 1993, had disappointing sales. Sculley was forced out by the board of directors in June 1993. Under Sculley’s successor, Michael Spindler, Apple developed the PowerMac, using the PowerPC processor. When the company could not meet the market demand for PowerMacs, orders began to level off. In addition, the company successfully marketed the inexpensive Performa PC, but the profit margin was so narrow that the sales success did little for Apple’s overall bottom line. In January 1996, Spindler was removed and replaced by Gil Amelio. The company was reporting quarterly losses of three-quarters of a billion dollars, but Amelio forced through a dramatic restructuring that restored modest profitability. Apple acquired NeXT, planning to develop NeXTstep into a new Mac operating system to be called Rhapsody. Steven Jobs was brought back to oversee this project and, when

Amelio resigned under pressure in July 1997, Jobs and Fred Anderson, the company’s CFO, jointly managed the company. As interim chair of Apple, Jobs revamped the corporate structure and replaced most of the directors on the board. He dramatically announced a cooperative agreement with Apple’s longtime nemesis, Microsoft, and introduced a series of new PowerMacs and the tremendously successful iMac. The company again became highly profitable, its stock price rose throughout the late 1990s, and Jobs was able to drop “interim” from his title. Apple’s next major innovation, the Cube, was as disappointing as the iMac had been successful. The company subsequently concentrated on marketing proprietary ancillary devices and services, such as the iPod and iTunes. Martin Kich

Sources Brackett, Virginia. Steve Jobs: Computer Genius of Apple. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2003. Butcher, Lee. Accidental Millionaire: The Rise and Fall of Steve Jobs at Apple Computers. New York: Paragon, 1988. Kendall, Martha E. Steve Wozniak: Inventor of Apple Computer. New York: Walker, 1994. Linzmayer, Owen W. Apple Confidential: The Real Story of Apple Computer, Inc. San Francisco: Publishers Group West, 1999. Moritz, Michael. The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer. New York: William Morrow, 1984. Rose, Frank. West of Eden: The End of Innocence at Apple Computer. New York: Viking, 1989.

A P P L I E D M AT H E M AT I C S American achievements transformed applied mathematics from an embryonic discipline in the nineteenth century to a discipline that proved crucial to the Allied victory in World War II. In the postwar period, this discipline became of central importance to industry. Applied mathematicians begin with a consideration of real-world problems, envision separate elements of the problem under consideration, and abstract those elements into mathematical representations and structures. The nineteenth-century Yale professor Josiah Willard Gibbs was the first important American applied

Section 12: Banneker, Benjamin 733 mathematician, working especially in statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. During the early to mid-twentieth century, American mathematicians developed mathematical theories in statistics, physics, quantum mechanics, chemistry, and artificial intelligence. Harvard mathematician G.D. Birkhoff developed the ergodic theorem and worked in statistical physics and quantum mechanics. The ergodic theorem was also important in developing a kinetic theory of gases. MIT professor Norbert Wiener was a pioneer in stochastic processes, particularly Brownian motion, which explains the random nature of subatomic particles. In 1935, Richard Courant founded the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences, focusing on applied mathematics, at New York University. In the spring of 1937, Samuel S. Wilks taught mathematical statistics to undergraduates at Princeton. By 1940, serious work in mathematical statistics was being done by Harold Hotelling at Columbia and Jerzy Neyman at Berkeley. In 1941, William Prager and R.G.D. Richardson established a Program of Advanced Instruction and Research in Applied Mechanics at Brown University. Despite these significant advances, applied mathematics remained a discipline dominated by physicists and engineers and practiced by few professional mathematicians. Applied mathematics rose to prominence when America mobilized its ablest mathematicians in support of the nation’s military effort in World War II. The emphasis on applied mathematics derived from a recognition that the outcome of the war depended on obtaining solutions to mathematical problems in submarine warfare, radar, electronic countermeasures, explosives, rocketry, operations research, and cryptanalysis. The Applied Mathematics Panel (AMP) was established in 1942 to provide leadership in applied mathematics during the war. The AMP promoted programs in applied mathematics at Princeton, Columbia, New York, UC Berkeley, Brown, Harvard, and Northwestern, and it involved such important American mathematicians as Vannevar Bush, Warren Weaver, Richard Courant, and Oswald Veblen. Mathematicians who contributed to the development of computer science during the war included John von Neumann, who was also instrumental to the success of the Manhattan Pro-

ject, and George Stibitz of Bell Telephone Laboratories (a war contractor), who exhibited a machine for computing complex numbers with telephone relays. In 1946 the Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania operated ENIAC, the first electronic computer. The U.S. leadership in computer technology became possible through the establishment of the National Applied Mathematics Laboratories of the National Bureau of Standards and the Institute for Numerical Analysis at UCLA. The growing importance of applied mathematics in science and technology led to the establishment of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 1951 in Philadelphia. Mathematicians who had worked in cryptography also supported industrial efforts to commercialize computers between 1946 and 1953. During the latter half of the twentieth century, applied mathematics involved game theory, control theory, and operations research. Linear, dynamic, and integer programming has become an indispensable tool of economics, business, and finance. Santi S. Chanthaphavong

Source Duren, Peter, Richard A. Askey, and Uta C. Merzbach, eds. A Century of Mathematics in America. 3 vols. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 1988–1989.

BANNEKER, BENJAMIN (1731–1806) Benjamin Banneker, an eighteenth-century independent scholar from Maryland, was a surveyor, astronomer, and almanac publisher. His intellectual accomplishments were impressive in and of themselves, especially in light of his status as an African American in a slave state, where free African Americans such as Banneker were subjected to prejudice and persecution. Banneker’s maternal grandmother, Molly Welsh, a dairymaid in Devon, England, was accused of stealing milk from her employer in 1682. She was sentenced to seven years of indentured servitude in Maryland, where, after completing her sentence, she was given fifty acres of arable

734 Section 12: Banneker, Benjamin

A free black tobacco farmer, clockmaker, surveyor, and self-taught astronomer from Maryland, Benjamin Banneker published the widely respected Banneker’s Almanack from 1792 through 1797. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

farmland as required by law and managed to buy two African American slaves. One of the slaves was known as “Banneka,” and Welsh eventually freed and married him. Their grandson, Benjamin Banneker, was born near Ellicott’s Lower Mills, Maryland, on November 9, 1731. Many details of Banneker’s life are unknown or unclear. As a boy, he was befriended by a Quaker schoolmaster named Peter Heinrich, who encouraged him in his studies. Heinrich lent him books, conversed with him, and perhaps enrolled Benjamin in his school. Regardless of his education, Banneker was extremely well

read. He demonstrated extraordinary intelligence and intellectual curiosity throughout his life. As a young adult, Banneker supported himself by farming, pursuing intellectual endeavors such as astronomy in his free time. In 1753, he amazed his community with a wooden clock he had designed and built on his own; in that era, timepieces were rare. Later, he developed a close friendship with George Ellicott, a fellow intellectual who recognized Banneker’s genius and appreciated the knowledge and wisdom that Banneker imparted. Since Ellicott was white, however, the relationship was awkward. Nevertheless, in 1790, when the U.S. Congress began plans to create a permanent national capital, Ellicot’s uncle, Andrew Ellicott, was appointed to the position of surveyor general. He, in turn, appointed Banneker as one of his personal assistants, risking his reputation by selecting an African American. For several months, Banneker proudly worked alongside the white men, though racism made life difficult from day to day. Probably Banneker’s greatest claim to fame was his Almanac, which contained, in his words, “the motions of the sun and moon, the true places and aspects of the planets, the rising and setting of the sun, rising, setting, and southing of the moon, the lunations, conjunctions, and eclipses, and the rising, setting, and southing of the planets and noted fixed stars.” The first edition was dated 1792, and Banneker published new editions each year until 1797. These almanacs were well regarded and widely respected. For some buyers, the author ’s African American heritage was a selling point; many wished to support the work of an African American, and others considered the book an amusing novelty. Banneker began to receive a multitude of letters from admiring readers, as well as a steady stream of visitors to his home. Just before the publication of his first almanac, Banneker took a bold step. He sent a handwritten advance copy to Thomas Jefferson, then secretary of state, together with a lengthy personal letter. Generally respectful in tone, the letter nevertheless included a sharp and direct criticism of Jefferson’s slaveholding. Jefferson replied with a polite but evasive note praising the almanac.

Section 12: Brownian Motion 735 Banneker died on October 9, 1806. On the day of the funeral, his home was burned to the ground in an apparent act of arson. Many valuable records were lost, including a mass of personal writings and the famous wooden clock. Historians have had limited success in documenting his life and work, but he is still widely regarded as an inspirational figure. Andrew Perry

Sources Beddini, Silvio A. The Life of Benjamin Banneker. Rancho Cordova, CA: Landmark Enterprises, 1984. Cerami, Charles. Benjamin Banneker. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2002.

B R OW N I A N M OT I O N Brownian motion is the random movement of microscopic particles suspended in a gas or liquid that is caused by the particles’ collisions with molecules in the surrounding liquid or gas. Observations of this movement in the nineteenth century provided the first visible evidence for the existence of molecules. By the start of the twenty-first century, Brownian motion had become the basis for a variety of mathematical models used in science, manufacturing, and economics. Brownian motion is named after Robert Brown, the Scottish botanist who first described the phenomenon in 1827, after observing the random motions of evening primrose pollen as it floated in water on a microscope slide. After conducting more research, Brown theorized that the motion of the tiny particles was not due to the pollen being alive, but to the action of invisible molecules in constant collisions with the tiny particles. In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper that connected the Brownian motion phenomenon to the molecular-kinetic theory of heat and provided the first mathematical theory explaining the concept. Subsequent studies of Brownian motion by the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Perrin verified Einstein’s explanation in 1908 and ultimately confirmed the atomic nature of all matter. For his work, Perrin received the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Research into the nature and applications of Brownian motion by American scientists began in earnest in the 1920s when MIT mathematics professor Norbert Wiener, who is perhaps more widely known for his work in cybernetics, began relating Brownian motion to stochastic process mathematical theories based on random variables. Wiener ’s work was so influential that Brownian motion is now often called the Wiener process. By the 1930s, physicist George Uhlenbeck was doing pioneering work leading to a new theory of macroscopic Brownian motion as a process. Throughout the 1940s, Brownian motion emerged as a fairly well-known and well-explicated physical phenomenon, yet it was not until the late 1950s that the concept became more widely known outside the fields of physics and mathematics. In 1959, M.F.M. Osborne, a physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, applied the concept of Brownian motion to his studies of the apparent randomness of the stock market. Drawing heavily on the theories of the late nineteenth-century French mathematician Louis Bachelier, Osborne developed “econophysics,” a model combining physics and financial economies. His research would eventually challenge several of the longestablished macroeconomic and neoclassical models in economics. By the 1970s, notions of Brownian motion had influenced the work of IBM researcher Benoit Mandelbrot on fractal geometry, which he defined as “a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is . . . a reduced-size copy of the whole.” Mandelbrot’s fractal research revolutionized the field of digital graphics in everything from medical imaging to computer gaming. Today, the concept of Brownian motion is at the heart of such diverse fields as statistical physics, complex systems analysis, and manufacturing operations research. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Mandelbrot, Benoit B. The Fractal Geometry of Nature. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1982. Mazo, Robert. Brownian Motion: Fluctuations, Dynamics, and Applications. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

736 Section 12: Bush, Vannevar

B U S H , V A N N E VA R (1890–1974) Professor, engineer, and a leading supporter of scientific and technological development, Vannevar Bush helped to shape some of the emerging trends in twentieth-century America. Some of his most notable achievements were in the development of the computer and the increased involvement of the federal government in providing funding and setting national policy in science and technology. Born on March 11, 1890, Bush grew up in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He attended Tufts University and in 1916 earned a doctorate in engineering from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He taught and directed research in engineering at MIT from 1919 to 1938, serving the last six years as dean of the engineering school. While teaching at MIT, Bush developed an interest in the construction of computers that could solve the complex mathematical equations commonly used by engineers. In the 1920s, Bush and his students developed a machine that could find

the area under a curve where the curve is represented by the product of two functions. This device, called a network analyzer, was completed in 1927. In the following years, Bush and his students produced several other computing devices, including the differential analyzer (in 1930), which could solve the complex equations used in creating electrical power networks. A second, more advanced differential analyzer, completed in 1942, cut the programming time (over a day) of the original down to under five minutes. These computers, as well as others designed or envisioned by Bush, were analog devices that would be replaced by speedier and more advanced digital computers following World War II. Besides his contributions as a teacher and engineer, Bush was also a key figure in the growing involvement of the federal government in supporting science. As president of the Carnegie Institution starting in 1939, he directed grants to support a variety of scientific pursuits. As Bush became involved in national scientific policy, he pushed for the creation of an organization that could coordinate civilian and military research needs. He believed such an

Computer design pioneer Vannevar Bush (far left) works with colleagues at MIT in the 1930s on his differential analyzer, a predecessor to the analog computer. Bush later helped direct U.S. science policy during World War II. (General Photographic Agency/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Section 12: Calculus 737 organization was vital, given the failure of civilian–military cooperation during World War I and the growing tensions in Europe. President Franklin D. Roosevelt took his advice on this issue, and in 1940, Bush was appointed chair of the newly created National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). The committee, which reported to the president as an advisory body, had representatives from both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. When the NDRC was reorganized in 1941 and absorbed into the new Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), Bush became director of the OSRD. He held this position until 1946. The OSRD oversaw many federally funded science projects during World War II, including the government laboratories that developed radar, sonar, and the atomic bomb. Bush, at the request of President Roosevelt, also made recommendations on ways to continue the interaction between the federal government and the scientific community after the war. He recommended expanded federal assistance to restart basic research projects that had been set aside because of the war and to deal with the increasing cost of maintaining and purchasing equipment. Bush urged the federal government to take on a new peacetime role as a financial supporter of basic scientific research, not necessarily through government-run labs, but by funding private research. His hopes and plans in this area were laid out in his 1945 publication Science: The Endless Frontier. Some, but by no means all, of his recommendations resulted in the 1951 creation of the National Science Foundation. When the Red Scare swept across the nation in the early 1950s, Bush publicly defended the loyalty of Robert Oppenheimer. In 1955, Bush retired as president of the Carnegie Institution and left Washington and policy-making circles, discouraged at the new emphasis on national security at the expense of innovation. In his later years, Bush spent his time raising turkeys in New Hampshire and completing a few engineering projects. He sometimes spoke out on the nuclear arms race, the importance of entrepreneurship for engineers and scientists, and the growing commercialization of American life. He died on June 30, 1974. Paul Buckingham

Sources Bush, Vannevar. Operational Circuit Analysis. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1929. ———. Science, the Endless Frontier. A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945.Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945. Nyce, James M., and Paul Kahn, eds. From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind’s Machine. Boston, MA: Academic Press, 1992. Zachary, G. Pascal. Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century. New York: Free Press, 1997.

C A LC U L U S Calculus is a set of general methods for solving mathematical problems involving rates of change and the accumulation of quantities, especially problems involving infinite or infinitesimal quantities. Its discovery in the seventeenth century was a milestone in the history of mathematics and contributed significantly to the development of the physical sciences. Before calculus, mathematics and the associated physical sciences had been hampered by a lack of general methods and notation for solving certain problems. Mathematicians usually addressed problems one at a time, often by developing a different method for each problem. Though parts of what became calculus can be found in the work of many mathematicians, there was no recognition of the existence of a general method prior to the late seventeenth century. Calculus is composed of two general methods: integral and differential calculus. The two types are related, as solutions to problems found by methods of integration can be verified with the tools of differential calculus, and those solved via differentiation can be verified through integration. This concept is called the fundamental theorem of calculus, and its expression by Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton mark them as the codiscoverers of calculus. Newton probably developed his ideas first, but Leibniz, who developed his method independently, was the first to publish, in 1684. This sparked an epic conflict over who developed this key mathematical concept first. Leibniz’s notation is regarded as more flexible than that of Newton and is the one generally used today for both differential and integral calculus.

738 Section 12: Calculus Each type of calculus is used for different categories of problems. Differential calculus is a method of solving problems involving rates of change over time, such as in the acceleration of a solid body or the growth of principle at a given interest rate. Integral calculus is used for solving problems involving the accumulation of quantities, such as determining forces exerted by liquids or measuring the volume and surface area of solids. The core method of calculus was in place by the eighteenth century, and the system was further fleshed out in the nineteenth century, but Americans were not yet contributing significant advances in the theoretical branches of mathematics. The mathematics community in nineteenthcentury America was largely centered around the teaching of basic mathematics for practical purposes, such as mapmaking, navigation, and engineering. Scholarship was largely confined to translations, commentaries, and edited editions of the works of prominent, but not necessarily contemporary, European mathematicians. Only in the late nineteenth century were there scholarly communities in the United States that treated mathematics as more than a tool and began making important contributions in fields associated with calculus. American mathematicians have contributed in such fields as the calculus of variations, differential equations, vector calculus, complex analysis, and differential geometry. Paul Buckingham

Sources Berlinski, David. A Tour of the Calculus. New York: Pantheon, 1995. Duren, Peter, Richard A. Askey, and Uta C. Merzbach. A Century of Mathematics in America. 3 vols. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 1988–1989. Hall, A. Rupert. Philosophers at War: The Quarrel Between Newton and Leibniz. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Tarwater, Dalton, ed. The Bicentennial Tribute to American Mathematics, 1776–1976. Papers presented at the fifty-ninth annual meeting of the Mathematical Association of America commemorating the nation’s bicentennial, Buffalo, New York, 1977.

CHAOS THEORY Chaos theory deals with the irregular, erratic side of nature, such as the swirling of smoke and the

Earth’s weather patterns. It was first developed in 1961 by Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Lorenz was using a computer program to study the possibility of predicting long-term weather patterns, and he wanted to examine one weather sequence at greater length. To begin the simulation in the middle, he typed in a data sequence carried to three decimal places. The computer’s memory retained six decimal places, however, creating a difference in the initial data that was equivalent to only one part in a thousand. That small difference eventually created a wild divergence from the previous weather pattern and showed how an extremely small initial change in a sequence can lead to much larger changes over time. This phenomenon, “sensitive dependence on initial conditions,” is sometimes referred to as “the butterfly effect.” The name comes from the idea that a butterfly flapping its wings in New York can create a change in the atmosphere that, while slight, might eventually lead to large-scale changes that produce hurricanes in Hong Kong. In other words, insignificant changes at the beginning of a process or system may become increasingly significant and yield larger and larger changes as time passes. Lorenz’s discovery led to the hope of finding mathematical models to explain erratic systems that do not obey the laws of Newtonian physics. These systems, such as the unpredictability of a gambling game, have been problematic, because they do not seem to conform to any consistent mathematical explanations. Chaos theory posits that these systems are not actually random but are deterministic and can be predicted using mathematical models. Chaos theory is closely related to the study of fractals, geometric shapes that are highly complex and infinitely detailed. Fractals contain copies of themselves—a property called “selfsimilarity”—with each section containing as much detail as the whole fractal. The more the fractal is enlarged, the more detail can be seen— a property that goes on infinitely. Fractals are related to chaos theory, because they are extremely complex, seemingly chaotic structures that exhibit definite properties. By studying fractals, scientists may be able to discover mathematical models that can be applied to larger systems.

Section 12: Computer Applications 739 The study of chaos theory has been greatly enhanced—and in many ways even made possible—through the use of digital technology and computer simulations. Prior to the advent of computers, it was impossible to perform the number of computations necessary to create the long-term simulations that provide insight into the workings of chaotic systems. The science of chaos is sometimes regarded as the third great revolution in science, after relativity and quantum mechanics. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking, 1987. Grebogi, Celso, and James A. Yorke, eds. The Impact of Chaos on Science and Society. New York: United Nations University Press, 1997.

C O M P U T E R A P P L I C AT I O N S Computer applications, also known as computer programs or end-user programs, are sets of instructions that direct a computer to perform a desired sequence of operations, thus enabling it to carry out a specific task. The earliest computers had fixed programs that allowed the computer to carry out only a specific type of task. In order to change the task, or “program,” of these computers, they would have to be physically rewired, a time-consuming and tedious process. In 1945, however, mathematician John von Neumann put forth the idea that a computer could have a fixed physical structure and yet be directed to execute various functions and computations through the use of a programmed control. In 1947, scientists produced the first generation of computers that could take advantage of von Neumann’s programming ideas. This development enabled programmers to write a series of instructions in code and change the computer’s operation without having to physically rewire the machine. These computers also included the important innovation of random access memory (RAM), a memory structure designed to give constant access to any particular piece of infor-

mation. This memory structure facilitated the use of subroutines—small bits of prewritten, repetitive code—and opened up new possibilities in the creation of computer applications. Throughout the 1960s, the surge in development of computer hardware continued to spur the creation of computer software. By the end of the 1960s, computer applications were in such demand that companies began to sell prepackaged software to businesses. With the advent of the personal computer (PC) in the early 1980s, the market for packaged computer applications grew rapidly and software companies began to create programs designed to run on particular PC operating systems. The two most popular operating systems in this early PC market were Apple Corporation’s graphical user interface (GUI) and Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Today, the creation of computer applications has become a fairly standard process. All applications are written in one of a number of particular programming language. The programmer uses the selected language to create instructions for the computer, also known as the source code. Of the numerous programming languages that can be used to create computer source code, common examples are Basic, C++, Java, and Perl. Once the application source code is written, it must be run through a compiler and an assembler program, in order to translate it into a set of instructions that the computer can understand. This final format is known as machine language. When this format is reached, the computer can understand and execute the instructions contained in the application. Computer applications can be grouped in several major categories, depending on what type of actions they are created to perform. Some of the most common categories are word processing, database applications, spreadsheets, drawing and other image interfaces, slide and graphics presentations, desktop publishing, media players, and Internet browsers. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources Campbell-Kelly, Martin, and William Aspray. Computer: A History of the Information Machine. New York: Basic Books, 1996.

740 Section 12: Computer Applications Glassborow, Francis. You Can Do It!: A Beginners Introduction to Computer Programming. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2004. Ifrah, Georges. The Universal History of Computing: From the Abacus to the Quantum Computer. Trans. E.F. Harding. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2001. Williams, Brian K., and Stacey C. Sawyer. Using Information Technology: A Practical Introduction to Computers and Communications. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

CYBERNETICS Cybernetics is the study of communication and control in living organisms and in machines. It emphasizes the similarities that exist between animals and machines and recognizes that, even though they may be constructed of very different materials, their operation is essentially the same. The field also posits that, because of the similarity, scientific methods can be used to study both. Feedback—especially negative—is an important element in cybernetics. When part of the output of a system is fed back into the system, it affects the system and its subsequent output. This creates a closed loop in which the system output continually affects its own value, thus directing future operation of the system. Negative feedback helps the system determine what not to do and thereby acts as a stabilizing factor. The system attempts to establish equilibrium and becomes self-regulating. The ability of a complex system to regulate itself—also known as homeostasis—can be applied to numerous structures, including complex machines, biological entities, and social systems. One of the most important contributions of cybernetics is that it offers a single vocabulary and a single set of concepts for representing the most diverse types of systems. Cybernetics is an interdisciplinary field that cuts across various natural and social sciences. Its origin is usually traced to the publication of an influential paper in 1943, “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology,” by American mathematician Norbert Wiener, American electrical engineer Julian Bigelow, and Mexican neurophysiologist Arturo Rosenbleuth. In the paper, they established a clear link between animate behavior and that of feedback-control systems.

The term “cybernetics” was applied to the field by Wiener in his 1948 book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and Machine. The word derives from the Greek kybernetes, meaning “one who steers.” After the publication of the book, the term was picked up by others studying similar principles, and it became widely applied to many studies of communication and control. Wiener expanded the influence of cybernetics by exploring the social implications of its principles in his book The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), now considered the seminal work in the field. The book notes the application of cybernetic principles to social institutions and draws analogies between automated machines and human institutions. The study of cybernetics continued to grow, and the American Society for Cybernetics was founded in 1964. Cybernetics discoveries have been influential in a wide range of scientific fields, including artificial intelligence, computing, sociology, and medicine. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources Ashby, W. Ross. An Introduction to Cybernetics. London: Chapman and Hall, 1956. Cordeschi, Roberto. The Discovery of the Artificial: Behavior, Mind, and Machines Before and Beyond Cybernetics. Boston: Kluwer Academic, 2002. Rose, John. The Cybernetic Revolution. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974.

ENIAC The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, was the world’s first digital electronic computer. This significant advance in computer design is credited to John Adam Presper Eckert, Jr., and John William Mauchly. Eckert, an electrical engineer, and Mauchly, a physicist interested in meteorology, met in 1941 and turned a shared interest in electronic counting circuits into a U.S. Army contract to develop a new electronic computer. The U.S. Army needed artillery fire tables for quick battlefield computation of shell trajectories, but none of the contemporary mechanical

Section 12: ENIAC 741 and electronic computers were fast enough to meet its requirements. Construction on ENIAC began at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering in July 1943. The 30 ton, 1,800 square foot computer was ready for operation in fall 1945, but it was not unveiled publicly until early 1946. To meet the needs of the U.S. Army, Eckert and Mauchly incorporated two major breakthroughs in their ENIAC design: digital circuits and vacuum tube relays. Analog electronic machines stored numbers by reading electronic pulses. Ten pulses equaled the number ten. The digital circuits of ENIAC counted the number ten with one pulse, a pulse in the tens-digit circuit. Seventy-two would not be seventy-two pulses, as in the analog systems, but seven pulses in the tens-digit circuit and two pulses in the ones-digit circuit. ENIAC could store twenty ten-digit numbers with accompanying positive/negative signs. The machine could handle basic arithmetic operations and, by plugging in different circuit panels, could process data using various mathematical functions. Advances in design gave ENIAC a computation speed estimated at 500 times that of contemporary analog computers. It was able to process

5,000 addition operations per paired circuit per second. Multiplication and other operations took a bit longer. Further increases in speed were derived from the use of 17,468 vacuum tubes instead of the standard mechanical relay switches. Because programming ENIAC for a specific problem involved setting as many as 3,000 switches, it could take as long as two months to program the system. The computer itself was never used for its intended purpose, as the war ended before it was fully functional. It was used, however, in atomic weapons research, including some associated ballistics work, until it was removed from service in 1955. Eckert and Mauchly did not profit significantly from their key role in the design of ENIAC. In fact, their contributions were variously usurped, challenged, or simply forgotten over the years. They did market the ENIAC design and developed other more advanced computers, such as BINAC and UNIVAC, but they did not succeed as entrepreneurs. Patent rights for some of ENIAC’s design advances were assigned in 1947 to the EckertMauchly Computer Company, which proved

ENIAC—the world’s first operational, large-scale, electronic digital computer, unveiled in 1946—occupied 1,800 square feet (167 square meters), weighed thirty tons, and contained nearly 18,000 vacuum tubes. (Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

742 Section 12: ENIAC unsuccessful. In 1955, the patents came into the possession of Sperry Corporation, prompting a series of court battles between Sperry and other computer corporations who were using equipment based on the ENIAC design. A federal court decision in Honeywell v. Sperry (1973) invalidated the Eckert-Mauchly patents to avoid creating a monopoly in the increasingly important computer industry. These legal and patent conflicts further undermined the credit owed to Eckert and Mauchly for their design. Paul Buckingham

Sources McCartney, Scott. ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World’s First Computer. New York: Berkley, 2001. Metropolis, Nicholas, Jack Howlett, and Gian-Carlo Rota, eds. A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century: A Collection of Essays. New York: Academic Press, 1980. Norberg, Arthur L. Computers and Commerce: A Study of Technology and Management at Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company, Engineering Research Associates, and Remington Rand, 1946–1857. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

FA R R A R , J O H N (1779–1853) The Harvard professor of mathematics and natural philosophy John Farrar was born in Lincoln, Massachusetts, on July 1, 1779. He attended Phillips Academy on scholarship before entering Harvard College in 1799. He distinguished himself at both ends of the classroom, teaching in common schools during winter breaks and winning John Bonnycastle’s An Introduction to Astronomy (1786) in an academic contest in 1802. After Farrar graduated from Harvard in 1803, his financial patron, Mrs. Samuel Phillips, paid his tuition to Andover Theological Seminary, but the Harvard Overseers interrupted his divinity career by hiring him as a tutor of Greek in 1805. Two years later, they promoted him to Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Farrar spent the rest of his career in this professorship. As was standard practice, he supervised the mathematics tutors and delivered lectures on natural philosophy to the juniors and seniors. He was considered a caring and engaging instructor who displayed a flair for

showmanship with the physical and electrical experiments he performed during class. He restored the prestige the chair had known under John Winthrop IV by collecting meteorological and astronomical data, purchasing scientific instruments, and researching the possibility of constructing an observatory in Cambridge. He associated professionally and socially with liberal Unitarians, including the Transcendentalist circle. Farrar’s most significant contribution was in refocusing American collegiate mathematics and science education. When he became Hollis Professor, Harvard students learned all of their mathematics by memorizing and reciting portions of Webber’s Mathematics (1801), which was derived from outdated English textbooks, and Euclid’s Elements of Geometry (1482). While Yale’s Jeremiah Day included French mathematics textbooks among his sources in the series he prepared in the 1810s, Farrar recommended that students learn directly from the treatises written by Silvestre-François Lacroix and Adrien-Marie Legendre in the 1790s. These books appeared to be superior, because they were analytical in style, emphasizing algebraic techniques and a “natural” mode of laying out mathematical principles in historical order, while incorporating recent discoveries in mathematics. In general, Farrar argued, these works were more successful at challenging the student mind to develop disciplined patterns of thinking. Farrar published seven volumes in the Cambridge Series of Mathematics between 1818 and 1824; various Harvard tutors seem to have done most of the literal translation work. Farrar followed this series with the five-volume Cambridge Series of Natural Philosophy (1825–1827), which was mainly a translation of several works by Jean-Baptiste Biot. Farrar’s mathematics textbooks were quickly adopted throughout the United States at institutions ranging from the U.S. Military Academy to Bowdoin College and the University of Virginia. They helped create an increased emphasis on science and mathematics in the nineteenthcentury college curriculum and led to the establishment of mathematics prerequisites for college admission. They also inspired other professors to prepare mathematics textbooks that melded British and French influences into a uniquely

Section 12: Forrester, Jay Wright 743 American style. Textbook series such as those compiled by Charles Davies surpassed Farrar’s series in popularity during the 1830s. The physical problems and nervous ailments Farrar suffered throughout his life forced him to take a leave of absence from Harvard in 1831–1832 and to retire completely in 1836. He traveled to Europe for his health, visiting scientists in France, England, and Scotland. He was married twice and had no children. After 1840, he lived in seclusion in Cambridge, where he died on May 8, 1853. Although his scientific and mathematical achievements were overshadowed by younger, professional mathematicians and scientists, such as Benjamin Peirce, Farrar prepared the intellectual and cultural setting in which the next generation worked. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Source Palfrey, John Gorham. “Professor Farrar.” Christian Examiner 55 (1853): 121–36.

F O R R E S T E R , J AY W R I G H T (1918– ) The American electrical engineer Jay Wright Forrester, a pioneer in computer engineering and management, developed random access magnetic core memory (the predecessor of random access memory, or RAM, used in modern computers) as well as system dynamics, which deals with the simulation of interactions between objects in dynamic systems. He is the author of multiple books and papers on system principles and dynamics, and he is currently Germeshausen Professor Emeritus and Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. Born in Nebraska on July 14, 1918, Forrester grew up on a cattle ranch. While still in high school, he built a wind-driven, 12-volt electric plant from old automobile parts that provided the ranch’s first electricity. He graduated from the University of Nebraska with a B.S. in electrical engineering, then attended MIT. Under the mentorship of Gordon S. Brown, a pioneer in feedback

control systems, he studied electric and hydraulic servomechanisms (control systems) for radar antennas and gun mounts. In 1945, Forrester began to lead the development of a new aircraft stability and control analyzer for the U.S. Navy. The navy wanted the ability to test the effects of aircraft design changes by simulating aircraft behavior, including a plane’s real-time response to pilot actions. The project initially called for development of an analog computer, but to meet real-time performance demands, Forrester constructed an experimental digital computer, inspired by the U.S. Army’s ENIAC computer. Known as Whirlwind, the new digital computer occupied 25,000 square feet and contained thousands of vacuum tubes, each with a life expectancy of approximately 500 hours. Forrester discovered that he could prolong tube life to 500,000 hours through the use of siliconfree cathode material. He further enhanced reliability by installing a system to automatically check for components showing early indications of failure, thus allowing operators to repair or replace a component before an error occurred. Despite these improvements, memory was still a problem, so Forrester began work on an eventual replacement for the slow onedimensional mercury delay line and the faster, but much less dependable, two-dimensional Williams tube. In 1949, as the U.S. military was losing interest and confidence in the Whirlwind project, the Soviets developed an atomic weapon. This created an urgent demand for an air-defense system that could identify and intercept incoming aircraft or missiles. Forrester was put in charge of implementing Whirlwind as the heart of a new defense system called SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment). By 1953, SAGE had the capability of monitoring forty-eight aircraft simultaneously. That year, Whirlwind’s memory was replaced with Forrester ’s new three-dimensional memory, which was made of a magnetic ferrite core combined with a wire grid. This innovation doubled Whirlwind’s speed while improving reliability and lowering costs. Forrester left the project in 1956, two years before SAGE began operation. It was used as a U.S. air-defense system until the 1980s.

744 Section 12: Forrester, Jay Wright As a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Forrester continued to break new ground by applying his engineering view of electrical systems to the field of human systems. Focusing on case studies of organizational policy, he used computer simulations to analyze social systems and predict the implications and outcomes of different models. This methodology, called system dynamics, has been applied to a wide range of problems, including urbanization, industrialization, energy and the environment, and biological and medical modeling. Glenda Turner

Sources Forrester, J.W. Industrial Dynamics. Cambridge, MA: Productivity, 1961. System Dynamics Society. http://www.systemdynamics.org.

GIBBS, JOSIAH WILLARD (1839–1903) In addition to his major discoveries in chemistry and physics, Josiah Willard Gibbs is known for his work in mathematics, where he is credited with the invention of vector analysis, a form of calculus that explains the movement of objects through space. Gibbs was born on February 11, 1839, in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1854, he entered Yale College (now Yale University), where his father was a professor of sacred literature. Nine years later, Gibbs graduated with the first engineering doctorate—one of the first doctorates of any kind—awarded by an American institution of higher learning. From 1866 to 1869, he did postdoctoral work at various institutions in Paris and Berlin, ending up at the renowned University of Heidelberg in Germany, then a leading center for the study of chemistry and physics. Upon his return to the United States, Gibbs began teaching at Yale and was appointed professor of mathematical physics in 1871. Gibbs’s appointment was unorthodox in that the young scientist, then thirty-two, had never published a scholarly paper. Over the next seven years, however, he published a series of papers cumu-

latively titled On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances; this work is regarded by historians of science as one of the most important in nineteenth-century physics and mathematics. In these papers, Gibbs applied the principles of thermodynamics—the branch of physics that studies the effect of temperature, pressure, and volume on physical systems—to the understanding of chemical reactions. In the 1880s, Gibbs began his work on vector analysis, also known as vector calculus. (In mathematics, a vector is a number combined with a direction.) His findings were recorded largely in the form of unpublished notes that he used for teaching his students. Not until 1901 did one of his students compile the notes into a scholarly article that was published. Even as Gibbs was pioneering vector analysis, he was also writing on optics, the branch of physics that describes the property of behavior of light, and statistical mechanics, which applies probability theory to the study of particles subjected to force. In the 1890s, Gibbs conducted research into crystallography, the study of the atomic arrangement of solids. He also applied his theories of vector analysis to astronomy, using it to more precisely determine the orbits of planets and comets. For much of his life, Gibbs’s work in all of these fields went largely unrecognized. This was partly because European scientists, then at the forefront of physics and mathematics, considered America a scientific backwater, and partly because Gibbs published his work in the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences, an obscure journal barely read in the United States and virtually unknown in Europe. By the 1890s, his writings were being translated and published in French and German scientific journals, but by then several European scientists had duplicated some of his work. Gibbs never married. He lived with his sister and her husband in New Haven for most of his life. He died on April 28, 1903. James Ciment

Sources Rukeyser, Muriel. Willard Gibbs. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1942. Wheeler, Lynde Phelps. Josiah Willard Gibbs: The History of a Great Mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1952.

Section 12: Hollerith, Herman 745

GORENSTEIN, DANIEL (1923–1992) Daniel Gorenstein worked in algebraic geometry, which uses abstract algebraic equations to solve problems in the geometric mathematics of points, lines, curves, and surfaces. Known for his ability to render complex mathematics into accessible prose, he authored numerous works on algebraic geometry, including Finite Groups (1967) and Finite Simple Groups: An Introduction to Their Classification (1982). Gorenstein was born in Boston on January 1, 1923. From an early age, he showed an aptitude for mathematics, teaching himself the basics of calculus by the time he was twelve. His formal education took place at the prestigious Boston Latin School, the oldest secondary school in America, and at Harvard University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1943. During World War II, Gorenstein accepted a position at Harvard teaching mathematics to army personnel. After the war, he stayed at Harvard as a graduate student. Working under Oscar Zariski, a pioneer in the development of algebraic geometry, Gorenstein earned a Ph.D. in mathematics in 1950. Over the course of four decades, Gorenstein taught at a number of institutions of higher learning, including Clark University (1951–1964, with a year’s hiatus to teach at Cornell in 1958–1959), Northeastern University (1964–1969), and Rutgers University (1969–1992), where he was chair of the mathematics department from 1975 to 1981. From 1989, he also served as director of the National Science Foundation Science Technology Center in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, a joint project of Rutgers and Bell Laboratories. Gorenstein’s first major contribution to the field of algebraic geometry came with his doctoral dissertation, in which he introduced the concept of the Gorenstein ring, a key element in commutative ring theory. But he is best remembered for his work in the classification of finite simple groups. In 1960 and 1961, he attended the University of Chicago’s Group Theory Year, a symposium

of scientists dedicated to resolving fundamental problems in the group theory subfield of algebraic geometry. Gorenstein provided the overall leadership and intellectual guidance to this symposium of scientists from around the world, an extraordinary achievement in that the final proof offered by the conference ran to some 10,000 pages in about 500 journal articles by more than 100 scholars. The Group Theory Year is regarded by most scholars in the field as one of the crowning achievements of twentiethcentury mathematics. Over the years, Gorenstein earned many honors. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he won the American Mathematical Society’s Steel Prize for mathematical exposition in 1989. He died on August 26, 1992. James Ciment

Sources Christensen, Lars Winther. Gorenstein Dimensions. New York: Springer, 2000. Gorenstein, Daniel. Finite Groups. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.

HOLLERITH, HERMAN (1860–1929) An innovative American statistician, engineer, and early computer scientist, Herman Hollerith pioneered modern statistical analysis and information processing with his automatic tabulating machines. He revolutionized the process by which the U.S. Census was tabulated by implementing a system of punch cards and mechanical readers to analyze millions of pieces of data that previously had to be hand calculated. Hollerith also founded the Tabulating Machine Company, which eventually became the International Business Machine Corporation (IBM). Herman Hollerith was born on February 29, 1860, in Buffalo, New York, to Franciska Brunn and Johann Hollerith, who had emigrated from Germany in 1848. He was a bright child but struggled to learn spelling; a determined teacher

746 Section 12: Hollerith, Herman

Herman Hollerith invented a mechanical tabulating machine, used in the 1890 U.S. Census, based on punch cards for recording data. Punch cards became a basic input mechanism for later digital computers. His firm eventually merged with two others to form IBM. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

made his life miserable with constant efforts to improve his spelling, causing him to skip school whenever possible. As a result of these problems in school, he was taught at home by the family’s Lutheran minister, an environment in which he excelled. Hollerith entered New York City College in 1875 at the age of fifteen and the School of Mines of Columbia University in New York two years later. After graduating with a degree in mining engineering in 1879, he went to work as an assistant to his professor, William Trowbridge, at Columbia. Trowbridge subsequently was appointed chief special agent for the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington, D.C., heading up the data analysis section, and he asked Hollerith to join him as a statistician. At the Census Bureau, Hollerith became acquainted with John Shaw Billings, the director of vital statistics for the 1880 census. The nation’s population boom and the addition of new questions to the census that year posed enormous data collection and analysis problems. Billings and Hollerith discussed the possibility of using machines and punch cards to automate the processing of census data—an idea that Hollerith enthusiastically pursued. In the fall of 1882, Hollerith became a lecturer on mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, devoting his nonteaching time to designing a mechanical system to more efficiently sort and compile data. One of his first prototypes employed a roll of paper tape with holes in predetermined locations. The paper would roll across a mechanical spool with needles. When the needles came to a hole, an electric circuit would be completed and a number automatically registered. Returning to Washington after a year, Hollerith became an examiner at the U.S. Patent Office, but he left that position after building his first working computing device. On September 23, 1884, he filed a patent for a machine that tabulated data using paper tape and a roller with pins. An electrical current was created when the pins passed through the holes and into mercury located underneath; the electrical charge activated a mechanical counter. Later, Hollerith replaced the paper tape with punch cards as a means to record census data. Each punch card represented one person, and each hole on the card indicated data such as birth date, age, sex, occupation, and race. Presorted punch cards allowed for a logical sequence of computations. On June 8, 1887, Hollerith took out a patent for a machine-driven punch-card sorter. To prove that the system worked, he offered to organize the voluminous and disarrayed health records of the city of Baltimore, Maryland. Although he had to punch the data manually onto the cards, the Baltimore trial succeeded. When the results were repeated in the compilation of statistics for the health departments of the state of New Jersey and the city of New York, Hollerith drew the attention of the newspapers. Hollerith modified the punch cards to accommodate complex data. On December 9, 1888, he convinced the U.S. surgeon general’s office to use his machines for their data management. His system was unveiled at the Paris Exposition of 1889, and it won the gold medal; it also won the bronze medal at the Chicago world’s fair of 1893. The 1880 U.S. Census, which was manually processed, was not completed until 1888, by which time the statistics had become obsolete. The problems of a larger population and more extensive questionnaire were compounded by the difficulty of collecting data from the new, farflung Western states. To address these issue, the

Section 12: Levinson, Norman 747 Census Bureau held a competition for a system that would reduce the effort in collecting and processing the population and demographic data. Hollerith submitted his system and won the contract for the 1890 census. The Hollerith Electric Tabulating System, based on the reading and sorting of punch cards, completed all data processing for the 1890 census in just six weeks and saved the federal government $5 million over the 1880 effort. For his invention, Hollerith received the Elliot Cresson Medal, awarded for outstanding achievements in science and technology, from the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia in 1890. That same year, he was awarded a doctorate in Engineering from Columbia University in New York. Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Company was incorporated in New Jersey on December 3, 1896. With successive tabulators, his invention became a commercial success, especially with foreign governments, railroad, and life insurance companies. Hollerith also invented the first key-punch device, allowing manual entry into a data machine and an automatic card mechanism that fed a stack of cards into a reader. Hollerith did the data tabulation for the 1900 census as well, but the high cost of his machines led the federal government to build its own system for the 1910 census. Hollerith sued the government for patent infringement, but he ultimately lost the seven-year litigation. In 1911, the Tabulating Machine Company merged with Computing Scale and Bundy Manufacturing to form the Computing Tabulating Recording (CTR) Corporation. When Hollerith sold his shares and retired in 1921, he was a millionaire. With his wife, Lucia Talcott, he raised cattle near the Chesapeake Bay, in Maryland. In February 1924, CTR changed its name to International Business Machines. Hollerith died of a heart attack on November 17, 1929. James Fargo Balliett and Santi S. Chanthaphavong

Sources Austrian, Geoffrey D. Herman Hollerith: Forgotten Giant of Information Processing. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Kidwell, Peggy A., and Paul E. Ceruzzi. Landmarks in Digital Computing: A Smithsonian Pictorial History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1994. Shurkin, Joel N. Engines of the Mind: A History of the Computer. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984.

LEVINSON, NORMAN (1912–1975) Norman Levinson was a mathematician who worked in the fields of number theory, nonlinear differential equations, and complex analysis. He was born on August 11, 1912, in Lynn, Massachusetts. By 1934, he had completed both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In his studies, he especially excelled in mathematics, and his abilities in this field, along with the support and encouragement of his mentor and mathematics professor, Norbert Wiener, led him to apply to the MIT doctoral program in mathematics. Because of his exceptional work to this point, Levinson earned a traveling fellowship from the MIT mathematics department that allowed him to study at Cambridge University in England. Based on the papers he produced at Cambridge, MIT granted Levinson a Doctor of Science degree in mathematics in 1935. He then earned a National Research Council Fellowship, which he used to study at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study for nearly two years. The fellowship ended early when Levinson was appointed as an instructor in mathematics at MIT in 1937, beginning a thirty-eight-year teaching career. Levinson published Gap and Density Theorems in 1940 as part of a prestigious American Mathematical Society Colloquium series usually reserved for senior scholars. His 1955 Theory of Ordinary Differential Equations, written with Earl Coddington, was a widely used course text. Levinson also worked in geophysics and signal processing, a key field dedicated to studying the amplification and interpretation of radio and other electromagnetic signals. Besides his contributions to mathematics, Levinson was also embroiled in the politics of his time. As a Jew in the New England academic community, he faced resistance and, at times, anti-Semitism. His personal feelings opposing racial discrimination and anti-Semitism influenced his decision to join the American Communist Party in 1931. He left the party after eleven years, because he wished to focus on social equality, not Stalinism.

748 Section 12: Levinson, Norman His membership in the Communist Party came back to haunt him years later during the Red Scare of the 1950s when federal investigators began to look into the affairs of high-profile college faculty, especially those involved in research in sensitive areas such as signal processing. During Levinson’s testimony before congressional committees investigating the Army Signal Corps, he was forthright about his involvement in the Communist Party and managed to avoid lasting harm to his career. He continued during the next two decades, as one colleague put it, as the heart of the mathematics community at MIT. Levinson’s awards included a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1948, the 1953 Bocher Prize for his work in differential equations, and the 1971 Chauvenet Prize for a paper on the prime number theorem. He was in the midst of an important set of projects related to the Riemann hypothesis, one of the great unsolved problems in mathematics, when he died on October 10, 1975. Paul Buckingham

Source Levinson, Norman. Selected Papers of Norman Levinson. 2 vols. Ed. John A. Nohel and David H. Sattinger. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser, 1998.

MARK I The Harvard Mark I computer was the first widely known, fully automatic (programcontrolled) electromechanical calculating device. Also known as the IBM-Harvard Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, the Mark I was commissioned in 1944. The computer was the brainchild of Howard Hathaway Aiken, a graduate student in theoretical physics at Harvard University. Aiken’s completed machine, nicknamed “Bessie” by its operators, cost his sponsors— International Business Machines (IBM) and the U.S. Navy—nearly half a million dollars. Aiken proposed the development of a digital mechanical calculating device to solve certain complex nonlinear differential equations—called Bessel functions—in his 1939 thesis on vacuum tube design. Analog computers then available, such as Vannevar Bush’s Differential Analyzer, had great difficulty calculating such functions,

which had no exact solutions. Aiken envisioned “a switchboard on which are mounted various pieces of calculating machine apparatus. Each panel of the switchboard is given over to definite mathematical operations.” Aiken later claimed that his device was inspired by a chance encounter with a remnant of Charles Babbage’s famous nineteenth-century mechanical computer, the Difference Engine. The completed Mark I was the largest electromechanical computer ever built. It stood 8 feet high, 51 feet long, and 2 feet deep. It weighed five tons, including its 750,000 individual parts and 500 miles of wiring. According to one observer, the computer made as much noise as “a roomful of ladies knitting.” The Mark I could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Each addition or subtraction operation took one-third of a second, each multiplication took six seconds, and each division took fifteen seconds. Mathematical operations could be calculated to twenty-three significant figures. Critics downplay the Mark I as stillborn technology (almost immediately obsolete), but it provided a valuable architecture for study and practice. One of the machine’s chief programmers was naval officer Grace Murray Hopper, who created her first program on the Mark I. That program calculated coefficients for the interpolation of the arc tangent for Harvard’s Bureau of Ships Computation Project. Hopper wrote the definitive Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (1946) and was the chief developer of Flow-matic, an early English-like higher-level programming language. Several of the basic commands introduced in Flow-matic, including “add,” “execute,” and “stop,” were later incorporated into the popular computer language COBOL. Hopper also overcame one of the chief limitations of the computer, the lack of conditional branches, by reusing loops of punched paper tape encoded with instructions. Still, because the Mark I had no memory by which to store programs internally, Hopper complained that she was forced to start nearly from scratch each day. The Mark I computer was also used by the Russian American economist Wassily Leontief in developing the input-output method of economic analysis, which earned him a Nobel Prize in 1973. Astronomer James Baker used the

Section 12: Microsoft 749 machine to design telephoto lenses for the U.S. Army Air Corps for reconnaissance purposes. John von Neumann, who developed today’s most common computer architecture, visited the Mark I—his first brush with digital computing— to feed it implosion calculations in the development of the first atomic bomb. And the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project used the machine to compute ballistics tables for gunnery range-finding and fire control. Aiken dismantled the Mark I computer after fifteen years of service to Harvard, but he also developed several successors—Mark II through IV—each increasing in reliability as solid-state components replaced older electromechanical relay and vacuum tube technology. The Mark computers and their Harvard architecture did not fare well with the advent of the von Neumann architecture, which made reading, writing, and storage of programs a feasible process, and they were defunct by the 1960s. Philip Frana

The Windows operating system made Microsoft the world’s dominant software provider and Bill Gates, its cofounder and chairman, the world’s richest man. (Carol Halebian/Getty Images)

Sources Bashe, Charles. “Constructing the IBM ASCC (Harvard Mark I).” In Makin’ Numbers: Howard Aiken and the Computer, ed. I. Bernard Cohen and Gregory W. Welch. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Cohen, I. Bernard. Howard Aiken: Portrait of a Computer Pioneer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Oettinger, Anthony G. “Howard Aiken.” Communications of the ACM 5:6 (1962): 298–99.

MICROSOFT The world’s largest computer software company, the Microsoft Corporation was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on April 4, 1975, by William “Bill” Gates, Jr., and Paul Gardner Allen, two young computer technicians and entrepreneurs from Seattle, Washington. Four years later, the company relocated to the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, and in 1986 moved to its current headquarters in Redmond. While technology historians generally do not consider Microsoft a major software innovator, the company has nevertheless been expert at developing and marketing inexpensive and adaptable computer technologies, most notably MS-DOS,

the Windows operating system, and the set of office software products that includes the MS Word word processing program, the Excel spreadsheet program, and the PowerPoint visual presentation system. Over the years, Microsoft expanded into other areas, such as computer gaming and television broadcasting. Microsoft got its start adapting an early computer programming language known as BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for use in the Altair 8800, one of the first personal computers. But the company’s major breakthrough came with the creation of MS-DOS in 1981, which was designed for use in the first personal computer built by International Business Machines (IBM), then the world’s largest manufacturer of mainframes. As with BASIC and Altair, Microsoft adapted an existing software program, a version of QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from another small software company and converted it for use in the IBM personal computer. From their experience with mainframes, IBM executives believed that the largest share of revenues in the new personal computer market would come from hardware; thus, it did not bother buying exclusive rights to the use of what

750 Section 12: Microsoft it called PC-DOS. This proved to be a mistake with enormous consequences. Other companies soon built cheaper versions of the IBM PC, but they had to install software that was compatible with the IBM PC. The result was rapid growth for Microsoft, as MS-DOS, the name it gave its operating system, became the standard for most of the exploding personal computer market. At the same time, a major early competitor, Apple Computers, was developing its own proprietary operating system. While MS-DOS required users to learn code to operate their PCs, Apple’s software used a graphic interface: Users could point and click at icons on the screen to perform simple tasks. In 1985, Microsoft introduced its Windows operating system, which employed a graphic interface similar to Apple’s. With its greater financial resources and marketing savvy, Microsoft succeeded in marginalizing Apple to a small share of the personal computer market. In subsequent years, Microsoft continued to piggyback on existing technologies, using its enormous financial resources and market muscle to imitate a competitor’s product and then situate its own as the industry standard. In the late 1980s, Excel and MS Word sidelined Novell’s Lotus spreadsheet program and Corel’s WordPerfect word processing program, respectively. Explorer browsing software overwhelmed Netscape in the mid1990s. Microsoft’s aggressive marketing, as well as the ubiquity of its operating systems, eventually led to antitrust action by the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Union. Microsoft was forced to take remedial action and had to pay substantial damages to competitors as a result of court rulings, but the corporation has not been broken up or forced to divest itself of major assets. Many computer experts, however, point to one new threat to Microsoft’s future—the ability of computer users to avoid buying operating systems altogether and use those increasingly available over the Internet. In the early 2000s, the company had revenues of nearly $50 billion annually and employed in excess of 75,000 employees in more than 100 countries. Arguably, no technology firm has done more to make the personal computer (PC) a ubiquitous part of everyday life. James Ciment

Sources Manes, Stephen, and Paul Andrews. Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994. Wallace, James, and Jim Erickson. Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. New York: HarperBusiness, 1993.

NUMBER THEORY Number theory is a branch of mathematics that deals with the properties of numbers and the intrinsic powers of integers (whole numbers and zero). It draws on a range of mathematical fields—from algebra and statistics to advanced calculus and quadratic equations—depending on the type of problem being solved. One of the largest branches of pure mathematics, it has proven useful to problem-solving in computing, physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy. Mathematicians sometimes use the terms “number theory,” “arithmetic,” and “higher arithmetic” interchangeably, but number theory is different from simple arithmetic. Number theory has a rich history, challenging mathematicians with complex problems that have gone unanswered for 2,000 years and more. It has grown in prominence and importance in recent years, especially with the development of cryptography and statistical mechanics. In nineteenth-century America, a handful of mathematicians took on segments of number theory in their work. Harvard professor Benjamin Peirce became a major figure in the history of number theory by proving that there is no odd perfect number with fewer than four distinct prime factors. Peirce’s introductory textbooks in algebra became standards, and his more advanced A System of Analytical Mechanics (1855) was considered the most important work in mathematics published in the United States to that time. At the University of Chicago, mathematics professor Eliakim Moore did groundbreaking work in abstract algebra, the foundations of geometry, and integral equations. In 1893, while studying algebraic structures and groups, he proved that every finite field is a Galois field (named after French mathematician Évariste Galois)—that is, it

Section 12: Number Theory 751 contains a finite number of elements. In the early 1900s, Moore reformulated Hilbert’s axioms, a set of twenty geometry assumptions devised by German mathematician David Hilbert in 1899, to turn the original undefined lines, points, and planes into undefined points only. Moore’s On the Projective Axioms of Geometry (1902) revealed that Hilbert’s axioms contained redundancies. Moore’s students included such leading American mathematicians of the next generation as George David Birkhoff, Anna Wheeler, Oswald Veblen, and Leonard Dickinson. Birkhoff, whose work encompassed many areas of mathematics, is best remembered for his contribution to ergodic theory, a foundation of contemporary chaos theory pertaining to statistical physics. Anna Wheeler, who had also worked with David Hilbert, was known for her work on integral equations with an emphasis on infinite dimensional linear spaces. Wheeler was the first woman to give the Colloquium Lectures at the American Mathematical Society meetings, in 1927. She was one of the first mathematicians to work in the area known as “functional analysis.” Oswald Veblen was one of the founders and the first professor of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University (1930), where he played a key role in recruiting such luminaries as Albert Einstein and John von Neumann. Veblen was also accomplished in the field of algebraic topology and worked in relativity as well. Leonard Dickson, who became a mathematics instructor at the University of Chicago in 1900, did important work in abstract algebra and spent much of his career on number theory. His three-volume History of the Theory of Numbers (1919–1923) covers every significant number theory from the dawn of mathematics to the 1920s, including those pertaining to divisibility, prime numbers, Diophantine analysis, and quadratic equations. Julia Robinson, a mathematician at the University of California, Berkley, contributed significant advances in the 1940s that led to the solution in 1970 of the number theory problem known as Hilbert’s Tenth Problem—a Diophantine equation (polynomial equation with integral coefficients and only integral solutions) written by David Hilbert in 1900. Robinson was the first woman elected to the mathematical section of the National Academy of Science, in 1975,

and she was the second woman, after Wheeler, to give the Colloquium Lectures at the American Mathematical Society meetings, in 1980. In 1995, Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles and Harvard professor Richard Taylor solved one of the longest-standing problems in mathematics by providing a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. The theory, devised by the seventeenth-century French government official and amateur mathematician Pierre de Fermat, states: “It is impossible to separate any power higher than the second into two like powers.” In a notebook, Fermat had written that he had devised a proof of this theory, but that it was too large to fit in the margin. For 350 years, various number theorists tried to work out a proof for the theorem. Wiles thought he found a solution in 1993, and he gave a series of lectures about his discovery, but then he identified an error and spent two more years collaborating with former student Richard Taylor to complete the proof using algebraic geometry. Dan Goldstein, working at the Institute of Mathematics in Palo Alto, California, in 2003 achieved a breakthrough on another longstanding problem in number theory—proving the “twin prime conjecture.” Proposed by the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid about 300 B.C.E., the theory states that there are an infinite number of “twin primes,” or prime numbers that differ by two. (Prime numbers cannot be divided by any number smaller than themselves, other than 1, without leaving a remainder. Those that differ by two include 3, 5, 7, 11, and so on.) Goldstein’s findings brought the math world a few steps closer to understanding the frequency and location of prime number patterns, in particular advancing the knowledge of how prime numbers, especially larger ones, are distributed. Meanwhile, several advanced computing projects were under way to find the largest twin prime number; as of early 2007, the largest on record was 58,711 digits long. Number theory, long an esoteric field even in academic circles, holds a central position among American mathematicians and theoretical scientists in the twenty-first century, often involving intense competition, international collaboration, and the help of advanced computing systems. Researchers often work in secret for years to solve problems that have frustrated number

752 Section 12: Number Theory theorists for centuries, though practical applications have abounded. The attributes of prime numbers and factors are of particular importance in the development of security codes for access to and transmission of sensitive database information. James Fargo Balliett

Sources Aczel, A.D. Fermat’s Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem. New York: Penguin, 1996. Artemiadis, Nikolaos K. History of Mathematics: From a Mathematician’s Vantage Point. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society, 2004. Yan, Song Y. Number Theory for Computing. Berlin: SpringerVerlag, 2000.

PEIRCE, BENJAMIN (1809–1880) The mathematician, astronomer, and educator Benjamin Peirce—the father of logician and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce—was born on April 4, 1809, into a prominent Massachusetts family. His father served in the state legislature and later worked as the librarian at Harvard College. Peirce entered Harvard in 1825 and graduated with an A.B. degree in 1829. He befriended the son of mathematician and astronomer Nathaniel Bowditch and assisted Bowditch with the translation and editing of Pierre-Simon Laplace’s Mécanique Céleste (Celestial Mechanics, 1829–1839). He taught at the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, from 1829 to 1831, before being appointed tutor of mathematics at Harvard. He received a master ’s degree there in 1833. By this time, Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy John Farrar was increasingly unable to fulfill his duties. In 1833, Peirce was appointed to the new and unendowed position of university professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. He became known as an enthusiastic teacher who was difficult to understand; similarly, only the most capable students could follow the mathematics textbook series he prepared in the 1830s. In 1842, Peirce was appointed the first Perkins Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics, an

endowed position that he held until his death. His interest in tracking students so that only those truly interested in mathematics would take advanced courses helped lead to the founding of the Lawrence Scientific School, founded at Harvard University in 1847. Peirce conducted research in mathematics and astronomy. He published lectures on the 1843 comet, edited the mathematical sections of the American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge, and was appointed director of longitude determination of the U.S. Coast Survey in 1852. He was consulting astronomer for the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac from 1849 to 1867, and he developed the first statistical significance test for outliers, which was published in the Astronomical Journal in 1852. Peirce engaged in a priority dispute with George Phillips Bond over the structure of Saturn’s rings in the early 1850s, and he wrote A System of Analytical Mechanics in 1855. In 1867, he was promoted to superintendent of the Coast Survey. After he retired from that post in 1874, he served as the consulting geometer. Peirce’s most notable publication was Linear Associative Algebra (1870), a relatively brief treatise in which he provided a method for classifying algebras according to their defining properties. He synthesized earlier work by George Peacock and William Rowan Hamilton. His justification for the book revealed his desire to study mathematics for theological edification, but Peirce also identified a connection between mathematics and deductive thought that became commonly accepted in the twentieth century. Although this work was only lithographed and distributed in small numbers at first, the work was republished in 1881 in the American Journal of Mathematics, the first American research periodical in mathematics, which Peirce had edited in the 1870s. Peirce was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1829, the American Philosophical Society in 1842, the Royal Astronomical Society of London in 1850, and the Royal Society of London in 1852. He served on the founding committees of the Smithsonian Institution (1847), the Dudley Observatory at Albany, New York (1855–1858), and the National Academy of Sciences (1863). He was also one of the mid-nineteenth-century American advocates for mathematical and

Section 12: Peirce, Charles S. 753 scientific research who described themselves as the Scientific Lazzaroni (scientific wanderers). Although Peirce did not directly train any of the first-generation of American research mathematicians, he was a force on behalf of professionalization in at least three ways: he advocated research-oriented higher education, he interested American mathematicians in new algebras and in statistics, and he helped to create numerous institutions devoted to research. In addition, he actively participated in the concerns of nineteenth-century American astronomy, mathematics, and surveying. Amy Ackerberg-Hastings

Sources Cohen, I. Bernard, ed. Benjamin Peirce: “Father of Pure Mathematics” in America. New York: Arno, 1980. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor. “Benjamin Peirce’s ‘Linear Associative Algebra’ (1870): New Light on Its Preparation and Publication.” Annals of Science 54 (1997): 597–606. Hogan, Edward. “ ‘A Proper Spirit Is Abroad’: Peirce, Sylvester, Ward, and American Mathematics, 1829–1843.” Historia Mathematica 18 (1991): 158–72. Lenzen, Victor F. Benjamin Peirce and the United States Coast Survey. San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1968.

tested by its practical consequences. Although he originally called his philosophy “pragmatism,” he eventually began calling it “pragmaticism,” in order to differentiate it from the work of James, which he found too subjective and insufficiently rigorous, and that of Dewey, which he found too sociological in nature. Peirce quipped that the term “pragmaticism” was “ugly enough to keep it safe from kidnappers.” In 1879, Peirce became a lecturer in logic at Johns Hopkins University, but school authorities dismissed him in 1884 when they learned that he had lived with his wife before their wedding. Peirce never obtained another university appointment, and his private life was often troubled. Suffering from physical ailments and the side effects of drugs he took to treat them, he

P E I R C E , C H A R L E S S. (1839–1914) Regarded by many as the greatest logician of his time, Charles S. Peirce was the originator of the philosophy of pragmatism (testing the meaning of something by its consequences) and semiotics (the study of signs). Peirce left an impressive body of original work and profoundly influenced such philosophical giants as William James and John Dewey. Ironically, he held only one brief academic appointment and lived on the charity of others for much of his life. The son of one of the nation’s foremost mathematicians, Peirce was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 10, 1839. In 1861, he began working for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. He remained there for thirty years, while pursuing his philosophical studies. In a series of articles including “The Fixation of Belief ” (1877) and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878), Peirce argued that thought and action are linked and that the meaning of an idea is

A founder of the pragmatic movement in American philosophy and an innovator in mathematics, physics, and astronomy, Charles Sanders Peirce regarded himself first and foremost as a logician. Some regard him as America’s greatest. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce)

754 Section 12: Peirce, Charles S. had two nervous breakdowns. After being forced to resign from the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1891, he had to rely on friends for support, chiefly William James. Lacking a permanent academic position as a forum for his ideas, Peirce was often under appreciated both during his lifetime and for many years after his death on April 19, 1914. The publication of his complete works, an ongoing project, and renewed scholarly interest in his ideas have confirmed his status as one of America’s most important philosophers. Fred Nielsen

Sources Apel, Karl-Otto. Charles S. Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981. Brent, Joseph. Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life. 1993. Reprint, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Menand, Louis. The Metaphysical Club. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. Peirce, Charles. Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

SAGE SAGE, an acronym for Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, is the predecessor of most realtime computer systems, command-and-control military systems, and air defense systems in operation today. Devised during the Cold War, SAGE laid the foundation for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) national air-traffic control system in the United States, as well as the first commercial airline reservation system (SABRE). The SAGE system, now dismantled, is also notable as one of the largest software projects of the 1950s and early 1960s. Work on SAGE began at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory in 1954, led by engineers George Valley and Jay Forrester. The most important function of the system as they conceived it was to coordinate radar information received from operators at remote air-defense direction centers—especially the echo signatures of Soviet intercontinental missiles—and return instructions to local antiaircraft batteries or fighter interceptors. Sector control officers combined data received from the network of individual SAGE installations to create

unique geographic air-situation displays on 19 inch cathode-ray tubes. The SAGE system was capable of refreshing its displays with new information 200 times every 2.5 seconds. Operators targeted individual aircraft on the display with a unique light gun. A mockup of a SAGE display unit was prominently featured in the doomsday film Fail-Safe (1964). At the heart of SAGE was AN/FSQ-7 (ArmyNavy Fixed Special Equipment), an early operating system developed by the U.S. Air Force. The SAGE AN/FSQ-7 system got its name, in turn, from the FSQ-7 Whirlwind II, an early randomaccess core memory computer and direct successor to the first real-time control computer, known as Whirlwind. The AN/FSQ-7 system required one of the largest programming efforts of its time, employing hundreds of programmers well before the formal establishment of computer science as a discipline. Some 100,000 instructions, or roughly 1,250 per computer program, were written for the system by 1956. Ten years later, the AN/FSQ7 comprised more than 500,000 instructions. Because of the operating system’s size, AN/FSQ-7 programmers introduced novel software for checking and compiling code, as well as new computer communications capabilities. Among them were the Lincoln Utility System, designed to assist inexperienced programmers in structuring, documenting, debugging, and communicating their work. The complete AN/FSQ-7 system—twentyfour hardware installations in all—processed system status data, buffer storage tables, and basic system programs by dividing them into blocks, or pieces of code between 25 and 4,000 words long. The computer transferred these blocks into and out of core memory as needed. SAGE systems were closely coordinated with a sequence-control program, which ran each airdefense monitoring program repeatedly—some every few seconds and others every few minutes. The system’s reliability and redundancies meant that the SAGE system experienced less than ten hours of downtime each year. International Business Machines (IBM)— which worked closely with the Lincoln Lab on computer projects—developed its own commercial real-time airline reservation system, the Semi-Automatic Business-Research Environment

Section 12: Statistics 755 (SABRE), by reusing software and expertise developed in completing the massive SAGE network. IBM implemented the first SABRE system for American Airlines between 1962 and 1964. The system included a half-million lines of code and reportedly cost $40 million. IBM sold variants of SABRE to Pan American and Delta Airlines in 1965. The company later developed an off-the-shelf version of its system called the Programmed Airline Reservations System (PARS). Philip Frana

Sources Astrahan, Morton M., and John F. Jacobs. “History of the Design of the SAGE Computer: The AN/FSQ-7.” Annals of the History of Computing 5 (October 1983): 340–49. Everett, Robert R., et al. “SAGE: A Data Processing System for Air Defense.” In Proceedings of the Eastern Joint Computer Conference. Washington, DC: IRE-ACM-AIEE, 1957. Jacobs, John F. “SAGE Overview.” Annals of the History of Computing 5 (October 1983): 323–29.

S TAT I S T I C S Statistics is a branch of mathematics that entails collecting and analyzing numerical data and making inferences or predictions based on the analysis. Subdisciplines are descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and probability theory. Descriptive statistics involves the collection of data by means of scientific observation and experiment, and the subsequent analysis of data by means of simple mathematical calculations. Analysis can range from tables of percentages to graphs of frequency distributions and more sophisticated measures of ranking data. Inferential statistics involves the use of analyzed data to make inferences about tendencies or patterns. Analysis of large collections of data often yields patterns that allow scientists to assert the probability of a given situation or result to recur repeatedly. Modern statistics largely developed in the twentieth century in response to the increasing demand for analysis of large amounts of data collected by social and natural scientists. The English philosopher and mathematician Karl Pearson, for example, contended in 1910 that any empirical argument should be backed with “statistics on the table.” Pearson was especially

known for developing the Pearson correlation, a means of finding correlation among disparate variables. Early leaders in the field included Ronald Aylmer Fisher, who published Statistical Methods for Research Workers (1925), and Harald Cramer, who published Mathematical Methods of Statistics (1945). L.H.C. Tippett studied the problem of the distribution of extremes and coined the phrase “random number.” Emil J. Bumbel examined extremes in distributions in Statistics of Extremes (1958). The foundations of probability theory were examined by a number of mathematicians, in particular F.N. David, who wrote Games, Gods, and Gambling (1962). The theories of these European statisticians would find a home in the practical needs of a growing America. Formal statistical inquiry in the United States began in the nineteenth century. The American Statistical Association (ASA) was founded in Boston in 1839 to “collect, preserve, and diffuse statistical information in the different departments of human knowledge.” In 1888, the American Statistical Association began publishing the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Many of its members worked for the U.S. Census Bureau, reflecting the need to track the nation’s booming population. Herman Hollerith, for example, a member of the American Statistical Association, worked for the Census Bureau and devised the idea of calculating machines. Others worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reflecting the growing productivity of the American industrial economy. During and after World War II, American statistician William Edwards Deming applied statistical analysis to manufacturing processes for the purpose of quality control. Deming’s ideas were adopted by the Japanese in their industrial development after World War II. In Japan, the Deming Prize for the advancement of statistical quality control is given each year to an individual and a company. Throughout the twentieth century, American statisticians employed European statistical models in the biological, physical, and social sciences. Johns Hopkins University opened a biostatistics program in 1918. The American Statistical Association began publishing a biometrics journal in 1945. In 1959, the ASA published Technometrics, statistical methods in the physical sciences.

756 Section 12: Statistics During the 1960s and 1970s, interest in statistical methodology spread to the social sciences, causing a revolution in social scientific inquiry and methods. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) became an essential tool for social scientists seeking quantitative data to support theory and inference. Andrew J. Waskey and Russell Lawson

Sources Agresti, Alan, and Barbara Finlay Agresti. Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences. San Francisco: Dellen, 1979. American Statistical Association. http://www.asstat.org. Salsburg, David. The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century. New York: Henry Holt, 2001. Stigler, Stephen M. Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

UNIVAC On the last day of March 1951, the Philadelphia branch of the United States Census Bureau ushered in what historian Paul Ceruzzi has called “the true beginning of the computer age” when it took delivery of the Universal Automatic Computer, or UNIVAC I, the first commercially available electronic digital computer in the country. Though capable of the then blazing speed of 1,000 calculations per second, the device looked anything but nimble. It weighed in at 16,000 pounds (7,300 kilograms), contained 5,000 vacuum tubes, and required 1,000 cubic feet (28 cubic meters) of floor space. Bulk aside, the UNIVAC offered exactly what organizations such as the Census Bureau needed: the ability to perform repetitive calculations on large volumes of numerical data quickly and reliably. Indeed, UNIVAC proved so useful in this regard that the Census Bureau ordered two more of the behemoths in the early 1950s, with the U.S. Air Force and General Electric (GE) following suit with single purchases. GE used its UNIVAC to become the first company in the world to institute a computerized payroll system, thus firmly establishing the computer in the technological arsenal of modern corporate America. This was exactly the outcome anticipated by UNIVAC’s designers, physicist J. William Mauchly

and engineer J. Presper Eckert, Jr., when they began work on its predecessor—the Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC)—at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Engineering in 1943. Like so many other research and development endeavors of the time, ENIAC, the world’s first operational large-scale electronic digital computer, was intended to aid the war effort, specifically to calculate complex ballistics tables for the U.S. Army Ordnance Department. But Mauchly had long harbored the belief that computers eventually would have broad applications in the scientific and commercial fields. His desire to patent ENIAC and promote the machine for commercial use—despite its having been developed under the semiofficial auspices of the university—led to a permanent rift between the physicist and the parent institution in 1946. Soon thereafter, Mauchly and Eckert transferred their operations to an old textile mill in Philadelphia. They landed a preliminary contract with the Census Bureau, formed an official business partnership, the Electronic Control Company (ECC), and began development of UNIVAC. Despite naysayers—most famously computer pioneer Howard Aiken of Harvard, who argued that there would be no need and no demand for more than one or two of these machines in the entire nation—Mauchly’s marketing skills soon landed several additional contracts for the as yet unfinished UNIVAC. Due to the exciting nature of this pioneering venture, ECC had little trouble attracting enthusiastic and talented programmers and engineers from high-caliber institutions such as Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the original Moore School team. Veterans of the UNIVAC project later recalled a cooperative and egalitarian work environment where even comparatively minor employees could make significant contributions to the emerging field. Moreover, at a time when women were particularly rare in the fields of engineering and mathematics, the UNIVAC team boasted several talented female members in both areas, including most famously Grace Murray Hopper, a trailblazing programmer on other early computer projects, such as Harvard’s Mark I program. UNIVAC’s innovative design team produced equally innovative solutions for this first generation of commercial-application computers,

Section 12: von Neumann, John 757 including the first magnetic tape storage system, which provided a much faster medium for data input and output than the then dominant punch-card systems from International Business Machines (IBM). Moreover, UNIVAC’s ability to read both alphabetical as well as numerical symbols and to store programs in its memory as well as data represented significant breakthroughs in making the computer a flexible, allpurpose tool for business. In 1947, ECC incorporated as the EckertMauchly Computer Company (EMCC), but unfortunately, the business acumen of the company’s founders did not match the design and development skills of its production team. Like many early computer concerns, EMCC had evolved from a government-financed, universitybased project team that lacked significant experience in manufacturing or business management. Mauchly and Eckert consistently underestimated their development and production costs and contracted to deliver UNIVACs at optimistically low, fixed prices, rather than the more typical cost-plus format that had been employed for much war-production work in World War II. Chronically strapped for cash, Mauchly and Eckert sold EMCC to Remington Rand in 1950. They continued to develop UNIVACs as a division of that corporation until their UNIVAC model was officially retired in 1957. Although only six UNIVACs were ever produced (one was sent to the Smithsonian Institution in 1957), the Eckert-Mauchly machine proved that computers could play a vital role in efficiently processing the vast streams of data generated by the increasingly bureaucratized world of modern corporations and government agencies. The UNIVAC also managed to capture the public’s imagination when one of the Census Bureau’s machines accurately predicted the outcome of the Eisenhower–Stevenson presidential contest during nationally televised coverage of the 1952 election. Jacob Jones

Sources Ceruzzi, Paul. A History of Modern Computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Kidwell, Peggy A., and Paul E. Ceruzzi. Landmarks in Digital Computing: A Smithsonian Pictorial History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1994.

Lukoff, Herman. From Dits to Bits: A Personal History of the Electronic Computer. Portland, OR: Robotics, 1979. Stern, Nancy. “The Eckert-Mauchly Computers: Conceptual Triumphs, Commercial Tribulations.” Technology and Culture 23:4 (1982): 569–82. ———. From ENIAC to UNIVAC: An Appraisal of the EckertMauchly Computers. Bedford, MA: Digital, 1981.

NEUMANN, JOHN (1903–1957)

VON

The Hungarian American mathematician John von Neumann made significant contributions to such diverse fields as pure mathematics, logic, game theory, quantum physics, computer science, and meteorology. He was born Janos Neumann on December 28, 1903, in Budapest, Hungary, and emigrated to the United States in the face of rising anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany during the 1930s. He was an outspoken critic of communism and did much work for the U.S. armed forces, including helping to develop the atomic bomb. While still in gymnasium (high school), von Neumann did original research in mathematics. A paper he wrote in high school, “Zur Einführung der transfiniten Ordnungszählen” (Toward the Introduction of Transfinite Ordinal Numbers), published in 1923, expanded upon the work of German mathematician George Cantor in ordinal numbers. Von Neumann passed the entrance exam for the chemical engineering program at Zurich’s prestigious Eidgennoissische Technische Hochschule—a test Albert Einstein had failed on his first try—and enrolled simultaneously in a doctoral program in mathematics at Budapest University, splitting time between the two cities. He did his doctoral research on the axiomization of set theory, and, in 1926, at the age of twenty-two, he earned his Ph.D. (with highest honors) in chemical engineering. That same year, he took a position at Göttingen University in Germany, where he worked with David Hilbert and other mathematicians. He was a prolific author, publishing thirty-two papers on physics, mathematics, and economics by 1929. In the early 1930s, German society became increasingly difficult for Jews. Fortunately, von Neumann received an attractive job offer in

758 Section 12: von Neumann, John 1933: a lifetime professorship at the newly formed Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. The position included a handsome salary and no teaching duties. Von Neumann quickly accepted the offer, joining Einstein and other luminaries at the prestigious institute. He became an American citizen in 1937. During World War II, von Neumann turned to applied mathematics in an effort to help his new country’s military efforts, working for the National Defense Research Council and other agencies on a wide range of practical problems. These included studies of the efficiency of different geometric shapes in designing explosives, the effectiveness of aircraft bombing patterns, explosive blast waves, and other topics. Toward the end of the war, von Neumann worked with the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, helping to design the atomic bomb and joining discussions on where best to deploy it. He served on the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission from 1955 until his death. Von Neumann was also a major pioneer in the developing field of game theory, a mathematically oriented subfield of economics. Along with Oskar Morganstern, he published the classic Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1946. According to von Neumann, economic problems “are often stated in such vague terms as to make mathematical treatment a priori hopeless.” In the book, von Neumann restated the issues with clarity and precision before proceeding with his own insightful analysis. Near the end of his life, he became increasingly interested in the development of the first computers. At the Institute for Advanced Study he directed the Computer Project, building a computer that proved particularly useful to meteorologists. In 1958, he published The Computer and the Brain. The Computer Project shut down soon after his death from cancer on February 8, 1957, but von Neumann’s work in economics and computer science continues to be influential. Andrew Perry

Sources Macrae, Norman. John von Neumann. New York: Pantheon, 1992. Morganstern, Oskar, and John von Neumann. The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944.

W H I R LW I N D Upon its completion in 1951, after five years of work and $5 million in government investment, Whirlwind was “the fastest real-time digital computer in the world,” according to historian Bruce Wheaton. Project Whirlwind also made substantial contributions to the nascent field of computer engineering, including magnetic-core random access memory (RAM) and block diagram system designs. Like several other computer projects of the mid-twentieth century, Whirlwind grew out of a World War II military contract. In this case, the Special Devices Division of the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics wanted a training machine that could analyze pilot responses while simulating the flight characteristics of a broad range of aircraft types. Since the Electrical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was already working on related feedback systems, it was awarded the contract for the flight simulator in December 1944.The lead engineer on the project, a young MIT graduate student named Jay Forrester, soon realized that the analogue computers used in such work were too slow to produce the sort of rapid feedback needed for complex, real-time flight simulation. By the following year, Forrester had determined that only some version of the digital computers then being developed, such as in the ENIAC project at the University of Pennsylvania, would be capable of achieving the necessary speeds. Responding to Forrester’s arguments, the navy agreed to expand the original contract to accommodate the development of a digital computer. Thus, Project Whirlwind was officially launched in March 1946. Forrester recruited his friend and fellow MIT graduate student Robert R. Everett to manage Whirlwind’s system design, or block diagram section. Block diagrams—visualizations of the interaction of computer components and operation sequences—were one of the major contributions made by the Whirlwind project to early computer design. As stated by Whirlwind’s chief historian, Thomas Smith, block diagrams “bridged the gulf between the abstract logical concepts underlying the digital computer and the engineering concepts transforming the logic of the computer into

Section 12: Wiener, Norbert 759 corresponding engineering-design problems susceptible of solution.” Forrester, meanwhile, was making his own major contribution to computer design history by fashioning Whirlwind’s internal magneticcore storage unit, which gave the computer the sort of RAM capacity necessary to perform realtime functions. Magnetic-core storage would be the industry standard, until it was superseded by transistors in the 1960s. Despite its major advances in general computer design, however, as the Whirlwind project neared the end of its funding cycle in 1948, the team still had not finished the flight simulator they were originally contracted to produce. As a result, Whirlwind’s new supervisory agency—the Office of Naval Research (ONR)—threatened to phase out funding for the project. ONR also balked at Whirlwind’s expense. Forrester’s group had, after all, been consuming over $1 million a year when comparable programs such as UNIVAC were getting by on less than half that amount. Forrester responded that the military needed a fast, general-purpose computer that could be used for any number of real-time command and control applications, such as coordinated fire control for artillery and missile systems. As for the cost, Forrester argued that mathematically precise component engineering and system design were necessary for the level of reliability required for real-time operations, and thorough design work at the beginning would make the machine more easily replicable by private industry when the latter took over production. Then, in August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear weapon. The end of the U.S. nuclear monopoly meant that the Soviets eventually could launch a nuclear attack on the United States using long-range bombers flying over the North Pole. To counter this threat, the U.S. Air Force looked to build a nationwide network of radar posts to provide early warning of such an attack. Coordinating the information from these radar sites and providing the air force with real-time information for fighter intercepts would require the kind of computing capacity provided by Whirlwind. Thus, the U.S. Air Force became the new funding agency for the Whirlwind project. In April 1951, the computer passed its first real-world test with flying colors, successfully

coordinating information of a mock attack from several radar sites on Cape Cod, while also providing trajectories for U.S. Air Force counterattack. Whirlwind would become the prototype for the FSQ-7 computer used by the early warning air defense system known as SAGE (SemiAutomatic Ground Environment) developed by MIT and the MITRE Corporation, headed by Whirlwind veteran Everett. The FSQ-7 also would provide the foundation for future International Business Machines (IBM) dominance of the digital computer industry, as IBM was tapped to replicate the computer for both the defense establishment and the larger commercial market. Jacob Jones

Sources Redmond, Kent C., and Thomas M. Smith. From Whirlwind to MITRE: The R & D Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. ———. Project Whirlwind: The History of a Pioneer Computer. Bedford, MA: Digital, 1980. Smith, Thomas M. “Project Whirlwind: An Unorthodox Development Project.” Technology and Culture 17:3 (July 1976): 447–64.

WIENER, NORBERT (1894–1964) The American mathematician Norbert Wiener, who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for more than forty years, developed an interdisciplinary approach to the study of communication and control in living organisms and machines—a field he dubbed cybernetics. Born on November 26, 1894, Wiener was a child prodigy, a role thrust upon him by his father, Leo Wiener, a Slavic languages specialist at Harvard University. Enrolled at Tufts University at the age of eleven, Wiener finished his doctoral work in mathematical logic at Harvard at age eighteen. As an instructor at MIT beginning in 1919, he worked out mathematical solutions by talking to anyone who would listen on his rambles around campus. He was known for his absentmindedness and quirks, many revolving around the paradox of his extreme egocentric behavior and

760 Section 12: Wiener, Norbert personal generosity. His classes could be chaotic. He had a propensity for punctuating lectures with unrelated commentaries, self-reflections, and problems worked out on the fly. Cybernetics involves the study of communication and control in living organisms and in machines, particularly in respect to the principles of biological feedback, how information is transferred, and inner organization and selfcontainment (of both humans and machines). Today, cybernetic thought permeates multidisciplinary activity in computer science, engineering, biology, and the social sciences, although the term itself is no longer widely used in the West. Wiener, who derived the word cybernetics from a Greek word meaning “to steer,” inspired many others to adopt the science as a unifying force binding together game theory, operations research, automata theory, logic, and information theory. He fashioned cybernetics in the context of World War II and the development of advanced

weaponry in the struggle against the Axis powers. Wiener envisioned sophisticated fire-control systems for shooting down enemy planes. These weapons systems would be patterned after the feedback mechanisms, or self-adjusting physiological abilities, of the human body. At the end of the war, Wiener emphasized the peaceful uses of cybernetics and computer automation. His cybernetics had a profound effect on the development of theories of human and machine intelligence after 1950. He argued that humans and machines should be considered together in fundamentally interchangeable terms. As he wrote in a 1948 article for Scientific American, “Cybernetics attempts to find the common elements in the functioning of automatic machines and of the human nervous system, and to develop a theory which will cover the entire field of control and communication in machines and in living organisms.” The debates of the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics in the 1940s and 1950s, which featured

Longtime MIT professor and mathematician Norbert Wiener is known as the founder of cybernetics—the interdisciplinary study of the feedback process in machines, living organisms, and social organizations. (AIP Emilio Segre Visual Archives)

Section 12: Wiener, Norbert 761 many leading scientists from all disciplines, nurtured and further solidified the ideas of Wiener and others who wanted to use cybernetics to create a new machine-based artificial intelligence. One of the Macy Conferences’ most active participants, the mathematical biophysicist Walter Pitts, appreciated Wiener’s direct comparison of neural tissue to vacuum tube technology. Pitts considered the electrical devices ideal representatives of the most fundamental units of human thought. Wiener was a professor at MIT from 1919 to 1960, during which time he worked on Brownian motion, the random action of subatomic particles; probability theory, which influenced stochastic processes; potential theory, which is related to electromagnetism; and harmonic analysis, which

relates to irregular functions in mathematics. He wrote two autobiographies, Ex Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (1953) and I Am a Mathematician (1956). Wiener died in Stockholm, Sweden, on March 18, 1964. Philip Frana

Sources Galison, Peter. “The Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision.” Social Studies of Science 23 (1993): 107–27. Mahoney, Michael S. “Cybernetics and Information Technology.” In Companion to the History of Modern Science, ed. R.C. Olby, et al. New York: Routledge, 1990. Wiener, Norbert. “Cybernetics.” Scientific American 179 (1948): 14–19. ———. Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1948.

DOCUMENTS A Nineteenth-Century Calculating Machine The mechanical and electronic calculator has a long history. American scientists contributed to the development of calculators through pragmatic inventions that sought to martial information more quickly and efficiently. The following document, from an 1888 issue of Scientific American, describes the invention of “An Improved Calculating Machine” by a Chicago inventor. There has lately been invented by Mr. Dorr E. Felt, of Chicago, a calculating machine which he has named the comptometer. It is a practical machine operated by keys for the computation of numbers and the solution of mathematical problems. The rapidity and accuracy with which computations are made on the comptometer when in the hands of a skillful operator are calculated to meet the approval and win the admiration of all. In the construction of the comptometer all the operating parts are made of the finest hardened steel, thus insuring the greatest degree of durability. The accuracy and durability of the machine have been thoroughly tested in the actuary’s department of the United States Treasury at Washington, where one is in constant use. It will add, subtract, multiply, and divide, from which it is evident that all arithmetical problems can be solved on it. Particular attention is called to its availability in computing interest, discount, percentage, and exchange. It is a neat, compact machine, fourteen and one-quarter inches long, seven and one-quarter inches wide, and five inches high, weighing eight and a half pounds. By referring to the cut, it will be seen that each key has two numbers on its top, one large and the other small, but for the present leave the small one out of consideration, and understand every reference to be to the large one only. It will be seen that the keys resolve themselves into rows running from right to left and rows running

from the operator. For convenience in explaining, the rows running from right to left will be called rows, and those running from the operator will be called series. It will be further noticed that every key in the first row has the figure 1 on its top, those in the second the figure 2, those in the third the figure 3, etc. The figures on the tops of the keys in the series run from one to nine inclusive. The first series represents units, the second tens, and the third hundreds, etc. To add, it is merely necessary to touch on the machine the numbers to be added; if we have 5,673 will be shown on the register; we next touch 9 in the third series, 3 in the second, and 2 in the first, when the sum of the two numbers, 6,605, will be shown by the register. This operation can be continued until the limit of the machine is reached, which in the standard size is 999,999,999. Subtraction, multiplication, and division can each be as rapidly and as easily performed. By again referring to the cut, it will be seen that at the front of the machine is a plate in which are a number of square openings, which is called the register plate. At these openings are shown all results by numeral wheels, which are below the plate and which stand side by side on the same shaft, and each of these numeral wheels is acted upon by its keys direct and also by the carrying part of the numeral wheel next lower in order, something that has never been practically accomplished before in any mathematical calculator operated by keys. The carrying mechanism in this machine is entirely independent of the keys struck, and the power required for carrying is gradually accumulated and automatically released at the proper moment, therefore requiring no additional effort to depress the key when, through the operation of the carrying device, the next numeral wheel in order above has to be moved, than when such is not the case; therefore, when a succession of nines occur on the register, and a key is struck in one of the lower orders, it is impossible to discover that any more power is required than

762

Section 12: Documents 763 when one nine only appears on the register. In this machine two positive stops are employed for each numeral wheel, one to prevent overrotation of the numeral wheel under the impulse of the key stroke, and the other to prevent overrotation of the numeral wheel when actuated by the carrying mechanism. As there is no frictional device employed to prevent over-rotation, the machine always responds to a light touch on the keys; and as each numeral wheel is always in positive engagement with its controlling devices, absolute accuracy is insured at all times. It having been stated that the carrying device is independent, it will be at once seen that when a key of one of the higher orders is struck, the carrying device of the next lower order is at once released, allowing the numeral wheel on which the key struck acts to move independently of all numeral wheels lower in order. The result of any operation being obtained, the machine is returned to naught by depressing the lever which appears on the right and turning the knob above it until the figures seven appear on the register, when release the lever and continue turning the knob, and the machine will stop at the ciphers. Source: “An Improved Calculating Machine,” Scientific American 59 (August 1888).

Herman Hollerith’s Electric Tabulating System Herman Hollerith, the founder of IBM, revolutionized the statistical manipulation of data with his Hollerith Electric Tabulating System, which was used by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1890. The following is a description of the machine published at the time. [O]ne of the most important elements of the Hollerith electric tabulating system [is] the machine which is used for transferring the individual records to cards by punching holes, the relative position of these holes in the cards determining the characteristics of the individual. As used in the census work, it should be understood, that, in the compilation of the statistics of population, a card must be punched for each individual reported, so that for this class of observations alone no less than 65,000,000 cards will have to be punched. It is to facilitate this

work that the key-board punch . . . has been devised. The machine consists of a base, to which is secured a card-holder, in which individual cards can readily be inserted and removed. In front of this is a key-board, formed with a number of holes, each lettered and numbered, the letters and numbers corresponding to the designations given to the different statistical items to be recorded. Moving on this base is a swinging arm, pivoted at the back, and capable of being swung from right to left, and forward and backward. Secured to this swinging arm is a punch, which is connected with, and operated by, a lever terminating in a knob and pin directly over the key-board. The holes in the key-board are arranged in such curves, that, by moving the pin along them, the punch will move in straight lines parallel to the edge of the card. The pin, punch and key-board are in such relative positions that the punch will not cut the paper until the pin is depressed in one of the holes, thus securing the punching of the holes in proper position in the card. To transcribe a record, a card is first put in the holder, and then, beginning at the upper lefthand corner of the key-board, the items are successively recorded by punching according to the letters and numbers on the key-board. The movement of the punch, or knob, being from the upper left-hand corner to the right, and then back along the front edge of the key-board to the left, leaves the punch in convenient position for removing the punched card and inserting a new one. The general arrangement of the key-board conforms with the arrangement of the items on the schedule which are to be transcribed. Simple items, such as sex, race, conjugal condition, etc., are designated on the key-board directly by abbreviations, suitably arranged in groups by heavy lines. Thus, for example, sex would be included in a small space, one hole being designated M, and one F. The operator becoming familiar with the position in which these items are found on the key-board, little time is lost in transcribing such records. In the case of occupations and birthplaces, and other items where a large amount of detail is required to be recorded in a comparatively small space of the card, combinations are used. Thus, a group of occupations,

764 Section 12: Documents such, for instance, as the agricultural occupations, would be indicated by A; then, again, professional occupations may be indicated by B, another group of occupations by C, etc. . . . The cards used for the purpose of transcribing the individual records of the census, will be made of think manilla stock, 31⁄4 inches wide and 65⁄8 inches long. They will be perfectly blank, except a printed number, which serves to identify the given card, if necessary. Besides this number, the cards will have a number of holes punched by means of these key-board punches. The position of each of these punch marks upon each card designates, in accordance with a pre-arranged scheme, some distinguishing characteristic of the individual, such, for example, as the race, . . . the sex; the age; the conjugal condition, in case of females, whether a mother, and if so, how many children, and how many of these living; the place of birth; the place of birth of father; the place of birth of mother; if foreign born, the number of years in the United States; whether naturalized or not; the profession, trade or occupation; the number of months unemployed during the census year; whether the person attended school or not during the census year; whether able to read, able to write, able to speak English, if not, what language spoken. Source: “Further Details of the Hollerith Electric Tabulating System,” Manufacturer and Builder 22:5 (May 1890).

Electronic Tabulation of the 1890 Census The following account describes the efficiency of the Hollerith Electric Tabulating System in the manipulation of population data for the 1890 U.S. Census. The chiefs of the Population Division of the Census Office celebrated the completion of the count of the population of the United States. . . . The Hollerith electric tabulating system has been in use by the Census Office for the tabulation of the schedules of the population taken under the eleventh census. Superintendent Porter . . . spoke as follows: “For the first time in the history of the world, the count of the population of a great nation has been made by the aid of electricity. The number named on every one of fifteen million schedules has been registered twice by the nimble and expert fingers of the counters. . . . In June, these blanks were distributed throughout the country. In July and August they find themselves back in the Census Office, counted twice, and ready for the next statistical treatment. . . . We have actually counted 128,000,000 in six weeks, or the entire population of 64,000,000 twice in that period. . . . [W]e could, with these electrical machines, count the entire population of the United States in ten days of seven working hours each.” Source: “The Hollerith System in the Census Work,” Manufacturer and Builder 22:9 (September 1890).

Section 13

APPLIED SCIENCE

ESSAYS The American Inventor A

merica has been a place for the jack of all trades, the entrepreneur, the tinker, the inventor. America was the new world, and as the eighteenth-century writer Hector St. John de Crevecoeur exclaimed in Letters from an American Farmer (1782), it was a place where “new men” could develop new ideas and a fresh perspective on life, unencumbered by the traditions, philosophies, and institutions of Europe. Americans were not metaphysicians, but rather practical thinkers who applied the great ideas of European scientists and philosophers to the particular problems of the American environment. Over the course of American history, American inventors took European scientific theories and made useful items. Europeans worked out the theory and structure of electricity, but Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb. European physicists discovered the nature of the atom and the theories of fission and nuclear chain reaction, but Americans built the first atomic bomb. Americans used European mathematical foundations to build the first electronic computers. In agriculture, industry, communication, transportation, and military technology, American inventors created, developed, manufactured, multiplied, utilized, built, and succeeded in reshaping their environment. The American innovative mindset was present at the beginning of colonial settlement, when the mere provision of the simple necessities of life, such as food and shelter, demanded a practical and empirical approach to problem solving. The first permanent English colony at Jamestown, for example, succeeded because Captain John Smith recognized that the initial mindset of the Jamestown colonists—that a successful colony required the discovery of mines of gold and silver—had to be replaced by the mindset of self-sufficiency in the new land. Smith realized that the wealth of North America lay not in

precious metals but in the fertility of the soil and the plenty of the forests, rivers, and sea. John Smith grew up in Elizabethan England at the same time as another innovative thinker, Francis Bacon. Bacon firmly believed that the problems of everyday life as well as the problems of science were best solved by means of an empirical mindset. In his book Novum Organum (New Method), published in 1620, Bacon argued that once problems are identified, the thinker must form a hypothesis of the solution and then test the hypothesis by experiment; trial and error is often necessary to discover the solution to the problem. Knowledge and behavior must change in accordance with the solution. Francis Bacon was a synthesizer: He realized that the empirical method was being used on a daily basis by English men and women to solve everyday problems, and he formulated a method to make systematic what previously had been sporadic. English emigrants to America brought Bacon’s method to bear on the manifold problems they confronted in building communities in the wilderness. Bacon’s essay New Atlantis (1627) hypothesized a society based on the empirical method, where the goal of the populace was the increase and application of knowledge. The New Atlantis, which Bacon imagined to be off the coast of America somewhere in the Pacific, was said to be a land reflecting the manifold accomplishments of applied knowledge. The hero of this society was the inventor. Likewise in America, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the inventor was eulogized. Benjamin Franklin, the most well-known and respected man of Revolutionary America, was the leader of the American effort to promote useful knowledge. Franklin invented practical items such as the bifocal lens, Franklin stove, catheter, and lightning rod, and

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768 Section 13: Essays he began useful institutions such as the public library, fire department, and American Philosophical Society. Independence from England and the demands of creating a productive, successful society inspired in Americans a willingness to embrace technology to encourage improvements in production, transportation, and communication. The Industrial Revolution thrived in America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries because of the American personality, which focused on building and doing. The stage for industrialization was set by the tremendous productivity of the American farmer, which resulted in available capital and food surplus to support a growing population, creating a demand for more products. Farm productivity was the result of individual and collective ingenuity. John Deere, for example, addressed the needs of Midwestern farmers in the 1830s by inventing a durable steel plow that could furrow the thick soil and scour the ploughshare. He massproduced this steel plow at his factory in Moline, Illinois, meeting the demand of the increasing numbers of American farmers migrating west. Also in great demand because of the growing American population was clothing. Do-ityourself Americans sought the means to make their own inexpensive, durable clothing. In the 1840s and 1850s, inventors Elias Howe and Isaac Singer responded to American demand with the sewing machine, which allowed for both individual and collective production of clothing for personal and consumer use. The sewing machine helped break down class barriers by standardizing clothing, so that the factory laborer could buy similar clothes, and dress in the same fashion, as the factory owner. Science and technology encouraged the standardization and democratization of invention, production, and consumption. Henry Ford, for example, was an American hero, because he integrated the elements of manufacture into an efficient assembly-line process. The result was a product without variety—the ownership of a Ford automobile was not distinctive and its use was not unique—and thus Ford drastically lowered the cost of the automobile, making it available to all Americans. This process would extend to numerous other consumer products.

During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, natural limitations on human movement yielded to American inventiveness. Communication across vast distances was enabled by Samuel F.B. Morse’s telegraph (first demonstrated in 1838) and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone (1876). As the limitations of space and time were circumvented by communication and transportation devices, likewise the most fundamental of natural laws limiting human movement, gravity, was overcome by American inventors. In December 1903, bicycle makers Orville and Wilbur Wright flew a heavier-than-air machine over the sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1940, Russian immigrant Igor Sikorsky successfully flew the first helicopter. One of the most outstanding examples of American inventiveness is the perfection of the rocket. Yankee ingenuity is illustrated in the life and accomplishments of Robert Goddard, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, and graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. A reclusive physics professor at Clark University, his pioneering genius gave birth to jet propulsion and liquid-propellant rocketry, and he secured an astonishing number of patents through his work. His suggestive paper, “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,” published in 1919, was followed by the successful launch of a liquidfueled rocket in 1926. Goddard left New England in 1930 for the quiet and climatic constancy of Roswell, New Mexico, where he continued his experiments with liquid fuel, particularly liquid oxygen. In April 1932, he launched an 11 foot (3.35 meter) rocket to an altitude of 2,000 feet (620 meters) at 500 miles (800 kilometers) per hour. At Roswell, Goddard worked to ensure vertical stability by means of gyroscopes and pendulums; optimum power and acceleration with the most efficient weight; remote control; and reusable combustion chambers. During World War II, he continued his work on liquid-fueled rockets for the U.S. Navy. Other American scientists and engineers continued the work in rocketry, producing the most astonishing examples of American ingenuity: rockets capable of reaching the moon and, in 1969, landing a human on its surface. Russell Lawson

Section 13: Essays 769 Sources Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans. 3 vols. New York: Vintage Books, 1964–1973. Cohen, I. Bernard. Benjamin Franklin’s Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Lawson, Russell M. “Science.” In Encyclopedia of New England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. ———. “Science and Medicine.” In American Eras: The Colonial Era, 1600–1754, ed. Jessica Kross. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

The Bounty of North America T

he first European explorers of North America were struck by the incredible, seemingly unlimited bounty of the sea, rivers, forests, mountains, and plains. Learning the farming techniques of the American Indians, using trial and error, and bringing from Europe assumptions and methods of science, colonial Americans learned how to forage for food, medicine, and building materials; grow crops for consumption and trade; dig iron from bogs and smelt it into wrought iron and pig iron; build mills next to rivers and streams; and apply knowledge and technology in many other ways to make the land productive and their lives secure.

food. Maples produced sugar, as did the box elder and showy orchid. Many trees produced edible flowers in the spring; chief among these were the redbud, the flowers of which were used in salads. The common blue violet also was a salad material. The jack-in-the-pulpit was boiled and eaten. The American Indians and settlers also gathered the nuts of the forest—the chestnut, pecan, black walnut, and butternut. The nut of the shagbark hickory could produce, upon boiling, an oily substance called pawcohicorn that Indians used as an ingredient in various foods. Bitternut hickory nuts produced oil for lamps.

Rural Economy Fruit of the Forest The forests and plains provided plentiful materials and wholesome food for colonists and the native peoples alike. They used basswood to make ropes and mats; flowering dogwood, black walnut, and black oak for dye; arrowwood branches for the shafts of arrows; the inner bark of the slippery elm as a glue; red mulberry fibers for clothing; and wax of the honeybee for candles. Trees in which the hunter could find beehives filled with honey and wax included the basswood and southern bayberry. Fruit trees yielded their bounty in summer and fall. The persimmon, a sweet, pungent fruit, was dried by Indians and used in bread. Natives and settlers alike enjoyed the pawpaw. The fruit of the black cherry tree could be made into jelly and wine. The berries of the blackhaw made a good jam. The inner bark of the sweet gum tree provided chewing gum. Indians ate the sprouts of the smooth sumac. Chewing sumac fruit helped ward off thirst. Winged sumac berries provided winter

Agriculture was the foundation of colonial American society, culture, and economy. All thirteen of the colonies were agriculturally based, some more than others. New England colonies such as New Hampshire and Maine also were heavily dependent on fishing, shipbuilding, trade, and lumber. The Northern and Middle Colonies raised sheep for wool. Breeding of sheep, cattle, and horses was carried on actively. The heavy, rocky terrain of New England required draft animals and sturdy plows to penetrate the soil. The plow was an essential tool, used with more frequency after 1650. During the colonial period and into the nineteenth century, plows became more sophisticated, with iron then steel plowshares (used to cut the soil) and wooden then iron plated moldboards (used to turn the soil). Plows developed during the colonial period included the Carey Plow, which used a wrought-iron plowshare, and the shovel-plow, which used a shovel-like plowshare to cut the soil with a furrowing action.

770 Section 13: Essays particularly in England among cloth manufacturers. The best dye is produced through the leaves, but sometimes the whole plant is used. Lucas experimented for several years, trying different planting times and different soils to see which crop would be best. In 1741, samples of her indigo harvest were sent to England and declared the finest yet seen, even better than those produced by the French in their Caribbean colonies. Lucas shared seed with other South Carolina farmers, and the indigo harvest grew yearly, becoming an important part of the colony’s economy.

Colonial Industries

An abundance of lumber, the bounty of the sea, and the importance of maritime trade to the colonial economy made shipbuilding a vital industry in early America. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Weavers and fullers produced cloth for domestic consumption from wool, flax, and cotton. New Englanders established fulling mills soon after settlement in the early to mid-1600s. Every colonial family had spinning wheels and handlooms for making thread and fabric for homespun clothes. Flax, a versatile plant that can be used for fibers and food, was cultivated in colonial America primarily for a thread that was strong and sturdy. Southern colonies produced cash crops such as tobacco, sugar, indigo, and rice. Rice was introduced in the Carolinas during the midseventeenth century. Tobacco was introduced in Virginia much earlier, shortly after the founding of Jamestown. Eliza Lucas of South Carolina was famous for her experiments on and production of indigo, a plant that forms a blue dye, which was increasingly in demand during the eighteenth century,

Mills of various types were a necessity in burgeoning towns of early America. Mills were used to grind grain (gristmills), cut wood (sawmills), improve cloth (fulling mills), and make paper (paper mills). A moving stream of water pushed a waterwheel that powered a system of gears that rotated a saw blade or moved a millstone or other devices. Undershot and overshot mills were erected perpendicular to a stream: the waterwheel of an undershot mill moved clockwise; in an overshot mill, the waterwheel moved counterclockwise. Horizontal mills lay parallel to a stream. North America had plentiful bogs that provided iron ore for those who knew how to smelt and hammer it into useful implements. Lacking a good iron source, England encouraged colonial production of pig iron, formed into bars or ingots that could be exported to the mother country. The English were less enthusiastic about colonial iron production that resulted in wrought iron for use in farm and building materials. One of the first ironworks in the colonies was located at Saugus, Massachusetts, where, in the 1640s, Joseph Jenks built a furnace and forge to heat the iron with charcoal and limestone to produce pig iron. At its peak in the late 1640s, the Saugus Ironworks produced one ton of pig iron per day.

Fishing When John Smith cruised the New England coast in 1614, he learned from the native Algonquin that the number of fish in the sea, rivers, and streams was comparable to the hairs on the head—

Section 13: Essays 771 uncountable. Smith became a proponent of the colonial fishing industry, which came to fruition shortly after the founding of initial settlements at Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Strawbery Banke (New Hampshire). Smith envisioned the center of the fishing industry at the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. Indeed, during the 1600s and 1700s, the Isles of Shoals, particularly the town of Gosport, became the center of the New England fishing industry. Here fishermen and fishwives spent their days fishing, cleaning the catch, and drying the cleaned fish on stakes, wooden rafters that allowed the fish to be dried by the sun and the

wind. Salt-fish was produced in huge quantities, as was dumb-fish, a fish (particularly cod) allowed to mellow, sometimes by being buried in the ground for several days, before it was boiled. Russell Lawson

Sources Lawson, Russell M. “Science and Medicine.” In American Eras: The Colonial Era, 1600–1754, ed. Jessica Kross. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Russell, Howard. Indian New England before the Mayflower. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1980. Smith, John. The Complete Works of Captain John Smith. Ed. Philip Barbour. 3 vols. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

Science and the Industrial Revolution H

istorians conceptualize the development of science and industry as a process that occurred over time through successive periods of advancement: the agricultural revolution of the pre-industrial sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Industrial Revolution of the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, and a second industrial revolution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While others were early leaders in developing theories of science, Americans were skilled at applying scientific theory, yielding technologies that spurred industrial and economic growth.

Agricultural Revolution The social and technological changes in sixteenthand seventeenth-century Europe and America known as the agricultural revolution produced a new economy that gave impetus to the even greater technological innovation of the Industrial Revolution. With the demise of serfdom, and with more efficient food production reducing the need for agricultural workers, many people migrated to the larger population centers in search of employment, which provided the ready pool of workers that made the Industrial Revolution possible. The migration of peasants from the landed estates of Europe contributed a considerable number of settlers to the New World. These settlers

introduced the new techniques of the agricultural revolution to the primarily agrarian society of the Americas, which was eager to employ any technology that would stimulate production. The American agricultural economy was unencumbered by outmoded land-use laws, which existed in Europe, and Americans had already demonstrated a willingness to develop and market new crops such a tobacco and corn. American landowners sought to decrease the number of workers needed and the total cost of production by increasing yield per worker through new farming technology. Innovations that contributed to this greater efficiency included new crops, new techniques of land use, and mechanization. New crops such as potatoes and clover improved the crop yield per acre in two ways: These new root and fodder crops produced higher yields of animal feedstuffs than the grasslands they replaced, and the mix of crops intended for human consumption changed to higher-yielding crops. A secondary effect of these new crops was to shift the human diet away from cereals as a staple toward meat and other animal products. In addition, increased crop yields produced new marketable goods for a rapidly increasing population in America. From the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the agricultural revolution was characterized by changes in

772 Section 13: Essays land use, larger farms, regional specialization, and the introduction of new machinery and improved fertilizers, livestock feedstuffs, and drainage. In land-rich America, new lands were being cleared, and crop rotation, selective breeding, and herd management were introduced. Two particular land reclamation innovations, both technologically based, were clearing and drainage, and fertilization and restoration. Clearing and drainage not only increased the quantity of available arable land, but it also allowed the land to be worked by mechanized farming techniques, using new plows and new plowing methods. Chemical fertilizers and revitalizing cover crops restored fertility to depleted lands. For example, chemical nitrogen fertilization and crop-based nitrogen fertilization using leguminous crops, such as clover, returned some overworked lands to production and improved production on in-use farm lands by as much as 60 percent. The unenclosed, open field system of the Middle Ages was based on a three-year crop rotation, with different crops planted in each of two fields and a third field lying fallow. But the Dutch introduced a four-field crop rotation system by planting turnips and clover in fields that would have remained fallow, thus increasing overall production. Clover also proved to be an excellent fodder crop, used for livestock feedstuffs. The new system of crop rotation increased the area of arable land; the increased grain and cereal crops increased livestock production, which in turn yielded more manure for fertilizer. The agricultural revolution brought improvements to old technologies and introduced new ones, primarily mechanization. For example, Jethro Tull’s seed drill more evenly distributed seeds than was possible before its use, and Disney Stanyforth’s and Joseph Foljambe’s swing plough cultivated soil that traditional ploughs could not, making more land arable. Though small improvements to basic farm implements increased their efficiency, the introduction of mechanized harvesting—using thrashing or threshing machines, reapers, steam engines, and internal combustion engines—exponentially increased productivity. With more production per acre, landowners needed fewer workers. Agrarian wealth became concentrated in the hands of fewer people. Un-

skilled workers sought jobs in industry and commerce rather than on farms, providing urban centers with factory workers and consumers. Between 1790 and the end of the nineteenth century, the number of people employed in agriculture dropped by 40 percent.

Industrial Revolution Application-oriented science, often based on trial and error, was employed in the Industrial Revolution launched in the mid-eighteenth century. For example, the developing American textile industry relied on American and European inventiveness. Of the former was Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin, allowing for the efficient production of cotton for New England factories, and the concept of interchangeable parts—subsequently called the American system of manufacturing— that he developed as a consequence of mass producing muskets for the U.S. military. Americans also turned European ideas and inventions into the efficient production of goods. English immigrant Samuel Slater, for example, brought Richard Arkwright’s idea of the spinning frame to America, introducing its use at Slater’s Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. During the second half of the nineteenth century, industrialization was driven by innovations in chemicals, petroleum refining and distribution, machinery, food and consumer production and distribution, electrical industries, and engine-based industries such as the automotive and farm machinery industries. At the same time, there was a shift in scientific, industrial, and technological leadership away from Great Britain to the United States. The primary technological changes in America included new basic materials, new energy sources, new machines and inventions, new organizational structures, new forms of transportation and communication, and new applications of science to industry and technology. From the end of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century, science and industry were characterized by advances in and the predominance of steel, chemicals, the internal combustion engine, and electrical equipment and motors. It was in the last half of the nineteenth century that the distinction between engineering,

Section 13: Essays 773 applied science, and the pure sciences was first drawn, and it was at this time that science and technology transitioned from technology-driven science to science-driven technology. For example, with advances in the science of metallurgy, American steel manufacturers were able to improve their processes and create products to the varying specifications of individual industries. In a similar vein, Nikola Tesla’s knowledge of electromagnetism, specifically his rotating magnetic field principle in 1882, improved Thomas Edison’s direct-current dynamos. And it was Tesla’s polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors that allowed the efficient transmission of electricity over great distances. The United States took the lead in the second industrial revolution by virtue of its abundant natural resources, assembly-line manufacturing techniques, advances in transportation and communication, and the application of science to technology. With its substantial raw materials and energy resources that were made accessible by an expanding railroad system, the United States began to exceed the industrial production of Western Europe in the late nineteenth century. By the first quarter of the twentieth century, the United States was well ahead of Western Europe in terms of industrial output. New forms of transportation, such as the steam locomotive, steamship, automobile, and airplane, reduced travel time between various parts of the country, and made new areas accessible. New and improved forms of communication, such as the steam-powered rotary printing press, telegraph, telephone, and radio, enhanced the flow of information and allowed individuals, families, and businesses to more easily maintain contact across distances. In business, improvements in transportation and communication allowed companies to link factories with off-site corporate management as well as outside suppliers. In one example, increased communication allowed General Motors to decentralize its management structure and give its operating divisions substantial autonomy within the parameters of the overall business plan. Levi Strauss was able to leave his brothers with the family dry goods business in New York and strike out for California to establish a long-distance partnership. Additionally,

businesses no longer had to move to be near their customer base; they simply dispatched a sales force and shipped their goods as needed. The new forms of transportation allowed for increased distribution of goods throughout the world and allowed for the vertical integration of an industry without having to place a factory at the production site of components or the source of raw materials. Coke and iron could be brought to the steel mill, and parts for the production of automobiles could be shipped to the assembly plant. Carnegie Steel used railroads and ships to move the raw materials for steelmaking to its mills. Henry Bessemer’s pneumatic steelmaking process made bulk steel production possible, and Karl Wilhelm Siemens’s open-hearth process allowed the efficient production of quality steel; these processes made possible the increase in industrial production that epitomized the second industrial revolution. The rapid introduction of the Bessemer process in the United States by Andrew Carnegie’s J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works (later Carnegie Steel Company) during the 1870s catapulted American steel production beyond that of Great Britain. The ready availability of steel for durable rails helped expand the growing railroad industry. The expansion of American railroads opened vast portions of the nation to settlement, manufacturing, and increased utilization of natural resources, thereby creating correlative growth in the demand for consumer goods. Evolving industries relied on the accessibility and transportability of natural resources such as coal, iron, and petroleum. Moreover, the increasing availability of petroleum products at an affordable price powered the development of the internal combustion engine, giving rise to the American automotive and farm machinery industries. By 1929, the United States accounted for 85 percent of the world’s output of automobiles, and it was the world leader in gasoline-powered farm machinery, construction equipment, and trucks. Henry Ford adapted Eli Whitney’s American system for the first assembly-line-manufactured automobile. Ford’s innovation was to make the system a continuous process that enabled nonstop manufacturing with less worker intervention. In continuous-process manufacturing, machines

774 Section 13: Essays are idled only for repairs or scheduled maintenance, requiring a workforce to be present twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The process was initially introduced in the mass production of foodstuffs in the United States. By the mid-twentieth century, it was used to manufacture everything from automobiles to tools to pharmaceuticals. In the early twentieth century, industries that were dependent on the basic sciences, such as the chemical and electrical industries, began to recruit engineers, physicists, chemists, and other scientists. Thus, they were able to provide a competitive edge in the development and refinement of manufacturing processes and products. Such companies as AT&T, B.F. Goodrich, Westinghouse, General Electric, and Bayer led their respective industries into the late twentieth century because of their long-standing commitment to basic research and the application of scientific knowledge. Companies that did not make this commitment, such as International Harvester, General Motors, and U.S. Steel, eventually lost market shares to companies that did. Some historians believe that the twentieth century was characterized by a third industrial revolution, identified by various inventions and communications technologies. These include Lee de Forest’s invention of the three-electrode vac-

uum tube in 1907, the invention of the transistor at Bell Laboratories in 1948, and the first patent for a silicon chip, by Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, in 1959. Some historians also point to the development of the first mainframe, the desktop computer, the Windows operating system, and the browsable Internet. For other historians, the major transition now under way is essentially an electronic or information revolution. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Ackoff, Russell L. The Second Industrial Revolution. Washington, DC: Alban Institute, 1975. Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977. Felman, Lewis. Second Industrial Revolution. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1985. Finkelstein, Joseph. Windows on a New World: The Third Industrial Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1989. Koning, Niek. The Failure of Agrarian Capitalism: Agrarian Politics in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and the USA, 1846–1919. New York: Routledge, 1994. Overton, Mark. Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500–1850. Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rutledge, John, and Deborah Allen. Rust to Riches: The Coming of the Second Industrial Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. Stearns, Peter N. The Industrial Revolution in World History. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998.

Albert Einstein and Atomic Power I

n the years immediately after World War II, a common perception throughout the world was that Albert Einstein, the physicist who developed the theory of relativity, was also directly involved in the development of the atomic bomb used against Japan in August 1945. Later that year, however, Einstein remarked, “I do not consider myself the father of the release of atomic energy. My part in it was quite indirect. I did not, in fact, foresee that it would be released in my time. I believed only that it was theoretically possible.” In a quirk of fate, the German physicist Otto Hahn accidentally split the uranium atom a year

before Hitler’s armies overran Poland and began World War II in Europe. Atomic energy was irreversibly linked to the war. By 1940, other experiments by other physicists had shown how fission could pass from one atom to another, a chain reaction of splitting atoms that released tremendous energy. American scientists took the lead in research and development early in the war. Einstein’s involvement consisted of a single, timely letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in August 1939 that helped inaugurate the Manhattan Project, America’s official involvement in developing an atomic weapon. When the United States tested a plutonium bomb in July 1945, and,

Section 13: Essays 775 a few weeks later, used a uranium bomb against Hiroshima and a plutonium bomb against Nagasaki, Einstein agreed that such destruction was justified from the standards of wartime morality. The end of war was achieved. But what would the peace be like? From 1945 until his death ten years later, Einstein threw himself into the political, scientific, and moral debates taking place throughout the world respecting the development and implementation of atomic power. The issue was not the validity of science or its applications. Atomic energy would no doubt be a useful part of human existence. To be sure, he stated in an address to scientists in 1948, uncontrolled technology may lead to destruction, but there is both good and bad in everything; the good must be coaxed, cultivated like a weak plant. “Penetrating research and keen scientific work have often had tragic implications for mankind, producing, on the one hand, inventions which liberated man from exhausting physical labor, making his life easier and richer; but on the other hand, introducing a grave restlessness into his life, making him a slave to his technological environment, and—most catastrophic of all—creating the means for his own mass destruction.” Einstein believed that the marriage of humanity and technology is filled with love and hate, but divorce is unthinkable. Rather, if the match threatens evil, humans must alter the conditions under which the match exists. According to Einstein in a 1946 radio broadcast, “the development of technology and of the implements of war has brought about something akin to a shrinking of our planet. Economic interlinking has made the destinies of nations interdependent to a degree far greater than in previous years. The available weapons of destruction are of a kind such that no place on earth is safeguarded against total destruction. The only hope for protection lies in the securing of peace in a supranational way. A world government must be created which is able to solve conflicts between nations by judicial decision.” He went on, “Moral authority alone is an inadequate means of securing the peace.” Scientists, trained to examine problems objectively and to arrive at disinterested solutions, should take the lead in formulating a world society based on the peaceful control of nuclear weapons.

Einstein knew from personal experience that reason must be inspired by a sense of the beauty of the universe, a childlike wonder of the mysteries of existence that all scientists share. Science involves creativity. So, too, does the solution of peace in our time. The passionate logic of the world’s scientists was exactly what the world needed in the nuclear age. Einstein was eccentric and naive enough to believe that the creative impulse, the human willingness to surrender to beauty, would overwhelm the forces of militarism, ideology, and inhumanity. In a world of icons and isms, life becomes so abstract as to be meaningless. “The release of atomic energy,” Einstein declared in 1946, “has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. One could say that it has affected us quantitatively, not qualitatively. As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.” Unrestrained technology in a world where the state is an “idol”

Albert Einstein’s fateful letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in August 1939 warned of the possibility that Germany might build an atomic bomb and helped persuade FDR to fund the Manhattan Project. After the war, Einstein favored nuclear disarmament. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

776 Section 13: Essays ensures that conflict will continue. Yet, Einstein maintained, “that was true before the atomic bomb was made. What has been changed is the destructiveness of war.” Humans remain the same: they continue to be volatile, jealous, passionate, and warring. The ends of war never alter, but the means do. Technological changes demand comparative changes in human society, politics, institutions, beliefs, and even the assumptions on which science is based. In 1951, commenting on Johannes Kepler (1570–1631), Einstein praised the German mathematician and astronomer for his ability to go beyond established preconceptions, to question and search for new answers, and to break from paradigms that shackle the human mind to scientific

constructs of the past. Such, Einstein thought, was the dilemma of his own time. Humans still adhered to ideas untenable in an age of nuclear destruction. New ideas must be developed, new assumptions conceived. Einstein believed that scientists who, like Kepler, train themselves to go beyond the past and seek new truths ultimately will have the tools necessary to lead the world to peace. Russell Lawson

Sources Clark, Ronald W. Einstein: The Life and Times. New York: Avon, 1999. Einstein, Albert. Essays in Humanism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.

A–Z A G R I C U LT U R A L E N G I N E E R I N G Traditionally, agricultural engineers have applied their knowledge and training to the design and upkeep of farm machinery, the architecture and arrangement of farm structures, power generation and use, and the conservation of resources. More recently, the field has expanded to include aquaculture, information technology, and renewable energy production. The American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE), founded in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1907, recently changed its name to the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), reflecting vast changes in the methods of food production and processing and the advent of computerized farming and biotechnology. Still, agricultural engineers today focus mainly on increasing the efficiency of farm operations— usually by substituting capital for labor and thereby increasing production per worker—while setting the standards for farm machinery and processes most likely to achieve those efficiency gains. Long before agricultural engineering became a recognized profession, American farmers and inventors (often one and the same) were developing machinery and techniques to make farm operations less burdensome and more profitable. As early as the late eighteenth century, seed drills had slowly begun to replace broadcast sowing, the cradle was making headway against the sickle for grain harvesting, and numerous tinkerers developed improved plow designs, including Thomas Jefferson who invented a betterscouring moldboard plow. Nonetheless, many farmers saw little need to change their traditional practices, particularly if self-sufficiency rather than the production of a large marketable surplus was their primary goal, as indeed was the case for thousands of small farmers in America. Several factors converged in the nineteenth century, however, that permanently altered the nation’s farming regimen. A steadily rising urban population increased demand for the prod-

ucts of American farms, while the expansion of a national transportation network facilitated the marketing of those crops and simultaneously reordered the geographic distribution of production and specialization. The center of national wheat growing, for example, shifted steadily westward over the course of the nineteenth century, as farmers transformed the fertile prairie lands of the Midwest into grain fields. With their matted layers of grass and sometimes sparse supplies of water, the prairies proved a daunting obstacle for farmers, as well as an opportunity for the empirical, trial-anderror variety of invention and engineering that predominated in the 1900s. Steel plows, reapers and binders, windmills, and barbed wire eventually emerged as dominant systems in prairie farming, but only after literally thousands of variations had been tried and discarded. In fact, there were still dozens of different standards for many of these devices on the eve of the ASAE’s organization. At the same time, the closing of the western frontier in the late nineteenth century heralded the beginning of a new era of intensive farming, in which agriculturists would have to learn how to get more production out of existing acreage rather than simply move west and start over again whenever the soil became exhausted. The ASAE’s message of standardization and efficiency promised scientific solutions to the manifold problems of modern farming, substituting systematic professionalism for the empiricism of previous decades. Agricultural engineers, for instance, argued that the confusing network of early twentieth-century equipment standards was inherently inefficient. Why should there be dozens of design types for ubiquitous farming equipment such as plows or harrows when soil conditions did not warrant such variety? This approach was not without its critics. Farmers and their organizations were sometimes suspicious of the close relationship between agricultural engineers and farm implement companies, and some farmers simply resented advice from “college” types. Meanwhile, civil,

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778 Section 13: Agricultural Engineering mechanical, and later electrical engineers wondered why they should define themselves under the nebulous title of “agricultural” engineer when their own professional organizations already provided the necessary identity and standards. Yet as farming became increasingly mechanized, irrigated, and electrified in the first half of the twentieth century, and as farm operations grew even more consolidated and specialized, the unique engineering requirements of agriculture became more obvious, helping to define the field in the process. So, too, did the establishment of numerous degree-granting land grant university programs in agricultural engineering. In recent decades, the increasing mechanical and biological complexity of U.S. farm operations, particularly with the advent of new environmental concerns, as well as advances in biotechnology and information technology, have ensured that the profession of agricultural engineering is here to stay. Moreover, as these same concerns have spread around the world, the profession has become increasingly international. The ASABE now claims 9,000 members in more than 100 countries. Jacob Jones

Sources American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. http://www.asabe.org. Fitzgerald, Deborah. Every Farm a Factory: The Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Gates, Paul W. The Economic History of the United States. Vol. 3, The Farmer’s Age: Agriculture, 1815–1860. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1960.

Kohlmeyer, Fred W., and Floyd L. Herum. “Science and Engineering in Agriculture: A Historical Perspective.” Technology and Culture 2:4 (1961): 368–80. Stewart, Robert E. Seven Decades That Changed America: A History of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1907–1977. St. Joseph, MI: American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1970.

A G R I C U LT U R A L E X P E R I M E N T S TAT I O N S Agricultural experiment stations were first established in the United States in the 1870s. Affiliated with state universities, these laboratories conduct agricultural research and experiments to improve American agriculture. American farmers relied on European farming methods until the nineteenth century, when expanding market demand for agricultural products led them to become more innovative. By 1825, courses in agriculture and sciences were being offered at schools and colleges, resulting in nationwide research and agricultural experimentation. To encourage such agricultural education, the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 provided funding to set up agricultural and mechanical colleges in each state. As agricultural research activities expanded, educators realized that research results could benefit not only students but also American farmers, and they recommended that agricultural extension departments be created at colleges to aid in getting this information to

Thomas Jefferson, one of the most innovative planters in the American colonies, regarded agriculture as “a science of the very first order.” His many inventions included a plow that could delve deeper than standard plows of the time and help limit soil erosion. (Library of Congress, LC-MSS-27748–64)

Section 13: Agriculture 779 farmers. The first agricultural experiment stations were established in Connecticut and California in 1875, and, by 1887, there were experiment stations connected with eight land grant colleges, operating exclusively with state funding. Thirteen other states conducted less formalized work. On March 2, 1887, led by Missouri Representative William Hatch, the U.S. Congress approved the Hatch Experiment Station Act to provide federal funding to each land grant university to create a network of agricultural experiment stations. Under the legislation, the stations would continue to be owned and controlled by the states and operate on state and federal monies. The purpose of the act was to elevate agriculture to a science by promoting scientific research and experimentation using the principles of agricultural science, to create uniformity in methods and results among the stations, and to distribute these research findings to farmers. Under the act, stations would conduct research on plant and animal physiology and diseases, crop rotation, new plant and tree acclimation, soil and water analysis, composition of manures, adaptation of grasses and forage plants, comparability of food for domestic animals, and methods of production. In 1888, the Office of Experiment Stations was established to coordinate state and federal agricultural research and to publish important station research. By 1913, most of this publishing was done by the state stations themselves through periodic bulletins and annual reports. The Office of Experiment Stations became part of the USDA Agricultural Research Administration in 1942. Since the passage of the Hatch Act in 1887, work done at the agricultural experiment stations has significantly contributed to solving many problems in agriculture by revising farming methods and making American farms more productive. Experiment stations also have influenced other areas, including the biological and medical sciences, which have used the research to cure diseases such as brucellosis, rabies, and tuberculosis. The use of antibiotics grew out of the research on soil bacteria at experiment stations. Judith B. Gerber

Source Marcus, Alan I. Agricultural Science and the Quest for Legitimacy: Farmers, Agricultural Colleges, and Experimental Stations, 1870–1890. Ames, IA: Blackwell, 1985.

A G R I C U LT U R E Agriculture is the management of land to grow crops or rear livestock for food, fiber, and other products such as skins. It has been a central factor in societal development and economic growth, requiring both heavy labor and the advancement of scientific research and technological innovation. The European discovery and colonization of the New World resulted in an exchange of crops and animals that transformed indigenous agricultural systems. Wheat, barley, various legumes and fruits, cattle, goats, and sheep were introduced to the New World, while squash, corn (maize), tomatoes, potatoes, and tobacco were introduced to Europe. The forests of America’s eastern coast were opened up for prized wood and agriculture. As the frontier moved west, further modification of the natural vegetation cover ensued. Wheat, corn, cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugarcane production dominated arable agriculture. Cattle and sheep herds came to occupy the central rangelands, where large-scale ranching was established. Market gardening for vegetables and fruit and dairy herds were established in urban hinterlands. Ideas and innovations were exchanged between America and Europe, which was becoming increasingly reliant on America’s food and fiber products. Examples of such innovations are the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, the development of food canning in the early 1820s, the invention of the mechanical harvester by Cyrus McCormack in 1831, the construction of the grain elevator in 1842, the pioneering of refrigerated meat transport by ship beginning in 1847, and the first steam tractors in 1868. Science and scientists in the United States played a major role in the industrialization of agriculture and the emergence of large agribusinesses. This involved the increasing use of fossil fuels in mechanization, artificial fertilizer production, crop protection, and the development of chemicals to protect animal health. Related

780 Section 13: Agriculture industries have developed, including those involved with food processing and agrochemical production for herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and fertilizers. Along with animal and plant breeding programs, agricultural science has contributed to increasing yields, reduced labor costs, and wealth generation. At the same time, agricultural science has contributed to many environmental problems, such as soil erosion, water pollution, loss of habitats, and the invasion of alien species. The United States today is a major world producer, consumer, and exporter of agricultural products, notably wheat, corn, soy, fruit, cotton, and meat. Its agricultural science continues to lead the world, notably in biotechnology, which involves the genetic modification of crops to create, for example, insect-resistant cotton and herbicideresistant crops such as corn, soy, and wheat. The United States is also the world’s major grower and consumer of genetically modified crops. A.M. Mannion

Sources Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. Ames, IA: Blackwell, 1994. U.S. Department of Agriculture. http://www.usda.gov.

AGRONOMY Agronomy, also known as agricultural science, is the practical use of knowledge about plants and soil to increase crop yields and crop production. It incorporates biology, botany, chemistry, and physics into an applied science that forms the foundation of agricultural practice. The state agricultural experiment stations established by the Hatch Act in 1887 provided American farmers with innovative new production techniques and soil management methods. This was illustrated by the research that the stations did on soybean production, which resulted in widespread distribution of soybeans for U.S. farmers to use as animal feed by the turn of the twentieth century. One of the most influential practitioners of agricultural science was George Washington Carver, who, in 1896, became the director of agricultural research at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Carver

conducted pioneering work in the field, finding more than 300 new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans, helping to diversify the South’s agriculture. His work contributed to the growing recognition of the field of agronomy. As a result of the new trend in scientific agricultural research, agronomy was recognized as a branch of the agricultural sciences in the United States in the early 1900s. The American Society of Agronomy was established in 1907 and began publishing its Agronomy Journal later that year. The society, still active today, supports scientific, educational, and professional activities to enhance communication and technology transfer among agronomists and those in related disciplines on topics of local, regional, national, and international significance. Agronomists help crop management by studying propagation, care, and management of cereal, field, and forage crops. Agronomy includes research on production techniques (such as irrigation) and on improving production through methods that increase quality and quantity of crops (such as selecting drought-resistant crops). Agronomists also study the prevention and correction of adverse environmental effects such as soil degradation. Agricultural scientists classify crops into a number of agronomic categories. These include cereals (e.g., wheat, oats, barley); legumes (peanuts, beans); forage crops (grasses grown for animal feed); root crops (beets, carrots); tuber crops (potatoes); oil crops (flax, soybeans, sunflowers, mustard); sugar crops (sugarcane, corn); vegetable crops (potatoes, carrots, and so on); pharmaceuticals (tobacco, mint, hemp); fiber crops (flax, cotton); rubber crops (guayule); and special-purpose crops (cover crops, companion crops). The study and practice of agronomy have changed significantly since the first half of the twentieth century. In the 1960s, intensified agriculture led to advances in selecting and improving crops and animals for high productivity and in developing new products like artificial fertilizers. Intensive agriculture has led to widespread environmental damage, however, and many agronomists started new fields—such as integrated pest management and waste treatment— to address the problems. Other new research fields include genetic engineering and precision farming.

Section 13: Apollo, Project 781 Some of agronomy’s contributions to crop production over the last fifty years include plant breeding, chemical fertilizers, and irrigation techniques. Agronomy also has led to better management of cropping systems such as double-cropping and soil conservation measures to minimize soil erosion. Judith B. Gerber

Sources American Society of Agronomy. http://www.agronomy.org. Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. Ames, IA: Blackwell, 1994.

AMERICAN INDIAN CANOES Native Americans over the centuries experimented with a variety of canoe types for use on rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, and coastal waters. The three principal types invented by the native peoples were skin canoes, dugout canoes, and bark canoes. The word “canoe” is of native origin, specifically from the Indians of the Caribbean, from whom it spread to North America by means of Spanish and French soldiers, traders, and hunters. Dugout canoes were the most widespread type in America because of their rugged simplicity and adaptability to a variety of forest environments. Softwood trees such as the cottonwood (Populus deltoides), particularly those with a wide girth, found along the upper Missouri River, were best. Dugouts were heavier and less maneuverable than canoes made with wood frames and animal skin or bark, but they could be made quickly with a few simple tools, such as an adze, an axe, and flint to start a fire. The canoe maker would use the axe to fell a tree. The adze would be used to strip its bark and begin the process of alternately scraping and burning the log to form a hollow core. Hot coals softened the wood for easy removal. Dugouts were the canoes of choice for the southern Plains Indians and hunters and trappers of the southern Louisiana Territory. American Indians and settlers of the northern Plains and northeastern forests had more choices in type of canoe to build because of the presence of the white birch (paper or canoe birch, Betula

papyrifera). The white birch is found in northern climates and, along with pine, is a dominant tree of the northeastern forest. Birch bark peels off in long strips; it is flexible yet strong, and it looks like thick paper. Indians would fit the sheets of bark around a frame of spruce or cedar, then use black cedar roots, which are long, stringy, and strong, to sew the bark onto the frame. Such canoes were light yet sturdy, could hold much cargo and passengers, and could be easily repaired. Similar were the skin canoes some native tribes made. These used a frame of pliable wood made soft in hot water; over this was stretched a buffalo or similar animal skin. The Inuits of Baffin Island used sealskins to cover their framed canoes and kayaks. Russell Lawson

Source Fichter, George. How to Build an Indian Canoe. New York: McKay, 1977.

A P O L LO , P R O J E C T On July 21, 1969, Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon, declaring, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” This lunar landing, one of the biggest scientific achievements of the twentieth century, was televised to the world. Project Apollo was begun by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) in the early 1960s; it enjoyed huge success, cost $25.4 billion, and employed 400,000 people. The scientific goals of the project were to determine the history of the moon, to precisely map its surface, and to locate magnetic fields, sources of heat, and volcanic and seismic activity. Apollo was inaugurated by President John F. Kennedy’s call to land a man on the moon before the decade of the 1960s was over. During the Cold War, the United States sought to keep ahead of the Soviet Union in science, technology, and discovery. There were seventeen Apollo missions in all, ranging from success to disaster. Apollo 1 was destroyed by fire on January 27, 1967, killing the crew of three men. Apollo 7 (October 11–22, 1968)

782 Section 13: Apollo, Project nauts returned safely to Earth. The running of a battery-operated Jeep-like lunar vehicle was the highlight of the Apollo 15 mission (July 26–August 7, 1971). The Apollo 17 mission (December 7–19, 1972) was the last in the program. The other planned missions were canceled for financial reasons. Thereafter, NASA turned its attention to the Space Shuttle program. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources

The goal of the seventeen-mission, $25 billion Apollo program—and the entire U.S. space effort of the 1960s— was achieved with the moon landing by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (pictured here) in July 1969. (Neil A. Armstrong/NASA/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

was the first manned spacecraft that orbited the Earth, launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the first to be televised from aboard the spacecraft. Apollo 8 (December 21–27, 1968) marked the first time humans orbited the moon. Apollo 10 observed the moon from ten miles out and orbited repeatedly as a rehearsal for a lunar landing. On July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 was launched with the crew of Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin Aldrin. The craft for landing on the moon consisted of two parts: the Command Service Module (CSM), which was the vehicle for the round trip to the moon; and the Lunar Module (LM), which was detached from the CSM in lunar orbit, carrying Armstrong and Aldrin to the surface of the moon. The LM Eagle landed on the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong and Aldrin were on the lunar surface for about two hours, engaged in extra-vehicular activity (EVA). They collected rock samples and planted a seismometer. Upon their return to Earth, the USS Hornet collected the astronauts and the command module from the Pacific Ocean on July 24. U.S. astronauts performed more experiments on the moon’s surface during the Apollo 12 mission (November 14–24, 1969). During the Apollo 13 mission (April 1970), an oxygen tank exploded; the mission was aborted and the astro-

Beattie, Donald A. Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Chaikin, Andrew. A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. New York: Viking, 1994. Light, Michael. Full Moon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002. Murray, Charles, and Catherine B. Cox. Apollo: The Race to the Moon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.

ARMY CORPS

OF

E N G I N E E R S , U.S.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has for more than 200 years been involved in engineering tasks for the United States, such as building military fortifications and monuments, bridging rivers, damming rivers and streams, surveying lands, building roads, and clearing forests. The Corps was created on June 16, 1775, by the Second Continental Congress for the purpose of building military structures for war with England. Following the American Revolution, the Corps was temporarily disbanded, then reorganized in 1794 as the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson and Congress made the Army Corps of Engineers a separate entity from the Artillerists. The task of the Army Corps of Engineers initially was to provide military fortifications. During the years leading up to the War of 1812, fortifications were established along the Atlantic coast to improve coastal defenses. Following that war, civilian responsibilities (such as surveying and road building) were given to the Corps by an act of Congress. During the 1820s, Congress commissioned the engineers and topographers of the

Section 13: Atomic Bomb 783 Corps to survey lands west of the Appalachian Mountains and along the Mississippi River to determine the best routes for roads, where canals were needed, what rivers needed dredging, and where rivers and streams should be bridged. The Cumberland Road, which extended from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois, was completed by the Corps in 1841. The Corps was also responsible for building the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Library of Congress. Other domestic activities of the Corps during the nineteenth century included surveys of coastlines, river deltas, and the Great Lakes; constructing lighthouses; building river levees; and flood control. Historically, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has also been actively involved in the logistical requirements of war. In 1847, during the Mexican War, the Corps was considered crucial to the siege of the Mexican Army at the Battle of Vera Cruz. During the Civil War, the Corps acted on behalf of Union forces by building bridges and roads, ensuring the movement of supplies, constructing defensive fortifications, and erecting siege works. During World War I, engineers were sent to France to help build roads and bridges and to supply lumber, especially for railroad tracks. Corps engineers and scientists were also involved in chemical weapons production and deploying tanks in battle. During World War II, the Corps again played a critical role in battle logistics, building airfields, military hospitals, munitions plants, supply depots, and bridges, and helping to destroy comparable enemy constructions. The efforts of the Corps continued in the Korean War and in Vietnam, with bridge building and forest cutting foremost among their contributions. During the twentieth century, the Corps has been especially engaged in flood control and construction of hydroelectric dams, as in the Tennessee Valley and Oklahoma. The Army Corps of Engineers continues to operate many hydroelectric facilities. In recent years, the Corps has been particularly involved in relief from such natural disasters as floods and hurricanes. Research and development has been an Army Corps of Engineers priority since its inception. Corps scientists and engineers have made particular contributions to the technology of hydraulics, such as developing meters to gauge

river currents, devising techniques to increase water current to remove sandbars, and inventing hydraulic dredges for rivers. Nicholas Katers

Sources Reynolds, Terry S. The Engineer in America: A Historical Anthology from Technology and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Schubert, Frank N. The Nation Builders: A Sesquicentennial History of the Corps of Topographical Engineers 1838–1863. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980. Shallat, Todd. Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994.

AT O M I C B O M B Atomic bombs are weapons that derive their explosive energy from nuclear fission, a process whereby certain radioactive elements split into lighter elements when bombarded by neutrons. The process initiates a chain reaction that releases tremendous amounts of energy. The term is actually somewhat of a misnomer, given the fact that nuclear fusion, the force behind the much more powerful hydrogen bombs, is no less atomic than nuclear fission. Still, the term is used primarily to identify the early pure fission bombs and occasionally as a catchword for all nuclear weapons. The atomic bomb was a product of the Manhattan Project, a three-year, top-secret project involving the nations of Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. Atomic bombs were used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 in an effort to bring an end to World War II. The creation and use of atomic weapons forever changed the nature and course of America’s place in international politics.

Histor y On August 2, 1939, physicist Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt concerning new theories by Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard on using uranium to produce a nuclear chain reaction that might be harnessed into

784 Section 13: Atomic Bomb a bomb with unprecedented explosive power. The letter also hinted at possible efforts by Nazi Germany to use uranium from Czechoslovakian mines for experiments in nuclear fission. The letter urged Roosevelt to quickly support American university and perhaps even industrial research in this area to gain an advantage over the German effort. Roughly a year later, in late 1940, a group of British scientists made a presentation to a select group of American physicists in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the MAUD Committee, a British group organized earlier in 1940 to study the possibility of developing a new weapon based on the fissioning of uranium-235 (U-235). The presentation led to the discovery that the two nations’ research tracks were converging, and American and British scientists subsequently agreed to work together on the development of the atomic bomb. Prior to the start of actual work on the design and construction of the atomic bomb, theoretical experiments had been carried out at a number of different research laboratories, including Columbia University and the University of Chicago. A number of work sites were later established in the United States, Britain, and Canada to support the massive scientific and technical effort needed to build the bomb. The U.S. and British governments worked together to purchase uranium ore from mines around the world, and uranium and plutonium production plants were built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and along the Columbia River at Hanford, Washington, respectively. In 1943, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer gathered the best scientific minds available and established Project Y at Los Alamos, a remote mesa in the Jemez Mountains north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Because initial research had been conducted in New York at Columbia University, the Army Corps of Engineers Manhattan District was initially assigned to carry out any construction work relating to the project. Thus, “Manhattan Project” was the code name used for the project. Work at the principal Manhattan Project sites would eventually be supported by research and technical work at scores of universities and industrial corporations across North America.

Two Designs The Manhattan Project research produced two distinct atomic bomb designs based on the principle of nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is the process whereby an atom splits, or fissions, into several smaller fragments after its nucleus is hit with a neutron. These fragments, or fission products, are less than the mass of the original atom because roughly 0.1 percent of the atom’s original mass has been converted into energy. This conversion is the energy released during an atomic bomb explosion. The fission of a radioactive atom process produces several neutrons, which, in turn, bombard other nearby atomic nuclei to cause more fission and initiate a selfsustaining nuclear chain reaction. This all takes place during an atomic bomb explosion in less than a second. One atomic bomb design, which would later be the basis for the “Little Boy” bomb used at Hiroshima, was a gun-type weapon that employed specially formulated high explosives to propel a mass of uranium along a gunlike barrel into the center of another mass of uranium. The impact of the two masses initiates a rapid nuclear fission and the violent release of energy in the form of an atomic explosion. The second bomb design, which would become the basis for the “Fat Man” bomb, used high explosives surrounding a plutonium sphere to compress it from all directions under millions of pounds of pressure to a point at which a nuclear chain reaction became self-sustaining and resulted in an atomic explosion. The scientists were so certain that the gun-type bomb would work that it was not tested before it was used on Hiroshima; the design of the implosion device was so speculative at the time that it had to be tested. Probably the greatest challenge faced by the makers of the first atomic bombs was a lack of significant amounts of the U-235 and plutonium239 (Pu-239) needed for the two bomb designs. Not only were uranium isotopes very difficult to extract, but the amount of ore needed for just a few pounds of enriched uranium was substantial. Based on research conducted by Nobel laureate Harold Urey and his colleagues at Columbia

Section 13: Atomic Bomb 785 grees Fahrenheit. The intense heat of the blast melted the sandy soil at the site, creating an olive-green radioactive glass called trinitite.

Use and Consequences

The explosion of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (shown here) in August 1945 brought the end of World War II and marked the beginning of the nuclear age. The mushroom cloud became a symbol of the destructive power of modern technology. (Keystone/MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

University, a massive gaseous diffusion plant was constructed at Oak Ridge as the first step in the enrichment process. Enrichment then required the use of magnetic separation and gas centrifuge processes to further separate the useable lighter U-235 isotopes from the heavier, nonfissionable U-238 isotopes. Plutonium-239, an isotope of the man-made element plutonium, is found naturally in only minute amounts. The Pu-239 used in the implosion bomb was produced from uranium processed in the reactors at Hanford, Washington. The testing of the “Gadget,” the nickname used for the implosion device in Los Alamos during its development, took place at just a few seconds before 5:30 A.M. on July 16, 1945, at a desolate desert site called Trinity near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The detonation produced an explosion equivalent to nearly 20,000 tons of TNT and temperatures of millions of de-

On August 6, 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima became the target of the world’s first atomic bomb attack when the Little Boy bomb was exploded roughly 2,000 feet above the city with a force equivalent to nearly 12,500 tons of TNT. Three days later, the United States detonated a Fat Man atomic bomb over the port city of Nagasaki, destroying much of the urban center. The detonation produced an explosion equivalent to nearly 22,000 tons of TNT, but because of the steep slopes surrounding the city, the destructive effect of the blast was less than that of Hiroshima. Roughly one-quarter of a million people were killed in Japan by the world’s first two atomic bombs. Many died well after the initial blast from burns and radiation sickness. The atomic bombs used on Japan would undergo further refinements in the years that followed, based on data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on atomic tests conducted at Enewetak atoll in the South Pacific and at the Nevada Test Site. On November 1, 1952, an atomic bomb would be exploded as part of a larger, more powerful experimental hydrogen bomb device, code-named Ivy Mike, to usher in the current era of fusion-based nuclear weapons. The development of the atomic bomb is considered one of the most controversial events in American science. Arguments over the bomb’s invention and use have gone on for more than half a century and will no doubt continue. Proponents argue that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki halted a terrible and bloody war, perhaps saving many thousands of American and Japanese lives. Opponents contend that the use of two bombs on unprepared civilian populations was, among other things, reckless and cruel. Perhaps the greatest consequence of the invention of the atomic bomb, and the generations of hydrogen bombs that followed, is that its development is now widely considered to have been a principal factor in the emergence of the

786 Section 13: Atomic Bomb United States as a world superpower during the twentieth century. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Groves, Leslie R. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York: Da Capo, 1983. Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. Serber, Robert. The Los Alamos Primer: The First Lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

AT O M I C E N E R G Y C O M M I S S I O N The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was formed in 1946 after the Atomic Energy Act, passed by the U.S. Congress that year, was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. The mission of the AEC was to assume the scientific and technical activities of the Manhattan Engineer District, the organization responsible for supervising the design, development, and testing of the atomic bomb during World War II. Specifically, the AEC was directed to sustain the advancement of theoretical and practical knowledge relating to American nuclear science, including the potential peaceful uses of the atom; in the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to the initiative as “Atoms for Peace.” Throughout much of its twenty-eight-year history, the AEC maintained a uniquely privileged status with Congress and the American public. Its monopoly on nuclear materials and nuclear research, coupled with the secrecy required of nuclear weapons work, made it one of the most well-funded and influential agencies of the period. Truman appointed lawyer and former head of the Tennessee Valley Authority David E. Lilienthal to head the commission, along with New England businessman Sumner T. Pike, Iowa newspaper editor William T. Waymack, reserve admiral Lewis L. Strauss, and, as the only scientist on the commission, Los Alamos physicist Robert F. Bacher. Initially, the AEC oversaw scientific and technical work at the three Manhattan Project facilities: Hanford, Washington; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Over the next few decades, the Commission’s scientific and industrial assets grew to include nuclear facilities and laboratories in twenty-one states. Much of the AEC’s scientific work in nuclear physics and energy was unprecedented and exploratory. The work included, among other activities, the development and testing of nuclear weapons, nuclear power plant design and development, radioisotope production, and the development of radioisotopic power sources for space exploration and medical applications. It also funded research on fusion reactors, high temperature superconducting power transmission systems, energy storage, solar energy, coal gasification, and geothermal resource development. The Atomic Energy Commission was abolished on December 31, 1974, by the Energy Reorganization Act. The end of the AEC was part of a broader series of energy-related national policy initiatives that separated nuclear energy development from regulatory matters by assigning to the new Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) responsibility for the regulation of civilian use of nuclear materials, principally materials used in medicine and the nuclear energy and manufacturing industries. The reorganization was primarily a response to growing criticism that the AEC could not properly regulate the same nuclear energy sources that it helped research, develop, produce, and operate. The Energy Reorganization Act placed much of the basic research programs in atomic, nuclear, and radiation physics, and related disciplines of chemistry and applied mathematics, under the auspices of the newly created Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). As part of the reorganization, some 6,000 AEC employees went to ERDA, and almost 2,000 became part of the NRC. In October 1977, ERDA became part of the U.S. Department of Energy. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Duncan, Francis. Atomic Shield: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Vol. 2, 1947–1952. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1969. Hacker, Barton C. Elements of Controversy: The Atomic Energy Commission and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing,

Section 13: Boeing 787 1947–1974. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Hewlett, Richard G., and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr. The New World: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Vol. 1, 1939–1946. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962.

BELL, ALEXANDER GRAHAM (1847–1922) Best known for his speaking telegraph, or telephone, Alexander Graham Bell also invented several other notable medical devices, helped develop the phonograph and the airplane, and was an avid proponent for the deaf. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 3, 1847, and came to the United States as a young man in his early twenties. He was initially interested in designing devices to help the deaf understand and speak. In 1876, his experiments resulted in the invention of a device that revolutionized communications and transformed business transactions. “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” became famous as the first words heard over the newly devised speaking telegraph. By 1900, there were more than 1.5 million telephones in America, and by 1915, a transcontinental telephone line connected Washington, D.C., and California. Although the telephone brought fame and fortune to Bell, he spent many years in litigation trying to protect his patent rights from challenge by corporate competitors. Bell was also a leading figure in educating the deaf; he married one of his deaf students, Mabel Hubbard. The couple produced two daughters, as well as one son who died as a newborn from respiratory failure in 1881. Spurred by the death of his son, Bell invented the vacuum jacket, an early version of the iron lung that aided victims of poliomyelitis in the twentieth century. In 1881, Bell also attempted to help President James A. Garfield, who had been shot in an assassination attempt. Doctors, unable to find the bullet, turned to Bell and his associates in the hope that they could invent a mechanism to do so in time to save the president’s life. In response, Bell invented the telephonic needle probe. Although the invention was unable to save Garfield, it was

used extensively to save other lives during the Sino-Japanese War, the Boer War, and World War I. Bell received an honorary medical degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1886 for his contribution to surgery. Bell’s passion in working with the deaf continued throughout his life. In 1890, the American Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf was incorporated in New York. Bell made monetary contributions to the fledgling organization, served as its president for eight years, and invented the audiometer, a device used to identify the partially deaf. Bell also advocated a day school for the deaf, which allowed them to interact with the hearing during various parts of the day. In 1885, he took his case to Madison, Wisconsin, and succeeded in passing legislation implementing his plan. By 1900, Wisconsin had fifteen day schools for the deaf, and other states were using Wisconsin’s program as a model. Bell also aided in shaping the U.S. census policy. In 1890, he made suggestions for making the census of the deaf more accurate and useful, and he persuaded Congress to retain census documents for future studies. A cofounder of the magazine Science in 1880, Bell served as president of the National Geographic Society from 1898 to 1904. He died on August 2, 1922, in Nova Scotia, Canada. Stacy L. Smith

Sources Bruce, Robert V. Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973. Grosvenor, Edwin S., and Morgan Wesson. Alexander Graham Bell: The Life and Times of the Man Who Invented the Telephone. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997.

BOEING The world’s largest commercial aircraft manufacturer as of 2007, the Boeing Company has been at the forefront of aviation and aerospace technology through much of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Among the innovative aircraft designed and built by Boeing are the 1938 Model 307 Stratoliner, the first transport aircraft with a pressurized cabin; the workhorse

788 Section 13: Boeing B-17 bomber of World War II; the 707, America’s first commercial jetliner, introduced in 1958; and the 747, the world’s first jumbo jet, introduced into commercial service in 1970. Boeing also has been deeply involved in American space exploration since the 1960s, producing the Lunar Orbiter I, the first U.S. craft to circle the moon in 1966. With McDonnell Douglas and North American Aviation, Boeing jointly designed and manufactured the Saturn V, the rocket that would eventually carry the Apollo spacecraft to the moon.

Early Years The Boeing Company was founded in Seattle, Washington, on July 15, 1916, by William Boeing, a logging executive with deep pockets, a passion for aviation, and an understanding of wooden structures, critical to the manufacturing of airplane fuselages in the early years of aviation. Joining forces with former U.S. Navy engineer George Westervelt, Boeing founded the Pacific Aero Products Company to build the B&W, a seaplane they hoped to sell to the U.S. Navy. The company changed its name the following year to the Boeing Airplane Company. Although the navy turned down the B&W seaplanes, the aircraft were bought by the New Zealand Flying School, representing Boeing’s first international order. In New Zealand, the plane would set an altitude record of 6,500 feet (1,981.2 meters) in 1919. Boeing was more successful with its Model C seaplane. The U.S. Navy purchased the Model C to use as a flight trainer during World War I in Boeing’s first contract with the U.S. military. In December 1919, Boeing launched its B-1 mail plane, the company’s first commercial aircraft. With commercial aviation replacing military contracting as the most lucrative segment of the industry in the 1920s, William Boeing launched his own airline, Pacific Air Transport, in 1927. In 1929, the two companies merged to form the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation (UATC). The corporation also acquired several other aircraft engineering companies that year; among them was Pratt and Whitney, a manufacturer of engines. With the passage of the Air Mail

Act of 1934, which prohibited corporations from being in both the airplane manufacturing business and the airline industry, the UATC was split into three companies: Boeing Airplane, United Airlines, and United Aircraft, the precursor to United Technologies, which owns Pratt and Whitney. Boeing’s first deal with a commercial airline was manufacturing the Boeing 314 Clipper seaplane for Pan American World Airways (Pan Am); it was the largest civil aircraft at that time, with a ninety-seat (or forty-bed) capacity. In 1939, Pan Am used the plane to launch the first regular passenger service across the Atlantic Ocean. In the mid-1940s, Boeing also launched the 307 Stratoliner. With its pressurized cabin, the plane became the first commercial aircraft designed to fly at 20,000 feet, above weather conditions in the lower atmosphere—thus avoiding excessive air tubulence, a major impediment to air travel at the time. Although only 10 of these aircraft were built, the Stratoliner represented a significant breakthrough in commercial aviation. America’s entry into World War II postponed further innovation in commercial design and construction, as Boeing and its competitors turned to the manufacture of military planes. Under government aegis, Boeing joined forces with Lockheed Aircraft and Douglas Aircraft to build the B-17 Flying Fortress, and with Glenn Martin and Bell Aircraft to manufacture the B-29 Superfortress. These two long-range bombers were responsible for much of the aerial destruction of targets in the European and Pacific theaters of the war. With the end of World War II, Boeing, like other U.S. aircraft manufacturers, was hit hard by the loss of military contracts. Moreover, its first commercial aircraft in the postwar era, a modified version of the B-29 called the Stratocruiser, failed to catch on with airlines. At the onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s, Boeing returned to military contracting, building the C-97 troop and freight transport, the B-50 bomber, and the KC-97 aerial tanker. The company also launched a ground-to-air pilotless aircraft, a precursor to anti-aircraft missiles, in 1949.

Section 13: Boeing 789

The Jet Age While its commercial and military aircraft in the first half of the twentieth century established Boeing as a major innovator in the industry, its reputation was cemented with its advances in commercial jet aviation during the 1950s and 1960s. Boeing’s 707 was not the first commercial jet aircraft to go into operation—that distinction lies with the ill-fated de Havilland Comet of Britain, which crashed several times in the early 1950s due to metal fatigue. But the 707, which first went into operation with Pan Am in 1958, soon came to dominate the world of commercial aviation. The 707 carried passengers to destinations around the world in a matter of hours rather than the days that propeller-driven aircraft had taken. With its cruising speed of 550 miles (880 kilometer) per hour and a range of 4,500 miles (7,200 kilometers), the sleek, four-engine, 156seat aircraft became the flying symbol of jet-age modernity and jet-set elegance. While production of the 707 ceased in 1984, its record of reliability ensured that more than 1,000 of the planes would continue to be used in commercial flight through the early 2000s. Boeing introduced other jet aircraft in the 1960s, including the three-engine, mediumrange 727 in 1963 and the two-engine, shortrange 737 in 1967. But it was the 747 jumbo jet, built at the company’s mammoth new factory in Everett, Washington, that captured the public’s imagination. Introduced in 1968 and first flown commercially in 1970, the 747 dwarfed all other jetliners in operation. The double-decker, 416passenger plane was so large that many airports had to modify their terminals and lengthen their runways to accommodate it. No less impressive was the 747’s range. Able to fly more than 7,000 miles (11,200 kilometers) without refueling, it made the first nonstop trans-Pacific flights possible. In its various configurations, the 747 continues to be built today; more than 1,400 are in operation around the world. By the 1970s and early 1980s, Boeing dominated the commercial aircraft manufacturing industry, overshadowing its main competitors, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas. But developments in Europe and the Soviet Union would dramatically alter the company’s strategy and

commercial prospects. In the early 1970s, several European aircraft companies joined forces to establish the Airbus consortium. Its first product, the medium-range, wide-body A300, went into commercial operation in 1974. By the 1980s, the A300 and larger A320 were capturing a growing share of airline orders, with Airbus ultimately surpassing Boeing in overall commercial jet orders in the early 2000s. By mid-decade, however, Airbus stumbled, plagued by design-related delays in the introduction of its superjumbo A380. In 2006, Boeing regained its title as the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial aircraft, partly through its introduction of the 787 Dreamliner, whose increased fuel efficiency made it popular with airlines hard-hit by rising fuel prices. Meanwhile, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s was affecting the U.S. defense business, as the nation’s military budget shrank significantly. With military contracts dried up, the defense manufacturing industries underwent massive consolidation. Flush with revenues from its commercial aviation division, Boeing—a somewhat minor player in military aviation during much of the Cold War—became a major player in the field in the late 1990s and early 2000s, acquiring the aerospace and defense units of North American Rockwell in 1996 and merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997. Boeing also acquired another major aerospace innovator with its purchase of Hughes Space and Communications in 2000. These acquisitions made Boeing the second-largest defense contractor in the world, after Lockheed Martin, itself a product of 1990s mergers and restructuring. By the mid-2000s, Boeing enjoyed revenues in excess of $60 billion annually and employed more than 150,000 people in seventy countries. In 2001, Boeing moved its corporate headquarters from its longtime home in Seattle to Chicago. James Ciment

Sources Bowers, Peter M. Boeing Aircraft Since 1916. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989. Lawrence, Philip K., and David W. Thornton. Deep Stall: The Turbulent Story of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005.

790 Section 13: Brooklyn Bridge

B R O O K LY N B R I D G E Designed by civil engineer John Augustus Roebling and completed in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge spans the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City. The world’s longest suspension bridge (1,595 feet) at the time of its completion, it was an engineering and artistic masterpiece regarded as a symbol of technological progress and the modern age. Shortly after receiving the commission, Roebling declared that it would “not only be the greatest bridge in existence, but it will be the greatest engineering work of the Continent and of the age.” Its towers, he said, “will be entitled to be ranked as national monuments.” Unfortunately, while scouting the location for the towers, Roebling injured his foot and eventually died of tetanus, leaving his son, Washington Augustus Roebling, to oversee the project. Spanning the East River presented a number of problems. To begin with, the sheer distance called for two interior supports. Two caissons, large brick structures providing support for the towers, were therefore sunk into the river as anchors. The construction of the caissons pre-

sented dangers for the workers. By the time they were complete, three workers had been killed by “the bends,” or caissons disease, and many others had been paralyzed, including Washington Roebling himself. Work began on the Brooklyn caisson on January 2, 1870. Weighing 3,000 tons when launched, it was lowered at the rate of 6 inches per week, reaching a final depth of 44 feet, 6 inches below the surface. On December 2, 1870, however, fire struck and work was halted for several weeks, as the caisson was flooded to douse the flames. Work on the Brooklyn caisson finally ended in March 1871. The New York caisson was launched in May 1871, weighing 3,250 tons. In the summer of 1872, Washington Roebling had to be carried off the caisson, stricken with the bends. Paralyzed, he remained bedridden for the remainder of construction, directing the project from his bedroom window. After this, fear of caissons disease became so great that Roebling was forced to halt construction of the second caisson prematurely, estimating that over eighty more deaths would have occurred if work continued. With the underwater work completed, construction focused on the elegant towers, on which four steel cables 15.75 inches in diameter

The Brooklyn Bridge, connecting the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, was an engineering marvel at the time of its opening in 1883. The first steel-wire suspension bridge, it continues to carry a heavy flow of traffic across the East River. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Section 13: Clocks and Timepieces 791 were hung to support the bridge. Going against accepted practices, Roebling chose steel over iron for its greater strength—which did not prevent a terrible accident in June 1878. The wires snapped, killing or injuring several workers, because the contractor in charge of producing the steel substituted cheaper materials. Roebling was furious, but he decided against reworking the cables, since they were already five times thicker than necessary. Costing more than $15 million and twenty to thirty deaths, the Brooklyn Bridge was finally opened on May 24, 1883, fourteen years after construction began. Eighty-five feet wide and weighing 14,680 tons, it remains an engineering and artistic marvel—as well as a busy thoroughfare. Benjamin Lawson

Source McCullough, David. The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. New York: Touchstone, 1972.

C LO C K S

AND

TIMEPIECES

Early mechanical clocks, lacking faces and dials, signaled the time by means of sound. The term “clock” comes from the German word for “bell,” Glocke. The machines in use in England in the late thirteenth century lost up to fifteen minutes each day, but clocks were improved through a spring developed by the Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi in the early 1400s and a pendulum devised by the Dutch astronomer and physicist Christiaan Huygens in 1656. The uncoiling of the spring and the swinging of the pendulum provided a periodicity that could drive a clock’s gears more reliably than previous methods. In the 1760s, the chronometer, invented by the English carpenter John Harrison, supplanted the pendulum clock as the most accurate timekeeper. Its precision was proven on several transatlantic voyages, during which sailors used it to calculate the difference in longitude between Portsmouth, England, and Barbados in the West Indies. Their estimates were well within the acceptable margin of error of thirty

nautical miles; the chronometer was shown to lose less than three seconds a day. Throughout the late eighteenth century and into the nineteenth, establishments cropped up in American port towns from Boston to New Orleans, making, selling, and testing chronometers. In 1807, when the U.S. Congress approved a request from President Thomas Jefferson to conduct a study of the nation’s coastal lands, the Treasury and Navy departments, both of which led the study, relied heavily on chronometers. The production of other types of timekeepers flourished in the United States. In 1807, two Connecticut investors commissioned Eli Terry, a Plymouth-based clockmaker who had received the first American patent for a clock mechanism, to build 4,000 long-case clocks in three years. During the first year, Terry used the down payment to construct machinery that helped him complete the order on time. In 1850, having been given workspace in Edward Howard’s Massachusetts factory, Aaron L. Dennison conceived techniques for mass-producing watches. Both Terry’s and Dennison’s work helped bring these once costly machines within the reach of more people. In the nineteenth century, inventors brought electricity to the craft of clock building, both to drive machine gears and to relay a time signal between timepieces. In 1852, Moses Farmer was granted the first U.S. patent for an electric clock for his work in synchronizing Boston’s new firealarm system. In 1884, Chester Pond unveiled his most famous invention, the self-winding clock, a battery-powered instrument that could go for a year untouched. A clock driven by the oscillations of a quartz crystal first appeared in 1929 after Warren A. Marrison, an engineer at New York’s Bell Laboratories, discovered that the crystal vibrated at a regular frequency. By the end of World War II, the quartz clock had been refined to drift only one second every thirty years. The greatest revolution in timekeeping was the atomic clock, a device driven by the oscillations of individual atoms. The idea for such a machine was born in 1945, when Columbia University professor I.I. Rabi theorized that a clock could be made in accordance with his theory of atomic beam magnetic resonance. Several years later, the National Bureau of Standards—now the National Institute of Standards and Technology—developed

792 Section 13: Clocks and Timepieces the world’s first atomic clock, which used the ammonia molecule at first, then later used the cesium atom. With the advent of atomic clocks, precision timekeeping improved exponentially. In 1967, the second (as a unit of measurement) was redefined; this fundamental unit was now derived not from the rotation of Earth, which could fluctuate in its speed, but from the oscillation of the cesium atom. Whereas a cesium clock in the 1950s would lose a second over a few hundred years, the cesium fountain atomic clock, put into use in 1999, is accurate to one part in 1015—or about one second in 20 million years. Danny Kind

Sources Andrewes, William J.H. “A Chronicle of Timekeeping.” Scientific American (September 2002): 76–85. Bartky, Ian R. Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Boorstin, Daniel. The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself. New York: Vintage Books, 1985. De Carle, Donald. Watch and Clock Encyclopedia. 2nd ed. London: N.A.G. Press, 1976. Gibbs, W. Wayt. “Ultimate Clocks.” Scientific American (September 2002): 86–93.

DEERE, JOHN (1804–1886) The inventor of the self-scouring plow, which revolutionized farming in the nineteenth century, John Deere was the founder of one of the world’s largest manufacturers of agricultural implements and machinery, John Deere was born in Rutland, Vermont, on February 7, 1804, to a tailor father and seamstress mother. He received little formal schooling and apprenticed in a blacksmith shop when he was seventeen. During his twenties, Deere opened several shops in Vermont, but all of them failed. Seeking richer agricultural lands, where farmers had more money and more need for blacksmithing services, he moved to Grand Detour, Illinois, in 1836. Deere soon became familiar with a problem unknown to farmers in the stony New England

countryside. So rich was the thick earth of the prairies that Midwest farmers were often forced to stop their plowing to pull the mud off the moldboard—the large, curved parts of the plow that turned the soil. Within a year of his move to Illinois, Deere had designed an all-steel plow that did not have this problem with mud buildup. By 1839, he had started production and sold his first ten plows. Word soon spread of the invention, and orders poured into his shop, allowing Deere to end his blacksmithing work and devote himself to the manufacture of plows. In 1848, Deere moved operations to Moline, Illinois, to take advantage of the Mississippi River for water power and transportation. The John Deere company has been headquartered there ever since. As the nation’s economy boomed in the 1850s, and as ever larger sections of the Midwestern prairie came under the plow, the company prospered. By the middle of that decade, it was producing some 13,000 plows a year. Deere also devised a number of other innovative tools during this period, including the double plow and shovel plow, as well as various kinds of cultivators and harrows. Deere was also an innovator in production and marketing techniques. He was among the first manufacturers to recognize the potential savings of using interchangeable parts in the production process. And he employed a large team of sales representatives, known as “travelers,” who established wholesale and retail dealerships in every state and in Canada. In 1858, he turned over day-to-day operations of the company to his son Charles so that he could devote himself to research and development of new equipment. An aggressive businessman in his own right, Charles Deere had the business incorporated as Deere and Company in 1868 and oversaw the further expansion of the firm, including its expansion into overseas markets. Deere had five children with his first wife, Demarius Lamb, who died in 1865. The following year, he married her sister Lucenia Lamb. In his later years, John Deere devoted increasing amounts of his time and fortune to philanthropic causes, as well as local politics, becoming mayor of Moline in 1873. He died in Moline on May 17, 1886. Aside from Cyrus McCormick’s mechanical reaper, the Deere plow did more than any other

Section 13: Eastman, George 793 invention to turn America into the world’s most productive agricultural nation by the end of the nineteenth century. It helped transform the vast expanses of the Midwestern prairie and the Great Plains into the breadbasket of the world. James Ciment

Sources Broehl, Wayne G. John Deere’s Company. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992. Deere and Company. http://www.deere.com.

DURYEA, CHARLES (1861–1938), AND FRANK DURYEA (1869–1967) The brothers Charles and J. Frank Duryea produced the first working automobile sold in America. The vehicle was driven by a one-cylinder, gasoline-powered engine. Two years later, the Duryea brothers established the first U.S. automobile manufacturing company, Duryea Motor Wagon of Springfield, Massachusetts. Raised on a family farm in Illinois, the Duryea brothers had a passion for mechanical devices, and they began to build bicycles near the end of the cycling craze of the late 1880s. By 1890, Charles was determined to build an enginedriven rather than horse-drawn carriage, and he enlisted Frank (by far the better mechanic) to help. The motor-carriage project was centered in Springfield. There, on September 23, 1893, Frank completed and drove a primitive vehicle a few hundred feet. Recognizing the inherent flaws in his prototype, Frank abandoned the horsebuggy form and designed an automobile from the ground up. The new vehicle was completed by the summer of 1895 and was entered by Charles in a Chicago motor race held in November of that year. Driven by Frank on Thanksgiving Day, one day after a major blizzard, the Duryea car came in first, ahead of a German-built Mueller-Benz and four other entrants. The publicity gained in this and other races allowed the brothers to bring their automobile to full production in 1896.

The Duryea Motor Wagon Company produced and sold thirteen automobiles that year, making it the first commercial automobile factory in the United States. Within just a few years, however, the Duryea cars were no more than antiquated museum pieces. By 1899, the brothers had gone their separate ways. Charles moved on to other pursuits as a consulting engineer, while Frank continued in the infant automobile industry. From 1904 to 1914, he served as vice president and chief engineer of the Stevens-Duryea company, a competitive firm that produced a number of high-quality, four- and six-cylinder cars. With Frank’s retirement from the business in 1914, the Duryeas’ influence on automotive history came to an end. Like fellow bicycle mechanics Wilbur and Orville Wright, whose airplane designs were also quickly bypassed by others, the Duryea brothers are celebrated today mainly for contributing to the birth of a new industry and mode of transportation. One of the thirteen original Duryea cars made in Springfield is on view at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. William M. Shields

Sources Berkebile, Don. “The 1893 Duryea Automobile.” United States National Museum Bulletin 240 (1964): 1–28. May, George. Charles E. Duryea: Automaker. Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Brothers, 1973. Sharchburg, Richard P. Carriages Without Horses: J. Frank Duryea and the Birth of the American Automobile Industry. Warrendale, PA: Society of Automotive Engineers, 1993.

EASTMAN, GEORGE (1854–1932) The inventor and industrialist George Eastman, the great popularizer of photography and founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, was born in Waterville, New York, on July 12, 1854. His father owned and operated a business school but traveled to nearby Rochester, where he sold roses and fruit trees to supplement his income. When his father died in 1862, George left school to work and help his mother. Eastman worked as an office boy and a clerk at Rochester

794 Section 13: Eastman, George Savings Bank before he began to experiment with photography. At the time, the common process was wetplate photography, which involved coating a plate of glass with a substance called collodion, a proteinaceous substance made from egg white. Then, a layer of guncotton and alcohol mixed with bromide salts was added. Before the emulsion dried, but after it had set, the plate was dipped into silver nitrate and loaded into the camera in the dark. While taking a picture, the photographer had to spend a long time exposing the image to light. Any movement would cause blurring. Eastman’s original dry-plate process was advertised as the gelatino-bromide dry plate. But as he continued to experiment with dry plates— ever researching what others had done—he came up with a lighter-weight camera and a faster way to coat the plate. His methodical personality and ability to think ahead gave him an advantage, as he envisioned a coating machine, a step that greatly improved production efficiency. Eastman applied for a patent on a coating machine in 1879. The photographic dry plate was patented as both an apparatus and a process the following year. In 1881, Eastman went into partnership with Henry Strong, a roomer in his mother’s boarding house who recognized the opportunity to become prosperous, and they formed the Eastman Dry Plate Company with $2,000. The firm incorporated in 1884 to manufacture what it called American Film. Now that film was less bulky, a smaller and less expensive camera could be used. Four years later, Eastman invented the first box camera. With William Hall Walker, he designed a paper film that could be rolled through the camera and advanced for each picture. The film and box camera could take up to 100 pictures, changing the paradigm of photography from a professional’s realm to anyone’s hobby. Word spread, and the company began receiving orders from all over Europe. Eastman hired a chemist named Henry Reichenbach to improve the paper film, and, in 1889, Reichenbach succeeded in developing a transparent, flexible film, similar to the kind now used in standard cameras. In 1892, the same year that Eastman developed the daylight-loading film,

he changed the name of the company to Eastman Kodak. The Brownie, a low-priced, easy-touse camera, made photography even more popular and pulled the company out of a temporary depression. The camera cost $1. Eastman gave generously of his time and money to institutions in the city of Rochester, including the Eastman School of Music, the Eastman Dental Dispensary, the University of Rochester, Strong Memorial Hospital, and Kilbourn Hall, a performance auditorium named after his mother. An avid hunter, he traveled to Africa and brought back many exotic species to display in his home, which later became the George Eastman House, one of the world’s leading museums of photography. His enduring love for Africa and its people spurred him to donate millions of dollars to the Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes. As the infirmities of aging compromised his lifestyle, Eastman became more depressed and alienated from social encounters. His modest, quiet personality on the outside belied the aggressive energy he channeled into his inventions and business enterprise. No longer willing to cope with the ravages of arthritis and other degenerative health problems, he committed suicide on March 14, 1932, in Rochester. Lana Thompson

Sources Ackerman, Carl W. George Eastman: Founder of Kodak and the Photography Business. Delaware, OH: Beard, 1930. Brayer, Elizabeth. George Eastman: A Biography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Life Library of Photography: Light and Film. New York: TimeLife Books, 1975.

E D I S O N , T H O M A S A LVA (1847–1931) America’s most prolific and celebrated inventor, Thomas Alva Edison turned the very act of invention from an enterprise of inspired individuals to an industry in itself, founding the Edison laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, and lived most of his life in New Jersey. Receiving little formal education, he was

Section 13: Edison, Thomas Alva 795 tutored at home by his schoolteacher mother. Coming from a family of limited means, Edison went to work at the age of twelve, selling newspapers and food at local railroad stations. He became a telegraph operator at sixteen, working for Western Union and other companies through the late 1860s. Fired from several jobs for constantly tinkering with the equipment, Edison gradually shifted from telegraph operator to telegraph innovator, developing an improved printing telegraph for the financial industry in 1869. In 1870, Edison moved to Newark, New Jersey. With a machinist named William Ungar, he founded the Newark Telegraph Company to manufacturer stock tickers, but also to experiment in other aspects of telegraphy. Given his growing reputation as an innovator, Edison was able to attract a coterie of bright young assistants from around the United States and across Europe. With industry expanding rapidly after the American Civil War, Edison’s company won contracts to develop and manufacture new kinds of telegraph

equipment, making it possible for newly emerging national firms to communicate between their headquarters and far-flung factories. As his business grew, Edison, a tireless worker who put in extraordinarily long hours throughout his professional career, began to distance himself from the company’s day-to-day operations. He increasingly devoted his time to inventing, establishing a separate laboratory for himself in 1875. He also began keeping copious notes of his work, to make sure that his patent claims were judged to be legitimate and predate those of any competitor. Among the first inventions Edison developed in his new laboratory was the acoustic telegraph, which allowed multiple messages to be transmitted simultaneously on a single wire. In adapted form, the acoustic telegraph would emerge, through the work of Scottish-born inventor Alexander Graham Bell, as the telephone. In subsequent years, Edison would develop a number of innovations in telephony, including

An exhausted Thomas Edison listens to a prototype of the phonograph after spending five continuous days and nights perfecting the device—which finally came to fruition in 1877. Edison transformed invention itself from an individual enterprise into an industry. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

796 Section 13: Edison, Thomas Alva the carbon-button transmitter, which Bell Telephone licensed from Edison for use in its products. In 1876, Edison took a further step away from the operations of his company by moving to Menlo Park, where he set up another laboratory. In the next five years, Edison and his team of researchers developed one new invention after another, most notably the phonograph in 1877 and the incandescent light bulb in 1879. While the former won him worldwide acclaim as the “wizard of Menlo Park,” including an invitation to demonstrate the device for President Rutherford B. Hayes at the White House, it was the latter invention that would make his fortune. Electrical incandescence had been demonstrated as early as the first decade of the nineteenth century, and arc lights were already being used in street and theater illumination by the time Edison set out to develop a safe, longlasting, inexpensive, and small-scale light bulb that could be used in homes and offices. Winning financial backing from executives at Western Union and other businesses, Edison expanded his Menlo Park facility and hired new assistants to help him with the project. Based on his work with the acoustic telegraph, which involved the use of high-resistance wires, Edison approached the problem differently from others working in the field of electric incandescence, most of whom subscribed to the idea that using a low-resistance filament was the key to inventing small-scale lighting. After much experimentation, Edison and his team developed the high-resistance carbon filament, the essential breakthrough that made the modern light bulb possible. Edison was also working on a system for generating and transmitting the electricity necessary to make the light bulb work, and to create the business organization necessary to exploit his new invention. During the 1880s, Edison and his team, most notably physicist Francis Robbins Upton, developed a direct-current (DC) electrical transmission system. Edison, along with a number of investors, including many who had financed his light bulb experiments, organized the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, which built the first Edison electric generating station in Lower Manhattan; the company would undergo several name changes before becoming General Electric (GE) in 1892.

While GE would go on to become one of the world’s most successful manufacturing companies in the twentieth century, Edison’s insistence on direct-current electrical transmission would prove a failure. Although safer than alternating current (AC), being developed by rival George Westinghouse in the late nineteenth century, DC could not be transmitted effectively over large distances, making it impractical for large-scale electrical utilities. Ultimately, Westinghouse’s AC would become the backbone of the world’s electrical systems. In 1888, Edison embarked on the development of motion pictures. Over the next twenty years, his laboratory would produce a number of inventions in the field, including the first motion-picture camera and the first kinetoscope, a primitive kind of projector, in 1889 and 1894 respectively. But in the race to create a screen projector for mass viewing, Edison lost to French inventor Charles Lumière, and he also failed in his efforts to develop an integrated talking picture system. Although Edison’s greatest achievements were behind him by the turn of the twentieth century, his wide-ranging knowledge and curiosity led him to experiment with X-rays, the large-scale manufacture of iron and cement, and other ventures. During World War I, he advised the U.S. Navy on military technology. By this time, Edison was extraordinarily wealthy, and he was often seen in the company of presidents and industry leaders. He enjoyed a particularly close friendship with auto manufacturer Henry Ford, and the two would take highly publicized automobile tours together. While Edison’s frantic pace slowed as he entered his seventies, he continued to work at his laboratory nearly until his death. Edison was married twice; his first wife died in 1884, and he remarried in 1886. He had six children, three with each wife. He died in Orange, New Jersey, on October 18, 1931. James Ciment

Sources Josephson, Matthew. Edison: A Biography. New York: McGrawHill, 1959. Pretzer, William S., ed. Working at Inventing: Thomas Edison and the Menlo Park Experience. Dearborn, MI: Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, 1989. Wachhorst, Wyn. Thomas Alva Edison, an American Myth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Section 13: Electricity 797

ELECTRICITY The development of electricity during the nineteenth century defined how Americans consume physical energy, which transformed American society. Nineteenth-century American scientists and inventors built on the discoveries of Europeans to produce, use, and distribute electricity. This led to revolutions in communications, transportation, industry, lighting, and the electronics industry, as well as a proliferation of electrical devices taken for granted in the twenty-first century. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Alessandro Volta of Italy invented the electric battery, which he called the wet cell. The volt, the unit of electrical pressure, is named after him in tribute to his work to find “flowing electricity” to complement existing static electricity. The voltage of each cell in the electric battery is low, usually between one and two volts, and the electron flow produces direct current as it flows along a single path. The reason for this unidirectional current is that the battery maintains the same polarity and output voltage across its two terminals. The application of direct current in America enabled development of both the telegraph by Samuel F.B. Morse and the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell. Electric on and off pulses were used to send telegraph messages across great distances, while voice-modulated electricity on copper wires enabled speech to be sent via telephone. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, American inventors applied the European understanding of alternating current. Alternatingcurrent sources change their direction of flow for a defined number of times per second. This property of frequency is often expressed in terms of Hertz, named after the German physicist and engineer Heinrich Hertz, who verified the wave aspects of electromagnetic radiation in 1888. Alternating current sources also produce direct current for those devices that operate better without voltage variations. To overcome the mass of electric batteries needed for power, late nineteenth-century American industry increasingly relied on the alternating current electric motor, invented by Nikola Tesla. Since direct-current motors are eas-

ier to run at a variety of speeds, they were commonly found on subway and light-rail systems; however, electric power can be sent more economically and efficiently over long distances as high-voltage alternating current. Consequently, power companies use alternating-current motors. The ability to transmit electricity over great distances ended the need to locate power plants close to where products were produced. Industries were liberated from traditional power sources—wood, coal, and water. Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla pioneered the development of modern electrical power systems. In 1879, Edison introduced direct-current electric light by improving generators, patenting electric distribution, and developing the first electric meter for recording customer consumption. With this comprehensive approach, Edison knew how much to charge each customer for electric service.

Benjamin Franklin’s Leyden jar experiment proved that a spark generates heat. A practical, experimental approach to understanding electrical current on the part of early American and European scientists led to the great technological advances of later centuries. (North Wind Picture Archives)

798 Section 13: Electricity Electrical distribution was becoming big business. Tesla, building on the contributions of Thomas Edison, Michael Faraday, and others, was able to visualize working inventions; his implementation of them led to the fusion of electrical theory with electrical engineering. The Edison approach to electricity favored direct-current generation, with distribution limited to about a mile from a noisy generating plant, and suitable only for lighting. Tesla understood these pitfalls. His signature invention was the alternating-current motor, which allowed for the widespread generation and distribution of electrical power. He fought to introduce the alternating-current approach, whereby electrical power could be transmitted over hundreds of miles. In addition to lighting, alternating current could be used for powering residential appliances and industrial machinery. Tesla’s vision for alternating-current power was ultimately realized during the twentieth century. Samuel Insull made possible the widespread integration of America’s electrical infrastructure. One of Edison’s lieutenants, he became an advocate of alternating current in electrical production and distribution. Insull used economies of scale to overcome market barriers through the inexpensive production of electricity with large steam turbines. This technology made it easier to put electricity into more American homes. Insull drove demand for electricity by charging for the user’s share of peak demand at one rate and for kilowatts used during off-peak hours at another rate. He encouraged and promoted through incentives the notion of load management to ensure a high level of continuous consumption to match the turbines’ steady generating power. Insull’s legacy was the democratization of electricity in America during the early twentieth century. Cost-effective generation of electricity and the electric light bulb changed the quality of life for millions of Americans. Inexpensive and safe light, brought to the home as alternating current, replaced unsafe flame from candles and noxious fumes from gas. And because houses now could have lower ceilings, since no extra vertical headroom was needed to collect and vent gas, home construction costs plummeted. Meanwhile, corporations were formed to both drive and serve the demand for increasing con-

sumption of electricity. Westinghouse, founded in 1886, and General Electric, founded in 1892, focused primarily on kitchen and other household appliances. Both promoted convenience through ceiling fans (1882), desk fans (1886), coffeepots (1891), electric stoves (1893), and toasters (1909), to name a few. Convenience bolstered consumption, and these corporations thrived by serving the customer. Electricity also provided illumination for nighttime social events and leisure activities. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Grob, Bernard. Basic Electronics. 8th ed. Westerville, OH: McGraw-Hill, 1997. Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. New York: Random House, 2003. Koslowsky, Robert. A World Perspective Through 21st Century Eyes. Victoria, Canada: Trafford, 2004.

ELECTRON MICROSCOPE Unlike traditional microscopes, in which light passes through a series of magnifying lenses, electron microscopes use magnetically focused beams of electrons to create the magnified image. Electron microscopes have two major advantages over light-based microscopes. First, they can be used to scan solid objects—opaque objects are not suitable for viewing with traditional light-based microscopes. Second, electron microscopes provide magnification hundreds of times greater than that of light-based microscopes. While light-based microscopes can magnify an image by a factor of several thousand, electron microscopes can magnify an image by a factor of 1 million or more, allowing the study of objects at the atomic level. Much of the early work in electron microscopy took place in Europe and Canada during the years between World Wars I and II. The theoretical physics that would make the electron microscope possible was formulated by University of Paris scientist Louis de Broglie in the 1920s. The first prototype was developed in

Section 13: Eliot, Jared 799 1933 by German engineers Max Knoll and his student Ernst Ruska at the Technical University of Berlin. Physicists at the University of Toronto built the first practical electron microscope in 1938. The first major U.S. work in electron microscopy was conducted at the research laboratories of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Led by Russian émigré physicist Vladimir Zworykin, the RCA scientists, many of whom were also conducting pioneering research on cathode ray tubes and television transmission and reception, developed early prototypes of a scanning electron microscope (SEM). In the earlier transmission electron microscope (TEM), a beam of electrons was focused on an object, causing an enlarged version to appear on a fluorescent screen or photographic film. When using the TEM, the object was moved, a technique that was soon supplanted by instruments in which the electron gun moved and the object under scrutiny remained static. For example, the SEM used a moving electron beam to scan an object. SEMs, however, did not have the same powers of resolution as TEMs. The earliest TEMs could resolve objects of less than 50 angstroms (one angstrom equals one ten-billionth of a meter), while the first SEMs had a resolution of about 2,000 angstroms. Because of their lesser resolution, SEMs did not attract as much attention in the scientific community as TEMs. But they had other advantages. By scanning objects, they allowed for more three-dimensional imaging, making them especially useful for examining the surface structures of specimens. As the power of SEMs improved in the post–World War II era, they increasingly supplanted TEMs in research laboratories. Over time, scientists and engineers at RCA and other research facilities improved both types of electron microscopes, making them smaller, more powerful, and easier to use. And largescale production made them more affordable. In 1969, RCA got out of the business of manufacturing electron microscopes, but a number of other U.S. firms continue to produce them. James Ciment

Sources Hawkes, Peter W., ed. The Beginnings of Electron Microscopy. Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1985. Newberry, Sterling P. EMSA and Its People: The First Fifty Years. Milwaukee, WI: Electron Microscopy Society of America, 1992.

E L I O T, J A R E D (1685–1763) The Reverend Jared Eliot, an agricultural scientist, inventor, and graduate of Yale College, served as the pastor of the Congregational church of Killingworth, Connecticut, from 1707 to his death. He was a mostly self-taught physician, one of the last New England clergymen-physicians. In 1739, he presided over a meeting of medical practitioners at New Haven to regulate practice in Connecticut. Eliot’s travels to visit his parishioners and patients helped turn his mind to the agricultural challenges facing Connecticut, and he published the first of six short but influential treatises, Essays on Field-Husbandry in New England, in 1748. The last pamphlet in the series, which adapted the new agricultural ideas of Jethro Tull and other English “improvers” to the different circumstances of New England, was published in 1759. Eliot tried to write in a more plain, accessible style than Tull, one appropriate to American farmers. The fifth treatise in the series actually takes the form of a traditional New England sermon, with Tull’s writings replacing the Bible as the text being expounded. Eliot endorsed natural theology, pointing out that agriculture should turn human minds to their creator. Eliot’s endorsement of Tull’s ideas was selective. He approved of Tull’s method of planting seeds in even rows and, along with the mathematician and president of Yale College Thomas Clap and the wheelwright Benoni Hylliard Eliot, devised a set of improvements on Tull’s “drillplough” to mechanize the process (though the machine did not come into common use in Eliot’s time). Eliot disagreed with Tull’s argument against manuring, which Tull thought ineffective. Eliot believed that manuring was necessary to enrich the poor soils of Connecticut. He also

800 Section 13: Eliot, Jared endorsed some of the traditional, astrologybased beliefs about the phases of the moon influencing the proper time to carry out agricultural operations. Eliot hoped that his work would initiate better communications and dissemination of innovations and best practices among farmers. He hoped that American farmers would form agricultural societies similar to those already existing in Scotland and Ireland, but his hopes were frustrated. Along with Clap, he served as an agent for the London Society of Arts in a project to promote silk culture in Connecticut. In 1762, he published An Essay on the Invention, or Art of Making Very Good, if not the Best Iron, from Black Sea Sand. The following year, the London Society of Arts awarded Eliot a gold medal for his success in extracting iron from sand. Word of the prize came only days before his death, which occurred on April 22, 1763. William E. Burns

Sources Grasso, Christopher. “The Experimental Philosophy of Farming: Jared Eliot and the Cultivation of Connecticut.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 50 (1993): 502–28. Wilson, Philip K. “Jared Eliot.” In American National Biography, vol. 7. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

ERIE CANAL Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal connected Lake Erie with the Hudson River, giving New York merchants access to upstate markets and the Great Lakes region. Connecting cities such as Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo, the Erie Canal brought considerable prosperity to inland New York and established New York City as the most important seaport in America. Spanning over 360 miles, the Erie Canal was the largest towpath canal of the time period, requiring eighty-three locks and eighteen aqueducts to bypass the Adirondack Mountains. Begun in 1817 by order of the New York legislature, the Erie Canal marks a milestone of American engineering. With the backing of Governor De Witt Clinton and wealthy New York merchants, work on the canal proceeded rap-

idly, helped by the relatively gentle terrain of the proposed pathway. Clinton persuaded the state legislature to finance the undertaking with tolls, tax revenues, and bond sales to foreign investors interested in the project. The investment paid off, and the canal soon generated revenue beyond its initial cost. New York’s upstate cities also benefited from increased commerce due to the success of the Erie Canal. In 1818, a year before the canal opened, Rochester processed only 26,000 barrels of flour from local wheat; by 1828, with the canal, Rochester was processing 200,000 barrels and, by 1840, almost 500,000. The canal resulted in Rochester’s population increasing from a few hundred residents to 20,000. The success of the Erie Canal sparked a national canal boom, though few reached the heights of New York’s system. The importance of these new canals led to widespread use of steamboats, a much faster alternative to the horsedrawn freight barges immortalized in popular song. Three men oversaw the building of the Erie Canal: Benjamin Wright, David S. Bates, and Canvass White, the youngest and least experienced of the three. Wright, as chief engineer, oversaw much of the project, while Bates served as assistant engineer and worked on the middle section, including the aqueduct near Rochester. Building the canal was an amazing feat of engineering and resolve, especially as much of the work was done by hand. By the end of the project, millions of cubic yards of dirt had been dug, thousands of tons of rock quarried to construct the massive locks, and giant reservoirs of water filled to provide a steady supply of water. Tens of thousands of workers, many of whom were immigrants, provided the manual labor, working under dismal conditions. In a marsh near Syracuse, for example, nearly a thousand workers died due to an outbreak of fever. Today, the Erie Canal is no longer used commercially. Despite renovations from 1836 to 1862, the role of the canal was eclipsed in the twentieth century by new developments such as railroads, the interstate highway system, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the advent of commercial flight, all of which provided more effective means of transporting goods. Today, the

Section 13: Factories 801

Spanning New York State from Buffalo on Lake Erie to New York City on the Hudson River, the 360 mile (580 kilometer) Erie Canal—shown here in the upstate town of Lockport—was an audacious undertaking and an economic boon to the young republic. It opened in 1825. (Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

canal is part of the New York State canal system, and it has limited use, primarily for pleasure craft. Benjamin Lawson

Sources Bernstein, Peter L. Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Henretta, James A., David Brody, and Lynn Dumenil. America: A Concise History. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999. Johnson, Paul E. A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.

FA C T O R I E S A factory is a place of production where powered machinery is used by workers to transform or assemble materials. It may consist of one or more separate buildings on a single site. The term factory is generic; other names are steel mills, automotive plants, machine shops, and locomotive works.

Factories had their antecedents in preindustrial manufactories where artisans and laborers using hand tools were gathered together. In the case of some shipyards and arms production facilities, these could be very large. It was not until the Industrial Revolution, however, that the true factory was born. Here, workers sold their labor, working in buildings and using tools owned by others. The factory thus became the place of production best able to exploit the technology of the Industrial Revolution and the social relations that accompanied the technology. The subsequent history and current status of the factory cannot be disentangled from the general history of industry and manufacturing technology. It is impossible to say what was America’s first factory. Important early manufacturing sites included Oliver Evans’s automated gristmill in Delaware in the 1790s; New England textile mills based on English technology and brought to America by Samuel Slater, culminating in his cotton mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793; and the federal armories at Springfield, Connecticut, and Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, where the concept of mass production using interchangeable parts began to be worked out.

802 Section 13: Factories New technology during the late 1800s, especially electrification, radically changed the nature of factories. Rather than just a shell to enclose production, the factory became part of the production process, designed by experts to facilitate standardized mass production. Electrically operated machinery (with alternating current motors) allowed plants to be laid out more rationally. Electrical lighting replaced daylight or more dangerous forms of artificial illumination. Whenever possible, engineers built control of production into the design and layout of the machines. Skilled workers became machine tenders, while innovations in material-handling equipment eliminated the need for large numbers of unskilled laborers. These developments culminated shortly before World War I in the moving assembly line at Henry Ford’s Highland Park, Michigan, factory designed by architect Albert Kahn. In recent decades, factory work has been further transformed by the introduction of industrial robots, computer-assisted manufacturing tools and techniques, and new management ideas aimed at making the factory workplace less alienating. However, such developments as the outsourcing of production, competing offshore manufacturing, and the rise of the information and service economy have resulted in a continuing decline in factory-based jobs in the United States. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that only 11 percent of the labor force is currently employed in industrial plants. This is seen most vividly in stark industrial “brownfields” of abandoned manufacturing sites and the stagnating economies of the former industrial heart of the nation, now termed the Rust Belt. The American factory, though far from a thing of the past, is no longer the characteristic place of work and production it once was. James Hull

Sources Biggs, Lindy. The Rational Factory: Architecture, Technology, and Work in America’s Age of Mass Production. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Fingleton, Eamonn. In Praise of Hard Industries. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Licht, Walter. Industrializing America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

F O R D, H E N RY (1863–1947) With his assembly-line manufacture of automobiles and the 1908 introduction of the Model T, Henry Ford put America on wheels. His innovations and successes helped to jump-start the modern car industry. Ford was born on a farm in Springwells (now Greenfield), Michigan, on July 30, 1863. Although a less than average student, he showed an aptitude for mathematics and was fascinated with machinery. Determined to avoid farm life, Ford moved to the nearby town of Detroit when he was sixteen, and he landed an apprenticeship position in the engine shop of a shipbuilding company. In 1882, Ford went to work for the Westinghouse Engine Company, selling and servicing steam engines. After several other jobs, he was hired in 1891 as an engineer with the Edison Illuminating Company, where his mechanical abilities got him promoted to chief engineer within two years. While working at Edison, Ford became fascinated with the internal combustion engine, a power source that had been developed in Europe in the middle years of the nineteenth century. Smaller and more powerful for their size than steam engines, internal combustion engines were the leading candidates as power sources for the newly emerging technology of automobiles. In 1896, Ford completed his first vehicle, a car he called the Quadricycle. Improved prototypes followed, and, in 1899, with the backing of fifteen investors, Ford opened the Detroit Automobile Company. Unable to turn a profit, however, the company went out of business. Ford turned to building racing cars, setting his sights on speed records in the first years of the twentieth century. With his reputation as an innovator more firmly established, Ford opened his second company, the Ford Motor Company, on June 16, 1903, with $28,000 in capital, a dozen workers, and a remarkably small 12,000-square-foot (1,100-square-meter) assembly plant. Like most early automobile assemblers, Ford bought many of his components from outside contractors. The engines and chassis came from John and Horace

Section 13: Ford, Henry 803 Dodge, who became majority shareholders in Ford’s company. A major stumbling block Ford faced was patent infringement. A patent for the gasolinepowered automobile was held by the Edison Electric Car Company, as a backup in case its electric-powered cars proved to be failures. In 1899, several makers of gasoline automobiles formed the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers (ALAM) to license all automobile manufacturers. Ford refused to comply, continuing to build automobiles in defiance of the ALAM. Ultimately, the dispute would end up in federal court in 1911. Ford won. Meanwhile, in 1906, Ford had introduced his Model N, an 800-pound (360-kilogram), 18horsepower runabout. But Ford was not happy with the car’s high price or its mechanical problems. One of his main backers, Detroit coal merchant Alexander Malcolmson, believed that bigger profits could be made with heavier and more expensive automobiles. With the money generated by the highly successful Model N, Ford bought out Malcolmson, clearing the way to focus on the car that he wanted to build—a cheap and reliable vehicle for use by farmers and workers. Beginning in 1906, Ford assembled a team of engineers at a separate plant to build the prototype of the Model T, a crank-started, 20-horsepower vehicle with a four-cylinder engine made of lightweight vanadium steel. Originally intending to build several models, he instead created a standard chassis upon which the various body types could be fitted. In 1908, the car was finished, and Ford notified his dealers that it was ready for sale. Ford used interchangeable parts and mass production to keep the prices down— $825 for the convertible model and $1,000 for the hardtop. Those prices put the cars out of the reach of the small farmers Ford had intended as his market, but the Model T’s reliability and relatively low cost—most cars at the time sold for $2,000 and up—made it a hit. In 1910, Ford opened a massive 62-acre (25-hectare) plant at Highland Park. At Highland Park, Ford put into practice two elements that would bring the Model T’s price down substantially, making it truly a car of the average American. The first innovation was the time-motion study, perfected by industrial engi-

Henry Ford’s first vehicle powered by a combustion engine, the two-cylinder Quadricycle introduced in 1896, helped him arrange the funding to start his first automobile manufacturing company—which failed. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

neer Frederick Taylor, by which everything workers did was studied closely to find ways to cut out extraneous movement and wasted time. The second innovation was the moving assembly line, an idea borrowed from the great meatpacking plants of Chicago, where animal carcasses were moved from worker to worker, each of whom had a single and simple task to perform. The process saved enormous amounts of time and effort by keeping workers from having to move around the factory to assemble automobiles. So successful were these ideas that, by the time the last of some 15 million Model Ts rolled off the assembly lines in 1927, the cost of the basic model had dropped to $290. The Model T made Ford the largest automobile company in the world, and the efficiency of

804 Section 13: Ford, Henry his production process allowed him to introduce, in 1914, the then unheard-of wage of $5 a day. In many people’s minds, Ford had invented mass production, and the word “Fordism” entered the vocabulary as a synonym for it. Despite this success, the Ford Motor Company was outstripped by rival General Motors as the world’s largest automobile manufacturer in the late 1920s, partly because Ford failed to follow GM’s lead in marketing a variety of models at different price ranges. In 1927, Ford replaced the Model T with the more powerful and betterequipped Model A. By that time, this new model was relatively primitive compared to cars being built by GM’s Chevrolet division, and it proved far less successful than the Model T. Meanwhile, Ford had moved on to other pursuits, attempting to act as peacemaker during World War I and going into the airplane business in the 1920s. He also bought a newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, in the 1920s, which gained notoriety for publishing anti-Semitic literature. In 1938, Ford suffered a stroke and turned over the day-to-day management of the company to his son Edsel. When Edsel died in 1943, Ford returned to the helm at the age of eighty. Two years later, he turned over the reins to his grandson Henry Ford II in 1945. Henry Ford died in Dearborn, Michigan, on April 7, 1947. James Ciment

Sources Brinkley, Douglas. Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 1903–2003. New York: Viking, 2003. Nevins, Allan, and Frank Ernest Hill. Ford. New York: Arno, 1976. Watts, Steven. The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

F U L L E R , R. B U C K M I N S T E R (1895–1983) Ever original and innovative, R. Buckminster Fuller was described in a 1964 Time magazine cover story as the “first poet of technology.” An autodidact whose works refused the disciplinary

boundaries of academia, he made important contributions as a designer, architect, inventor, artist, mathematician, poet, and futurist. He was born Richard Buckminster Fuller on July 12, 1895, in Milton, Massachusetts; his father died when he was twelve. After attending the local Milton Academy, he briefly went to Harvard; later, he received a degree from Bates College. Fuller married in 1917 and served in World War I. For a time in the 1920s, he owned a company that designed versatile buildings. After experiencing a personal crisis during the 1930s, Fuller took a faculty position at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina. There, he devised the geodesic dome. As a solid yet lightweight structure that allows for a wide coverage of space without internal supports, the geodesic dome represented a breakthrough in shelter construction. With the unveiling of the golf-ball-shaped structure that housed the U.S. Pavilion at Montreal’s Expo ’67, Fuller achieved the status of a pop culture icon. While the cost-effective and easily constructed domes never gained the widespread use as lowcost housing that he envisioned, they have indeed been used to provide shelter for low-income families in poorer countries. An estimated 300,000 geodesic domes are believed to exist throughout the world today, with uses ranging from homes, radar installations, and weather stations to industrial and sporting facilities. Fuller was an early advocate of renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, and wave power. Through the use of such alternative sources, he argued, human societies could meet all of their energy needs while discontinuing the use of fossil fuels and atomic energy. Perceiving that the global energy crisis was brought about by ignorance, Fuller envisioned the practicality of seemingly fantastic alternatives. He theorized, for example, that fixing a wind generator to every energy transmission tower in the United States would generate almost four times the country’s power output at the time. Fuller’s other works include the Dymaxion Map, which displays the world’s continents on the flat surface of a polyhedron with minimal distortion; in 1946, he received the first new patent for a cartographic system in 150 years. Fuller is

Section 13: Gemini, Project 805 also remembered for designing the Dymaxion House, a low-cost, energy efficient, prefabricated shelter. His life’s achievements include twentyfive U.S. patents, twenty-eight books, and fortyseven honorary doctorates in various disciplines. Despite having no formal architectural training, he received the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 1970, its highest honor, as well as the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1968. Fuller viewed his work as an integrated effort to anticipate and solve the major problems facing the planet and its inhabitants. He sought greater “life support” for all people through using fewer and fewer natural resources. His holistic approach was reflected in Fuller’s attempt to develop what he called a comprehensive anticipatory design science to recognize and address future ecological and social problems. He stressed what he saw as the humanitarian purpose of technology. By providing insights into the essential unity of the natural world, technology could offer a guide to solving social problems. Fuller coined the term “Spaceship Earth” to convey his view of the unity of planetary life and the need for all people—its passengers—to act cooperatively. People everywhere, he believed, are “local problem solvers” who are connected to each other, the rest of the world, and the entire universe by working for the betterment of each other. Fuller summed up his approach in the now familiar exhortation “Think globally; act locally.” His progressive vision and concern for issues of social and environmental justice have extended Fuller’s influence well beyond the realms of science, design, and architecture. His commitment to improving life on Spaceship Earth resonated with the counterculture movements of the 1960s and 1970s, and his ideas have continued to inspire contemporary social movements of diverse interests and philosophies. He died in Los Angeles on July 1, 1983. Jeff Shantz

Sources Sieden, Lloyd S. Buckminster Fuller’s Universe: His Life and Work. New York: Perseus, 2000. Zung, Thomas T.K. Buckminster Fuller: Anthology for a New Millennium. New York: St. Martin’s, 2002.

GEMINI, PROJECT The Gemini space program, officially designated Project Gemini, was designed by America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to bridge the technology gap between the Mercury program and the Apollo lunar missions. Authorized by Congress in 1961, the primary objectives of the program were to subject humans, support systems, and equipment to long-duration flights orbiting Earth; successfully execute rendezvous and docking techniques; prove that astronauts could perform tasks outside the spacecraft; and perfect methods of entering the atmosphere and landing at a preselected landing point. NASA established the Gemini Project Office at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas, to manage the program and chose the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to construct the spacecraft. The technology and experience of Project Mercury were drawn on to create the two-crewmember Gemini spacecraft, which was designed for increased aerodynamic lift and improved maneuverability. The new spacecraft shared the basic design configuration of the Mercury capsule, but it included a number of enhancements: onboard computers that provided for precision navigation; fuel cells that generated enough electricity for long-duration missions; ejection seats that served as the primary escape system; rendezvous radar; and storable propellant fuels. Weighing nearly 8,000 pounds, each of the twelve Gemini spacecraft relied on its Titan II launch rocket to supply the necessary thrust to carry it into orbit. The first initial Gemini missions were unmanned tests of the vehicle. Manned missions occurred from March 1965 to November 1966; Gemini astronauts orbited Earth in flights ranging from five hours to fourteen days. On March 23, 1965, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young launched into space aboard Gemini III, in which they orbited Earth three times. Three months later, Gemini IV astronaut Edward H. White II became the first American to perform an extravehicular activity. Using a tether and hand-held maneuvering unit, he moved about outside the capsule during a twenty-two-minute space walk. In December 1965, a major objective

806 Section 13: Gemini, Project John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing humans on the moon and returning them safely to Earth. Kevin Brady

Sources Grimwood, James M., Barton C. Hacker, and Peter J. Vorzimmer. Project Gemini Technology and Operations: A Chronology. Washington, DC: NASA, 1969. Hacker, Barton C., and James M. Grimwood. On the Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977.

GIRDLING The successful rendezvous of two spacecraft, the Gemini 7 capsule (pictured here) and the Gemini 6 craft (from which this photo was taken), in December 1965 satisfied one of the major objectives of the entire Gemini program. (NASA/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

of the Gemini program was achieved when crewmembers of Gemini VI were able to rendezvous with the Gemini VII spacecraft. On November 11, 1966, astronauts James A. Lovell, Jr., and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., launched into orbit aboard Gemini XII. This final Gemini flight included a five-hour space walk by Aldrin and a successful docking operation with an unmanned Agena upper-stage booster. Although the Gemini program was essentially a technological learning experience for NASA, it also included a program of experiments in space science. Gemini astronauts conducted studies in astronomy, atmospheric sciences, biology, medicine, space environment, and radiation effects. They also carried out special communication tests, took Earth terrain color photographs, observed weather patterns, and researched the effects of prolonged weightlessness and immobilization on humans. The Gemini program did not represent the pathbreaking endeavor of Project Mercury, nor was it as ambitious as the later Apollo flights to the moon. The twelve-flight program, consisting of ten manned missions, developed the necessary techniques for advanced lunar missions, including orbital rendezvous and docking operations and extravehicular activities. These missions played an important role in achieving President

To “girdle” a tree means to cut a strip around the circumference of the trunk, slicing through both bark and cambium layers in order to deny the crown sufficient nutrients to sustain leafy growth. A fully girdled tree will eventually die as a result of the cut, but partial or temporary girdling has long been employed by horticulturists to increase the size of fruit on orchard trees. Silviculturists (forest managers) use girdling to rid woodlots of undesirable invasive species. Girdling is best known, however, as a method of land clearance in the “long fallow” or “slash and burn” farming typical of subsistence agricultural societies throughout history, though many contemporary groups also employ the practice. In the absence of either large pools of available labor, animal power, or metal tools such as axes, agricultural societies in America found it more economical to clear temporary farming plots in forest areas by using the slash and burn technique (of which girdling was a primary component). This method was used rather than the full land clearance typical of Anglo-European farmers who settled in such heavily forested areas as eastern North America. In the traditional agricultural system, small farming parties entered a mature forest area and pulled, cut, piled, and then burned the shorter underbrush. After this, they used their available cutting tools (for example, axes or knives of stone or animal bone) to girdle the remaining larger trees. Girdling removed the leaf canopy and allowed sunlight to stream down to the forest

Section 13: Goddard, Robert Hutchings 807 floor where crops were planted; farmers used ash from the burned brush as fertilizer. Since many mature forest areas have relatively thin layers of topsoil (especially in tropical rain forests, where much of the organic material is locked up in the plants themselves), the accumulated fertility of humus on the forest floor would be depleted within just a few years, resulting in declining crop yields. At that point, traditional agriculturists would move on to a different area of the forest and repeat the process. The depleted plot would be left to lie fallow long enough (sometimes for decades) for the natural vegetation to rejuvenate itself, after which the area could be farmed again in the same manner. Several American Indian societies practiced girdling and long-fallow agriculture in the temperate forests of eastern North America. Many Anglo-European settlers learned of the technique from Native Americans in the colonial era, later adopting it for their own farms. The system proved particularly attractive to ScotsIrish settlers in the heavily wooded “backcountry” valleys of the Appalachian and Allegheny highlands. As members of this large ethnic group moved south and west after the American Revolution, they transferred long-fallow methods such as girdling to the Cumberland plateau of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, the Ozark hill country of Arkansas, and other areas, including the dense woods of central Indiana and Illinois. In these latter areas, however, slash and burn farming was typically a prelude to the development of a permanently cleared landscape suitable for a more intensive agricultural system, where farmers intended to work the same land for many years, maintaining fertility through the application of manure and artificial fertilizers rather than following the long-fallow method. Nonetheless, long after the Civil War, both girdling and long-fallow agriculture persisted in many isolated areas of southern Appalachia and the Ozarks well into the twentieth century. Travelers reported the appearance of “deadenings”—open areas of girdled and dying trees in the middle of healthy forests. As early as the first decades of the nineteenth century, however, both girdling and long-fallow agriculture were passing from the American

scene. Girdled trees had always presented a hazard to farmers—they were known as “widowmakers” on the frontier—as dead limbs or entire trees might fall without warning. The longfallow agriculture in which girdling played such a central role also required that farmers have access to sufficiently large property holdings to accommodate the prolonged periods of idleness necessary for “tired” land to renew itself. But the descendants of the Scots-Irish subsistence farmers had a long tradition of big families and partible inheritance (equal division of property among all heirs), making it increasingly difficult to keep the large farms intact, especially when southern Appalachia began to be overrun by timber and coal companies around the turn of the twentieth century. Thus, like many other traditional skills developed in rural America, the knowledge of girdling is now preserved mainly as a cultural artifact. The exceptions are those instances noted above where the practice is still in use for forest maintenance and horticulture. Jacob Jones

Sources Doolittle, William E. “Agriculture in North America on the Eve of Contact: A Reassessment.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82:3 (1992): 386–401. Farragher, John Mack. Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986. Otto, John S. “Forest Fallowing in the Southern Appalachian Mountains: A Problem in Comparative Agricultural History.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 133:1 (1989): 51–63. Otto, John S., and N.E. Anderson. “Slash-and-Burn Cultivation in the Highlands South: A Problem in Comparative Agricultural History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24:1 (1982): 131–47.

G O D D A R D, R O B E R T H U TC H I N G S (1882–1945) Robert H. Goddard took the theory of propulsion and turned it into reality. Goddard’s thirtyplus years in rocketry produced an impressive list of achievements and inventions, including application of a nozzle to more efficiently propel rockets, proof that a rocket works in a vacuum,

808 Section 13: Goddard, Robert Hutchings production of mechanical designs for both multistage and liquid-fuel rockets, the first inertial guidance system, the first implementation of blast vanes for directional-thrust control, and the first powered projectile to exceed the speed of sound. His accomplishments are reflected in a total of 214 patents. Goddard was born on October 5, 1882, in Worcester, Massachusetts; he attended Worcester Polytechnic University and Clark University, from which he earned a Ph.D. in 1911. Goddard’s life was shaped by his reading of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898), a science fiction fantasy about the invasion of Earth by Martians. He imagined building a device that could ascend to Mars. In 1914, Goddard transformed from fantasist, dreaming about flights into space, to physicist, determining the size of a rocket needed to raise 1 pound of payload into space. The most significant aspect of Goddard’s first patent, in 1914, was the adaptation of a coneshaped nozzle to the rocket. This innovation allowed combusting gases to apply pressure against the cone as they streamed from the rocket chamber, thereby increasing the rocket’s power and its lift potential. The ability of Goddard’s solid-fuel rocket motors to convert energy into thrust provided a tenfold increase in efficiency from 2 to 20 percent. Also important were the many basic operational experiments of his rocket designs. In 1915, Goddard proved that a rocket could provide thrust in a vacuum; in fact, working in a vacuum improved rocket thrust by roughly 20 percent over thrust in air. The impact of this achievement revealed that rocket operation was independent of its surroundings. This discovery was significant in the success of the future space age. In 1919, Goddard wrote A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, in which he described liquidfuel and solid-fuel rocket motors and multistage rockets. His rockets of the mid-1920s included a combustion chamber and nozzle for propulsion, an igniter to ensure constant combustion, and a pumping mechanism to effectively mix the fuel and liquid oxygen in the chamber. Initially, the motor was on top of the rocket so that it would drag the rest of the assembly behind it. Goddard believed this configuration would ensure straight flight. Later, he would discover that as

long as the motor was located on the rocket’s axis, stability would be maintained. On March 16, 1926, in Auburn, Massachusetts, Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fuel rocket, using a combination of liquid oxygen and gasoline propellants. The rocket weighed 10 pounds and did not lift off until the excess fuel burned off, so the motor’s 9 pounds of thrust could propel it skyward. The rocket rose in an arc, peaking at a height of 41 feet, and completed a semicircle before hitting the ground 184 feet away. The flight lasted just 2 seconds, with an average speed determined to be 60 miles per hour. During 1930, Goddard and his team experimented with a number of design improvements and added to their growing list of successes. A 10 foot rocket, featuring high-pressure gas to force the propellants into feed lines, was successful in reaching an altitude of more than 1,800 feet and achieving a maximum speed of just over 400 miles per hour. At this time, the state of aerodynamics was so young that the world’s fastest airplane had not yet reached such speeds. Even more significant was the fact that this design was the precursor of primary space vehicle propulsion employed thirty years later. Goddard built the “A” series rockets from September 1934 to October 1935, experimenting with gyroscopes to perfect a flight stabilization system. These rockets were roughly 14 feet tall and 9 inches in diameter. The flight of A-14 achieved a height of 2,000 feet before nose-diving into the ground. After this experience, Goddard built the “K” series motors and performed nine static tests from November 1935 to February 1936. From here, the “L” series rockets were built. They were shorter, at less than 13 feet tall, but thicker, with 18 inch diameters. In 1938, improvements allowed for the flight of the L-30, which achieved a record height of 3,294 feet. During the period between the two world wars, Goddard was not only the most famous American scientist but also the most publicized rocketeer. The only repetitive mistake of his career was his emphasis on using gyroscopes for flight stability. The laws of mechanics dictate that stability could be achieved with sufficient acceleration, in addition to reaching higher altitude; however, Goddard never came to discover this engineering fact.

Section 13: Goodyear, Charles 809 The U.S. government invested millions of dollars in rocket development at the conclusion of World War II and used a number of Goddard’s inventions in violation of his patent rights. The misappropriation of his inventions was cloaked in secret government classifications to avoid paying royalties. As Goddard’s inventions were found in virtually every jet plane or rocket that entered the atmosphere and beyond, it finally became clear that the U.S. government should compensate Goddard for his patents. Goddard died on August 10, 1945. It was not until 1960, well after his death, that the government admitted to pilfering Goddard’s ideas and paid his heirs $1 million in compensation. Goddard believed rockets could carry humans into space, yet most of his work was funded by the military to build missiles as weapons. This was because the only way to generate government interest in rocketry at that time was to design weapons of war. In memory of this brilliant scientist who wanted to see human space travel realized, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was established on May 1, 1959. Goddard’s vision of reaching other worlds came to pass in 1969 with the Apollo 11 moon landing. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Baker, David. The Rocket: The History and Development of Rocket and Missile Technology. New York: Crown, 1978. Clary, David A. Rocket Man: Robert H. Goddard and the Birth of the Space Age. New York: Hyperion, 2003. Koslowsky, Robert. A World Perspective Through 21st Century Eyes. Victoria, Canada: Trafford, 2004.

G O O DY E A R , C H A R L E S (1800–1860) Charles Goodyear invented the thermoset (vulcanization) process that made rubber commercially applicable. Vulcanized rubber greatly improved the efficiency, durability, and performance of nineteenth-century engines, both internal combustion and steam, and made possible the development of higher performance engines and machines capable of sustained operations over longer periods with far greater temperature and pressure tolerances.

Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 29, 1800. He began his working career by partnering with his father in the family hardware business. When the business went bankrupt in 1830, Goodyear began experimenting with altering the properties of India rubber so that it would be useful across a wider range of temperatures than it was in its natural state. In 1835, he patented a process that created a new form of rubber by boiling a compound of the natural gum (latex) base from which rubber is derived and magnesium oxide in a mixture of quicklime and water. Goodyear soon learned that even a small amount of a weak acidic substance, apple juice for example, so reduced the durability of this form of rubber as to render it useless for practical application. He began using nitric acid as a curative agent and in 1837 produced mailbags created through this process for the U.S. government. It was discovered, however, that the rubberized fabric degraded quickly in the hot climate common to the southern United States. Seeking another solution, he used a sulfurbased curative process developed by Nathaniel M. Hayward, who briefly worked for Goodyear. In 1839, Goodyear accidentally discovered vulcanization when he dropped an experimental mixture of rubber and sulfur on a hot stove. The sulfur acted as a curing agent (connecting repeating molecular chains with intermolecular chemical bonds) that, when heated, irreversibly cross-linked the rubber molecules. The result of this process was a strong, flexible, durable rubber that was more resistant to solvents and less affected by temperature variations. Vulcanized rubber can be formulated to maintain an elasticity range within specific temperature tolerances and molded and conformed to seal gaps in engines and to serve many other purposes. Vulcanization results in a thermoset rubber that does not melt on reheating and does not become brittle at cold temperatures. The rubber molecule has a number of sites, called cure sites, where a sulfur atom attaches and forms a chain of two to ten sulfur atoms that bridge to other rubber molecules, forming a polymer. A higher ratio of sulfur to rubber in the mixture produces a higher number of these bridges. The greater the number of these bridges, the harder the rubber—and vice versa. Such variations are particularly important in applications such as tires.

810 Section 13: Goodyear, Charles Goodyear spent the ensuing years consumed with determining the correct mixture and conditions of vulcanization, even selling his children’s textbooks to provide cash for purchasing needed materials. He finally deemed his process sufficiently perfected to apply for a patent in 1844. By then, however, others—most notably Horace H. Day—also claimed the discovery. In 1852, the Third U.S. Circuit Court (in Trenton, New Jersey) adjudicated Goodyear’s patent infringement case against Day and declared Goodyear the sole inventor of vulcanization. In addition to promoting his discovery in the United States, Goodyear exhibited articles made from his invention throughout Europe. He was awarded the Great Council Medal at England’s Crystal Palace Exhibition (the Great Exhibition of 1851) and the Grand Medal at the Paris Exposition of 1855. Goodyear chronicled the discovery and perfection of vulcanization in his autobiography, Gum-Elastic and Its Varieties, originally published in two volumes (1853–1855). Even though he was granted sixty patents and created a process that today is used to create products essential to industries ranging from health care to space exploration, when Goodyear died in New York City on July 1, 1860, his only financial legacy to his family was a debt of $200,000. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Alliger, G., and I.J. Sjothun. Vulcanization of Elastomers: Principles and Practice of Vulcanization of Commercial Rubbers. Melbourne, FL: Krieger, 1978. Korman, Richard. The Goodyear Story: An Inventor’s Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly. San Francisco: Encounter, 2002. Peirce, Bradford. Trials of an Inventor: Life and Discoveries of Charles Goodyear. Seattle, WA: University Press of the Pacific, 2003. Slack, Charles. Noble Obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the Race to Unlock the Greatest Industrial Secret of the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hyperion, 2003.

G U N M A N U FA C T U R I N G Gun manufacturing in America altered with the changes in technology and production brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Primitive

guns in the late 1700s had smoothbore barrels and used the flintlock firing mechanism. Eighteencentury gunmakers learned their craft serving as apprentices to master gunsmiths, employing a variety of specialized tools to build guns by hand with nonuniform parts. During the nineteenth century, gunsmiths followed Eli Whitney’s model of building standardized firearms using interchangeable parts. One of the first American contributions to gun manufacturing was the development of the Kentucky rifle toward the end of the eighteenth century. The Kentucky rifle used the European invention of “rifling” or cutting spiral grooves in the bore of the barrels to stabilize the passage of the bullet, creating a highly accurate, long-range weapon. After the invention of the weatherproof percussion cap by Englishman Joshua Shaw in 1814 (patented by him in 1822, after he had immigrated to America), the rifle was more reliable and not limited to use in dry weather (a requirement for igniting the black powder in muzzle-loaders). Moreover, the new rifles, known as “breech loaders,” were loaded at the rear part of the firearm, rendering obsolete the cumbersome action of loading a ball and powder down the muzzle. In 1835, Samuel Colt of Connecticut invented the revolver, or repeating pistol. This design was improved by subsequent manufacturers such as Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson. There also were advances in ammunition. Primed brass cartridge cases enabled gunmakers to build a powerful handgun for the famed Colt 45 and 38 special cartridges. Later, bottleneck brass cases were used in rifles, and plastic casings were used in shotguns. In 1862, American inventor Richard Gatling patented his namesake repeat-firing weapon and founded the Gatling Gun Company in Indianapolis, Indiana. This hand-cranked machine gun had six barrels and a drum magazine, and used percussion caps, firing 200-plus rounds per minute (when it did not jam). In 1865, Gatling demonstrated an improved model of the weapon, incorporating copper-cased cartridges and a vertical magazine. The redesigned gun was adopted by the U.S. Army in 1866 and soon thereafter came into use by governments around the world. In 1870, Gatling relocated to Connecticut, where he continued to improve the design

Section 13: Hoover Dam 811

The original Colt revolver, the first practical repeating firearm, was patented by Samuel Colt in 1836 and went into mass production the same year. His factory pioneered the moving assembly of interchangeable, machine-manufactured parts. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

throughout his life; developing a ten-barrel model, .45, .50, and 1 inch caliber models (for naval use), and an engine-driven model, the first “mini-gun.” In 1907, the Gatling Gun Company merged with Colt Firearms. Four years later, the U.S. Army declared the hand-cranked guns obsolete, replacing them with fully automatic machine guns. Gun technology continued to advance, along with innovations and improvements in barrels, firing mechanisms, priming chemistry, primer design, smokeless powder development, ballistics science, bullet development, and cartridge case manufacture. John Browning of Utah was a leading innovator during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His innovations included the use of recoil and gases from the gun to open the action and load subsequent rounds for automatic operation. Browning invented a repeating rifle in 1884, a machine gun in 1890, and an automatic pistol in 1911. American gunsmiths such as Browning worked on upgrading old designs and developing new actions in accordance with the demands of modern warfare. Browning’s developments in automatic weapons were adopted by the U.S. Army; his .30- and .50-caliber machine gun designs were used in both World War I and World War II. The army also adopted his semi-automatic and automatic pistols and rifles. As the sophistication of military weapons changed, so did the tactics employed by military forces. Gun manufacturing became more specialized during the world wars, and the military used company-based and military-based gunsmiths. At the same time, civilian gunsmiths

worked on sporting rifles, shotguns, and pistols. Sporting applications reflected the growing interest in shooting by the general public. Today, gun manufacturers work to upgrade a weapon’s action (including the firing pin), the barrel or choke components on shotguns, and the carving and assembly of wooden or synthetic stocks. Specialized military and private gun manufacturers generally focus on maintenance and accuracy of various small-arms weapons. Sport and military cartridge developers work in concert with gun manufacturers to refine shooting performance based on powder burn rate, bullet weight and caliber, velocity, wind drift, and energy specifications. James Steinberg and Phoenix Roberts

Sources Berk, Joseph. The Gatling Gun: 19th Century Machine Gun to 21st Century Vulcan. Boulder, CO: Paladin, 1991. Van Zwoll, Wayne. America’s Great Gunmakers. South Hackensack, NJ: Stoeger, 1992. Wahl, Paul. The Gatling Gun. New York: Arco, 1965. Whisker, James B. The Gunsmith’s Trade. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1992.

HOOVER DAM One of the most ambitious engineering projects in American history, the Hoover Dam, also known as the Boulder Dam, was constructed between 1931 and 1936. A concrete, gravity-arch structure, 1,244 feet (379 meters) long, the dam is located on the lower Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona. Standing 726 feet (221 meters) high, the Hoover Dam is the second-highest dam in the United States, after California’s Oroville Dam. Its hydroelectric capacity is just over 2,000 megawatts, providing electricity for communities in Arizona, Nevada, and southern California. Behind the dam sits Lake Mead, an artificial reservoir with an expanse of roughly 158,000 acres (64,000 hectares). As conceived in the early 1920s, the dam had three purposes: 1) to prevent flooding when melting snows from the Rocky Mountain headwaters engorged the river each spring and threatened farmland; 2) to provide water for irrigation

812 Section 13: Hoover Dam on farms and for use in cities in rapidly growing southern California; and 3) to generate electricity for those same communities. The fears in other Southwestern states that California would take most of the water and electricity were alleviated with the Colorado River Compact of 1922. Still, it took more than six years for the federal government, which financed construction of the $49 million dam, to sign off on the project. The contract to build the dam was given in 1931 to a consortium of six Western contracting firms, known as the Six Companies. The site of the dam in a sun-blasted, hard rock canyon presented a number of engineering problems. To prevent flooding at the site, two temporary coffer dams had to be built. Then, the Colorado River had to be diverted. This was achieved by digging four diversion tunnels, each more than 50 feet (15 meters) in diameter and collectively more than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) in length, through solid rock. With that achieved by early 1933, construction of the dam itself began in June.

The Hoover Dam would be the largest concrete structure ever built up to that time, and that scale presented the engineers with some new challenges. Perhaps most formidable was the cooling and contracting process. If workers poured all of the concrete in one solid form, so much heat would be generated that the material would take more than a century to cool. And, as the concrete cooled, it would contract, undermining the stability of the dam. To avoid this problem, the engineers came up with a novel solution. Rather than create a single massive block of concrete, they constructed numerous interlocking, trapezoidal columns, which would allow heat to dissipate at a much faster rate. To further speed up the cooling, metal coils were placed in each column and river water was run through them. These solutions allowed the bulk of the dam to be built in just over two years. Even as the dam was being built, excavations were being dug for the powerhouse, where the hydroelectric generators would be installed. In addition, transmission lines were laid over a dis-

The Hoover Dam, located on the Arizona–Nevada border, harnessed water from the Colorado River for power generation and flood control. At the time of its completion in 1936, it was the world’s tallest dam and largest concrete structure. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Section 13: Hydroelectricity 813 tance of nearly 300 miles (480 kilometers) to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Despite the problems and scale of the project, the dam was completed on time and on budget. The first power transmitted on October 26, 1936, less than five years after construction had begun. But the dam had other costs. Nearly 100 workers died in its construction. James Ciment

Sources Dunar, Andrew J., and Dennis McBride. Building Hoover Dam: An Oral History of the Great Depression. New York: Twayne, 1993. Stevens, Joseph E. Hoover Dam: An American Adventure. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

HYDROELECTRICITY Hydroelectricity is electrical power produced by turbines using water falling or flowing from a natural or artificial source. It is also called hydroelectric power, hydropower, or simply hydro. Most hydroelectric facilities either divert water from a natural source, such as at Niagara Falls, or use water from a natural source impounded by a dam, such as Lake Mead behind the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. In limited cases, a power plant can use excess capacity to pump water to a reservoir that can then be used to generate hydroelectric power during peak usage periods. Also, relatively small amounts of electricity can be generated using the force of flowing water. In a typical hydroelectric generating site, water enters a conduit known as a penstock, which delivers it to a turbine. Water striking the blades of the turbine causes the blades to turn. This causes a shaft connected to a generator to turn. There, magnets rotating past copper coils induce electrical current. A transformer takes this current and delivers it to transmission wires at the high voltages necessary for the economical long-distance transmission of electricity. Power lines then carry the current to stations, where it is progressively stepped down to usable voltages and delivered to homes, businesses, and other end users. Individual electricity-producing sites are linked through power grids to produce and distribute power throughout large regions. While econom-

ically and technically efficient, such grids are vulnerable to disruptions, causing massive power outages. This was seen notably in 1965 and 2003 when small technical failures caused cascading outages, leaving millions in the northeastern United States and adjacent areas of Canada without power for hours or in some cases days. During the 1880s, the Westinghouse Electric Company—founded by inventor and industrialist George Westinghouse—acquired Europeandeveloped alternating current (AC) technology, direct current having already been implemented by Thomas Edison in New York City. With the development of the induction coil, a practical AC transformer by William Stanley, and an effective AC motor by Nikola Tesla, the technical superiority of AC was established by the end of the decade. The first large-scale transmission of AC power by hydroelectricity began at Niagara Falls in 1895. Subsequently, the availability of large amounts of relatively inexpensive hydroelectric power greatly assisted the growth of North American industry. The enormous costs associated with hydroelectric generation and frequent location of generation sites on public lands have made government agencies, notably the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in the Western states, the Tennessee Valley Authority in Appalachia, and Ontario Hydro at Niagara Falls, the major players in this sector. The Department of Energy reports the total U.S. hydroelectric capacity at more than 100 gigawatts. This represents about 10 percent of the country’s electrical power, down from 40 percent in the early twentieth century and about half the world average. Proponents of hydroelectricity point to its renewable and nonpolluting nature, but the environmental and social impacts of developing hydroelectric sites have been considerable. With few important untapped sites for adding hydroelectric capacity, this source is unlikely to grow in importance, but it will remain a part of the nation’s energy mix for the foreseeable future. James Hull

Sources Hughes, Thomas Parke. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983. Nye, David E. Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.

814 Section 13: Hydrogen Bomb

HYDROGEN BOMB The hydrogen bomb is a thermonuclear device that derives its explosive energy from nuclear fusion. An atomic (fission) bomb inside the device triggers the fusion reaction, causing the nuclei of light atoms—typically an unstable isotope of hydrogen—to fuse under extremely high temperatures. Hydrogen bombs are called “thermonuclear” because of the intense heat needed to overcome the electrical repulsion between positively charged hydrogen nuclei and cause them to fuse into helium atoms. The fusion reaction converts hydrogen into helium; in the process, it explosively releases tremendous amounts of energy. The hydrogen bomb was first used on November 1, 1952, when an explosion equal to more than 10 million tons of TNT vaporized the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands. Within 90 seconds after detonation, the bomb’s fireball reached 57,000 feet in height; the subsequent mushroom cloud was nearly 100 miles across by the time it reached its farthest extent. The explosion (codenamed Ivy Mike) was created by a thermonuclear explosive device built according to the theory of staged radiation implosion developed by Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam at Los Alamos. (Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union and other nuclear scientists in Britain, China, and France were also working with the theory of staged radiation implosion in independent efforts.) The hydrogen bomb, or Super, as it was originally called, was developed in spite of serious differences of opinion within the nuclear weapons science community and American political leadership. The Super had been considered possible during the Manhattan Project, but the work at the time had focused specifically on developing the fission bomb. Once the Manhattan Project had ended, some of the scientists began to reconsider the Super. Other Manhattan Project scientists, however, given the existence of powerful fission weapons, saw no need for the vastly more powerful fusion-based hydrogen bombs. One of these was Los Alamos laboratory director J. Robert Oppenheimer, who lost his top-secret security clearance in December 1953 over his opposition to

the hydrogen bomb and his 1930s Communist Party connections. A typical hydrogen bomb works by using the energy of an atomic fission device, called the hydrogen bomb “primary,” to compress and then ignite a physically separate mass of fusion fuel, called the “secondary.” The detonation of the primary device creates high levels of X-ray energy that is used to compress and heat an unstable isotope of hydrogen, typically deuterium or tritium, and pack the hydrogen atoms closer together. As the hydrogen isotope is compressed to extremely high densities and temperatures, a second fission device, called the “spark plug,” located in the secondary’s center, ignites the mass, creating a fusion reaction like that found in the sun. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Herken, Gregg. Brotherhood of the Bomb: The Tangled Lives and Loyalties of Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, and Edward Teller. New York: Henry Holt, 2002. Rhodes, Richard. Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

I R O N W O R K S , C O LO N I A L The American Northeast during the colonial period possessed a combination of readily available iron ore and wood. Thus, Anglo-American colonial promoters envisioned an iron industry from the beginnings of permanent colonization. Iron in North America could be refined out of surface iron ore rather than deep mined. It was smelted out of the ore by heating with charcoal made of hardwoods. English ironworks switched from charcoal to coal in the mid-eighteenth century, but Americans, with a relative abundance of wood, continued using charcoal throughout the colonial period. The cheapest and crudest way to refine iron was “blooming,” heating ore in a charcoal fire and pounding it to eliminate the “slag” or waste. Bloomeries produced only small amounts of iron and demanded heavy labor, but they met the needs of small communities seeking iron for domestic and farming uses. High-volume iron operations used the blast furnace. Blast furnaces stood between 20 and 30

Section 13: Ironworks, Colonial 815

The first American ironworks, fired by abundant supplies of wood, date to the mid-1600s in New England. The simple “blooming” process was labor-intensive and produced only small amounts of iron for tool making and other domestic uses. (New York Public Library, New York)

feet high, used charcoal as fuel, and a rock with a low melting temperature, such as limestone, as a flux, which combined with impurities in the iron to form the slag calcium silicate. The carbon monoxide gas produced by the charcoal reduced the iron oxide to iron, and the extreme heat of the blast furnace, the oxygen for which was provided by water-powered bellows, liquefied the metal. Then, the metal could be poured out in long bars called “pigs.” Pig iron was further refined to remove the carbon it had absorbed in the furnace by being melted repeatedly in a refinery hearth and then hammered into shape. Beginning in the 1640s, John Winthrop, Jr., was an active promoter of ironworks in Massachusetts, where the General Court issued him a monopoly in 1644. His ironworks at Lynn and Braintree used some of the most advanced technology of the time but proved economically unsuccessful. The Saugus Ironworks in Massachusetts, established in 1648, also was unsuccessful, despite its producing a ton of pig iron per day for four years before it closed. Iron production increased in America during the eighteenth century. Thomas Rutt led the establishment of the eastern Pennsylvania iron industry, while Colonel Alexander Spottswood set

up a blast furnace near Fredericksburg, beginning the Virginia iron industry. Two large mills were set up in Maryland to serve the British market—the Principio Company, founded around 1720, and the Baltimore Company, founded in 1731. By mid-century, the colonies surpassed England in the production of pig iron. The expansion of American cast iron and steel production, however, disturbed English authorities, who passed the Iron Act in 1750. By removing duties, the measure encouraged Americans to export bar and pig iron to Britain, but it forbade the manufacture of cast iron or steel. The Iron Act was largely ignored in the colonies, however; cast iron and steel continued to be produced. By 1775, American manufacturers produced about 15 percent of the world’s iron. William E. Burns

Sources Bridenbaugh, Carl. Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743–1776. New York: Oxford University Press, 1955. Mulholland, James A. A History of Metals in Colonial America. University: University of Alabama Press, 1981. Robbins, Michael W. The Principio Company: Iron-Making in Colonial Maryland 1720–1781. New York: Garland, 1986.

816 Section 13: Kettering, Charles F.

K E T T E R I N G , C H A R L E S F. (1876–1958) One of the driving forces in advancing automobile technology in the twentieth century was Charles Franklin Kettering, known as “Boss Ket.” Born in Loudonville, Ohio, on August 29, 1876, Kettering graduated from Ohio State University in 1904 with a degree in engineering. He went to work for the National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton. There, he helped develop the first electric cash register and became the chief of NCR’s inventions department. In 1909, he resigned to design automotive electrical equipment at the Dayton Engineering Companies (Delco), which he founded with Edward A. Deeds. While at Delco, Kettering developed the all-electric automobile lighting and ignition systems; in 1911, he invented the first electric self-starter, introduced by Cadillac in 1912. He also built a gasoline engine-driven generator, the “Delco,” which allowed farms in isolated areas to provide their own electricity. Building on the purchase of the Wright brothers’ Wright Company, Kettering founded the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company (DWA) in 1914. During World War I, he developed a propeller-driven “aerial torpedo” (cruise missile) with a 200-pound bomb load. In 1916, Kettering sold Delco to the United Motors Corporation, later General Motors Corporation (GM). From 1920 to 1947, he served as GM’s vice president and director of research for the General Motors Research Corporation. In this position, Kettering was instrumental in the development of quick-drying automobile lacquers (Duco paint), the high-speed, two-cycle diesel engine, and the modern, high-compression automobile engine, introduced in 1951. Kettering’s home, Ridgeleigh Terrace, located in the town named for him, Kettering, Ohio, was air-conditioned in 1914, making it the first home so equipped in the United States. Kettering’s airconditioning system used toxic gases (ammonia, methyl chloride, and sulfur dioxide) as refrigerants, and in 1928, Kettering collaborated with

chemist Thomas Midgley, Jr., to create freon, the nontoxic chlorofluorocarbon that became the primary refrigerant in air conditioning and refrigeration units. Under Kettering’s leadership, General Motors and Dupont formed the Kinetic Chemical Company in 1930 to produce the freon. Freon was used by Frigidaire in the first widespread consumer refrigerators and by the Carrier Engineering Corporation in the first self-contained home air-conditioning unit introduced in 1932. Midgley and Kettering also collaborated on the creation of high-octane antiknock fuels. Kettering held more than 200 patents, including those for a portable lighting system, a treatment of venereal disease, and the prototype of the modern incubator for maintaining the temperature of premature infants. Though he received no patents for his work on magnetism, his research on its application to potential diagnostic medical technologies forms the basis of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which revolutionized medical diagnostics. In 1927, Kettering created the C.F. Kettering Foundation for the Study of Chlorophyll and Photosynthesis “to sponsor and carry out scientific research for the benefit of humanity.” The foundation sponsored research into cancer and photosynthesis and promoted cooperative and scientific education in the United States. Now renamed the Kettering Foundation, it is committed to answering the question “What does it take to make democracy work as it should?” In 1945, Kettering and Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., the longtime head of GM, co-founded the SloanKettering Institute for Cancer Research at the Memorial Cancer Center in New York City. Two years later, Kettering retired from GM. He died on November 25, 1958, in Dayton. The General Motors Institute was renamed Kettering University in 1982. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Boyd, Thomas Alvin. Charles F. Kettering: A Biography. Washington, DC: Beard, 2002. Zehnpfennig, Gladys. Charles F. Kettering: Inventor and Idealist; a Biographical Sketch of a Man Who Refused to Recognize the Impossible. Men of Achievement Series. Minneapolis, MN: T.S. Denison, 1962.

Section 13: Land, Edwin 817

L A N D, E D W I N (1909–1991) Edwin Herbert Land, developed a one-step, sixty-second process for developing and printing photographs known as Polaroid photography Land was born on May 7, 1909, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He became interested in polarized light, light that vibrates or aligns in a single plane not visible to the human eye, while a freshman at Harvard in 1926. Land invented a method of producing inexpensive plastic or polymeric sheets or film called Polaroid J sheets that polarized light. He did this with iodoquinine sulfate (herapathite) crystals that had been reduced to the submicroscopic level and placed in a homogeneous suspension designed to prevent the finely divided hexagonal particles from settling rapidly. These crystals were first discovered in 1852 by William Herpath and were known to show different colors when viewed from different axes (dichroism). Land found that when these small crystals were forced through narrow slits, they polarized, that is, aligned in two conflicting or contrasting patterns. When light passed through Land’s sheets or through film, certain wavelengths of light were absorbed, creating an image. The absorption of wavelengths of light also allowed unwanted light to be removed by filters and lenses treated with Land’s process. The sheets, film, and filters could be varied, absorbing light at specific wavelengths. Land and George Wheelwright III, a Harvard physics instructor, in 1932 formed the LandWheelwright Laboratories in Boston. By 1936, Land was applying his polarizing (absorption) principle to camera filters, sunglasses, automobile headlights, and other optical devices. In 1937, Land created the Polaroid Corporation, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Just prior to World War II, he introduced a polarized light, three-dimensional, motion-picture process. During the war, Land used his polarizing principle to invent infrared filters, dark-adaptation goggles, and target finders. Land also improved his polarizing sheets. Quinine was essential in making the iodoqui-

nine sulfate crystals and was in short supply due to its use in treating soldiers with malaria. Land stretched large sheets of polyvinyl alcohol (clear plastic) and thereby aligned the molecules that he dyed with iodine. This improved polarizing material continues to be used in sunglasses and camera filters, and as a component in liquid crystal displays, found in such devices as digital watches and portable computers. Land’s Polaroid Land Camera (demonstrated in 1947, first sold in 1948) was capable of producing finished black and white, and later color photographic prints in sixty seconds. This instant photography worked by squeezing chemicals stored on the border of the film through the camera’s two rollers. The chemicals first coated the film with an opaque layer, creating a minidarkroom; then dyes were released. As the film developed, the opaque layer cleared, revealing the photograph. Land also demonstrated that color pictures are composed of white and pink light rather than blue, green, and red light. He explained the effect, the mechanism of which is still not completely understood, in his “retinex” theory of color perception, postulating that a minimum of three independent image-forming mechanisms (retinexes) make the effect possible. Among his many other accomplishments are a microscope for viewing living cells in natural color and the optics for the U-2 spy plane made during the 1950s by Lockheed (today Lockheed Martin). After his retirement from the Polaroid Corporation in 1980, Land founded the Rowland Institute for Science with funding from his Cambridge-based Rowland Foundation, a charitable organization Land had established in 1960. While working at the Rowland Institute, he was involved in the discovery that light and color perception are regulated by the brain and not the retina. In 1957, Land was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard, and he received the Medal of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Land’s more than 500 patents in light and plastics are second in number only to those of Thomas Edison. Land died on March 1, 1991, in Cambridge. Richard M. Edwards

818 Section 13: Land, Edwin Sources Earls, Alan R., Nasrin Rohani, and Marie Cosindas. Polaroid. Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 2005. McElheny, Victor K. Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land. New York: Perseus, 1998. Olshaker, Mark. The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experience. Briarcliff Manor, NY: Stein and Day, 1978.

LAND GRANT UNIVERSITIES The first American colleges and universities emphasized the study of theology and languages. These disciplines were too arcane for reformers in the mid-nineteenth century who wanted the states to establish colleges that would teach agriculture, engineering, and other disciplines with a practical orientation. Between 1855 and 1858, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Iowa all founded agricultural colleges. In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act, granting each state 30,000 acres of land per congressional representative; with the proceeds from the sale of this land, each state was to endow an agricultural and mechanical college. Historians refer to these institutions as land grant colleges or universities, to mark their origin in the granting of land rather than of money. From the outset, farmers wanted these universities to serve a regulatory function, charging them in the 1860s with analyzing fertilizers and in the 1870s with analyzing insecticides to verify their chemical composition. Scientists, however, sought a more ambitious research agenda. Tensions peaked in 1878, when the governing board of the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College changed its name to the Ohio State University. Farmers saw in this decision a betrayal of the university’s commitment to applied science in general and to agriculture in particular. Congress sought to satisfy the proponents of both agriculture and a broad research agenda. In 1887, it codified the agriculture-first strategy of farmers in the Hatch Act, which gave each state $15,000 annually to establish and maintain an agricultural experiment station as the research arm of its land grant university. In 1890, Congress placated those who advocated breadth of instruction and research by passing the Second

Morrill Act, which gave each land grant university $25,000 a year for teaching and research in agriculture but also in English, mathematics, and other disciplines with no obvious connection to agriculture. The wrangling over the focus of the land grant institutions was part of a larger debate regarding science. The founders of the land grant universities shared the Jeffersonian belief that science should yield practical results. By the early twentieth century, however, a core of scientists and university administrators had come to regard the focus on applied science as enervating. Not all science needs be utilitarian to be legitimate, they asserted; the pursuit of science for its own sake was both an end in itself and a foundation for applied research. In this view, basic science and applied science were seen as the two poles of a single continuum. In that spirit, Congress in 1906 gave the agricultural experiment stations, the citadels of applied science at the land grant universities, an additional $15,000 for basic research. Yet the thrust of science at the land grant universities, from hybrid corn to biotechnology, had been utilitarian. If agriculture were to benefit from this research, the land grant universities would need to communicate the results to farmers. To this end, Congress in 1914 passed the Smith-Lever Act, giving each land grant university $10,000 a year to establish a Cooperative Extension Service. From the early days, the federal government and the states have cooperated in research at the land grant universities. Federal agencies have stationed scientists at each institution to conduct research of regional and national scope. In this system, duplication is inevitable; several land grant universities, for example, breed new varieties of wheat. The federal government has tried to minimize duplication by concentrating research at centers affiliated with several of the land grant universities. The research also tends to be interdisciplinary; research on insect-borne corn viruses, for example, requires cooperation among agronomy, plant pathology, entomology, microbiology, and genetics. The trend toward increased interdisciplinary research at America’s land grant universities is expected to continue in the twenty-first century. Christopher Cumo

Section 13: Laser 819 Sources Brunner, Henry S. Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, 1862–1962. Washington, DC: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1962. Eddy, Edward D. Colleges for Our Land and Time: The LandGrant Idea in American Education. New York: Harper, 1957.

LASER Laser is an acronym for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.” Laser light differs from sunlight; the former is a single color at a specific wavelength, while the latter is a mixture of colored light. In addition to being monochromatic, laser light is also coherent, since all of its light waves travel parallel to one another in a phase relationship where wave crests and troughs reinforce each other. American physicist Gordon Gould invented and coined the term laser in 1957, extending the work of another American physicist, Charles Townes, who invented the maser (“microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”) in 1953. The laser replaced microwaves with visible light. Gould determined that a laser, which emits concentrated photons, could heat matter to the temperature of the sun’s surface in only one-millionth of a second. He prophetically noted its potential uses in communications, radar, and heating. In 1960, yet another American physicist, Theodore Maiman, became the first to demonstrate a functioning laser, generating 10,000 watt, high-energy pulses of red light, a ruby laser. From that point on, an entire family of lasers was developed—gas lasers (1961), semiconductor lasers (1962), liquid lasers (1966), quantum-well lasers (1975), and X-ray lasers (1985) —which are linked by the common action of concentrated electromagnetic emissions. Because the laser travels in a narrow, parallel beam, it is ideal for use in measurement systems, such as surveying. Because of lasers’ high degree of precision, their use in manufacturing environments ensures quality. In surgery, the concentration of energy in a narrow laser beam makes it possible to excise a very small area and leave the surrounding region untouched. Lasers are used in surgical pro-

Highly concentrated beams of light, lasers have found hundreds of scientific and commercial applications in just half a century. Here, an engineer works on what he hopes will be a superfast computer that uses lasers to transmit and process data. (John Chiasson/Getty Images)

cedures that annihilate cancer cells, remove kidney stones, unclog blood vessels, and improve eyesight. Because a laser beam is less intense at its edges than at its center, the laser can be used as a tweezer-like tool to move microscopic objects—a capability of great value in biological studies where single cells must be manipulated without damage. High-powered laser can be channeled with precise control for such other functions as welding operations, drilling diamonds, and cutting metal. Low-power applications find many uses in communication systems, bar-code scanners, and consumer electronics. Fiber optic systems, employed in today’s telecommunication systems, commonly employ a laser light source. Digital information transmitted as electrical current modulates the light beam, turning the laser on when a digital pulse is present and turning the laser off when the digital pulse is absent. This modulated light beam is coupled into a glass fiber at a specific wavelength and sent over the design distance. At the receiving end, a photodiode detector converts the laser pulses into electrical signals representing the original digital information. Because of the widespread use of fiber optic systems, semiconductor diode lasers are the most commercially exploited class of lasers. Robert Karl Koslowsky

820 Section 13: Laser Sources Edwards, Terry. Fiber Optic Systems: Network Applications. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989. Hecht, Jeff, and Dick Teresi. Laser: Light of a Million Uses. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1998. Silfvast, William T. Laser Fundamentals. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

L AT I M E R , L E W I S H O WA R D (1848–1928) The African American inventor Lewis Howard Latimer was among an elite group of scientific pioneers who significantly advanced the Industrial Revolution. He was born on September 4, 1848, in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to George and Rebecca Latimer, who had escaped slavery in Virginia only six years before. A contemporary of such other distinguished African American inventors as Norbert Rillieux, Elijah McCoy, and Granville Woods, Latimer served two years in the Union navy during the American Civil War. After his discharge from the navy in 1865, Latimer worked as a drafter at a patent firm in Boston. His creative intellect and ability for drafting were readily apparent early on, and it was not long before he was offered a job by Alexander Graham Bell. Working in the same laboratory, Latimer and Bell became friends, and Bell asked Latimer to draw the patent design for the communications machine he had invented, which he called the telephone. Latimer’s drawings were submitted to the Patent Office, and Bell was granted the patent in 1876. By 1879, Herman Maxim, the inventor of the machine gun, recognized Latimer ’s talent and hired him to work for the U.S. Electric Lighting Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Latimer ’s work there would center around improving Thomas Edison’s lightbulb design; specifically, he aimed to lengthen the life span of the bulb. Between 1880 and 1881, Latimer devised a way of encasing the carbon filament within a cardboard envelope, which prevented the filament from breaking and extended the life of the light while reducing its cost and significantly expanding its use among the general public. Unfortunately for Latimer, the invention was legally

patented to the company rather than to him personally, and he never benefited financially from it. In 1882, Latimer joined his friend Charles Weston at the Westinghouse Electric Company and supervised several major public lighting projects, including some of the first street lights in New York City. The following year, he joined forces with Edison at the Excelsior Electric Company (later part of General Electric), where he was appointed chief drafter. He also functioned as an expert legal witness for the Board of Patent Control, a patent protection organization formed by the two largest electric companies, Westinghouse and General Electric. Latimer continued to design and invent throughout his life. Among his inventions are a safety elevator, a locking rack for hats, coats, and umbrellas, and a book supporter. In addition, he wrote the first electrical lighting textbook, Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System (1890), taught at the Henry Street Settlement for recent immigrants, and was asked to be a founding member of the Edison Pioneers, a group of men who had created the electrical industry. He died on December 11, 1928, in Flushing, New York. Paul T. Miller

Sources Clarke, John Henrik. “Lewis Latimer—Bringer of the Light.” In Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern, ed. Ivan Van Sertima. Somerset, NJ: Transaction, 1987. Fouche, Rayvon, and Shelby Davidson. Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

L AW R E N C E L I V E R M O R E N AT I O N A L L A B O R AT O R Y For over half a century, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been involved in the creation, maintenance, testing, and refurbishing of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. It also conducts research in nuclear fusion, the biological effects of radiation, and non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and addresses homeland security issues.

Section 13: Lindbergh, Charles A. 821 Located in Livermore, California, the facility is named for physicist Ernest O. Lawrence, who founded the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1931. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is one of the three national security laboratories of the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. Its staff includes 2,700 scientists and engineers. This national laboratory’s innovations include submarine-launched, megaton-class warheads (explosive power equal to 1 million tons of TNT) fitted to underwater-launched Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs); a single, high-yield, multiple nuclear warhead package (MIRV); technologies for the removal of radiation and other contaminants from groundwater; linking computer processors performing the same task (multiple parallel computer processing) in the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program; and modeling of regional and global climate conditions and change. The laboratory works to ensure the safety, reliability, and utility of the U.S. nuclear arsenal through the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which also refurbishes weapons and their components as necessary. The lab also seeks to detect, prevent, and reverse nuclear, chemical, and biological WMD proliferation through the Strengthening Homeland Security and Countering WMD Proliferation and Use program. In 1991, the lab established the Nonproliferation, International Security, and Arms Control directorate, which develops largescale, long-term, reliable, sustainable, and affordable clean energy production. In addition, the lab seeks ways to dispose of nuclear waste, and analyzes atmospheric plume analysis of any release of radioactive or other hazardous materials. Scientific research areas include bioscience, chromosome mapping, high-speed cell sorters for research, and biodetectors to detect potentially hazardous molecules in the air and water. The Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry researches atomic and subatomic accelerator technologies used to study subatomic particles. The National Ignition Facility uses laser technology to study the physics, ignition, and fusion burn of weapons systems. The Forensic Science Center is involved in chemical and forensic

analysis. The Superblock facility researches materials science. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Gusterson, Hugh. Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. http://www.llnl.gov.

L I N D B E R G H , C H A R L E S A. (1902–1974) The most celebrated aviator in American history, Charles Lindbergh achieved fame in 1927 by becoming the first person to complete a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The flight was closely followed in the American and European press, and the public on both continents hailed Lindbergh as a hero. The son of a congressman, Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born in Detroit on February 4, 1902, and was raised on a farm in Minnesota. From an early age, he took an interest in the new field of aviation, but he was turned down as a pilot in World War I because of his young age. Enrolling as an engineering major at the University of Wisconsin in 1920, he soon dropped out to pursue a career in aviation. In 1923, Lindbergh bought his first airplane and flew it around the South and West on barnstorming tours, a popular entertainment of the day, in which pilots flew stunts above admiring crowds. A year later, he entered the U.S. Army Air Service, precursor to the U.S. Air Force. He graduated at the top of his class in training as a pursuit pilot in 1925 before being appointed a captain in the Missouri National Guard. While serving in the National Guard, Lindbergh also flew the U.S. mail between St. Louis and Chicago. Advances in aircraft technology and the exploits of military aces in World War I had generated enormous interest in the field of aviation after the war, both among the general public and in the business community, which was beginning to recognize the commercial potential of flight. When Raymond Orteig, a New York City hotelier, offered a $25,000 prize in 1919 to anyone who could fly solo from New York to Paris

822 Section 13: Lindbergh, Charles A.

The Spirit of St. Louis monoplane, which carried Charles Lindbergh on his historic nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, was powered by an air-cooled, 220horsepower, nine-cylinder engine. The engine had a special device to keep it greased for the entire flight. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

without stopping, Lindbergh convinced some St. Louis businesspeople to finance the construction of an airplane to enter the contest. Designed by aviation engineer Donald Hall, the single-seat, single-engine monoplane— equipped with a 223-horsepower, air-cooled, nine-cylinder Wright radial engine—was built in just sixty days in the spring of 1927, at a cost of $10,000. When Hall complained that he needed more time to iron out stability problems, Lindbergh responded that he preferred a somewhat unstable craft, as it would keep him awake for the transatlantic flight, which was estimated to take more than forty hours. To accommodate the 450-gallon fuel tank in the front, the plane was stripped of all excessive weight and had no windshield, which required Lindbergh to use a periscope to navigate. At 7:52 A.M. on May 30, 1919, Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Airfield on Long Island, New York, in a plane dubbed The Spirit of St. Louis. Over the next thirty-three and one-half hours, he battled winds, icy conditions, and fatigue, fi-

nally landing in front of a crowd of more than 100,000 people at Le Bourget Field outside Paris. The flight was celebrated around the world. Lindbergh sailed home aboard a U.S. Navy cruiser sent specifically to pick him up, receiving a huge ticker-tape parade upon his return to New York City. Lindbergh’s great triumph would be followed by equally great tragedy. On the night of March 31, 1932, the infant son of Lindbergh and his wife, writer Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was kidnapped from their home in Hopewell, New Jersey. The child was found dead on May 12. In the late 1930s, Lindbergh was embroiled in controversy when he became the spokesperson for the isolationist movement, which was against U.S. involvement in World War II, and made anti-Semitic remarks. Nevertheless, with U.S. entry into the war following Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh volunteered to serve, flying some fifty combat missions in the Pacific. After the war, he became an adviser to the U.S. military. Lindbergh won a Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography, The Spirit of St. Louis, published in 1953. He died in Maui, Hawaii, on August 26, 1974. James Ciment

Sources Hixson, Walter L. Lindbergh, Lone Eagle. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Lindbergh, Charles A. The Spirit of St. Louis. New York: Scribner’s, 1953. Ross, Walter S. The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh. New York: Harper and Row, 1967.

M A N H AT TA N P R O J E C T The Manhattan Project was the largest integrated scientific research and development project in American history. Started in 1942, the once top-secret project combined the intellectual and financial resources of several nations—principally the United States, Great Britain, and Canada—in a race to develop the world’s first atomic bomb. At the time, Nazi Germany was believed to be working on a bomb of its own. The historic project not only would usher in the Atomic Age but also would change the very nature of American science.

Section 13: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 823 Supervised by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Manhattan Engineer District, the project had three principal work sites: the Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Hanford Engineer Works in Washington State; and Project Y, a site at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Teams at these three sites worked in relative secrecy to provide the effort and materials necessary for the development, design, and construction of the atomic bomb. In addition to the government work, a number of prominent American companies, such as Chrysler Corporation, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, and Monsanto, also made valuable contributions to several peripheral but nonetheless critical aspects of the project. Two distinct atomic bomb designs were produced. The first design, “Little Boy,” used explosives to propel a mass of uranium into another piece of uranium. The collision initiated a state of nuclear fission and the subsequent violent release of energy known as an atomic explosion. The second design, nicknamed “Fat Man,” used explosives to compress a plutonium sphere from all directions. This explosion initiated a selfsustaining nuclear chain reaction that resulted in an atomic explosion. The research, design, and assembly were done at Los Alamos, while the supporting sites at Oak Ridge and Hanford produced the enriched uranium and plutonium, respectively. The first atomic device was tested on July 16, 1945, at a desert site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. In the weeks that followed, the Little Boy and Fat Man atomic bombs would be used, respectively, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The work of the Manhattan Project advanced American science in a number of fields and provided much of the underpinning for future scientific work in such areas as criticality research, high explosives research, radionuclide chemistry, and theoretical physics. From the project would come technical advances in computers, metallurgy, metrology, health physics, and radiation safety. The scope and scale of the Manhattan Project remains unparalleled in American scientific history. No other scientific undertaking has ever marshaled so many resources in such a limited time for such a specific task. By the time the project ended, it had employed thousands of indi-

viduals and cost the governments involved nearly $2 billion. “Manhattan Project” has since become a catchword for any large science effort of short duration involving vast resources and bright scientific minds. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Groves, Leslie R. Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project. New York: Da Capo, 1983. Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

MASSACHUSET TS INSTITUTE O F T E C H N O LO G Y The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is among the preeminent institutions of higher learning in America in the fields of pure and applied science. Incorporated by an act of the state legislature in 1861, its principal founder was geologist William Barton Rogers, supported by other leading Bostonians who recognized the need for a college devoted to the sciences and practical arts. MIT opened its doors in Boston in 1865 with fifteen students. Six years later, it admitted its first woman student, Ellen Swallow, who graduated in 1873 with a degree in chemistry. “Boston Tech” expanded steadily in size and enrollment at its location on Boylston Street. By 1910, it was apparent that new structures and more space were needed; in June 1916, the university moved across the Charles River to Cambridge, into a new campus designed by MIT graduate W. Welles Bosworth. A major portion of the funds for the project were provided by inventor George Eastman, founder of the Kodak Corporation. In 1917, MIT lost its annual appropriation from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and was forced to look for new ways of funding its education and research programs. Under the leadership of university president Richard MacLaurin, electrical engineer Dugald Jackson, and chemical engineer William Walker, MIT developed a “Technology Plan” that aimed at developing closer connections between the university’s research program and the needs of industry. The plan succeeded in securing MIT’s financial future.

824 Section 13: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Major contributions to the U.S. effort in World War II put MIT in a position to benefit from the government’s massive postwar defense programs. The university’s close ties to the defense industry came under fire during the turbulent Vietnam War years, however, forcing it to divest control of several military-funded laboratories. Today, the MIT campus in Cambridge is densely packed with dormitories, education and research buildings, a sports complex, and student service facilities. Total enrollment exceeds 10,000 students. MIT has an annual budget of nearly $2 billion and invested assets valued at nearly $8 billion. More than sixty Nobel Prizes have been awarded to former or current faculty members and students. In 2004, MIT named its first woman president, neurobiologist Susan Hockfield. William M. Shields

Sources Jarzombeck, Mark. Designing MIT: Bosworth’s New Tech. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004. Prescott, Samuel C. When MIT Was “Boston Tech.” Cambridge, MA: Technology Press, 1954. Stratton, Julius A., and Loretta H. Mannix. Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. Wylie, Francis. M.I.T. in Perspective. Boston: Little, Brown, 1975.

MCCORMICK, C YRUS HALL (1809–1884) A farmer turned inventor, Cyrus Hall McCormick devised several agricultural implements, the most important of which was a reaper for cutting grain. The device represented a major step forward in the mechanization of American agriculture. Born to a farm family in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on February 15, 1809, McCormick took an interest in agricultural innovation at a young age. In 1831, he patented a plow and designed a reaper. Drawn by a team of two horses, the reaper vibrated a blade across a toothed platform that enmeshed the grain to be cut, much as a comb enmeshes hair. Over the next two years, McCormick tested his reaper on farms in Lexington, Virginia, garnering interest from local farmers.

McCormick patented his reaper in 1834, but he did not immediately begin widespread production, insisting that improvements were needed before it should be manufactured in quantity. He was, moreover, in debt during the late 1830s, having invested heavily in an iron production company that failed during the Panic of 1837. By 1841, McCormick had turned around his finances and raised the capital to begin manufacturing reapers in Lexington. In 1844, he licensed production in Brockport, New York, Cincinnati, Ohio, and New York City. Dissatisfied with the workmanship at these factories, he restructured and concentrated production in 1847 in Chicago. Although he patented improvements to his reaper in 1845 and 1847, the original patent expired in 1848, opening the manufacture and sale to competition. By 1850, no fewer than thirty manufacturers vied for the market, a number that increased to more than 100 by 1860. Meanwhile, McCormick exhibited his reaper at the London World’s Fair in 1851, winning the Council Medal and accolades from the London Times. Favorable reviews generated sales. McCormick sold a total of seven reapers in 1842, 500 in 1847, and 4,561 in 1858. In the latter year, he grossed $466,659. McCormick owed his success as much to business savvy as to inventiveness; he was among the first to insist on field trials as the measure of performance. As Henry Ford would later do with the automobile, McCormick mass-produced reapers of a single, uniform type. Never content with the current model, he also introduced a series of innovations: a mower for cutting grass, a raker for gathering grain or grass into bundles, and two types of binders for tying together bundles of grain or grass. McCormick advertised ahead of production. He guaranteed his reaper against defects and allowed farmers to buy on credit. Profits from the sale of his reaper allowed McCormick to become a philanthropist, journalist, and politician. In 1859, he made a significant donation to the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest and, in 1866, he donated to the Union Theological Seminary at Hampden-Sidney, Virginia. In 1860, he bought the Presbyterian Expositor and the Chicago Times.

Section 13: Mercury, Project 825 McCormick used these papers to campaign against secession and for the peace wing of the Democratic Party. An advocate of free trade and the westward expansion of the railroad, McCormick supported Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 presidential election. Abraham Lincoln’s election led McCormick to discontinue the Expositor, though in 1872 he bought a second Presbyterian newspaper, the Interior. In 1864, he ran for Congress as the Democratic candidate but lost to Republican challenger John Wentworth. Between 1872 and 1877, McCormick was the chair of the Democratic central committee in Illinois. His international reputation reached its apex in France, where he was inducted into the Legion of Honor in 1869, and into the French Academy of Science in 1879. McCormick and his wife, Nancy Maria of Jefferson County, New York, whom he married in 1858, had seven children. He died in Chicago on May 13, 1884. Christopher Cumo

Sources Aldrich, Lisa J. Cyrus McCormick and the Mechanical Reaper. Greensboro, NC: Morgan-Reynolds, 2002. Judson, Clara. Reaper Man: The Story of Cyrus Hall McCormick. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948.

M E R C U R Y, P R O J E C T America’s first manned spaceflight program, Project Mercury was initiated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 7, 1958. The objective of the program was to place humans into orbit around Earth and return them safely to the ground. In two phases, suborbital and orbital flights, Project Mercury provided the space agency with new knowledge and operational experience in human spaceflight. In November 1958, NASA established a Space Task Group to manage the Mercury project. While the group defined mission goals and technical requirements, the space agency awarded the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation a contract to construct the vehicle. Devised from existing technology and equipment, the one-person Mercury spacecraft was a wingless capsule designed

The original NASA astronauts, known as the Mercury Seven, were: (back row, left to right) Alan B. Shepard, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, and L. Gordon Cooper, Jr.; (front row, left to right) Walter M. Schirra, Jr., Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, John H. Glenn, Jr., and M. Scott Carpenter. (NASA/Getty Images)

to protect its human passenger from the vacuum and radiation of space. With dozens of controls, electrical switches, fuses, and levers, the capsule interior had just enough space to include the astronaut. The vehicle also had an ablative heat shield, which safeguarded the astronaut from extreme temperatures as the capsule reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Redstone and Atlas launch vehicles were used to place the spacecraft in suborbital and orbital flights, respectively. Prior to the manned flights, the space agency first conducted unmanned tests to evaluate the integrity of the launch vehicles and capsule. The first Americans to pilot a Mercury capsule were drawn from a group of 110 military test pilots. The astronaut selection process was based on the pilots’ flight experience, a long array of physical requirements, and psychological testing. On April 9, 1959, NASA announced the seven original Mercury astronauts: L. Gordon Cooper, Jr., Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, M. Scott Carpenter, Alan B. Shepard, Jr., Walter M. Schirra, Jr., John H. Glenn, Jr., and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton. On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space when a Redstone

826 Section 13: Mercury, Project rocket carried him in a Mercury capsule on a fifteen-minute suborbital flight. Nine months later, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth in the Friendship 7 as it successfully circled the planet three times. On May 15, 1963, Gordon Cooper was launched into space aboard Faith 7, where he remained in orbit for a day. The success of the mission led NASA to cancel a seventh manned Mercury flight. The Mercury spacecraft was not designed for performing experiments due to operational limitations and volume and weight constraints, but the space agency recognized the scientific value of conducting research in an orbiting vehicle. During the Mercury flights, therefore, the astronauts carried out a series of experiments in biomedicine, physical science, and engineering. They also performed perception studies, observed weather conditions, took terrain photographs, collected radiation measurements, examined liquids in zero gravity, and deployed a tethered balloon experiment. Lasting nearly five years, the twenty-fiveflight program, including six manned space missions in the Redstone and Atlas rockets. The program achieved its primary objectives of placing a manned spacecraft in orbit and demonstrating that humans could rocket into space, operate a vehicle in space without any negative consequences, and return safely to Earth. Kevin Brady

Sources Grimwood, James M. Project Mercury: A Chronology. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963. Swenson, Loyd S., Jr., James M. Grimwood, and Charles C. Alexander. This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury. Washington, DC: NASA, 1966.

MILLS The Industrial Revolution in America is said to have begun with the founding of Slater’s Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793. Established by the English textile manufacturer Samuel Slater, it was the first facility in America to spin cotton mechanically. Setting out to replicate England’s thriving industry, Slater reconstructed an English plant and machines from memory and

smuggled plans. Located near the great falls at the junction of the Blackstone and Seekonk rivers, Slater’s mill was a great success. Slatersville and other mill villages sprang up nearby. Separate communities reliant on the mill, these villages were built, maintained, and sustained directly by the mill’s owners. Many mill workers were children: All of Slater’s original nine employees were between the ages of seven and twelve. Over the course of succeeding decades, textile mills and mill towns spread throughout New England. Francis Cabot Lowell, head of the Boston Manufacturing Company, developed mechanical looms for his Waltham, Massachusetts, factory in 1814–1815. The first vertically integrated factory in America, the Waltham mill conducted all operations, from spinning to finished goods, in the same building. Further improvements were implemented in a second Waltham mill in 1816–1818, finalizing the systems later used in his namesake town, Lowell, Massachusetts, founded near the Pawtucket Falls of the Merrimack River in 1821. Touted as “the first large, planned, industrial city in America,” Lowell grew to accommodate 33,000 people by mid-century. Like the mills at Waltham, Lowell’s Boott mills were four stories high, rectangular, 150–160 feet long by 40–50 feet wide, with centrally located exterior stair towers reaching from the ground to the top floor. Originally built in the 1830s, the buildings were later improved with fire protection systems, such as ceiling sprinklers. Requiring cheap labor, the Boott mills hired young farm women to cut costs, but the mills also provided them with housing and education. Such innovations established Lowell as America’s premier model of an industrial city, as its system fostered both economic and social benefits to members. As time passed, working conditions changed, as did the workforce. New Irish, Portuguese, French Canadian, and Greek immigrants were all desperate for work. Also, Massachusetts passed legislation overseeing child labor, working conditions, and education, reducing total profit. By the 1920s, as New England’s aging mills battled high taxes, unionized labor, and costly transportation expenses, many investors began focusing their efforts on new textile plants in the South, causing many Northern factories to reduce operations or close. Today, abandoned

Section 13: NASA 827 mills and factories are a common sight in New England industrial cities and towns. Benjamin Lawson

Sources Lincoln, Jonathan Thayer. “The Beginnings of the Machine Age in New England: David Wilkinson of Pawtucket.” New England Quarterly 6 (1933): 716–82. Prude, Jonathan. “Capitalism, Industrialization, and the Factory in Post-Revolutionary America.” Journal of the Early Republic 16 (1996): 237–55.

M O R S E , S A M U E L F.B. (1791–1872) Samuel Finley Breese Morse was an artist and inventor of the telegraph, which used electrical impulses to transmit messages in code. Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April 27, 1791. His father, Jedidiah Morse, was a congregational minister and geographer. After an education at Yale and art studies in England, Morse settled down to the life of a professor and artist. A gifted and prolific painter, he produced more than 300 portraits and historical paintings during his first forty-one years. In 1832, Morse became the first fine arts professor of an American college—New York University— and he was one of the thirty cofounders of the National Academy of Design, serving effectively as president from 1826 to 1845. His contributions as an artist were overshadowed by his fame as an inventor. Morse’s Yale education exposed him to lectures on electricity and opportunities to assist with electrical experiments using wet-cell batteries. On a return ocean voyage from England in 1832, he conceived the idea of transmitting information by electricity over iron wire. The genesis of this idea came from shipboard talk of recent discoveries in electromagnetism and the development of the electromagnet. Due to his commitment to the arts, however, Morse was unable to complete his first telegraph apparatus until late 1835. Morse learned how to employ more power using denser coils. He also developed the dot-dash Morse code, telegraph key, and sounder for telegraph operators to use. Morse was influenced by the work of British scientists William Cooke and

Charles Wheatstone and was assisted by friends and associates Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail. In 1842, Morse lobbied Congress to provide funds to set up a telegraph line. He demonstrated the telegraph between two committee rooms in the U.S. Capitol. Congress responded with a $30,000 appropriations bill in 1843 to build the first telegraph line, from Baltimore to Washington. Morse was named superintendent of telegraphs and was responsible for construction. The line was completed in 1844, and Morse invited a number of notable figures to the May 24 formal opening. The first message sent was a biblical quotation from Numbers 23:23: “What hath God wrought!” After the initial demonstration, acceptance was rapid; thousands of miles of telegraph cable were strung along railway lines across North America. The word “telegram” entered the lexicon in 1852, and more than 200 million telegraph messages were sent annually at the height of its popularity. Today, telegraphy has largely been replaced by fax machines, e-mail, and text messaging. Morse died in New York on April 2, 1872. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Oslin, George P. The Story of Telecommunications. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1992. Silverman, Kenneth. Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law on July 29, 1958. During the half-century of its existence, NASA has led the world in developing aircraft that can fly at supersonic speeds, carry humans into outer space, and take them to the moon; in conducting zero gravity research; and in developing reusable spacecraft such as the Space Shuttle. NASA was created amid Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the 1950s, research into missile technology by the two countries resulted in the

828 Section 13: NASA first artificial satellite, Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union into Earth orbit in October 1957. The United States, afraid that it was being left behind in the arms race, inaugurated NASA to narrow the technological gap between the two countries. One of the first tasks of NASA was to respond to Sputnik with a satellite of its own. This goal was achieved on the last day of 1958 when Explorer 1 rode a Jupiter C rocket leaving Earth’s orbit. The satellite discovered the Van Allen radiation belt, a region of highly charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field. NASA’s early facilities included the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. The lab has been a prime mover in NASA’s unmanned space programs. These programs included the Pioneer, Ranger, Surveyor, Viking, Magellan, Galileo, and Pathfinder missions that explored the moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, and the limits of the solar system. Pioneer missions encompassed twenty years of space exploration, from 1958 to 1978, including the most famous missions, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, which explored Jupiter and Saturn before traveling to the outskirts of the solar system. Ranger and Surveyor, from 1961 to 1965 and 1966 to 1968, were lunar probes gathering information in preparation for the manned Apollo program. Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 were launched in August and September 1977. Voyager 2 flew by, studied, and photographed Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and is now heading for the edge of the solar system. Voyager 1 studied and photographed Jupiter and Saturn, crossed the “termination shock” (a region of compressed, heated particles at the edge of the solar system), and is traveling toward interstellar space. Pathfinder, launched in 1996, landed on Mars, and a remote rover, Sojourner, explored the Martian surface, collecting samples. At the same time, Global Surveyor orbited Mars and sent substantial data back to Earth about the red planet. Exploration rovers sent to Mars in 2004 traversed the planet’s surface. A highly publicized unmanned mission was Deep Impact, which flew by the comet Tempel 1 and released an “impactor” that collided with the comet on July 4, 2005, making a deep crater.

Deep Impact discovered new facts about the nature of comets, such as their porous nature, low gravity, and core material that dates back to the formation of the solar system. NASA’s initial manned space programs were Project Mercury, from 1959 to 1963; Project Gemini, from 1963 to 1966; and Project Apollo, from 1967 to 1972. These successful programs demonstrated that humans could function in space without any significant negative reactions, that rendezvous and docking operations between spacecraft were possible, that spacecraft could successfully reenter the atmosphere, and that spacecraft could successfully take humans to the moon. Seeking to establish a permanent human presence in space, NASA followed the Apollo program with the Skylab space station, which served as an orbital laboratory where crewmembers conducted research and experiments. In 1975, NASA cooperated with the Soviet Union in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. This international endeavor included a crew exchange and the testing of rendezvous and docking maneuvers. In 1981, NASA launched the first reusable spacecraft, the Space Shuttle Columbia, which was used for more than a hundred missions. In 1984, Congress authorized NASA to construct a new space station; however, budgetary and developmental constraints hindered the project. By 1993, Russia agreed to cooperate with the United States to build such a facility. Known as the International Space Station, it became operational on November 2, 2000, when the Expedition One crew docked with it. Over the years, NASA has launched Intelsat, Echo, Telstar, and Syncom communications satellites to provide long-range communications on Earth. Additionally, NASA sent the Ranger, Pioneer, Mariner, Viking, and Voyager spacecrafts to survey the moon, investigate Venus and Mars, and explore the outer planets in the solar system. In April 1990, the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope enabled researchers to make numerous discoveries about the origins of the universe. NASA also launched satellites such as TIROS and Landsat to research Earth’s weather patterns and resources. On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas as it was returning

Section 13: Nautilus 829 to Earth from a mission, killing all seven crew members on board. The tragedy was the result of a piece of foam breaking off during launch from the orbiter ’s external tank and striking the Space Shuttle’s left wing. The space fleet was grounded for nearly three years as NASA modified the Space Shuttles and implemented measures to improve safety. On July 26, 2005, the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery marked the resumption of U.S. space flights. In January 2004, President George W. Bush authorized NASA to complete the International Space Station, continue robotic exploration of the solar system, retire the Space Shuttle fleet, and develop a vehicle that would enable humans to return to the moon. Kevin Brady and Russell Lawson

Sources Anderson, Fred W. Orders of Magnitude: A History of NACA and NASA, 1915–1980. Washington, DC: NASA, 1981. Heppenheimer, T.A. Countdown: A History of Space Flight. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. http://www. nasa.gov.

Nautilus The USS Nautilus was the world’s first nuclear submarine. In 1948, driven by the growing Cold War, former U.S. submariner Hyman Rickover gathered a team of scientists and engineers, established the Naval Reactors Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission, and developed a workable nuclear reactor, called S1W, which used fission instead of internal combustion to produce steam to power turbines. Nuclear power had a number of advantages over previous technology: It all but eliminated a submarine’s need to surface for air, and it replaced over 630 metric tons of diesel with about one-half kilogram of uranium. Moreover, while previous submarines required two engines, diesel and electric, Nautilus had only the reactor. The Nautilus keel was laid at General Dynamic’s Electric Boat Division at Groton, Connecticut, in 1952, and the ship was christened by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower on January 21, 1954. After its final fitting and testing, Commander Eugene P. Wilkinson, Nautilus’s first captain,

The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, makes an early sea trial in 1955. Its passage beneath the polar ice cap to the North Pole in 1958 demonstrated the potential—scientific as well as military—of nuclear submarines. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–103120)

830 Section 13: Nautilus ordered all lines cast off on January 17, 1955, and signaled the historic message “Underway on nuclear power.” Nautilus was not only the world’s first nuclearpowered vessel but the first ship designed to operate almost entirely underwater. Previous submarines were actually submersibles, or surface ships that could submerge for short periods, usually from one to two days. On the Nautilus, submersion would be limited only by the food and oxygen needs of the crew. The vessel’s shakedown cruise in May 1955 took it from Connecticut to Puerto Rico, a total of 1,376 miles (2,220 kilometers) in 89.9 hours. Underwater all the way, it was the longest and fastest submerged cruise ever, averaging 15 knots—World War II’s like-named Nautilus (SS-168) had averaged 8 knots submerged. In 1958, the sub made a transit of the Arctic Ocean, becoming the first ship to reach 90 degrees north latitude—the North Pole—and gathering more scientific data than had been obtained in all previous Arctic explorations combined. On returning to the United States, the crew received a ticker-tape parade in New York City and the first peacetime Presidential Unit Citation ever awarded. Though much of its career was spent in development of new antisubmarine warfare techniques, Nautilus saw action in the Mediterranean Sea during the 1956 Suez Crisis, and it was part of the 1962 quarantine of shipping during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In twenty-five years on active duty, Nautilus sailed more than 500,000 miles (more than 800,000 kilometers), refueling only twice, before arriving at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California, where it was decommissioned on March 3, 1980. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982, Nautilus was returned to Groton, where it remains permanently berthed as part of the Submarine Force Museum. Phoenix Roberts

Sources Anderson, William R., and Clay Blair, Jr. Nautilus 90 North. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Tab, 1989. Friedman, Norman, and James L. Christley. U.S. Submarines Since 1945: An Illustrated Design History. Washington, DC: Naval Institute Press, 1994.

Gillcrist, Dan. Power Shift: The Transition to Nuclear Power in the U.S. Submarine Force As Told by Those Who Did It. Lincoln, NE: Universe, 2006. U.S. House of Representatives. Advanced Submarine Technology and Antisubmarine Warfare. Park Forest, IL: University Press of the Pacific, 2005. U.S. Navy Submarine Force Museum. http://www.ussnautilus. org.

NUCLEAR ENERGY Nuclear energy derives from European scientific developments and American engineering skill during the first half of the twentieth century. Building on Albert Einstein’s theories of matter and energy, Ernst Rutherford’s work with uranium, and Niels Bohr’s work with the atomic structure, American physicist Ernest Lawrence invented the cyclotron in 1931. In a cyclotron, subatomic particles are accelerated to great speeds, colliding with the atomic nuclei of unstable elements. After the discovery of fission in 1938, Italian American Enrico Fermi worked on the emission (from the uranium nucleus) of secondary neutrons and their associated self-sustaining chain reactions. He developed a series of experiments at the University of Chicago that culminated in the December 1942 creation of an atomic pile and the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. As one of the scientific leaders on the Manhattan Project for the development of nuclear energy and the atomic bomb, Fermi solved many of the physics problems associated with nuclear development. For nuclear fission to produce a continuous supply of energy, the reaction must be controlled such that it achieves a steady state of operation. The first large-scale nuclear power plant to take advantage of this principle was in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, which began operation in December 1957. In a nuclear reaction, complete fission of uranium 235 produces 2.5 million times more heat than an equivalent weight of carbon in coal, oil, or natural gas. The controlled fission process generates heat that is used to produce highpressure steam to rotate a mechanical turbine, which in turn generates electricity. Nuclear reactor efficiency is about 30 percent, with 70 percent of the heat from fission released locally into

Section 13: Oppenheimer, J. Robert 831 the atmosphere or a nearby river or ocean. The 30 percent of heat energy converted to electricity is similar to that of a coal plant, but nuclear reactors require much less fuel to produce comparably large amounts of energy. A single kilogram of uranium is equivalent to the energy found in 3,000 tons of coal, without producing the global warming effects of carbon dioxide or the pollution of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Recognizing the possibilities of this alternative energy source, Americans during the 1970s and 1980s built a series of nuclear reactors; by 1990, there were 112 reactors in the United States. By 1980, nuclear energy produced more electricity than oil, and, by 1983, it produced more electricity than natural gas. Hydroelectric power also fell behind nuclear energy, yielding its second place status behind coal in 1984. Today, the United States still derives about 16 percent of its energy needs from nuclear power. Sixty-five locations around the country have 104 nuclear reactors in operation. The U.S. safety record is considered one of the best in the world and is continually improving. Opponents of nuclear power cite the risks of nuclear contamination of the environment and humans by means of accidental release of radioactive contaminants released into the air and water. Also, as the technology becomes more common, some fear the possibility of proliferation of nuclear technology to countries that sponsor terrorism. Nevertheless, the federal government encourages the development of nuclear power because of the nation’s ever increasing need for energy. The U.S. Department of Energy has plans to develop a dual-purpose next-generation nuclear power plant that will produce both electricity and hydrogen. In the future, nuclear energy may offer the least polluting and most available source to satisfy the growing American demand for energy. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Garwin, Richard L., and Georges Charpak. Megawatts and Megatons: A Turning Point in the Nuclear Age? New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Seaborg, Glenn T. Adventures in the Atomic Age: From Watts to Washington. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

O P P E N H E I M E R , J. R O B E R T (1904–1967) J. Robert Oppenheimer’s leadership in the Manhattan Project during World War II resulted in the successful development of the world’s first atomic bomb. The project lasted twenty-seven months and, was spread geographically throughout the United States; it culminated in the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, which brought a rapid end to World War II. Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York City, the eldest son of German immigrants, on April 22, 1904. After undergraduate studies at Harvard University and postgraduate work in England and Germany, where he studied with such leading European physicists as J.J. Thompson and Max Born, Oppenheimer returned to the United States in 1929 to become a physics professor at the University of California at Berkeley. At Berkeley, Oppenheimer investigated the energy processes of subatomic particles. He identified the process of quantum tunneling, whereby a particle moves from one point to another without passing through intermediate points. He also predicted the existence of astronomical black holes, which occur when a massive star collapses under its own gravitational force. Upon the formation of the Manhattan Project in 1942, Oppenheimer was appointed director of the new weapons laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The work there lasted from the spring of 1943 to the fall of 1945, leading to the first and successful atomic bomb test on July 26, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico, some 300 miles south of Los Alamos. Oppenheimer codenamed the test “Trinity,” for the three planned atomic bomb detonations using the fission process. The other two bombs were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on August 6 and August 9, respectively. In 1945, at the peak of activity, 125,000 people were employed on the Manhattan Project across all sites. In New Mexico, the average age of the employees was just over twenty-nine. Costs totaling about $2.2 billion made the Manhattan Project the largest research and development

832 Section 13: Oppenheimer, J. Robert Oppenheimer resigned his post shortly thereafter and became the director of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, a position he held from 1947 to 1966. During the McCarthy era in the early 1950s, Oppenheimer became the object of investigation and persecution by the government for his contacts with members of the Communist Party; his security clearance was revoked in 1953. A decade later, however, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award and restored his security clearance. Oppenheimer died of cancer on February 18, 1967. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Bernstein, Jeremy. Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004. Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Cassidy, David C. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century. New York: Pi Press, 2005. Seaborg, Glenn T. Adventures in the Atomic Age: From Watts to Washington. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. J. Robert Oppenheimer (left), the director of the Manhattan Project, and U.S. Army General Leslie Groves, the military officer in charge of the program, examine the remains of a tower in Los Alamos, New Mexico, from which an atomic test bomb was set off in 1944. (Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

undertaking until the International Space Station in the 1990s. As fast as the project team was formed, however, it was disbanded; most of the key players moved on to other projects or joined the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). After the war, Oppenheimer became chair of the General Advisory Committee of the AEC, which was authorized by federal legislation in April 1946 to assume control of research and development of nuclear weapons. One of the first tasks of the commission was to improve the fission process and build an atomic arsenal. Oppenheimer aggressively pursued these objectives, but he opposed developing more powerful nuclear weapons. After the Russian success in detonating an atomic bomb in 1949, however, President Harry S. Truman mandated the AEC to build an even more powerful weapon. The result was the hydrogen bomb.

P AT H F I N D E R , M A R S The Mars Pathfinder spacecraft was launched on December 4, 1996, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its seven-month, 309 million mile journey to Mars was NASA’s greatest success in decades. Pathfinder landed on the surface of Mars on July 4, 1997, with millions of television viewers watching. En route to the Red Planet, the spacecraft made four course correction maneuvers as it spun at a rate of two rotations per minute along its spin axis oriented toward Earth. NASA used an innovative approach for Pathfinder’s atmospheric entry and landing on Mars. A four-anda-half minute automated sequence controlled the descent through the thin Martian atmosphere and touchdown on the rocky surface. Pathfinder’s entry velocity of 16,600 miles per hour was 80 percent faster than earlier (Viking mission) landers. The spacecraft entered the atmosphere of Mars directly from interplanetary space and not from orbit.

Section 13: Photography 833 Pathfinder underwent 20 g’s of force during peak aerodynamic deceleration, roughly one minute after atmospheric entry. To reduce the speed of descent, a large parachute was deployed. Giant airbags, fifteen feet in diameter, inflated seconds before touchdown, absorbing the shock of impact and protecting the lander from the rugged terrain as it made initial contact. The lander bounced for several minutes along the planet’s surface. When the landing was over, the airbags were deflated and retracted, and the planetary rover—named Sojourner, after American abolitionist Sojourner Truth—was deployed to explore the Martian landscape. Ares Vallis, a former flood basin, was chosen as the landing site because of its relatively safe terrain and proximity to a diversity of rocks deposited from a catastrophic flood. During Sojourner’s excursions across the surface, it relied on the lander for Earth communications and imaging support. Sojourner’s close-up photos and instrument data obtained from studying rock composition were fed to Pathfinder for transmission to Earth scientists. Besides the rover’s photographs, the lander sent such data as the planet’s temperature, winds, and atmospheric pressure. A camera on the lander took panoramic images of the landing site and monitored the lowering of the lander’s ramp and initial deployment of Sojourner. The mission lasted for three months, much longer than anticipated. Mission control lost radio contact with Pathfinder on September 27, 1997, and the mission officially ended on March 10, 1998. One of the public relations objectives for the Mars Pathfinder was to highlight NASA’s “faster, better, cheaper” directive and its ability to deliver results. The scientific results of the mission, and the public response to the robotic rover traveling the barren Martian surface, transcended all scientific objectives and exceeded expectations. To the public, the neighboring planets of the solar system never seemed so close. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Benjamin, Marina. Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond. New York: Free Press, 2003. Godwin, Robert, ed. Mars: The NASA Mission Reports. Toronto: Apogee, 2000.

P H OTO G R A P H Y The science of photography began with the work of nineteenth-century European chemists who experimented with recording various shades of light on metal, glass, and paper. Early twentiethcentury American inventors turned European photographic science into a widespread art form and easy-to-use technology for the masses. The camera is a device that records images that can be reproduced as photographs or electronically on display screens. The origins of the camera date to the seventeenth century, when the camera obscura was developed by artists to depict natural scenes. Its components include a box, a viewfinder and a lens to project the vertical scene, and a mirror behind the lens that deflects the image ninety degrees and projects it on a horizontal surface. This early invention was eventually connected to advances in chemistry by German, French, English, and American chemists who developed various means of capturing and fixing an image on a flat medium such as a metal or glass plate. Englishman Thomas Wedgwood in 1802 invented the negative by using silver compounds applied to paper; when exposed to light, the dark areas of the image turned light and the light areas turned dark. In the 1820s, French physicist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce used a similar chemistry to produce the world’s first photographs, called heliographs. In the 1830s, French artist Louis-JacquesMandé Daguerre collaborated with Niépce to produce the earliest production photographs, called daguerreotypes. Plates were inserted in the back of the box-shaped camera, and the shutter opened while the subject sat motionless; chemical treatments were used to develop the images. In America, Mathew Brady used the daguerreotype with inexpensive tin plates to document the images of the Civil War, which established the field of photojournalism In 1841, Englishman William Talbot in 1841 patented the technique (calotype) of recording a negative in the camera; in the developing process, a positive was made on a separate chemically treated paper. His fellow Englishman Frederick Scott Archer in 1848 began using glass plates in a process called wet-plate or collodion

834 Section 13: Photography photography to produce finely detailed negatives, which had to be developed after exposure. In the early 1900s, the Englishman Richard Maddox and American George Eastman perfected the dry-plate process that placed an emulsion on a paper or plastic film base that could be processed later. These innovations in film processing led to the mass production of roll film cameras. Use of negative film that was later converted to a positive picture became the industry standard. Eastman, who in the 1880s founded the company that would become Kodak, established factories in both Great Britain and Germany, overtaking a more established but, by then, outdated European photo industry. In 1895, the Lumière brothers in France developed the movie camera and projector. American

movie makers soon produced early narrative motion pictures such as The Great Train Robbery (1903), and the advent of talking pictures in the late 1920s gave rise to the modern motion picture industry in the United States. In 1925, the German Leitz Company produced a still camera using 35 mm film, the same used in movie cameras. Over time, camera technology was refined for specialized uses, such as high speed, high altitude, space, microscopic, and medical diagnoses photography. In the 1940s, American inventor Edwin Land developed a film processing method that allowed a developed (positive) picture to emerge directly from the camera. This technique was further sophisticated by his Polaroid Company and sold widely on the international market from the 1950s to the 1970s. By the early 2000s, the digital chip began replacing chemical film processing for still and motion picture cameras. Using computer technology, pictures in the form of image files are stored in camera memory cards, from which the photographer can transfer image files to a computer and use graphics software to modify the image. The greater the size of the image sensor chip, and the greater the number of megapixels on it, the finer the image. Since digital photographs are printed using ink-jet and dry ink paper technology, the quality is similar to print chemistry. The ability of photographers to alter their photos, however, no longer assures viewers that the photograph is a genuine depiction. James Steinberg and Oliver Benjamin Hemmerle

Sources

Kodak’s Brownie camera—named for inventor Frank Brownell—revolutionized photography in the first decade of the twentieth century. Handheld, easy to operate, and inexpensive, the Brownie introduced the concept of the amateur “snapshot.” (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–70574)

Brayer, Elizabeth. George Eastman: A Biography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Newhall, Beaumont. History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present. Lebanon, IN: Bulfinch, 1982. North, Michael. Camera Works: Photography and the TwentiethCentury Word. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Sandler, Martin W. Photography: An Illustrated History. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002. Taft, Robert. Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839–1889. New York: Dover, 1964. Welling, William B. Photography in America: The Formative Years, 1839–1900. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. Wensberg, Peter C. Land’s Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Section 13: Plutonium 835

P I N C K N E Y, E L I Z A L U C A S (1722–1793) Eliza Lucas was a South Carolina plantation manager and agricultural innovator best known for the introduction of indigo, the source of a popular blue dye. Born in the West Indies in 1722, she immigrated to South Carolina with her family when she was 16. Her father, a British army officer from Antigua, took the unusual step of sending her to be educated in London. She played the flute, read Milton and Plutarch, spoke French fluently, and was an amateur astronomer, but her passion was botany. While still in her teens, she managed her father’s 600 acre plantation at Wappoo Creek near Charleston, corresponding with him about her planting decisions. She began growing indigo in 1739. By 1744, she had produced a commercially acceptable product suitable for export to Britain. That same year, she married Charles Pinckney, a leading statesman and planter. Indigo was a particular challenge because of the complicated processing necessary to produce the dye, and Eliza Lucas Pinckney had much difficulty finding a reliable expert to oversee the process. With success, she distributed indigo seed among her fellow planters to encourage them to try the crop. In the 1740s, as more dyes of all kinds were needed to give color to the ever growing quantity of textiles produced in England, indigo cultivation expanded dramatically, and the British Parliament agreed to subsidize its production in 1749. Indigo’s growing season complemented that of rice, South Carolina’s staple crop, and indigo became a crop second only to rice in the South Carolina economy. Indigo was only one of the crops with which Pinckney experimented. Many derived from the Caribbean. She grew cotton, lucerne, ginger, and cassava. She also grew figs, hoping to dry them for export, and she tried packing eggs in salt to export them to the British Caribbean. On another family plantation, Belmont on the Cooper River, she tried to cultivate silk but, like the many other colonial Americans who tried to produce it com-

mercially, she was unsuccessful. She also educated some of her young slaves to read, hoping to start a school for slave children, a highly unusual step for a South Carolina slaveowner. Though increasingly busy with raising her four children, she nevertheless found time to continue experimenting with silk production. Accompanying her husband to England, she took along some Belmont silk, which was woven into a gold brocade dress. In England, she came into contact with a network of gardeners and agriculturalists interested in new plants from America. After Charles Pinckney’s death in 1758, Eliza Pinckney managed the family’s plantations for the benefit of her young sons and daughter. During this time, she participated in networks of botanical exchange with fellow South Carolina planters and others across the Atlantic. Although, like many South Carolinians, Pinckney had closer connections with the Caribbean and England than with the other continental colonies, she supported the American Revolution. Indeed, her sons Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Thomas Pinckney played important roles in the war and its aftermath. Eliza Lucas Pinckney died of cancer on March 26, 1793. William E. Burns

Source Pinckney, Elise, ed. The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997.

P LU TO N I U M Plutonium is a radioactive, silver-colored, metallic element used principally as fuel in nuclear weapons and some nuclear reactors. Plutonium has been a source of both scientific challenge and political controversy since its discovery by Glenn Seaborg, Edwin McMillan, Arthur Wahl, and Joseph Kennedy in 1941 at the University of California, Berkeley, while bombarding uranium targets with deuterium neutrons from a 60 inch cyclotron. Although trace amounts are found naturally in uranium ores, plutonium must be manufactured. During the Manhattan Project, plutonium was used to create the first implosion-type

836 Section 13: Plutonium nuclear device tested in July 1945 and the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Plutonium for this weapon was made from an isotope of uranium, uranium 238. (The bomb used against Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6 was constructed with uranium 235.) This was processed in nuclear reactors at the Hanford Engineer Works in Hanford, Washington; Hanford would remain America’s largest producer of weapons-grade plutonium throughout much of the Cold War. Scientific research on plutonium since the end of World War II has focused primarily on enhancing reactions in nuclear warheads and on the use of the metal in nuclear energy production. Although there are fifteen known isotopes of plutonium, the two most common ones are plutonium 239, which is used in nuclear weapons, and plutonium 238, used primarily in nuclear power sources. Aside from nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, plutonium has few uses. With the end of the Cold War, scientists have continued to explore potential scientific, commercial, or industrial uses for the metal. Currently it is used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) for space probes; one kilogram of plutonium 238 can provide 22 million kilowatt-hours of heat energy, making it possible for interstellar probes to operate far into the coldest reaches of outer space, where solar panels are ineffective. Handling plutonium is a complicated affair. At the end of World War II, health physicists and physicians working under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission conducted a range of medical studies on the effects of plutonium on laboratory animals and human subjects, frequently without the informed consent of the human subjects. Plutonium is highly radioactive and requires only relatively small amounts to achieve a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. It also reacts chemically with oxygen and water, creating a pyrophoric compound that burns easily in room-temperature air. Because of the radiological and chemical hazards, as well as the risk of nuclear proliferation if it falls into the wrong hands, plutonium must be kept in specially designed containers in high-security storage facilities. Because of the large stockpiles built up during the Cold War, the United States currently has

more plutonium than it needs, creating a variety of environmental problems. With the cessation of plutonium production in the late 1980s, Hanford began an extensive environmental cleanup project that is rife with overlapping and sometimes conflicting regulatory, political, and technical challenges. Plutonium 239 has a half-life––the time required for one-half of a quantity of the plutonium to become naturally nonradioactive through the process of radioactive decay––of roughly 24,000 years. Scientists continue to work on long-term technical solutions for the storage of used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Greenwood, Norman Neill, and A. Earnshaw. Chemistry of the Elements. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997. Seaborg, Glenn T., et al. The Plutonium Story: The Journals of Professor Glenn T. Seaborg, 1939–1946. Columbus, OH: Battelle, 1994.

POPUL AR SCIENCE MAGAZINE Popular Science magazine is one of the oldest American periodicals seeking to bring the wonders of science to the general public. Founded in 1872 as a philosophical journal covering theoretical science, it later became a leading resource for the lay public in the coverage of applied science. First published as the Popular Science Monthly, the magazine was envisioned by founding editor Edward L. Youmans as a vehicle for presenting and explaining the scientific ideas and breakthroughs then occurring in Europe to the thoughtful but scientifically untrained reader in America. Youmans carried out this plan with a missionary zeal, and the magazine introduced the American public—including scientists—to the works of Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and John Tyndall, as well as, through translations, the works of other European scientists. The inclusion of information on Darwin and his supporters led some religious critics to refer to the magazine as the “evolutionist monthly.” The natural sciences were featured prominently, but emphasis was also given to the

Section 13: Radio 837 emerging social sciences, with important articles on sociology, psychology, economics, and political science. Later years found American authors appearing more frequently in the pages of Popular Science Monthly, including ichthyologist David Starr Jordan and inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The magazine also offered coverage of important scientific addresses and meetings. By the mid-1880s, circulation was nearly 18,000, an extraordinary number for a specialized publication. Upon Youmans’s death in 1887, his brother William took over the editorship; he carried on the magazine’s mission until 1900, when Columbia University professor and psychologist James McKeen Cattell, already the publisher of Science, was named editor. A year later, the Cattellowned Science Press purchased the magazine. Cattell, an outspoken proponent of science popularization, continued the journal along the same lines as the Youmans brothers. A 1904 merger with Sanitarian, a journal of health and public health, brought an increase in the number of health and medical articles. By 1915, faced with declining circulation, Cattell concluded that the magazine could no longer attempt to reach both the lay public and readers with some scientific training (scientists, teachers, and the college educated). He sold the name to the publishers of the World’s Advance, a popular journal devoted to mechanical devices and their development. Cattell retained the subscriber list and launched a new journal, Scientific Monthly, which continued the philosophy of the Youmans brothers. The new editor of Popular Science Monthly was Waldemar Kaempffert, who had been associated with Scientific American and who would later become the first science editor of the New York Times. The magazine now featured copious illustrations and the decidedly practical bent that would become its hallmark. This included regular coverage of aviation, the automobile, radio, and photography. Advertising was now accepted. Well-known scientists continued to contribute articles; however, many came from industrial laboratories rather than universities, reflecting a growing trend in American (and European) science. George Eastman, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Robert Goddard all wrote for the magazine. The emphasis was now on the

products that science made possible (technology) rather than on new scientific knowledge. World War II brought a shift in editorial emphasis to the new technologies of the battlefield, such as jet aircraft, radar, and the atomic bomb. And while coverage of automobiles and more familiar household technologies never disappeared, newer technologies continued to add to the magazine’s appeal: satellites and transistor radios in the 1950s (when the name was shortened to Popular Science); space flight in the 1960s; solar and nuclear power in the 1970s; personal computers in the 1980s; and the Internet and digital photography since then. Today, Popular Science continues to inform and educate lay readers about the basics of emerging science and invention. It also sparks the imagination of the next generation of scientists and engineers. George R. Ehrhardt

Sources Burnham, John C. How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987. Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines. Vol. 3, 1865–1885. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938.

RADIO Radio is the wireless transmission of electromagnetic signals through amplitude or frequency modulation. A radio is also an electronic device that can receive or send radio signals within a specific frequency (between 3 hertz and 300 megahertz), traveling in an oscillating wavelength that is below that of visible light. Additional types of electromagnetic radiation with frequencies near that of radio include microwave, infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. A transmitted radio wave, which moves at the speed of light, can travel several thousand miles and be picked up by a radio or other device, such as a television or telephone. The discovery of radio signals and development of electrical equipment to transmit sound and images via radio waves brought profound changes to human communication.

838 Section 13: Radio

Early Development In 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse, an inventor and painter from New York, demonstrated a new electromagnetic communication system called telegraphy. In Morse’s system, an electrical device made a series of dots and dashes that spelled out a coded message to a receiver on the other end of a telegraph wire. Although rudimentary and time-consuming, Morse’s telegraph was the first reliable long-distance communication system using electrical signals. It was limited in that it relied on the physical connection of wires from one point to another, often over long distances. The wires were frequently damaged or broken and required constant maintenance to ensure a connection. James Clerk Maxwell, a Scottish physicist whose groundbreaking publication Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873) established the concept of radio waves, theorized that electromagnetic energy could be transmitted through space without connecting wires or cables. In 1888, the German physicist Heinrich R. Hertz, working from the University of Karlsruhe, devised a transmitting oscillator that emitted radio waves and detected them using a metal loop with a gap on one side. When the loop was placed within the transmitter’s electromagnetic field, sparks were produced across the gap, thus proving that electromagnetic waves could be sent through space and physically detected. In the final decade of the nineteenth century, inventors and scientists sought to advance the technology of wireless radio transmissions. The Serbian American engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, working in New York, developed a wireless transmission technique in 1891—albeit beyond the range of human hearing. Granted a U.S. patent, Tesla lectured the following year at the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London on the transmission of intelligence without wires. Meanwhile, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi had made key advances in wireless radio communication. He traveled to Great Britain in 1897 to perform a demonstration, sending and receiving a signal 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) and then nearly 10 miles (16 kilometers) away. Whereas Tesla used electric currents rather than electromagnetic radio waves for his wireless

transmissions, Marconi believed if radio waves could be transmitted and detected over long distances, a practical form of wireless telegraphy would be possible. Using a telegraph key to modulate the electric signal, Marconi was able to transmit Morse code over a distance as great as 3.7 miles (6 kilometers). With U.S. Navy support, Marconi continued to increase radio transmission distances. By 1901, he detected a telegraphic signal in Newfoundland that had been transmitted from Cornwall, England, some 1,860 miles (2,990 kilometers) away.

First Broadcasts American inventors led the effort to further extend Marconi’s radio research. Working at Chicago’s Armour Institute of Technology, Lee De Forest developed the audion, a three-element vacuum tube, in 1906. The audion amplified sound and enabled voice transmission, liberating wireless communication from dependence on Morse code to transmit messages. By 1913, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) had established coast-to-coast phone service, with a government-sanctioned monopoly. On Christmas Eve 1906, Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden, who had worked for both Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse and held over 200 patents, transmitted the first transatlantic radio signal from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, to Macrihamish, Scotland. For the test, Fessenden had built identical 420-foot (128meter) towers in each location; for the transmission, he used a high-frequency alternator built for him by the Swedish American Ernst Alexanderson, who worked at General Electric in New York. Alexanderson went on to improve the high-frequency alternator, which led to the birth of commercial radio broadcasts. The earliest practical application of radio technology was to provide communication between ships and shore locations, especially for weather broadcasts or military transmissions. In April 1912, a Marconi wireless set was aboard the Titanic when it struck an iceberg in the frigid North Atlantic, and late-night Morse code transmissions enabled the rescue of the few dozen survivors left adrift in lifeboats after the ship sank. Interference from amateur operators was said to have impeded communication with

Section 13: Radio 839 rescue ships, however, and the public pressured Congress in the aftermath to regulate the airwaves. Before passage of the Radio Communications Act of 1912, there was no government regulation of radio transmitters in the United States. Amateur radio stations competed for airwaves, especially in and around big cities in the industrial Northeast, creating chaos on the airwaves. The Radio Communications Act defined the airwaves as a “collective national resource of the United States” and confined amateurs radio operators—known as “hams”—to the band above 1,500 kilocycles. The act also named the Department of Commerce and Labor as the licensing authority for radio operations, limited the number of licenses to be granted to commercial interests, and allowed the federal government to seize private stations in the event of war or a national disaster. The Wilson administration exercised that right during World War I, ordering all private radio operations shut down on April 7, 1917— citizens could not own or operate radio transmitters or receivers. The U.S. military took over the radio industry, and the development of related technology was accelerated. Major electrical firms working for the armed forces made significant advances in vacuum-tube engineering and manufacturing, and research into oscillating crystal circuits was initiated. (The vacuum tube would not be used even on a limited basis in commercial receivers until the mid-1920s, and it was not until the 1940s that it became the dominant technology.) During World War I, the belligerents used radio to enhance their information-gathering and operational capabilities. Radios were placed in aircraft and combat boats, and battlefield commanders were able to exchange messages in real time. As hubs of communication, radio stations became key battlefield targets.

Postwar B oom In the decades following World War I, radio exerted perhaps the most radical influence on human communication since Gutenberg’s invention of the moveable-type printing press in the fifteenth century. On August 31, 1920, the first American radio station—8MK in Detroit—

began regular broadcasting, followed quickly by KDKA in Pittsburgh, the first licensed “commercial station” owned by Westinghouse. By 1929, more than 600 radio stations, broadcasting from commercial studios, colleges, newspapers, and cities, were transmitting to an increasing number of receiver owners. Between 1923 and 1930, 60 percent of American families purchased a radio set. From the start of the industry, radio broadcasting was closely connected to the sale of radios; one could not exist without the other. As more radios were sold, more stations were set up to serve them and more programming was produced and broadcast. Thus, radio was several industries in one. It was the producer of a household appliance that went from $10 million in sales in 1921 to an $843 million industry in 1929. Sets ranged from the inexpensive (around $50) to the very expensive (hundreds of dollars), which retailers sold to consumers on the installment plans. By the end of the decade, even though many Americans still did not own a radio, most had access to a set through friends, family, or community organizations. News and entertainment were the staples of early radio. The fledgling medium was seen primarily as a means of giving people information faster than they could get it in newspapers, or to put them in the audience of a faraway or costly live performance. As the demands and cost of radio programming increased, small stations became affiliated with larger ones to form networks, which shared programming. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA), one of the largest producers of radio sets, formed the first national network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in 1926. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) was formed in 1928, followed by the Mutual Broadcasting Company (MBC) in 1934. In addition to the major national networks, there were dozens of smaller regional networks, many owned by radio technology companies such as General Electric and Westinghouse. In the meantime, the federal government furthered regulation of the industry in 1927 by establishing the Federal Radio Commission, which later became the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In the 1930s, radio provided free information and entertainment during the Great Depression

840 Section 13: Radio with established formats of news, music, drama, and comedy. American culture began a long process of homogenization, as urban and rural areas across the country heard the same voices. On the technological front, the year 1938 brought a significant breakthrough. Working in his basement laboratory at Columbia University in New York City, inventor Edwin Armstrong devised a receiver system that used frequency modulation (FM) to access the radio band, greatly reducing static and improving sound quality (at a shorter listening range) than AM radio. The emergence of FM radio challenged the existing structure of AM systems, and the number of stations continued to increase. By 1948, about 460 FM stations were broadcasting in the United States. In the early 1940s, U.S. armed forces in World War II had benefited from another technological innovation. The Motorola company, based in Chicago, had developed the “handie-talkie,” or “walkie-talkie,” a portable two-way radio. The development of technology to transmit pictures on radio bandwidths—television—was another sea change for mass media in the United States. The first designs were unveiled by Charles Francis Jenkins in 1925, when the images were modulated on AM and the sound on FM. The introduction of black-and-white commercial televisions in the late 1940s challenged the dominance of radio as a mass medium at the national level. Radio programming emphasized recorded music, information, and talk-show programming rather than live events. The demand for improved sound quality in the 1970s led to an expansion of FM stations that could broadcast in stereo format; the number of FM stations soon exceeded that of AM stations. The desire for commercial-free, educational, dramatic, and special programming led the FCC to authorize FM stations to form an organization called National Public Radio (NPR), which eventually became an independent nonprofit corporation supported by government funding and private donations. By the 1980s, NPR had more than 1,000 affiliate stations; as of 2007, its audience exceeded 16 million listeners per week. The FCC implements and enforces rules designed to address market share, bandwidth allocation, and other communications issues. In 1941, the agency issued its first monopoly rule,

preventing a single company from owning more than 25 percent of radio broadcasting systems in any market. At the time, only seven radio stations met or exceeded that limit. In 1964, the FCC released its duopoly rule, which prevented any company from owning both radio and television stations in the same market, or two radio stations in a larger market and one in a smaller market. Further consolidation in the communications industry motivated the FCC to act again in 1970, limiting companies to ownership of only one radio station, television station, and newspaper all in the same market. In 2003, however, the FCC reversed its stand and voted to relax most of its ownership rules. Congress intervened and had the ownership rules restored, but several other deregulation measures were implemented.

O ther R adio Technologies Radio technology is used in a number of advanced electronic systems. Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) was developed by the U.S. military in the early 1940s to provide navigational positions and an image of objects and landforms. Cooking with microwaves was discovered accidentally by an engineer at Raytheon labs in Waltham, Massachusetts. The company introduced the first microwave oven model in 1947. Engineers at Bell Labs in New Jersey built the first portable wireless telephones in the 1960s. These were followed within three decades by the first consumer mobile (or cellular) phones. By the early twenty-first century, microwave radio signals were able to provide clear mobile phone communications through a network of towers across the United States. As of mid-2007, there were approximately 238 million cellular phones in use. Radio as an entertainment and information medium maintains a strong cultural presence, with more than 12,000 AM and FM stations broadcasting in the United States. Significant developments of the twenty-first century include the implementation of digital and satellite technologies, which have combined to form a new medium of space-based radio at 2.3 GHz. Satellite radio, with a U.S. subscriber base numbering in the millions and growing steadily, is

Section 13: Satellites 841 unconstrained by the physical limitations of Earth-based systems, thereby providing strong, clear signals where AM and FM do not reach. Although the FCC issues licenses to satellite radio providers, program content is unregulated— allowing for a wider choice of programming but looser standards. James Fargo Balliett and Steven J. Rauch

Sources Arnheim, Rudolf. Radio. New York: Arno, 1971. Garratt, G.R.M. The Early History of Radio. London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1994. Harlow, Alvin F. Old Wires and New Waves: The History of the Telegraph, Telephone, and Wireless. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1936. Shiers, George, ed. The Development of Wireless to 1920. New York: Arno, 1977. Sterling, Christopher H., and John M. Kitross. Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001.

S AT E L L I T E S Artificial space satellites are a product of both the technological change that has taken place since 1945 and the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Since the late 1950s, satellites have come to play a vital part in American life and society, from defense and communications to weather forecasting and at-home entertainment. The roots of the rocket technology that made satellites possible go back to Germany in World War II. After the end of the war, the Americans and Soviets raced to acquire such technology and enlisted the expertise of the German scientists who developed it. While the Americans succeeded in recruiting Wernher von Braun, who had headed the German rocketry program, both sides were able to acquire the technology to develop their own ballistic missiles. The Americans and the Soviets also realized that the technology could be used to launch satellites into space. In 1955, both nations pledged to launch their own satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The IGY was an international effort to study physical phenomena on Earth, and it was scheduled to run from July 1957 to December 1958.

It was widely expected that the United States would be the first country to put a satellite in orbit. Therefore, it came as a surprise when, on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I on an R7 rocket that had been developed under the leadership of the great Soviet scientist Sergei Korolev. The Soviets followed up this success a month later with the launch of Sputnik II, which carried the first living creature into space, a dog called Laika. Under pressure to respond, the Americans rushed their preparations, resulting in the launchpad explosion of the Vanguard rocket on December 6, 1957. This failure was dubbed “Kaputnik” by the international press and was a humiliating blow to American prestige. The Department of Defense, which still ran the space program in early 1958, quickly regrouped. On January 31, 1958, it launched Explorer I, using a Jupiter C rocket that von Braun had developed for the U.S. Army. In light of the problems to date, the federal government created a civilian agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to more effectively coordinate U.S. space efforts. After these first successes, each of the superpowers began to develop satellites that were increasingly more advanced and useful. In 1961, for instance, the United States launched the first spy satellite, called CORONA. Surveillance photos were taken in space, and then the film was ejected in a capsule that was retrieved in midair by the U.S. Air Force. Despite the limitations of this system, such satellites were able to provide extensive intelligence on the Soviet Union and prove that the “missile gap” of the late 1950s and early 1960s did not exist. The United States also developed the first navigation satellite, Transit, in 1959; the first weather satellite, TIROS, in 1960; and the first experimental communication satellites, ECHO 1, Telstar 1 and 2, and Syncom 1, 2, and 3, in the early 1960s. In 1965, the United States launched Early Bird, the world’s first commercial communications satellite. At the same time, however, the Soviets continued to develop new and more capable satellites of their own. They launched their first reconnaissance satellite, Zenit, in 1961; the world’s first maneuverable satellite, Polyot 1, in 1963; and a system of communication satellites, known as Molniya, beginning in 1965.

842 Section 13: Satellites Other countries joined the superpowers in space: Canada and Great Britain in 1962, France in 1965, and Japan and China in 1970. All launched satellites for telecommunications, navigation, surveillance, or weather-monitoring purposes. The 1970s saw more improvements in satellite technology, with the United States launching the Landsat satellites to monitor changes in the Earth’s landscape and the first Geostationary Satellite (GOES) to monitor weather patterns. (A satellite in geostationary orbit is one that remains fixed over a specific point on the Earth, usually at a distance of more than 20,000 miles from the surface.) The United States also developed the KH-11 series of reconnaissance satellites; these used an electro-optical system to transmit images to ground stations. Another major technological advance was the development of satellite television. In 1965, the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) proposed to create a satellite system to serve the domestic television audience; however, it was Telstar Canada that launched the first domestic communications satellite in 1972. This satellite, ANIK, was quickly joined by Western Union’s WESTAR 1 in 1974 and RCA’s SATCOM F1 in 1975. One result of these satellites was the phenomena of so-called superstations, such as TBS out of Atlanta, whose programming could be transmitted throughout the United States. In addition, the rapid growth of cable television in the United States was a product of these satellites, since content could be immediately transmitted from one place (where a major sports event was taking place, for example) to local cable providers throughout the country. With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the renewed arms buildup launched by the Reagan Administration in late 1980, Cold War tensions—dormant during the détente of the 1960s and 1970s—were revived. One effect was that, in 1983, the Reagan Administration proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), more commonly known as Star Wars. This would have involved the development of a system of satellites to protect the United States from incoming Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). But technological difficulties and the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s prompted then President George H.W. Bush to scale back the program dramatically.

Throughout the 1990s and the early twentyfirst century, more advanced communication, reconnaissance, and weather satellites have continued to be developed not only by the United States, but by Russia, Japan, and the European Space Agency. One example was the Hubble Space Telescope, which, after early technical problems, was launched by NASA in 1990, providing spectacular images of faraway galaxies. Other examples have included satellite television services such as Direct TV, which has provided increased competition to cable TV. The launch of SpaceShip One, the first commercial rocket to achieve suborbital flight, in 2004, promised an expansion of satellite launches in the twenty-first century. Matthew Trudgen

Sources Dickson, Paul. Sputnik: The Shock of the Century. New York: Walker, 2001. Gavaghan, Helen. Something New Under the Sun: Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998. Heppenheimer, T.A. Countdown: A History of Space Flight. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997. Peebles, Curtis. The Corona Project: America’s First Spy Satellites. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997. Richelson, Jeffrey T. America’s Secret Eyes in Space: The U.S. Keyhole Spy Satellite Program. New York: Harper and Row, 1990. Walter, William J. Space Age. New York: Random House, 1992.

SHIPBUILDING An integral part of American industry since the colonial period, shipbuilding has changed substantially with technological advances over the centuries. Changing trade patterns, urbanization, industrial developments, commercial growth, and political conflicts also have affected shipping practices and shipbuilding. Prior to the second industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century, ships were the most effective method of transporting people and goods, and all thriving seaports required efficient vessels to carry on their trade. The development of alternative forms of transportation—such as railroads, trucks utilizing interstate highways, and commercial

Section 13: Shipbuilding 843 aviation—in the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries forced the shipbuilding industry to specialize and consolidate in specific seaports. From the start, shipbuilding was an important industry in America. During the colonial period, wind-powered wooden vessels were the most common, and America’s shipbuilding industry flourished due to abundant forests, especially in the Northeast. The availability of wood allowed American shipwrights to produce vessels at a fraction of the cost of English-built ships. Skilled craftsmen, such as woodworkers, blacksmiths, riggers, caulkers, and sail-makers, all contributed to the building process. Early building techniques, arduous by today’s standards, required workers to fit hand-cut wood into the framework manually. Colonial vessels tended to be small by European standards. Most American merchants traded within the English colonial system, especially along the Atlantic seaboard and the Caribbean, and they relied heavily on trade in the Englishcontrolled West Indies. After the Revolutionary War, however, American merchants sought new trade venues. The change in trade routes led to new shipbuilding techniques to accommodate more ambitious forms of enterprise. In the nation’s early decades, U.S. shipbuilding was not centered in a few major shipyards as it is now, and many small seaports built their own vessels. Even in the first decades of the nineteenth century, small local craft such as dories and gundalows were the most common vessels. Larger vessels such as brigs and fullrigged ships required more workers and deeper water, and most were built near the nation’s largest urban centers: Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston. Major shipbuilding centers were located near the mouths of rivers or bays, in areas with easy access to deep water to aid the launching process. Smaller cities, such as Salem, Massachusetts, that lacked sufficient space for normal launching adopted alternative techniques like the “side launch,” in which the ship was built and launched parallel to the shoreline to reduce the amount of space necessary for the launch. International trade required larger and more efficient vessels. By the mid-nineteenth century, clipper ships, popular for their speed and sleek design, dominated. In the second half of the

nineteenth century, demand for more spacious cargo holds led to the development of colossal schooners with four and five masts. Only the seaports with the best facilities, such as Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, and rapidly growing Western ports such as San Francisco, had shipyards large enough to accommodate these vessels. In general, the tonnage produced at shipyards in the mid-nineteenth century tended to grow in proportion to the city’s population surge, as big cities like New York out-competed smaller ports, and American shipyards consolidated near the major seaports. Technology aided the consolidation process. Industrialization led to the development of steam-powered vessels in the mid-nineteenth century, revolutionizing shipbuilding methods. The Bessemer process made iron and steel feasible materials for building ships; as wind ceased to be the primary means of propulsion, the shipbuilding process became increasingly mechanized. Instead of relying on skilled local craftsmen, American shipbuilding began to rely on semi-skilled workers to operate manufacturing machines. The rise of mass production both benefited and hurt the American shipbuilding industry: Workers took less pride in their work, and the working conditions were often dangerous, but the building process was more efficient, and new technology enabled larger, safer ships to be built. In the early twentieth century, military shipbuilding supplanted the production of trading vessels as the most lucrative sector of the industry. Large, privately run shipyards like the Iron Works at Bath, Maine, and the New York Shipbuilding Company produced many of America’s most technologically advanced warships of the mid-twentieth century, such as the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, completed in 1961 at the now-defunct New York shipyard. Similar shipyards established around the nation’s coasts prior to World War I included the Chicago Shipbuilding Company near Lake Michigan and the Union Iron Works in San Francisco, both of which supplemented U.S. Navy yards during the wartime production boom. After World War II, the American shipbuilding industry went into a prolonged recession, and many shipyards have closed over the years. Most contemporary shipbuilding enterprises

844 Section 13: Shipbuilding rely on military contracts, producing high-tech vessels at a high prices, and there is steep competition for a limited number of contracts. As a result, many existing navy yards, such as the one at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, face possible closure, while others, such as the Charleston Navy Yard in Boston, have already shut down. Technological innovations have forced the modern shipbuilding industry to specialize and isolate production to specific locations, creating a very different scenario from the informal local production methods common in America’s early decades. Benjamin Lawson

Sources Crowell, John Franklin. “Present Status and Future Progress of American Shipbuilding.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 19 ( January 1902): 46–60. Korndorff, L.H. “A Challenge to the American Shipbuilding Industry.” Proceedings of the American Academy of Political Science 19 (May 1941): 28–35. Morison, Samuel Eliot. Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783–1860. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. Petters, Mike. “American Shipbuilding: An Industry in Crisis.” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 132 (February 2006): 15–19.

S I KO R S K Y, I G O R I VA N O V I C H (1889–1972) Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky was one of the great pioneers in the history of aviation and famous as the inventor of the first practical helicopter. He was born in Kiev, Russia, on May 25, 1889. His family was financially comfortable, and he was able to spend much of his youth reading and studying. Chemistry was a favorite subject. In 1903, he became a student at the naval academy, and, three years later, he went to Paris to learn more about airplanes and to acquire an engine. Passionately interested in aviation, Sikorsky decided to build his own helicopter. By 1909, he managed to get a primitive model off the ground. His parents and sister supported his early work, giving him money whenever he asked for it.

By 1910, Sikorsky had shifted to the construction of airplanes and slowly perfected his own models. In 1911, he built an early version of a multiengine plane. He was so successful that the next year, at the age of just twenty-three, he became the head of the airplane division of a large Russian corporation. The director encouraged his work, and this allowed Sikorsky’s inventiveness to flourish. He began almost immediately to construct a plane propelled by four engines. The Grand, as it was called, was the world’s first plane with four engines; it had a 92 foot wingspan and an enclosed cabin, among other unusual features. Next came various versions of another model called the Ilia Mourometz; soon this enormous plane, also powered by four engines, was put into production. Russia needed large bombers, because World War I had broken out. Working diligently, Sikorsky succeeded in building planes capable of flying at 10,000 feet. When conditions in Russia began to degenerate because of the 1917 revolution, Sikorsky left behind his homeland, his fortune, and his young child Tania. After a brief stay in France, he immigrated to the United States. On March 30, 1919, Sikorsky arrived in New York, an event that marked the beginning of the second stage of his life. He had little money and no command of English, but he was ever optimistic about the future of aviation and his own abilities. U.S. aviation was in its infancy, however, and finding a niche in the industry proved difficult despite Sikorsky’s reputation. During 1921 and 1922, he was forced to earn an income as a teacher and lecturer. After landing a short-term development contract with the government, he founded a company in 1923. The fledgling firm was on tenuous financial ground, relying on the support of small investors. A significant boost came from the Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, who invested $5,000. On January 27, 1924, Sikorsky married Elizabeth Semion, a Russian immigrant; the couple would have four sons. Sikorsky’s sisters and his daughter Tania came from Russia to join his family on Long Island. Sikorsky’s company produced an all-metal transport plane, the S-35, that was used to haul

Section 13: Singer, Isaac 845 cargo. One managed to cross the Andes at 19,000 feet. The S-35 was modified so that it could be used to cross the Atlantic, and Sikorsky hoped it would be the first model to make the trip; a crash set back the development schedule, however, and Charles Lindbergh, flying the custombuilt Spirit of St. Louis, was the first to accomplish the feat in 1927. In 1928, Sikorsky built a large plant in Stratford, Connecticut, where his company produced the S-38, an amphibian plane that proved to be a great success. These flying boats or clippers were, after the four-engine triumph, Sikorsky’s second great accomplishment. He then collaborated with Lindbergh on the S-40; at 17 tons, it was the largest American transport and could be equipped with either traditional landing gear or amphibian floats. It was used to carry passengers in South America. In 1933, the S-42, with a controllable-pitch propeller, crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In just one flight, it managed to break eight world records. More developments followed, including nonstop flights to Europe. Eventually the flying boat era came to an end. In 1939, Sikorsky returned to his earlier dream of creating a practical helicopter. This marked the beginning of his third and final period of accomplishment. His prescience and inventiveness resulted in the first successful machine that could be used for transport and rescue in emergencies where a plane could neither hover nor land. The VS-300 and subsequent models were the forerunners of today’s helicopters. Sikorsky retired in 1957 and died fifteen years later, on October 26, 1972. He was widely admired and frequently honored, receiving the National Defense Transportation Award, the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy, the Copernican Citation, the Collier Trophy, and the National Medal of Science, among other awards. Robert Hauptman

Sources Cochrane, Dorothy, Von Hardesty, and Russell Lee. The Aviation Careers of Igor Sikorsky. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989. Delear, Frank J. Igor Sikorsky: His Three Careers in Aviation. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1969. Sikorsky, Igor I. The Story of the Winged-S: An Autobiography. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1939.

SINGER, ISAAC (1811–1875) An innovator and shrewd businessman, Isaac Merritt Singer founded the Singer Sewing Machine, arguably the most recognizable American brand in the world by the early 1900s. He was not first to build a sewing machine; that distinction goes to inventor Elias Howe, who patented it in 1846. But Singer incorporated the basic features and functionalities that made sewing machines practical household appliances. He was born in Pittstown, New York, on October 27, 1811. His parents were German immigrants; they divorced when he was ten years old, and Singer stayed with his father. Like many of the great nineteenth-century American inventors, Singer had little formal education. At the age of twelve, he left his father’s house to move in with an older brother in Rochester, New York. There, he worked at odd jobs, including a brief apprenticeship in a mechanic’s shop. Although he was a natural mechanic with a gift for understanding the inner workings of machines, Singer became intrigued by stage acting and pursued a theatrical career through the mid1840s. Unable to support himself as an actor, he took a job at his brother’s contracting business, working on the Lockport and Illinois Canal. While employed there, Singer invented a rockdrilling machine and sold the patent for $2,000, which he invested in a theater company. When that failed, he turned once again to mechanical invention, developing a machine for carving metal and wood type. Failing to attract adequate investment to manufacture his carving machine, Singer turned to the sewing machine. By the end of the 1840s, a number of early sewing machines were already on the market. In 1851, Singer acquired one of the machines being manufactured by Orson Phelps in Boston. Within a few days, Singer had determined what made the machine—and others like it—so inefficient and unreliable. The shuttle moved in a circular motion, taking a twist out of the thread with each movement. Singer ’s prototype replaced the circular motion of the shuttle with a to and fro motion that moved the

846 Section 13: Singer, Isaac thread in a straight line. Instead of having a bar push the needle horizontally through the fabric, Singer had his needle go up and down. These changes made the machines work much faster and reduced the propensity to snap the thread. Singer ’s innovations were so effective that they are still central to sewing machine design today. Singer patented his invention and went into business with Phelps and several other partners in 1851. Ruthless in business, Singer used trickery and threats to get his partners to sell their shares in the company for token amounts. At the same time, he brought his lawyer, Edward Clark, into the business. It proved a wise choice, as Singer became caught up in a number of patent suits with other sewing machine inventors and manufacturers in the early 1850s. In 1856, Clark created a patent pool, which ended the sewing machine wars of the late antebellum era. Clark also would be the architect of I.M. Singer Company’s rapid expansion throughout the United States and around the world in the late nineteenth century, establishing franchises for the manufacturing, distribution, and sale of Singer sewing machines on every continent except Antarctica. The Singer sewing machine revolutionized the garment industry. Not only was it efficient and reliable, but it was easy to operate, allowing for the rapid growth of the ready-to-wear clothing industry. Prior to the spread of the sewing machine, most clothes were hand-sewn to order, a business that catered primarily to the wealthy. The inexpensive Singer sewing machines also allowed for the spread of textile sweatshops in New York City and other American metropolises, a system that brutally exploited immigrant workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the early 1860s, Singer was a multimillionaire who no longer took an active role in managing the company, instead devoting his time to various mistresses and life as a country gentleman. Singer’s personal life was complicated. He married twice and lived with several other women, fathering twenty-four children by five different women. He died at his estate in Torquay, England, on July 23, 1875. James Ciment

Source Bissell, Don. The First Conglomerate: 145 Years of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. Brunswick, ME: Audenreed, 1999. Brandon, Ruth. A Capitalist Romance: Singer and the Sewing Machine. London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1977.

S L AT E R , S A M U E L (1768–1835) Samuel Slater established the first American textile mill to mechanically spin cotton, and Slater’s innovations sparked the Industrial Revolution in America. Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the location of Slater Mill, initially became the leading city in industrial America, and the model for later mill cities in the Northeast. Born on June 9, 1768, in Derbyshire, England, Slater became an apprentice in a cotton mill in 1782. By the time he left England for America, he had intricate knowledge of English mill designs. He arrived in New York in 1789 and moved to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where he entered the employ of Moses Brown. A successful merchant, Brown had recently established a new textile mill in the city, and he hired Slater to help operate and improve the machinery. Based on the designs of the English inventor Richard Arkwright, Slater made changes to the mill that enabled it to be water-powered. Brown was sufficiently impressed to make Slater a partner. In 1793, Slater built a new mill near the falls at the junction of the Blackstone and Seekonk rivers in Rhode Island (this mill is still in operation as a museum). Before Slater’s innovations, the American textile industry had been forced to rely on England for its goods, as it was able to produce only small quantities at a slow rate. The innovations introduced in Slater Mill allowed America to produce its own goods with less reliance on cross-Atlantic trade. In 1797, because of disagreements over the operation of the facility, Slater built a new mill, the White Mill, across the river in Pawtucket. There, he opted to specialize in one particular process—producing yarn, rather than the standard practice of manufacturing finished products. This specialized approach allowed greater efficiency in production and yielded greater

Section 13: Space Probes 847

S PA C E P R O B E S

Slater Mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, built in 1793, was America’s first successful mill for spinning raw cotton into textiles. Founder Samuel Slater brought the technology from England by memory. (Library of Congress, HAER RI, 4-PAWT, 3–8)

profits, as less machinery was needed to perform the operations. Slater’s most ingenious innovation, however, lay not in mechanics but in the development of mill communities in which his employees could live. Built within walking distance of the mill, these company towns extended the power of the mill owner over employees. Slater and his associates controlled everything, from grocery stores to schools and churches. One such community, founded in 1803, was Slatersville, located north of Pawtucket near the Massachusetts border. The compound included two tenement buildings in which employees and their families lived. Slater’s control extended to the most minute details of his employees’ lives, including not only their wages but their expenditures as well—making him a wealthy man. Samuel Slater died on April 20, 1835. Benjamin Lawson

Sources Conrad, James L., Jr. “ ‘Drive That Branch’: Samuel Slater, the Power Loom, and the Writing of America’s Textile History.” Technology and Culture 36 (1995): 1–28. Penn, Theodore Z. “The Slater Mill Historic Site and the Wilkinson Mill Machine Shop Exhibit.” Technology and Culture 21 (1980): 56–66. Slater Mill. http://www.slatermill.org.

Like many scientific and technical achievements of the Cold War era, human exploration of the solar system was initially propelled by the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. From the early 1960s to the present day, U.S. and Soviet/Russian probes have visited seven of Earth’s eight planetary neighbors, sending back valuable information and helping to promote public interest in outer space. On October 4, 1957, the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik startled the American people and their leaders. The message was loud and clear: Soviet space science was more advanced than that of the United States. But even as several early milestones in the space race were cleared by the Russians, American preparations for the Apollo program were closing the technology gap and setting the stage for a rivalry in voyages to Earth’s closest planetary siblings: Venus and Mars. The Soviet Union opened the race with a determined effort. Moscow placed a great deal of pressure on Sergei Korolev, the head of the Soviet space program. With the United States moving closer to a successful moon shot during the 1960s, Korolev began a titanic effort in unmanned exploration to maintain Soviet prestige. Korolev targeted both of Earth’s immediate neighbors, but the alignment of the planets in the early 1960s meant that a journey to Venus would take considerably less time than a trip to Mars. At the time, little was known about Venus. Astronomers had long known that it was about the same size as Earth and that it had an atmosphere, but they knew nothing about its composition. Some Soviet scientists speculated that it could be a jungle planet with a thick cover of water vapor clouds, or possibly a semi-hospitable desert world. In the late 1950s, the American physicist Carl Sagan correctly theorized that Venus was in fact a scorched, inhospitable world, but his ideas were not widely accepted at the time. The Soviet Union made the first of its attempted launches in 1960. In stunning contrast to the success of his Earth orbiters, however, Korolev ’s interplanetary efforts began with a series of dismal failures. After dealing with various

848 Section 13: Space Probes flaws in rocket design, the USSR finally sent the Venera 1 probe hurtling toward Venus on February 12, 1961. The Soviets lost contact with the probe seven days after the launch. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), acting through the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, responded to Soviet efforts by sending the spacecraft Mariner 2 to Venus. Launched on August 27, 1962, this probe had the advantages of a light and simple design. Its mission was also uncomplicated: to reach Venus without losing radio contact. On December 14, the probe successfully rendezvoused with Venus, confirming that the planet possessed a hostile environment and was unsuitable for visits by human beings. The Soviet Union continued its efforts to reach Venus, eventually sending fifteen successful missions between 1967 and 1984, including numerous surface landings. The United States, however, shifted most of its attention to other planets. In July 1965, Mariner 4 arrived at Mars, again beating the Soviets and providing the first useful images of the red planet. In the 1970s, American successes in planetary exploration accelerated, giving NASA a permanent lead over the relatively idle Soviet program. In 1973, the United States took a leap forward by launching Mariner 10; it flew past Venus in February 1974 en route to several meetings with Mercury, the solar system’s innermost planet. In 1976, the United States landed two Viking probes on the surface of Mars. These probes collected a vast amount of data, but their findings proved disappointing to some members of the scientific community, who had hoped to find signs of life. The year 1978 saw an American return to Venus in the form of two Pioneer probes, which used radar to scan and map the surface of the planet for the first time. Buoyed by their triumphs in the inner solar system, NASA scientists and engineers also had begun work on ambitious plans to visit the giant gaseous planets of the outer solar system— Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. In 1969, NASA announced that a “grand tour” of the gas giants would take place in the later 1970s. For this task, NASA began to plan new types of probes, equipped with a wide array of cameras and other sensory devices. They also planned the inclusion of plutonium power systems, re-

placing the solar panels that had been effective in the inner solar system but which would not provide enough power in the dim light conditions farther out. In 1972, the “grand tour” was nearly canceled due to budgetary concerns. The Vietnam War continued to stretch the federal budget, and NASA was already funding other expensive projects. NASA responded by scaling back its plans. Pioneer 10 provided a first look at Jupiter in March 1972, and Pioneer 11 reached Saturn in April 1973. The “grand tour” was finally begun in earnest in 1977, with the launch of NASA’s twin Voyager probes. They were to travel first to Jupiter and Saturn and then continue the mission to Uranus, Neptune, and beyond. Both probes distinguished themselves as they visited the first two gas giants. In spite of an ongoing struggle to maintain the program’s budget, Voyager 2 was sent on to meet Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989. As of 2007, NASA continued to maintain contact with the two Voyagers, which were then investigating the extreme edges of the solar system. In the late 1980s and 1990s, NASA began to focus more on launching probes that would remain in orbit of their target planets instead of simply flying by. The probe Magellan arrived at Venus in August 1990 and began an extensive mapping project. The probe Galileo reached Jupiter in December 1995 and settled in for a multiyear mission. In 1997, NASA cooperated with European space agencies in launching the probe Cassini on a course for Saturn. NASA also launched an ambitious series of probes to Mars in the 1990s. The Mars Pathfinder and its Sojourner rover, which landed successfully on Mars on July 4, 1997, captured public attention with its detailed photos of the planet’s surface. But the Mars Observer was lost in 1992, and two additional Mars probes were lost in 1999. These failures drew significant criticism. NASA redeemed itself with two successful landings of Martian rovers in January 2004. Named Spirit and Opportunity, the two robotic crafts explored different hemispheres of the planet. Opportunity, in particular, found convincing mineral evidence that Mars once had free-flowing water on its surface.

Section 13: Space Shuttle 849 Recent NASA missions include the CassiniHuygens Mission, operated in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA). Since 2004, Cassini has orbited Saturn, providing photos and data of the planet, its rings, and its moons; the Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon, Titan, in 2005. The probe Deep Impact collided with the comet Tempel 1 in July 2005, providing photos and data on the nature of comets. The spacecraft Dawn lifted off on September 27, 2007, on an almost four-year mission to study the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. David Stiles

Sources Burrows, William E. The New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age. New York: Random House, 1998. “JPL Missions.” NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ missions. Reeves, Robert. The Superpower Space Race: An Explosive Rivalry Through the Solar System. New York and London: Plenum, 1994.

sensors and measuring instruments, but its primary mission was to go up and come down safely. The next three missions also tested performance and systems. Since mission STS-05 in November 1982, Space Shuttles have been used to conduct experiments in zero gravity, deploy and retrieve communications and observation satellites, carry parts for the International Space Station, map the Earth’s surface, and repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. From 1995 to 1998, shuttle vehicles also were used to bring astronauts and supplies to the Russian space station Mir. While the orbiter can carry up to ten astronauts, the typical Space Shuttle mission has carried a crew of seven. Among other equipment and devices, the Space Shuttle is equipped with a pressurized Spacelab, designed by the European Space Agency for research in zero gravity; the Remote Manipulator System, a robot arm that moves payloads in and out of the cargo bay; and the Manned Maneuvering Unit, a backpack that allows astronauts to fly short distances from the vehicle. Although the Space Shuttle itself is

S PA C E S H U T T L E The U.S. Space Shuttle, a reusable rocketpropelled space vehicle that lands like an aircraft, was developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the 1970s and took its first flight in 1981. Six Space Shuttle vehicles have been built: Enterprise (used only for tests and not spaceworthy), Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor. Challenger broke up during lift-off in January 1986, and Columbia disintegrated during re-entry in February 2003. As of 2007, there have been 118 shuttle, or Space Transportation System (STS), missions. NASA administrators had long desired a reusable vehicle for a variety of research and deployment missions in space, and the Space Shuttle program received congressional approval and funding in January 1972. The first mission, STS-01, piloted by John Young and Robert Crippen aboard the shuttle orbiter Columbia, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 12, 1981, and it landed in the California desert on April 14. Its payload was a package of

The launch of the orbiter Columbia on April 8, 1981, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marked the beginning of the Space Shuttle program and the era of reusable manned spacecraft. (Keystone/CNP/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

850 Section 13: Space Shuttle reusable, the external fuel tank, carrying the liquid hydrogen and oxygen propellant required for launch, is not. In addition, the Space Shuttle’s external solid rocket boosters must be recovered from the ocean after each launch. On January 28, 1986, after twenty-four flights, the Space Shuttle program came to a halt after the sudden explosion of Challenger some seventythree seconds after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center. The explosion destroyed the spacecraft and killed all seven crew members aboard, including the first civilian chosen to ride the Space Shuttle, teacher Christa McAuliffe. After extensive investigation, a failed O-ring seal on one of the solid rocket boosters was found to have been the cause of the explosion. The shuttle program was subsequently grounded until September 1988. A second disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when the shuttle Columbia, nearing completion of STS-107, inexplicably broke apart over Texas, just a few minutes before its scheduled landing. Following extensive investigations, it was ultimately determined that a piece of foam insulation had been dislodged during liftoff and had damaged one of the vehicle’s wings. The Space Shuttle returned to space on July 26, 2005. Space Shuttle missions are expensive. By 2006, they were costing more than $500 million each, far in excess of the original projections in the 1970s. In addition to the expense of individual missions, the tragic events that brought all planned flights (and their satellite launches) to a halt cast a pall over the entire shuttle program. The X-33 program, conceived as the next generation of reusable launch vehicle, was canceled as early as 2001. No matter when U.S. space flight resumes, NASA has announced that the Space Shuttle program would end by 2010, complying with President George W. Bush’s long-term plan. Other programs designed for other purposes, such as the proposed Orbital Space Plane, are expected to replace it. Vickey Kalambakal

Sources Columbia Accident Investigation Board. Report. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 2003–2004. Harland, David M. The Space Shuttle: Roles, Missions, and Accomplishments. New York: Wiley, 1998.

S PA C E S TAT I O N The Russian Salyut and Mir space stations and the United States’s Skylab were forerunners to the establishment of more permanent research facilities and human habitations in space. Manned artificial satellites such as Skylab, which was launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1973, are a class of satellites sent into space for the performance of scientific tasks. NASA’s objective for Skylab was to establish an orbiting space laboratory, increasing the time astronauts could spend in space, and allowing for the study of the effects of space on the human body. Superior astronomical observations of the moon, planets, sun, and stars were also achieved. Three different crews manned the $2.5 billion space station before its usefulness was outlived. After 34,981 orbits, the abandoned Skylab burned up in a fiery blaze as it fell into Earth’s atmosphere in 1979. The next generation of space stations began when President Ronald Reagan approved the Freedom project, which was intended, in part, to gain political advantage over the Soviets during the Cold War. With the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, however, President Bill Clinton pushed for international collaboration and cost sharing among many countries, but especially with Russia, due to its decades of experience with spaceflight and space station design. The Russian–U.S. space alliance was an essential step in making a next-generation space station a reality. A 1993 multinational agreement ended the antagonism between East and West and opened up a new era of cooperation in space. Since 1993, fifteen countries and five space agencies have been involved in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS). In addition to the United States and Russia, they include Japan, Canada, and member countries of the European Space Agency such as Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The participants in this program are contributing components and human resources to build a station that is visible to the naked eye from Earth.

Section 13: Steam Engine 851 The concept for the ISS is akin to Tinkertoy construction, requiring about fifty American and Russian launches to ferry all the modules for assembly in space. NASA’s Space Shuttle plays a key role, ferrying large parts and personnel to and from the station. On November 2, 2005, the International Space Station reached its fifth anniversary of continuous human presence in space. Since the first crew arrived in 2000, fifteen Americans and fourteen Russians have lived and worked there. The ISS continues to evolve with each crew change and every supply visit from Earth. The space station has become a state-of-the-art laboratory for scientific research. It features a microgravity environment that exists nowhere on Earth, which helps scientists understand how the body functions for extended periods of time in space. Experience gained from studies, such as bone loss measurements and radiation shielding, will be critical in long-duration missions to Mars. Upon completion, the football-field-size ISS will comprise two laboratory modules from Russia and the United States and one laboratory module each from Europe and Japan. An American habitation module and two Russian-built lifesupport system modules are the foundational components. All these modules connect to a 290foot beam, which also supports solar panels to generate electricity and a robot manipulator arm that traverses its length to perform heavy lifting. The station has a width of 240 feet across its solar arrays and a height of 90 feet. Currently, there are 15,000 cubic feet of living space. Forty computers connected by an extensive fiber optic network run the ISS to sustain the crew and safely navigate the station’s orbit of Earth. The ISS is part of a larger vision inaugurated by President George W. Bush in 2004, currently being planned and implemented by NASA. The “Vision for Space Exploration” seeks to use the ISS as a base for experiments, planning, and manned and unmanned flights to the moon, Mars, and farther into the solar system. Robert Karl Koslowsky

Sources Caprara, Giovanni. Living in Space: From Science Fiction to the ISS. Buffalo, NY: Firefly, 2000. Launius, Roger D. Space Stations. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2003.

STEAM ENGINE A steam engine uses combustion to heat water until it pressurizes into steam and generates force by moving a piston up and down or turning a turbine. Steam engines convert this force into mechanical action to pump liquids or spin a shaft to turn wheels, conveyors, looms, gristmills, paddles, propellers, and electric motors. The first steam engine was developed by 1730 in England by Thomas Newcomen for pumping water out of mines. James Watt, a Scottish inventor, improved early designs by developing the double-acting steam engine in 1782. His company, Boulton and Watt, produced steam engines for nearly 120 years in the Soho Foundry in England. By 1804, the American Oliver Evans had upgraded Watt’s designs with a high-pressure steam engine for the American market. The use of stationary steam engines became widespread in American factories, breweries, mills, and farms, contributing significantly to the Industrial Revolution. Designs were continually improved, as power output increased and uses expanded to firefighting, ships, and other transportation.

Maritime Applications In 1787, the Connecticut inventor John Fitch had developed a reliable boat equipped with a steam engine and propelled by paddles. Robert Fulton improved on the early designs and in 1807 built the Claremont, the first steam-driven sternwheeler. Steamboat manufacture expanded and provided extensive transportation for passengers along the Mississippi and other rivers from the 1830s on. By 1812, the Washington Navy Yard was building steam engines for war boats, and private firms were building marine engines for commercial use. Moses Rogers, Fulton’s associate, applied the steam-driven paddlewheel to oceangoing sailing ships. This dramatically shortened the time it took to cross the Atlantic Ocean; in 1819, Roger’s ship the Savannah made the trip to England in a month’s time. Given the disadvantages of paddlewheel propulsion, the Scottish John Ericsson and English Francis Smith in 1836 jointly developed

852 Section 13: Steam Engine the screw propeller, which further improved the speed and reliability of ship propulsion. In 1843, the U.S. Navy launched its first screw-propeller steam warship, the USS Princeton, designed by John Ericsson. Commercial steam-powered passenger ships using Ericsson’s screw propellers were able to offer reliable transportation across the Atlantic and beyond. By the late 1850s, U.S. commercial and military vessels were expanding the nation’s shipping routes into Asia. In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay, and the Japanese government signed the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened Japanese ports to American merchants. The famed American black steamships, trailing steam and smoke, were technological mysteries in the Asian world. During the American Civil War, Ericsson was responsible for the construction of the North’s screw-driven ironclad, the USS Monitor. Following the war, the U.S. Navy converted to steelhull ships and initially used powerful steam reciprocating engines. By the early 1900s, the new steam-turbine engine was in production. The steam turbine uses a series of nozzles to releases superheated, highpressure steam on a turbine with blades, causing them to spin and produce considerable energy. The steam turbine was initially developed in 1892 by Charles Parsons of England. The design was improved upon by American Charles Curtis with a velocity-compounded impulse stage turbine; Curtis’s engine was patented in 1896. The Parsons steam turbines were used in many American ships, beginning in 1910 with the USS North Dakota. The last traditional steam-powered warship was the USS Texas in 1912. Curtis steam turbines were used primarily as motors for electrical generation in America. The Hendy Iron Works in California produced hundreds of triple reciprocating steam engines and later steam turbine engines. In 1947, Westinghouse bought the company to produce steam and gas turbines for electrical generation.

Land Transpor tation and O ther Uses With western expansion in America during the early 1800s, the need for overland transportation increased. In England, Richard Trevithick devel-

oped a steam-powered vehicle that traveled on wheels positioned on a steel track. Trevithick’s ideas soon generated rail transport companies in Britain and the United States. In the mid-1800s, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company and others began constructing tracks. By 1860, the United States had more than 30,000 miles (48,000 kilometers) of track installed, and by 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed. Early locomotives were imported from England, but American companies soon developed their own steam locomotives, improving on the original design. Baldwin Locomotive Works, the American Locomotive Company, and the Lima (Ohio) Locomotive Works produced thousands of locomotives from the 1830s to the 1900s. The locomotive required an engineer to drive and a fireman to stoke the boiler and provide maintenance. African American inventor Elijah McCoy conceived the lubricator cup, which allowed steam-engine lubrication during operation. Skeptical of imitations, American engineers came to want only “the real McCoy” product. Ohioan Moses Latta is credited with developing the first American-built steam firefighting engine in Cincinnati in 1852. The steam boiler enabled pressure for suction from a water supply and allowed crews to spray water more than 100 feet (30 meters). Many fire departments across the country adopted the machine, which was much more effective in extinguishing fires than the previous hand pumpers. By 1897, the Stanley Steamer and Fulton steam cars grew in popularity for personal transportation. A Stanley prototype in 1906 set an automobile land speed record of 127 miles (204 kilometers) per hour. The development of the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine cut short uses of such steam-powered cars, although Japan continued production until the 1950s. In the United States, other steam engine innovations included the steam-powered bicycle, introduced in 1867. The steam tractor, produced by a variety of companies, was widely used in American agriculture during the late 1800s. And the experimental Besler steam biplane reported successful flights in 1934, though it was never put into production. By the 1920s, American electrical utility companies were rapidly constructing electrical

Section 13: Telegraph 853 generating stations. These were made possible by massive steam turbine engines, generating thousands of horsepower; these were coupled to large electrical motors that generated electricity for sale to the public. Power plants enabled consumers and industry to use newly developed electrical devices and machines at home and at work. While most steam-engine technology has been replaced, its legacy lives on in the network of electrical power generating stations around the world. James Steinberg

Sources Hindle, Brooke, and Steven Lubar. Engines of Change: The American Industrial Revolution, 1790–1860. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1986. Kras, Sara Louise. The Steam Engine. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2004. Sutcliffe, Andrea. Steam: The Untold Story of America’s First Great Invention. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

SYNTHETIC RUBBER Unlike natural rubber, derived from the tree Hevea brasiliensis found abundantly in Southeast Asia, synthetic rubber is an artificially made polymer material acting as an elastomer, that is, a substance that undergoes stress then returns to its original size. Synthetic rubbers such as butyl, neoprene, nitrile, polysulphide, and styrenebutadiene are resistant to heat, sunlight, and oil. They are used in electrical cable insulation, telephone wiring, sheet products, roofing, fuel hoses, and roadways. The raw materials of synthetic rubber include petroleum, coal, and natural gas. The impetus for the development of synthetic rubber came from the limited supply of natural rubber during the 1920s, in part because of the Stevenson Act, which was imposed on the rubber trade by England to protect its rubber industry. In the United States, DuPont scientist Elmer Bolton headed a team that began researching polymers. Bolton brought Harvard chemist Wallace Carothers to DuPont and hired Notre Dame chemist Julius Nieuwland, who actively researched polymerization, as a consultant. In 1929, DuPont researchers used polymerization to create choroprene. This product was intro-

duced by the company as Duprene; it was successfully mass-produced in the 1930s and is now called neoprene. Demand for synthetic rubber increased dramatically during the late 1930s and 1940s because of World War II, as Japan controlled the regions where most of the world’s supply of natural rubber was produced. The U.S. government began production of the monomer styrene, which was used to create a synthetic substance called Buna rubber. Ultimately, fifty U.S. factories producing synthetic rubber were established during the war, producing double the amount of worldwide natural rubber made before the attack at Pearl Harbor. Today, synthetic rubber is used in a variety of products; for example, automotive tires manufactured in the United States are made of approximately two-thirds synthetic rubber. Advances in technology have led to the development of numerous synthetic rubbers, such as nitrile rubber, that can withstand high temperatures and are used in such applications as gasoline hoses, automotive seals, adhesives, sealants, and examination gloves. The elastomer industry of the United States is the largest in the world, producing about a quarter of the world’s rubber output. Patit Paban Mishra

Sources Herbert, Vernon, and Attilio Bisio. Synthetic Rubber: A Project That Had to Succeed. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985. Hofmann, Werner. Rubber Technology Handbook. New York: Hanser, 1989. Korman, Richard. The Goodyear Story: An Inventor’s Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly. San Francisco: Encounter, 2002.

TELEGRAPH As the Industrial Age dawned in the early nineteenth century, a new communications medium emerged based on the transmission of electromagnetic energy over wire. The ability to send messages by electromagnetic telegraph overcame the tyranny of distance that had plagued previous incarnations of telegraph technology. The first successful application of the new technique is credited to Samuel F.B. Morse, a

854 Section 13: Telegraph Yale-educated artist and painter who first heard of electromagnetism during a conversation about new scientific experiments during a return voyage from Europe to the United States in 1832. Morse pursued the development of an electromagnetic telegraph by integrating myriad scientific concepts of early telegraph pioneers into a usable and practical mode. Prior to 1832, electrical telegraphy was impractical because of limitations in the electric current conveyed from a remote transmitter. Morse explored ways to enhance and improve the method by collaborating with several American and European telegraphy experts, particularly Alfred Vail and Leonard Gale, who became his close colleagues. By 1835, Morse had developed a working telegraph model, and, in 1838, he invented a code based on a system of dashes and dots to communicate messages. This new language of communication, called Morse code, was a major breakthrough, because it was a simple and easily learned system that made for efficient transmission of messages. The electromagnetic telegraph operated by breaking the circuit transmission between the machine’s battery and receiver, with the breaks being measured in dashes and dots. On January 6, 1838, in Morristown, New Jersey, Morse successfully operated his device for the first time. On February 21, 1838, he demonstrated his telegraph to President Martin Van Buren and cabinet members in Washington, D.C. Morse sought financial support from the U.S. government for his invention and, in 1843, received $30,000, with which he built a small telegraph system between Washington and Baltimore. On May 24, 1844, the first telegraph message, “What hath God wrought!” was transmitted along the line. Morse’s invention was quickly copied and became a widely used instrument of business and personal communication, as well as a competitive commercial enterprise. By 1851, more than fifty companies were operating telegraph lines in the United States. Continuous improvements in technology and application lead to typeprinting telegraphs, multiplex machines, and facsimile devices, all designed to carry a higher message density and faster transmission. The electric telegraph had a far-reaching impact,

transforming social interaction, culture, politics, economics, and military affairs. In 1868, the first telegraph message was successfully transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean, opening a new era in global communications. Steven J. Rauch

Sources Harlow, Alvin F. Old Wires and New Waves: The History of the Telegraph, Telephone, and Wireless. New York: AppletonCentury, 1936. Shiers, George, ed. The Electric Telegraph: An Historical Anthology. New York: Arno, 1977.

TELEPHONE Credit for successfully applying the principles of transmission of speech over wire is generally given to Alexander Graham Bell, a professor of vocal physiology at Boston University. Bell combined an understanding of the nature of sound with knowledge of the established electric telegraph, leading him to conceive of sending sound along a wire based on a variance in pitch. Along with his assistant Thomas Watson, Bell explored the idea of a “harmonic telegraph” device and, by 1875, had proved that different tones could be sent over wire. After the development of an effective transmitter and receiver, Bell and Watson achieved their goal on March 10, 1876, when Bell spoke to his assistant in another room through the instrument: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” The basic principle for operation of the telephone is based on the air-pressure changes caused by human speech, which in turn cause a thin iron diaphragm to vibrate in front of an iron core surrounded by a coil of wire. The vibrations on the electromagnetic field are then conducted by electrical current through wires connected to a receiver. At the receiver, another electromagnet translates the fluctuations in current into vibrations on a diaphragm that the listener hears as human speech. Bell’s achievement enticed many scientists to copy and improve upon the device. In 1877, Thomas Edison patented the carbon button transmitter, a small device that was highly sensitive to

Section 13: Television 855 the pressure of modulating sound waves. Edison’s invention greatly increased the distance of speech transmission, and the telephone soon challenged the telegraph as the primary means of long-distance communication. When Bell’s patents expired in the early 1890s, more than 6,000 independent telephone companies sprang up across the United States. A major challenge was to establish a network that would allow communication between cities, and that could carry multiple conversations on the same set of wires. The telephone network was achieved in 1913, when the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) was granted a regulated monopoly status by the U.S. government to run a national telephone network to deliver “universal” telephone service. By 1923, there were over 23 million telephones connected to the network for government and private use. During World War II, technology improvements included mobile phones using radio signals, as well as advances in component and system packaging. By mid-century, the telephone had become an integral part of the American economy and society, enabling people to more effectively and efficiently communicate. By the early 1990s, almost 94 percent of U.S. households had at least one telephone. As technology advanced, the telephone was no longer limited to wires. In 1946, AT&T began development of mobile car-phone systems. In 1973, Motorola’s head researcher, Martin Cooper, successfully demonstrated a wire-free, handheld phone that allowed him to call his counterpart at rival Bell Labs while walking down a New York City street. This first cell phone was based on a network of multiple base stations located in an overlapping pattern of “cells,” or coverage areas; in this system, calls are automatically handed over from one station to another when the phone moves from one coverage area to the next. The proliferation of this cell phone technology was restricted at first due to the limited allocation of the frequency spectrum bandwidth by the FCC. By 1983, the FCC allocated the bandwidth to establish the first cellular system in Chicago, but even that was not enough when the number of cell phone subscribers passed 1 million in 1987.

In the mid-1990s, cell phone technology became commercially viable, as more spectrum was allocated and microchip technology improved the ability to transfer data within a cellular system. The use of communications satellites orbiting Earth allowed line-free communications almost anywhere on the planet. As of 2006, there were more than 60 million cell phone customers within the United States, and the technology was being enhanced by the use of Internet protocols and fiber optics to allow the personal computer and Internet to provide wireless telephone communications. Steven J. Rauch

Sources Harlow, Alvin F. Old Wires and New Waves: The History of the Telegraph, Telephone, and Wireless. New York: AppletonCentury, 1936. Shiers, George, ed. The Telephone: An Historical Anthology. New York: Arno, 1977.

TELEVISION Television is an electronic system for transmitting still or moving images and sound to receivers that recreate them. To create television broadcasts, video signals are broken up, transmitted through the air, and then reassembled by the technology inside the television set. The first television sets were made possible by the development of the cathode ray tube (CRT), the basis of the picture tube found in all early televisions. The CRT is a specialized vacuum tube that uses electron beams to produce an image. The tube shoots beams of electrons at a phosphorescent surface, causing it to glow. By controlling where each beam strikes, a glowing picture can be created. The cathode ray tube was invented by the German scientist Karl Ferdinand Braun in 1897. Then, in 1927, a young American engineer named Philo T. Farnsworth developed the dissector tube, a type of cathode ray tube that uses a magnetic field to sweep the electrons vertically and horizontally. Using this technique, the tube can put a dissected picture back together again.

856 Section 13: Television Later that year, on September 7, Farnsworth demonstrated the first electronic television in San Francisco using his dissector tube. He also applied for and received a patent for his invention. At about the same time, however, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was trying to patent a similar device. This led to a patent battle that lasted over ten years, resulting in RCA paying Farnsworth for patent licenses. Many became interested in television technology when it was featured in an RCA exhibition at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. By 1941, there was enough interest that the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) were both able to launch commercial television stations in New York City. Television did not really catch on, however, until after World War II. The first U.S. coast-to-coast broadcast took place in 1951, as President Harry S. Truman addressed the opening of the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco. At the time, there were an estimated 13 million television sets in the United States. The year 1951 also saw the debut of the I Love Lucy show, which broke new ground by being the first program to be produced on film instead of broadcast live. It also established Lucille Ball as TV’s first major female star. There have been many advances in television technology over the years. Today, signals are delivered via cable or satellite dish receiver as well as through the airwaves. The cathode ray tube system also has been improved upon. Some modern televisions use a liquid crystal display (LCD) instead of a CRT. The LCDs create the image on a layer of liquid crystal material sandwiched between two sheets of glass. The newest technologies include plasma television, a type of flat-panel display made up of a layer of gas between two glass plates, and HDTV, which allows for a wide-screen experience on a home television. Beth A. Kattelman

Sources Hilmes, Michelle, and Jason Jacobs. The Television History Book. London: British Film Institute, 2004. Schatzkin, Paul. The Boy Who Invented Television: A Story of Inspiration, Persistence, and Quiet Passion. Burtonsville, MD: Teamcom, 2002.

THREE MILE ISLAND Early on the morning of March 28, 1979, Unit 2 of the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant, located on an island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, experienced a minor malfunction that caused an automatic shutdown of the nuclear reactor. In the first few minutes of the shutdown, a malfunctioning valve led plant operators into a series of catastrophic errors that eventually defeated all of the plant’s automatic protection systems. The result was severe damage to the core of the reactor, a minor release of radiation into the environment, and, for a time, concern that hydrogen buildup inside the reactor could cause an explosion. Poor planning for such unexpected events also led to a communications breakdown with state and local officials. To gain control of communications in the confused, near-panic situation, President Jimmy Carter ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to send a senior regulatory official to TMI to ensure that accurate and timely information about the accident was provided to government officials, the press, and the public. After several uneasy days, in which control of the reactor was in doubt and Pennsylvania’s governor ordered a precautionary evacuation of pregnant women from the area, the reactor ’s condition was stabilized and the threat to the public reduced. The name Three Mile Island, however, became associated with public concerns about the safety of nuclear power plants. The accident at TMI revealed a number of flaws in reactor design, operator training, and emergency planning. In the course of the next decade, all U.S. nuclear power plants were required by the NRC to retrofit improved safety and monitoring equipment, retrain and requalify plant operators, rewrite control-room procedures, redesign control-room layouts and instrumentation, and cooperate with state and local officials in preparing emergency plans for each site. As of 2006, U.S. reactors have not experienced another accident as serious as the one that occurred at Three Mile Island. New reactor designs

Section 13: Transcontinental Railroad 857 employ a passive safety approach that would prevent a repeat of accidents of this type. William M. Shields

Sources American Chemical Society. The Three Mile Island Accident: Diagnosis and Prognosis. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1986. The Report of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. New York: Pergamon, 1979. Three Mile Island: A Report to the Commissioners and to the Public. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980.

T R A N S C O N T I N E N TA L R A I L R O A D Technically, the first transcontinental railroad was only 48 miles in length, crossing the Isthmus of Panama. Antedating the completion of the Panama Canal (1914) by almost six decades, this five-year project, finished in 1855, posed many of the same formidable challenges faced by the

canal’s engineers, including malarial swamps and rugged mountains. While the Panama Railroad was remarkable in its own right, spanning the hundreds of miles of desert, plains, and mountains through the western expanse of the North American continent was far more extraordinary. On May 10, 1869, the “Golden Spike” ceremony at Promontory, Utah, marked the completion of this 1,776 mile transcontinental railroad—and the triumph over numerous obstacles, both natural and human made. The event showcased the intersection of big dreams, politics, war, business, government, ethnic strife, human pathos, and engineering skill. As early as 1845, Americans such as Asa Whitney, a New York merchant, urged that a transcontinental railroad be built. The Gadsden Purchase in 1853 was designed to facilitate a southerly route for a railroad, but Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a senator representing Illinois in the U.S. Congress, attempted to win Southern support for a Chicago terminus in exchange for his support of the Kansas-Nebraska

Completion of the transcontinental railroad—linking America’s eastern and western rail networks in a nationwide mechanized transportation system—was marked by the driving of a golden spike at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. (MPI/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

858 Section 13: Transcontinental Railroad Act (1854)—legislation that promoted the concept of “popular sovereignty” on the question of extending slavery to U.S. territories. But neither the Midwest nor the South could garner the necessary congressional votes for where the line would be built. Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, Republican ascendancy, and the withdrawal of Southern members of Congress during the Civil War greased the rails for a Midwestern route. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 authorized the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific to build rail lines from east and west and to meet in the middle. Finding a viable path through the Sierra Nevada Mountains—one that would not employ too steep a gradient—was perhaps the greatest engineering challenge. Railroad engineer Theodore Judah was able to solve the problem, plotting a path through Donner Pass. His 1857 treatise A Practical Plan for Building the Pacific Railroad sketched for the public what would be needed for the enterprise: a transit party (mapping and marking the route), a leveling party (determining the vertical profile), and a survey engineer, to calculate the gradient as well as all the logistical details (amount of masonry and timbers for bridges, the manner of crossing rivers, etc.). Judah’s plan was intended to give investors an accurate estimate of construction cost. Besides the extremes of craggy mountains and dusty deserts, the land presented other challenges. A lack of trees on the plains necessitated the importation of wood for railroad ties and led to improvisations, such as coating more readily available cottonwood with a zinc solution to help prevent the soft wood from rotting quickly. Snow sheds were devised to protect against snowdrifts, and gigantic mechanical shovels were introduced for scraping snow away. A steam engine, hauled to the site by men and oxen, drilled through granite during the completion of a tunnel. Nitroglycerin, newly discovered and highly volatile, was used to blast through stubborn rock far more effectively than black powder. The Union Pacific’s Irish workers fought the elements and Native Americans as the line snaked its way through Nebraska and Colorado. Chinese workers risked life and limb as they were lifted in buckets across rock faces or as they

dug tunnels, carving the Central Pacific through California, Nevada, and into Utah. As the railroads approached their rendezvous, a stillstanding record was set by the Central Pacific workers, as they laid more than 10 miles of track in one day. As the hammer struck the ceremonial “Golden Spike,” an electric circuit was completed across the continent—a signal via telegraph that set off celebrations in major American cities. The nation was bound together, not just with the copper of the telegraph wires, but now with rails of iron—a reality that manifested a stronger union not only politically but also financially. Frank J. Smith

Sources Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863–1869. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Bain, David Haward. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Penguin, 2000.

U.S. M I N T Although the United States declared its independence in 1776, Americans continued to use various foreign and state-issued coins in the absence of a national mint. After years of effort by Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Robert Morris, and others, Congress passed the Mint Act of 1792, which created the U.S. Mint. With the stroke of a pen, the new nation discarded the British system of coinage and adopted the decimal system we know today. The U.S. Mint was established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1792 under the leadership of one of America’s leading scientists, David Rittenhouse, and it issued its first coins in 1793. The early process of striking coins was labor intensive and time consuming. Horses, oxen, and humans supplied the energy needed to drive the various machines. Originally, the Mint relied on human-powered mill and screw presses that required several minutes to produce each coin. Steam-powered presses, capable of producing 120 coins per minute, were introduced in 1836. Over the years, the Mint grew with the nation,

Section 13: Uranium 859 adopting new technology and opening new branches to meet demand. Minting coins is a precise science. One hundred years ago, the Mint required the services of many technicians to produce a quality product. The value of a coin was based on the amount of gold or silver it was made of. These precious metals had to be certified for purity by an assayer before they could be refined, cast into ingots, alloyed, and rolled several times to produce strips of precise thickness. Disks called “planchets” were cut from these strips, which were then stamped into coins. Coins exceeding one dollar in value were struck from gold; those valued at one dollar and below were struck from an alloy of silver and copper. Pennies were struck from copper alloyed with small amounts of other metals. Gold and silver are no longer used in circulating coins. Although today’s coins appear silver, they are actually made from a layer of copper sandwiched between two layers of nickel. A blanking press punches out disks, which are annealed to soften them for striking. After a ridge is created around the edge of the blank, the disk is struck in the coining press, which imprints the design of the coin. Finally, the coins are inspected for quality, counted, bagged, and distributed to banks for circulation. Pennies are produced in a similar manner from precut copper-coated zinc blanks. Since 1792, the U.S. Mint has produced circulating and commemorative coins to feed the nation’s growing economy. The Mint has always relied on technology and mechanization to keep pace with this important charge. Today, the U.S. Mint’s facilities in Philadelphia and Denver are sufficient to supply all the circulating coins for the United States—up to 50 million coins every twenty-four hours. Charles Delgadillo

Sources Evans, George G., ed. Illustrated History of the United States Mint. Philadelphia: George G. Evans, 1892. Schwarz, Ted. A History of United States Coinage. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1980. Stewart, Frank H. History of the First United States Mint: Its People and Its Operations. Philadelphia: Frank H. Stewart Electric Co., 1924. U.S. Mint. http://www.usmint.gov.

URANIUM Uranium is a silver-colored radioactive metal used in nuclear power reactors and nuclear weapons. It is the heaviest naturally occurring metal element in Earth’s crust, and it is found in fourteen known atomic forms, or isotopes. The most prevalent of these are the naturally occurring isotopes uranium 234, uranium 235, and uranium 238. Of these, uranium 238 is by far the most abundant. The world’s principal uranium sources are found in the Congo River basin in Africa, northern Saskatchewan in Canada, and Colorado and Utah in the United States. Historically, uranium ores have also been mined in Australia, Europe, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia. The discovery of uranium involved European and American scientists. Martin Klaproth, a Berlin apothecary, first characterized “uranit” as an element in 1789. In 1841, French chemist Eugene-Melchior Peligot isolated the element uranium, and, in 1896, physicist Antoine Becquerel discovered its radioactivity. The uranium ore pitchblende was first discovered in the United States in 1871 in waste from abandoned gold mines near Denver, Colorado. Yellow carnotite uranium ores were discovered in 1881 on the Colorado Plateau in southwestern Colorado and eastern Utah in the late 1890s and used chiefly in the production of yellow-colored glass and ceramics. Fueled by growth in the medical uses of radium, ore processors began extracting radium from the region’s carnotite ore shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. By the late 1920s, much of the uranium ore mined was being processed for its vanadium content. Vanadium was used as an additive in steelmaking to stabilize carbide for producing rust-resistant and high-speed tool steels. With the discovery of atomic fission in 1938, uranium became a potential source of fissionable material for use in atomic bombs and to generate nuclear power. In 1942, the top-secret Manhattan Project used uranium to produce one of the world’s first atomic bombs, an atomic fission bomb that exploded over Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945. A plutonium-based

860 Section 13: Uranium implosion bomb had also been developed and was used on Nagasaki three days later. Because it is easier to convert uranium 238 to plutonium in breeder reactors than it is to extract uranium 235 from ores through a process called enrichment, plutonium became the principal material for nuclear weapons. Today, both uranium and plutonium are used in American thermonuclear weapons. Uranium is also used as a nuclear reactor fuel in nuclear power generating facilities around the world. In nuclear reactors, a controlled fission chain reaction caused by the splitting of uranium 235 atoms creates intense heat that is used to convert water into steam. The steam is fed through a turbine, which in turn drives an electricity-producing generator. One ton of natural uranium can produce 40 million kilowatthours of electricity, which is equivalent to burning more than 78,000 barrels of oil or 15,000 tons of coal. The first nuclear reactors went online in 1954, when the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was launched. In 1955, Arco, Idaho, became the first town in the United States to be powered by electricity produced by nuclear energy. Some of the greatest challenges to more widespread use of uranium for power generation in the United States lie in problems related to its production, processing, and disposal. Uranium mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication have historically created production and processing wastes. Likewise, the storage, reprocessing, and disposal of spent uranium fuel from reactors have grave environmental, political, and nuclear nonproliferation implications given that the half-life––the time required for one-half of a quantity of the uranium to naturally become nonradioactive through the process of radioactive decay––of uranium 235 is more than 700 million years. Todd A. Hanson

Sources Bickel, Lennard. Deadly Element: The Story of Uranium. New York: Stein and Day, 1981. Gittus, John H. Uranium. London: Butterworths, 1963. Hofman, Sigurd. On Beyond Uranium: Journey to the End of the Periodic Table. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2002.

B R AU N , W E R N H E R (1912–1977)

VON

German-born rocket engineer Wernher von Braun led the creation of powerful booster rockets (Saturn series) that supported the U.S. space program to send satellites and then humans into space. With hundreds of other top German scientists, von Braun emigrated to the United States after World War II, became a U.S. citizen, and went to work for the U.S. government. Wernher Magnus Maximillian von Braun was born on March 23, 1912, in Wirsitz, Prussia, to politician Magnus Freiherr von Braun and Emmy von Quistorp. When he was young, his mother gave him a telescope, and he used it to spend numerous hours looking into the stars. In 1920, Wirsitz became part of Poland and his family moved to Berlin, Germany. At first, von Braun did not enjoy math, but upon obtaining a copy of The Rocket into Interplanetary Space (1923) by Hermann Oberth, he focused intensely on physics. As a teenager, he experimented with a rocket-powered wagon, which did not sit well with the local police. Von Braun and a few friends began using the local dump for launching rockets. The German Army noticed and visited him in 1930 to arrange a citizen advisory role to the military. That same year, he attended the Berlin Institute of Technology and assisted his mentor Oberth in the first liquidfueled rocket motor tests. By 1934, von Braun had earned a doctorate in physics in aerospace engineering from the Technical University of Berlin. Von Braun joined the Nazi party in 1937 and used schematics from American rocket engineer Robert Goodard to begin building a rocket for the German government. As the head of German rocket technology during World War II, von Braun led the development of the V-2 (Vergeltunswaffe 2), the first ballistic missile, able to travel up to 200 miles (320 kilometers) and carry a 2,200-pound (1000-kilogram) warhead. By 1942, military rocket testing was under way. The project was set back by targeting problems and devastating bombing of the manufacturing facilities by Allied forces in 1944, although scores of V-2s were fired at London that same year.

Section 13: West, Joseph 861 After the war, von Braun was brought to the United States in a secret program called Operation Paperclip, in which nearly 1,600 German scientists, technicians, and other personnel were extricated from Germany. Relocated to Fort Bliss, Texas, and provided with 118 staff members and unused parts from the V-2 program, von Braun began building a U.S. rocket program in 1946. Four years later, the endeavor was moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where von Braun oversaw construction of the Redstone rocket. This surface-to-surface ballistic missile, used for the first live nuclear weapons tests, was able to fly 200 miles and carry a 3.75-megaton nuclear warhead. Von Braun became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955. With his childhood ambitions still strong, he began writing about the possibilities of a space station and helped Walt Disney produce three television programs about space exploration. In 1957, after the successful launch of the Soviet space satellite Sputnik, von Braun’s team modified a Redstone rocket to create the Juno-C, which effectively launched the U.S. space program on January 1, 1958, by lifting the first U.S. artificial satellite, Explorer 1, into space. The public had mixed reactions to seeing von Braun’s name in the headlines, but his place in modern American science and technology was secure. Von Braun joined the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) in 1960, and he was appointed a deputy administrator in 1970. He served as director of the new Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, and ultimately headed development of the Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon. The reduction of funding for the Apollo program in 1972 led to his retirement. Von Braun continued his work in the space industry, helping create the National Space Institute in 1976, consulting with several aerospace companies, and touring the world to speak to university audiences about his experiences and passion for space exploration. He died at the age of sixty-five on June 16, 1977, from a combination of intestinal cancer and injuries sustained in a car crash. President Jimmy Carter called him “a man of bold vision.” James Fargo Balliett

Sources Piszkiewicz, Dennis. Wernher von Braun: The Man Who Sold the Moon. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. von Braun, Wernher. Conquest of the Moon. New York: Viking, 1953. ———. The Mars Project. Chicago: University of Illinois, 1991. Ward, Bob. Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005.

W E S T, J O S E P H (?– C A . 1692) As an agricultural scientist and one of the first governors of colonial South Carolina, Joseph West helped preserve the fledgling colony through its difficult early years. At the same time, he attempted, with less success, to organize the colony’s agricultural systems in conformity with the plans of the proprietors in Great Britain, including their erstwhile secretary, the philosopher John Locke. While West was dispatched to the Carolinas (via Barbados) in 1669 with three ships of supplies and colonists, Locke and like-minded procolonization contemporaries were engaged in a strenuous debate at home about whether such colonization schemes were feasible or even advisable during a time of acute economic and social distress. The Great Plague of 1665 and the London fire of 1666 had wreaked havoc in England, while an ongoing war with the Dutch severely strained the nation’s finances, military, and workforce. It was certainly not the best time, opponents of colonization argued, to commit able-bodied men and scarce resources to questionable colonial enterprises thousands of miles away. Locke and his supporters argued, to the contrary, that the colonies would not only provide new trade opportunities for the home country, including markets for manufactures, but they could also supply commodities such as timber and naval stores currently purchased from competing countries. The colonies might also serve as a repository for the more disaffected citizens of England, particularly criminals, paupers, and the unemployed, thus reducing social tensions

862 Section 13: West, Joseph at home while simultaneously giving the castoffs a chance to improve and redeem themselves through honest labor in the soil. For Locke and other like-minded agrarians (“physiocrats” in the parlance of the day), agriculture, in particular crop-growing, would not only convert the colonial wilderness into productive land, but it would convert the colonists into productive members of a stable society. The leaders of the new South Carolina colony— including West, who served as governor from 1671 to 1672, and again from 1674 to 1682—were therefore instructed to insist that colonists till the soil to the exclusion of less socially valuable activities such as slave trading or even raising livestock. This directive ignored the fact that these were both common pursuits in the Barbados colonies from which Carolina drew many of its early settlers. The instructions provided to the colony’s leaders were often suprisingly specific. As historian John Otto notes, West received detailed orders about how to tend the colony’s cattle, which were at all times to be looked after by “one or more” herders who would “bring [the cattle] home at night, & putt them in yor enclosed Groud, otherwise they will grow wild & be lost.” But the realities on the ground in Carolina did not often conform to the theories propounded back in England. Transplanted Barbadians continued to engage in the businesses that had proved profitable for them in the islands, particularly slave trading and the provisioning of pirate ships. Almost all of the Carolina settlers, meanwhile, soon learned that in the semitropical environment of South Carolina, it made more sense to allow branded cattle to roam freely in the woods for most of the year, rather than go to the trouble of rounding them up each day. Moreover, even with West’s stern demand for crop planting to the exclusion of other activities, the colony at first proved incapable of feeding itself, requiring the proprietors to pay for expensive resupply operations. Growing increasingly exasperated with the enterprise, the proprietors forced West out of the governorship in 1682. Despite a proprietorsponsored wave of non-Barbadian settlement in the colony, South Carolina would continue to evolve into a center of slave trading and the open-range cattle business, rather than the soci-

ety of crop-growing yeomen envisioned by the proprietors. In fact, the year of West’s departure also witnessed the colony’s first export of cattle to Barbados, the beginning of a lucrative trading network with the sugar colonies of the Atlantic and Caribbean. Jacob Jones

Sources Arneil, Barbara. “Trade, Plantations, and Property: John Locke and the Economic Defense of Colonialism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 55:4 (October 1994): 591–609. Otto, John. “Open-Range Cattle-Ranching in the Florida Pinewoods: A Problem in Comparative Agricultural History.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 130:3 (September 1986): 312–24. Sirmans, M. Eugene. “Politics in Colonial South Carolina: The Politics of Proprietary Reform, 1682–1694.” William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 23:1 (January 1966): 33–55.

W H I T N E Y, E L I (1765–1825) Eli Whitney, renowned for inventing the cotton gin, was born in Westboro, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765. He attended Yale, graduating in 1792. In addition to his famous invention, Whitney introduced the service contract and the American system of mass-production, assemblyline manufacturing, using prefabricated interchangeable parts. In the late eighteenth century, English textile mills were the heart of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The British textile mills used cotton to produce the thread for the weaving process, and their demand for cotton far exceeded the available supply. The American South, a major producer of cotton, exported only a small amount of its total available volume. The problem was that removing the seeds from raw cotton made the conversion of cotton into thread a highly labor intensive process. Because the plentiful green-seed, short-staple cotton grown on inland plantations in the United States required this labor-intensive process, it was too expensive for use in the English mills. The black-seed, long-staple cotton grown in the southern coastal regions was more easily cleaned of its seed, but it was less plentiful.

Section 13: Whitney, Eli 863 Whitney’s cotton gin was designed to mechanically remove the seeds with substantially less labor. The machine featured a simple, fourpart design. Workers fed raw cotton into a hopper, from which a revolving cylinder with wire hooks pulled the cotton through an iron barrier with narrow slots smaller than the seeds. The seeds were blocked by the barrier, allowing only the soft cotton fibers to pass through. A bristled cylinder, revolving in the opposite direction, then cleared (brushed) the seedless cotton from the teeth of the first cylinder. The centrifugal force of the second cylinder flung the cleaned cotton out of the gin. Whitney secured a patent for the cotton gin in 1794 and formed a partnership with Phineas Miller to manufacture the machine. From the beginning, Whitney marketed the machine in tandem with a separate and renewable service contract. The business failed three years after the patent was issued, however, partly because the domestic demand for the cotton gin was limited by the relatively small number of Southern planters who dominated the plantation system. Moreover, the simplicity of the cotton gin’s design made it easily reproduced by mechanics and planters who ignored Whitney’s patent and built their own gins. Those who did buy Whitney’s device were unwilling to pay the service fees, because they could easily make repairs themselves. After Congress decided not to renew his cotton gin patent when it expired in 1807, Whitney refused to patent his later inventions. Whitney’s creation of the American system of manufacturing is perhaps his greatest legacy. The conventional method of manufacturing at the time, the English system, created individualized products as one or more craftspeople worked on production from beginning to end. If a replacement part was needed, it had to be crafted to fit the specific product. Though each craftsperson might create finished products with similar characteristics, the parts and system of assembly were so particular to each worker that it was difficult and time consuming for anyone other than the original maker to repair the product. Whitney reasoned that standardized parts assembled in a repeated process would reduce the skill, labor, and time necessary to manufacture or repair any product.

Federal armories in the 1790s were capable of producing only 1,000 muskets a year but, anticipating war with France, sought thousands more. Whitney won the bid to manufacture 10,000 muskets over two years. His plan was to use interchangeable parts mass-produced on an assembly line. Whitney, however, underestimated the time that he needed to invent and build the new machines necessary to produce standardized parts. Whitney invented a milling machine to shape metal and other materials in exactly the same dimensions. He also invented a router that replaced the hand chisel for carving and shaping wooden components in the same dimensions. He designed job-specific machine tools and jigs (templates) that allowed efficient assembly of the muskets by a team (line) of unskilled or semiskilled workers, as opposed to craftspeople who had learned their trade over a number of years. Because all of the parts were standardized and assembled in the same repetitious manner, the time and cost of manufacturing the muskets decreased. The interchangeability of the parts also meant that needed repairs could be made without returning the product to the manufacturer. Whitney’s plea for additional time on the project was granted when he demonstrated the effectiveness of his new system of manufacturing to president-elect Thomas Jefferson and other government officials in 1801, assembling operational muskets from stacks of interchangeable parts. Whitney succeeded in creating a system that radically improved the production time and quality of manufactured goods. It was Whitney’s American system of manufacturing that Henry Ford used to create the first assembly-line automobile, and it is Whitney’s system that dominates global manufacturing to this day. Eli Whitney died in New Haven, Connecticut, on January 8, 1825. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Bagley, K., and Ray Douglas Hurt. Eli Whitney: American Inventor. Mankato, MN: Capstone, 2003. Green, Constance. Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 1997.

864 Section 13: Woods, Granville

WOODS, GRANVILLE (1856–1910) The African American inventor Granville T. Woods, who obtained patents for more than fifty electrical and mechanical devices, was born on April 23, 1856, in Columbus, Ohio. He attended school until the age of ten, when he went to work at a local machine shop that repaired railroad equipment. Fascinated by electrical power and the railroads, he paid close attention to how different pieces of equipment were used and even paid some workers to explain electrical concepts to him. In 1872, at age sixteen, Woods took employment with the Danville and Southern Railroads in Missouri, but he quit in the face of racist policies that denied him promotions. For the next several years, he traveled around the Midwest and East, working in machine shops and furthering his studies. In 1878, he secured a job with the British steamship Ironsides; however, he soon became disenchanted with his limited role. Understanding that the only company that would not discriminate against African Americans would be his own, Granville Woods and his brother, Lyates, began the Woods Electrical Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1880. The Woods’s company made a number of significant advances in telephone, telegraph, and electrical equipment, including an improved steam boiler, an automatic air-brake system for trains, an improved telephone transmitter, and a device that combined the telephone and telegraph. The latter technology, called “telegraphony,” allowed a telegraph station to send voice and telegraph messages over a single line. The invention became so successful that the American Bell Telephone Company purchased it from Woods. General Electric and the Westinghouse Air Brake Company also purchased some of Woods’s innovations. Woods also invented and patented the electric third rail system, which enabled the development of the overhead railroad system found in many metropolitan cities, such as Chicago, St. Louis, and New York. However, Woods is best known for his 1887 creation, the synchronous multiplex railway telegraph. This device, a varia-

tion of the induction telegraph, allowed messages to be sent between railway stations and moving trains, thereby dramatically increasing railway safety by facilitating easier and more accurate communication between train conductors and railway controllers. Unfortunately for Woods, other inventors attempted to lay claim to his creations and innovations. Most notable among these disputes was one brought by Thomas Edison, who stated that he had created a telegraph device before Woods and that he was therefore entitled to its patent. Woods defended himself against Edison’s claim on two occasions, proving that he alone made the device. In the end, Edison admitted defeat and offered Woods a position with the Edison Company. It was ironic, therefore, that Woods became known as the “Black Edison.” By the time of his death on January 30, 1910, he had become one of America’s most respected inventors in his own right. Paul T. Miller

Sources Fouche, Rayvon, and Shelby Davidson. Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Hayden, Robert. “Black Americans in the Field of Science and Invention.” In Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern, ed. Ivan Van Sertima. Somerset, NJ: Transaction, 1987.

W R I G H T, O R V I L L E (1871–1948), AND WILBUR WRIGHT (1867–1912) Orville and Wilbur Wright were the inventors and builders of the first successful self-propelled, heavier-than-air craft—flown at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. Their invention revolutionized not only transportation but warfare as well in the twentieth century. Wilbur was born in Millville, Indiana, on April 16, 1867, and Orville was born in Dayton, Ohio, on August 19, 1871. From childhood, the brothers were always close. They claimed that their interest in aviation dated from the moment, in 1878,

Section 13: Wright, Orville, and Wilbur Wright 865 when their father presented them with a toy helicopter. But it was the death of German glider pioneer Otto Lilienthal in 1896 that inspired them to pursue the idea of building a motordriven aircraft. By that time, the brothers, each having dropped out of high school, had started printing and bicycle businesses together. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Wright brothers were not the only ones interested in flight technology. Inventors and scientists around the world were experimenting with aircraft, and the Wrights set themselves the task of reading everything they could on the subject. Their research led them to conclude that the major problems of aerodynamics and propulsion already had been solved by others. As a result, they focused on the chief remaining problem in building a successful airplane: control of the aircraft. By the late 1890s, the two were focusing on how to allow the operator to control the three motions of an aircraft: pitch (up and down movement), roll (rotation of the aircraft), and yaw (side to side movement). Their first success came with the idea of wing-warping, or twisting the wing across its span, to control roll. To try

out their idea, they used their skills as bicycle mechanics to build a test glider. The brothers studied U.S. Weather Bureau reports to find the best place to test their glider. They ultimately decided on the windy sand dunes on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Between 1900 and 1902, they flew their gliders more than 250 times at Kitty Hawk, achieving a flight of more than 600 feet (183 meters). The extensive testing helped them overcome other problems in control and aerodynamics. They then returned to Dayton to deal with the final challenge, propulsion. At their bicycle shop, they built a small, lightweight, four-cylinder engine, which they mounted on their test plane. Returning to Kitty Hawk in the fall of 1903, they quickly achieved success, with Orville making a 120 foot (36.5 meter), 12 second flight on December 17. Several more attempts produced an 856 foot (261 meter), 29 second flight, with Wilbur at the controls. At first, they tried to keep their achievement a secret, fearful that rivals would steal their ideas. But by the late 1900s, a number of aviators in Europe were able to copy their design and fly aircraft of their own. In 1908, the brothers won their first contract to build an

The Aviation Age began with the first controlled, powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft by Wilbur and Orville Wright on December 17, 1903. The Wright Company, which they founded six years later, eventually produced nineteen airplane models. (Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

866 Section 13: Wright, Orville, and Wilbur Wright airplane for the U.S. Army, and they formed the Wright Company the following year. Wilbur spent most of his remaining years fighting patent infringement suits, while Orville sold his shares in the company in 1915, becoming an adviser to the military during World War I. Orville retired from aviation shortly thereafter and spent the rest of his life promoting aviation and defending against rivals’ claims to have invented the first airplane. So upset was he by the Smithsonian Institution’s decision to award the distinction of airplane inventor to one Samuel Langley that he donated the brothers’ first 1903 craft to the London Science Museum.

Neither brother ever married, and both lived out their lives in Dayton. Wilbur died on May 30, 1912, and Orville died on January 30, 1948. James Ciment

Sources Crouch, Tom D. The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. Heppenheimer, T.A. First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2003. Tobin, James. To Conquer the Air: The Wright Brothers and the Great Race for Flight. New York: Free Press, 2003.

DOCUMENTS The Telegraph Explained The invention of the telegraph by Samuel F.B. Morse (and others) revolutionized communication in America, setting the stage for further progress in communications, such as the telephone and radio. The device was explained to American readers in 1881. This telegraph is based upon the principle that a magnet may be endowed and deprived at will with the peculiarity of attracting iron by connecting or disconnecting it with a galvanic battery; all magnetic telegraphs are based solely upon this principle. The telegraphs bearing the names of the several inventors, as Morse (who may be called the pioneer in this invention), House, Bain, etc., are simply modifications in the application of this great principle. It is by breaking off the magnetic circuit, which is done near the battery, that certain marks are produced by means of a style or lever, which is depressed when the current is complete, and of the length of the interval of the breaking of this current, that signs of different appearances and lengths are produced and written out upon paper, making in themselves a hieroglyphic alphabet, readable to those who understand the key. This is the entire principle of electromagnetic telegraphing. It was formerly considered necessary to use a second wire to complete the magnetic circuit, now but one wire is used, and the earth is made to perform the office of the other. Where the distance is great between the places to be communicated with a relay battery is necessary to increase the electric current, and in this manner lines of great length may be formed. The House apparatus differs from the Morse only that by means of an instrument resembling a piano-forte, having a key for every letter, the operator, by pressing upon these keys, can reproduce these letters at the station at the other end of the line, and have them printed in ordinary printing type upon strips of paper, instead

of the characters employed on the Morse instrument to represent these letters. The Bain telegraph differs from either of the two preceding methods, simply in employing the ends of the wires themselves, without the means of a magnet or style to press upon the paper, the paper being first chemically prepared; so that when the circuit of electricity is complete, the current passes through the paper from the point of the wires, and decomposes a chemical compound, with which the paper is prepared, and leaves the necessary marks upon it. There is not the same need for relay batteries upon this line as upon the others. The greatest and most important telegraphic attempt is the successful laying of the cable across the Atlantic Ocean, which was finally completed and open for business July 28th, 1866. The cable lost in mid ocean in the unsuccessful attempt of the summer of 1866, has been recovered, and now forms the second cable laid, connecting the Eastern with the Western Continent. The operation of telegraphing is very simple, and can easily be learned, being purely mechanical. Source: Henry Hartshorne, The Household Cyclopedia of General Information (New York: Thomas Kelly, 1881).

The Science of Agriculture During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans focused on the practical aspects of science. Ensuring the fertility of the soil was of utmost importance, requiring specific techniques of fertilization and crop rotation, as revealed in the following excerpt from The Household Cyclopedia of General Information, published in 1881. Vegetation, in its simplest form, consists in the abstraction of carbon from carbonic acid, and hydrogen from water; but the taking of nitrogen also, from ammonia especially, is important to them, and most of all, to those which are most nutritious, as the wheat, rye, barley, &c., whose

867

868 Section 13: Documents seeds contain gluten and other nitrogenous principles of the greatest value for food. Plants will grow well in pure charcoal, if supplied with rain-water, for rain-water contains ammonia. Animal substances, as they putrefy, always evolve ammonia, which plants need and absorb. Thus is explained one of the benefits of manuring, but not the only one as we shall see presently. Animal manure, however, acts chiefly by the formation of ammonia. The quantity of gluten in wheat, rye, and barley is very different; and they contain nitrogen in varying proportions. . . . During the putrefaction of urine, ammoniacal salts are formed in large quantity, it may be said, exclusively; for under the influence of warmth and moisture, the most prominent ingredient of urine is converted into carbonate of ammonia. Rotation of Crops. The exhaustion of alkalies in a soil by successive crops is the true reason why practical farmers suppose themselves compelled to suffer land to lie fallow. It is the greatest possible mistake to think that the temporary diminution of fertility in a field is chiefly owing to the loss of the decaying vegetable matter it previously contained: it is principally the consequence of the exhaustion of potash and soda, which are restored by the slow process of the more complete disintegration of the materials of the soil. It is evident that the careful tilling of fallow land must accelerate and increase this further breaking up of its mineral ingredients. Nor is this repose of the soil always necessary. A field, which has become unfitted for a certain kind of produce, may not, on that account, be unsuitable for another; and upon this observation a system of agriculture has been gradually formed, the principal object of which is to obtain the greatest possible produce in a succession of years, with the least outlay for manure. Because plants require for their growth different constituents of soil, changing the crop from year to year will maintain the fertility of that soil (provided it be done with judgment) quite as well as leaving it at rest or fallow. In this we but imitate nature. The oak, after thriving for long generations on a particular spot, gradually sickens; its entire race dies out; other trees and shrubs succeed it, till, at length, the surface becomes so charged with an excess of dead vegetable matter, that the forest becomes a peat moss, or a surface upon which no large tree

will grow. Generally long before this can occur, the operation of natural causes has gradually removed from the soil substances, essential to the growth of oak leaving others favorable and necessary to the growth of beech or pine. So, in practical farming, one crop, in artificial rotation with others, extracts from the soil a certain quantity of necessary materials; a second carries off, in preference, those which the former has left. We could keep our fields in a constant state of fertility by replacing, every year, as much as is removed from them by their produce. An increase of fertility may be expected, of course, only when more is added of the proper material to the soil than is taken away. Any soil will partially regain its strength by lying fallow. But any soil, under cultivation, must at length (without help) lose those constituents which are removed in the seeds, roots and leaves of the plants raised upon it. To remedy this loss, and also increase the productiveness of the land, is the object of the use of proper manures. Land, when not employed in raising food for animals or man, should, at least, be applied to the purpose of raising manure for itself; and this, to a certain extent, may be effected by means of green crops, which, by their decomposition, not only add to the amount of vegetable mould contained in the soil, but supply the alkalies that would be found in their ashes. That the soil should become richer by this burial of a crop, than it was before the seed of that crop was sown, will be understood by recollecting that three-fourths of the whole organic matter we bury has been derived from the air: that by this process of ploughing in, the vegetable matter is more equally diffused through the whole soil, and therefore more easily and rapidly decomposed; and that by its gradual decomposition, ammonia and nitric acid are certainty generated, though not so largely as when animal matters are employed. He who neglects the green sods, and crops of weeds that flourish by his hedgerows and ditches, overlooks an important natural means of wealth. Left to themselves, they ripen their seeds, exhausting the soil, and sowing them annually in his fields: collected in compost heaps, they add materially to his yearly crops of corn. Source: Henry Hartshorne, The Household Cyclopedia of General Information (New York: Thomas Kelly, 1881).

Section 13: Documents 869

The Lowell Mills The textile mills that opened in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1830s made a sanguine attempt to find a pastoral balance between technology and nature. Mill owners sought to avoid the negative consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which included an entrenched working class and dirty factory towns. The Lowell Mills were to avoid such pitfalls by hiring young farm girls who would work for a few years, earning enough money to build a proper dowry. The mill was set next to the flowing stream, surrounded by the beauties of nature. What could be a more ideal scenario for the happy blending of nature and technology? A more realistic description is provided by the recollections of Lowell factory girl Harriet Robinson. In what follows, I shall confine myself to a description of factory life in Lowell, Massachusetts, from 1832 to 1848, since, with that phase of Early Factory Labor in New England, I am the most familiar—because I was a part of it. In 1832, Lowell was little more than a factory village. Five “corporations” were started, and the cotton mills belonging to them were building. Help was in great demand and stories were told all over the country of the new factory place, and the high wages that were offered to all classes of work-people; stories that reached the ears of mechanics’ and farmers’ sons and gave new life to lonely and dependent women in distant towns and farm-houses. . . . Troops of young girls came from different parts of New England, and from Canada, and men were employed to collect them at so much a head, and deliver them at the factories. At the time the Lowell cotton mills were started the caste of the factory girl was the lowest among the employments of women. In England and in France, particularly, great injustice had been done to her real character. She was represented as subjected to influences that must destroy her purity and self-respect. In the eyes of her overseer she was but a brute, a slave, to be beaten, pinched and pushed about. It was to overcome this prejudice that such high wages had been offered to women that they might be induced to become mill-girls, in spite of the opprobrium that still clung to this degrading occupation. . . .

The early mill-girls were of different ages. Some were not over ten years old; a few were in middle life, but the majority were between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. The very young girls were called “doffers.” They “doffed,” or took off, the full bobbins from the spinning-frames, and replaced them with empty ones. These mites worked about fifteen minutes every hour and the rest of the time was their own. When the overseer was kind they were allowed to read, knit, or go outside the mill-yard to play. They were paid two dollars a week. The working hours of all the girls extended from five o’clock in the morning until seven in the evening, with one half-hour each, for breakfast and dinner. Even the doffers were forced to be on duty nearly fourteen hours a day. This was the greatest hardship in the lives of these children. Several years later a ten-hour law was passed, but not until long after some of these little doffers were old enough to appear before the legislative committee on the subject, and plead, by their presence, for a reduction of the hours of labor. Those of the mill-girls who had homes generally worked from eight to ten months in the year; the rest of the time was spent with parents or friends. A few taught school during the summer months. Their life in the factory was made pleasant to them. In those days there was no need of advocating the doctrine of the proper relation between employer and employed. Help was too valuable to be ill-treated. . . . The most prevailing incentive to labor was to secure the means of education for some male member of the family. To make a gentleman of a brother or a son, to give him a college education, was the dominant thought in the minds of a great many of the better class of mill-girls. I have known more than one to give every cent of her wages, month after month, to her brother, that he might get the education necessary to enter some profession. I have known a mother to work years in this way for her boy. I have known women to educate young men by their earnings, who were not sons or relatives. There are many men now living who were helped to an education by the wages of the early mill-girls. Source: Harriet H. Robinson, “Early Factory Labor in New England,” in Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Fourteenth Annual Report (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1883).

Section 14

H I S TO R Y A N D P H I LO S O P H Y OF SCIENCE

ESSAYS History as Science S

cience—the means by which humans seek understanding without bias, or knowledge that is concrete and immutable—is a relative term. The American understanding has changed over the centuries: from a nonspecific view (science as the rational approach to intellectual inquiry) to an esoteric view (science as a highly specialized method of achieving empirical results). The study of history is a case in point. To the eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinker, historical inquiry was as much a scientific endeavor as inquiry into nature in all of its forms. Indeed, human and natural history were kindred studies, subject to the same standards of research and analysis. The discovery and exploration of North America brought forth new opportunities for scientists to collect and analyze information and to create narrative profiles of the human and natural history of America. Hence much of the nonfiction literature of the colonial period was descriptive of America’s unique and hitherto unknown lands and peoples. Early American histories tended to be local in focus but broad in conception, adopting as the definition of history the ancient Greek version of the word, historia, which meant literally “inquiries.” The works of historians such as John Smith, William Stith, Robert Beverley, William Strachey, William Douglass, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, Jeremy Belknap, William Gordon, James Sullivan, Hannah Adams, and Mercy Otis Warren were general inquiries, broadly conceived, of peoples, places, and natural phenomena past and present.

Early American Historiography One of the first great practitioners of the natural and human historical narrative was John Smith, who explored the James River, Chesapeake Bay, and New England coast in 1607, 1608, and 1614,

respectively. Smith referred to his works of geography, ethnography, and cartography as history, by which he meant an inquiry into the immediate past of the people and places he observed. His works were not chronological accounts of past events, but contemporary accounts of what he observed in the terra incognita of America. Similarly William Strachey’s Historie of Travell in Virginia Britannica, written about 1613, was a contemporary human and natural history. In 1705, Robert Beverley likewise combined the observations of a natural historian with a narrative of human affairs in his History and Present State of Virginia. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers continued to see the natural and human history of America as irrevocably linked. Examples of this approach are numerous. Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) sublimates human affairs to a broad portrait of the natural history of America. James Sullivan, in his History of the District of Maine (1795), likewise could not but see the history of Maine settlements within the context of the massive Northern forest. Mastery of this approach to history culminated in 1792 with the publication of Jeremy Belknap’s three-volume History of New-Hampshire. The first two volumes narrate New Hampshire political history, while the third volume provides a natural portrait of the colony and state: geography, landscape, rivers and mountains, agricultural product, flora and fauna, trade and shipping, demographics, social and political institutions, and the character of the people. Belknap recorded significant and remarkable geographic discoveries and natural events such as human confrontations with animals, meteorological occurrences, floods, earthquakes, storms, and the Dark Day of May 1780. Belknap founded the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1791 as an organization to express

873

874 Section 14: Essays and promote his definition of science, which encompassed all aspects of human experience, especially human and natural history. Belknap, who became the corresponding secretary of the new organization, wrote a circular letter to “every Gentleman of Science in the Continent and Islands of America” to enlist their aid in acquiring information on “the natural, political, and ecclesiastical history of this country.” He suggested that corresponding members of the Massachusetts Historical Society focus their attention on town and church histories; political events, including wars; “biographical anecdotes of persons in your town,” especially those “who have been remarkable for ingenuity, enterprise, literature, or any other valuable accomplishment”; a “topographical description of your town or county, and its vicinity; mountains, rivers, ponds, animals, vegetable productions”; agriculture; “monuments and relicks of the ancient Indians”; “singular instances of longevity and fecundity from the first settlement to the present time”; “observations on the weather, diseases, and the influence of the climate, or of particular situations, employments and ailments, especially the effect of spirituous liquors on the human constitution”; manufacturing; fisheries; education; and “remarkable events.” The accounts of nineteenth-century travelers adopted a similarly broad approach to the relationship between history and science. Scientists such as Thomas Nuttall and John Bradbury combined natural history and human history with a narrative of their own adventures descending rivers and crossing the Great Plains. The Journals of Lewis and Clark and Francis Parkman’s The Oregon Trail (1849) are the best expressions of this genre.

“New Histor y ” After the Civil War in America, the development of the professional disciplines in the social, physical, and life sciences threatened the long and fecund marriage of history and science. A revised, positivist definition of science based on the assumption that it has little to do with human subjectivity and individual personalities resulted in the judgment that the narrative histories of the past were impressionistic and “qualitative,” rather than scientific and “quantitative.” Hence,

at the same time that the historical profession was emerging in the late 1800s and early 1900s, historians such as Charles Harvey Robinson advocated a scientific approach to historical inquiry that he termed “new history.” Henry Adams’s nine-volume History of the United States During the Administrations of Adams and Jefferson (1889–1891) provides an example of the approach. In this great work, Adams tried to construct a total history that examined political and institutional as well as economic and demographic change. To determine the wealth of the state of Massachusetts, for example, Adams examined shipping tonnage, banking, import and export duties, taxation, and even postal receipts. He calculated that the amount taxed increased 70 percent from 1800 to 1817. From similar statistics, he concluded that wealth in America doubled every twenty years, while population doubled every twenty-three years. In the 1960s and 1970s, American historians embraced the assumptions and methods of the social sciences to create an interdisciplinary approach to history that relied heavily on quantitative analysis of surviving local records such as tax, probate, and census records. This “new history” focused on the masses rather than the elite, the community as a whole rather than just its leaders. Fields of research included the new social history, the new urban history, psychohistory, demographic history, family history, the new economic history, the study of mentalitie, and the new quantitative history, focused on research techniques such as sampling, statistical analysis, theoretical models based on available data, and computer programs such as the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Academic journals emerged in the 1960s and the 1970s to accommodate the new history. Among them were Historical Methods, Social Science History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban History, and Computers and the Humanities. Leaders of this movement included Darrett Rutman, Philip Greven, Jackson Turner Main, and Robert Fogel. Rutman was one of the first identifiable proponents of the “new social history.” In studies such as Winthrop’s Boston: A Portrait of a Puritan Town 1630–1649 (1965), he called into question the qualitative methods of “historians of early New England, and particularly the intellectual

Section 14: Essays 875 historians who have dominated the field in the last generation”—those who “limit themselves to the study of the writings of the articulate few, on the assumption that the public professions of the ministers and magistrates constitute a true mirror of the New England mind.” Historians, Rutman argued, gain a truer reflection of a past society by examining concrete sources, such as wills, deeds, tax records, and other local documents. Greven borrowed the methodology of European demographers to study family life in colonial America. “The principal value of quantification of demographic data,” he wrote, “is that it ought to enable historians to make precise distinctions between the life experiences of individuals and groups in different places and times.” Others, such as Michael Zuckerman, John Demos, and Kenneth Lockridge, turned to anthropology, sociology, computer science, and the theories of Robert Redfield, Erik Erikson, Eric Wolf, Clifford Geertz, Claude Levi-Strauss, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim to guide their studies of colonial history. Main’s The Social Structure of Revolutionary America (1965) is an examination of local tax and probate records in the thirteen colonies as evidence of the social and economic structure in America. Fogel’s work, often called “cliometrics,” led to significant reinterpretations of colonial

slavery, as in his book, co-written with Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross (1974). The new history is social scientific. Jerome Clubb, for example, argues that systematic analysis of the past complements the analysis of contemporary societies by sociologists, anthropologists, and economists. “The task of a genuine social scientific historian would be to use the past to construct empirical social theory to describe and explain specific events of the past.” This would result in “an improved social science,” he maintains, that “would increase the utility of historical evidence for the pursuit of scientific knowledge of human affairs, and the study of the past can contribute to that improvement.” Russell Lawson

Sources Clubb, Jerome M., and Erwin Scheuch, eds. Historical Social Research: The Use of Historical and Process-Produced Data. Stuttgart, Germany: Klett-Cotta, 1980. Kammen, Michael, ed. The Past Before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. Landes, David, and Charles Tilly. History as a Social Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. Lawson, Russell M. The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian’s Dialogue with the Past. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. Riley, Stephen T. The Massachusetts Historical Society 1791–1959. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1959.

The Philosophy of Science T

he philosophy of science has undergone telling changes in America. Scientists of the colonial period accepted the Aristotelian approach of systematic logic applied to the induction and deduction of truth. The challenges to Aristotle during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, however, led to an increasing emphasis on the empirical method. American scientists of the eighteenth century were more apt to quote Francis Bacon, the English empiricist, than Aristotle. In Novum Organum (1620), Bacon argued for a “new method”: knowledge acquired systematically by means of experimentation. The Baconian method implied

that meaning is achieved by verifiable theories based on the precise observation of natural phenomena.

Positivism During the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, Western science was thought to be the means by which humans could achieve objective knowledge. The philosophy of positivism argued that science can overcome the limitations of human perspective by providing stable interpretive schemes and models built on empirical evidence. Facts—accumulated evidence gathered

876 Section 14: Essays under controlled conditions shown to be valid many times over—form the basis for a breadth of perspective that can potentially apply to all times and all places rather than to isolated instances. Likewise, science does not have to rely on the experiences of one person and his or her personal interpretation. Rather, theory transcends individual subjectivity to acquire the status of objective reality. Positivist scientists believe in the validity of reason and confirmable evidence; if they use imagination, it is within the confines of a verifiable methodology. Such scientists assume that they can accumulate sufficient, verifiable data pertaining to human and natural experience to explain the various aspects of this experience according to standards of logic, reason, and science. Scientists therefore try to separate the subject from the object. The only way to know the characteristics of the object under study is for the scientist to analyze it as an observer rather than as a participant. Positivists see science as cumulative, in that theory is rarely overturned; instead, it is explicated or reduced to a more fundamental explanation of real phenomena. Even social science, as David Landes’s and Charles Tilly’s History as Social Science (1971), “is problem-oriented. It assumes that there are uniformities of human behavior that transcend time and place and can be studied as such. . . . The aim is to produce general statements of sufficiently specific content to permit analogy and prediction.” The social scientist “states his hypothesis in the form of an explanatory model, preferably in mathematical language and so framed that the criteria of proof are measurable.” Marvin Harris’s, in Cultural Materialism (1979), adds that science seeks “to restrict fields of inquiry to events, entities, and relationships that are knowable by means of explicit, logico-empirical, inductive-deductive, quantifiable public procedures or ‘operations’ subject to replication by independent observers.”

Subjec tivit y In the wake of World War II and its examples of human irrationality and destructiveness, theorists began to rethink the philosophical bases of

science. Irrationality, anomalies, imagination, and emotions now seemed even more a part of human life, including even the realm of scientific inquiry. Before the war, historian of science George Sarton had argued that explanations often have an aesthetic quality for theoretical scientists, who have a subjective desire to find out what is true, “to understand more deeply and more fully the whole of nature, including ourselves and our relations to it. An intense curiosity to find the truth about things in general and himself in particular is as much a characteristic of man as his thirst for beauty and justice.” Albert Einstein in 1931 declared “the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research.” He believed that “the only deeply religious people of our largely materialistic age are the earnest men of research.” One of the first postwar theoreticians to propose the subjectivity of science was Stephen Toulmin, who argued that the scientist’s own weltanschauung, or conceptual worldview, forms the fundamental assumptions of scientific method and theory. Scientific laws, in Frederick Suppe’s words, “are methods of representing regularities already recognized, being methods of representing phenomenal deviation from ideals of natural order.” The truth or falseness of a law depends on how well it explains the phenomena. A scientific theory comprises “laws, hypotheses, and ideals of natural order,” the truth or falseness of which depends on how successful the theory is at “representing phenomena.” Toulmin believed that science is cumulative, because divergent theories, old and new, can be understood according to the explanatory order of the weltanschauung. Thomas Kuhn, however, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), argued that science is not cumulative because of the revolutionary aspect of the paradigm. Kuhn believed that the paradigm (weltanschauung or worldview) is a conceptual framework of fundamental assumptions that directs the methods, theories, and organization of the scientific community. The paradigm becomes the means of explanation, a scientific dogma, for a generation of scientists who refuse to consider alternatives, as long as the paradigm satisfactorily explains phenom-

Section 14: Essays 877 ena. Trust and belief in the paradigm hinders the objective pursuit of truth and disinterested science, as defined by the Baconian and positivist theories of science. In the wake of the challenge to positivism by theorists of science such as Toulmin and Kuhn, science has adjusted its lofty goals of objective truth to more realistic aims. Probability, rather than certainty, is the emphasis today. Science, in Marvin Harris’s words, “claims to be able to distinguish between different degrees of uncertainty. In judging scientific theories one does not inquire which theory leads to accurate predictions in all instances, but rather which theories lead to accurate predictions in more instances. Failure to achieve complete predictability

does not invalidate a scientific theory; it merely constitutes an invitation to do better.” Russell Lawson

Sources Harris, Marvin. Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York: Random House, 1979. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Landes, David S., and Charles Tilly. History as Social Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971. Rosenberg, Alex. The Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2000. Sarton, George. The History of Science and the New Humanism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1937. Suppe, Frederick, ed. The Structure of Scientific Theories. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977.

The Emergence of an American History of Science T

he history of the philosophy and methodology of science has intrigued students of nature and humanity for centuries. In America, the study of the history of science was part of the natural history emphasis of the early explorers. John Smith and other colonial naturalists and historians wrote about what Native Americans had discovered about the use of the land, what they knew about geography, and how they understood the universe. Eighteenth-century Enlightenment historians explained American history according to the impact of the natural environment on human affairs. Robert Beverley, for example, in History and Present State of Virginia (1705), examined Virginia political and social history in the context of natural history. Thomas Jefferson likewise, in Notes on Virginia (1782), could not but see the history of America as one of humans interacting with nature. Jefferson believed that nature was the product of a benevolent creator who provided a universe of order, harmony, and perfection based on natural laws that, upon discovery, would allow hu-

mans to create a society similarly ordered and harmonious. The ultimate expression of this point of view was Jeremy Belknap’s masterful History of NewHampshire (1784, 1791, 1792); in three volumes, this work encompassed the political, social, institutional, cultural, economic, and natural history of the colony and state of New Hampshire. Belknap, like other eighteenth-century thinkers, believed that human progress in science depended on working with the environment, accommodating nature rather than forcing or conquering it. The American Enlightenment thinker, because of the uniqueness of the colonial experience and the constant reminders of the Puritan “errand into the wilderness,” believed that humanity and nature (hence the creator) worked in concert to bring about the best society. Even the most skeptical eighteenth-century thinkers, such as Thomas Paine (in The Age of Reason, 1794), could appreciate the divine reason that formed the universe. How then could humans presume to control what was wrought by God, the creator?

878 Section 14: Essays these new forces, chemical and mechanical, grew in volume until they acquired sufficient mass to take the place of the old religious science.” The victory of the Dynamo cast humanity into a different world, with new structural components forged by science—industry, transportation, communications, and more powerful weapons—that resulted in new ideological foundations. People in the early twentieth century, when Adams was composing the Education, were forming their ideas in response to an understanding of the scientific laws of the universe, rather than forming the scientific laws of the universe out of their own ideas. The latter approach, devoted to an understanding of the supernatural and subjective (the Virgin), had resulted in a sense of security, unity, and truth, whereas the victory of science and the Dynamo led people to see the apparent chaos and uncertainty inherent in the universe.

G eorge S ar ton

The Dynamo, advertised here in 1884, was the first electric generator capable of producing power for industry. To historian Henry Adams, it symbolized the dynamic force of modern technology and its effect on civilization. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–67964)

Henr y Adams One of America’s historians of science was Henry Adams, who created in his autobiographical Education of Henry Adams (1918) a view of the historical process of the victory of the sciences in the war waged to gain dominance over nature. Adams’s metaphors to describe this centurieslong conflict were the Virgin, representing traditional society, religion, and human dependence on nature, and the Dynamo, or electric motor, which represents science, technology, secularism, and materialism. “The Virgin,” he wrote, “had acted as the greatest force the Western world ever felt, and had drawn man’s activities to herself more strongly than any other power, natural or supernatural, had ever done.” But the Dynamo was supreme: “very slowly the accretion of

The formal, academic study of the history of science in America began with the creation of the History of Science Society in 1924. George Sarton, a native of Belgium, who had founded the journal Isis in 1912, established the society in part to support the academic journal dedicated to the study of the history of science. Sarton served as editor of Isis from 1913 to 1952. Sarton conceived of the modern study of the history of science as a humanistic discipline. “Science,” he wrote in The History of Science and the New Humanism (1937), “is nothing but the human mirror of nature.” While noting, “we can see nature only through man’s brain,” he added, “we are always studying nature, for we cannot see man without it.” The History of Science Society continues to be a dominant organization worldwide, orienting and focusing the attention of scholars on the interdisciplinary study of the history of science. Russell Lawson

Sources Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams. 1918. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961. Becker, Carl L. The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Sarton, George. The History of Science and the New Humanism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1937.

Section 14: Essays 879

The Sociology of Science H

istorians and theorists of science in the years after World War II began to recognize that science involves more than methodology and philosophy—that it relies as much on the collective pursuit of knowledge. Philosophers such as Frederick Suppe, Steven Toulmin, Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, and Max Feyerabend developed an approach to understanding science that relied on examining subjective elements, including human interaction. How scientists relate to one another and organize themselves has a profound impact on the acquisition of knowledge, the agreed-upon theories of physical, biological, and social scientists. Sociologists of science study the modes of organization and means of communication among scientists. Early American scientists, typically amateurs, lawyers, clergy, and merchants who practiced science as an avocation, organized themselves by means of various institutions. Early colleges such as Harvard and Yale, like elite colleges and universities of today, had restrictive and competitive admission, a difficult curriculum, and a developing camaraderie among graduates. There were exceptions, of course, such as Benjamin Franklin, but by far most scientists during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment were college-educated and exclusionary. The leading intellectuals in any given community were generally the lawyers, merchants, clergy, and physicians who had graduated from European universities or American colleges. Scientific correspondence involved letters exchanged among the welleducated. Jeremy Belknap called such intellectuals the “sons of science,” or the inheritors of the scientific revolution that had begun in Europe during the previous two centuries. Belknap, who resided in a small town in northern New Hampshire, where he often felt cut off from the scientific communities of Boston and Philadelphia, was nevertheless a leader in the development of organizations to bring scientists together to pursue their inquiries collectively. During the American Revolution, Belknap wrote to his friend, Ebenezer Hazard: “Why may not a Republic of Letters be realized in America as well as a Republican Government?

Why may there not be a Congress of Philosophers as well as of Statesmen? And why may there not be subordinate philosophical bodies connected with a principal one, as well as separate legislatures, acting in concert by a common assembly? I am so far an enthusiast in the cause of America as to wish she may shine Mistress of the Sciences, as well as the Asylum of Liberty.” Belknap wrote his letter in 1780, the same year that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was organized in Boston; already the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia had been in operation on and off for more than thirty years. In 1791, Belknap himself organized the first historical society in America, the Massachusetts Historical Society. His plan was that “each Member on his admission shall engage to use his utmost endeavors to collect and communicate to the Society, Manuscripts, printed books and pamphlets, historical facts, biographical anecdotes, observations in natural history, specimens of natural and artificial Curiosities, and any other matters which may elucidate the natural, and political history of America from the earliest times to the present day.” Membership in the Massachusetts Historical Society was by invitation only. Its journal, the Collections, sent to members, included correspondence and reports that were for a limited audience of American literati. The conduct of American science by 1800, in short, lacked only one crucial element of twenty-first-century science: professionalization. In the mid-nineteenth century, American science became the endeavor of professionals who pursued it for a living and taught in universities. The model for scientific research in the American academy was the German university system. The decentralization of higher education in Germany fostered competition for the top scholars of academic disciplines that were becoming rapidly more specialized. Although the German university system emphasized the search for pure science, scholarship, and specialization of disciplines, its offspring—the American university system—emerged at a time when applied science was in great national demand. The Morrill Act of 1862 set aside land and funds for the

880 Section 14: Essays

It was not until the twentieth century that the ranks of professional scientists expanded to include significant numbers of African Americans. Here, pharmaceutical students do lab work at all-black Howard University about 1900. (Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–35750)

creation of land-grant universities devoted to research, instruction, and extension of practical knowledge. The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was the first to take the lead in the professionalization of science by creating graduate schools where students worked directly with professors who trained them in the ways and means of science. Thus, American universities at the end of the nineteenth century were encouraging, in the words of Joseph Ben-David, “the establishment of specialized research roles and facilities” for professors and “large-scale systematic training” of students. The emergence of universities as the centers of pure and applied scientific knowledge led them to assume “an important function in the growing professionalization of occupational life, and in making research an increasing permanent aspect of business, industry, and administration.” After World War II, America philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn began to think systematically about the sociology of science. In his groundbreaking book The Structure of Scien-

tific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn argued that the unifying force in the organization of science is the “paradigm”—the commonly accepted beliefs, theories, and rules that unite scientists and direct scientific research within a field. Once a paradigm is established, Kuhn argues, scientists can engage in “normal science”—specialized research and analysis, using accepted methodologies, to seek solutions to unsolved problems. Another important component of paradigmatic science is its proliferation through the education of students in the methods, assumptions, and common goals of the scientific establishment. The rite of passage is the Ph.D., a symbol that the student has mastered the techniques of normal science and the assumptions of the paradigm. The new holder of a Ph.D. is ready to become an equal member in the professional enterprise of science. Research is presented at conferences and submitted to esoteric, peer-reviewed journals. Conferences and journals are the means by which communication among peers is accomplished. The academic world, moreover, observes a set, formal ranking that tends to be preserved by an “old

Section 14: Essays 881 guard.” As long as a young scientist conforms to the paradigm and performs normal science in the proper way, according to professional standards, he or she is likely to rise in the ranks—from assistant professor to associate professor to professor. Kuhn’s concept of “normal science” embraces the accepted methods and common assumptions of a scientific discipline. Modern science, for example, is organized around the belief that science involves the systematic accumulation and verification of knowledge: systematic in that it is organized, unified, and directed; accumulated by experience using the empirical method; and verified according to the standards of the scientific method, the proving or disproving of hypotheses by controlled experiment, as well as the judgment of one’s scientific peers. The scientist tries to use the most objective methods at his or her disposal, yet subjectivity

can never be avoided, and truth can be chimerical. Still, scientists search for the most probable reflection of reality. Yet a probable truth agreed on by similar-thinking puzzle solvers is a far cry from the positivist ideal of the seeker of truth acquiring objective knowledge of human and natural phenomena. Russell Lawson

Sources Harris, Marvin. Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. New York: Random House, 1979. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 1962. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Suppe, Frederick, ed. The Structure of Scientific Theories. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Tucker, Louis Leonard. Clio’s Consort: Jeremy Belknap and the Founding of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston: The Massachusetts Historical Society, distributed by Northeastern University Press, 1989.

A–Z ADAMS, HENRY (1838–1918) Henry Brooks Adams, the grandson of John Quincy Adams and great-grandson of John Adams, was a Harvard history professor, philosopher, writer, and critic. He is best known for his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1918); histories such as the nine-volume History of the United States During the Administrations of Adams and Jefferson (1889–1891); his novel Democracy (1880); and collections of essays such as Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1913). A prominent theme in Adams’s life and work was the overwhelming technological change wrought by science that occurred over the course of his life. He declared that he was born into a pastoral and faith-filled world like that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was ending his life in a secular world that was dominated by machines. “I firmly believe,” he declared in an 1862 letter to his brother Charles, “that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world.” At the time, Henry was serving as secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, the U.S. ambassador to England. It was the period of the Civil War, when the weapons of war could indeed seem daunting. But even after the war, and until the end of his life, Henry Adams repeated the same theme—destruction awaits a world that creates mechanistic forces it cannot control.

The Virgin and the D ynamo Adams felt pulled in two different directions: the past of a pastoral world confident in God’s con-

trol and human knowledge, and the future of a mechanistic, secular world where God is unknown and science reveals multiplicity rather than simplicity. After a stint teaching at Harvard, the suicide of his wife in the 1880s, and financial ruin in the 1890s, Adams sank into depression, unsure of the importance of science and history. It was at this time that he came to recognize two themes of human history, which he termed the Dynamo and the Virgin. The Dynamo is human technology, the product of reason and science. It represents the human aim to control nature. The Virgin is the pastoral and the divine, representing religion and a reliance on nature. These two forces, Adams believed, have been in constant conflict throughout human history, particularly in the several centuries since the beginning of the Scientific Revolution in the 1500s. Humans, once childlike in their dependence on nature, their humility before the forces of nature and the supernatural that they could not comprehend, were now, because of scientific and industrial revolutions, coming to think that nature is subject to human will and knowledge. But Adams concluded that such knowledge, such control, is illusory and elusive. Humans believe they control, but they do not.

The Science of Histor y Adams likewise was equivocal about history as a science. In some respects, he believed that through statistical analysis of economics, social change, and politics, a precise historical narrative—like his own History of the United States During the Administrations of Adams and Jefferson— could approach science. As he wrote in The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma (1919): “Any science assumes a necessary sequence of cause and effect, a force resulting in motion which cannot be other than what it is. Any science of history must be absolute, like other sciences, and must fix with mathematical certainty the path which human society has got to follow.” Adams discovered,

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Section 14: African American Scientists 883 however, that such absolutism in the understanding of the human past is elusive. As he wrote at the conclusion of The Education of Henry Adams: “The child born in 1900 would . . . be born into a new world which would not be a unity but a multiple, where no one had ever penetrated before; where order was an accidental relation obnoxious to nature; artificial compulsion imposed on motion; against which every free energy of the universe revolted.” Science seemed to have degenerated into chaos, knowledge into ignorance. “All that a historian won was a vehement wish to escape. He saw his education complete and was sorry he ever began it. As a matter of taste, he greatly preferred his eighteenth-century education when God was a father and nature a mother, and all was for the best in a scientific universe.” But the ongoing benevolent design of the Enlightenment worldview was not to be in the industrial world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Caught between two worlds, yet still attempting to impose a scientific formula to explain the dialectic of nature and humanity, Adams enlisted mathematical theory and empirical methodology to measure humanity’s increasing control over nature. To achieve a science of history comparable to the natural sciences, he needed a way to measure “the law of reaction between force and force—between mind and nature—the law of progress.” According to Adams, the acceleration of human progress is an “invariable law” in human history. The manipulation of nature by humans is a standard proportional increase that is uniform and predictable. The force of nature, he believed, is the independent variable and the force of humanity the dependent variable: the human force, reacting with nature, “increases in the direct ratio of its squares” over time. Yet human progress is not natural, rather forced and artificial, and Adams feared for the future of accelerating control of human technology over the natural environment. Russell Lawson

Sources Adams, Henry. The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma. New York: Macmillan, 1919. ———. The Education of Henry Adams. 1918. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961.

AFRICAN AMERICAN SCIENTISTS Many early African Americans were pioneers in the fields of science and technology, developing methods for working with tools and crops with limited resources, instituting medical practices based on herbal remedies, and even performing minor surgical procedures under inhospitable conditions. Many of the tens of millions of Africans kidnapped and forced into labor in the Americas had previous knowledge of herbal medicine, crop cultivation, animal husbandry, and textile fabrication. Low-country rice planters in South Carolina preferred captured workers from the Congo-Angola region, because these Africans were experienced rice growers and would be able to put their knowledge to work directly upon arrival. From these beginnings, African Americans would go on to make significant contributions to the scientific advancement of the nation and to its industry, natural sciences, medicine, and high technology.

Inventors One of the best-known African American inventors of the eighteenth century was Benjamin Banneker. Born in rural Maryland just outside Baltimore, he excelled in mathematics and quickly became known for his intellectual abilities. One of his admirers was George Ellicott, a mathematician who lent him books on astronomy. Banneker mastered the material and, by 1783, devoted himself to his astronomical studies. Among Banneker’s achievements were assisting the planning of Washington, D.C., producing an annual almanac from 1792 to 1802, and carrying on a prolonged correspondence with Thomas Jefferson concerning the equality of races, a correspondence that would eventually sway Jefferson toward recognizing the intellectual abilities of all peoples. In the nineteenth century, with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, African American inventors contributed mightily to technological innovation. Creative and brilliant men such as Elijah McCoy (for whom the phrase “the real McCoy” was coined), Jan Matzeliger, Granville

884 Section 14: African American Scientists T. Woods, Lewis Latimer, Garrett Morgan, and Norbert Rillieux created timesaving and safetypromoting devices that changed the face of industry. Among the hundreds of inventions developed and patented by African Americans during the 1800s were the locomotive lubricating cup (McCoy), which made it possible for trains to be continually lubricated without stopping; the shoe lasting machine (Matzeliger), which made mass production of shoes possible; the railway induction telegraph (Woods), which made communication between moving trains and the train yard possible; the cotton-thread light-bulb filament (Latimer), which made electric lighting affordable for domestic use; the automatic traffic signal (Morgan), which prevented countless traffic-related accidents and fatalities; and the vacuum evaporator (Rillieux), which revolutionized the processing of sugar.

Natural Sciences Many African Americans have had distinguished careers in the natural sciences. George Washington Carver, Charles Henry Turner, and Mathew Henson stand out for excellence in their fields. Carver, forced to grow up without his parents, both of whom were enslaved in Missouri, was one of America’s most extraordinary scientists. He showed a keen interest in nature early in life and experimented with plants even as a boy. After being rejected by Highland University in Kansas on the basis of his race, Carver was admitted to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, in 1887. By 1894, he had not only earned his undergraduate degree at Iowa State College but was offered a faculty position as well. In what would become one of the most important moments in the history of American agricultural science, Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, implored Carver to join the school as director of agriculture. Beginning with only a crude laboratory and twenty acres of land, Carver would transform Tuskegee into a world-famous agricultural sciences institution. He became known for his work on improving soil conditions, instituting effective crop rotations, and finding multiple uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, and pecans. He eventually pro-

duced more than 300 products from the peanut alone, including facial cream, ink, cooking oil, soap, and cheese. In addition, Carver developed over 115 products from the sweet potato and over 75 products from the pecan. Between the late 1800s and early 1900s, Charles Henry Turner’s research into animal behavior, especially that of insects, made him one of the premier scientists in his field. He published more than fifty scientific papers, taught classes at Sumner High School in St. Louis, and earned the respect of scientists throughout America and Europe. Although he was offered a job as professor at the prestigious but predominately white University of Chicago, he turned it down, saying he could do more good for African Americans by staying among them and teaching scientific skills to young people in his community. During the late nineteenth century, Matthew Henson was driven to explore unknown parts of the world. Although he had little formal schooling, he was trained onboard a cargo ship during his teens and then as an associate to Robert Peary on their many survey expeditions. As a team, Peary and Henson traveled to the far reaches of the world for some twenty-three years. Their most noteworthy trip was to the North Pole in 1909, when both men became the first explorers ever to reach this historic point. He earned his place in scientific history as a kind of polar astronaut whose knowledge and skill in navigating the frozen tundra of the Arctic helped open a new world.

Medicine A number of African American doctors have pioneered medical procedures, perfected new techniques, and excelled in the practice of medicine. Among them are former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders; Percy Lavon Julian, who invented a synthesis of cortisone from soybeans; and Carlton B. Goodlet, a family doctor who also practiced law and edited the San Francisco SunReporter newspaper. In the early twentieth century, one medical scientist stands out for his life-saving accomplishments in the field of blood plasma. Charles Drew pioneered the process of blood storage that was instrumental in saving lives during

Section 14: African American Scientists 885 World War II and thereafter. Upon graduating from Amherst College, he decided to pursue his career in medical science and enrolled at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. By 1933, he had earned degrees in medicine and surgery; he was appointed a resident at Montreal General Hospital, where he became interested in hematology (blood science) research. In 1938, Drew worked with John Scudder, a leading scientist in the field, and devised a way to make a blood bank— a place where blood could be stored for long periods of time without breaking down. Drew’s first experiments succeeded in storing blood for seven days, and he continued to work toward developing a method that would last even longer. Early in World War II, Drew was appointed medical director of the Blood Transfusion Association of the Red Cross; however, due to his refusal to segregate the blood of blacks and whites, a standard practice at the time, he was forced to step down and returned to Howard University in 1941. Drew spent the last years of his life training promising black doctors and speaking out against racial prejudice, especially in medicine. Daniel Hale Williams was another African American doctor who advanced medical practice. Even as a youngster, he had a steady hand and a vibrant intellectual curiosity. In 1877, Dr. Henry Palmer recognized this while Williams was cutting his hair and agreed to have Williams apprentice in his office. In 1880, after only two years of apprenticeship, Williams entered Chicago Medical College. After graduation, he taught anatomy at his alma matter and opened his own office on Chicago’s South Side in 1883. Williams also opposed the racism of his time; in 1891, he opened the Provident Hospital and Training School for Nurses in Chicago, where African Americans were able to receive high-quality medical training and care. Surrounded by top-tier medical professionals and armed with an in-depth knowledge of anatomy, Williams quickly became one of the leading surgeons in Illinois. Williams is perhaps best known for an 1893 operation he performed on James Cornish, a stabbing victim. Without the aid of modern medical devices such as heart-rate or respiratory monitoring machines, he opened Cornish’s chest, repaired his pericardium (the sac that en-

velops the heart), and sutured him up for recovery. Cornish went on to live an active life for twenty more years. Williams was the first person to perform such a successful open-heart surgery, an operation that seemed beyond the reach of even the most confident and skilled surgeons of that time.

High Technology In the latter part of the twentieth century, science and technology became primary fields of inquiry—and of educational investment—in the Western world. Nuclear energy, space exploration, and computer technology led the way, producing many well-known and respected African American scientists. Among them were Lloyd Quarterman, Mae Jemison, and William Northover. In the 1940s, Quarterman was one of six African American scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. After college at St. Augustine’s in North Carolina, Quarterman was hired by the U.S. War Department to work on atomic research at Columbia University in New York and the University of Chicago’s Argonne National Lab. Combining forces with Enrico Fermi, he worked with radioactive materials to develop nuclear reactors. In addition to his work in radioactive and fluoride chemistry, Quarterman was a spectroscopist (a scientist who studies the interaction of radiation and matter). He is credited with inventing a new type of cell, the diamond cell, which enabled scientists to see the vibrations of different molecules in a solution. In this way, he was able to manipulate molecules to form new compounds. Mae Jemison was raised in Chicago and developed an early love of astronomy. She earned a chemical engineering degree from Stanford and a medical degree from Cornell before joining NASA in 1987. Jemison was the science mission specialist on the STS-47 Spacelab J flight, on which she conducted experiments in life sciences and material sciences, including bone cell research. After serving for six years as a NASA astronaut, she established the Jemison Group to focus on the beneficial integration of science and technology into daily life. In addition, after

886 Section 14: African American Scientists teaching environmental studies at Dartmouth College from 1995 to 2002, she began directing the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in Developing Countries. The chemist William R. Northover conducted pioneering work in fiber optics at Bell Labs from the 1960s to the 1980s. His work gave birth to some of the most important developments in research on the science of glass fiber light guides, which can transmit digitally coded information. The research and application of glass properties technology that Northover and his colleagues worked on have had far-reaching benefits in the telecommunications industry. Northover has also worked directly on projects involving semiconductors and lasers. African American scientists and inventors have made significant contributions and important breakthroughs in fields as diverse as agronomy, nuclear science, medicine, and information technology. Even though many of the first African Americans arrived in bondage, they came with a collective pool of skills and intellect that enabled them to forge a new life and create mechanisms that would make their situations more tolerable. Many early pioneers would improve methods of industrial work and safety, making work less grueling and dangerous over time. Industrial improvements were followed by innovations in science and medicine, improving the quality of life not just for themselves, but for all Americans. Despite racial prejudice, African American scientists and inventors have stood firmly for equality of intellect and opportunity. They have shown the nation and the world that it is the quality of people, not their appearance, that makes greatness. Paul T. Miller

Sources Black Inventor Online Museum. http://www.blackinventor. com. Diggs, Irene. Black Inventors. Chicago: Institute of Positive Education, 1975. Fouche, Rayvon, and Shelby Davidson. Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation: Granville T. Woods, Lewis H. Latimer, and Shelby J. Davidson. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Hayden, Robert C. Seven Black American Scientists. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1970. Van Sertima, Ivan, ed. Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern. Somerset, NJ: Transaction, 1987.

AMERIC AN AC ADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), founded in 1780, is the second oldest science society in America (after the American Philosophical Society) and the first successful science society founded in New England. Initially housed on the campus of Harvard College, the academy still maintains its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The AAAS was begun during the American Revolution by leaders such as John Hancock and John Adams, who believed that a successful republic required the gathering of scientific information and the promotion of scientific knowledge. The AAAS encouraged members to contribute papers and other communications on natural and human history, which would be communicated to other thinkers and scientists throughout the country by means of its periodical, the Memoirs. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the means of communication and membership altered, but not the focus on all aspects of thought and culture in America, particularly the sciences. Fellows of the AAAS have included scientists, thinkers, policymakers, and writers such as Daniel Webster, Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Percival Lowell, Albert Einstein, and Talcott Parsons. The AAAS continues to be an exclusive organization, inviting only recognized experts and prizewinners into its ranks as fellows. Recent inductees include journalists, poets, academics, researchers, artists, architects, actors, corporate executives, politicians, and musicians; natural scientists in the fields of mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, astronomy, engineering, molecular biology, biochemistry, psychology, ecology, public health, medicine, and surgery; and social scientists in economics, anthropology, sociology, demography, political science, public policy, law, and history. For the past half-century, the journal of the AAAS, Daedalus, has published scholarly articles dealing with a host of topics in the sciences, humanities, education, and public policy. Recent issues have focused on such subjects as inequality

Section 14: American Antiquarian Society 887 in America, public education, science and religion, aging, imperialism, justice, time, bioethics, diversity, and modernity. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences supports scholarship through various prizes named in memory of famous American scientists and writers. The Rumford Prize, for example, named for the physicist Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, is awarded for contributions to the understanding of heat. The Talcott Parsons Prize, named in honor of the American sociologist, awards work in the social sciences. The Emerson-Thoreau Medal recognizes lifetime achievement in literature. Russell Lawson

Source American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad. org. Daedalus (formerly Journal of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences). 1955–2007. Oleson, Alexandra, and Sanborn C. Brown, eds. Pursuit of Knowledge in the Early American Republic: American Scientific and Learned Societies from Colonial Times to the Civil War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

AMERIC AN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY Founded in 1812 and located in Worcester, Massachusetts, the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is both a scholarly association and a research library for the study of American culture, history, arts, and sciences through the year 1876. The AAS is dedicated to collecting and preserving printed records, from the first European settlement of North America through the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, and making documents available to scholars, writers, artists, genealogists, and the general public. The society’s library contains more than 3 million items, including books, pamphlets, periodicals, visual records, and works of art. The AAS is also a publisher of bibliographies and books on antiquarianism, and it produces the scholarly journal Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society twice a year. The AAS was the brainchild of printer and publisher Isaiah Thomas, whose periodical the

Massachusetts Spy was one of the leading patriot newspapers of the Revolutionary War era. In 1812, the Massachusetts legislature responded to a petition by Thomas and passed an act incorporating the AAS as America’s first national historical society. According to the measure, the society was to “encourage the collection and preservation of the Antiquities of our country, and of curious and valuable productions in Art and Nature [that] have a tendency to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge.” The seed of the AAS’s collection was Thomas’s bequest of some 8,000 books, as well as funds to build the society’s first library building in 1820. The collection grew as historians, many of them well-heeled amateurs, donated their own libraries and collections of artifacts. The first catalog of the society’s collections, published in 1837, was produced by Christopher Columbus Baldwin, Thomas’s successor as AAS president. Over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the society added new buildings and vastly expanded its collection. Under the leadership of Waldo Lincoln in the early twentieth century, the AAS began to systematically collect copies of newspapers and journals from the colonial, early republic, antebellum, and early post–Civil War era in American history. Beginning in the 1950s, this extensive collection of early American publications was put on microfilm and made available to libraries around the country. In 2002, the society began putting the first installments of a digital version of the collection online. The AAS offers a host of scholarly and educational programs, including undergraduate seminars in American Studies and American history, fellowships at its Center for Historic American Visual Culture and in its Program in the History of the Book in American Culture, and a public lecture series and performances on topics in American history. The organization also provides primary source materials for students and continuing-education programs for history and social science teachers. Many of the twenty-four members of the AAS’s governing council are historians and antiquarians. The council appoints a president and advises on policy and program initiatives. Other society officers are elected by the nearly 800 AAS

888 Section 14: American Antiquarian Society members from across the United States and around the world. James Ciment

Sources American Antiquarian Society. http://www.american antiquarian.org. Burkett, Nancy H., and John B. Hench, eds. Under Its Generous Dome: The Collections and Programs of the American Antiquarian Society. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1992.

A M E R I C A N A S S O C I AT I O N F O R T H E A D VA N C E M E N T O F S C I E N C E The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a nonprofit organization of scientists and members of the public. Unlike various other scientific societies, such as the National Academy of Sciences, the AAAS does not restrict membership, preferring to let anyone join who has an interest in science. Vast in the scope of its aims, the AAAS facilitates the exchange of information among scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and members of the public; fosters international cooperation among scientists in the pursuit of research that crosses national boundaries; encourages high school students to pursue careers in science, engineering, and mathematics; advocates government funding of science; and shares the knowledge of and appreciation for science with the public. A group of geologists met in 1840 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to form the American Society of Geologists. Intent on expanding its base to include scientists from all disciplines, eighty-seven members of the society gathered on September 20, 1848, at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia to found the AAAS. In 1851, Alexander Dallas Bache, the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin and AAAS president, called for the association to organize scientists with the aim of persuading the federal government to fund science. In doing so, the AAAS has helped forge the long-standing link between the government and scientific community in America. The federal government began funding agricultural research in the nineteenth century, expanded its funding of sci-

ence during the two world wars, and today funds research in innumerable disciplines of science. As important as the establishment of an agenda for the association was the recruitment of scientists. William Barton Rogers, a geologist and founder of the AAAS, wanted an association in step with the democracy of Jacksonian America, but Bache, a patrician by upbringing, hoped the AAAS would be an elite organization of the most distinguished scientists. In its early days, the AAAS was nearer the vision of Rogers than that of Bache. In 1848, it required no scientific credentials of its members. In the early 1870s, however, the AAAS moved toward Bache’s position by creating the category of fellow for its most distinguished members. At first, the AAAS welcomed generalists with open arms, but by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the AAAS had become an association of specialists. In 1873, insect researchers formed the Entomological Club within the AAAS; by 1882, the association had a total of nine sections: mathematics and astronomy, physics, chemistry, mechanical science, geology and geography, biology, microscopy and histology, anthropology, and economic science and statistics. The annual meeting each December was not only a forum for the presentation of research and the discussion of issues at the forefront of science but also a means to forge links across disciplines, and the association urged all of the sectional organizations to attend. The 1850 meeting included a session on the fashionable field of craniometry. In 1887, physicists Albert Michelson and Edward Morley presented the findings of their groundbreaking ether-drift experiments. In 1908, chemists Gilbert N. Lewis and Richard C. Tolman lectured on Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity. In 1916, physicist Robert Millikan lectured on the Bohr atom. Another forum for the dissemination of science is the journal Science. In 1894, James McKeen Cattell, a professor of experimental psychology at Columbia University, began to edit Science with the aim of publicizing both the latest scientific research and the agenda of the AAAS. Cattell intertwined the content of the journal with the business of the association, which, in 1895, began to subsidize publication. In 1900, AAAS members

Section 14: American Association for the Advancement of Science 889 began to receive Science as a benefit of membership, and, in 1944, the AAAS acquired the journal. During his fifty-year tenure at Science, Cattell emphasized the uniqueness of the AAAS, reminding readers that, unlike the National Academy of Sciences, it did not receive federal funding. Certain that bigger was better, Cattell made a virtue of the AAAS’s size, its geographic diversity, and its disciplinary breadth. As permanent chair of the Executive Committee of the AAAS between 1925 and 1941, Cattell saw in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal an opportunity to strengthen government support of science. Mindful that the Great Depression had hurt scientists as well as the working class, the AAAS in 1934 urged Congress to create the Project for Scientific Aid for Public Works and the Recovery Program for Scientific Progress within the framework of New Deal agencies. The proposal called for $2.6 million to create jobs for unemployed scientists for six months. In addition to this initiative, the AAAS urged the government and universities to grant fellowships to unemployed scientists. Beyond these efforts the AAAS joined physicist Karl Compton in seeking $16 million in congressional aid to scientific research on the grounds that scientific knowledge was essential to national welfare. In these ways, the New Deal invigorated the AAAS’s call for government support of science. The Great Depression gave way to the affluence of post–World War II America, but the AAAS was slow to benefit from prosperity. The 1947 meeting attracted 2,700 attendees, down from nearly 5,000 the previous year, as the association suspended the presentation of technical papers in favor of papers that drew broad connections among scientific disciplines. In 1948, a group of biologists voted to establish the American Institute of Biological Societies with no formal ties to the AAAS, and, in 1951, institute members voted to hold their annual meeting apart from that of the AAAS. The decision prompted the AAAS to convene that year at the Arden House Conference at Columbia University. Conferees acknowledged that the old ideal of the AAAS as a forum for the exchange of the latest science could no longer be the chief aim. This function would need to be secondary, given that the disciplinary organizations were now the clearinghouses for the latest

science. Conferees therefore committed the AAAS to increasing public awareness of the importance of science. In keeping with this ideal, the AAAS began in the mid-1950s to hold seminars for the media and to publish books with popular appeal rather than just for a small community of scholars. In 1955, the association accepted $300,000 from the Carnegie Corporation to create a Science Teaching Improvement Program, which evolved into its education department. Especially popular was the AAAS’s television show Nova. As the AAAS has grown, it has undertaken new initiatives. In the 1990s, its presidents F. Sherwood Rowland and Jane Lubchenco directed the AAAS to publicize the dangers of ecological degradation and global warming. In a broad concern for human rights, the AAAS condemned the governments of Cambodia and Nicaragua. Eager to persuade a new generation of children and adolescents to pursue an education in science, the AAAS in the mid-1990s created the radio program Kinetic City Super Crew and a companion Web site. At the same time, the AAAS broadened the diversity of its members. It had enrolled women as early as 1850 but was slow to promote them to leadership positions. In 1969, AAAS members elected their first female president, mathematician Mina Rees. Since then, women have totaled one-quarter of AAAS presidents and members of the board of directors. In 1972, the AAAS created the Office of Opportunities in Science to encourage women and minorities to pursue careers in science, engineering, and mathematics. From its nucleus of eighty-seven men in 1848, the AAAS in 2007 has grown to 120,000 members and 262 affiliate organizations, serving millions of scientists worldwide. Christopher Cumo

Sources American Association for the Advancement of Science. http://www.aaas.org. Kohlstedt, Sally G. The Formation of the American Scientific Community: The American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848–1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976. Kohlstedt, Sally G., Michael M. Sokal, and Bruce V. Lewenstein. The Establishment of Science in America: 150 Years of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999.

890 Section 14: American Historical Association

AMERIC AN HISTORIC AL A S S O C I AT I O N The American Historical Association (AHA) is a private organization of historians dedicated to preserving America’s historical resources and disseminating historical knowledge and research to a wide audience. The AHA was founded in response to the increasing professionalization of the study of history in the late nineteenth century. In September 1884, a group of historians met in Saratoga Springs, New York, and decided to form the AHA as an independent organization. Prior to this time, the main national organization for historians was the American Social Science Association. The AHA grew in membership during the 1880s and became incorporated by the U.S. government in 1889. Today, the organization is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has 15,000 members. Throughout its history, it has played important roles in promoting historical research, archiving historical manuscripts and artifacts, and developing tools to assist history teachers at all levels. Publishing historical research is an important goal of the AHA. Although this is accomplished through a variety of journals and monographs, the flagship of the AHA since 1895 has been the American Historical Review, a journal devoted to all aspects of world and American history. In the early years of the AHA, the compilation of bibliographies of historical works grew in importance because of the need to organize scattered historical resources and writings. The AHA produced a Guide to Historical Literature in 1931 (revised in 1961), which provided an extensive bibliography of historical writings about all historical periods. The AHA collects and preserves important historical documents and artifacts by promoting the creation and expansion of historical archives at the state and local levels. AHA members such as John Franklin Jameson, concerned that the U.S. government neglected its own historical records, which were haphazardly organized and often stored in buildings that were not fireproof, pushed for a national archives beginning in 1890. Eventually, Congress appropriated funds

for the task in 1926. Construction of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., began in 1931 and was completed in 1935. The AHA has also promoted secondary education in the United States by advocating a fouryear history curriculum as well as encouraging the training of high school history teachers. The AHA has been a trendsetter for social science professional organizations. It has shown the influence that a collection of individuals who share similar goals can have on the larger society. Wade D. Pfau

Sources American Historical Association. http://www.historians.org. Jameson, J. Franklin. “The American Historical Association, 1884–1909.” American Historical Review 15:1 (1909): 1–20. Link, Arthur S. “The American Historical Association, 1884–1984.” American Historical Review 90:1 (1985): 1–17.

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF N AT U R A L H I S T O R Y The American Museum of Natural History— located on the west side of Manhattan’s Central Park at 79th Street—began in 1869 when Albert Smith Bickmore, a student of biologist Louis Agassiz, managed to convince some wealthy patrons and government officials to found a worldclass museum. Those involved began by purchasing individual collections composed of thousands of mounted birds, mammals, fish, and reptiles. These objects were stored in a temporary location until the museum was built. The museum also sponsored collecting and research expeditions. By the middle of the twentieth century, the museum held the largest natural history collection in the United States, supplied by some 1,000 major expeditions and maintained by more than 500 employees. The building, which also contained dozens of laboratories and a 200,000volume library, had been visited by more than 100 million people. Today, the museum’s holdings are so rich and extensive that they are housed in a complex consisting of twenty-five buildings. These include

Section 14: American Philosophical Society 891 the Hayden Planetarium, the Rose Center for Earth and Space, an IMAX theater, exhibit halls, a working library, and the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Building. The impressive main entrance features four 54 foot columns, surmounted by statues of Daniel Boone, James Audubon, and Lewis and Clark; it opens into a large, classical interior. The world-famous collection of the museum includes countless life-like dioramas of bear, elk, wolves, tigers, and gorillas; dinosaurs and their eggs (the tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is 18.5 feet high); elephants; a giant squid; a 76-foot-long blue whale replica, which hangs from the ceiling; amphibians and reptiles; fish; insects; invertebrates; fossils; shells; coral; Native American artifacts such as headdresses, totem poles, a Hopi pueblo, and a 64 foot Haida canoe; artifacts of the Maya and Aztec peoples; pottery; extraordinary rocks, minerals, and gems (including the Star of India sapphire and the De Long star ruby); carved jade, ivory, and amber; astronomical, meteorological, and geological exhibits such as models of volcanoes and earthquakes; thousands of meteorites; and some 32 million other items. A number of prominent Americans have been associated with the museum in one way or another. Theodore Roosevelt and J. Pierpont Morgan were instrumental in its founding. Henry Fairfield Osborn’s research in paleontology earned him its presidency. Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and George Gaylord Simpson all worked there, and Robert E. Peary, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, A.L. Kroeber, Colin Turnbull, and Napoleon Chagnon did fieldwork or led expeditions throughout the world (including Mongolia, Patagonia, New Guinea, the North Pole, Africa, the North Pacific, India, Burma, and the western part of the United States). Like the National Geographic Society, the American Museum of Natural History sponsors both scientific research, sometimes with living creatures and carried out on the premises, and expeditions. It also supports Natural History, a periodical that keeps readers apprised of happenings in the natural world. Each of the year’s ten issues includes sections on the museum and listings of special exhibits (e.g., live frogs or butterflies), lectures, and educational programs. Robert Hauptman

Sources American Museum of Natural History. http://www.amnh.org. Hellman, Geoffrey. Bankers, Bones, and Beetles: The First Century of the American Museum of Natural History. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press, 1969. Rexer, Lyle, and Rachel Klein. American Museum of Natural History: 125 Years of Expedition and Discovery. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995. Saunders, John Richard. The World of Natural History as Revealed in the American Museum of Natural History. New York: Sheridan House, 1952.

A M E R I C A N P H I LO S O P H I C A L SOCIETY The American Philosophical Society was the first scientific society in America. It was founded in Philadelphia in 1743, the same year that Benjamin Franklin published A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the British Plantations in America. Franklin was the first secretary of the society, and Thomas Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the first president. The seed from which the American Philosophical Society sprang was a group of young men called the Junto that Franklin had formed in 1727 to promote inquiry, experiment, and the exchange of ideas on a wide range of subjects. The society merged in 1769 with the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge, also founded by Franklin, who became the first president of the combined American Philosophical Society and held the office until his death. Hopkins and Samuel Vaughan helped revive the society after the American Revolution, in part because of a charter granted by the state of Pennsylvania in 1780 that allowed the society to correspond with learned individuals and institutions “of any nation or country” on its legitimate business at all times, “whether in peace or war.” In 1789, the first woman was elected to the society: Russia’s Princess Dashkova, the president of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. Franklin was succeeded as president in 1791 by the astronomer David Rittenhouse who, in the 1760s, had won international recognition for the society by plotting the transit of Venus from telescopes mounted on a platform behind what is now Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson served as the society’s third

892 Section 14: American Philosophical Society

The American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, formally established as such in 1769, is the oldest learned society in the United States. Benjamin Franklin was elected as its first president. (Library of Congress, HABS PA, 51PHILA, 46–1)

president, from 1797 to 1814. Along with others in the society, Jefferson helped prepare Lewis and Clark for the scientific, linguistic, and anthropological elements of their exploration of the newly acquired lands of the Louisiana Purchase. The society sponsored the publication of the papers of Lewis and Clark, as well as those of Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Henry, and William Penn, among many others. The society also promoted America’s economic independence by seeking to investigate, understand, and improve agriculture, manufacturing, transportation, and other areas of endeavor. An introductory page in the first Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (published since 1771 and currently published in five issues a year) states: “The Promoting of useful Knowledge in general, and such branches thereof in particular . . . being the express purpose for which the American Philosophical Society was instituted; the publication of such curious and useful Papers as may, from time to time, be communicated to them, becomes of course, one material part of their design.” The interests of the society evolved over time. By the last half of the nineteenth century, the main areas of inquiry were American paleontology, geology, astronomical and meteorological observations, and Indian ethnology. A research grant program established in the 1930s has supported such projects as the archeo-

logical excavations of Tikal in Guatemala and the second Byrd Antarctic expedition to measure the depth of the polar ice cap. The society sponsors five research grant and fellowship programs, the most notable being the Franklin Grants in the humanities and a research grant in American history of the early national period. Most grants are used to produce scholarly books and articles, but grant programs have also assisted research in the humanities and social sciences, clinical medicine, North American Indian linguistics, and ethnohistory. There is also a library resident fellowship program for research in the society’s collections. One of the recipients of the clinical medicine program, David Fraser, later led the U.S. Public Health Service investigation of Legionnaires disease. The society’s biannual meetings in April and November include the presentation of papers and discussions exploring topics in the sciences and humanities. Topics have included underwater archeology, nuclear magnetic imaging, Shakespeare’s writings, and race relations in modern America. The society also supports additional sessions, during which specialists present papers on topics of interest to a more limited audience. Session topics include the complexity of life, American presidential elections, and the protein as a building-block of life. The Proceedings (begun in 1838), a quarterly, publishes papers delivered at the biannual meetings of the society as well as papers submitted independently. The society also publishes larger studies in Memoirs (begun in 1935); subjects have ranged from ancient Egyptian science to modern-day Pennsylvania flora. The society has counted among its membership such notables as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, John Marshall, the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, Robert Fulton, Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Robert Frost, Louis Pasteur, Elizabeth Cady Agassiz, John James Audubon, Marie Curie, Gerty T. Cori, Albert Einstein, George C. Marshall, Linus Pauling, Margaret Mead, and Thomas Edison. As the society entered the twenty-first century, it counted more than 850 members, 85 percent of whom resided in the United States. The society confers membership based on scholarly and scientific ac-

Section 14: Arminianism 893 complishments in any of five areas: mathematical and physical sciences; biological sciences; social sciences; humanities; and arts, professions, and leaders in public and private affairs. More than 200 members of the society have received the Nobel Prize. The society recognizes accomplishments not only by conferring membership but by awarding special prizes and medals as well. The Magellanic Premium (1786) is awarded for discoveries “relating to navigation, astronomy, or natural philosophy.” The oldest scientific prize given by an American institution, it has acknowledged such discoveries and accomplishments as the circumnavigation of the globe by submarine and the advent of various forms of space technology. The Benjamin Franklin Medal (1906) is awarded for distinguished achievement in the sciences. The Lashley Award (1935) recognizes achievements in neurobiology. The Lewis Award (1935) honors a publication by the society and has been awarded to Enrico Fermi (1946), Millard Meiss (1967), and Kenneth Setton (1984), among others. The Moe Prize (1982) and Phillips Prize (1888) honor papers in the humanities and jurisprudence. The Barzun Prize (1992), named for Jacques Barzun, one of the founders of the discipline of cultural history, recognizes contributions to American or European literature, education, and cultural history. The Jefferson Medal (1993) is awarded for distinguished achievement in the arts, humanities, or social sciences. The Dalland Prize (2001) recognizes outstanding achievement in patient-oriented clinical research. The society remains headquartered in Philadelphia and occupies two buildings in Independence National Historical Park: the Philosophical Hall (erected 1785–1789) and the Library, a replica of the original home of the Library Company of Philadelphia (1798). The Library houses 200,000 books and bound periodicals, 7,000,000 manuscripts, and thousands of prints and maps, primarily devoted to U.S. history to 1840 and the history of science and technology, especially eighteenth- and nineteenth-century natural history, linguistics, the modern life sciences, physics, and computer technology. The Library also houses the Benjamin Franklin Papers, the papers of artist Charles Willson Peale and family, and the papers

of Franz Boas, founder of modern American anthropology. Richard M. Edwards

Sources American Philosophical Society. http://www.amphilsoc.org. Carter, Edward C. One Grand Pursuit: A Brief History of the American Philosophical Society’s First 250 Years, 1743–1993. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993. Smith, Murphy D. Oak from an Acorn: A History of the American Philosophical Society Library, 1770–1803. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1976.

ARMINIANISM Arminianism was a movement that sprang from Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1559–1609), who questioned the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Educated at Geneva, Arminius was a respected minister in Amsterdam. He defined predestination in terms of God’s foreknowledge. In his system, God foresees that alongside those whom he has decreed for election there are those who freely choose to reject Christ and are damned. Although all are depraved, God has extended “prevenient” grace to all, so that faith is possible for all under Christ’s universal atonement. Arminius’s views contradicted orthodox Calvinism. Arminius became a more controversial figure upon his appointment to a professorship at the University of Leyden in 1603. There, he clashed with fellow professor Franciscus Gomarus, a strict Calvinist who had protested his hiring. Critics repeatedly condemned Arminius but failed to dislodge him from his teaching post, where he remained until his death in 1609. His followers, led by his successor at Leyden, Simon Episcopus, formalized Arminius’s theology, thereby giving birth to “Arminianism.” When followers of Gomarus (Gomarists) attempted to have them removed from teaching posts, Arminians responded by drafting a Remonstrance (statement of beliefs) in 1610. The Dutch Arminian supporters of the statement henceforward became known as Remonstrants. The Synod of Dort (November 1618–May 1619) condemned the Remonstrants as heretics

894 Section 14: Arminianism and permanently alienated them from the Dutch Reformed Church. Over the next two centuries, Arminianism moved well beyond Arminius and increasingly came to be associated with the complete rejection of Calvinism. It proved to be most influential in Great Britain and the United States. Controversy over Arminianism arose in colonial New England during the early eighteenth century, as Anglicans gradually established a presence there. Calvinism had been the established orthodoxy among Congregational New Englanders since the arrival of Puritans in the early seventeenth century; they were determined to keep Anglicanism, and the Arminianism that often accompanied it, at bay. The motive was as much political as theological, for they feared a large Anglican presence would lead to conformity with the mother country and the eventual establishment of the Church of England. In 1722 what came to be called the “great apostasy” shook Yale College (then the bastion of Reformed orthodoxy), and indeed the rest of New England, when it was discovered that Yale rector Timothy Cutler had been meeting regularly with a group of dissident clergy, along with former and current Yale tutors, all of whom had embraced Arminianism. Trustees at Yale quickly fired those involved and enforced strict new guidelines for tutors and rectors. The following summer, a popular young minister and Yale graduate named Jonathan Edwards delivered a commencement address in which he denounced Arminianism in apocalyptic terms and reaffirmed the soundness of strict Calvinist doctrine. At least temporarily, Yale remained a Calvinist stronghold. Later, as a famous revivalist and author, Edwards would continue to do battle with what he called the “great noise” over Arminianism. In the subsequent Great Awakening of the 1730s, 1740s, and 1750s, Edwards and other Calvinists called themselves New Lights and were opposed by Arminians who called themselves Old Lights. The Old Lights, led by the likes of Charles Chauncy, minister of Boston, promoted a rational Christianity informed by science. They believed that the natural world was an “elder scripture,” that the study of nature would reveal knowledge of God, and that said

natural theology showed that God is good and just and does not arbitrarily condemn humans to everlasting damnation. The Old Lights believed in a morality based on duty, order, and reason, and they were reluctant revolutionaries during the American Revolution. By the late eighteenth century, Old Light Arminians and scientists such as Jeremy Belknap of Boston were embracing universal salvation. During the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century, the former New Lights, especially the Methodists and Baptists, embraced the relaxed approach toward Calvinist damnation of Arminianism. By the mid-nineteenth century, Arminianism was firmly established as the new orthodoxy of American Protestantism. Stephen Peterson

Sources Gonzales, Justo L. A History of Christian Thought: From the Protestant Reformation to the Twentieth Century. Vol. 3. Revised ed. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1987. MacCulloch, Diarmaid. “Prophets Without Honor: Arminius and the Arminians.” History Today, October 1989, 27–34. Sell, Alan P.F. The Great Debate: Calvinism, Arminianism, and Salvation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker House, 1983. Slaatte, Howard A. The Arminian Arm of Theology: The Theologies of John Fletcher and His Precursor, James Arminius. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1977.

DEISM Deism, the belief in a “natural” or “rational” monotheism, flourished in the eighteenthcentury European Enlightenment. Inherently unorthodox and opposed to religious doctrine, deism offered a malleable, and often quite personal, religious system. As such, there was little agreement, then or now, as to its exact tenets. Instead, deism has had numerous variants. For many educated elites skeptical of Christianity, the new faith offered a means to reform the ancient religion by removing unreasonable doctrines—such as transubstantiation and salvation—while maintaining a divine presence in a designed world. More radical thinkers argued that deism could replace Christianity. For nearly two centuries, debates raged over the sanctity of religious orthodoxy and the religious

Section 14: Field Museum of Natural History 895 implications of modern science, as intellectuals struggled to create a framework for a “rational” religion. Although varied, deism contained a number of general principles. First, most deists were committed to monotheism and the existence of a higher power. At the same time, owing to the religious strife of the seventeenth century, most adherents were vehemently opposed to organized religions, particularly the ritualism of Roman Catholicism and the extremism of English Puritanism. Such religious excesses and intolerance were considered antithetical to true religion; the belief in a vengeful God, or doctrines of asceticism and religious hatred, were considered modern perversions. Ordained priests and other spiritual authorities were equally suspect. Instead, most deists believed in a single universal religion, often accepting the wisdom of figures from other spiritual and philosophical traditions, such as Socrates, Buddha, and Muhammad. Every tradition had something to offer, in part because each advocated universal principles such as human benevolence and morality. Other universal principles, including empiricism, skepticism, and rationalism—the hallmarks of the Scientific Revolution—soon became a foundation for the new religion. The scientific discoveries of the seventeenth century deeply influenced the development and contours of deism. Following the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia in 1687, which explained mathematically the movements of heavenly bodies by a universal gravitational force, many intellectuals argued that the universe is governed by rational laws. Controversy arose over the idea of divine intervention: Some deists insisted God merely determined the original universal laws (like gravity) and then stepped back, allowing the world to run itself much like a machine; others maintained that God continued as an active presence in the world. Regardless, most deists accepted that the world was designed and operated according to scientific rules that could be understood through human reason. The celebration of human reason led many to dispute the role of revelation and denounce a number of traditional doctrines as mere superstition. Many deists were prominent and influential members of society. The list of European deists

includes such luminaries as Pierre Bayle, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Jean d’Alembert, Moses Mendelssohn, and Immanuel Kant. Newton, notably, remained a Christian. Deism also influenced many leaders of the American Revolution. Freemasons arrived in the colonies in the early eighteenth century and quietly established themselves as the primary adherents of deism there, eventually finding favor among the educated colonial elite, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Jefferson’s deism was evident in the Jefferson Bible, a compilation of the New Testament that focused on Jesus the teacher and moralist but omitted passages that suggested divinity and the supernatural. Paine, one of America’s foremost deists, described in The Age of Reason (1794) a rational approach to religion and included a polemic against Christianity and the New Testament, arguing that science contradicts most stories of Jesus in the Gospels. Franklin, in his Autobiography, denied that he was a deist, yet his religious proclivities focused on a rational source of universal goodness—the deist God. J.G. Whitesides

Sources Byrne, Peter. Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion: The Legacy of Deism. New York: Routledge, 1989. Jacobs, Margaret C. Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1991.

FIELD MUSEUM OF N AT U R A L H I S T O R Y The Field Museum in Chicago has provided natural history and cultural exhibits for the general public as well as materials for scholarly research since it was created to house its core biological and anthropological collections, which had been assembled for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Originally known as the Columbian Museum of Chicago, it was renamed the Field Museum of Natural History in 1905 in honor of Marshall Field, the Chicago department store magnate who was the museum’s first major benefactor.

896 Section 14: Field Museum of Natural History Field, who died in 1906, also bequeathed to the museum its sustaining funds and the lakefront building (1921) that anchors the Chicago Parks District’s Museum Campus. This campus also includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium (1929) and the Adler Planetarium (1930). Though the Field Museum was officially renamed the Chicago Natural History Museum in 1943, that name was never commonly used, and the Field name was restored in 1966, both to honor Field and to reflect the name used by most Chicagoans. The Field Museum is divided into four main departments: Anthropology, Botany, Geology, and Zoology. The curatorial and scientific staff work as a team in conducting interdisciplinary research in anthropology, archeology, ethnography, evolutionary biology, paleontology, and systematic biology; in managing the collections; and in collaborating on public programming with the museum’s Departments of Education and Exhibits. The Harris Loan Program, which began in 1912, circulates artifacts, specimens, audiovisual materials, and activity kits to Chicago area schools. The Field also maintains a 250,000volume natural history library and many interactive exhibits. One such exhibit, the Underground Adventure, provides a different perspective on life by shrinking visitors to the size of a penny relative to the oversized exhibit components. Two of the museum’s laboratories can be viewed by the public: the MacDonald’s Prep Lab prepares fossils for study, and the Regenstein Laboratory demonstrates methods of archeological preservation and study. The museum has more than 20 million specimens, all of which are being photographically digitized for easier scholarly and Internet access. Some of its best-known animal exhibits include Sue, the world’s largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton; two very large African (Kenyan) elephants that have stood in the museum’s Stanley Field Hall since 1921; the two preserved male lions of Tsavo, which killed over 140 workers during the construction of a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River in East Africa in 1898, a story told in the 1996 film The Ghost and the Darkness; and many other specimens located in the Nature Walk, Mammals of Asia, Mammals of Africa, and other exhibits.Carl Akeley, the museum’s head taxidermist from

1895 to 1909, invented techniques that enabled the Field Museum to display animals in dioramas mimicking their natural habitats, a presentation method that continues in natural history exhibits throughout the world. The museum houses many cultural exhibits, including traditional clothing from Tibet and China, a nineteenth-century Maori meeting house, and a Native American exhibit that features totem poles and traditional costumes as well as a Pawnee earth lodge. The Inside Ancient Egypt exhibit interactively demonstrates some of the daily activities common to life in Cleopatra’s Egypt, such as food preparation, religious practice, burial, dress, business, and family relationships. Twenty-three human and animal mummies are on display, along with a tomb adorned with 5,000-year-old hieroglyphs. The Grainger Hall of Gems and the Hall of Jades concentrate on diamonds and other gems and their uses. The Evolving Planet, a Life over Time exhibit, traces 4 billion years of history and the evolution of life on Earth and includes a dinosaur hall. Richard M. Edwards

Sources Alexander, Edward P. The Museum in America: Innovators and Pioneers. American Association for State and Local History Book Series. Lanham, MD: AltaMira, 1997. Danlioy, Victor J. Chicago’s Museums: A Complete Guide to the City’s Cultural Attractions. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1991. The Field Museum. http://www.fieldmuseum.org.

H A R VA R D M U S E U M O F N AT U R A L H I S T O R Y Formally established in 1995, the Harvard Museum of Natural History is the offspring institution of the Harvard University Herbaria, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and the Mineralogical and Geological Museum. The primary mission of Harvard’s Museum of Natural History is to display the collections of its parent institutions. In addition, it offers educational programs to children, adults, and teachers, as well as public lectures and films dedicated to various aspects of natural history and tours to places of historical

Section 14: Hazard, Ebenezer 897 and environmental interest around the world. The museum is housed in the same Cambridge, Massachusetts, building as its parent institutions and the institutionally distinct Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Founded by botanist Asa Gray in 1858, the Harvard University Herbaria is the oldest of the three parent institutions. The nucleus of its collection was donated by William Hooker, director of the Royal Botanic Garden in Kew, England. First called the Museum of Vegetable Products, the institution was originally dedicated to horticulture. With a strong practical focus, the museum’s early directors sought practical uses for wild and domesticated plants. Today, the Herbaria consists of three parts: the Gray Herbarium and the Botanical Museum, both housed in the University Museum building, dedicated in 1891, and the Arnold Arboretum, founded in 1872 and named for its original benefactor, whaling merchant James Arnold. The arboretum is located on 265 acres in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston. The second-oldest of the Museum of Natural History’s parent institutions is the Museum of Comparative Zoology, founded in 1859 by Swissborn and German-educated zoologist and geologist Louis Agassiz, who emigrated to the United States in 1847 to become a professor in those disciplines at Harvard College. So closely linked is the man and institution that the museum is often called “The Agassiz.” Combining his own collection with those already belonging to the college and those donated by benefactors, Agassiz set up the exhibits to highlight the diversity and comparative relationships of Earth’s fauna. At the time, most natural history collections were the possessions of amateur zoologists and paleontologists, and usually were displayed in random and haphazard ways. Harvard’s zoological collection is now housed in the University Museum building. While it still collects and preserves specimens, the museum is largely dedicated to education and research efforts in various branches of zoology and paleontology, with departments including Biological Oceanography, Entomology, Herpetology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate Paleontology, Invertebrate Zoology, Mammalogy, Marine Biology, Malacology, Ornithology, Population Genetics, and Vertebrate Paleontology.

Before the opening of the University Museum building in 1891, the collections of the Mineralogical and Geological Museum were maintained by the university’s Chemistry Department. Considered one of the finest of its type in the world, the mineralogical collection is noted for the diversity and uniqueness of its specimens. James Ciment

Sources Dupree, A. Hunter. Asa Gray, American Botanist, Friend of Darwin. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959, 1988. Harvard Museum of Natural History. http://www.hmnh. harvard.edu. Lurie, Edward. Nature and the American Mind: Louis Agassiz and the Culture of Science. New York: Science History Publications, 1974. Pick, Nancy. The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. New York: HarperResource, 2004.

H A Z A R D, E B E N E Z E R (1744–1817) Ebenezer Hazard, a collector and editor of historical documents, provided the first major public record of the United States and its colonial past. He also served as postmaster of New York (1775), surveyor of post roads (1776–1782), and postmaster general of the United States (1782–1789). In 1792 and 1794, he published two volumes of Historical Collections: Consisting of State Papers, and Other Authentic Documents; Intended as Materials for an History of the United States of America. Born in Philadelphia in 1744 and educated at Princeton, Hazard began his professional life as a bookseller before becoming involved in the postal service during the Revolutionary War. Especially interested in history, both human and natural, Hazard engaged his free time in the pursuit of knowledge of both subjects. His friend and collaborator in this antiquarian pursuit was the historian and geographer Jeremy Belknap. The Belknap-Hazard collection of letters, spanning twenty years (1779–1798), includes a host of fascinating epistolary investigations into geography, mineralogy, political science, natural science, and particularly history.

898 Section 14: Hazard, Ebenezer Hazard was also a correspondent with other notable thinkers of the time, such as the geographer Jedidiah Morse, the lexicographer Noah Webster, the historian William Gordon, and the naturalist Thomas Jefferson. Hazard was recognized for his scientific interests with membership in the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. During his many years of service with the U.S. Post Office, Hazard had conceived of a collection of historical documents. Spending years on horseback during the Revolutionary War, putting post offices in order and determining the best post roads, he had a chance to see most of the new nation and to interact with public officials. Astonished to discover that most public documents were haphazardly collected and stored, he decided that the best means of preserving America’s history was by multiplying the copies of its public documents. To this end, he set about copying as many as he could, spending weeks at a time crouched at a writing desk, transcribing documents. As the years passed, he collected such a vast number of such documents that he decided to publish them, providing Americans with a public record of their brief past. Hazard’s Historical Collections focused mostly on the colonial documents of New England, such as the Records of the United Colonies of New England (the New England Confederation). Thomas Jefferson welcomed the project, writing to Hazard that the collected documents “are curious monuments of the infancy of our country. . . . Time and accident are committing daily havoc on the original [documents] deposited in our public offices. The late war has done the work of centuries in this business. The lost cannot be recovered, but let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.” Although Hazard’s Historical Collections was a financial failure, the two volumes of documents quickly became the standard that other collectors and editors would use in determining what to preserve and how to preserve the past. Peter Force and Jared Sparks, for example, two of the most important documentary editors of the

nineteenth century, relied heavily on Hazard’s Historical Collections in their own historical work. Russell Lawson

Sources Lawson, Russell M. The American Plutarch: Jeremy Belknap and the Historian’s Dialogue with the Past. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. Shelley, Fred. “Ebenezer Hazard: America’s First Historical Editor.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 13 (1955).

H E M P E L , C A R L G U S TAV (1905–1997) The philosopher of science Carl Gustav Hempel is best known for his work on logical positivism (he preferred the term “logical empiricism”), an approach that asserts the primacy of scientific observation over metaphysical or subjective argument Born in Orianenburg, Germany, on January 8, 1905, Hempel had an eclectic education. He studied mathematics and symbolic logic at the University of Göttingen, and mathematics, physics, and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Berlin. He was awarded his doctorate in philosophy from the latter institution in 1934. While there, he became a member of the Berlin Group, an influential circle of philosophers who asserted that experience is the only source of knowledge and that symbolic, or mathematical, logic offers the key to the analysis of philosophical problems. After Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, Hempel emigrated to Belgium. Although he was not Jewish, his father-in-law was Jewish, and Hempel was an outspoken critic of Nazi antiSemitism. In 1937, Hempel accepted a position at the University of Chicago as a research associate in philosophy but returned briefly to Belgium. With the Nazis threatening war in Europe, Hempel permanently emigrated to the United States in 1939. He taught philosophy at a number of institutions of higher learning, including the City College of New York (1939–1940), Queens College (1940–1948), Yale University (1948–1955), Princeton University (1955–1964), the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (1964–1966), and the University

Section 14: Hermeneutics 899 of Pittsburgh (1976–1985). Between teaching stints in Israel and Pittsburgh, he taught courses at the Berkeley and Irvine campuses of the University of California. Hempel was a pioneer in the study of the deductive-nomological model of scientific inquiry, which sees scientific theories as the result of deductive arguments involving two parts: observed facts and natural law. Hempel first explored this model in his work with philosopher Paul Oppenheim, which included a 1936 article, “Studies in the Logic of Explanation,” published in the journal Philosophy of Science. This work was critical to the relationship between scientific observation or experimentation and scientific theory. Hempel and Oppenheim’s work also helped explain the basic differences between fundamental theory and derived theory. Fundamental theory is universal, like the laws of physics discovered by Isaac Newton, which apply to all objects at every time and in every place. Derived theory is determined from the observation of specific things, such as Johannes Kepler’s observations of the motions of the sun and the planets, which apply only to those bodies in that particular space. Hempel’s major published works include Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science (1952) and the 1988 article “Provisos: A Problem Concerning the Inferential Function of Scientific Theories,” published in the philosophical journal Erkenntnis. He died in Princeton, New Jersey, on November 9, 1997. James Ciment

Sources Fetzer, James H., ed. Science, Explanation, and Rationality: Aspects of the Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Scheffler, Isaac. The Anatomy of Inquiry. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.

HERMENEUTICS Hermeneutics, or the science of interpretation, takes its name from the Greek god Hermes, a messenger of the gods who proclaimed and interpreted the words of the gods to mortals.

Hermeneutical principles were applied by ancient Greeks to sacred and legal texts. The medieval Catholic Church’s hermeneutics recognized four acceptable interpretations of scripture: the literal, the allegorical, the tropological (moral), and the anagogical (spiritual or mystical). During the Renaissance, the rediscovery of ancient texts and a new appreciation for the Bible text in its original languages (Hebrew and Greek) led eventually to what became known as the “grammatico-historical” approach. Protestant Reformers were determined to discover a universally applicable set of principles that could be applied by any Christian, not just clergy. A belief in the perspicuity (clarity) of the scriptures was combined with the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, leading the Reformers to contend that one can discern the Bible’s true meaning through the use of proper hermeneutical principles. Simultaneously, Protestantism sparked an interest in the physical sciences; hermeneutics, as a “science,” played a role in at least three ways. First, the very concept that interpreting the Bible is “science” showed the interplay between special revelation (scripture) and general revelation (nature). Second, the relationship between special and general revelation (on matters such as cosmology) was bound up in the question of hermeneutics and how a particular scriptural text (or scientific phenomenon) should be viewed. Third, Protestants considered natural science to be like a book that can be read inductively. The philosopher Francis Bacon was perhaps the best-known proponent of this “two-book,” inductive empirical approach. The American scientist and clergyman Jeremy Belknap in 1792 proclaimed that nature is “elder scripture,” holding out answers about God and his creation to the inquisitive mind of the scientist and Christian. Fueled by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, hermeneutics developed particularly in three areas in early modern Europe: classical learning, law, and philosophy. A renewed interest in the Greek and Latin classics led scholars on a quest for the authentic text of ancient documents. A revived interest in Roman law prompted scholars to seek universal principles of interpretation, often in terms of exegeting a

900 Section 14: Hermeneutics text grammatically. The third area, philosophy, led ultimately to modern hermeneutics. Perhaps more than any other eighteenthcentury philosopher, the German Christian Wolff enunciated the view that hermeneutics entails universally valid principles—laws that apply for all fields of knowledge requiring interpretation. Wolff emphasized authorial intent, as judged by how effective the author had been in using syntax to convey his or her intended meaning. The theories of another German, Friedrich Schleiermacher, marked a further turning point for hermeneutics. Schleiermacher distinguished between a written text considered linguistically and the same writing as an expression of the author ’s life experience. For Schleiermacher, the key to understanding was found in the nexus between these two aspects. Schleiermacher’s approach, which reflected the ideas of the Romantic movement, clashed with the earlier, Enlightenment-inspired quest for the rational, and it affected the natural sciences as well as the liberal arts. Modern humans were seen as vacillating between a subjectivistic approach and one that purported to be totally objective. American contributors to this debate included the pragmatists Charles S. Peirce and William James. Recent European hermeneutical philosophers exerting a strong influence on American philosophy and science include Paul Ricoeur and Michael Polanyi. Hermeneutics continues to play a significant role in the search for a universal and all-encompassing principle of interpretation— whether the object of discussion is a written text or the phenomena of the cosmos. Frank J. Smith

Sources Bleicher, Josef. Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy, and Critique. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980. Hanko, Herman C. “Issues in Hermeneutics.” Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, issues for April 1990, November 1990, April 1991, November 1991. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. Mueller-Vollmer, Kurt. The Hermeneutics Reader: Texts of the German Tradition from the Enlightenment to the Present. New York: Continuum, 1988.

K U H N , T H O M A S S. (1922–1996) Best known for his landmark book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas S. Kuhn remains one of the most influential and popular historians and philosophers of science of the past half-century. Since publication, Structure has been translated into twenty-five languages, and the English edition alone has sold more than 1 million copies. This work has influenced historians, philosophers, scientists, economists, and sociologists, making it required reading in a variety of disciplines. It has also generated a sizable body of literature that examines, critiques, and develops many of Kuhn’s ideas. Thomas Samuel Kuhn was born on July 18, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Following an accelerated undergraduate program in physics, and work on developing radar technology for the U.S. government during World War II, he returned to Harvard for graduate study in physics in 1945. During the dissertation stage of his graduate training in solid state physics, Kuhn convinced his mentor James B. Conant, the president of Harvard University and a chemist, to support his appointment to Harvard’s Society of Fellows in order to transform himself into a historian of science. Kuhn hoped the history of science would be an avenue to pursue philosophical questions about the development of scientific ideas. Kuhn received his doctorate in physics in 1949 and, despite being largely self-taught in philosophy and the history of science, became an instructor and then an assistant professor of general education and history of science until 1956. It was during this time that his groundbreaking work on Structure began as a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston. In 1956, Kuhn accepted a post at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to teaching history of science and intellectual history from a scientific point of view, Kuhn published his first book, The Copernican Revolution (1957). In it, he examined an early example of the type of scientific revolution addressed in his later writings. Challenging the orthodox understanding of scientific progress, he suggested that the devel-

Section 14: Kuhn, Thomas S. 901

Thomas Kuhn’s view that science progresses in abrupt, periodic revolutions, or “paradigm shifts,” rather than by the uniform accumulation of knowledge, was itself revolutionary. (Bill Pierce/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

opment of scientific ideas is not a steady and logically driven march toward understanding the truth. He argued that Copernicus had transformed humans’ conception of the universe and their relationship to it, overthrowing Aristotelian ideas but still maintaining a degree of continuity with ancient doctrines. Kuhn thus introduced two main points found in his later, more developed philosophy of science. He suggested that a scientific revolution is real and measurable progress, but the process of change is not as simple as replacing old bad beliefs with new good ones.

Logical Positivists, Karl Popper, and the Kuhnian Revolution In the 1950s, philosophy of science was dominated by two groups: On the one hand were logical positivist philosophers, including Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel; on the other hand were Karl Popper and his followers.

The logical positivists were primarily concerned with the logical analysis of scientific knowledge, emphasizing that scientific theories are verified by experiment and evidence. They argued that a scientific theory is meaningful only if it can be proved to be true or false by means of experience, at least in principle—an assertion called the “verifiability principle.” Popper and his followers maintained that scientific theory, and human knowledge in general, are generated by the creative imagination to solve problems that have arisen in specific historical and cultural settings. For Popper, scientific progress is the result of experimental testing. Differentiating science from nonscience, Popper argued that a theory should be considered scientific only if there is the possibility that it can be proven false. This made “falsifiability” the criterion of demarcation between what is and is not genuine science. With the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, Kuhn provided a new picture of scientific theory. While the logical positivists and Popper’s group suggested that science was a gradually growing body of knowledge, Kuhn argued that it changes through dramatic revolutions in thought. This challenged the notion that scientific change was strictly a rational process. In Structure, Kuhn claimed that typical scientists are not objective and independent thinkers; rather, they are generally conservative individuals who accept the theories they have been taught, and who apply their knowledge to solving the problems that their theories dictate. For Kuhn, most scientists are puzzle solvers who aim to discover what they already know in advance based on the shared understanding about how problems are to be understood. This implicit body of intertwined theoretical and procedural beliefs is said to operate as a “paradigm,” or framework, guiding the research efforts of scientific communities. For Kuhn, the history of science is not gradual and cumulative, but interrupted by a series of intellectual revolutions in which paradigms are successively replaced. Structure was initially well received by a variety of audiences in history, philosophy, and the social sciences. In 1964, Kuhn joined the new Program in History and Philosophy of Science at Princeton University, where he was the M. Taylor

902 Section 14: Kuhn, Thomas S. Pyne Professor of Philosophy and History of Science. As a rising young historian whose ideas had implications for the philosophy of science, Kuhn attended the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, held at Bedford College, London, in July 1965. Among the major philosophers at the colloquium were Popper, Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, Stephen Toulmin, and the positivists collectively, including Kuhn’s Princeton colleague Carl Hempel. The published proceedings from the London colloquium, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (1970), edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, cemented Kuhn’s place among the elite philosophers of science. In the book, many of the colloquium contributions were revised to respond to Kuhn’s ideas. A revised edition of Structure was also published in 1970 and included a postscript in which Kuhn responded to some of the major critiques of his groundbreaking approach. Kuhn’s next major work, The Essential Tension (1977), was a collection of historical and philosophical essays. In this book, he argued that an essential tension between tradition and innovation is needed to make progress in an intellectual field. The historical essays he included remained focused on the internal historical development of scientific disciplines, but in his philosophical essays Kuhn revised and extended many of the central ideas from Structure. To clarify his argument about the nature of revolutionary change in science, Kuhn expanded the idea of an essential tension between new and old scientific ideas, the nature of paradigms, the relationship between successive theories following paradigm shifts, and the criteria for theory choice by practicing scientists. These arguments were largely developed in response to critiques of Kuhnian philosophy by scholars such as Stephen Toulmin and Ian Hacking. In 1978, Kuhn provided an unorthodox history of early quantum theory in Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discovery: 1894–1912. He challenged the received view of this critical period in the history of physics by arguing that Max Planck was not the founder of quantum theory in 1900, because he was still working in an older classical tradition. For Kuhn, it was the misreading of Planck’s work by Albert Einstein

and Paul Ehrenfest and their subsequent attempt at problem-solving that initiated early quantum theory. Many physicists have strongly resisted this interpretation, while historians of science have frequently critiqued or ignored it. As critics at the time noted, the index of this massive and scholarly work contained no references to earlier Kuhnian ideas of paradigms or scientific revolutions. Historian Steve Fuller argues this represented the climax of Kuhn’s attempts to distance himself from his radical interpreters, noting that Kuhn frequently admitted he preferred his critics to his followers.

Later Work and the Kuhnian Legac y Kuhn’s distinction in the fields of history and philosophy of science was sufficiently established by 1979 to earn him a position on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy, where he remained until he retired in 1991. Although Kuhn intended to write a sequel to Structure to provide a definitive statement of his position in response to his critics, he did not finish this project. The University of Chicago Press in 2000 issued a posthumous second collection of Kuhn’s essays, The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970–1993, with an Autobiographical Interview. These essays reveal how Kuhn spent his last decades defending, developing, and substantially refining many of the basic concepts set forth in Structure, including the nature of scientific progress, paradigm shifts, and the relationship between old and new scientific frameworks. Kuhn was honored with the prestigious George Sarton Medal for lifetime achievement in the History of Science in 1982. After suffering from cancer during the last years of his life, he died on June 17, 1996, at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His work remains a highly influential landmark of twentieth-century intellectual history and continues to stimulate debates about science, culture, and policy across academic disciplines. Eric Boyle

Section 14: Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University 903 Sources Bird, Alexander. Thomas Kuhn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Fuller, Steve. Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History of Our Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Hoyningen-Huen, Paul. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s Philosophy of Science. Trans. Alexander T. Levine. Foreword by Thomas S. Kuhn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970–1993, with an Autobiographical Interview. Ed. James Conant and John Haugeland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Nickles, Thomas, ed. Thomas Kuhn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

L AW R E N C E S C I E N T I F I C S C H O O L , H A R VA R D U N I V E R S I T Y When it opened in 1847, Harvard University’s Lawrence Scientific School was one of only a handful of U.S. institutions offering laboratory education in the sciences on the European model, as well as an emphasis on original research by faculty and students. At the time, no other educational institution came close to the financial resources of the Lawrence School, which was endowed with a $50,000 bequest from textile magnate Amos Lawrence, cited as “the largest single gift” to “a U.S. college before the Civil War.” At the same time, Yale provided competition to Harvard with the establishment of the Sheffield Scientific School. In addition, the federal government became involved in funding science and engineering education as part of a growing awareness that the future economic strength of the United States would depend increasingly on scientific and engineering expertise. “Our country abounds in men of action,” Lawrence declared in the letter accompanying his bequest to Harvard,” and “hard hands are ready to work hard materials.” But, he asked, “Where shall sagacious heads be taught to direct those hands?” The Lawrence School, then, represented a concerted effort to build up a national scientific and technical infrastructure to rival and eventually surpass that of Europe, mirroring a similar competition in the economic and cultural spheres. The first stage in this process was to transfer advanced European laboratory training to the

western shores of the Atlantic, in particular the rigorous training methods employed at Justus Liebig’s famous school of applied chemistry at Giessen in Germany. Liebig’s program— incorporating everything from the basics of how to bend glass for tubes to sophisticated qualitative analysis, as well as an emphasis on the importance of original research—had attracted enthusiastic international students, including many Americans, since its founding in 1824. One of those American students was Eben Horsford, who studied at Giessen from 1844 to 1846 before being called to the Rumford chair in science at Harvard. Horsford arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, determined to build a “Giessen on the Charles,” and he was instrumental in convincing Lawrence to underwrite the Scientific School at Harvard (Lawrence helped finance Harvard’s geology and engineering departments as well). Horsford developed the Lawrence School’s first laboratory course in analytical chemistry, and he supervised the school’s chemistry lab for sixteen years. The Lawrence School developed postgraduate and professional training programs based on the German model, but by the 1860s, Horsford had shifted most of his efforts to the pursuit of wealth in industry, leaving Charles W. Eliot (the future president of Harvard) to take over his teaching responsibilities in the chemistry program. By that time, the bright scientific stars in the Harvard firmament included mathematician Charles Peirce, chemist Oliver Wolcott Gibbs (who was named to the Rumford chair, and thus leadership of the Lawrence School, with Horsford’s departure), and pathbreaking botanist Asa Gray. Yet none of the Lawrence School luminaries shone brighter than the internationally renowned, Swiss-born naturalist Louis Agassiz, whose popular U.S. lecture tour in 1846 led to the offer of a chair in zoology and geology at Harvard (also funded by Lawrence), which he accepted in 1848. Despite his lifelong opposition to Darwinian theories of evolution (which he opposed on both scientific and religious grounds), Agassiz won wide professional acclaim for his original studies on the impacts of glaciation in the northern hemisphere. It was as a teacher, fundraiser, and popularizer of serious scientific study in America, however, that Agassiz had his most lasting

904 Section 14: Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University impact. His ability to raise money was particularly important at a time when securing scarce outside funding could prove crucial to the development or even the survival of young scientific institutions like the Lawrence School. Not only did Agassiz pry $75,000 from private donors to establish a Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard in 1859, but he leveraged another $100,000 from the Massachusetts state legislature at a time when government funding for science was meager. But it was Charles W. Eliot, Harvard’s president from 1869 to 1909, who solidified the university’s position in scientific education. Under Eliot, Harvard established its famed “elective system,” which greatly expanded the potential for advanced course offerings in the sciences and helped to attract the brightest students and faculty. Following the lead of Yale’s Sheffield School, Eliot instituted formalized graduate programs in the sciences at Harvard and the Lawrence School beginning in 1872, and he made a concerted effort to woo the most brilliant scholars to Cambridge. Eliot made faculty advancement contingent upon scholarly production and original research, and he encouraged observance of the sabbatical year to afford faculty the respite from teaching and administrative duties necessary to pursue research and publishing. To make sure that students were ready to undertake a rigorous college education, Eliot took the lead in promoting nationwide college entrance examinations. He also supervised the compilation of eighty-three chemistry and forty physics experiments that all high school students should complete before applying to Harvard. These “Harvard lists” influenced the teaching of high school science across the United States, as schools began building laboratory facilities and upgrading their curricula to meet the new standards. Not all of Eliot’s changes benefited the Lawrence School, which Eliot actually tried to merge in 1904 with Boston’s rival scientific institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Court action and the resistance of faculty and students eventually blocked the merger. In the meantime, the Lawrence School suffered from doubts about its future, despite

the fact that prominent industrialist Gordon McKay had pledged his substantial estate to the school. In the end, McKay’s money had to be used elsewhere at Harvard as the Lawrence Scientific School officially ceased to exist in 1906. The university’s administration, led by Eliot, decided to move Lawrence’s graduate programs into a new Harvard Graduate School of Applied Sciences, while the undergraduate courses became part of the regular Harvard curriculum. Jacob Jones

Sources Elliott, Clark A., and Margaret W. Rossiter. Science at Harvard University: Historical Perspectives. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1992. Love, James Lee. The Lawrence Scientific School in Harvard University, 1847–1906. Burlington, NC, 1944. Miller, Howard. Dollars for Research: Science and Its Patrons in Nineteenth-Century America. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970. Whitman, Frank P. “The Beginnings of Laboratory Teaching in America.” Science, new ser. (August 19, 1898): 201–6.

MASSACHUSET TS HISTORIC AL SOCIETY The Massachusetts Historical Society was founded in 1791 by a small group of Bostonians who called it simply “the Historical Society.” The organization’s mission was to “collect, preserve, and communicate materials for a complete history of this country,” not just the state. In 1794, it was chartered and renamed the Massachusetts Historical Society, to distinguish it from other fledgling historical societies. Patriotic sentiment after the American Revolution inspired the establishment of academies and scholarly societies throughout the new nation. The historian and congregational minister Jeremy Belknap, known as the “American Plutarch,” played a pivotal role in founding the society. Recognizing the need for a repository of rare books and historical manuscripts, he sought to establish a storehouse and archive. Belknap’s insistence that history must be both factually accurate and based on primary sources con-

Section 14: Massachusetts Historical Society 905 tributed to his reputation as the founder of the “scientific history” movement in the United States. His writings helped augment the sense of pride that was developing in American thought. At the time, there was no federal depository or archive for government materials. Public documents were disappearing or poorly preserved. Only a few libraries existed, none of which compared with the renowned university libraries of Great Britain. To be a competitive cultural force, the United States needed to preserve its own history. Belknap believed that a large collection of historical materials was essential to preserve an accurate view of history. An enthusiastic merchant from New York City, John Pintard, shared Belknap’s view and proposed the formation of an American Antiquarian Society. Both men believed that the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of Boston were too focused on science instead of history. They envisioned a new association of learned gentlemen, similar to the Society of Antiquaries of London. Belknap and Pintard met in 1789 to discuss their concept, and Belknap launched the Historical Society two years later. It was the first historical society in the United States. An avid collector himself, Belknap made his personal possessions the cornerstone of the society’s holdings. Lacking significant competition for manuscripts, the organization was able to acquire a great deal of articles. Early members donated valuable family papers, books, and artifacts and actively sought other contributors. For example, Belknap convinced Paul Revere to write an account of his famous ride for the society’s archive, which survives to this day. The society focused on documents relating to the history of America after the arrival of European settlers. A 1791 letter on the goals of the society publicized its desire to compile a natural, political, and ecclesiastical history. The organization drafted a constitution that included details on its intention to collect observations in natural history and topography, as well as specimens of “natural and artificial curiosities.” For many years, therefore, the society amassed materials on natural history. After 1833, however, it turned over most of these objects to the Boston Society

of Natural History and focused instead on political and cultural history. The Massachusetts Historical Society stood at the vanguard of organized historical research in the United States, and it was a model for other research societies that began collecting primary source materials and preserving them for posterity. John Pintard founded the New York Historical Society in 1804. Individual libraries, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives also began collecting primary source materials. By the late twentieth century, there were approximately 8,000 state and local historical societies across the nation. Another integral aspect of the society’s mission was to disseminate historical information. Few American historians from afar could afford to travel to the collections in various cities, so the society tried to make its sources accessible through publication. The society began publishing historical titles in 1792 and continues to release books and monographs. The earliest published collections were printed by the Apollo Press, owned by Belknap’s son Joseph. Today, the society helps to produce a scholarly journal, the New England Quarterly, which includes major articles on regional history, literature, and culture. Also, the Massachusetts Historical Review, published annually, contains essays, photographs, historical documents, and review articles. The Massachusetts Historical Society maintains a research library and manuscript repository, along with millions of rare documents and artifacts. Notable holdings include papers from the family of John and Abigail Adams, maps and personal accounts from the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the pen that Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. The society organizes exhibits and public lectures, produces documentary television programs and films, and lends its materials to other nonprofit and educational institutions. Robin O’Sullivan

Sources Massachusetts Historical Society. http://www.masshist.org. Riley, Stephen T. The Massachusetts Historical Society 1791–1959. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1959. Tucker, Louis Leonard. Clio’s Consort: Jeremy Belknap and the Founding of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1989.

906 Section 14: Morison, Samuel Eliot

M O R I S O N , S A M U E L E L I OT (1887–1976) Samuel Eliot Morison, one of the leading American historians of the twentieth century, was known especially for his lively writing style. Born on July 9, 1887, to a privileged family in the Beacon Hill area of Boston, Morison was fortunate to be in a milieu conducive to studying American history. He grew up among educated relatives and a city that was itself a historic monument. He received his B.A. at Harvard in 1908 and married Elizabeth Bessie Shaw Greene in 1910. Eager to see the world, Morison went to Paris in 1913 and then returned to study and earn his Ph.D. in history. His dissertation was a biography of his grandfather, the Massachusetts political leader Harrison Gray Otis. He began teaching history at Harvard in 1915; in addition to his assigned duties, Morison taught adult education classes for the blue-collar, working poor of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Morison’s first publications were maritime histories directed at the less-educated reader. From 1922 to 1925, he took a leave of absence to teach at the University of California at Berkeley and then at Oxford University, where he was named the Harmsworth Professor of American History. He returned to Harvard in 1926, and, in 1941, he was named Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History. During World War II, Morison was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Promoted to rear admiral, he was commissioned to write a history of American involvement in the Pacific. This resulted in the fifteen-volume History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II (1947–1962). His wife, Elizabeth, died in 1945, and, four years later, Morison married the socially prominent Priscilla Barton, a distant cousin. In 1955, he retired from Harvard. Morison combined his avocation, sailing, with his professional interests, retracing the voyages of European and American sailors. The resulting books were his best work. These included a twovolume biography of Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), which won a Pulitzer Prize, and John Paul Jones (1959), for which he won another Pulitzer. His journeys

The distinguished historian and Harvard professor Samuel Eliot Morison, who specialized in maritime history, combined research and firsthand experience. A lifelong sailor, he retraced Columbus’s voyages before writing a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of the explorer. (Dmitri Kessel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

also resulted in a two-volume history, The European Discovery of America (1971–1974). His final work was A Concise History of the American Republic (1976), co-written with Henry Steele Commager and William E. Leuchtenberg. Morison advocated narrative history that did not sacrifice good scholarship. As he wrote in History as a Literary Art (1948), “the quality of imagination, if properly restrained by the conditions of historical discipline, is of great assistance in enabling one to discover problems to be solved, to grasp the significance of facts, to form hypotheses, to discern causes in their first beginnings and, above all, to relate the past creatively to the present.” Morison died in Boston on May 15, 1976. Lana Thompson

Sources Morison, Samuel Eliot. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. ———. The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Section 14: National Science Foundation 907 ———. John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959. Wilcomb, E. Washburn. “Samuel Eliot Morison, Historian.” William and Mary Quarterly 36 (1979): 325–52.

N AT I O N A L A C A D E M Y OF SCIENCES On March 3, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln approved an act of Congress that established the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Fifty members were appointed; upon the death or resignation of any member, the remaining members were to appoint a replacement. The legislation stipulated that the academy “shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art.” The establishment of such an academy became necessary as the United States was developing into a technological society, and scientists wished to create an institution similar in function to those already established in European nations. The original membership of fifty grew to approximately 150 by 1916, but even the larger body was unable to handle all the requests for advice from the government pertaining to military preparedness prior to America’s entry into World War I. This prompted President Woodrow Wilson to establish the National Research Council (NRC) as part of the academy. The NRC was able to draw on the larger scientific community to aid members of the NAS. Wilson was later persuaded that, with the rapid expansion of American commerce and industry, the NRC should continue its work after the war. Thus, on May 11, 1918, he signed an executive order perpetuating the NRC. Currently, four organizations comprise what is known collectively as “the Academies”: the National Academy of Sciences (NAS); the National Research Council (NRC); the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), established in 1964; and the Institute of Medicine (IOM), established in 1970. Headquartered in Washington, D.C, these are private nonprofit institutions, independent of the federal government. Election to the Academies is considered a high honor and

comes with no monetary compensation. Members must be U.S. citizens and are elected annually in recognition of distinguished achievement and scholarly research in their fields. Noncitizens are elected as foreign associates. The NRC currently serves as the operating agency of the Academies. It draws from thousands of scientists, engineers, and other professionals who volunteer to serve, along with members, on committees formed to study specific scientific concerns and issue reports on their findings. The Academies advise the federal government, state governments, and private organizations. The 1997 Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that, to the best of their ability, the Academies appoint the most qualified individuals for whom there is no conflict of interest relevant to the function of the committee. Committees are expected to produce balanced and objective reports, as these reports often influence government policy. The official journal of the Academies is the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Founded in 1914, this journal publishes research reports by both members and nonmembers. Mary F. Grosch

Sources Hilgartner, Stephen. Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org. National Academy of Sciences. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1969.

N AT I O N A L S C I E N C E F O U N D AT I O N The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It was officially established on May 10, 1950, when the National Science Foundation Act was approved by President Harry S. Truman. Its continuing mission is “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes.” Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Office of Scientific Research and Development

908 Section 14: National Science Foundation (OSRD), a forerunner of the NSF, was developed for the support of military research during World War II. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Vannevar Bush, a leading mathematician, engineer, physicist, and head of OSRD, foresaw a similar agency to continue in times of peace. The first official proposal for what was to become the NSF was a report by Bush entitled Science: The Endless Frontier, published in 1945. The report recommended that the federal government accept responsibility for promoting science by funding new research and encouraging children in the study of science. Legislation introduced from 1945 to 1949 to establish the National Science Foundation included a politician-drafted bill that envisioned the president of the United States as the ultimate authority. A scientist-backed bill (drafted by the OSRD) favored a foundation run by a science board. A compromise was reached in 1949 whereby a dual authority was proposed—a Science Board and director with similar powers— and the NSF became a reality in 1950. The NSF director oversees the staff and management and is responsible for planning, budgeting, and dayto-day operations. The National Science Board establishes NSF policies. The board’s twentyfour members serve a six-year term and are appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The mission of the NSF remains the same as when it was created in 1950, which is to initiate and support scientific research and programs to promote scientific education. Other responsibilities have been added to the mission, including the promotion of international collaboration to address global concerns and participation by women, minorities, and persons with disabilities who remain underrepresented in the scientific fields. The NSF does not conduct research itself but funds fundamental research in science (except medical science) and engineering. This includes fields such as mathematics, computer science, and the social sciences. According to the NSF Web site, its “job is to determine where the frontiers are, identify the leading U.S. pioneers in these fields and provide money and equipment to help them continue.” The agency funds both existing and emerging fields of study. Proposals for research, both solicited and unsolicited, are

received by the foundation and undergo a rigorous evaluation by independent reviewers before final funding decisions are made. Science education is supported in the form of fellowships and trainee positions for graduate students, scientists, and science teachers. The NSF also promotes the enhancement of teachers’ skills and the improvement of curricula at the elementary through high school levels. Mary F. Grosch

Sources Bush, Vannevar. Science, the Endless Frontier. A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945. Lomask, Milton. A Minor Miracle: An Informal History of the National Science Foundation. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 1976. National Science Foundation. http://www.nsf.gov.

R E N S S E L A E R P O LY T E C H N I C INSTITUTE In late 1824, attorney and itinerant lecturer Amos Eaton, with financial support from the region’s great landowner, Stephen Van Rensselaer, founded the Rensselaer School in Troy, New York. It was the first technically oriented college in the English-speaking world. Eaton had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Williams College, had studied science at Yale under Benjamin Silliman, and had lectured on scientific subjects throughout the northeastern United States. Rensselaer was initially staffed by a senior professor (Eaton), a junior professor, and one or two adjunct lecturers. In that era, practical experience or intensive study of a scientific subject sufficed to qualify one as a professor; many of Rensselaer’s instructors in subsequent decades were recent graduates of the school. Enrollment was small, and a bachelor’s degree could be earned in one or two years. From the beginning, however, Rensselaer’s rigorous standards resulted in rates of attrition as high as two-thirds of the student body. The institution specialized in technical and scientific topics at a time when a liberal arts focus was taken for granted elsewhere. By 1861, it took

Section 14: Royal Society of London 909 the name Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). At every point, the young school’s emphasis was on practical applications of science and technology in everyday life. Students were required to prepare lectures and carry out their own experiments, rather than passively witness an instructor’s experimentation. Rensselaer’s degree in Civil Engineering (C.E.)—the world’s first such degree—and Bachelor of Natural Science (B.N.S) gave way to the more common B.Eng. and B.S. only after other colleges began to compete in the field of scientific education. The school also stated the intention of educating the sons (and eventually the daughters) of the rising middle class. Financial assistance, or at least credit, was extended to a few well-qualified students of need, and RPI pioneered in opening its doors to foreign and ethnic minority students long before this was the norm in American education. RPI operated on a shoestring budget until the 1890s, when Palmer Ricketts took over as president. Ricketts actively sought funds from the growing body of RPI alumni, as well as from philanthropists such as Andrew Carnegie and Mrs. Russell Sage. RPI grew in size and endowment, adding students, faculty, buildings, and areas of study during Ricketts’s forty-two-year administration. RPI added formal graduate study in 1913, awarding its first doctorate three years later. During the course of the twentieth century, RPI placed increasing emphasis on original research, outside funding, and the acquisition of world-class technology. Once the only school of its kind in North America, RPI faced increasing competition from scientific schools at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and other major universities—often staffed by RPI graduates. Its previous emphasis on training qualified civil engineers had to give way to more areas of study. Rensselaer remains a highly successful, financially stable institution of higher learning, with five schools: architecture, engineering, humanities and social sciences, management and technology, and science. Resisting the trend in American education to grow at any cost, RPI has kept its enrollment to just over 7,000 students. Its faculty and alumni include dozens of worldfamous scholars, inventors, and entrepreneurs. RPI continues to make important innovations in

the development of American technological education. David Lonergan

Sources Baker, Ray P. A Chapter in American Education: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 1824–1924. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924. Rezneck, Samuel. Education for a Technological Society: A Sesquicentennial History of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Troy, NY: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1968.

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The founding in 1660 of the Royal Society, an allmale, London-based organization with state sponsorship but financial and organizational independence, greatly encouraged the conduct of science in the English colonies in America. The society’s initial goal was to compile records of scientific and technological phenomena. For information from America, the society needed the help of American residents. The first colonial admitted as a fellow of the Royal Society was John Winthrop, Jr., whose description of how Americans made pitch was the first paper read to the society (in 1662) by a colonial. From 1660 to 1783, dozens of colonial Americans were admitted as fellows, and hundreds of letters from the colonies were published in the society’s journal, Philosophical Transactions. Colonial fellows benefited by not having to pay admission fees or dues until 1753, when the society’s financial needs led it to abolish the exemption. The English leaders of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century viewed colonial fellows more as sources of knowledge and artifacts than as original thinkers. Colonial residents had access to the plants, animals, and minerals of America, and they were particularly valued for their ability to explain technical processes peculiar to the colonies. Realizing that information about colonial technology and natural history should be gathered systematically, the Royal Society prepared lists of queries that were sent to America with individuals who were journeying to the colonies. In doing so, the society hoped to satisfy British

910 Section 14: Royal Society of London scientific curiosity as well as strengthen the economy of the empire by identifying colonial resources for exploitation. In addition, the Royal Society promoted visits by scientists to America for the purpose of gathering information; it sponsored observations of the eighteenthcentury transits of Venus, for example. The society also encouraged natural historians such as Mark Catesby. By the mid-eighteenth century, Americans were gaining more respect as original scientists, as evidenced by the awarding of the Royal Society’s highest honor, the Copley Medal, to Benjamin Franklin in 1753 and the waiving of his fees upon admission as a fellow in 1756. Other prominent colonial scientists who were fellows included Cotton Mather, William Byrd II, and the Harvard astronomer John Winthrop IV. The Royal Society also provided the inspiration and organizational model for the first American scientific societies, the seventeenth-century Boston Philosophical Society and the far more successful American Philosophical Society. The amateur culture of the Royal Society, as opposed to its far more professionalized French rival, the Royal Academy of Sciences, greatly influenced the development of scientific culture in early America. The close connection between the Royal Society and the American scientific community was weakened by the War of Independence, but, in subsequent years, American scientists continued to be admitted to the Royal Society. William E. Burns

Sources Burns, William E. Science and Technology in Colonial America. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005. Royal Society. http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk. Stearns, Raymond Phineas. Science in the British Colonies of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970.

SARTON, GEORGE (1884–1956) George Alfred Léon Sarton, the father of poet May Sarton, was a pioneer in establishing the history of science as a distinct discipline. He wrote fifteen books and more than 300 articles in a dynamic career as a scholar and editor.

Born on August 31, 1884, in Ghent, Belgium, Sarton entered the University of Ghent to study philosophy, but after two years he withdrew in disgust for a year before beginning his work in the natural sciences in 1905. Although his work in chemistry earned him a gold medal from the university, he received his doctor of science degree in 1911 for a historical and philosophical thesis on the celestial mechanics of Newton. In 1912 Sarton founded Isis, a scholarly journal devoted to the history and philosophy of science. During the early days, according to Harvard historian of science I. Bernard Cohen, Sarton’s wife, Mabel, wrapped and mailed each issue herself. During his forty years as editor of Isis, Sarton compiled an index of thousands of publications dealing with the history of science throughout the world in the form of a critical bibliography, which helped make scholars aware of the resources and growing literature in the field. For Isis, he recruited a distinguished editorial board that included mathematician Henri Poincaré, sociologist and philosopher Emile Durkheim, physiologist Jacques Loeb, and chemist Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald. The range of fields represented by these scholars reflected Sarton’s conviction that the history of science was by nature an encyclopedic discipline. The ultimate goal was to create a synthesis of science and the humanities—an ideal he called “the new humanism.” Sarton began to accumulate notes for what would become his Introduction to the History of Science, which he first conceived as a relatively short, two- or three-volume history of science to 1900. His devotion to compiling the history was disrupted by the devastation of the German occupation of Belgium in 1914. When his family was forced to abandon their home, Sarton buried the notes for his book in a metal trunk in the garden. The family moved to England, where Sarton worked for the British War Office. In 1916, he emigrated to the United States, where, in 1918, Robert S. Woodward, the president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., created for him the position of research associate in the history of science. With the support of the Carnegie Institution, the recovery of his notes after the war, and the

Section 14: Scientific American 911 use of the Widener Library at Harvard University in exchange for honorary teaching responsibilities, Sarton completed the three-volume Introduction to the History of Science over a nearly thirty-year period, from 1919 to 1947. In that mammoth work, he reviewed and cataloged the scientific and cultural contributions of nearly every civilization from antiquity through the fourteenth century. With his emphasis on critical bibliography, his sweeping survey of scientific inquiry, and the journal he created, Sarton helped create the elements required by the new field of history of science. In 1924, when the History of Science Society was founded, Isis became its official publication (Sarton continued to assume financial responsibility until 1940). His influence is further evidenced by his numerous honorary degrees (from such institutions as Brown University and Harvard University), the scholarly honor societies to which he was elected (including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia), and the roles he served as founding member of the International Academy of the History of Science and president of the International Union of the History of Science. The George Sarton Medal, established in his honor, remains the most prestigious prize of the History of Science Society; it has been awarded annually since 1955 to an outstanding historian of science selected from the international scholarly community. Eric Boyle

Sources Garfield, Eugene. “The Life and Career of George Sarton: The Father of the History of Science.” Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences 21:2 (1985): 107–17. Thackray, Arnold. “Sarton, Science, and History.” Isis 75 (1984): 19–20. Thackray, Arnold, and Robert K. Merton. “On Discipline Building: The Paradoxes of George Sarton.” Isis 63 (1972): 473–95.

choose to announce their important discoveries to peers and the public. Thomas Alva Edison founded Science in 1880, but the first weekly issue did not appear until 1883. Since 1900, it has been sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The first issue was an ambitious overview of the sciences, with articles on a diversity of topics and a surprising number of illustrations. In 1923, it was a twenty-page, sparsely illustrated weekly publication, offering detailed essays, information on current discoveries, book reviews, and news items. By the middle of the twentieth century, little had changed: It had grown into a forty-sixpage compilation, but it was still sparsely illustrated, with somewhat longer papers, news, announcements, book reviews, technical papers, and footnoted communications. In 1964, it was much more impressive: a weekly with multiple sections, an eye-catching cover picture, and 100 or more pages, many of them illustrated. Today, Science publishes a plethora of different types of items and articles, including brief letters, news notices, technical comments, research articles, reports, and discussions of science policy. Issues contain either an in-depth cover story (such as “HIV/Aids in Asia”) or special sections with multiple articles on the same topic (such as “The State of the Planet” or “Genomic Medicine”). Some weekly issues run more than 200 pages and are generously illustrated in color. Many well-known scholars have been associated with Science. Stephen Jay Gould, Edward O. Wilson, and Margaret Mead have been published in it, as have Nobel laureates Gertrude Elion, Joshua Lederberg, Barbara McClintock, Albert Michelson, Robert Millikan, Glenn Seaborg, and Rosalyn Yalow, among others. Robert Hauptman

Source Science magazine. http://www.sciencemag.org.

SCIENCE

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Science and its British analogue, Nature, are two of

Devoted to disseminating scientific discoveries and theories to the intelligent layperson, Scientific American is the oldest continuously published

the most prestigious scientific publications in the world, the journals that most researchers would

912 Section 14: Scientific American magazine in the United States. Similar publications such as National Geographic and Psychology Today serve their readers very well, but they are more specialized in their interests and do not maintain the sophisticated intellectual level that is the hallmark of Scientific American. Without pandering or condescending to its readers, but concomitantly avoiding the esoteric articulations or incredibly complex mathematics that one might find in Cell or Physical Review Letters, the periodical offers lucid and concise overviews and explanations to its readers. Scientific American began in 1845 as a weekly publication. By 1850, it promoted the work of the U.S. Patent Agency, and early issues concluded with a list of recent patents. In 1907, it consisted of twenty oversize, generously illustrated pages and was a cross between Popular Mechanics and National Geographic. By 1939, it was a monthly publication similar to today’s version, but the illustrations continued to appear in black and white. Some color was evident by 1951, and, during the course of that year, book reviewers included I.I. Rabi, I. Bernard Cohen, Ernest Nagel, and Jacob Bronowski. Over the years, Scientific American has changed in size, structure, organization, and emphases, but it has remained constant in its goal: to present state-of-the-art overviews of technology and the sciences (physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology, and mathematics) and their subdisciplines. Great discoveries naturally interest readers, and the magazine has managed to induce 127 Nobel Prize winners to write 213 articles on their specializations. Long before well-known scientists such as Guglielmo Marconi, the Wright brothers, and Robert Goddard succeeded in their endeavors, their efforts were covered in Scientific American. Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, Robert Jarvik, Francis Crick, Linus Pauling, and John Kenneth Galbraith are among the innumerable authors who have offered invaluable perspectives on their work. As early as 1899, the editors presented special thematic issues (on bicycles and cars), and, for many years, each September number has been devoted to a particular topic. For example, the 1950 special issue was devoted to “The Age of Science,” for which J. Robert Oppenheimer, Harlow Shapley, Max Born, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Alfred Kroeber, and Linus Pauling, among

Scientific American, the nation’s oldest continuously published magazine, was first issued in August 1845 as a weekly broadsheet. The November 1, 1851, edition featured Isaac Singer’s invention of the continuous-stitch sewing machine. (Mansell/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

others, contributed overviews of their respective disciplines. The 2003 special issue focused on “Better Brains,” and the 2004 special topic was “Beyond Einstein.” Issues are now replete with color images and graphics, diverse brief and more detailed articles, and interviews with notable figures. During the second half of the twentieth century, two authors helped to make Scientific American the extraordinary publication that it is: Martin Gardner’s column on mathematical puzzles and games was eagerly awaited each month, and Philip Morrison’s wide-ranging and incisive book reviews apprised readers of new publications in all disciplines. Scientific American is published in sixteen foreign languages and has a circulation of 1 million copies. The entire run is held in hardbound volumes and various micro-

Section 14: Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University 913 formats by many academic research libraries. A database of digital archives (dating to 1993) is available by subscription. Robert Hauptman

Sources Mitchell, Carolyn B. Life in the Universe: Readings from Scientific American Magazine. New York: W.H. Freeman, 1994. Scientific American. http://www.sciam.com.

SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL, YA L E U N I V E R S I T Y On August 19, 1847, the governing body of Yale College—the Yale Corporation—approved the establishment of a postgraduate program in the applied sciences, the first of its kind in the United States. The Yale Scientific School emerged in 1853 when Yale’s civil engineering program joined the School of Applied Chemistry. With only two professorships, eight students, limited funding, and a grudging acceptance by the parent college, the school was slow to develop. Only after New Haven railroad developer Joseph Earl Sheffield made a major financial and property bequest to the school in 1858 did the program achieve solvency. In 1860, the school began offering the Doctor of Philosophy degree. The first Ph.D. was awarded in 1861, the same year the organization changed its name to the Sheffield Scientific School to honor its primary benefactor. Sheffield’s bequest indicated an increasing awareness that scientific training and professional research would be crucial to America’s future industrial growth. Previously, such training was hard to come by outside of Europe, and aspiring practitioners in applied chemistry or physics usually had to go abroad for their graduate studies. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Yale’s small science faculty boasted one of the country’s most prominent advocates of American science at the time, Benjamin Silliman, Sr., founder and editor of the eminent American Journal of Science (1818). Yet even Silliman found it difficult to secure funds and support to make science education a required part of the Yale curriculum (his popular courses were offered as

electives). In the years before the Sheffield endowment, professors at the Yale Scientific School often had to purchase their own books and equipment, and even pay rent to Yale College for use of a campus building. Moreover, advocates of expanded science and engineering instruction continued to run up against resistance from more traditionally minded educators who argued that combining pedestrian “vocational” training such as engineering with the conventional “classical” curriculum of ancient Latin and Greek literature and philosophy would dilute the very purpose of the college, which they viewed as preparing gentlemen for their future roles as social, governmental, and military leaders. The situation changed when James Dwight Dana, a Yale professor of geology, called for a new scientific school at Yale—the central theme in his commencement address of 1856—which inspired a number of private donors to contribute funds for the enterprise, including Sheffield. Sheffield’s son-in-law, John Addison Porter, became a member of the faculty at the new institution. Porter was an alumnus of the rigorous training program in applied chemistry at the internationally famous Justus von Liebig Laboratory at the University of Giessen in Germany. Liebig’s students began with practical laboratory work—learning how to sharpen knives, drill corks for flasks, and bend glass for tubes— before moving on to qualitative analysis and finally an individual research problem directed by Liebig himself. Liebig’s fame drew students from around the world, including many from the United States, and most left as disciples or at least disseminators of his methods in their home countries, including both Porter and assistant chemist Samuel W. Johnson at Sheffield. The Sheffield School attracted other first-rate professors, including Daniel Coit Gilman, future founding president of Johns Hopkins University, who took charge of building up Sheffield’s library while also serving as professor of geography. Another Sheffield professor was Francis Amasa Walker, later president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among the early graduates of Sheffield were such famous engineer-scientists as J. Willard Gibbs, who made his name in fields as disparate as theoretical physics and the development of improved railcar braking systems.

914 Section 14: Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University The Sheffield faculty worked on public outreach as well. In 1866, they initiated a highly popular series of public science presentations— originally titled “Public Lectures to Mechanics” but soon referred to simply as the “Sheffield Lectures”—which often drew New Haven audiences numbering in the hundreds. After Gilman’s departure in 1872, Sheffield’s scientistdirectors, mineralogist George Jarvis Brush, and chemist Russell Henry Chittenden strengthened the school’s reputation for superior scientific and engineering training, as well as the quality of its faculty research and public outreach programs. By the early twentieth century, however, it had become obvious that there was great duplication of effort between the Sheffield School and its parent institution, as Yale had added significantly to the science side of its liberal arts curriculum. Thus, when Yale decided upon a general reorganization of the university in 1918–1919, Sheffield was left with responsibility of teaching a four-year course of undergraduate, preprofessional instruction in science and engineering (leading to the Bachelor of Science degree), but its graduate program was transferred to a new graduate school administered by Yale University. Only in 1945, after twenty-five years as an undergraduate institution, did Sheffield resume its original role of postgraduate scientific training (engineering instruction had moved to a separate School of Engineering in 1932). The reversion proved short-lived, as the Sheffield Scientific School officially ceased to exist in 1956, its faculty and graduate students reclassified under the Division of Science at Yale University. Jacob Jones

Sources Baitsall, George A., ed. The Centennial of the Sheffield Scientific School. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950. Chittenden, Russell H. History of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1928. Miller, Howard. Dollars for Research: Science and Its Patrons in Nineteenth-Century America. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970. Warren, Charles H. “Sheffield Scientific School—The First Hundred Years.” Scientific Monthly 67:1 (1948): 58–63. White, Gerald T. “Benjamin Silliman, Jr., and the Origins of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale.” Ventures 8:1 (1968): 19–25.

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION The Smithsonian Institution is made up of eighteen museums and nine research centers—most located in Washington, D.C.—devoted to understanding, exploring, and explaining American natural and human history and culture. The Smithsonian was established in 1846 from an estate owned by the British scientist James Smithson, who bequeathed to the United States a trust in the amount of $508,318. Smithson’s early vision, an institution dedicated to the growth and diffusion of knowledge, continues to be fulfilled today. The first building, referred to as “the Castle,” was completed in 1855. Its unique architecture— a Gothic Revival design drafted by James Renwick—has eye-catching turrets, spires, parapets, and towers. During the 1880s and 1890s, other Smithsonian buildings were opened: the United States National Museum Building, the Astrophysical Observatory, and the National Zoo. The latter included an “animal house” and an outdoor display area for 839 fauna from all over the world. Smithsonian Park, an area with tree-shrouded winding paths, in time became known as the National Mall. Visitors to the Natural History Museum can observe preserved fauna from all over the world, a living insect colony, minerals and gems, and carefully prepared skeletons of animals. Exhibits illustrate how Earth came to be, how animals adapted to ecologic niches by either surviving or dying out, and how people evolved and spread throughout the world. What visitors do not see are the areas where scientists, technicians, and artists study, clean, classify, and document the holdings. The National Air and Space Museum has twenty-two galleries, which house a huge collection of historic aircraft and spacecraft. The history of air and space technology is illustrated with the Wright brothers’ 1903 airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, and the Apollo 11 command module. Planetarium presentations are given throughout the day. In 2001, the space history section began to save artifacts from the Apollo space program. One focus is the spacesuits developed for the moon landings of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Section 14: Spelman College 915 The fabrics provide valuable information as they age under the scrupulous observation of museum scientists. Since both degradable and permanent materials are used to construct a spacesuit, the staff has documented, identified, and photographed every spacesuit. Accessories such as helmets, gloves, and books also have been collected. Because of this project, the museum will be a worldwide authority for spacesuit preservation and conservation. Extensive art collections are found in many Smithsonian buildings. The Freer Gallery designed by Charles Platt, an Italian Renaissance–style building adjacent to the Smithsonian Castle, opened on the National Mall in 1923. The collection includes Asian and American art: bronzes, jades, screens, scrolls, ceramics, paintings, and metalworks. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden opened in 1974. Architect Gordon Bunshaft designed this building in the shape of a cylindrical drum. The collection focuses on twentieth-century art. The National Museum of American History and the National Museum of African American History house collections of sociocultural interest. There is a division of cultural history, where exquisite keyboard and stringed instruments are displayed; among the violins, cellos, and violas are creations of Stradivarius. The National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum are housed at the Patent Office Building, which was designed in Greek Revival

The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., was created by an act of Congress in 1846 “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” It was funded with a bequest by British chemist and mineralogist James Smithson, who never set foot in the United States. (Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images)

style by Pierre L’Enfant. Both focus on individual artists rather than styles of art. Lana Thompson

Sources Small, Lawrence. “Fanciful and Sublime.” Smithsonian Magazine (December 2002): 12. ———. “A Pantheon After All.” Smithsonian Magazine (July 2002): 16. ———. “Pursuing Perfection.” Smithsonian Magazine (September 2002): 16. Smithsonian Institution. http://www.si.edu.

SPELMAN COLLEGE Spelman College, founded in 1881 in Atlanta, Georgia, is one of two surviving black colleges for women and one of the largest undergraduate producers of African American women in science. Scientific study at Spelman College, as at most historically black colleges and universities, suffered for decades under segregationist policies in higher education. Science programs were underfunded, poorly equipped, and largely rooted in a philosophy of manual and industrial training. Those who did pursue science were limited to practical fields, such as home economics, agriculture, the mechanical arts, and premedicine. The cost of instruction in these areas was less than in research-based disciplines that required equipment and instrumentation. When Spelman College was founded, the concept of a liberal arts education to support the development of black female scientists ran counter to what white society thought black women could or should be. African American consciousness-raising in the 1960s and the emerging women’s movement in the 1970s would help to change attitudes and national policies. Two members of the mathematics faculty at Spelman in particular, Shirley Mathis McBay and Etta Zuber Falconer, questioned the college’s commitment to educating African-American women in science. The chemistry curriculum was little more than a service course for students pursuing majors in home economics or physical education, and those with any science interests outside of premedicine had

916 Section 14: Spelman College to petition to take the majority of their courses at neighboring colleges. McBay and Falconer, only the ninth and eleventh black women in the United States to earn doctorates in their field, wanted to put in place a structure that would nurture the growth of future black women in science. With the support of Spelman’s president, Albert E. Manley, the two began work in the early 1970s to reinvent and build Spelman’s science program. Over the next two decades, departments were added to include biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, and physics, as well as a dual degree program in engineering. Under the dual degree program, students spent three years at Spelman taking preengineering coursework and two years at neighboring Georgia Institute of Technology for an engineering specialty, graduating with degrees from both institutions. In addition to curricular changes, academic-year and summer programs were established to increase student recruitment, retention, and graduation. The college actively recruited and hired faculty with doctoral degrees and active research portfolios so that students could gain hands-on experience with research. By the 1990s, the number of science graduates increased by more than 450 percent, from 28 in 1968 to 132 in 1996. Denise Stephenson-Hawk, a mathematics major, was one of those graduates. After leaving Spelman in 1976, she became the first African American woman to earn a doctoral degree in fluid dynamics, from Princeton University. Greer Lauren Geiger, also a 1976 graduate, earned an M.D., from Harvard Medical School, specializing in ophthalmology. Geiger’s fascination with the body, visual arts, and the biology and chemistry of the eye led her to pioneer a form of eye surgery that uses gas inside the eye to repair macular holes that result in the loss of the center of vision. In 1995, the National Science Foundation named Spelman College a model institution for excellence in undergraduate science and mathematics education. For the period 1997– 2001, the NSF ranked Spelman among the top fifteen baccalaureate-origin institutions graduating African Americans in the sciences who went on to earn the doctoral degree in science disciplines. With a second model designation by the NSF in 2000, Spelman continues to rank as one

of the top producers of African American women in science. Olivia A. Scriven

Sources Barnett, Harold M. “Spelman’s Response to the Scientific Challenge.” Spelman Messenger (Summer/Fall 1993): 12–15. Falconer, Etta Z. “A Story of Success: The Sciences at Spelman College.” SAGE: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women 6:2 (1989). Noble, Jeanne L. The Negro Woman’s College Education. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. Pearson, Willie, Jr., and H. Kenneth Bechtel, eds. Blacks, Science, and American Education. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

T AY LO R , F R E D E R I C K (1856–1915) Frederick Winslow Taylor, the founder of modern scientific management and the first industrial efficiency engineer, was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on March 20, 1856, to a wealthy Philadelphia Quaker family. At age twelve, Taylor traveled to Europe with his family, where they remained for three years. On returning to the United States, he attended Phillips Exeter Academy, an elite prep school in New Hampshire. Taylor developed what would become chronic health problems and, in an attempt to combat nightmares, invented a kind of harness to wear during sleep. Because of chronic headaches, insomnia, and poor vision, he chose to forego medical studies at Harvard University for a career in industry. In 1874, he became an apprentice machinist and pattern maker at Enterprise Hydraulic Works, a small Philadelphia pump operation. He completed his apprenticeship in 1878 and, through a family connection, began working in the machine shop of Midvale Steel while enrolled in university studies. He was awarded a mechanical engineering degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey in 1883. The following year, he married Louise Spooner; the couple eventually adopted three children. Most of Taylor’s observations and experimental studies on industrial management were

Section 14: Taylor, Frederick 917 made while he was working at Midvale. Over a twelve-year period, he ascended the corporate hierarchy as a machinist, foreman, master mechanic, and chief engineer. He is best known for developing and introducing time-motion studies, in which workers’ movements are measured and controlled to maximize work and boost the speed and volume of production. Taylor advocated production efficiency based on particular management techniques, such as fitting the best workers and tools to the job, and developing a cooperative approach between workers and management. He vehemently opposed trade unions or any collective bargaining; he believed that workers should cooperate with management above all else. His methods often produced resentment not only among workers but among managers as well. In the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century, with the rise of the American labor movement, “Taylorism” was widely denounced as exploitative, oppressive, dehumanizing, antidemocratic, and harmful to workers. Notwithstanding such criticism, Taylor’s philosophy of “the one best way” spread throughout the industrialized world, taking root in shops, offices, and industrial plants, especially steel mills. Taylor’s methodology be-

came a source of industrial conflict that continued throughout the twentieth century. Taylor is credited with launching the movement in scientific management with his bestknown text, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911). Other works include A Piece Rate System (1895), Shop Management (1903), and Concrete Costs (with S.E. Thompson, 1912). During his career, Taylor also worked at the Manufacturing Investment Company in Madison, Maine. He acted as a consultant and was a professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. He died of pneumonia on March 21, 1915. Heidi Rimke

Sources Kakar, Sudhir. Frederick Taylor: A Study in Personality and Innovation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1970. Kanigel, Robert. The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency. New York: Viking, 1997. Nelson, Daniel. Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980. Sicilia, David B. The Principles of Scientific Management. Norwalk, CT: Easton, 1993. Wrege, Charles D., and Ronald G. Greenwood. Frederick W. Taylor, the Father of Scientific Management: Myth and Reality. Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin, 1991.

DOCUMENTS America’s First Historical Editor Ebenezer Hazard’s Historical Collections (1792) was the first edited compilation of American documents. The following is the preface to the work, in which the author explains his reasons for collecting and publishing the documents. When the Conduct of Individuals in a Community is such as to attract public Attention, others are very naturally led to many Inquiries respecting them; so, when Civil States rise into Importance, even their earliest History becomes the Object of Speculation. Secluded from the rest of the World, the Anglo-American Colonies were viewed merely as Dependencies on Great Britain; and little more of them, comparatively, was known, than at what time they were discovered, and by whom: But when they dared to assert their Claims to Freedom, and in Defence of them to oppose the Parent State, whose Power even Europe dreaded—when they compelled her to consent to their Emancipation, and to acknowledge them as Independent States—they were then thought worthy of more respectful Attention, and an Acquaintance with their History was faught for with Avidity. But although the public Mind was anxious for Information, it could not be easily obtained: The Histories which had appeared, relating to a few individual States only, were not sufficient to gratify the inquisitive and were, in general, written so long since, as not now to prove satisfactory; and Materials for furnishing a more comprehensive View of the Subject were much dispersed, and not within the Reach of many. To remove this Obstruction from the Path of Science, and, at the same Time, to lay the Foundation of a good American History, is the Object of the following Compilation. It was the Compiler’s original Intention to visit each State in the Union, and to remain there a sufficient Time to form a complete Collection of such Materials for its History as had escaped the Ravages of Time and Accident. His Design was honoured with the Approbation

and Patronage of Congress, whose Recommendation of it gained him immediate Access to the Archives of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, including those of the old Colony of Plymouth, and the Province of Maine; but before he could proceed further an Appointment, as Post Master General of the United States, obliged him to reside at the Seat of Federal Government, and prevented his continuing the Work in the Method he at first proposed:—the papers collected since have been picked up just as they happened to fall in his Way: Hence the Compilation, although large, is necessarily very far from being complete; but he has, notwithstanding, thought it expedient to publish it in its present State, lest it should be scattered and lost;—he hopes too, that by laying a Foundation, he may induce others to prosecute Work which he conceives is not devoid of either Utility or Entertainment. Source: Ebenezer Hazard, Historical Collections: Consisting of State Papers, and Other Authentic Documents, Intended as Materials for an History of the United States of America (Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1792–1794).

The Virgin and the Dynamo In his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1918), the author summarizes his view of history as a perceived contest between human attempts to control the environment, and the subsequent development of technology (the Dynamo), and the inherent human need for security found by accommodating and embracing the pastoral mentality of dependence on nature and God (the Virgin). The following excerpt is taken from Chapter 25, “The Virgin and the Dynamo.” Then he showed his scholar the great hall of dynamos, and explained how little he knew about electricity or force of any kind, even of his own special sun, which spouted heat in inconceivable volume, but which, as far as he knew, might spout less or more, at any time, for all the certainty he felt in it. To him, the dynamo itself was but an ingenious channel for conveying some-

918

Section 14: Documents 919 where the heat latent in a few tons of poor coal hidden in a dirty engine-house carefully kept out of sight; but to Adams the dynamo became a symbol of infinity. As he grew accustomed to the great gallery of machines, he began to feel the forty-foot dynamos as a moral force, much as the early Christians felt the Cross. The planet itself seemed less impressive, in its old-fashioned, deliberate, annual or daily revolution, than this huge wheel, revolving within arm’s length at some vertiginous speed, and barely murmuring—scarcely humming an audible warning to stand a hair’sbreadth further for respect of power—while it would not wake the baby lying close against its frame. Before the end, one began to pray to it; inherited instinct taught the natural expression of man before silent and infinite force. Among the thousand symbols of ultimate energy the dynamo was not so human as some, but it was the most expressive. . . . Historians undertake to arrange sequences,— called stories, or histories—assuming in silence a relation of cause and effect. These assumptions, hidden in the depths of dusty libraries, have been astounding, but commonly unconscious and childlike; so much so, that if any captious critic were to drag them to light, historians would probably reply, with one voice, that they had never supposed themselves required to know what they were talking about. Adams, for one, had toiled in vain to find out what he meant. He had even published a dozen volumes of American history for no other purpose than to satisfy himself whether, by severest process of stating, with the least possible comment, such facts as seemed sure, in such order as seemed rigorously consequent, he could fix for a familiar moment a necessary sequence of human movement. The result had satisfied him as little as at Harvard College. Where he saw sequence, other men saw something quite different, and no one saw the same unit of measure. He cared little about his experiments and less about his statesmen, who seemed to him quite as ignorant as himself and, as a rule, no more honest; but he insisted on a relation of sequence. And if he could not reach it by one method, he would try as many methods as science knew. Satisfied that the sequence of men led to nothing and that the sequence of their society could lead no further, while the mere sequence of time was artificial,

and the sequence of thought was chaos, he turned at last to the sequence of force; and thus it happened that, after ten years’ pursuit, he found himself lying in the Gallery of Machines at the Great Exposition of 1900, his historical neck broken by the sudden irruption of forces totally new. . . . The historian was thus reduced to his last resources. Clearly if he was bound to reduce all these forces to a common value, this common value could have no measure but that of their attraction on his own mind. He must treat them as they had been felt; as convertible, reversible, interchangeable attractions on thought. He made up his mind to venture it; he would risk translating rays into faith. Such a reversible process would vastly amuse a chemist, but the chemist could not deny that he, or some of his fellow physicists, could feel the force of both. When Adams was a boy in Boston, the best chemist in the place had probably never heard of Venus except by way of scandal, or of the Virgin except as idolatry; neither had he heard of dynamos or automobiles or radium; yet his mind was ready to feel the force of all, though the rays were unborn and the women were dead. . . . This problem in dynamics gravely perplexed an American historian. The Woman had once been supreme; in France she still seemed potent, not merely as a sentiment, but as a force. Why was she unknown in America? For evidently America was ashamed of her, and she was ashamed of herself, otherwise they would not have strewn fig-leaves so profusely all over her. When she was a true force, she was ignorant of fig-leaves, but the monthly-magazine-made American female had not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam. The trait was notorious, and often humorous, but any one brought up among Puritans knew that sex was sin. In any previous age, sex was strength. Neither art nor beauty was needed. Every one, even among Puritans, knew that neither Diana of the Ephesians nor any of the Oriental goddesses was worshipped for her beauty. She was goddess because of her force; she was the animated dynamo; she was reproduction—the greatest and most mysterious of all energies; all she needed was to be fecund. . . . [I]n mechanics, whatever the mechanicians might think, both energies acted as interchange-

920 Section 14: Documents able force on man, and by action on man all known force may be measured. Indeed, few men of science measured force in any other way. After once admitting that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points, no serious mathematician cared to deny anything that suited his convenience, and rejected no symbol, unproved or unproveable, that helped him to accomplish work. The symbol was force, as a compass-needle or a triangle was force, as the mechanist might prove by losing it, and nothing could be gained by ignoring their value. Symbol or energy, the Virgin had acted as the greatest force the Western world ever felt, and had drawn man’s activities to herself more strongly than any other power, natural or supernatural, had ever done; the historian’s business was to follow the track of the energy; to find where it came from and where it went to; its complex source and shifting channels; its values, equivalents, conversions. It could scarcely be more complex than radium; it could hardly be deflected, diverted, polarized, absorbed more perplexingly than other radiant matter. Adams knew nothing about any of them, but as a mathematical problem of influence on human progress, though all were occult, all reacted on his mind, and he rather inclined to think the Virgin easiest to handle. The pursuit turned out to be long and tortuous, leading at last to the vast forests of scholastic science. From Zeno to Descartes, hand in hand with Thomas Aquinas, Montaigne, and Pascal, one stumbled as stupidly as though one were still a German student of 1860. Only with the instinct of despair could one force one’s self into this old thicket of ignorance after having been repulsed by a score of entrances more promising and more popular. Thus far, no path had led anywhere, unless perhaps to an exceedingly modest living. Forty-five years of study had proved to be quite Futile for the pursuit of power; one controlled no more force in 1900 than in 1850, although the amount of force controlled by society had enormously increased. The secret of education still hid itself somewhere behind ignorance, and one fumbled over it as feebly as ever. In such labyrinths, the staff is a force almost more necessary than the legs; the pen becomes a sort of blind-man’s dog, to keep him from falling into the gutters. The pen works

for itself, and acts like a hand, modelling the plastic material over and over again to the form that suits it best. The form is never arbitrary, but is a sort of growth like crystallization, as any artist knows too well; for often the pencil or pen runs into side-paths and shapelessness, loses its relations, stops or is bogged. Then it has to return on its trail, and recover, if it can, its line of force. The result of a year’s work depends more on what is struck out than on what is left in; on the sequence of the main lines of thought, than on their play or variety. Compelled once more to lean heavily on this support, Adams covered more thousands of pages with figures as formal as though they were algebra, laboriously striking out, altering, burning, experimenting, until the year had expired, the Exposition had long been closed, and winter drawing to its end, before he sailed from Cherbourg, on January 19, 1901, for home. Source: Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1918. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961).

America’s First Historical Society The clergyman, historian, and scientist Jeremy Belknap was chiefly responsible for the founding of the first historical society in America, the Massachusetts Historical Society, in 1791. The following is his “Plan of an Antiquarian Society,” penned in August 1790. It became the blueprint for the Massachusetts Historical Society. A Society to be formed consisting of not more than seven at first for the purpose of collecting, preserving, and communicating the Antiquities of America. Admissions to be made in such manner as the associated shall judge proper. The number of members to be limited. A President, Recording and Corresponding Secretary, Treasurer, Librarian, and Cabinet keeper to be appointed. Each Member to pay ___ at his admission and yearly. This and other money to be applied to promoting the objects of the Society. Each Member on his admission shall engage to use his utmost endeavours to collect and communicate to the society Manuscripts, printed books and pamphlets, historical facts, biographical anecdotes, observations in natural history, specimens of natural and artificial Curiosities and any other matters which may

Section 14: Documents 921 elucidate the natural, and political history of America from the earliest times to the present day. All communications which are thought worthy of being preserved shall be entered at large in the books of the Society . . . and the originals kept on file. Letters shall be written to Gentlemen in each of the United States requesting them to form similar societies and a correspondence shall be kept up between them for the purpose of communicating discoveries . . . to each other. Each society through the United States shall be desired from time to time to publish such of their Communications as they may judge proper, and all publications shall be made on paper and in pages of the same size that they

may be bound together—and Each Society so publishing shall be desired to send gratuitously to each of the other Societies one dozen Copies at least of each publication. Quarterly meetings to be held for the purpose of communicating— and in this State the quarterly meetings shall be held on the days next following those appointed for the meetings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. When the Society’s funds can afford it Salaries shall be granted to the Secretaries and other Officers. Source: Jeremy Belknap Papers, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ser. 5, vol. 3 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1891).

American Nobel Laureates in Science Physiology or Medicine 1933

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1943 1944

1946

1947

1950

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1958

Thomas H. Morgan, “for his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity.” George R. Minot, William P. Murphy, and George H. Whipple, “for their discoveries concerning liver therapy in cases of anaemia.” Edward A. Doisy, “for his discovery of the chemical nature of vitamin K.” Joseph Erlanger and Herbert S. Gasser, “for their discoveries relating to the highly differentiated functions of single nerve fibres.” Hermann J. Muller, “for the discovery of the production of mutations by means of X-ray irradiation.” Carl F. Cori and Gerty T. Cori, “for their discovery of the course of the catalytic conversion of glycogen.” Philip S. Hench and Edward C. Kendall (with Tadeus Reichstein of Switzerland), “for their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects.” Selman A. Waksman, “for his discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic effective against tuberculosis.” Fritz A. Lipmann, “for his discovery of co-enzyme A and its importance for intermediary metabolism.” John F. Enders, Frederick C. Robbins, and Thomas H. Weller, “for their discovery of the ability of poliomyelitis viruses to grow in cultures of various types of tissue.” Andre F. Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards (with Werner Forssman of Germany), “for their discoveries concerning heart catheterization and pathological changes in the circulatory system.” George W. Beadle and Edward L. Tatum, “for their discovery that genes act by regulating definite chemical events”; Joshua Lederberg, “for his discoveries concerning genetic recom-

1959

1961

1962

1964

1966

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

923

bination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria.” Arthur Kornberg and Severo Ochoa, “for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxyribonucleic acid.” Georg von Békésy, “for his discoveries of the physical mechanism of stimulation within the cochlea.” James D. Watson (with Francis H.C. Crick and Maurice H.F. Wilkins of the United Kingdom), “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.” Konrad Bloch (with Feodor Lynen of Germany), “for their discoveries concerning the mechanism and regulation of the cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism.” Charles B. Huggins, “for his discoveries concerning hormonal treatment of prostatic cancer”; Peyton Rous, “for his discovery of tumour-inducing viruses.” Haldan K. Hartline and George Wald (with Ragnar Granit of Sweden), “for their discoveries concerning the primary physiological and chemical visual processes in the eye.” Robert W. Holley, Har G. Khorana, and Marshall W. Nirenberg, “for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.” Max Delbrück, Alfred D. Hershey, and Salvador E. Luria, “for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses.” Julius Axelrod (with Ulf von Euler of Sweden and Sir Bernard Katz of the United Kingdom), “for their discoveries concerning the humoral transmittors in nerve terminals and the mechanism for their storage, release and inactivation.” Earl W. Sutherland, Jr., “for his discoveries concerning the mechanisms of the action of hormones.” Gerald M. Edelman (with Rodney R. Porter of the United Kingdom), “for their

924 American Nobel Laureates in Science

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1983 1985

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1987

discoveries concerning the chemical structure of antibodies.” George E. Palade (with Albert Claude and Christian de Duve of Belgium), “for their discoveries concerning the structural and functional organization of the cell.” David Baltimore, Renato Dulbecco, and Howard M. Temin, “for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell.” Baruch S. Blumberg and D. Carleton Gajdusek, “for their discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases.” Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally, “for their discoveries concerning the peptide hormone production of the brain”; Rosalyn Yalow, “for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones.” Daniel Nathans and Hamilton O. Smith (with Werner Arber of Switzerland), “for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics.” Allan M. Cormack (with Godfrey N. Hounsfield of the United Kingdom), “for the development of computer assisted tomography.” Baruj Benacerraf and George D. Snell (with Jean Dausset of France), “for their discoveries concerning genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions.” David H. Hubel (with Torsten N. Wiesel of Sweden), “for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system”; Roger W. Sperry, “for his discoveries concerning the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres.” Barbara McClintock, “for her discovery of mobile genetic elements.” Michael S. Brown and Joseph L. Goldstein, “for their discoveries concerning the regulation of cholesterol metabolism.” Stanley Cohen and Rita LeviMontalcini, “for their discoveries of growth factors.” Susumu Tonegawa, “for his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity.”

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Gertrude B. Elion and George H. Hitchings (with Sir James W. Black of the United Kingdom), “for their discoveries of important principles for drug treatment.” J. Michael Bishop and Harold E. Varmus, “for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes.” Joseph E. Murray and E. Donnall Thomas, “for their discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease.” Edmond H. Fischer and Edwin G. Krebs, “for their discoveries concerning reversible protein phosphorylation as a biological regulatory mechanism.” Phillip A. Sharp (with Richard J. Roberts of the United Kingdom), “for their discoveries of split genes.” Alfred G. Gilman and Martin Rodbell, “for their discovery of G-proteins and the role of these proteins in signal transduction in cells.” Edward B. Lewis and Eric F. Wieschaus (with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard of Germany), “for their discoveries concerning the genetic control of early embryonic development.” Stanley B. Prusiner, “for his discovery of Prions—a new biological principle of infection.” Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro, and Ferid Murad, “for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system.” Günter Blobel, “for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell.” Paul Greengard and Eric R. Kandel (with Arvid Carlsson of Sweden), “for their discoveries concerning signal transduction in the nervous system.” Leland H. Hartwell (with R. Timothy Hunt and Sir Paul M. Nurse of the United Kingdom), “for their discoveries of key regulators of the cell cycle.” H. Robert Horvitz (with Sydney Brenner and John E. Sulston of the United Kingdom), “for their discoveries concerning ‘genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death.’ ”

American Nobel Laureates in Science 925 2003

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Paul C. Lauterbur (with Sir Peter Mansfield of the United Kingdom), “for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging.” Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck, “for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system.” Andrew Z. Fire and Craig C. Mello, “for their discovery of RNA interference— gene silencing by double-stranded RNA.” Mario R. Capecchi and Oliver Smithies (with Sir Martin J. Evans of the United Kingdom) “for their discoveries of principles for introducing specific gene modifications in mice by the use of embryonic stem cells.”

1980

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Economic Sciences 1970

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Paul A. Samuelson, “for the scientific work through which he has developed static and dynamic economic theory and actively contributed to raising the level of analysis in economic science.” Simon Kuznets, “for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development.” Kenneth J. Arrow (with John R. Hicks of the United Kingdom), “for their pioneering contributions to general economic equilibrium theory and welfare theory.” Wassily Leontief, “for the development of the input-output method and for its application to important economic problems.” Tjalling C. Koopmans (with Leonid V. Kantorovich of the U.S.S.R.), “for their contributions to the theory of optimum allocation of resources.” Milton Friedman, “for his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.” Herbert A. Simon, “for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations.” Theodore W. Schultz (with Sir Arthur Lewis of the United Kingdom), “for their

1985

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1987 1990

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pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries.” Lawrence R. Klein, “for the creation of econometric models and the application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies.” James Tobin, “for his analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices.” George J. Stigler, “for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation.” Gerard Debreu, “for having incorporated new analytical methods into economic theory and for his rigorous reformulation of the theory of general equilibrium.” Franco Modigliani, “for his pioneering analyses of saving and of financial markets.” James M. Buchanan, Jr., “for his development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making.” Robert M. Solow, “for his contributions to the theory of economic growth.” Harry M. Markowitz, Merton H. Miller, and William F. Sharpe, “for their pioneering work in the theory of financial economics.” Gary S. Becker, “for having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behaviour.” Robert W. Fogel and Douglass C. North, “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.” John C. Harsanyi and John F. Nash, Jr. (with Reinhard Selten of Germany), “for their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games.” Robert E. Lucas, Jr., “for having developed and applied the hypothesis of rational expectations, and thereby having transformed macroeconomic

926 American Nobel Laureates in Science

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2000

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2007

analysis and deepened our understanding of economic policy.” William Vickrey (with James A. Mirrlees of the United Kingdom), “for their fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information.” Robert C. Merton and Myron S. Scholes, “for a new method to determine the value of derivatives.” Robert A. Mundell, “for his analysis of monetary and fiscal policy under different exchange rate regimes and his analysis of optimum currency areas.” James J. Heckman, “for his development of theory and methods for analyzing selective samples”; Daniel L. McFadden, “for his development of theory and methods for analyzing discrete choice.” George A. Akerlof, A. Michael Spence, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, “for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information.” Daniel Kahneman, “for having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty”; Vernon L. Smith, “for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical economic analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms.” Robert F. Engle III, “for methods of analyzing economic time series with timevarying volatility (ARCH).” Edward C. Prescott (with Finn E. Kydland of Norway), “for their contributions to dynamic microeconomics: the time consistency of economic policy and the driving forces behind business cycles.” Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling, “for having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.” Edmund S. Phelps, “for his analysis of intertemporal tradeoffs in macroeconomic policy.” Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin, and Roger B. Myerson, “for having laid the foundations of mechanism design theory.”

Physics 1907

1923

1927 1936 1937

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1955

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1959

Albert A. Michelson, “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations carried out with their aid.” Robert A. Millikan, “for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect.” Arthur H. Compton, “for his discovery of the effect named after him.” Carl D. Anderson, “for his discovery of the positron.” Clinton J. Davisson (with George P. Thomson of the United Kingdom), “for their experimental discovery of the diffraction of electrons by crystals.” Ernest O. Lawrence, “for the invention and development of the cyclotron and for results obtained with it, especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements.” Otto Stern, “for his contribution to the development of the molecular ray method and his discovery of the magnetic moment of the proton.” Isidor I. Rabi, “for his resonance method for recording the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei.” Percy W. Bridgman, “for the invention of an apparatus to produce extremely high pressures, and for the discoveries he made therewith in the field of high pressure physics.” Felix Bloch and Edward M. Purcell, “for their development of new methods for nuclear magnetic precision measurements and discoveries in connection therewith.” Polykarp Kusch, “for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron”; Willis E. Lamb, “for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum.” John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain, and William B. Shockley, “for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect.” Owen Chamberlain and Emilio G. Segrè, “for their discovery of the antiproton.”

American Nobel Laureates in Science 927 1960 1961

1963

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1965

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Donald A. Glaser, “for the invention of the bubble chamber.” Robert Hofstadter, “for his pioneering studies of electron scattering in atomic nuclei and for his thereby achieved discoveries concerning the structure of the nucleons.” Maria Goeppert-Mayer (with J. Hans D. Jensen of Germany), “for their discoveries concerning nuclear shell structure”; Eugene P. Wigner, “for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles.” Charles H. Townes (with Nicolay G. Basov and Aleksandr M. Prokhorov of the USSR), “for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle.” Richard P. Feynman and Julian Schwinger (with Sin-Itiro Tomonaga of Japan), “for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics, with deepploughing consequences for the physics of elementary particles.” Hans A. Bethe, “for his contributions to the theory of nuclear reactions, especially his discoveries concerning the energy production in stars.” Luis W. Alvarez, “for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis.” Murray Gell-Mann, “for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions.” John Bardeen, Leon N. Cooper, and J. Robert Schrieffer, “for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory.” Ivar Giaever (with Leo Esaki of Japan), “for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively.” L. James Rainwater (with Aage N. Bohr and Ben R. Mottelson of Denmark),

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1988

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“for the discovery of the connection between collective motion and particle motion in atomic nuclei and the development of the theory of the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this connection.” Burton Richter and Samuel C.C. Ting, “for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind.” Philip W. Anderson and John H. van Vleck (with Sir Nevill F. Mott of the United Kingdom), “for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems.” Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson, “for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation.” Sheldon L. Glashow and Steven Weinberg (with Abdus Salam of Pakistan), “for their contributions to the theory of the unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles, including, inter alia, the prediction of the weak neutral current.” James W. Cronin and Val L. Fitch, “for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons.” Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur L. Schawlow, “for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy.” Kenneth G. Wilson, “for his theory for critical phenomena in connection with phase transitions.” Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, “for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars”; William A. Fowler, “for his theoretical and experimental studies of the nuclear reactions of importance in the formation of the chemical elements of the universe.” Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz, and Jack Steinberger, “for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino.” Hans G. Dehmelt (with Wolfgang Paul of Germany), “for the development of the ion trap technique”; Norman F.

928 American Nobel Laureates in Science

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1994 1995

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2000 2001

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2003

Ramsey, “for the invention of the separated oscillatory fields method and its use in the hydrogen maser and other atomic clocks.” Jerome I. Friedman and Henry W. Kendall (with Richard E. Taylor of Canada), “for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics.” Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., “for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation.” Clifford G. Shull, “for the development of the neutron diffraction technique.” Martin L. Perl, “for the discovery of the tau lepton”; Frederick Reines, “for the detection of the neutrino.” David M. Lee, Douglas S. Osheroff, and Robert C. Richardson, “for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3.” Steven Chu and William D. Phillips (with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji of France), “for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.” Robert B. Laughlin and Daniel C. Tsui (with Horst L. Störmer of Germany), “for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.” Jack S. Kilby, “for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit.” Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman (with Wolfgang Ketterle of Germany), “for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases of alkali atoms, and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates.” Raymond Davis, Jr. (with Masatoshi Koshiba of Japan), “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, in particular for the detection of cosmic neutrinos”; Riccardo Giacconi, “for pioneering contributions to astrophysics, which have led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources.” Alexei A. Abrikosov and Anthony J. Leggett (with Vitaly L. Ginzburg of Russia), “for pioneering contributions to

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the theory of superconductors and superfluids.” David J. Gross, H. David Politzer, and Frank Wilczek, “for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction.” Roy J. Glauber, “for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence”; John L. Hall (with Theodor W. Hänsch of Germany), “for their contributions to the development of laserbased precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique.” John C. Mather and George F. Smoot, “for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation.”

Chemistry 1914

1932 1934 1946

1949

1951

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Theodore W. Richards, “in recognition of his accurate determinations of the atomic weight of a large number of chemical elements.” Irving Langmuir, “for his discoveries and investigations in surface chemistry.” Harold C. Urey, “for his discovery of heavy hydrogen.” John H. Northrop and Wendell M. Stanley, “for their preparation of enzymes and virus proteins in a pure form”; James B. Sumner, “for his discovery that enzymes can be crystallized.” William F. Giauque, “for his contributions in the field of chemical thermodynamics, particularly concerning the behaviour of substances at extremely low temperatures.” Edwin M. McMillan and Glenn T. Seaborg, “for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements.” Linus C. Pauling, “for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances.” Vincent du Vigneaud, “for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone.” Willard F. Libby, “for his method to use carbon-14 for age determination in

American Nobel Laureates in Science 929

1961

archaeology, geology, geophysics, and other branches of science.” Melvin Calvin, “for his research on the carbon dioxide assimilation in plants.”

1965

Robert B. Woodward, “for his outstanding achievements in the art of organic synthesis.”

1966

Robert S. Mulliken, “for his fundamental work concerning chemical bonds and the electronic structure of molecules by the molecular orbital method.” Lars Onsager, “for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, which are fundamental for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes.” Christian B. Anfinsen, “for his work on ribonuclease, especially concerning the connection between the amino acid sequence and the biologically active conformation”; Stanford Moore and William H. Stein, “for their contribution to the understanding of the connection between chemical structure and catalytic activity of the active center of the ribonuclease molecule.” Paul J. Flory, “for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of the macromolecules.” William N. Lipscomb, “for his studies on the structure of boranes illuminating problems of chemical bonding.” Herbert C. Brown (with Georg Wittig of Germany), “for their development of the use of boron- and phosphorus-containing compounds, respectively, into important reagents in organic synthesis.” Paul Berg, “for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinantDNA”; Walter Gilbert (with Frederick Sanger of the United Kingdom), “for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids.”

1968

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Roald Hoffmann (with Kenichi Fukui of Japan), “for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions.” Henry Taube, “for his work on the mechanisms of electron transfer reactions, especially in metal complexes.”

1984

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Robert B. Merrifield, “for his development of methodology for chemical synthesis on a solid matrix.” Herbert A. Hauptman and Jerome Karle, “for their outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures.” Dudley R. Herschbach and Yuan T. Lee (with John C. Polanyi of Canada), “for their contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.” Donald J. Cram and Charles J. Pedersen (with Jean-Marie Lehn of France), “for their development and use of molecules with structure-specific interactions of high selectivity.” Sidney Altman and Thomas R. Cech, “for their discovery of catalytic properties of RNA.” Elias James Corey, “for his development of the theory and methodology of organic synthesis.” Rudolph A. Marcus, “for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems.” Kary B. Mullis, “for his invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method.” George A. Olah, “for his contribution to carbocation chemistry.” Mario J. Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland (with Paul J. Crutzen of the Netherlands), “for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone.” Robert F. Curl, Jr., and Richard E. Smalley (with Sir Harold W. Kroto of the United Kingdom), “for their discovery of fullerenes.” Paul D. Boyer (with John E. Walker of the United Kingdom), “for their elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP).” Walter Kohn, “for his development of the density-functional theory.” Ahmed H. Zewail, “for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy.”

930 American Nobel Laureates in Science 2000

2001

2002

2003

Alan J. Heeger and Alan G. MacDiarmid (with Hideki Shirakawa of Japan), “for the discovery and development of conductive polymers.” William S. Knowles (with Ryoji Noyori of Japan), “for their work on chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions”; K. Barry Sharpless, “for his work on chirally catalysed oxidation reactions.” John B. Fenn (with Koichi Tanaka of Japan), “for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules.” Peter Agre, “for the discovery of water channels [in cell membranes]”; Roderick

2004

MacKinnon, “for structural and mechanistic studies of ion channels [in cell membranes].” Irwin Rose (with Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko of Israel), “for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.”

2005

Robert H. Grubbs and Richard R. Schrock (with Yves Chauvin of France), “for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis.”

2006

Roger D. Kornberg, “for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.”

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Web Sites American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www. amacad.org. American Antiquarian Society. http://www.american antiquarian.org. American Association for the Advancement of Science. http://www.aaas.org. American Cancer Society. http://www.cancer.org. American Dental Association. http://www.ada.org. American Historical Association. http://www.historians. org. American Journal of Psychology. http://www.press. uillinois.edu/journals/ajp.html. American Mathematical Society. http://www.ams.org. American Medical Association. http://www.ama-assn. org. American Museum of Natural History. http://www. amnh.org. American Philosophical Society. http://www.amphilsoc. org. American Psychological Association. http://www.apa. org. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. http://www.asabe.org. American Society of Agronomy. http://www.agronomy. org. American Society of Civil Engineers. http://www.asce. org. American Society of Gene Therapy. http://www.asgt. org.

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Index Adams, Henry Brooks, 2:475; 3:878, 878, 882–883 Education of Henry Adams, The (1918), 3:882–883, 918–920 History of the United States During the Administrations of Adams and Jefferson (1889– 1891), 3:874, 882 “Virgin and the Dynamo, The” (1918), 3:882–883, 918–920 Adams-Onis Treaty (1819), 1:150 Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), 1:173, 249; 3:929 Adenyl acid (AMP), 1:249 Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Morison, 1942), 3:906 Adrenal cortex hormones, 3:923 Advancement of Learning (Bacon, 1605), 1:49 Adventures of Captain Bonneville (Irving, 1837), 1:86 AEC. See Atomic Energy Commission African Americans acquired immune deficiency syndrome, 2:286 Alzheimer’s disease, 2:288 Benjamin Banneker, 3:733–735, 734 craniometry, 1:206 Daniel Hale Williams, 2:394–395 Elijah McCoy, 3:852 Ernest Everett Just, 1:226 George Washington Carver, 1:203–204, 204 Granville T. Woods, 3:864 herbal remedies, 2:334 inventors, 3:883–884 IQ, 2:546 Lewis Howard Latimer, 3:820 life expectancy, 2:351 Lloyd Augustus Hall, 3:692 Matthew Henson, 1:113 medicine, 3:884–885 National Museum of African American History, 3:915 natural sciences, 3:884 race, 2:509 scientists, 3:880, 883–886 Spelman College, 3:915–916 sterilization, 1:212 technology, 3:885 Tuskegee experiment, 1:252–253 See also names of other African Americans Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe, 1:44; 2:416–417, 417 Charles Darwin, 2:416–417 Lawrence School, 3:903–904

Note: Numbers in bold are volumes. Page numbers in italics indicate images.

A

AAAS. See American Academy of Arts and Sciences; American Association for the Advancement of Science AAS. See American Antiquarian Society Abenaki Indians Henry David Thoreau, 1:60 John Gyles, 1:30–33, 265–266; 2:519 materia medica, 1:133 See also Native Americans Abortion, 2:284–285 Benjamin Spock, 2:384 C. Everett Koop, 2:350 Margaret Louise Sanger, 2:378 See also Obstetrics; Public health; Women Abrikosov, Alexei A., 3:928 Academy of Natural Sciences, 1:175, 188 Acadia Marc Lescarbot, 1:46, 103–104 Samuel de Champlain, 1:46, 88 Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Place, An (Franklin, 1744), 1:28 Account of Two Voyages to New-England, An (Josselyn, 1674), 1:36–37, 136 Acetaminophen, 1:196–197 Acosta, José de, 1:15, 48, 75 Mexico, 1:15, 48 Natural and Moral History of the Indies (1590), 1:15, 48, 75 Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), 1:217; 2:285, 285–287 African Americans, 2:286 American Medical Association, 2:291 C. Everett Koop, 2:350 Centers for Disease Control, 2:285–286 health care reform, 2:277–278, 283 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 2:285–287 New England Journal of Medicine, 2:362 public health, 2:371 ACS. See American Cancer Society Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, An (Jefferson, 1779), 1:36 ADA. See American Dental Association

I-1

I-2 Index Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe (continued) paleontology, 1:188–189 Age of Reason, The (Paine, 1794), 1:11, 83; 3:877, 895 Agre, Peter, 3:930 Agriculture, 3:779–780 crop rotation, 3:772 engineering, 3:777–778, 778 experiment stations, 3:778–779 farm machinery, 3:792–793 implements, 3:824 revolution, 3:771–772 science, 3:867–868 Agrimony, 1:135 Agronomy, 3:780–781 Agronomy Journal, 3:780 AGS. See American Geographical Society AHA. See American Historical Association AIDS. See Acquired immune deficiency syndrome Aiken, Howard Hathaway, 3:729–730, 748 Air flight, 1:87, 87–88 balloons and ballooning, 2:419–420 helicopters, 3:768, 844–845 See also Ornithology; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station; names of aircraft and spacecraft; names of aviators and inventors Air maps, 2:420 Akerlof, George A., 3:926 Alaska Denali, 2:448 earthquake, 2:431 glaciers, 2:436 Lincoln Ellsworth, 1:95–96 oil spill, 1:26 Aldrin, Edwin E. (“Buzz”), 1:78 See also Apollo, Project; Astronauts; Gemini, Project; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station Alexanderson, Ernst, 3:838 Algebra Algebraic geometry, 3:744 Linear Associative Algebra (1870), 3:752 See also Mathematics Allen, Frederick Madison, 2:287 Allen, Paul Gardner, 3:749 Almagest (Syntaxis of Astronomy, ca. 140–150 C.E.; Ptolemy), 2:610 Almanacs, 2:573–575, 579 American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge (Pierce), 3:752 American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, 1:261; 2:417–418 astrology, 2:574, 579 astronomy, 2:579

Almanacs (continued) Banneker’s Almanack (Banneker, 1792–1797), 3:734, 734 Mercurius Nov-Anglicans (Douglass, 1743), 2:320 Poor Richard’s Almanack (Franklin, 1732–1758), 1:28; 2:410, 574, 608–610, 609 writers, 2:409–410 Altair computer, 3:749 Alter, David, 3:663–664 Alternative market mechanisms, 3:926 Altman, Sidney, 3:681, 929 Alvarez, Luis W., 3:630, 927 Alzheimer’s disease, 2:287–289, 288 AMA. See American Medical Association AMC. See Appalachian Mountain Club America Online (AOL), 3:727 “America the Beautiful” (song), 1:12 American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), 3:886–887 American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge (Pierce), 3:752 American Antiquarian Society (AAS), 3:887–888 American Art Museum, 3:915 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 3:888–889 American Astronomical Society, 2:577 American Biography (Belknap, 1794), 1:82–83 American Breeders Association, 1:212 American Cancer Society (ACS), 2:308 American Conchology (Say, 1830–1834), 1:175 American Dental Association (ADA), 2:289–290 American Entomology (Say, 1817–1828), 1:52, 175 American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac (1852), 1:261; 2:417–418; 3:752 American Gardener’s Calendar, The (McHahon, 1806), 1:166 American Geographical Society (AGS), 1:78–79 American Geography (Morse, 1789), 1:111 American Historical Association (AHA), 3:890 American Indians. See Native Americans American Journal of Psychology, 2:533 American Journal of Science and Arts, 1:189 American Mathematical Society (AMS), 3:730–731 American Medical Association (AMA), 2:276, 290–291 Journal of the American Medical Association, 2:290 American Medical Botany (J. Bigelow, 1817–1820), 1:151 American Museum of Natural History, 3:890–891 American Natural History (Godman, 1828), 1:30 American Naturalist, 1:224 American Nobel Laureates. See Nobel Prize winners American Ornithology; or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States (Wilson, 1808–1814), 1:257

Index I-3 American Philosophical Society (APS), 1:xxx, 28, 35; 3:891–893, 892 American Plutarch, 1:82 American Psychological Association (APA), 2:533–534 American Reader (Webster, 1785), 1:61 American School for the Deaf, 2:291–292 American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), 1:56 American Sign Language, 2:291–292 American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS), 1:166 American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE), 3:777 American Sociological Association (ASA), 2:484 American Spelling Book, or The Blue-Black Speller (Webster, 1783), 1:61 American Statistical Association (ASA), 3:755 American Zoo and Aquarium Association, 1:264 AMP. See Adenyl acid; Applied Mathematics Panel Ampicillin, 2:390 AMS. See American Mathematical Society Amundsen, Roald, 1:95–96 Anatomical Investigations (Godman, 1824), 1:30 Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary, An (Donne, 1611), 1:49 Anderson, Carl David, 3:630–631, 654, 926 Anderson, Philip W., 3:927 Andreesen, Marc, 3:727 Anesthesia, 2:292–293 dentistry, 2:314–315 Ether Dome, 2:333 George Hayward, 2:333 obstetrics, 2:310 surgery, 2:386–387 William Halsted, 2:331 Anfinsen, Christian B., 3:929 Angel of Bethesda, The (C. Mather, 1972), 1:39–40 Anglo-American Polar Expedition, 1:120 Antarctic exploration, 1:95–96 Charles Wilson Peale, 1:53 Lincoln Ellsworth, 1:95–96 Richard Evelyn Byrd, 1:87; 3:892 See also South Pole Anthrax, 1:199–200 Anthropology, 2:469–473, 470 Appalachian Mountains, 2:469 ethnology, 2:494 See also Benedict, Ruth; Boas, Franz; Cultural anthropology; Mead, Margaret; Physical anthropology; names of other anthropologists Antibiotics, 2:293–294 early use, 2:277 microbiology, 1:234

Antibiotics (continued) penicillin, 2:364–366 Selman Abraham Waksman, 1:253–254; 3:923 streptomycin, 1:253; 2:377 surgery, 2:386–387 typhoid fever, 2:390–391 William Halsted, 2:331 Antibodies chemical structure, 3:923–924 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 2:286 immunization, 2:343, 356, 390–392 inoculation, 2:346–347 Jonas Salk, 2:376 tetanus, 2:390–391 Antidepressants, 1:196–197 Antiproton, 3:926 Antiquities Act (1906), 1:57; 2:485 Antitrust action, Microsoft, 3:750 AOL. See America Online APA. See American Psychological Association Apollo, Project, 3:781–782, 782, 828, 847, 861 astronauts, 2:436 Wernher Magnus Maximillian von Braun, 3:860–861 See also Gemini, Project; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station; names of astronauts; names of spacecraft Apollo 1, 3:781 Apollo 7, 3:781 Apollo 8, 1:81, 90; 3:782 Apollo 10, 3:782 Apollo 11, 1:78, 81, 90; 3:782, 782, 809, 861, 914 Michael Collins, 1:90 in museum, 3:914 Neil Armstrong, 3:781 Robert Hutchings Goddard, 3:809 See also Apollo, Project; Gemini, Project; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station Apollo 12, 3:782 Apollo 13, 3:782 Apollo 14, 1:119 Apollo 15, 3:782 Apollo 17, 3:782 Apollo Press, 3:905 Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC), 1:8, 79–80 Appalachia, 1:80 Appalachian Mountains, 1:32, 72–75; 2:438 anthropology, 2:469 girdling, 3:807 Thomas Walker, 1:123 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 3:783

I-4 Index Appalachian Trail, 1:8, 80; 2:448 Apple computers, 3:724, 731, 731–732, 739, 750 Appleseed, Johnny. See Chapman, John Applied health, 2:276–279 See also Health; Public health Applied mathematics, 3:732–733 Applied Mathematics Panel (AMP), 3:733 See also Mathematics APS. See American Philosophical Society Aquariums American Zoo and Aquarium Association, 1:264 See also Ichthyology; Oceanography Aquinas, Thomas, 1:43; 3:920 Arber, Werner, 3:924 Arboretum Americanum (The American Grove, Bartram, 1775), 1:166 Archeology, 2:484–486, 485 Antiquities Act (1906), 1:57; 2:485 Native Americans, 2:482–483 See also names of archeologists Arctic Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, 1:119 Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1:120 Lincoln Ellsworth, 1:95–96 Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1:120–121 See also North Pole Aristotle, 1:xxviii, 213; 3:625–626 Arkansas “Arkansaw Journal” (Pike), 1:128 Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory during the Year 1819 (Nuttall, 1821), 1:138, 170, 171, 175, 178–179 Arkwright, Richard, 3:846 Arminianism, 1:23; 3:893–894 Arminius, Jacobus, 3:893–894 Armstrong, Charles, 2:370 Armstrong, Edwin, 3:840 Armstrong, Lance, 2:308 Armstrong, Neil A., 1:78, 80–81, 90; 3:781–782 See also Apollo, Project; Astronauts; Gemini, Project; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. See U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ARPANET, 3:725–726 Arrow, Kenneth J., 3:925 Artificial hearts, 2:311–312 See also names of doctors Artificial intelligence. See Intelligence, artificial ASA. See American Scientific Affiliation; American Sociological Association; American Statistical Association

ASAE. See American Society of Agricultural Engineers ASD. See Autistic spectrum disorders ASHS. See American Society for Horticultural Science Aspects of Nature (Humboldt, 1849), 1:102 Asperger, Hans, 2:294 Asperger Syndrome, 2:294 Assembly-line production, 3:863 See also Ford, Henry Association of American Geographers, 1:79 Astrology, 2:579–580 almanacs, 2:574, 579 astronomy, 2:579–580 George Beard, 2:568 Ptolemaic system, 2:610 Astronauts Alan B. Shepard, Jr., 1:118–119 Edwin E. (“Buzz”) Aldrin, 1:78 Eugene Merle Shoemaker, 2:614 John Glenn, 1:97–98 Mae Jemison, 3:885 Michael Collins, 1:90–91 Neil A. Armstrong, 1:78, 80–81, 90; 3:781–782 Project Apollo, 2:436 safety, 2:595 See also Apollo, Project; Gemini, Project; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station Astronomy, 2:573–578 Almagest (Syntaxis of Astronomy, ca. 140–150 C.E.; Ptolemy), 2:610 almanacs, 2:579 American Astronomical Society, 2:577 Annie Jump Cannon, 2:584–585, 585 Asaph G. Hall, 2:591, 591–592 astrology, 2:579–580 Astronomical Journal, 3:752 Christian philosophers, 2:572–573 comets, 2:586–587 Edward Hitchcock, 2:466 Edwin Powell Hubble, 2:593–594 European background, 2:571–572 Eusebio Francisco Kino, 1:48 George Ellery Hale, 2:590 Guillaume Delisle, 1:93–94 Henry Draper, 2:587–588 Illustrated Astronomy (Smith, 1850), 2:620–621 James Edward Keeler, 2:596–597 Manasseh Cutler, 1:154–155; 2:620 Maria Mitchell, 2:576, 576, 598 mariner’s quadrant, 2:446 Mary Whitney, 2:576

Index I-5 Astronomy (continued) as modern science, 1:55 Native Americans, 2:480 Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, The (1766), 2:418, 575 Percival Lowell, 2:597–598 Puritans, 2:572 radio, 2:581, 595–596 religion, 1:55 telescope lens, 2:585–586 Thomas Godrey, 2:440 Vassar College, 2:576 weather, 2:409–410 William Bond, 2:582–583 William Dunbar, 1:158 women, 2:575–578 See also Observatories; Stars; Telescopes; names of other publications; names of other scientists Astrophysics, 3:928 Asylums, World War II, 2:557 Asymmetric information, 3:926 AT&T, 3:774, 838 Atkins, Edwin, 1:165 Atlantic Ocean, 1:3–5; 2:497 Charles Lindbergh flight, 3:821 telegraph across, 2:447; 3:854, 867 Atlantis, 1:238 Atmospheric chemistry, 3:929 Atomic bomb, 3:783–786, 785 Albert Einstein, 3:636, 774–776 atomic fission, 3:859 chemists involved, 3:680 Edward Teller, 3:666 Enrico Fermi, 3:637–638, 830 Ernest Lawrence, 3:646 fission, 3:640 Hans Albrecht Bethe, 3:632 J. Robert Oppenheimer, 3:831–832 James B. Conant, 3:689 John von Neumann, 3:757–758 Linus Pauling, 3:700 Lloyd Quarterman, 3:885 plutonium, 3:836 Robert Jay Lifton, 2:548–549 Willard Frank Libby, 3:693 World War II, 3:784–786 See also Atomic Energy Commission; Hydrogen bomb; Manhattan Project Atomic clock, 3:791 Atomic Energy Act (1946), 3:786 Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 3:786–787 Atomic fission, 3:859 Atomic nuclei, 3:926, 927

Atomic power, 3:774–776, 775 Atomic weight, 3:928 Atoms, trapping, 3:928 ATP. See Adenosine triphosphate Attraction force, 3:674–675 Audion, 3:838 Audubon, John James, 1:8, 194–196, 195; 3:891 Birds of America (1840–1844), 1:195, 239, 240 Ornithological Biography: An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States (1831–1839), 1:195, 240 Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (1845–1854), 1:195 See also National Audubon Society; Ornithology Audubon, John Woodhouse, 1:195 Audubon, Victor Gifford, 1:195 Audubon Society. See National Audubon Society Aumann, Robert J., 3:926 Aurora borealis, 2:418–419 Autism, 2:294–295 Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), 2:294 Automobiles, 3:773–774, 802–804 See also Ford, Henry; Ford Motor Company; General Motors (GM) Autopsy, 2:295–296 Avery, Oswald, 1:216 Avery, William, 2:583 Aviation Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich, 3:768, 844–845 World War I, 3:821 Awakenings, 1:11–12 Axel, Richard, 3:925 Axelrod, Julius, 1:196–197, 222; 3:923

B

Babbage, Charles, 3:748 Bacon, Francis, 1:5, 29, 54–56; 2:512, 572 Advancement of Learning (1605), 1:49 as inventor, 3:767 New Atlantis (1627), 3:767 Novum Organum (1620), 3:625, 875 Baekeland, Leo, 3:680 Baffin Bay, 1:72 Bailey, Liberty Hyde horticulture, 1:166 Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, The (1914), 1:166, 166 Baird, Spencer, 1:225 Baja California, 1:122 Baker, James, 3:748 Bald eagle, 1:241 Baldwin, William, 1:141–142

I-6 Index Ballard, Martha, 2:296–297 Balloons and ballooning, 2:419–420 Sounding balloons, 2:420 Baltimore, David, 3:924 Banister, John, 1:142–143 Banneker, Benjamin, 3:733–735, 734 Banneker’s Almanack (1792–1797), 3:734, 734 Banting, Frederick Grant, 2:297, 316–317, 317 Barber surgeons, 2:298 Barbiturates, 2:293 Bard, John, 2:298–299 Bardeen, John, 3:664–665, 926, 927 Bardeen Cooper Schrieffer theory, 3:664–665, 926, 927 Barnard, Christiaan, 2:299–300 Barton, Benjamin Smith, 1:143–144 as botanist, 1:137, 148–149 Native Americans, 1:149 William Baldwin, 1:141 Barton, Otis, 2:420–421 Bartram, John, 1:xxix, 144–145, 145, 147, 186 Arboretum Americanum (The American Grove, 1775), 1:166 as botanist, 1:28, 136–137 Florida, 1:147–148 Georgia, 1:147–148 horticulture, 1:165–166 Journal Kept by John Bartram of Philadelphia . . . upon a Journey from St. Augustine up the River St. John’s, with Explanatory Notes (1766), 1:145 Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and Other Matters Worthy of Notice (1751), 1:145 Bartram, William, 1:136–137, 147–149 BASIC computer language, 3:749 Basov, Nicolay G., 3:927 Bathysphere, 1:16; 2:420–421, 421 Battle of Fallen Timbers, Ohio, 1:89 Bayer, 3:774 BCS-theory, 3:927 Beadle, George W., 3:923 Beard, George Miller, 2:534–535, 568 Becker, Gary S., 3:925 Beebe, Charles William, 1:16; 2:420–421, 421 See also Carson, Rachel Beguin, Jean, 3:679 Beginner’s Chemistry (1610), 3:679 Behaim, Martin, 1:5 Behaviorism, 2:528, 535–536 Békésy, Georg von, 3:923 Belknap, Jeremy, 1:xxix, 6, 7, 10–11, 81–83, 137 American Biography (1794), 1:82–83 Belknap-Hazard collection of letters, 3:897–899

Belknap, Jeremy (continued) Dissertations on the Life, Character, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1795), 1:11, 82–83 Ebenezer Hazard, 3:897–899 Election Sermon, 1:6 History of New-Hampshire, The (1784–1792), 1:10, 13, 81–83, 85, 133 Massachusetts Historical Society, 1:83; 3:904–905, 920 materia medica, 1:133 “Plan of an Antiquarian Society,” (1790), 3:920–921 White Mountains expedition, 1:81–83 See also Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784) Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784), 1:13, 84–86 Cutler, Manasseh, 1:155 Whipple, Joseph, 1:123–125 See also Belknap, Jeremy Belknap-Hazard collection of letters, 3:897–899 Bell, Alexander Graham, 1:112–113; 3:768, 787, 795, 797, 820, 836, 837, 854 See also Bell Labs; Telephone Bell Curve, The (Herrnstein, 1994), 2:546 Bell Labs, 3:774, 840 Benacerraf, Baruj, 3:924 Benedict, Ruth, 2:476, 486, 489 Chrysanthemum and the Sword, The (1946), 2:486 Patterns of Culture (1934), 2:486 Bentley, Wilson Alwyn, 2:422 Benton, Thomas Hart, 1:96–97 Berg, Paul, 3:929 Berlandier, Jean Louis, 1:149–151 Diario de viaje de la Comisión de Límites (1850), 1:151 Guadeloupe, 1:150–151 materia medica, 1:135 Rio Grande, 1:150 Berson, Solomon A., 2:398 Bessemer, Henry, 3:773 Best, Charles, 2:297, 316–317, 317 Bethe, Hans Albrecht, 3:631–632, 927 Bettelheim, Bruno, 2:536–537 Beverley, Robert, 1:16–17; 3:873, 877 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920), 2:543 B.F. Goodrich, 3:683, 774 Biblia Americana, or Scared Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (C. Mather), 1:39 Bickmore, Albert Smith, 3:890–891 Big bang theory, 2:580–581, 581, 648, 649, 661 Bigelow, Henry Bryant Fishes of the Gulf of Maine (1925), 1:198 Fishes of the Western North Atlantic (1948), 1:198

Index I-7 Bigelow, Jacob, 1:151–152 Biggs, Hermann Michael, 2:300–301 Billings, William Dwight, 1:26 Biodiversity, 1:204–205, 258 Biological sciences Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, 1:231–232 Philadelphia Biological Society, 1:185 Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Wilson, 1975), 1:257 See also Antibiotics; Biological warfare; Conservation biology; Microbiology; Molecular biology; names of biologists; names of related sciences and scientists Biological warfare, 1:199, 199–200 Biosphere, 1:26 Bird flu, 1:241; 2:283 Birds. See Ornithology Birds of America (Audubon, 1840–1844), 1:195, 236 Birth control Birth Control Review, 2:378 contraception, 2:397 Margaret Louise Sanger, 2:377–379, 378 National Birth Control League, 2:397 See also Abortion; Midwifery; Obstetrics Bishop, J. Michael, 3:924 BITNET, 3:726 Bitternut hickory, 1:135 Black, James W., 3:924 Black holes, 2:581–582, 595, 596, 615; 3:661, 669, 670, 831 Black willow, 1:135 Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discovery: 1894– 1912 (Kuhn, 1978), 3:902 Blackwell, Elizabeth, 2:301–302, 302 Bleeding, 2:302–303 leeches, 2:302–303 phlebotomy, 2:302 See also Bloodletting Blobel, Günter, 3:924 Bloch, Felix, 3:926 Bloch, Konrad Emil, 1:200–201; 3:923 Bloembergen, Nicolaas, 3:927 Blood storage, World War II, 3:885 Bloodletting, 2:298, 302 See also Bleeding Blue Ridge Mountains, 1:74 Blumberg, Baruch S., 3:924 Boas, Franz, 1:206; 2:476, 486–487, 487, 489, 492; 3:893 Boeing, 3:787–789 Bohr, Aage N., 3:927 Bohun, Lawrence, 1:136, 159; 2:273

Bond, George Phillips, 3:752 Bond, William, 2:582–583 Bonneville, Benjamin Louis Eulalie de, 1:86–87 Bonpland, Aimé, 1:101 Boone, Daniel, 1:75; 3:891 Bopp, Thomas, 2:587 Boron-containing compounds, 3:929 Bose-Einstein condensation, 3:928 Boston Philosophical Society, 2:583 Boston Society of Natural History, 1:231 Botanic Manuscript of Jane Colden, 1724–1766 (1963), 1:54 Botany American Medical Botany (J. Bigelow, 1817–1820), 1:151 Benjamin Smith Barton, 1:148–149 Botanic Manuscript of Jane Colden, 1724–1766 (1963), 1:54 Cadwallader Coldren, 1:7, 20–22 Elements of Botany (Barton, 1803), 1:137, 144 Elements of Botany (Gray, 1887), 1:249 explorer-botanists, 1:136–138 Introduction to Systematic and Physiological Botany (Nuttall, 1827), 1:171 Jane Colden, 1:21, 153–154, 187 John Bartram, 1:xxix, 144–145, 145, 147, 186 Sketch of the Botany of South-Carolina and Georgia, A (1816, 1824), 1:159 William Bartram, 1:136–137, 147–149 See also Flora; Harvard Botanical Garden; Horticulture; Plants; names of other botanists, explorer-botanists, and scientists; names of other botanical works Botulism, 1:200 Boveri, Theodore, 1:215 Bowditch, Henry Ingersoll, 2:303–304 Bowditch, Henry Pickering, 1:222 Bowditch, Nathaniel, 1:156; 2:583–584 Bowen, Nathan, 2:574 Bowler, Peter, 1:140 Bowman, Isaiah, 1:79 Boyer, Paul D., 3:929 Boyle, Robert, 3:679 Boylston, Zabdiel, 1:168; 2:304–306, 305 Brackenridge, Henry Marie, 1:17–18 John Bradbury, 1:152 Missouri River journey, 1:67–68 Recollections of Persons and Places in the West (1834), 1:18 Views of Louisiana (1814), 1:18, 152 Bradbury, John, 1:17–18, 76, 152–153 as botanist, 1:137 catalogue of flora in Missouri Valley, 1:179–181

I-8 Index Bradbury, John (continued) “Catalogue of Some of the Most Rare or Valuable Plants Discovered in the Neighbourhood of St. Louis and on the Missouri.” (1810–1811), 1:179–181 Henry Brackenridge, 1:152 materia medica, 1:134–135 Native American beliefs and customs, 2:520–521 Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811 (1817), 1:76, 137, 152, 179–180 Bradford, William, 1:9 Brahe, Tycho, 2:586 Brattain, Walter H., 3:926 Brendan, 1:3 Brenner, Sydney, 3:924 Brereton, John, 1:99 Bridges, suspension, 3:790–791 Bridgman, Percy W., 3:926 Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, A (Webster, 1799), 1:62 Brief History of the War with the Indians in New England, A (I. Mather, 1676), 1:9 Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (Hariot, 1588), 1:33, 100 Broadband Internet access, 3:727 Broca, Paul, 1:206 Brooklyn Bridge, 3:790, 790–791 Brown, Herbert C., 3:929 Brown, Michael S., 3:924 Brown, Moses, 3:846 Brownell, Frank, 3:834 Brownian motion, 3:735 Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (Einstein, 1926), 3:636 Brownie camera. See Eastman, George; Kodak Brûlé, Etienne, 1:46 Bryan, William Jennings, 1:190, 245, 246 Bubble chamber, 3:927 Buchanan, James M., Jr., 3:925 Buck, Linda B., 3:925 Buck v. Bell (1927), 1:212, 248 Bumbel, Emil J., 3:755 Burbank, Luther, 1:201–202 Charles Darwin, 1:201 horticulture, 1:166 How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man (1921), 1:166, 201 Bureau of American Ethnology, 1:117 Bush, Vannevar, 3:736, 736–737 Butterfly effect, 3:738 Byrd, Richard Evelyn, 1:87, 87–88; 3:892 Byrd, William, II, 1:6, 18; 3:910

C

Cabot, John, 1:71 Cadwalader, Thomas, 1:221; 2:306–307 Calculators, 3:762–763 Calculus, 3:737–738 See also Mathematics Calhoun, John C., 1:110 California Report of the Exploring Expedition to Oregon and California (Frémont), 1:97 Caloric force, 3:674–675 Calvin, Melvin, 1:173; 3:686, 929 Calvin-Benson cycle, 1:173 Cameras, 2:422, 592, 593, 599, 604; 3:688, 793–794 See also Eastman, George; Kodak Canada Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1:120 Carte du Canada ou de la Novelle France (Map of Canada or New France (Delisle, 1703), 1:94 See also Artic; names of explorers; names of places in Canada Canals Erie Canal, 1:232; 2:432–433; 3:800–801, 801 Isthmian Canal Commission, 2:329 Panama Canal, 1:79, 88; 2:329, 400 See also Mars canals Cancer and cancer research, 2:307–309, 308 American Cancer Society (ACS), 2:308 National Cancer Institute, 2:307–309 prostatic cancer, 3:923 statistics, 2:308 surgery as treatment, 2:307 Cannon, Annie Jump, 2:577, 584–585, 585 Cannon, Walter Bradford, 1:222 Canoes, 1:7, 92, 107, 123, 156; 3:781 Cape Cod, Massachusetts, 1:99 See also names of places on Cape Cod Carbocation chemistry, 3:929 Carbon dioxide in plants, 3:929 Carbon-14, 3:928–929 Cardiovascular surgery, 2:313–314 Carlsson, Arvid, 3:924 Carolinas, 1:102–103 History of Carolina, A (Lawson, 1714), 1:136 New Voyage to Carolina, A (Lawson, 1709), 1:103 See also North Carolina; South Carolina Carothers, Wallace Hume, 3:680, 686–687, 687 Carr, Archie, 1:262 Carrion crow, 1:267 Carson, Rachel, 1:16, 202, 202–203, 211, 240 Edge of the Sea, The (1955), 1:203 Sea Around Us, The (1951), 1:202–203

Index I-9 Carson, Rachel (continued) Silent Spring (1962), 1:202–203, 211, 240 Under the Sea-Wind (1941), 1:202 See also Beebe, Charles William Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi (Map of Louisiana, Delisle, 1718), 1:94 Carte du Canada ou de la Novelle France (Map of Canada or New France, Delisle, 1703), 1:94 Cartier, Jacques, 1:xxviii, 45, 251 Carver, George Washington, 1:203–204, 204 Booker T. Washington, 1:203 Tuskegee Institute, 1:203–204, 204 Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (I. Mather, 1693), 1:41 Cassini, Jean Dominique, 1:93 “Catalogue of Some of the Most Rare or Valuable Plants Discovered in the Neighbourhood of St. Louis and on the Missouri.” (Bradbury, 1810–1811), 1:179–181 Catalogus plantarum Americae Septentrionalis (Muhlenberg, 1813), 1:169 Catesby, Mark, 1:18–20, 136, 186 John Banister, 1:142 ornithology founder, 1:186 Thomas More, 1:168 Catlin, George, 2:470 Cattell, James McKeen, 3:837 CBS. See Columbia Broadcasting System CDC. See Centers for Disease Control Cech, Thomas R., 3:929 Cell cycle, 3:924 Cell death, 3:924 Cells, 3:924 cell transplantation, 3:924 ion channels in cell membranes, 3:930 water channels in cell membranes, 3:930 Cellular phone, 3:840 See also Telephone Celluloid, 3:687–688 Celsus, 2:307 Census, U.S. See U.S. Census (1890) Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 2:278, 285–286, 319, 343, 356, 383 Cerebral hemispheres, 3:924 Ceruzzi, Paul, 3:756 Chain of being concept, 1:187–188 Challenger Space Shuttle, 1:81; 3:639 Chalmers, Lionel, 2:309–310 Chamberlain, Owen, 3:926 Champlain, Samuel de, 1:46–47, 73, 88–89 Acadia, 1:46, 88 New France map, 1:72 Sauvages, Des, 1:46

Champlain, Samuel de (continued) West Indies, 1:88 Chandra spacecraft, 2:593 Chandra X-ray Observatory, 2:575, 582, 604 Chandrasekhar, Subramanyan, 2:581; 3:927 Channing, Walter, 2:310 Channing, William Ellery, 1:23 Chaos theory, 2:414; 3:738–739, 751 Chapin, Charles Value, 2:310–311 Chapman, John (Johnny Appleseed), 1:7, 20 Charbonneau, David, 2:593 Chauncy, Charles, 1:10 Chauvin, Yves, 3:930 Chemical bonds, 3:928, 929 Chemical oceanography, 1:238 Chemical processes, 3:929 Chemical reactions, 3:929 Chemical Society of Philadelphia, 3:688–689 Chemical synthesis on solid matrix, 3:929 Chemical systems, 3:929 Chemical thermodynamics, 3:928 Chemical weapons. See Biological warfare Chemistry, 3:681–682 atmospheric, 3:929 atomic bomb, 3:680 Beginner’s Chemistry (1610), 3:679 carbocation chemistry, 3:929 chemists, 3:679–681, 680 inorganic chemistry, 3:692–693 Nobel Prize winners, 1:173; 2:455; 3:681, 686, 690, 693–694, 696–697, 699–700, 707, 711–712, 735, 748, 928–930 organic chemistry, 3:696–697 Sketch of the Revolutions in Chemistry, A (Smith, 1798), 3:688 surface chemistry, 3:928 Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry (Rush, 1770), 3:682 See also names of chemists Chemotherapy, 2:307–308 Chesapeake Bay, 1:58 Chirally catalysed hydrogenation reactions, 3:930 Chirally catalysed oxidation reactions, 3:930 Chloroform, 2:292; 3:680 Cholesterol, 1:200–201; 3:923, 924 Christian guilt, 2:566–568 Christian Philosopher, The (C. Mather, 1721), 1:10, 39 Christian Science Monitor, 2:321 Christiansen, Bob, 2:461 Chromosomes, 1:216; 3:923 See also Human genome

I-10 Index Chronological History of Plants: Man’s Record of His Own Existence Illustrated through Their Names, Uses, and Companionship, The (Pickering, 1879), 1:172 Chrysanthemum and the Sword, The (Benedict, 1946), 2:486 Chrysler Corporation, 3:823 Chrystie, Alice, 1:21 Chu, Steven, 3:928 Ciechanover, Aaron, 3:930 City in History, The (Mumford, 1962), 2:506 Civil War, 1:86 anesthesia, 2:292 History of the American Civil War (Draper, 1867–1870), 1:22 John Wesley Powell, 1:116–117 public health, 2:371 Clark, Alvan, 2:585–586 Clark, Eugenie, 1:262 Clark, John Bates, 2:478 Clark, William, 1:7, 13, 35, 72, 89–90; 3:891 See also Lewis, Meriwether; Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806); Louisiana Territory Clarke, William E., 2:292 Claude, Albert, 3:924 Clayton, John, 1:153 Clements, Frederick, 1:172 Clerc, Laurent, 2:291 Client-Centered Therapy (Rogers, 1951), 2:559 Climate change, 1:239; 2:415, 423, 439–440 Climatology, 2:422–423 Clinton, De Witt, 3:800 Cliometric history, 2:476–477 Clocks and timepieces, 3:791–792 Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S., 2:424–425 COBOL computer language, 3:748 Cocaine, 2:293 Cochlea, 3:923 Co-enzyme A, 3:923 Cognitive science, 2:529 Cogswell, Mason Fitch, 2:291 Cohen, Stanley, 3:924 Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude, 3:928 Coins, 3:858–859 Monetary History of the United States: 1867–1960,A (Friedman, 1963), 2:479 See also U.S. Mint Cold fusion, 3:632–633 Cold War biological warfare, 1:200 computers, 3:723 Strategic Defense Initiative, 3:842 Colden, Cadwallader, 1:7, 20–22 Alexander Garden, 1:162

Colden, Cadwallader (continued) Carolus Linnaeus, 1:21, 140, 187 medical treatments, 3:681 William Douglass, 2:320 Colden, Jane, 1:21, 153–154, 187 Collective behavior, 2:537–538 Colleges, 1:185 See also Universities; names of schools Collins, C. John, 1:208 Collins, Michael, 1:90–91 See also Apollo, Project; Astronauts Collinson, Peter, 1:28, 144–146 Collip, James, 2:297 Colman, Benjamin, 2:274 Colton, Gardner Quincy, 2:293 Coluber constrictor, 1:267–269 Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), 3:839 Columbia College, 2:299 Columbia Space Shuttle, 2:595 Columbus, Christopher, 1:91–92 geography, 1:71 Gonzalo Oviedo, 1:51 Hispaniola, 1:92 New World voyages, 1:91–92 Samuel Eliot Morison, 1:91 San Salvador, 1:92 West Indies, 1:91 Comet Hale-Bopp, 2:587 Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, 2:587 Comets, 2:586–587 See also names of comets Common Sense (Paine), 1:11 Communism, 2:502–503 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx, 1848), 2:502 Communist Party, 2:497, 502–503, 539; 3:747–748, 814 Community studies, 2:475–476 Compton, Arthur Holly, 3:633–634, 926 Compton effect, 3:926 Computer-assisted tomography, 3:924 Computers Altair computer, 3:749 Apple, 3:724, 731, 731–732, 739, 750 applications, 3:739–740 BASIC computer language, 3:749 broadband Internet access, 3:727 COBOL computer language, 3:748 Cold War, 3:723 computer-assisted tomography, 3:924 Dendral, 1:229 DSL, 3:727 ENIAC, 3:740–742, 741 HTML, 3:727

Index I-11 Computers (continued) IBM, 3:749 Internet, 3:725–728 Mark I computer, 3:748–749 Microsoft, 3:750 MS-DOS computer operating system, 3:749 PC-DOS computer operating system, 3:750 personal computers, 3:750 revolution, 3:723–725 SAGE, 3:754–755 SUMEX-AIM, 1:229 UNIVAC, 3:756–757 URL, 3:727 Whirlwind, 3:758 Windows computer operating system, 3:749 World War II, 3:723 Comstock Act (1873), 2:377–379, 378 Conant, James B., 3:689–690 Concord, 1:99 Conductive polymers, 3:930 Conservation biology, 1:204–205 Conservation Biology: An Evolutionary Perspective (Soule, 1980), 1:205 Society for Conservation Biology, 1:205 Contest in America between Great Britain and France (Mitchell, 1757), 1:167 Continent exploration, 1:75 See names of expeditions and explorers Continental drift, 2:425–426 Contraception, 2:377–379, 378, 397 See also Abortion; Birth control; Midwifery; Obstetrics; Sanger, Margaret Louise Cook, Frederick, 1:114 Cooley, Charles, 2:487–488 Cooley, Denton, 2:311–312, 314, 314 Cooper, Leon N., 3:927 Cope, Edward Drinker, 1:232 Cope’s Rule, 1:205 paleontology, 1:188 Copernician Revolution, The (Kuhn, 1957), 3:900 Cope’s Rule, 1:205 Corey, Elias James, 3:929 Cori, Carl F., 3:923 Cori, Gerty T., 3:923 Cormack, Allan M., 3:924 Cornell, Eric A., 3:928 Corning, 2:604; 3:648, 690 CORONA, 3:841 Coronado, Francisco de, 1:48, 75 Corps of Discovery, 1:106–108 See also Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) Cosmic microwave background radiation, 3:927 Cosmos (Humboldt, 1845–1862), 1:102

Cotton gin, 3:862–863 Cotton mills, 3:846–847, 847 Cottonwood, 1:135 Count Rumford. See Thompson, Benjamin (Count Rumford) Cournand, Andre F., 3:923 Coxe, John Redman, 3:688 Cram, Donald J., 3:929 Cramer, Harald, 3:755 Craniometry, 1:206, 206–207 Creation, 1:207–209 creation science, 1:208 evolution, 1:208 intelligent design, 1:208–209 length of days, 1:207–208 Crèvecoeur, Hector St. John, 1:6, 11 Letters from an American Farmer (1782), 1:6 Crick, Francis H.C., 1:191, 209, 216, 235, 255; 3:912, 923 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant, 1781), 1:44 Cromwell, Oliver, 1:49 Cronin, James W., 3:927 Cruise missile, 3:816 Crutzen, Paul J., 3:929 Crystal structures, 3:929 Crystallography, x-ray, 1:254, 255; 3:699–700 CSNET, 3:726 Cuba Harvard Botanical Garden, 1:165 Walter Reed, 2:399 Cultural anthropology, 2:483–484, 488–489 See also Anthropology; Benedict, Ruth; Boas, Franz; Mead, Margaret Cultural relativism, 2:489–490 Culture of Cities, The (Mumford, 1938), 2:506 Cumberland Gap, 1:123 Curiosa Americana (C. Mather, 1712), 1:39, 55, 186 Curl, Robert F., Jr., 3:929 Currency. See U.S. Mint Cushing, Harvey Williams, 2:312–313 Cutler, Manasseh, 1:7, 10–11, 54, 84–86, 154–156 astronomical journal, 2:620 as botanist, 1:137 materia medica, 1:133 Mount Washington, 1:155, 178 as naturalist, 1:155–156 Cuvier, Georges Léopold Chrétien Frédéric Dagobert, 1:188; 2:411 Cybernetics Norbert Wiener, 3:759–760 World War II, 3:760 Cyclosporine, 2:300 Cyclotron, 3:634, 926 Cytogenetics, 1:232–233

I-12 Index

D

Dablon, Claude, 1:92–93 Daguerreotype, 1:22 Daly, Charles P., 1:79 Dana, James Dwight, 2:426–428, 427; 3:913 Dark Day, 2:428–429 Darlington, William, 1:141 Darrow, Clarence, 1:190, 245–246, 246 Darwin, Charles Alexander von Humboldt, 1:102 in America, 1:189–191 Asa Gray, 1:189 Carolus Linnaeus, 1:140 Descent of Man, The (1871), 1:189–190, 213 Louis Agassiz, 2:416–417 Luther Burbank, 1:201 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859), 1:163, 189, 213 Popular Science Magazine, 3:836 Scopes trial, 1:190, 190 Stephen Jay Gould, 1:218–219 Darwin on Trial (Johnson, 1991), 1:45 Darwiniana (Gray, 1876), 1:55, 163 Darwinism Neo-Darwinism, 1:190 What is Darwinism? (Hodge, 1874), 1:190, 208 See also Darwin, Charles Dausset, Jean, 3:924 Davenport, Charles Benedict, 1:212 David, F.N., 3:755 Davis, John, 1:72, 100 Davis, Nathan S., 2:290 Davis, Raymond, Jr., 3:928 Davisson, Clinton J., 3:926 Dawkins, Richard, 1:258 Dayton, Tennessee, Scopes trial, 1:245–246 Dayton Engineering Companies, 3:816 Dayton-Wright Airplane Company (DWA), 3:816 DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane), 1:202–203, 211, 241 De Bry, Theodore, 1:4 De Duve, Christian, 3:924 De Fermat, Pierre, 3:751 De Forest, Lee, 3:838 De Jussieu, Antoine-Laurent, 1:139 De Kruif, Paul, 1:228 De Magnete (Gilbert, 1600), 1:49; 3:650 De Soto, Hernando, 1:75 De Vaca, Cabeza, 1:48

Deafness American School for the Deaf, 2:291–292 American Sign Language, 2:291–292 DeBakey, Michael E., 2:312, 313–314, 314 World War II, 2:313 Debreu, Gerard, 3:925 Declaration of Independence (Jefferson, 1776), 1:36 Deeds, Edward A., 3:816 Deere, John, 3:792–793 Degradation, protein, 3:930 Dehmelt, Hans G., 3:927 Deism, 1:11; 3:894–895 Delbrück, Max, 3:923 Delisle, Guillaume, 1:93–94 Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi (Map of Louisiana, 1718), 1:94 Carte du Canada ou de la Novelle France (Map of Canada or New France, 1703), 1:94 Denali, Alaska, 2:448 Dendral, 1:229 Density-functional theory, 3:929 Dentistry, 2:314–315 American Dental Association (ADA), 2:289–290 anesthesia, 2:314–315 root canals, 2:290, 315 See also names of dentists Deoxyribonucleic acid. See DNA Department of Agriculture. See U.S. Department of Agriculture Department of Defense. See U.S. Department of Defense Department of Health and Human Services. See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Derivatives, 3:926 Descent of Man, The (Darwin, 1871), 1:189–190, 213 Description of Louisiana, New Discoveries Southwest of New France (Hennepin, 1683), 1:47, 73, 100–101 Desert Beneath the Sea (Clark), 1:262 Deuterium, 3:680 DeVries, William C., 2:315–316 Dewey, John, 2:490, 490–491 Diabetes, 2:316–317, 317 Frederick Allen Madison, 2:287 insulin, 2:297, 316–317, 317 Diario de viaje de la Comisión de Límites (Berlandier, 1850), 1:151 Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane. See DDT Dickson, Leonard, 3:751 Dictionaries, 1:61, 62 Diffraction, x-ray, 1:209, 216, 235 Diphtheria, 2:317–319

Index I-13 Discourse on Prayer (I. Mather, 1677), 1:9 Discourse on the Revolutions of the Earth (Cuvier, 1812), 2:411 Discourse on Western Planting (Hakluyt, 1584), 1:100 Discovery, 1:98 Discovery Institute, 1:208 Discrete choice, 3:926 Disease, 2:280–283, 282 Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, A (Webster, 1799), 1:62 infectious diseases, 3:924 Short Practical Narrative of the Diseases Which Prevailed among the American Seamen, at Wampoa in China; in the Year 1805; with Some Account of Diseases Which Appeared among the Crew of the Ship New-Jersey, on the Passage from Thence, to Philadelphia, A (Baldwin, 1807), 1:141 See also Antibodies; Centers for Disease Control; Epidemics; Medicine; names of diseases and epidemics; names of doctors and scientists; names of other publications Dissertations on the Life, Character, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Belknap, 1795), 1:11, 82–83 Diversity of Life (Wilson, 1992), 1:205, 258 Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 2:491–492, 492 DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid), 1:192, 209–210, 215–217 DNA Synthesis (Kornberg, 1974), 1:228 Double Helix, The (Watson, 1968), 1:255 Francis H.C. Crick, 1:191, 209, 216, 235, 255; 3:912, 923 James Watson, 1:255 recombinant-DNA, 3:929 See also Genetics; RNA Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree, first granted, 2:299 Doisy, Edward A., 3:923 Dolly (cloned sheep), 1:217 Donne, John, 1:49 Double Helix, The (Watson, 1968), 1:255 Douglass, William, 2:319–320 Dow Chemical Company, 3:683, 690 Drake, Daniel, 2:277 Drake, Edwin L., 2:429, 429–430 Draper, Henry, 2:587–588, 618 Draper, John William, 1:22–23 Drugs treatment, 3:924 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 1:192 See also Medicine; Pharmacology; names of drugs Drummond, Thomas, 1:156–157 Musci Americani, 1:157

Drummond, Thomas (continued) Second Overland Expedition, 1:156–157 in Texas, 1:157 DSL (digital subscriber lines), 3:727 See also Internet Dudleian Lecture, 1:23–24 See also Dudley, Paul Dudley, Paul, 1:23–24, 186 Merchandize of Souls, Being an Exposition of Certain Passages in the Book of Revelation, The, 1:24 “Short Account of the Names, Situations, Numbers, etc. . . . , A,” 1:24 See also Dudleian Lecture Dugout canoes. See Canoes Dulbecco, Renato, 3:924 Dunbar, William, 1:7, 13, 76, 94–95, 157–158 Dunbar-Hunter Expedition (1804–1805), 1:94–95 See also Louisiana Territory DuPont, 3:680, 683–684, 687, 695, 697, 816, 823, 853 Duryea, Charles, 3:793 Duryea, Frank, 3:793 Dwight, Timothy, 1:6, 24–25, 66–67

E

Eagle lunar module, 1:81, 90 Earthquakes and seismology, 2:430–432 Alaska, 2:431 Richter scale, 2:456, 456–457 San Francisco Earthquake (1906), 2:457–458, 458 storms, 2:432 See also National Weather Service; U.S. Weather Bureau Eastern burning bush tree, 1:135 Eastern red cedar, 1:135 Eastman, George, 3:793–794, 823, 834 See also Cameras; Kodak Eastman Kodak. See Kodak Eaton, Amos, 2:432–433; 3:908 Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company (EMCC), 3:757 Ecology, 1:25–27 applications, 1:25–26 Fundamentals of Ecology (Odum, 1953), 1:26 history, 1:26–27 Rachel Carson, 1:16, 202–203 study, 1:25–26 See also Ecosystem; Environment; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Oceanography; Ornithology; Zoology; names of other ecologists; names of other publications Economics, 2:477–479 equilibrium theory, 3:925 laissez-faire economics, 2:499–500

I-14 Index Economics (continued) macro-economic policy, 3:926 Marxism, 2:502–503 Nobel Prize winners, 2:447, 478, 479, 493, 494, 499; 3:925–926 psychological research, 3:926 time series, 3:926 See also names of economists Ecosystem, 1:119, 172–173, 193, 198, 204–205, 231, 237, 258; 2:451, 452 See also Ecology Eddington, Arthur, 3:636 Eddy, Mary Baker, 2:320, 320–321 Edelman, Gerald M., 3:923–924 Edge of the Sea, The (Carson, 1955), 1:203 Edison, Thomas Alva, 3:647, 794–796, 795, 797, 820, 837, 854–855, 864, 911 See also Electricity Education of Henry Adams, The (Adams, 1918), 3:882–883, 918–920 Edwards, Jonathan, 1:10, 55 Christian guilt, 2:566–568 Gleanings of Natural History (1758–1764), 1:147 “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (1741), 1:55; 2:566–568 Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), 1:191 Ego, 2:538 Einstein, Albert, 3:635, 635–637 atomic bomb, 3:636, 774–776 atomic power, 3:774–776, 775 Evolution of Physics, The (1938), 3:636–637 General Theory of Relativity (1920), 3:636 Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), 3:636 Special Theory of Relativity (1905), 3:636 uranium, 3:836 World War II, 3:774 See also Relativity Eisenhower, Dwight D., 3:640, 786, 827 Elder scripture, 1:24 Eldredge, Niles, 1:218–219 Election Sermon (Belknap), 1:6 Electricity, 1:28; 3:797, 797–798 Experiments and Observations in Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America (Franklin, 1751), 1:28 Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System (Latimer, 1890), 3:820 Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Maxwell, 1873), 3:838 See also names of inventors and scientists Electrolysis, 3:680 Electron diffraction, 3:926

Electron microscope, 3:798–799 Electron transfer reactions, 3:929 Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), 3:740–742, 741 Electronic Tabulating System (1890 Census), 3:763–764 Elementary particles, 3:927 Elements of Botany (Barton, 1803), 1:137, 144 Elements of Botany (Gray, 1887), 1:249 Elements of Useful Knowledge (Webster, 1802–1812), 1:62 Eli Lily Company, 1:216 Elion, Gertrude B., 3:924 Eliot, Charles W., 3:903–904 Eliot, Jared, 3:799–800 Elliott, Stephen, 1:158–159 Sketch of the Botany of South-Carolina and Georgia, A (1816, 1824), 1:159 Southern Review (1828), 1:159 Ellsworth, Lincoln, 1:95–96 Embroyonic development, 3:924 EMCC. See Eckert-Mauchly Computer Company Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1:11 Endangered Species Act (1973), 1:256 Endeavour, 2:595 Enders, John F., 3:923 Energy Reorganization Act, 3:786 Engineering agriculture, 3:777–778, 778 genetics, 1:192 Engle, Robert F., III, 3:926 ENIAC. See Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer Enlightenment, 1:23, 188 Entomology, 1:210–211 American Entomology (Say, 1817–1828), 1:52, 175 Environment genetics engineering, 1:193 John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), 1:7, 20 Silent Spring (Carson, 1962), 1:202–203, 211, 240 See also Appalachian Mountain Club; Carson, Rachel; Ecology; Ecosystem; Sierra Club; names of other environmentalists and scientists Enzymes, 3:928 Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, 2:417 Epidemics Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, A (Webster, 1799), 1:62 influenza epidemic (1918–1919), 2:344–346, 345 polio epidemic, 2:370 typhus epidemic (1759), 2:299 U.S. Public Health Service, 2:344 weather, 2:309, 321, 351 yellow fever, 2:399, 402; 3:897

Index I-15 Epidemics (continued) See also Antibodies; Centers for Disease Control; Disease; Medicine; names of diseases and epidemics; names of doctors and researchers; names of other publications Epidemiology, 2:321–322 Erie Canal, 1:232; 2:432–433; 3:800–801, 801 Erikson, Erik, 2:538–540, 539, 548 Erlanger, Joseph, 3:923 Esaki, Leo, 3:927 Espy, James Pollard, 2:433–434 Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (I. Mather, 1684), 1:41 Essay on Classification (Aggasiz, 1851), 1:44 Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary (Garden, 1771), 1:162 Essential Tension, The (Kuhn, 1977), 3:902 Ether, 2:292, 310, 322–323 Ether Dome, 2:333 Ethnology, 2:492–493 Euclidean geometry, 3:721–722 See also Mathematics Eugenics, 1:211–212 Eukaryotic transcription, 3:930 Euler, Ulf von, 3:923 Evans, John, 1:13, 84 Evans, Martin J., 3:925 Everett, Robert R., 3:758 Evolution, 1:26, 189–190, 208, 213–215 Charles Darwin, 1:213–214 creation, 1:208 Medelian genetics, 1:214 See also Intelligent design; Scopes trial Evolution of Physics, The (Einstein, 1938), 3:636–637 Ewan, Joseph, 1:142 Exchange rates, 3:926 Experiment stations, agriculture, 3:778–779 Experimental gardens Joseph West, 1:159–160 Lawrence Bohun, 1:159 See also Botany; Harvard Botanical Garden; names of other botanists and horticulturists Experiments and Observations in Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America (Franklin, 1751), 1:28 Explication of the First Causes of the Action in Matter and of the Cause of Gravitation, An (Colden, 1745), 1:21 Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries (Powell, 1875), 1:77 Explorer 1, 3:861 Explorer-botanist. See Botany

Extraterrestrials, 2:588–589 Carl Sagan, 2:612 Joshua Lederberg, 1:229 search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), 2:613, 613–614 See also Intelligence, extraterrestrial

F

Factories, 3:801–802 See also names of companies; names of factories Farmer, Moses, 3:791 Farquhar, Jane Colden. See Colden, Jane Farrar, John, 3:742–743, 752 “Fat Man” bomb, 3:784, 823 Fatty acid metabolism, 3:923 FCC. See Federal Communications Commission FDA. See U.S. Food and Drug Administration Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 3:839 Femtosecond spectroscopy, 3:929 Fenn, John B., 3:930 Fermat’s Last Theorem, 3:751 Fermi, Enrico, 3:637, 637–638, 830 Fertilization, 1:226 Fessenden, Reginald, 3:838 Fever Which Prevailed in the City of New York in 1741–42, The (Colden, 1742), 1:21 Feynman, Richard P., 3:638–639, 927 Field, Marshall, 3:895–896 Field Guide to the Birds, A (Peterson, 1934), 1:240, 243–244 Field Museum of Natural History, 3:895–896 Finlay, Carlos Juan, 2:399 Fire, Andrew Z., 3:925 First American science, 1:71 Fischer, Edmond H., 3:924 Fish. See Ichthyology Fish and Wildlife Service. See U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Fishbein, Morris, 2:290 Fisher, Joshua, 1:84; 2:323 Fisher, Ronald Aylmer, 3:755 Fishes of the Gulf of Maine (H. Bigelow, 1925), 1:197–198 Fishes of the Western North Atlantic (H. Bigelow, 1948), 1:198 Fishing, 3:770–771 Fission, 3:639–640 Fitch, John, 3:851 Fitch, Val L., 3:927 Flavr Savr tomato, 1:192 Fleming, Willamina Paton, 2:577 Flexner, Abraham, 2:323–325, 324 Flexner, Simon, 1:234 Flint, Austin, 2:325

I-16 Index Flora in Missouri Valley, 1:179–181 White Mountains (Cutler), 1:178 See also Botany; Horticulture Flora Americae Septentrionalis (Pursh, 1814), 1:174 Flora Virginica (Gronovius, 1739–1743), 1:136, 153 Florida John Bartram, 1:147–148 Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, The (Catesby, 1729–1747), 1:18–20, 19, 136, 186 Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (Bartram, 1791), 1:137, 147–149 Flory, Paul J., 3:929 Fogel, Robert W., 2:477, 479, 493–494; 3:925 Folk customs, Native Americans, 2:471–473 Food and Drug Administration. See U.S. Food and Drug Administration Ford, Henry, 3:773, 802–804, 803, 837 Ford Motor Company, 3:802–804 Forensic medicine, 2:325–326 Forerunner (Steensen, 1669), 2:411 Forestry, 1:161 Forest Reserves Act (1891), 1:57 Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act (1960), 1:160 National Forest Management Act (NFMA, 1976), 1:160 U.S. Forest Service, 1:160–161 Forrester, Jay Wright, 3:743–744, 758–759 Forssman, Werner, 3:923 Fort Clatsop, 1:107–108 Fossils. See Paleontology Fowler, William A., 3:927 Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania (Barton, 1799), 1:144 Franklin, Benjamin, 1:xxx, 7, 27–29 Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian FirePlace, An (1744), 1:28 American Philosophical Society, 3:891–892 Experiments and Observations in Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America (1751), 1:28 Franklin tree, 1:148 as physicist, 3:628–629, 629 Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732–1758), 1:28; 2:574, 608–610, 609 Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge, A (1743), 1:28 See also Electricity Franklin, John, 1:78–79 Franklin tree, 1:148 Franklinia, 1:148 Freedom 7, 1:118 Freer Gallery, 3:915

Frémont, John Charles, 1:96, 96–97 Report of the Exploring Expedition to Oregon and California, 1:97 Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, 1:97 Frémont Peak, Rocky Mountains, 1:96, 97 French voyageurs, 2:520 Freon, 3:816 Freud, Sigmund, 2:528, 530, 530–531 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920), 2:543 ego, 2:538 id, 2:543–544 superego, 2:563–564 Friedman, Jerome I., 3:927 Friedman, Milton, 2:478–479; 3:925 Friendly Arctic, The (Stefansson, 1921), 1:121 Friendship 7, 1:98, 98; 3:826 Frobisher, Martin, 1:72 Frontier of science, 1:12 Fruit fly, 1:235–236 Fukui, Kenichi, 3:929 Fuller, R. Buckminster, 3:804–805 Fuller, Samuel, 2:326–327 Fuller, Solomon Carter, 2:288 Fullerenes, 3:929 Fulton, Robert, 3:851 Functionalism, 2:528 Fundamentals, The (1905–1915), 1:190 Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science (Hempel, 1952), 3:899 Fundamentals of Ecology (Odum, 1953), 1:26 Furchgott, Robert F., 3:924 Fusion, 3:640–641, 641

G

Gajdusek, D. Carleton, 3:924 Galapagos Islands, 1:16 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 2:478 Gallaudet, Thomas Hopkins, 2:291, 327, 327–328 Galton, Francis, 1:211, 214 Game Management (Leopold, 1933), 1:256 Game theory, 3:925 non-cooperative game theory, 3:925 Garden, Alexander, 1:161–162 Cadwallader Colden, 1:162 Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary (1771), 1:162 Garden of Eden, 1:5 Gardening. See Botany; Experimental Gardens; Horticulture Garment industry. See Sewing machine Gasser, Herbert S., 3:923 Gates, William, Jr., 3:749

Index I-17 Gay, Ebenezer, 1:23 GE. See General Electric Gell-Mann, Murray, 3:641–642, 927 Gemini, 1:119 Gemini, Project, 3:805–806 See also Apollo, Project; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station; names of astronauts; names of spacecraft Gemini 7, 1:90 Gemini 8, 1:81 Gemini 10, 1:90 Gene therapy, 1:193; 2:328 Genera Lichenum: An Arrangement of North American Lichens (Tuckerman, 1872), 1:177 Genera of North American Plants, The (Nuttall, 1818), 1:170 General and Natural History of the Indies (Oviedo, 1535–1549), 1:51, 75 General Electric (GE), 3:774 General Motors (GM), 3:773, 774, 804, 816 Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, The (Smith, 1624), 1:59 Genesis Act (1973), 1:191 Genesis creation story, 1:207–208 Genetics, 1:215–217; 3:923, 924 code, 3:923 DNA discovery, 1:215–217 engineering, 1:192 human, 1:217 revolution, 1:191–193 RNA, 3:923, 925, 929 See also Gene therapy; Human genome; names of geneticists Geography, 1:xxviii about, 1:71–72 American Geography (Morse, 1789), 1:111 American Geographical Society (AGS), 1:78–79 Christopher Columbus, 1:71 Geographical Review, 1:79 Geography Made Easy (Morse, 1784), 1:111 Giovanni Verrazzano, 1:71–72 John Cabot, 1:71 Marco Polo, 1:71 National Geographic Society (NGS), 1:112–113 Physical Geography of the Sea (Maury, 1855), 2:447 See also Maps; names of other explorers and geographers; names of geographic locations and features Geologic past, 2:410–412 Geologic time, 2:434 Geological Society of America (GSA), 2:435 Geological Survey. See U.S. Geological Survey

Geology Geological Society of America (GSA), 2:435 oceanography, 1:238 Principles of Geology (Lyell, 1830–1833), 1:55 scriptural geologists, 2:412–413 sedimentary rocks, 2:458–459 seismology, 2:430–432 See also Hydrology; Paleontology; U.S. Geological Survey; names of geologists Geomagnetism, 2:436–437 Geometry algebraic, 3:744 Euclidean, 3:721–722 See also Mathematics Georgia John Bartram, 1:147–148 Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (W. Bartram, 1791), 1:137, 147–149 General Theory of Relativity (Einstein, 1920), 3:636 Gesell, Arnold, 2:540–541 Geysers, Yellowstone National Park, 1:63, 63 Giacconi, Riccardo, 3:928 Giaever, Ivar, 3:927 Giauque, William Francis, 3:690–691, 928 Gibbs, Josiah Willard, 3:744 Gilbert, Humphrey, 1:xxix Gilbert, Walter, 3:929 Gilbert, William, 1:49; 3:650 Gilman, Alfred G., 3:924 Ginzburg, Vitaly L., 3:928 Girdling, 3:806–807 Appalachian Mountains, 3:807 Glaciers, 2:437–439, 438, 439 Alaska, 2:436 Louis Agassiz, 2:412, 416 Glaser, Donald A., 3:927 Glashow, Sheldon L., 3:927 Glauber, Roy J., 3:928 Gleanings of Natural History (Edwards, 1758–1764), 1:147 Gleason, Henry A., 1:172 Glenn, John, 1:97–98, 98 See also Astronauts; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station Global positioning system (GPS). See Satellites Global Surveyor, 3:828 Global warming, 2:439–440 See also Climate change; Climatology Globalization, 2:475 Glycogen, 3:923 GM. See General Motors “God bless America,” 1:12

I-18 Index God Speed, 1:99 Goddard, Robert Hutchings, 3:807–809, 837 Godfrey, Thomas, 2:440–441 Godman, John Davidson, 1:29–30 Goeppert-Mayer, Maria, 3:927 Goldstein, Dan, 3:751 Goldstein, Joseph L., 3:924 Good News from Virginia (Whitaker, 1612), 1:9 Goodyear, Charles, 3:680, 809–810 Gorenstein, Daniel, 3:745 Gorgas, William Crawford, 2:328–329, 400 Gosnold, Bartholomew, 1:99 Gould, Stephen Jay, 1:217, 217–220, 218 Charles Darwin, 1:218–219 phyletic gradulalism, 1:218–219, 218 punctuated equilibria, 1:218–219 spandrels, 1:219 G-proteins, 3:924 GPS. See Satellites Grafting, 1:20 Grand Canyon National Park, 1:57, 116 Grand Geyser, Yellowstone National Park, 1:63 Granit, Ragnar, 3:923 Gravitational radiation, 3:661 Gravity, 3:642–643 Explication of the First Causes of the Action in Matter and of the Cause of Gravitation, An (Colden, 1745), 1:21 See also names of scientists Gray, Asa, 1:55, 162–164, 163 Charles Darwin, 1:163, 189 Elements of Botany (1887), 1:249 Gray Herbarium, 1:164–165; 3:897 Gray Herbarium, 1:164–165 Asa Gray, 1:164–165; 3:897 Historic Letter File, 1:164 Great Awakening, 1:10, 23; 2:526, 573; 3:894 Second, 1:6, 11; 3:894 See also Religion Great Lakes, 1:7 Claude Dablon, 1:92–93 Louis Hennepin, 1:100 map, 1:46, 73 See also Erie Canal Great Plains, 1:13, 75–77, 156; 2:469–471 materia medica, 1:133–135 Native Americans, 2:520 Great United States Exploring Expedition. See Wilkes Expedition (1838–1842) Greeks, ancient, 1:3 Green, Horace, 2:329–330 Greengard, Paul, 3:924 Greenwood, Isaac, 1:28; 3:643–644

Gregorian calendar, 2:589–590 Grey, Robert M., 1:165 Grinnell, George Bird, 1:236 Gronovius, Johannes, 1:136, 153 Groseilliers, Sieur des, 1:47 Gross, David J., 3:928 Growth factors, 3:924 Grubbs, Robert H., 3:930 GSA. See Geological Society of America Guadeloupe, 1:150–151 Guides, expedition, 1:13–14 Guides, field, 1:240, 243 Guillemin, Roger, 3:924 Guns gun manufacturing, 3:810–811, 811 gunpowder, 3:680 muskets, 3:863 Guthrie, Samuel, 3:680 Gyles, John, 1:30–33, 265–266 Abenaki Indians, 1:30–33, 265–266; 2:519 materia medica, 1:133 Memoirs of Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, &c. in the Captivity of John Gyles, Esq., Commander of the Garrison on St. George’s River (1736), 1:30 Gynecology, 2:330–331 See also Birth control; Midwifery; Obstetrics; Women

H

Hahn, Otto, 3:774 Hakluyt, Richard, 1:xxix, 99–100 Hale, Alan, 2:587 Hale, George Ellery, 2:590 Hale telescope, 2:605, 605 Palomar Observatory, 2:604–605, 605 Hall, Asaph G., 2:591, 591–592 Hall, Granville Stanley, 2:530, 541–542 Hall, John L., 3:928 Hall, Lloyd Augustus, 3:692 Halley, Edmund, 2:586 Halley’s Comet, 2:587 Halsted Stewart, William, 2:331 anesthesia, 2:331 antibiotics, 2:331 Hamilton, Alexander, 2:331–332 Handbook of Psychiatry (Kraepelin, 1910), 2:288 Hänsch, Theodor W., 3:928 Hardin, Garrett, 1:26 Hardware. See Computers Hariot, Thomas, 1:33–34, 100 Harsanyi, John C., 3:925 Hartline, Haldan K., 3:923

Index I-19 Hartshorne, Henry, 3:717–718 Hartwell, Leland H., 3:924 Harvard Botanical Garden, 1:165 Cuba, 1:165 Edwin Atkins, 1:165 Robert M. Grey, 1:165 Harvard College, 1:xxix, 185 Harvard Mark I computer, 3:748–749 Harvard Medical School, 2:332–333 Harvard Museum of Natural History, 3:896–897 Harvard Observatory, 2:576–577, 592–593 Harvard University Herbaria, 1:164–165; 3:896–897 Hash, John F., Jr., 3:925 Hatch Act (1879), 1:166; 3:779 Hauptman, Herbert A., 3:929 Havell, Robert, Jr., 1:195 Hawaii, 1:126 Ring of Fire volcanoes, 2:461 Hayes, Rutherford B., 1:97 Hayward, George, 2:333–334 Hazard, Ebenezer, 3:897–898 Dark Day, 2:428 Historical Collections, 3:898 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793, 2:402; 3:897 Health applied, 2:276–279 at sea, 2:404–405 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 2:278 women, 2:396–398 See also Medicine; Public health; names of doctors and scientists Health care reform, 2:277–278, 283 Health maintenance organizations. See HMOs Hearts artificial, 2:311–312 catheterization, 3:923 transplants, 2:299–300 Names of doctors Heavy hydrogen, 3:928 Heckman, James J., 3:926 Heeger, Alan J., 3:930 Helicopters, 3:768, 844–845 Helium-3, 3:928 Hempel, Carl Gustav, 3:898–899 Hench, Philip S., 3:923 Hennepin, Louis, 1:7, 47, 73, 100–101 Henry Draper Catalogue (1918–1924)., 2:577, 585, 588 Henson, Matthew, 1:113 Herb gardens, 1:133 Herbal medicine, 2:334–335 remedies, 2:402–404

Heredity, 1:193 See also Eugenics; Genetics Hermeneutics, 3:899–900 Hermes, 3:899 Herpetology, 1:220 North American Herpetology (Holbrook, 1836–1840), 1:220 See also Holbrook, John Edwards Herrnstein, Richard, 2:546 Herschbach, Dudley R., 3:929 Hershey, Alfred D., 3:923 Hershko, Avram, 3:930 Hertz, Heinrich R., 3:797, 838 HHS. See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Hicks, John R., 3:925 High Performance Computing Act (1991), 3:726 High pressure physics, 3:926 Hilbert, David, 3:751 Hilbert’s Tenth Problem, 3:751 Hill-Burton Act (1946), 2:276 Hiroshima, 3:784–785, 785 Hirudin, 2:303 Hispaniola autopsy in, 2:295 Christopher Columbus, 1:92 Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (History of New France, Lescarbot, 1609), 1:46 Historia Plantarum (Ray, 1688), 1:142 Historians. See names of historians Historic Letter File, Gray Herbarium, 1:164 Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated in New England (Boylston, 1726), 2:304 Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (1851–1857), 1:118 Historical Collections: Consisting of State Papers, and Other Authentic Documents; Intended as Materials for an History of the United States of America (Hazard, 1792–1794), 3:897–898 Historical society, first, 3:920–921 History and Present State of Virginia, The (Beverley, 1705), 1:16–17; 3:873, 877 History as a Literary Art (Morison, 1948), 3:906 History as science, 3:873–875 History of Acadie, Penobscot Bay and River, with a More Particular Geographical and Statistical View of the District of Maine (Whipple, 1816), 1:123–124, 128–129 History of Carolina, A (Lawson, 1714), 1:136 History of New France (Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, Lescarbot, 1609), 1:104

I-20 Index History of New-Hampshire, The (Belknap, 1784–1792), 1:10, 13, 81–83, 85, 133 History of Science, Introduction to the (Sarton, 1947), 3:910–911 History of Science and the New Humanism, The (Sarton, 1937), 3:878 History of the American Civil War (Draper, 1867–1870), 1:22 History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (Draper, 1875), 1:22 History of the Five Indian Nations, A (Colden, 1727), 1:21 History of the Theory of Numbers (Dickson, 1919–1923), 3:751 History of the United States During the Administrations of Adams and Jefferson (Adams, 1889–1891), 3:874, 882 History of the World (Raleigh, 1614), 1:16 History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II (Morison, 1947–1962), 3:906 Hitchcock, Edward, 2:441–442, 464–466 Hitchings, George H., 3:924 HIV. See Human immunodeficiency virus HMOs, 2:335–336 HMS Challenger, 1:238 Hodge, Charles evolution, 1:208 What Is Darwinism? (1874), 1:190, 208 Hoffleit, Dorrit, 2:577–578 Hoffmann, Roald, 3:929 Hofstadter, Robert, 3:927 Hogg, Helen Sawyer, 2:577 Holbrook, John Edwards, 1:220 coluber constrictor, 1:267–269 Ichthyology of South Carolina (Holbrook, 1860), 1:220 North American Herpetology (Holbrook, 1836–1840), 1:220 Holistic medicine, 2:336–337 Hollerith, Herman, 3:745–747, 746, 755, 763–764 Electronic Tabulating System, 3:763–764 U.S. Census (1890), 3:763–764 Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company, 3:747 Holley, Robert W., 3:923 Hollis, Thomas, 3:644–645 Hollis Professorship, 3:644–645 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Sr., 2:292, 337–338, 338 Homer, 1:3 Homo sapiens sapiens species, 1:243 Hooton, Earnest A., 2:494–495 Hoover Dam, 3:811–813, 812 Hopi Indians, 2:480 See also Native Americans

Hopper, Grace Murray, 3:748 Hormones, 3:923 Horner, William Edmonds, 2:338–339 Horney, Karen, 2:542–543 Horsford, Eben, 3:903 Horticulture, 1:165–166 American Gardener’s Calendar, The (McHahon, 1806), 1:166 American Society for Horticultural Science, 1:166 Bernard McHahon, 1:166 Hatch Act (1879), 1:166 John Bartram, 1:165–166 Liberty Hyde Bailey, 1:166 Luther Burbank, 1:166 Society for Horticultural Science, 1:166 Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, The (Bailey, 1914), 1:166, 166 See also Botany; Plants; names of other horticulturists and scientists; names of other publications Horton, Robert E., 2:443 Hortus Britanno-Americanus (Catesby, 1763), 1:19 Horvitz, H. Robert, 3:924 Hospitals, 2:339–341 See also Sanatorium; names of hospitals Hounsfield, Godfrey N., 3:924 Household Cyclopedia of General Information, The (Hartshorne, 1881), 3:717–718 Houstoun, William, 1:136 How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man (Burbank, 1921), 1:166, 201 Howard, Leland, 1:210 Howe, Elias, 3:845 HTML (hypertext markup language), 3:727 Hubbard, Ruth, 1:221 Hubble, Edwin Powell, 2:593–594 Hubble Space Telescope, 1:98; 2:575, 594–595, 595; 3:828, 842, 849 Hubel, David H., 3:924 Hudson, Henry, 1:72, 75 Huggins, Charles B., 3:923 Hulse, Russell A., 3:928 Human genetics. See Genetics Human genome, 1:223, 223–224 chromosomes, 1:223 Human Genome Diversity project, 1:224 Human Genome Project, 1:210, 217, 223, 255 proteomics, 1:223–224 Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 2:285–287 See also Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)

Index I-21 Humanism, 2:495–496 History of Science and the New Humanism, The (Sarton, 1937), 3:878 pragmatism, 2:495, 548 Humboldt, Alexander von, 1:26, 101–102, 102 Hume, David, 1:44 Humoral transmittors, 3:923 Humors and humoral theory, 2:341–342 Hunt, R. Timothy, 3:924 Hunter, George, 1:13, 94–95 Hurricanes butterfly effect, 3:738 National Hurricane Center, 2:449, 449–450 See also National Weather Service; U.S. Weather Bureau Hurwicz, Leonid, 3:926 Hutton, James, 2:411 Huxley, Thomas, 3:836 Hyatt, Alpheus, 1:188, 224–225 Hydroelectricity, 3:813 Hydrogen bomb, 3:814 See also Atomic bomb; Manhattan Project Hydrogen spectrum, 3:926 Hydrology, 2:442–443, 464 Hygiene, 2:342–343 See also Health Hyssop, 1:133

I

IBM. See International Business Machines IBM personal computer, 3:749 IBM-Harvard Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Mark I) computer, 3:748–749 Ichthyology, 1:225 Fishes of the Gulf of Maine (H. Bigelow, 1925), 1:198 Fishes of the Western North Atlantic (H. Bigelow, 1948), 1:198 Ichthyology of South Carolina (Holbrook, 1860), 1:220 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1:202 See also Oceanography; Sea Id, 2:543–544 Identity crisis, 2:566 Ignarro, Louis J., 3:924 Illinois John Chapman, 1:20 Illustrated Astronomy (Smith, 1850), 2:620–621 Immunization, 2:343 antibodies, 2:343, 356, 390–392 “Improved Calculating Machine, An,” Scientific American, 3:762–763 Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System (Latimer, 1890), 3:820

Indiana John Chapman, 1:20 See also names of places in Indiana Indians, American. See Native Americans Indigo, 3:835 Industrial management, 3:916–917 Industrial Revolution, 3:771–774, 826 Lewis Howard Latimer, 3:820 Infectious diseases. See Disease Influenza, 2:344 Influenza epidemic (1918–1919), 2:344–346, 345 Inkeles, Alex, 2:497–498 Inoculation antibodies, 2:346–347 smallpox, 2:304–306 See also Vaccination Inorganic chemistry, 3:692–693 Insanity, 2:544, 544–545 See also Mental Health Insects. See Entomology Institute for Sex Research, Bloomington, Indiana, 1:227 Insulin, 2:297, 316–317, 317 Integrated circuit, 3:928 Intelligence, artificial Stanford University Medical Experimental Computer for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (SUMEX-AIM), 1:229 See also Computers Intelligence, extraterrestrial, 2:613, 613–614 Intelligent Life in the Universe (Shklovsky, 1966), 2:613 See also Extraterrestrials Intelligence quotient. See IQ Intelligent design, 1:208–209 Intelligent Life in the Universe (Shklovsky, 1966), 2:613 International Business Machines (IBM), 3:748 Herman Hollerith, 3:745 IBM personal computer, 3:749 SAGE, 3:754–755 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2:498–499 International Geophysical Year (IGY), 3:841 Internet, 3:725–728 Introduction to Systematic and Physiological Botany (Nuttall, 1827), 1:171 Introduction to the History of Science (Sarton, 1947), 3:910–911 Inuits, 3:781 Inventors, 3:766–769 African Americans, 3:883–884 See also names of inventions; names of inventors Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (Einstein, 1926), 3:636

I-22 Index Ion channels in cell membranes, 3:930 Ion trap technique, 3:927 Ionosphere, 2:443–444 IQ (Intelligence Quotient), 2:545–546 Iron ore, 3:770 Ironworks colonial, 3:814–815, 815 Saugus Ironworks, 3:770 Irving, Washington, 1:86, 171 Isis, 3:910 Isle of Shoals, 3:771 Isthmian Canal Commission, 2:329 Itinerant physicians, 2:347–348 Ivory-billed woodpecker, 1:239, 241

J

James, Edwin, 1:7 James, William, 1:xxx; 2:546–548, 547, 566 Jamestown, 1:58, 99; 2:274 Jansky, Karl Guthe, 2:595–596 Japan Hiroshima, 3:784–785, 785 William Edwards Deming, 3:755 Jarvik, Robert Koffler, 2:348–349 Jefferson, Thomas, 1:6–7, 16–17, 34–36, 89, 123 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, An (1779), 1:36 Alexander von Humboldt, 1:102 American Indian origins, 2:496, 521 Benjamin Banneker, 3:734 Declaration of Independence (1776), 1:36 deism, 3:895 Dunbar Expedition, 1:137 Dunbar-Hunter Expedition (1804–1805), 1:94–95 as economist, 2:477 History of the United States During the Administrations of Adams and Jefferson (1889– 1891), 3:874, 882 as humanist, 2:495 as inventor, 3:777–778, 883 Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), 1:104– 106 as naturalist, 1:138–139 Notes on the State of Virginia (1784), 1:16, 34–35; 2:521; 3:873, 877 as political theorist, 1:36 Report of Government for the Western Territories (1784), 1:36 Summary View of the Rights of British America, A (1774), 1:34, 36 Jefferson Medical College, 2:357 Jemison, Mae, 3:885–886 See also Astronauts

Jenkins, Charles Francis, 3:840 Jenks, Joseph, 3:770 Jensen, J. Hans D., 3:927 Jessaume, René, 1:134 Jesuit Relations, The (Dablon, 1972), 1:93 Jesuits, 1:15, 92–93 Jobs, Steve, 3:724 John Muir National Historic Site, 1:43 Johnson, Phillip E., 1:45 Johnson, Robert, 1:9 Jones, John, 2:349 Jordan, David Starr, 1:225; 3:836 Josselyn, John, 1:36–37, 74, 84 Account of Two Voyages to New-England, An (1674), 1:36–37, 136 as botantist, 1:136 materia medica, 1:133 mineral wealth, New England, 2:464 New-Englands Rarities Discovered (1672), 1:36, 65, 136, 265; 2:464 as physician, 2:273 seventeenth-century fauna, 1:265 White Mountains, 1:65 Journal Kept by John Bartram of Philadelphia . . . upon a Journey from St. Augustine up the River St. John’s, with Explanatory Notes, A (J. Bartram, 1766), 1:145 Journal of Metabolic Research, 2:287 Journal of Psychology, American, 2:533 Journal of the American Medical Association, 2:290 Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory during the Year 1819 (Nuttall, 1821), 1:138, 170, 171, 175, 178–179 Journal of Wildlife Management, 1:256 Jung, Carl, 2:528, 530, 530–531, 538 Just, Ernest Everett, 1:226

K

Kaempffert, Waldemar, 3:760 Kahneman, Daniel, 3:926 Kaiser Family Foundation, 2:397 Kandel, Eric R., 3:924 Kanner, Leo, 2:294 Kansas, 1:48 Kant, Immanuel, 1:44 Kantorovich, Leonid V., 3:925 Karle, Jerome, 3:929 Katahdin, Mount, 1:32, 128–129 Katz, Bernard, 3:923 Keeler, James Edward, 2:596–597 Kendall, Edward C., 3:923 Kendall, Henry W., 3:927 Kepler, Johannes, 1:34

Index I-23 Kettering, Charles Franklin, 3:816 Ketterle, Wolfgang, 3:928 Khorana, Har G., 3:923 Kilby, Jack S., 3:774, 928 Kings Canyon National Park, 1:119 Kinnersley, Ebenezer, 3:645–646 Kino, Eusebio Francisco, 1:48 Kinsey, Alfred Charles, 1:226–228, 227 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), 1:227 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), 1:227 Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 1:97–98; 3:768, 864–865, 865 Klein, Laurence R., 2:479; 3:925 Klein, Melanie, 2:538 Kline, Meredith, 1:208 K-mesons, 3:927 Knowles, William S., 3:930 Koch, Robert, 2:300–301 Kodak, 3:688, 793–794, 823, 834, 834, 837 Kohn, Walter, 3:929 Koop, C. Everett, 2:349–350 abortion, 2:350 acquired immune deficiency syndrome, 2:350 surgeon general, 2:350 Koopmans, Tjalling C., 3:925 Korean War Edwin Aldrin, 1:78 John Glenn, 1:97 Michael E. DeBakey, 2:313–314 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 3:783 Kornberg, Arthur, 1:228; 3:923 Kornberg, Roger D., 3:930 Koshiba, Masatoshi, 3:928 Kraepelin, Emil, 2:288 Krebs, Edwin G., 3:924 Krebs Cycle, 1:241 Kroto, Harold W., 3:929 Kuhn, Adam, 2:368 Kuhn, Thomas Samuel, 3:876–877, 880, 900–903, 901 Black-Body Theory and the Quantum Discovery: 1894–1912 (1978), 3:902 Copernician Revolution, The (1957), 3:900 Essential Tension, The (1977), 3:902 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The (1962), 3:876, 880, 900–902 Kurtz, Thomas, 3:724 Kusch, Polykarp, 3:926 Kuznets, Simon Smith, 2:499; 3:925 Kydland, Finn E., 3:926

L

La Salle, Sieur de, 1:47 Laissez-faire economics, 2:499–500

Lake Erie, 3:800 Lake Itasca, 1:118 Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste, 1:188, 213 Lamb, Willis E., 3:926 LAN. See Local area network Lancashire Mill, 1:152 Land, Edwin Herbert, 3:817–818 Land grant universities, 3:818–819 Landsat satellites, 3:842 Langmuir, Irving, 3:928 Laser, 3:819, 819–820 Laser spectroscopy, 3:927 Latimer, Lewis Howard, 3:820 Laughlin, Harry, 1:212 Laughlin, Robert B., 3:928 Lauterbur, Paul C., 3:925 Lawrence, Ernest O., 3:646–647, 926 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 3:820–821 Lawrence Scientific School, Harvard University, 3:903–904 Lawson, John, 1:102–103, 136 Leavitt, Henrietta Swan, 2:577 Lederberg, Joshua, 1:228–230; 3:923 Dendral, 1:229 extraterrestrial life, 1:229 Viking mission, 1:229 Lederer, John, 1:74 Lederman, Leon M., 3:927 Lee, David M., 3:928 Lee, Mr. (guide), 1:13–14 Lee, Yuan T., 3:929 Leeches, 2:302–303 Leggett, Anthony J., 3:928 Lehn, Jean-Marie, 3:929 Leidy, Joseph, 1:188, 230 Leontief, Wassily, 3:748, 925 Leopold, Aldo, 1:204, 255 Game Management (1933), 1:256 Sand County Almanac, A (1949), 1:204, 256 Lescarbot, Marc, 1:46, 103–104 Acadia, 1:46, 103–104 Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (History of New France, 1609), 1:46, 104 West Indies, 1:104 Letters from an American Farmer (Crèvecoeur, 1782), 1:6 Levi-Montalcini, Rita, 3:924 Levinson, Norman, 3:747–748 Levy, David, 2:587 Lewis, Arthur, 3:925 Lewis, Edward B., 3:924 Lewis, Meriwether, 1:7, 13, 35, 72, 104–105, 134; 3:891

I-24 Index Lewis, Meriwether (continued) See also Clark, William; Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806); Louisiana Territory Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), 1:105–108 journal, 1:106 Native Americans, 1:107–108 See also Clark, William; Lewis, Meriwether Libby, Willard Frank, 3:693–694, 928–929 Liberty Island, New York, 2:299 Liebig, Justus, 3:903 Life expectancy, 2:350–351 African Americans, 2:351 statistics, 2:350 Life of Sir William Osler (Cushing, 1926), 2:313 Lifton, Robert Jay, 2:548–549 Light, 3:647–648 speed of, 3:648–650 Lilius, Aloysius, 2:589 Lindbergh, Charles Augustus, 3:821–822, 822, 845 Linear Associative Algebra (Peirce, 1870), 3:752 Lining, John, 2:351–352 Linnaeus, Carolus, 1:138–140, 139 Cadwallader Colden, 1:21, 140, 187 Darwinian theory, 1:140 ichthyology, 1:225 Species Plantarum (1753), 1:138–139 Systema (1758), 1:138 Systema Naturae (1735), 1:138–139 taxonomy, 1:249–250 zoology, 1:262 Lipmann, Fritz A., 3:923 Lipscomb, William N., 3:929 Little, Daniel, 1:11, 84, 108–109 Liver therapy, 3:923 Local area network (LAN), 3:725 Locke, John, 3:861–862 Logan, James, 1:37–38 Logical empiricism, 3:898–899 Logical positivism, 3:898–899 Carl Gustav Hempel, 3:898–899 Thomas Samuel Kuhn, 3:901 Long, Crawford W., 2:292, 352–353 Long, Stephen Harriman, 1:7, 109–111 expedition, 1:52 Rail Road Manual (1829), 1:109–110 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1:118 Los Alamos, New Mexico, 3:640, 659, 665 Louisiana Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi (Map of Louisiana, Delisle, 1718), 1:94

Louisiana (continued) Description of Louisiana, New Discoveries Southwest of New France (Hennepin, 1683), 1:47, 73, 100–101 Views of Louisiana (1814), 1:18, 152 Louisiana Territory, 1:7, 89, 95 Lowell, Francis Cabot, 3:826 Lowell, Percival, 2:597–598 Mars description, 2:607, 621–622 Lowell Mills, 3:869 Lubricator cup, 3:852 Lucas, Eliza, 3:770 Lucas, Robert E., Jr., 3:925–926 Lumsden, Charles, 1:257 Luria, Salvador E., 3:923 Lyell, Charles, 1:55, 188 Lynen, Feodor, 3:923

M

MacArthur, Robert, 1:26 MacDiarmid, Alan G., 3:930 MacGillvray, William, 1:195–196 MacKinnon, Roderick, 3:930 Maclean, John, 3:694 Macleod, J.J.R., 2:297 Maclure, William, 1:175; 2:445 Macro-economic policy, 3:926 Macromolecules, 3:929, 930 Madeira Islands, 1:126 Madoc, King, 1:4–5 Magnalia Christi Americana (C. Mather, 1702), 1:9, 38 Magnetic and disordered systems, 3:927 Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 3:816, 925 Magnetism, 3:650 geomagnetism, 2:436–437 Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Maxwell, 1873), 3:838 Maine, 1:7, 60 History of Acadie, Penobscot Bay and River, with a More Particular Geographical and Statistical View of the District of Maine (Whipple, 1816), 1:123–124, 128–129 Maine Woods, The (Thoreau, 1864), 1:60 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 2:500–501, 501 Mallon, Mary (Typhoid Mary), 1:234; 2:391 Manhattan Project, 1:xxx; 3:822–823 Albert Einstein, 3:774–776 World War II, 3:638, 646, 659, 669, 689, 831 See also Atomic bomb; Hydrogen bomb; names of other scientists Mansfield, Peter, 3:925 Manual of Operation for the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Hopper, 1946), 3:748

Index I-25 Manufacturing. See Factories; names of companies Map of Louisiana ( Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi, Delisle, 1718), 1:94 Map of Virginia (Smith, 1612), 1:58 Maps air, 2:420 Atlantic Ocean, 1:5 Guillaume Delisle, 1:93–94 Great Lakes, 1:46, 73 Louis Hennepin, 1:73 Map of Canada or New France (Carte du Canada ou de la Novelle France, Delisle, 1703), 1:94 Map of Louisiana (Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi, Delisle, 1718), 1:94 Map of Virginia (Smith, 1612), 1:58 New France, 1:72 Marconi, Guglielmo, 3:838 Marconi Wireless Company, 2:444 Marcus, Rudolph A., 3:929 Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, 1:231–232 Mariner’s quadrant, 2:445–446 Mark I computer, 3:748–749 Market mechanisms, alternative, 3:926 Markowitz, Harry M., 3:925 Mars canals, 2:597, 607 Mars Pathfinder, 3:828, 832–833, 848 Marsh, Othniel Charles, 1:189, 232 Charles Darwin, 1:232 Edward Drinker Cope, 1:232 Marx, Karl, 2:502–503 Marxism, 2:502–503 MASH. See Mobile Army Surgical Hospital units Maskin, Eric S., 3:926 Maslow, Abraham, 2:549–550 Massachusetts Massachusetts Historical Society, 1:83; 3:904–905, 920 Of Plymouth Plantation (Bradford), 1:9 See also names of places in Massachusetts Massachusetts General Hospital, 2:353–354 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 3:823–824 Whirlwind, 3:758 World War II, 3:824 Materia medica, 1:133–135 Abenaki Indians, 1:133 Jean Louis Berlandier, 1:135 Jeremy Belknap, 1:133 John Bradbury, 1:134–135 John Gyles, 1:133 Manasseh Cutler, 1:133

Mathematics American Mathematical Society (AMS), 3:730–731 applied, 3:732–733 Norbert Wiener, 3:759–761, 760 Principia Mathematica (Newton, 1687), 1:140; 3:656–657, 657 See also Geometry; Numbers; Statistics; names of other mathematicians; names of other publications Mather, Cotton, 1:6, 9, 9–10, 38–40, 54–55, 186 Angel of Bethesda, The (1972), 1:39–40 Biblia Americana, or Scared Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, 1:39 Christian Philosopher, The (1721), 1:10, 39 Curiosa Americana (1712), 1:39, 55, 186 Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), 1:9, 38 Wonders of the Invisible World (1692), 1:40 Mather, Increase, 1:9–10, 40–41 Brief History of the War with the Indians in New England, A (1676), 1:9 Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1693), 1:41 Discourse on Prayer (1677), 1:9 Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684), 1:41 Relation of the Troubles Which Have Happened in New England, A (1677), 1:9 Mather, John C., 3:928 Maury, Antonia, 2:577 Maury, Matthew Fontaine, 1:238; 2:446–448 New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation, A (1836), 2:446 Physical Geography of the Sea (1855), 2:447 Maxwell, James Clerk, 3:838 Mayer, Maria Goeppert, 3:651, 651 Mayo Clinic, 2:354–356, 355 Mayr, Ernst, 1:214, 219 MBC. See Mutual Broadcasting Company McClintock, Barbara, 1:232–233, 233; 3:924 McCormick, Cyrus Hall, 3:779, 824–825 McCoy, Elijah, 3:852 McFadden, Daniel L., 3:926 MCI, 3:727 McKay, Frederick, 2:315 McMillan, Edwin M., 3:928 Mead, George Herbert, 2:550–551 Mead, Margaret cultural anthropologist, 2:476, 483, 486, 489, 492 World War II, 2:504 Measles, 2:356 Mechanism design theory, 3:926 Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity, The (Morgan, 1915), 1:236

I-26 Index Medelian genetics, 1:190, 213 evolution, 1:214 Sewall Wright, 1:214 Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (Leidy, 1870–1888), 1:230 Medical education, 2:357, 357–358 Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree, 2:299 See also names of schools and hospitals Medicine, 2:273–276, 275 African Americans, 3:884–885 American Medical Association (AMA), 2:276, 290–291 American Medical Botany (J. Bigelow, 1817–1820), 1:151 Cadwallader Colden, 3:681 forensic, 2:325–326 herbal, 2:334–335 holistic, 2:336–337 Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (Leidy, 1870–1888), 1:230 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), 2:343, 362 Nobel Prize winners, 1:197, 201, 209, 221, 222, 228, 231, 233, 235, 249, 253, 255, 262; 2:297, 317, 343, 359, 366, 393, 398–399; 3:923–925 patent, 3:697–698, 698 Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal (Barton, 1804), 1:143 Stanford University Medical Experimental Computer for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (SUMEX-AIM), 1:229 System of Anatomy for the Use of Students of Medicine, A (Wistar, 1811–1814), 1:259 tobacco, 1:252 Treatise on Wounds and Fevers (Colden, 1765), 1:21 Western Quarterly Reporter of Medical, Surgical, and Natural Science (Godman), 1:30 See also Antibiotics; Cancer and cancer research; Disease; Drugs; Medical education; Sulfa drugs; names of other doctors and scientists in the field; names of other publications; names of other drugs and treatments Medieval natural theology, 1:43–44 Mello, Craig C., 3:925 Memoirs of Odd Adventures, Strange Deliverances, &c. in the Captivity of John Gyles, Esq., Commander of the Garrison on St. George’s River (Gyles, 1736), 1:30 Mendel, Gregor, 1:209, 215–217 Menstruation, 2:397 See also Birth control; Obstetrics; Women Mental health, 2:551–553, 552 See also Insanity; Medicine; Mind; Psychiatry; Psychoanalysis; Psychology; names of doctors

Merchandize of Souls, Being an Exposition of Certain Passages in the Book of Revelation, The (Dudley), 1:24 Mercurius Nov-Anglicans (Douglass, 1743), 2:320 Mercury, Project, 1:98; 3:825, 825–826 Alan B. Shepard, Jr., 1:118–119 John Glenn, 1:98 See also Apollo, Project; Gemini, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station; names of spacecraft Merrifield, Robert B., 3:929 Merton, Robert C., 3:926 Metathesis method in organic synthesis, 3:930 Meteorology, 2:409–410, 413–415, 414 radar and satellites, 2:415 stars, 2:576–577; 3:927 telegraph, 2:413, 462 See also Red River Meteorite Mexico first hospital, 2:339 Hopi Indians, 2:480 José de Acosta, 1:15, 48 Los Alamos, 3:640, 659, 665 Two Bird Lovers in Mexico (Rice, 1905), 1:16 Michelson, Albert A, 3:926 Michelson-Morley Experiment, 3:651–653, 652 Microbe Hunters (de Kruif, 1926), 1:228 Microbiology, 1:234 antibiotics, 1:234 Prescott and Dunn’s Industrial Microbiology (Prescott), 1:245 World War II, 1:234 See also Reed, Walter; names of other scientists Microeconomic analysis, 3:925 Microrevolution, 1:215 Microsoft Corporation, 3:749, 749–750 antitrust action, 3:750 Apple computers, 3:750 See also Computers; Software Microwave background radiation, 3:928 cooking, 3:840 Middleton, Peter, 2:295 Midgley, Thomas, Jr., 3:816 Midwifery, 2:334, 358–359 Elizabeth Blackwell, 2:301–302, 302 Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska, 2:400–401 Martha Ballard, 2:296–297 women’s health, 2:396 See also Obstetrics; Women Military weapons. See Atomic bomb; Biological warfare; Chemical weapons; Civil War; Cold War; Guns; Korean War; Manhattan Project; World War I; World War II

Index I-27 Miller, Merton H., 3:925 Miller, Stanley, 1:247 Millikan, Robert Andrews, 3:653–654, 926 Mills, 3:770, 826–827 cotton, 3:846–847, 847 Lancashire Mill, 1:152 Lowell Mills, 3:869 Slater Mill, 3:846–847, 847 White Mill, 3:846–847 MILNET, 3:726 Mind body and, 2:526–527 development, 2:526–529, 527 See also Insanity; Medicine; Mental health; Psychiatry; Psychoanalysis; Psychology; names of doctors Minot, George Richards, 1:222; 2:359–360; 3:923 Mint, U.S. See U.S. Mint Minutes of the Progressive Growth, and Maturity of the Most Useful Vegetables at Penobscot, &c ( Little), 1:108 Mirrlees, James A., 3:926 Mississippi River, 1:7 Narrative Journal of Travels . . . to the Sources of the Mississippi River (Schoolcraft, 1821), 1:117 Narrative of an Expedition through the Upper Mississippi (Schoolcraft, 1834), 1:118 Zebulon Montgomery Pike, 1:128 Missouri “Catalogue of Some of the Most Rare or Valuable Plants Discovered in the Neighbourhood of St. Louis and on the Missouri.” (1810–1811), 1:179–181 Henry Marie Brackenridge, 1:67–68 Missouri Valley flora, 1:179–181 View of the Lead Mines of Missouri, A (Schoolcraft, 1819), 1:117 Missouri River, 1:67–68, 76 MIT. See Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mitchell, John, 1:167 Contest in America between Great Britain and France (1757), 1:167 Present State of Great Britain and North America (1767), 1:167 Mitchell, Maria, 2:576, 576, 598 Mitchell, Silas Weir, 2:553–554 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units, 2:314 Modernization theory, 2:473–475 Modigliani, Franco, 3:925 Molecular biology, 1:234–235 Molecular orbital method, 3:929 Molecular ray method, 3:926 Molecules, 3:929

Molina, Mario J., 3:929 Monadnock, Mount, 1:62 Monardes, Nicholas, 1:252; 2:273 Monetary History of the United States: 1867–1960, A (Friedman, 1963), 2:479 Money. See U.S. Mint Monograph of the Pheasants, A (Beebe, 1918), 1:16 Monologium (Anselm), 1:43 Monsanto Company, 1:192; 3:823 Montaigne, 1:5 Moons of other planets, 2:599–600 See also Space exploration; Space probes Moore, Eliakim, 3:750–751 Moore, Stanford, 3:929 Moran, Thomas, 1:63 More, Thomas, 1:5, 167–168 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 2:505 Morgan, Thomas Hunt, 1:216, 235–236, 262; 3:923 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 1:91; 3:906, 906–907 Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), 3:906 Christopher Columbus, 1:91 History as a Literary Art (1948), 3:906 History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II (1947–1962), 3:906 in World War II, 3:906 Morrill Land Grant College Act (1862), 3:778 Morse, Jedidiah, 1:111–112 Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, 3:827, 838 Morse code, 3:838 Morton, Charles, 1:xxix Morton, William T.G., 2:360, 360–361 Mosaic, 3:727 Mott, Nevill F., 3:927 Mottelson, Ben R., 3:927 Mount Katahdin, 1:32, 128–129 Mount Monadnock, 1:62 Mount Vesuvius, Italy, 2:426 Mount Washington, 1:13, 54, 84; 2:448, 448 exploration, 1:74 flora, 1:178 Manasseh Cutler, 1:155, 178 Mount Wilson Observatory, 2:448, 448; 2:600, 600–601 Mountains, 1:73–74 See also Appalachian Mountains; Rocky Mountains; White Mountains; names of mountains and peaks MRI. See Magnetic resonance imaging MS-DOS computer operating system, 3:749 Muhlenberg, Gotthilf Henry Ernest, 1:159, 168–169 Muir, John, 1:8, 41–42, 42 John Muir National Historic Site, 1:43

I-28 Index Muir, John (continued) Sierra Club, 1:8, 119 See also National parks Muller, Hermann J., 3:923 Mulliken, Robert S., 3:929 Mullis, Kary B., 3:929 Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act (1960), 1:160 Mumford, Lewis, 2:505–506, 506 Mundell, Robert A., 2:479; 3:926 Murad, Ferid, 3:924 Murphy, William P., 3:923 Murray, Charles, 2:546 Murray, Joseph E., 3:924 Musci Americani (Drummond), 1:157 Muscle relaxants, 2:293 Muskets, 3:863 Museums American Art Museum, 3:915 American Museum of Natural History, 3:890–891 Field Museum of Natural History, 3:895–896 Freer Gallery, 3:915 Harvard Museum of Natural History, 3:896–897 National Air and Space Museum, 3:914 National Museum of African American History, 3:915 National Museum of American History, 3:915 National Portrait Gallery, 3:915 Natural History Museum, 3:914 Peale Museum, 1:53 Smithsonian Institution, 3:914–915 Strawbery Banke Museum, 1:133, 134 Mutual Broadcasting Company (MBC), 3:839 Myerson, Roger B., 3:926

N

NAE. See National Association of Evangelicals Narrative Journal of Travels . . . to the Sources of the Mississippi River (Schoolcraft, 1821), 1:117 Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River (Townsend, 1839), 1:121, 129–130 Narrative of an Expedition through the Upper Mississippi (Schoolcraft, 1834), 1:118 Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition (Wilkes, 1844), 1:125 NAS. See National Academy of Sciences; National Audubon Society NASA. See National Aeronautics and Space Administration Nathans, Daniel, 3:924 National Academy of Sciences (NAS), 3:907 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 1:81; 3:827–829 Alan Shepard, 1:118–119

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) (continued) balloons, 2:420 Carl Sagan, 2:612 Edwin Aldrin, 1:78 John Glenn, 1:97–98 Mae Jemison, 3:885 Michael Collins, 1:90–91 Neil A. Armstrong, 1:78, 80–81, 90; 3:781–782 Viking, 3:828 Wernher Magnus Maximillian von Braun, 3:861 See also Apollo, Project; Astronauts; Gemini, Project; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station; names of other scientists; names of spacecraft National Air and Space Museum, 3:914 National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), 1:55 National Audubon Society (NAS), 1:8, 196, 236–237, 243 National Birth Control League, 2:397 National Broadcasting Company (NBC), 3:839 National Cancer Institute, 2:307–309 National Forest Management Act (NFMA, 1976), 1:160 National Geographic Society (NGS), 1:112–113 National Geographic, 1:112 National Hurricane Center (NHC), 2:449, 449–450 National Institutes of Health (NIH), 1:217; 2:282, 361–362 public health, 2:361 National Mall, 3:914–915 National Museum of African American History, 3:915 National Museum of American History, 3:915 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2:450–452, 451 National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 2:575 National Park Service (NPS), 1:43, 63; 2:452–453 National parks, 1:42–43 Grand Canyon National Park, 1:57 Kings Canyon National Park, 1:119 National Park Service (NPS), 1:43, 63; 2:452–453 Sequoia National Park, 1:119 Sierra Club, 1:119 Yellowstone National Park, 1:42, 62–64, 63 See also Environment; Forestry; Muir, John; National Park Service; Roosevelt, Theodore; Wildlife management National Portrait Gallery, 3:915 National Public Radio (NPR), 3:840 National Reclamation Act (1902), 1:57 National Research Council (NRC), 3:907 National Science Foundation (NSF), 3:907–908 Spelman College, 3:916 World War II, 3:908 National Solar Observatory, 2:575

Index I-29 National Weather Service (NWS), 2:452–453 National Women’s Health Initiative Project, 2:397 Native Americans, 1:xxvii, 3; 2:470; 3:626 archeology, 2:482–483 beliefs and customs, 2:520–521 Benjamin Smith Barton, 1:149 Brief History of the War with the Indians in New England, A (I. Mather, 1676), 1:9 cultural anthropology, 2:483–484 folk customs, 2:471–473 Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (1851–1857), 1:118 History of the Five Indian Nations, A (Colden, 1727), 1:21 Jedidiah Morse, 1:111–112 John Wesley Powell, 1:116–117 Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), 1:107–108 New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America (Barton, 1798), 1:144 origins, 2:496–497, 521 religious beliefs, 2:469–471 science, 2:480–482 sterilization, 1:212 See also Canoes; names of Native Americans; names of tribes Natural and Moral History of the Indies (Acosta, 1590), 1:15, 48, 75 Natural History Museum, 3:914 Natural History of Birds in the United States, The (Wilson, 1808–1814), 1:240 Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, The (Catesby, 1729–1747), 1:18–20, 19, 136, 186 Natural resources, 1:5; 3:769–771, 770 Natural theology, 1:8–12, 10, 43–45 medieval, 1:43–44 Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (Paley, 1802), 1:44 Renaissance, 1:43–44 See also Religion; names of theologians Naturalists, 1:6, 155–156 New France, 1:45–48 New Spain, 1:48–49 See also Environment; names of naturalists Nature, 3:911 Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structures of Molecules and Crystals, The (Pauling, 1939), 3:700 Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris, The (1766), 2:418, 575 Nautical Almanac Office, 2:418 Nautilus, USS, 3:829, 829–830, 860 Naval Observatory. See U.S. Naval Observatory

Navigation, 2:601–602 New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation, A (Maury, 1836), 2:446 radio technology, 2:602 satellite technology, 2:602 See also names of explorers and navigators; names of other publications; NBC. See National Broadcasting Company Needham, John, 1:247 Neo-Darwinism, 1:190 Nerve fibers, 3:923 Nervous system, 3:924 Netcom, 3:727 Netscape, 3:750 Neumann, John von, 3:749, 757–758 Neurasthenia, 2:554–555 Neurosis, 2:555–556 Neurotransmitters, 1:197 Neutrinos, 3:927, 928 Neutron diffraction technique, 3:928 Neutron stars, 2:615 New Atlantis (Bacon, 1627), 3:767 New Discoveries of a Very Great Country (Hennepin, 1697), 1:47 New Discovery of a Vast County in America (Hennepin, 1698), 1:100 New England, 1:80 Brief History of the War with the Indians in New England, A (I. Mather, 1676), 1:9 New-England Diary, or Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord Christ, 1726, The (Bowen), 2:574 New-Englands Rarities Discovered (Josselyn, 1672), 1:36, 65, 136, 265; 2:464 Relation of the Troubles Which Have Happened in New England, A (I. Mather, 1677), 1:9 Travels in New-England and New-York (Dwight, 1821), 1:66 See also White Mountains; names of explorers; names of other places in New England New England Hospital for Women and Children, 2:400 New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), 2:343, 362 New France, 1:45–48, 72 Carte du Canada ou de la Novelle France (Map of Canada or New France, Delise, 1703), 1:94 Description of Louisiana, New Discoveries Southwest of New France (Hennepin, 1683), 1:47, 73, 100–101 Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (History of New France, 1609), 1:46, 104 Novae Franciae accurata delineato (Bressani, 1657), 1:47 See also names of explorers and scientists

I-30 Index New Hampshire History of New-Hampshire, The (Belknap, 1784– 1792), 1:10, 13, 81–83, 85, 133 See also White Mountains New Harmony, Indiana, 1:176 New Lights, 1:10, 23; 2:573; 3:894 New Netherlands, 1:75 New Spain naturalists, 1:48–49 Political Essay on New Spain (Humboldt, 1805– 1834), 1:102 See also names of explorers and scientists New Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Navigation, A (Maury, 1836), 2:446 New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America (Barton, 1798), 1:144 New Voyage to Carolina, A (Lawson, 1709), 1:103 New York Brooklyn Bridge, 3:790, 790–791 Fever Which Prevailed in the City of New York in 1741–42, The (Colden, 1742), 1:21 Liberty Island, New York, 2:299 Travels in New-England and New-York (Dwight, 1821), 1:66 Newcomb, Simon, 2:575, 602–603 Newton, Isaac, 1:21 physics, 3:626–627 Principia Mathematica (1687), 1:140; 2:440, 584; 3:625, 626–627, 628, 656–657, 657, 662, 671, 895 NFMA. See National Forest Management Act NGS. See National Geographic Society NHC. See National Hurricane Center Nicaragua Expedition (1884–1885), 1:113 Nicolet, Jean, 1:47 NIH. See National Institutes of Health Nirenberg, Marshall W., 3:923 Nitric oxide, 3:924 Nitrous oxide, 2:292–293 NOAA. See National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Nobel Prize winners, 3:923–930 chemistry, 1:173; 2:455; 3:681, 686, 690, 693–694, 696–697, 699–700, 707, 711–712, 735, 748, 928–930 economics, 2:447, 478, 479, 493, 494, 499; 3:925–926 medicine, 1:197, 201, 209, 221, 222, 228, 231, 233, 235, 249, 253, 255, 262; 2:297, 317, 343, 359, 366, 393, 398–399; 3:923–925 peace, 1:57; 2:560 physics, 2:442, 580, 581, 615; 3:630–638, 642, 646–647, 650–655, 658–660, 664–665, 669–670, 926–928

Nobel Prize winners (continued) physiology, 1:197, 201, 209, 221, 222, 228, 231, 233, 235, 249, 253, 255, 262; 2:297, 317, 343, 359, 366, 393, 398–399; 3:923–925 See also names of Nobel Prize winners Non-cooperative game theory, 3:925 Non-Euclidean geometry, 3:721–722 See also Mathematics North, Douglass C., 3:925 North American Herpetology (Holbrook, 1836–1840), 1:220 North Carolina Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (W. Bartram, 1791), 1:137, 147–149 See also Carolinas; names of places in North Carolina North Pole Lincoln Ellsworth, 1:95–96 Matthew Henson, 3:884 Nautilus, 3:829–830 Richard Evelyn Byrd, 1:87, 87–88 Robert Edwin Peary, 1:79, 113–114, 114 See also Arctic Northeastern Wildflowers (Peterson, 1986), 1:244 Northern lights. See Aurora borealis Northover, William R., 3:886 Northrop, John H., 3:928 Northwest Passage, 1:72–73, 100 Claude Dablon, 1:93 Richard Hakluyt, 1:100 Norwood, Richard, 1:50–51 Seaman’s Practice, The (1637), 1:50 Trigonometrie, or, The Doctrine of Triangles (1631), 1:50 Notes on the State of Virginia (Jefferson, 1784), 1:16, 34–35 Nova Britannia: Offering Most Excellent Fruites by Planting in Virginia (Johnson, 1609), 1:9 Nova Scotia. See Acadia Novae Franciae accurata delineato (Bressani, 1657), 1:47 Novum Organum (Bacon, 1620), 1:49; 3:625, 875 Noyori, Ryoji, 3:930 NPR. See National Public Radio NPS. See National Park Service NRC. See National Research Council; Nuclear Regulatory Commission NSF. See National Science Foundation Nuclear energy, 3:830–831 Three Mile Island, 3:856–857 Nuclear fission, 3:639 Nuclear reactions, 3:927 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 3:786 Nucleic acids, 3:923, 929

Index I-31 Numbers History of the Theory of Numbers (Dickson, 1919– 1923), 3:751 number theory, 3:750–752 prime numbers, 3:751 See also Game theory; Mathematics Nurse, Paul M., 3:924 Nüsslein-Volhard, Christiane, 3:924 Nuttall, Thomas, 1:7, 13, 17–18, 76–77, 169–171, 170 as botanist, 1:137–138 journal, 1:76 Mississippi hydrology, 2:464 Osage description, 2:519–520 Thomas Russell, 1:175 Western prairie flora, 1:178–179 Wyatt Expedition (1834), 1:171 NWS. See National Weather Service Nylon, 3:680, 695, 695

O

Observations on the Inhabitants, Climate, Soil, Rivers, Productions, Animals, and Other Matters Worthy of Notice (J. Bartram, 1751), 1:145 Observatories, 2:603–604 Chandra X-ray Observatory, 2:582, 604 Harvard Observatory, 2:576–577, 592–593 Mount Washington Observatory, 2:448, 448 Mount Wilson Observatory, 2:600, 600–601 National Optical Astronomy Observatory, 2:575 National Solar Observatory, 2:575 Palomar Observatory, 2:604–605, 605 U.S. Naval Observatory, 2:618–619 Obstetrics, 2:362–364, 363 anesthesia, 2:310 Walter Channing, 2:310 See also Abortion; Birth control; Midwifery; Women; names of other doctors Oceanography, 1:237–239 chemical oceanography, 1:238 climate change, 1:239 geology, 1:238 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2:450–452, 451 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1:151–152, 224, 238 World War II, 1:238 See also Environment; Ichthyology; Maps; Sea; names of scientists Ochoa, Severo, 3:923 Odorant receptors, 3:925 Odum, Eugene, 1:26, 172 Odum, Howard, 1:26 “Of Cannibals” (Montaigne), 1:5

Of Plymouth Plantation (Bradford), 1:9 Ohio Battle of Fallen Timbers, 1:89 exploration, 1:75 John Chapman, 1:20 Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806), 1:106 Ohio River, 1:7, 75 John James Audubon, 1:194 railroads, 1:110 Thomas Drummond, 1:156–157 Oil drilling and exploration, 2:453–454, 454 Oklahoma, 1:48, 76 Olah, George A., 3:929 Old Lights, 1:10, 23; 2:573; 3:894 On Human Nature (Wilson, 1978), 1:258 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (Darwin, 1859), 1:163, 189, 213 Onsager, Lars, 3:696, 929 Operation Paperclip, 3:861 Oppenheimer, Julius Robert, 3:831–832, 832 Oppenheimer, Paul, 3:899 Optical coherence, 3:928 Optical precision instruments, 3:926 Oregon Trail, 1:86, 97 John Charles Frémont, 1:97 John Kirk Townsend, 1:129–130 Oregon Trail, The (Parkman, 1847), 1:77; 2:471, 473; 3:874 Report of the Exploring Expedition to Oregon and California (Frémont), 1:97 Organ and cell transplantation, 3:924 Organ development, 3:924 Organic Act (1897), 1:160 Organic chemistry, 3:696–697 Organic synthesis, 3:929 Ornithological Biography: An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States (Audubon, 1831– 1839), 1:195, 240 Ornithology, 1:239–242 American Ornithology; or, the Natural History of the Birds of the United States (Wilson, 1808–1814), 1:257 Birds of America (1840–1844), 1:195, 239, 240 Field Guide to the Birds, A (Peterson, 1934), 1:244 Natural History of Birds in the United States, The (Wilson, 1808–1814), 1:240 Ornithological Biography: An Account of the Habits of the Birds of the United States (Audubon, 1831–1839), 1:195, 240 Sibley Guide to Birds, The (Sibley, 2000), 1:240 Two Bird Lovers in Mexico (Rice, 1905), 1:16

I-32 Index Ornithology (continued) See also Audubon, John James; Catesby, Mark; Peterson, Roger Tory; names of other ornithologists; names of birds Ornithology of the United States (Townsend, 1839), 1:121 Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 1:242–243 Osheroff, Douglas S., 3:928 Osler, William, 2:364 Ottawa River, 1:88 Oviedo, Gonzalo, 1:48, 51, 75 Christopher Columbus, 1:51 General and Natural History of the Indies (1535–1549), 1:51 Summary of the Natural History of the Indies (1525), 1:51 Owens, Robert, 1:176; 2:445 Oxygen theory, 3:716 Ozone, 2:454–455

P

Paine, Thomas, 1:11 Age of Reason, The (1794), 1:11, 83; 3:877, 895 Common Sense, 1:11 Rights of Man, The, 1:11 Palade, George E., 3:924 Paleontology, 1:187–189, 232 Alpheus Hyatt, 1:188 chain of being concept, 1:187–188 Charles Lyell, 1:188 Edward Drinker Cope, 1:188 Enlightenment, 1:188 Georges Cuvier, 1:188 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1:188 Joseph Leidy, 1:188 Louis Agassiz, 1:188–189 See also Geology; names of other paleontologists Paley, William, 1:44 Palomar Observatory, 2:604–605, 605 Panama Canal, 1:79, 88; 2:329, 400 Paradogmatic science, 3:880 Parker, Eugene, 2:437 Parkman, Francis, 1:77 Parks. See Forestry; National parks; names of parks Parsons, Talcott, 2:507 Particle physics, 3:654, 927, 928 Pasteur, Louis, 1:247 Patent medicine, 3:697–698, 698 Pathfinder, Mars, 3:828, 832–833, 848 Pauli, Wolfgang, 3:654–655, 927 Pauling, Linus Carl, 3:681, 693, 699, 699–700, 928 atomic bomb, 3:700 Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structures of Molecules and Crystals, The (1939), 3:700 World War II, 3:700

Pauling Electronegativity Scale, 3:700 Pawnee Indians, 1:135 See also Native Americans Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia, 2:578, 605–606 PC-DOS computer operating system, 3:750 Peace Prize, Nobel, 1:57; 2:560 Peale, Charles Wilson, 1:52 American Entomology (1816), 1:52 Antarctic exploration, 1:53 Prairie Deer (1823), 1:52 Peale, Titian, 1:7, 51–53, 52 Peale Museum, 1:53 Pearson, Karl, 3:755 Pearson, T. Gilbert, 1:237 Peary, Robert Edwin, 1:79, 113–114, 114 Peck, William Dandridge, 1:54, 156 Pedersen, Charles J., 3:929 Peirce, Benjamin, 3:752–753 Linear Associative Algebra (1870), 3:752 number theory, 3:750 System of Analytical Mechanics (1855), 3:750 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 3:752, 753, 753–754 Penicillin, 2:364–366, 365 See also Antibiotics Penn, William, 1:37–38 Pennsylvania Fragments of the Natural History of Pennsylvania (Barton, 1799), 1:144 John Chapman, 1:20 Pennsylvania Gazette, 1:27 Pennsylvania Hospital, 2:274, 366–367, 367 Penobscot tribe, 1:108–109 See also Native Americans Penzias, Arno A., 3:927 Peptide hormone, 3:924 Perl, Martin L., 3:928 Personal computers, 3:750 Pesthouse, 2:367–368 Petersen, Jan, 2:298 Peterson, Roger Tory, 1:243–244, 243 Field Guide to the Birds, A (Peterson, 1934), 1:244 Northeastern Wildflowers (Peterson, 1986), 1:244 “Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide” series, 1:244 See also Ornithology Pharmaceutical industry, 3:700–701 Pharmacology, 3:702 Phase transitions, 3:927 Phelps, Edmund S., 3:926 Phelps, Orson, 3:845–846 Philadelphia Biological Society, 1:185 Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal (Barton, 1804), 1:143 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793, 2:402

Index I-33 Phillips, William D., 3:928 Philosophy American Philosophical Society (APS), 1:xxx, 28, 35; 3:891–893, 892 Boston Philosophical Society, 2:583 Christian Philosopher, The (C. Mather, 1721), 1:10, 39 Philosophical Club, 1:10 Philosophical Transactions, 1:24 of science, 3:875–877, 876, 880, 898–899, 900–901 See also Astronomy; names of philosophers Phlebotomy, 2:302 Phlogiston, 3:702–703 Phonograph, 3:794–796 Phosphorus-containing compounds, 3:929 Photoelectric effect, 3:926 Photography, 3:793–794, 833–834, 834 See also Cameras; Celluloid; Eastman, George; Kodak Photosynthesis, 1:172–173 Calvin-Benson cycle, 1:173 sugars, 1:173 Phyletic gradulalism, 1:218–219, 218 Physical anthropology, 2:507–508 See also Anthropology Physical Geography of the Sea (Maury, 1855), 2:447 Physical oceanography, 1:237–238 See also Oceanography Physicians Edward Robinson Squibb, 3:710–711 Frederick Cook, 1:114 Georg Stahl, 3:711 George Starkey, 3:711 Henry Draper, 2:587–588, 618 Ira Remsen, 3:707 Jared Eliot, 3:799–800 John Josselyn, 2:273 John Maclean, 3:694 John Redman Coxe, 3:688 John Winthrop, Jr., 1:186; 3:679–681, 692, 711, 714–715, 815, 909 World War II, 3:836 See also Barber surgeons; Itinerant physicians; Midwifery; names of other doctors Physick, Philip Syng, 2:368–369, 369 Physics Aristotle, 3:625–626 astrophysics, 3:928 Evolution of Physics, The (Einstein, 1938), 3:636–637 high pressure, 3:926 Newton, Isaac, 3:626–627

Physics (continued) Nobel Prize winners, 2:442, 580, 581, 615; 3:630–638, 642, 646–647, 650–655, 658–660, 664–665, 669–670, 926–928 particle physics, 3:654, 927, 928 quantum, 3:657–659 sound, 3:674 See also names of other physicists; names of other publications Physiology Nobel Prize winners, 1:222; 3:923–925 Physiological Botany, Introduction to Systematic and (Nuttall, 1827), 1:171 Pickering, Charles, 1:171–172 Pickering, Edward Charles, 1:80, 171; 2:606–607 Pickering, William Henry, 1:171 Pike, Zebulon Montgomery, 1:7, 76–77, 114–116, 115 “Arkansaw Journal,” 1:128 Mississippi River, 1:128 prairie dog, 1:266 Pike Expeditions (1805–1806), 1:114–116, 115 Pinchot, Gifford, 1:57, 204 Pinckney, Eliza Lucas, 3:835 Pinkham, Lydia Estes, 3:703–704 Pittman-Robertson Act, 1:256 Pitts, Walter, 3:761 Plains Indians, 1:134–135, 150; 3:781 See also Native Americans “Plan of an Antiquarian Society,” (Belknap, 1790), 3:920–921 Planetary Hypotheses (Ptolemy), 2:610 Planned Parenthood Federation of America, 2:397 Plants carbon dioxide in, 3:929 “Catalogue of Some of the Most Rare or Valuable Plants Discovered in the Neighbourhood of St. Louis and on the Missouri.” (1810–1811), 1:179–181 Chronological History of Plants: Man’s Record of His Own Existence Illustrated through Their Names, Uses, and Companionship, The (Pickering, 1879), 1:172 Genera of North American Plants, The (Nuttall, 1818), 1:170 How Plants Are Trained to Work for Man (1921), 1:166, 201 Luther Burbank, 1:201–202 photosynthesis, 1:172–173 See also Botany; Horticulture; names of plants Plastics, 3:680, 683–685, 684 Plunkett, Roy, 3:683–684 Plutarch, 1:3 Pluto, discovery of, 2:607–608

I-34 Index Plutonium, 3:835–836 Albert Einstein, 3:774 atomic bomb, 3:836 as element, 3:708 Eugene Paul Wigner, 3:670 Glenn Seaborg, 3:680 production plants, 3:784–785 uranium, 3:860 World War II, 3:836 Pocahontas, 1:58 Poinsett, Joel R., 1:96 Poison gas, 3:716 Polanyi, John C., 3:929 Polio, 2:369–370, 370 Poliomyelitis virus, 3:923 Political Essay on New Spain (Humboldt, 1805–1834), 1:102 Politzer, H. David, 3:928 Polo, Marco, 1:71 Polymerase chain reaction (PCR), 3:929 Pond, Chester, 3:791 Poor Richard’s Almanack (Franklin, 1732–1758), 1:28; 2:574, 608–610, 609 Popocatépetl, 1:73 Popper, Karl, 3:901 Popular Science magazine, 3:836–837 Popular Science Monthly, 3:836 Porter, Charlotte M., 1:53 Porter, Rodney R., 3:923–924 Positron, 3:926 Poutrincourt, Seigneur, 1:103–104 Powell, John Wesley, 1:76, 77, 116, 116–117 Pragmatism, 2:556; 3:753 Chaucey Wright, 1:261 humanism, 2:495, 548 John Dewey, 2:490 William James, 2:495, 548 Prairie Deer (Peale, 1823), 1:52 Prescott, Edward C., 3:926 Prescott, Samuel Cate, 1:244–245 Prescott and Dunn’s Industrial Microbiology (Prescott), 1:245 Present State of Great Britain and North America (Mitchell, 1767), 1:167 Priestley, Joseph, 3:628, 704–706 phologiston theory, 3:694 theory of oxygen, 3:716–717 Prime numbers, 3:751 Prince, John, 3:655–656 Prince, Thomas, 1:10 Principia Mathematica (Newton, 1687), 1:140; 2:440, 584; 3:625, 626–627, 628, 656–657, 657, 662, 671, 895

Principle Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (Hakluyt, 1588–1590), 1:100 Principles of Action in Matter (Colden), 1:21 Principles of Geology (Lyell, 1830–1833), 1:55 Principles of Psychology (James, 1890), 2:546–548, 547 Principles of Scientific Management (Taylor, 1911), 3:917 Prions, 3:924 Project Apollo. See Apollo, Project Project Mercury. See Mercury, Project Prokhorov, Aleksandr M., 3:927 Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge, A ( Franklin, 1743), 1:28 Prostatic cancer, 3:923 Protein, 3:924 degradation, 3:930 G-proteins, 3:924 synthesis, 3:923 Virus proteins, 3:928 Proteomics, human genome, 1:223–224 Protons, 3:926 Prozac, 1:197 Prusiner, Stanley B., 3:924 Psychiatry, 2:557, 557–558 Handbook of Psychiatry (Kraepelin, 1910), 2:288 See also names of psychiatrists; names of other publications Psychoanalysis, 2:528–532, 530 Psychology Abraham Maslow, 2:549–550 American Journal of Psychology, 2:533 American Psychological Association, 2:533–534 economic science, 3:926 Granville Stanley Hall, 2:541–542 Principles of Psychology (James, 1890), 2:546–548, 547 See also names of other psychologists; names of other publications “Psychology of Spiritualism, The” (Beard), 2:568 Psychopharmacology, 2:552 Ptolemaic system, 2:610–611 Ptolemy, Claudius, 2:610–611 Public health Charles Chapin, 2:310–311 Civil War, 2:371 movement, 2:371, 371–372 NIH, 2:361 See also Epidemics; U.S. Public Health Service Pulsar, 3:928 Punctuated equilibria, 1:218–219, 218 Purcell, Edward M., 3:926 Puritans, 1:6

Index I-35 new science, 2:571–573 New World belief, 1:8–9 understanding of self, 2:525–526 Pursh, Frederick Traugott in Canada, 1:174 Flora Americae Septentrionalis (1814), 1:174

Q

Quantum electrodynamics, 3:927 Quantum electronics, 3:927 Quantum fluid, 3:928 Quarterman, Lloyd, 3:885 Quebec, 1:46, 88

R

Rabi, Isadore Isaac, 3:659–660, 926 Race, 2:508–510 African Americans, 2:509 Louis Wirth, 2:518 skull capacity by, 1:206 Racism, scientific, 2:510 RADAR. See Radio Detection and Ranging Radar, meteorology, 2:415 Radiation gravitational radiation, 3:661 microwave background radiation, 3:927, 928 x-ray, 3:923 Radio, 3:837–841 astronomy, 2:581, 595–596 Radio Communications Act (1912), 3:839 stations, 3:839 Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Maxwell, 1873), 3:838 World War I, 3:839 World War II, 3:840 Radio Corporation of America (RCA), 3:839 Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR), 3:840 Radiocarbon dating, 3:706 Radiommunoassay, 2:398 Railroads, 3:773, 857, 857–858 Rail Road Manual (Long, 1829), 1:109–110 Rainwater, L. James, 3:927 Raleigh, Walter, 1:16, 33 Ramsey, Norman Foster, 3:660, 927–928 Random access memory (RAM), 3:743 Rational expectations, 3:925–926 Rattlesnake, 1:133, 134 Ray, John, 1:142 RCA. See Radio Corporation of America Reciprocal relations, 3:929 Reclamation service, 1:57 Recollections of Persons and Places in the West (Brackenridge, 1834), 1:18

Recombinant-DNA, 3:929 Red mulberry, 1:135 Red River Meteorite, 2:455–456 Redi, Francesco, 1:247 Reed, Walter, 2:372, 372–373, 399 in Cuba, 2:399 microbiology, 1:234 Reedmace, 1:134 Reflection, x-ray, 3:633 Reichstein, Tadeus, 3:923 Reid, Thomas, 1:55 Reines, Frederick, 3:928 Relación (de Vaca, 1555), 1:48 Relation of the Troubles Which Have Happened in New England, A (I. Mather, 1677), 1:9 Relativity, 3:634, 642–643, 649, 653, 661–662, 669 Religion, 1:54–56 Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, An (Jefferson, 1779), 1:36 History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (Draper, 1875), 1:22 Native Americans, 2:469–471 See also names of other publications; names of religions; names of theologians Remsen, Ira, 3:707 Renaissance natural theology, 1:43–44 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 3:908–909 Report of Government for the Western Territories (Jefferson, 1784), 1:36 Report of the Exploring Expedition to Oregon and California (Frémont), 1:97 Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (Frémont), 1:97 Retroviral oncogenes, 3:924 Rett syndrome, 2:294–295 Return to Earth (Aldrin, 1973), 1:78 Reuptake, 1:197 Revere, Paul, 2:315 Rhine, Joseph Banks, 2:558–559 Rhode Island, 2:517 Ribonuclease, 3:929 Ribonucleic acid. See RNA Rice, Mary Blair, 1:16 Richards, Dickinson W., 3:923 Richards, Theodore W., 3:928 Richardson, Robert C., 3:928 Richter, Burton, 3:927 Richter, Charles F., 2:456, 456–457 Richter scale, 2:456, 456–457 Ricin, 1:199 Ricker, Elswyth Thane, 1:16 Rickets, Ed, 1:26 Rights of Man, The (Paine), 1:11

I-36 Index Riley, Charles, 1:210 Rio Grande Francisco Kino, 1:75 Jean Louis Berlandier, 1:149–151 materia medica, 1:135–136 Rittenhouse, David, 3:662, 662–663 RNA (ribonucleic acid), 3:923, 929 interference, 3:925 See also DNA Robbins, Frederick C., 3:923 Roberts, Richard J., 3:924 Robinson, Julia, 3:751 Rocket technology, World War II, 3:841 Rocky Mountains, 1:7, 74 Frémont Peak, 1:96, 97 Narrative of a Journey Across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River (Townsend, 1839), 1:121, 129–130 Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (Frémont), 1:97 See also Wyeth, Nathaniel; names of other explorers Rocks. See Geology; Sedimentary rocks Rodbell, Martin, 3:924 Roebling, John Augustus, 3:790 Roentgen, Wilhelm, 2:307 “Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide” series, 1:244 Rogers, Carl, 2:559, 559–560 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 2:478; 3:636 Roosevelt, Theodore, 1:6, 56, 56–57 bathysphere, 2:420 Nobel Peace Prize, 1:57 Rough Riders, The (1899), 1:57 See also National parks; Wildlife management Root canals, 2:290, 315 Rose, Irwin, 3:930 Ross, John, 1:158 Rous, Peyton, 3:923 Rowland, F. Sherwood, 3:929 Rowland, Mary Canaga, 2:396 Royal Society of London, 1:49, 186; 3:909–910 Alexander Garden, 1:161–162 Boston Philosophical Society, 2:583 Rubber synthetic, 3:853 World War II, 3:853 See also Tires; Vulcanization Rubin, Vera, 2:578 Rudolph, Eugene, 1:142 Ruiz, Jose Francisco, 1:150 Rumford, Count. See Thompson, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin, 2:275, 275–276, 373–374, 374; 3:682

Russell, Thomas, 1:7, 174–175 Russia Influenza Epidemic, 2:345 See also Cold War; Soviet Union; World War I; World War II

S

Sabin, Albert, 2:370, 374–375 Sacagawea, 1:134 Saccharin, 3:680 Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, 2:449 Sagan, Carl Edward, 2:611–612, 612 SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment), 3:754–755 Saint Anselm, 1:43 Salam, Abdus, 3:927 Salk, Jonas, 2:375–376 antibodies, 2:376 flu vaccine, 2:375 polio, 2:283, 370, 376 World War II, 2:375 Samuelson, Paul A., 2:478; 3:925 San Diego Zoo, 1:263 San Francisco Earthquake (1906), 2:457–458, 458 San Salvador, 1:92 Sanatorium, 2:376–377 See also Public health; Tuberculosis Sand County Almanac, A (Leopold, 1949), 1:204, 256 Sanger, Frederick, 3:929 Sanger, Margaret Louise, 2:377–379, 378 Woman Rebel (1913), 2:378 Sarton, George Alfred Léon, 3:876, 878, 910–911 History of Science and the New Humanism, The (1937), 3:878 History of Science Society, 3:878 Introduction to the History of Science (1947), 3:910– 911 Isis, 3:878, 910 Sassafras, 1:135 Satellites, 3:841–842 Landsat, 3:842 meteorology, 2:415 navigation, 2:602 TIROS I, 2:414 Wernher Magnus Maximillian von Braun, 3:841 World War II, 2:602 See also Meteorology; Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) Saugus Ironworks, 3:770 Sauvages, Des (Champlain), 1:46 Say, Thomas, 1:7, 52, 175, 175–176 American Conchology (1830–1834), 1:175 American Entomology (1817–1828), 1:52, 175

Index I-37 Scarlet fever, 2:379 Scattering, x-ray, 3:633 Schally, Andrew V., 3:924 Schatz, Albert, 1:254 Schawlow, Arthur L., 3:927 Schelling, Thomas C., 3:926 Scholes, Myron S., 3:926 Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 1:117–118 Narrative Journal of Travels . . . to the Sources of the Mississippi River (1821), 1:117 Narrative of an Expedition through the Upper Mississippi (1834), 1:118 View of the Lead Mines of Missouri, A (1819), 1:117 Schools. See Colleges; Universities; names of schools Schrieffer, J. Robert, 3:927 Schrock, Richard R., 3:930 Schrödinger, Erwin, 1:235 Schultz, Theodore W., 2:479; 3:925 Schwartz, Melvin, 3:927 Schwinger, Julian, 3:927 Science, 3:911 Science: The Endless Frontier (1945), 3:908 Scientific American, 3:762–763, 911–913, 912 Scientific Management, Principles of (Taylor, 1911), 3:917 Scientific method, 1:xxvii Scientific racism, 2:510 Scopes trial, 1:208, 245–246, 246 Charles Darwin, 1:190, 190 Clarence Darrow, 1:190, 245–246, 246 Scottish Commonsense Realism, 1:5, 29, 55 Scriptural geologists, 2:412–413 Sea Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Morison, 1942), 3:906 Desert Beneath the Sea (Clark), 1:262 Edge of the Sea, The (Carson, 1955), 1:203 health at, 2:404–405 Physical Geography of the Sea (Maury, 1855), 2:447 Sea Around Us, The (Carson, 1951), 1:202–203 Seaman’s Practice, The (Norwood, 1637), 1:50 Short Practical Narrative of the Diseases Which Prevailed among the American Seamen, at Wampoa in China; in the Year 1805; with Some Account of Diseases Which Appeared among the Crew of the Ship New-Jersey, on the Passage from Thence, to Philadelphia, A (Baldwin, 1807), 1:141 Under the Sea-Wind (Carson, 1941), 1:202 See also Oceanography Seaborg, Glenn Theodore, 3:707–709, 708, 928 Seaman’s Practice, The (Norwood, 1637), 1:50 Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), 2:613, 613–614

Second Great Awakening, 1:6, 11; 3:894 See also Religion Second Overland Expedition, 1:156–157 Sedimentary rocks, 2:458–459 Segrè, Emilio G., 3:926 Seismology. See Earthquakes and seismology Selective samples, 3:926 Selective serotonin uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), 1:197 Selten, Reinhard, 3:925 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment. See SAGE Semiconductors, 3:926 Separated oscillatory fields method, 3:928 Sequoia National Park, 1:119 SETI. See Search for extraterrestrial intelligence Sewing machine, 3:845–846 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (Kinsey, 1953), 1:227 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey, 1948), 1:227 Sharp, Phillip A., 3:924 Sharpe, William F., 3:925 Sharpless, K. Barry, 3:930 Shattuck, George Cheever, 2:380 Sheffield, Joseph Earl, 3:913–914 Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University, 3:913–914 Sheldon, William Herbert, 2:560–561 Shepard, Alan B., Jr., 1:118–119 See also Astronauts; Mercury, Project Shipbuilding, 3:842–844 Shippen, William, Jr., 2:358 Shirakawa, Hideki, 3:930 Shklovsky, Iosif, 2:613 Shockley, William B., 3:926 Shoemaker, Carolyn, 2:587 Shoemaker, Eugene Merle, 2:614 See also Astronauts; Astronomy Shoemaker-Levy 9 (comet), 2:587 “Short Account of the Names, Situations, Numbers, etc. . . . , A” (Dudley), 1:24 Short Practical Narrative of the Diseases Which Prevailed among the American Seamen, at Wampoa in China; in the Year 1805; with Some Account of Diseases Which Appeared among the Crew of the Ship NewJersey, on the Passage from Thence, to Philadelphia, A (Baldwin, 1807), 1:141 Shull, Clifford G., 3:928 Shumway, Norman Edward, 2:299, 380–381 Sibley, David Allen, 1:240 Sibley Guide to Birds, The (Sibley, 2000), 1:240 Siemens, Karl Wilhelm, 3:773 Sierra, 1:119 Sierra Club, 1:8, 42, 119–120 John Muir, 1:8, 119

I-38 Index Sierra Club (continued) National Park Service, 1:119 See also Environment; Forestry; National parks; Wildlife management Sieur de La Salle, 1:47 Sikorsky, Igor Ivanovich, 3:768, 844–845 Silliman, Benjamin, 3:709–710 Silver, 3:858–859 Simon, Herbert A., 3:925 Singer, Isaac Merritt, 3:845–846 Singer Sewing Machine, 3:845–846 “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (Edwards, 1741), 1:55; 2:566–568 Sirius B, discovery of, 2:615 Sketch of the Botany of South-Carolina and Georgia, A (Elliott, 1816, 1824), 1:159 Sketch of the Revolutions in Chemistry, A (Smith, 1798), 3:688 Sketches from Life (Mumford, 1982), 2:506 Skinner, Burrhus Frederic (B.F.), 2:561, 561–562 behaviorism, 2:528 Walden Two (1948), 2:536, 562 Skinner, Richard, 2:315 Skull capacity by race, 1:206 Slater, Samuel, 3:772, 801, 826, 846–847, 847 Slater Mill, 3:846–847, 847 Slatersville, 3:847 Silent Spring (Carson, 1962), 1:202–203, 211, 240 Slippery elm, 1:135 Sloan, Alfred P., Jr., 3:816 Sloan-Kettering Institute, 3:816 Smalley, Richard E., 3:929 Smallpox, 1:199; 2:381–383, 382 Cotton Mather, 1:39 Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated in New England (Boylston, 1726), 2:304 inoculation, 2:304–306 Smith, Asa, 2:620–621 Smith, Hamilton O., 3:924 Smith, John, 1:6–8, 57–59, 58, 72, 73 image of America, 1:5–6 Map of Virginia (1612), 1:58 Smith, Thomas Peters, 3:688 Smith, Vernon L., 3:926 Smithson, James, 3:914 Smithsonian Institution, 3:914–915 Smoot, George F., 3:928 Snell, George D., 3:924 So Excellent a Fishe (Carr, 1967), 1:262 Social sciences, 2:475–477 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2:498–499

Social sciences (continued) Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), 2:510–511 See also names of scientists Society for Conservation Biology, 1:205 Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Wilson, 1975), 1:257 Sociology of science, 3:879–881, 880 Software MS-DOS computer operating system, 3:749 PC-DOS computer operating system, 3:750 Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, 2:510–511 Windows computer operating system, 3:749 See also Computers; names of computers; names of computer and software companies Sojourner, 3:828, 832–833 Solow, Robert M., 3:925 Song of Hiawatha, The (Longfellow, 1855), 1:118 Soulé, Michael, 1:205 Sound, physics of, 3:674 Sounding balloons, 2:420 South Carolina Ichthyology of South Carolina (Holbrook, 1860), 1:220 John Bartram, 1:136, 138 Joseph West, 1:136; 3:861–862 Marc Catesby, 1:18 Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida (W. Bartram, 1791), 1:137, 147–149 South Pole, 1:87, 87–88 See also Antarctic exploration Southern Presbyterian, 1:260 Southern Review (1828), 1:159 Soviet Union Whirlwind, 3:759 See also Cold War; Russia Space exploration, 1:xxx, 78 See Apollo, Project; Astronauts; Gemini, Project; Mercury, Project; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station; names of spacecraft Space probes, 3:847–849 Space Shuttle, 3:849, 849–850 Space Station, 3:850–851 Spacecraft. See Apollo, Project; Astronauts; Gemini, Project; Mercury, Project; Space exploration; Space probes; Space Shuttle; Space Station; names of spacecraft Spandrels, 1:219 Special Theory of Relativity (Einstein, 1905), 3:636 Speciation, 1:214 Species Plantarum (Linnaeus, 1753), 1:138–139 Spectroscopy, 3:663–664, 928

Index I-39 Spelman College, 3:915–916 Spence, A. Michael, 3:926 Spencer, Herbert, 1:213–214, 261; 3:836 Sperry, Roger W., 3:924 Spirit of St. Louis, 3:822, 822, 845, 914 Spiritism, 2:568 Spiritualism, 2:534–535, 568 Spock, Benjamin, 2:383–384, 384 Spontaneous generation, 1:246–247 Sprint, 3:727 SPSS. See Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Sputnik, 3:861 Squibb, Edward Robinson, 3:710–711 St. John’s wort, 1:135 St. Lawrence River, 1:88 Stahl, Georg Ernst, 3:702, 711 Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, The (Bailey, 1914), 1:166, 166 Stanford University Medical Experimental Computer for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (SUMEX-AIM), 1:229 Stanley, Wendell M., 3:928 Starkey, George, 3:711 Stars, 3:927 variable, 2:576–577 Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), 2:510–511 Statistics, 3:755–756 cancer, 2:308 life expectancy, 2:350 William Deming, 3:755 Steam engine, 3:851–853 Steel, 3:773 Steensen, Niels, 2:411 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 1:120–121 Stein, William H., 3:929 Steinberger, Jack, 3:927 Stephenson, William. See Stefansson, Vilhjalmur Sterilization African Americans, 1:212 laws, 1:212 movement, 1:247–248 Native Americans, 1:212 women, 1:212 Stern, Otto, 3:926 Sternberg, George Miller, 2:384–385 Stethoscope, 2:303 Stigler, George J., 3:925 Stiglitz, Joseph E., 3:926 Still, Andrew Taylor, 2:385–386 Stilliman, Benjamin, 3:913 Störmer, Horst L., 3:928 Strachey, William, 2:511–512

Strategic Defense Initiative, Cold War, 3:842 Strawbery Banke Museum, 1:133, 134 Streptomycin, 1:253; 3:923 Strong, Henry, 3:794 Strong interaction theory, 3:928 Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The (Kuhn, 1962), 3:876, 880, 900–902 Subjectivity, World War II, 3:876 Submarines, 3:829, 829–830, 860 Suess, Eduard, 1:26 Sugars, photosynthesis, 1:173 Sulfa drugs, 2:293 Sullivan, Harry Stack, 2:562–563 Sulphur compounds, 3:928 Sulston, John E., 3:924 SUMEX-AIM. See Stanford University Medical Experimental Computer for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Summary of the Natural History of the Indies (Oviedo, 1525), 1:51 Summary View of the Rights of British America, A (Jefferson, 1774), 1:34, 36 Sumner, James B., 3:928 Superconductivity, 3:664–665, 926, 927 Superego, 2:563–564 Surface chemistry, 3:928 Surgery, 2:386–388, 387 anesthesia, 2:386–387 antibiotics, 2:386–387 barber surgeons, 2:298 cancer treatment, 2:307 cardiovascular, 2:313–314 See also Medicine; names of doctors and surgeons Sutherland, Earl W., Jr., 1:248–249; 3:923 Sutherland, Edwin Hardin, 2:512–513 Sutton, Walter, 1:215 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1:20 Sweet bay, 1:135 Swift, Lewis, 2:586 Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry (Rush, 1770), 3:682 Synthetic rubber, 3:853 System of Analytical Mechanics (Peirce, 1855), 3:750 System of Anatomy for the Use of Students of Medicine, A (Wistar, 1811–1814), 1:259 Systema (Linnaeus, 1758), 1:138 Systema Naturae (Linnaeus, 1735), 1:138–139 Systematic and Physiological Botany, Introduction to (Nuttall, 1827), 1:171 Systematics. See Taxonomy Szilard, Leo, 3:783

I-40 Index

T

Tabulating system, 3:763 Tanaka, Koichi, 3:930 Tatum, Edward L., 3:923 Tau lepton, 3:928 Taube, Henry, 3:929 Taussig, Helen, 2:388–389 Taxonomy, 1:249–250 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 3:803, 916–917 Taylor, Joseph H., Jr., 3:928 Taylor, Richard E., 3:751, 928 Taylor, Zachary, 2:341 Taylorism, 3:916–917 Telegraph, 3:853–854, 867 across Atlantic Ocean, 2:447; 3:854, 867 meteorology, 2:413, 462 See also Morse, Samuel Finley Breese Telephone, 1:112–113; 3:854–855 Cellular phones, 3:840 See also AT&T; Bell, Alexander Graham; Bell Labs Telescope Hale telescope, 2:605, 605 Hubble Space Telescope, 2:594–595, 595 telescope lens, 2:585–586 x-ray, 2:593 See also Observatories Television, 3:855–856 Teller, Edward, 3:665–667 Telnet, 3:727–728 Temin, Howard M., 3:924 Tennent, John, 2:389 Tesla, Nikola, 3:838 Tetanus, 2:389–390 antibodies, 2:390–391 Lionel Chalmers, 2:309 Texas mountain laurel, 1:135 Thomas Drummond, 1:157 Texas Iron. See Red River Meteorite Textile industry, 3:770 Theology, natural. See Natural theology Theophrastus, 1:26 Theory of the Earth (Hutton, 1795), 2:411 Thermodynamics, 3:667 Thomas, E. Donnall, 3:924 Thompson, Benjamin (Count Rumford), 3:668, 668 heat experiment, 3:672–674 Thomson, George P., 3:926 Thoreau, Henry David, 1:7, 11–12, 59, 59–61, 65–66; 2:495 Abenaki Indians, 1:60 Maine Woods, The (1864), 1:60 Walden (1854), 1:7, 11–12, 59, 61; 2:495

Thoreau, Henry David (continued) Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, A (1849), 1:7, 59, 60–61, 65–66 Thoroughwort, 1:135 Three Mile Island, 3:856–857 Time zones, 2:459–460 Ting, Samuel C.C., 3:927 Tippett, L.H.C., 3:755 Tires, 3:809–810 TIROS, 2:414; 3:841 Titanic, 3:838 Tobacco, 1:250–252, 251 Jacques Cartier, 1:251 medicinal qualities, 1:252 See also Cancer and cancer research Tobin, James, 3:925 Tombaugh, Clyde, 2:607, 615–617, 616 Tomonaga, Sin-Itiro, 3:927 Tonegawa, Susumu, 3:924 Tonty, Henri de, 1:47 Townes, Charles H., 3:927 Townsend, John Kirk, 1:7, 121–122 black vulture or carrion crow, 1:267 Oregon Trail, 1:129–130 Tragedy of the Commons, The ( Hardin, 1968), 1:26 Transactions, 1:xxx Transcontinental railroad, 3:857, 857–858 Transit of planets, 2:617–618 Transportation, 3:773 Transuranium elements, 3:928 Travels in New-England and New-York (Dwight, 1821), 1:66 Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811(Bradbury, 1817), 1:76, 137, 152, 179–180 Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida . . . (W. Bartram, 1791), 1:137, 147–149 Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (Maxwell, 1873), 3:838 Treatise on Wounds and Fevers (Colden, 1765), 1:21 Trees Arboretum Americanum (The American Grove, Bartram, 1775), 1:166 See also Chapman, John; Horticulture; names of trees Trigonometrie, or, The Doctrine of Triangles (Norwood, 1631), 1:50 Truman, Harry S., 3:786 Tsui, Daniel C., 3:928 Tuberculosis, 2:300–301 Tuckerman, Edward, 1:176–177 Genera Lichenum: An Arrangement of North American Lichens (Tuckerman, 1872), 1:177

Index I-41 Tularemia, 1:199 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 1:77 Turner, Jackson, 1:12 Tuskegee experiment, 1:252–253 Tuskegee Institute, 1:203–204, 204; 2:509; 3:780, 884 Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 1:253 Tuttle, Horace, 2:586 Tuttle, Swift, 2:586 Two Bird Lovers in Mexico (Rice, 1905), 1:16 Tylenol, 1:197 Tyndell, John, 3:836 Typhoid fever, 2:390–391 antibiotics, 2:390–391 Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary), 1:234; 2:391 Typhoid Mary, 1:234 Typhus epidemic (1759), 2:299

U

Uncertainty principle, 3:669 Under the Sea-Wind (Carson, 1941), 1:202 United States Exploring Expedition. See Wilkes Expedition (1838–1842) UNIVAC, 3:756–757 Universities, 1:185; 3:903 land grant, 3:818–819 Universities: American, English, German (Flexner, 1930), 2:324 See also names of schools Uranium, 3:859–860 Albert Einstein, 3:836 nuclear fission, 3:639 plutonium, 3:860 Urbanization, 2:513–515, 514 Urey, Harold Clayton, 3:680, 711–713, 712, 928 URL (uniform resource locator), 3:727 U.S. Army Air Corps, 3:749 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units, 2:314 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 3:782–783 Appalachian Mountains, 3:783 Stephen Long, 1:109 World War II, 3:783 U.S. Census (1890), 3:763–764 electronic tabulation of, 3:764 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), 1:210, 234 U.S. Department of Defense, 3:725–726 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), 2:278 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1:202 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), 1:192 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), 2:435–436 Charles Marsh, 1:232

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) (continued) John Wesley Powell, 1:117 See also Geology; names of other geologists U.S. Mint, 3:662, 662–663, 858–859 U.S. Naval Observatory, 2:618–619 U.S. Public Health Service epidemics, 2:344 Tuskegee experiment, 1:252 See also Public health U.S. Weather Bureau, 2:413 USDA. See U.S. Department of Agriculture Usenet, 3:726 USGS. See U.S. Geological Survey

V

Vaccination, 2:391–392, 392 See also Inoculation Valla, Lorenzo, 1:xxvii–xxviii Van Vleck, John H., 3:927 Variable stars, 2:576–577 Varmus, Harold E., 3:924 Vassar College, 2:576 Veblen, Oswald, 3:751 Veblen, Thorstein, 2:515 Vector analysis, 3:744 Vernadsky, Vladimir, 1:26 Verrazzano, Giovanni, 1:xxviii, 5, 71–72 Vesalius, Andreas, 2:295 Vespucci, Amerigo, 1:xxix Vesuvius, Mount, 2:426 Vickrey, William, 3:926 View of the Lead Mines of Missouri, A (Schoolcraft, 1819), 1:117 Views of Louisiana (Brackenridge, 1814), 1:18, 152 Vigneaud, Vincent du, 3:928 Viking Joshua Lederberg, 1:229 NASA, 3:828 Vineland Sagas, 1:5 Viola, 3:727 “Virgin and the Dynamo, The” (Adams, 1918), 3:882–883, 918–920 Virginia Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (Hariot, 1588), 1:33, 100 Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, The (Smith, 1624), 1:59 Good News from Virginia (Whitaker, 1612), 1:9 History and Present State of Virginia, The (Beverley, 1705), 1:16–17; 3:873, 877 Map of Virginia (Smith, 1612), 1:58 Notes on the State of Virginia (Jefferson, 1784), 1:16, 34–35

I-42 Index Virginia (continued) Nova Britannia: Offering Most Excellent Fruites by Planting in Virginia (Johnson, 1609), 1:9 Virginia Company, 1:57–59 Virus proteins, 3:928 Visual system, 1:221; 3:924 Vitamin K, 3:923 Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (Audobon, 1845–1854), 1:195 Vizcaíno, Sebastián, 1:48, 122–123 Volcanoes and vulcanology, 2:460, 460–461 Mount Saint Helens, 2:461 Mount Vesuvius, Italy, 2:426 Ring of Fire volcanoes, Hawaii, 2:461 Yellowstone National Park, 2:461 See also National Park Service; National parks von Braun, Wernher Magnus Maximillian, 3:841, 860–861 Apollo, Project, 3:860–861 at NASA, 3:861 rockets, 3:860 satellites, 3:841 World War II, 3:860 von Neumann, John atomic bomb, 3:757–758 World War II, 3:758 Voyager, 2:590 Vulcanization, 3:680, 713–714 Vulcanology. See Volcanoes and vulcanology Vultures, 1:267

W

Waksman, Selman Abraham, 1:253–254 antibiotics, 2:293 streptomycin, 3:923 Wald, George, 3:923 Walden (Thoreau, 1854), 1:7, 11–12, 59, 61; 2:495 Walden Pond, 1:61 Walden Two (Skinner, 1948), 2:536, 562 Walker, John E., 3:929 Walker, Thomas, 1:123 Appalachian Mountains, 1:123 at Cumberland Gap, 1:74 Walnut tree bark, 1:133 Washburn, Henry, 1:63 Washington, Booker T. Carver, George Washington, 3:884 Tuskegee Institute, 1:203 Washington, Mount. See Mount Washington Water channels in cell membranes, 3:930 Water transportation, 1:7 Erie Canal, 1:232; 2:432–433; 3:800–801, 801

Water transportation (continued) Panama Canal, 1:79, 88; 2:329, 400 See also Canoes; names of boats Waterhouse, Benjamin, 2:392–393 Watson, James Dewey, 1:254–255, 255; 3:923 DNA, 1:209, 255 Human Genome Project, 1:255 RNA, 1:255–256 Watson, John Broadus, 2:564–565 Watson-Watt, Robert, 2:443 Wayne, “Mad Anthony,” 1:89 Weapons. See Atomic bomb; Biological warfare; Chemical warfare; Civil War; Cold War; Guns; Hydrogen bomb; Korean War; Manhattan Project; World War I; World War II Weather, 2:409–410 astronomy, 2:409–410 epidemics, 2:309, 321, 351 Jeremy Belknap, 1:82–84 John Josselyn, 1:37 National Weather Service (NWS), 2:452–453 U.S. Weather Bureau, 2:413 See also Climate change; Climatology; Earthquakes and seismology; Global Warming; Hurricanes Web browsers, 3:727 See also Internet Webster, Noah, 1:61–62 American Reader (1785), 1:61 American Spelling Book, or The Blue-Black Speller (1783), 1:61 Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, A (1799), 1:62 Elements of Useful Knowledge (1802–1812), 1:62 yellow fever, 1:62 Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, A (Thoreau, 1849), 1:7, 59, 60–61, 65–66 Weinberg, Steven, 3:927 Welfare theory, 3:925 Weller, Thomas H., 3:923 Wells, Horace, 2:292–293, 315 Welsh, Molly, 3:733–734 Werner, Abraham, 2:411 West, Joseph, 1:136; 3:861–862 experimental gardens, 1:136, 159–160 John Locke, 3:861–862 South Carolina, 3:861–862 West Indies Christopher Columbus, 1:91 Marc Lescarbot, 1:104 Samuel de Champlain, 1:88 West Nile virus, 1:241

Index I-43 Western prairie flora, 1:178–179 Western Quarterly Reporter of Medical, Surgical, and Natural Science (Godman), 1:30 Westinghouse Electric Company, 3:774, 820 Weston, Charles, 3:820 What Is Darwinism? (Hodge, 1874), 1:190, 208 What Is Life? (Schrödinger, 1944), 1:235, 254 Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (film, Koop, 1979), 2:350 Wheaton, Bruce, 3:758 Wheeler, Anna, 3:751 Wheeler, John Archibald, 3:669–670 Whipple, George Hoyt, 2:393–394; 3:923 Whipple, Joseph, 1:84, 123–125, 128–129 Whirlwind computer, 3:758–759 Whitaker, Alexander, 1:9 White ash, 1:133 White elm, 1:133 White Mill, 3:846–847 White Mountains, 1:7, 74, 80 exploration, 1:74 flora, 1:178 Jeremy Belknap, 1:81–83, 84–86 John Josselyn account, 1:65 See also Belknap-Cutler Expedition (1784); Mount Washington Whitney, Asa, 3:857 Whitney, Eli, 3:772, 779, 862–863 Whitney, Mary, 2:576 Wide area networks (WANs), 3:725 Wieman, Carl E., 3:928 Wiener, Norbert, 3:759–761, 760 Wieschaus, Eric F., 3:924 Wiesel, Torsten N., 3:924 WiFi, 3:727–728 See also Internet Wigner, Eugene Paul, 3:670, 927 Wilcox, Brian, 1:205 Wilczek, Frank, 3:928 Wild bergamot, 1:133, 135 Wild indigo, 1:135 Wilder, Burt, 1:222 Wildlife management, 1:256 Journal of Wildlife Management, 1:256 See also Environment; Forestry; National parks; Roosevelt, Theodore Wiles, Andrew, 3:751 Wilkes, Charles, 1:7, 125–127 Wilkes Expedition (1838–1842), 1:7, 53 Charles Pickering, 1:171–172 Charles Wilkes, 1:7, 125–127, 126 Wilkins, Maurice H.F., 3:923

Williams, Daniel Hale, 2:394–395 heart surgery, 2:395 Henry Palmer, 2:394 Williams, Roger, 2:516, 516–517 Key into the Language of America, A (1643), 2:516, 516–517 as minister, 2:469 Rhode Island, 2:517 Wilson, Alexander, 1:240, 257 John James Audubon, 1:194, 240 Natural History of Birds in the United States, The (1808–1814), 1:240 Wilson, Edward Osborne, 1:26, 205, 257–259, 258 Wilson, Kenneth G., 3:927 Wilson, Robert W., 3:927 Wilson, Woodrow, 1:63, 260 Windows computer operating system, 3:749 Winthrop, James, 1:62 Winthrop, John, IV, 1:9, 10, 62; 2:525, 617; 3:627, 645, 670–671, 910 Winthrop, John, Jr., 1:186; 3:679–681, 692, 711, 714–715, 815, 909 Winthrop, John, Sr., 3:714 Wirth, Louis, 2:517–518 Wistar, Caspar, 1:222, 259 Witch hazel, 1:133 Witherspoon, John, 1:55 Wittig, Georg, 3:929 Wolcott, Erastus Bradley, 2:395 Woman Rebel (Sanger, 1913), 2:378 Women astronomy, 2:575–578 health, 2:396–398 National Women’s Health Initiative Project, 2:397 New England Hospital for Women and Children, 2:400 Spelman College, 3:915–916 sterilization, 1:212 War War II and health of, 2:397 See also Birth control; Midwifery; Obstetrics; Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth; names of other women Wonders of the Invisible World (C. Mather, 1692), 1:40 Wood, Thomas, 1:222 Woodrow, James, 1:260 Woodrow, Wilson, 3:907 Woods, Granville T., 3:864 Woods Hole, Massachusetts, 1:231–232 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1:151–152, 224, 238 Woodward, Robert B., 3:929 Woofendale, Robert, 2:315 World systems theory, 2:475

I-44 Index World War I aviation, 3:821 cruise missile, 3:816 National Research Council (NRC), 3:907 poison gas, 3:716 polio epidemic, 2:370 radio communcation, 3:839 Russia, 3:844 shipbuilding, 3:843 World War II, 1:xxx; 3:811 Albert Einstein, 3:774 American Psychological Association, 2:534 applied mathematics, 3:732–733 asylums, 2:557 atomic bomb, 3:784–786 ballooning, 2:420 blood storage, 3:885 Boeing, 3:788 Charles Lindbergh, 3:822 computers, 3:723 cultural anthropology, 2:483 cybernetics, 3:760 Dow Chemical, 3:690 economic theory, 2:478 Hans Albrecht Bethe, 3:632 Harvard Botanical Garden, 1:165 History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II (Morison, 1947–1962), 3:906 ionisphere mapping, 2:444 J. Robert Oppenheimer, 3:831 Japanese recovery, 2:486 John Archibald Wheeler, 3:669 John Glenn, 1:97 John von Neumann, 3:758 Lewis Mumford, 2:506 Linus Pauling, 3:700 Manhattan Project, 3:638, 646, 659, 669, 689, 831 Margaret Mead, 2:504 mathematics study, 3:722 Michael E. DeBakey, 2:313 microbiology, 1:234 military weapons, 3:811 MIT, 3:824 modernization theory, 2:473 National Science Foundation, 3:908 nylon, 3:695 oceanography, 1:238 physicians, 3:836 plutonium, 3:836 polio epidemic, 2:370 Rabi, 3:659 radar systems, 2:415

World War II (continued) radio, 2:602; 3:840 Richard Evelyn Byrd, 1:88 Richard Phillips Feyman, 3:638 rocket technology, 3:841 rubber, 3:853 Russian interest, 2:497 Salk, Jonas, 2:375 satellite technology, 2:602 Shepard, 1:118 subjectivity, 3:876 television, 3:855–856 tetanus, 2:390, 392 thermosets, 3:683 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 3:783 Vannevar Bush, 3:736, 736–737 Wernher Magnus Maximillian von Braun, 3:860 Whirlwind, 3:758 William Edwards Deming, 3:755 women’s health, 2:397 World Wide Web, 3:726–728 Wormwood, 1:135 Wright, Benjamin, 3:800 Wright, Chauncey almanac, 1:261 Herbert Spencer, 1:261 Wright, Homer, 2:359 Wright, Louis B., 3:625 Wright, Orville, 1:97–98; 3:816, 914 Charles Duryea, 3:793 Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 1:97–98; 3:768, 864–865, 865 Wright, Sewall, 1:214 Wright, Wilbur, 1:97–98; 3:768, 816, 864–866, 865, 914 Charles Duryea, 3:793 Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 1:97–98; 3:768, 864–865, 865 Wright radial engine, 3:822 Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, 2:589 Wyatt Expedition (1834), 1:7, 171 Wyeth, Nathaniel, 1:121

X

X-ray crystallography, 1:254, 255; 3:699–700 diffraction, 1:209, 216, 235 energy, 2:444; 3:814 machines, 2:277, 307, 312, 340, 354 radiation, 3:923 reflection, 3:633 research, 3:631 scattering, 3:633

Index I-45 X-ray (continued) spectroscopy, 3:664 technology, 3:647 telescope, 2:593

Y

Yale University, Sheffield Scientific School, 3:913–914 Yalow, Rosalyn Sussman, 2:398, 398–399; 3:924 Yellow fever, 2:399–400 Africans, 2:281–282 epidemic of 1793, 1:259 epidemic of 1878, 2:277 John Bard, 2:299 New Orleans, 2:282 Noah Webster, 1:62 Yellowstone Expedition (1819–1820), 1:110 Yellowstone National Park, 1:42, 62–64, 63

Yellowstone National Park (continued) geyser, 1:63 volcanoes, 2:461 See also Roosevelt, Theodore Youmans, Edward L., 3:836–837

Z

Zakrzewska, Marie Elizabeth, 2:400–401 Elizabeth Blackwell, 2:301 women’s health, 2:396 Zewail, Ahmed H., 3:929 Zoology, 1:261–262 American Zoo and Aquarium Association, 1:264 Carolus Linnaeus, 1:262 Louis Agassiz, 2:412, 416 Zoos, 1:262–264, 263 San Diego Zoo, 1:263