[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 156 (Saturday, November 8, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12196-S12197]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
JOSEPH HENRY, THE SMITHSONIAN AND FREDERICK SEITZ
Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, Friday, the 7th of November 1997, on the
occasion of the bicentennial of the birth of Joseph Henry, the Joseph
Henry Medal was presented to Dr. Frederick Seitz at a dinner of the
Smithsonian Council. Clearly, this was a special occasion, and it was
singularly appropriate that Frederick Seitz should be the honoree. The
citation of the splendid gold medal reads:
The Board of Regents gratefully presents the Joseph Henry
Medal to Frederick Seitz in recognition of his manifold
contributions to The Smithsonian Institution. His advancement
of the Smithsonian's research and educational programs in the
sciences, history, and the history of science has exemplified
the ideals of James Smithson's mandate . . . ``for the
increase and diffusion of knowledge.''--May 4, 1997.
Having received the medal, Dr. Seitz, with his enormous erudition and
no less prodigious self-effacing manner, presented a paper of great
interest. Entitled, Joseph Henry: 200th Anniversary of Birth, he wrote
of the belated appearance of science as a large-scale activity in the
American Republic, but also of four early pioneers: Benjamin Franklin,
Benjamin Thompson, Henry A. Rowland, and Joseph Henry himself. Which of
us would know that Franklin discovered the Gulf Stream? That is just
one of the absorbing details of this fascinating disquisition. I ask
that it be printed in the Record in honor of Frederick Seitz, Joseph
Henry, and all that splendid company.
The material follows:
Joseph Henry; 200th Anniversary of Birth
When I first heard the rumor that I would receive the
Joseph Henry Medal on this special anniversary, I assumed it
was a case of mistaken identity. Very friendly calls from
Senator Moynihan, Homer Neal and Marc Rothenberg, however,
finally carried conviction. Needless to say I will continue
to experience a sense of awe in playing a role on this
special anniversary since the scientific community, of which
I have been part for most of my life, owes so much to Henry,
as I shall presently relate.
Our country, had so many difficult practical problems to
solve in its early days, that it did not take much interest
in the fundamental aspects of science, in contrast to the
European countries, until the end of the nineteenth century,
that is, about a hundred years ago when it created what was
then called the National Bureau of Standards. Even this step
had a very practical aspect since we were encouraging exports
and wanted to be in tune with standards of manufacture
internationally as well as at home. It is true that we did
have the closely linked Smithsonian Institution and National
Academy of Sciences at that time. However their existence was
in the last analysis tied closely to the unsolicited gift in
1832 of James Smithson, an English scientist who admired the
promises for the future of mankind that our republic offered.
Moreover, he felt that it was inevitable that we would
eventually become deeply involved in the pursuit of basic
science.
Even though our country did not encourage the development
of the basic sciences until the century we are now leaving
behind, we did manage to produce from our own soil a few
world-class scientists, including four truly great
physicists, not least Joseph Henry, during the previous two
centuries. I would like to say a few words about each.
The first was no less a person than Benjamin Franklin, born
in Boston in 1706, but more generally linked to Philadelphia,
his adopted home. We all know about the experiment with
lightning and the kite and his research with lightning
arrestors, however, this is only part of the story. He
discovered, as a result of extensive correspondence, that our
continental weather tends to have a
[[Page S12197]]
strong eastward drift; he discovered what we now term the
Gulf Stream which encircles the Atlantic Ocean, although he
falsely ascribed it not to winds and Coriolis forces, but to
the influence of the emergence of a yet undiscovered
underground river.
Perhaps even more remarkably, he was apparently the first
person to provide a good measure of molecular dimensions. He
noted that when a quantity of the right kind of oil is poured
onto water it spreads rapidly at first, but then stops
spreading and retains cohesion. He concluded that the
thickness of the oil film at the point of maximum spread mut
be linked to what we would now term the size of its molecular
constituents. Using measured quantities of oil he obtained an
entirely reasonable value for those dimensions.
The second great scientists, namely Benjamin Thompson, is
probably entirely unknown to many of you. He was born in
Woburn, in what was then the colony of Massachusetts in 1753,
and developed a strong interest in science during his youth.
He was not sympathetic to the Revolution and moved to England
in 1776 where he joined the military and served throughout
the war as an administrator. In 1794, after serving in
various roles in England and on the continent he was offered
a high post in the Bavarian government which he held for
eleven years. There among many other activities he supervised
the boring of canon in the royal arsenal. Being highly
observant, he noted that the extent to which the canon became
heated during the drilling was essentially proportional to
the length of time the drilling had taken place. He concluded
that the heat content of the metal was a form of energy
closely related to the energy of work. This proposal stood in
sharp contradiction to the popular theory of the time to the
effect that heat was the manifestation of the presence of a
special weightless fluid called phlogiston. He wrote a
convincing treatise on this topic, thereby opening the
doorway to the field of thermodynamics and statistical
mechanics which occupied some of the best scientific minds
during the next century. I should add that the great Chemist
Lavoisier, who was guillotined in 1794 and whom Thompson
knew, had also come to the conclusion that the phlogiston
theory must be wrong. Thompson's treatise pointed the way to
a new positive approach.
Thompson, incidentally, joined with Joseph Banks, the
President of the Royal Society in establishing the Royal
Institution in London where Humphrey Davy and Michael Faraday
later carried out their great researches and gave popular
public lectures on science. It is easy to imagine that
Smithson had the Royal Institution in mind as a role model
for our country when he gave the money to create the
Smithsonian. I should also add that Thompson came to terms
with his native land at the end of the Revolutionary War,
establishing good relationships with the Massachusetts
community.
Skipping chronological order for the moment, the third
great American scientist in my list is Henry A. Rowland, born
in Honesdale, Pennsylvania in 1848. He received his higher
education at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy,
New York, and was appointed to the chair in physics at the
Johns Hopkins University when it opened its doors in 1876. He
carried on research in many areas of physics, but is probably
best known for the development of a machine which engraved on
a material such as glass so-called diffraction line gratings
that were of special use in separating different wavelengths
of light. He was also interested in telegraphic equipment and
invented a widely used form of teletype machine.
Rowland gained early fame as a result of an experiment he
carried out in Europe in the laboratory of Hermann Helmholtz
in 1875, the year before he took residence in Baltimore. In
the previous decade, the very brilliant Scottish physicists,
James C. Maxwell, had collected all known information
concerning electromagnetic phenomena and placed it in the
form of a mutually consistent set of four mathematical
equations, generally known as Maxwell's equations. To achieve
what his intuition told him would provide appropriate
symmetry and balance in the equations, he modified one of the
set of four. In effect, the modification amounted to saying
that an isolated, moving electric charge would have a
magnetic field related to the velocity associated with it,
but one so weak for normal velocities achievable at the time
that it would be very difficult to measure. Helmholtz,
recognizing that the young American was an exceedingly
talented experimenter, suggested that he attempt to measure
that field, which Rowland did with ingenuity and notable
success in a remarkably short time. It should be added that
Rowland had to repeat the experiment twice in later decades
in order to convince others who had tried to duplicate his
work without success.
I should also add that Maxwell noted that one set of
solutions to his modified equations describe free
electromagnetic waves traveling with the speed of light in a
vacuum. He decided that ordinary visible light must consist
of electromagnetic waves. Helmholtz was quick to pick up on
this and convinced his brightest young colleague, Henrich
Hertz, to look into the matter on a laboratory scale to see
if he could generate much longer waves, independent of a
light source, using available electrical equipment. The ages
of wireless telegraphy, radio, television and radar loomed
over the horizon.
It would be equivalent to shipping oil from Texas to Saudi
Arabia for me to present a detailed biography of Joseph Henry
on this occasion since his background is well known to most
of you. In brief, he was born in Albany, New York, just 200
years ago and spent a portion of his early years living with
his grandmother in nearby Galway, a few miles west of
Saratoga. Incidentally, if you chance to pass through Galway
please note the handsome high school building, probably built
in the 1920's, which bears Henry's name. He studied at the
Albany Academy, which still exists, and early on had
difficulty deciding whether to become an actor or a
scientist. Fortunately, science won. He began a series of
highly innovative experiments with electromagnets and soon
discovered the induction of electric fields by changing
magnetic fields--the basis for one of Maxwell's equations.
Michael Faraday, in England, made the same discovery somewhat
later, but published his results before Henry managed to.
Never the less the international community has given credit
to Henry by naming the unit of measurement of magnetic
inductance after him. In connection with this research, he
invented the so-called electric transformer, so valuable in
alternating current circuits.
Although well established at the Albany Academy, he
accepted an appointment at what is now Princeton University
in 1832, and continued to carry on his research there,
focusing in part on various aspects of telegraphy. Much of
his original equipment is well preserved in the physics
department.
In 1846 he was offered the post of Secretary of the newly
created Smithsonian Institution which he accepted even though
he was reluctant to leave the special environment that he had
enjoyed at Princeton. He was soon widely recognized as the
dean of American science as he developed the new institution
into a center for research as well as public exhibitions
related to science. He was to serve in the post for thirty
two years.
In 1863, when the Civil War broke out, a small group of
scientifically oriented individuals in Washington, led by
Alexander Bache, a great grandson of Franklin, and Commodore
Charles Davis, succeeded in having a bill that created a
National Academy of Sciences passed by the Congress. Their
intention was to rally the available scientific community
into research associated with the war effort. The bill was
sponsored by Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. President
Lincoln signed the charter. Henry took an interest in the
activities of the new organization from the start,
recognizing fully its potentialities. During the course of
the war Henry became a good friend of President Lincoln who
expressed much admiration for him.
When, at the end of the war, the founders were at somewhat
of a loss in deciding what to do with the Academy during
peacetime, Henry agreed to become its president and retained
leadership until his death in 1878. During that period he
essentially made the Academy a temporary wing of the
Smithsonian, holding regular scientific meetings, expanding
the membership and challenging the members to do everything
they could to increase the amount of basic scientific
research being carried on in the country. By the time of his
death, the National Academy, although still closely tied to
the Smithsonian, was a well-running organization prepared to
play a major role in guiding the progress of good science in
the Republic.
I should add at this point that immediately after World War
I, another great Secretary of the Smithsonian, Charles D.
Walcott, who had served as the very effective president of
the Academy during that war, succeeded in obtaining private
funds which made it possible for the Academy to have a new
home of its own on Constitution Avenue. Walcott,
incidentally, was also a New Yorker, having been born in New
York Mills near Utica in 1850.
Our debt to Joseph Henry can perhaps be summarized by
saying that, in addition to establishing a high standard for
scientific research through his own laboratory work, he
encouraged general acceptance of those standards and took
leadership in establishing National institutions which could
carry them forward. In other words, he did for the promotion
of science in our country what Washington had done in helping
to establish the republic in which we have the good fortune
to live. I can think of no higher praise.
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