A History of the First Half-Century of the National Academy of Sciences, 1863-1913 (Electronic book text)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER III BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE INCORPORATORS THE tumultuous days of a great war would hardly seem a propitious time for the formation of an association to promote the arts of peace. Men of science, like men from every other department of life, were engaged directly or indirectly in the struggle, and it seems unlikely that any of them, and especially those in prominent positions, would find the leisure, or be in a mood, to consider the qualifications of their confreres for membership in an academy. The peculiar circumstances of the time must have greatly increased the difficulties of this delicate task. It has been suggested that the exigencies of the day account for the large number of men connected with the military and naval branches of the Government that were included among the incorporators. This may be true, as the founders of the Academy undoubtedly had the idea that it would be a help to the Government, but a more just view is, perhaps, that so many men of high scientific attainments were connected with the Army and Navy that the choice naturally lay in that direction. It would be interesting to know how the selection of incorporators was guided, but no records at present available reveal the facts. A clew is, perhaps, to be found by a study of the membership of scientific organizations already in existence when the Academy was founded. There were three general societies, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. From a comparison of the lists of those who were members between 1860 and I8631, it appears that from two-thirds to nearly three-fourths of the incorporators of theNational Academy were connected with one or the other of these societies, and that of the whole number of incorpora...