From Immigrant to Inventor

by Michael Pupin

The rapid rise of the Council into public favor is due principally to its wise programme and to the standing of the men and of the scientific organizations engaged in the carrying out of that programme, the fundamental feature of which is “to promote scientific research and the application and dissemination of scientific knowledge for the benefit of our national strength and well-being.” This expression, often heard within the ranks of the National Research Council, always reminds me of the following words in Washington’s Farewell Address:

Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.

In no branch of human activity does public opinion need enlightenment so much as it does in the fundamentals of science, and in their relation to technical arts. One weak point in every democracy, particularly when poorly understood and practised, is the belief among those who control political patronage that any man can do any job as well as any other man. The scientific man believes that a man must be trained for the job; hence his profound respect for the expert. Nothing in his opinion will advance our national strength and well-being so much as the ability of enlightened public opinion to differentiate between the expert and the clumsy product of political patronage. A motto of the Allies in the World War was: make the world safe for democracy. But those who are to-day associated in the National Research Council believe that it is even more important to “make democracy safe for the world” by the dissemination of scientific knowledge for the benefit of national strength and well-being. Many of us believe that this is the most important part of the national defense, to which the Council will always be pledged.

The National Research Council is not an organization which operates scientific laboratories; it confines its attention to the stimulation of co-operation between scientific workers, where such co-operation is necessary. This is not the place to discuss in detail all the aims and aspirations of the National Research Council and of the instrumentalities which it has created in order to reach these aims. A survey, even a brief one, of the work of the divisions belonging to the two groups of the National Research Council will give some idea of these aims. There are, however, two great aims which should be mentioned here, which have been well expressed by Doctor Vernon Kellogg, Permanent Secretary of the Council and chairman of its division on Educational Relations. He describes one of them as follows: “It [the National Research Council] will try constantly to encourage the interest of universities and colleges in research and in the training of research workers, so that the inspiration and fitting of American youth for scientific work may never fall so low as to threaten to interrupt the constantly needed output of well-trained and devoted scientific talent in the land.” The other principal aim he describes in the following significant words: “Still another [assistance to science] is the stimulation of larger industrial organizations, which may be in the situation to maintain their own independent laboratories, to see the advantage of contributing to the support of pure science in the universities and research institutes, for the sake of increasing the scientific knowledge and scientific personnel upon which future progress in applied science absolutely depends.”

The appeal of the National Research Council to the American universities and colleges in behalf of scientific research will not be like a voice in the wilderness. There never was so much enthusiasm for scientific research in the American colleges and universities as there is to-day. This enthusiasm will continually increase as time goes on, because many of the scientific workers in these institutions are gradually catching that enthusiasm during their term of office as members of the divisions of the National Research Council. Before very long most of these workers will have served as such members, because the election to membership is for a short term only, so that every scientist in the land who wishes to serve will get a chance to serve, and in this manner will become familiar with the aims and aspirations of the National Research Council. This rotational term of membership in the divisions of the Council is a splendid method of carrying on the educational propaganda, particularly among the younger scientists of the United States. Before very long the scientists associated by service in the Council will be like the soldiers of a great army of volunteers, each one of them believing in and ready to struggle for the same ideals, and all of them controlled by the same esprit de corps, which the world will soon recognize as the esprit de corps of American science.

With regard to the Council’s second principal aim, described so well by Doctor Kellogg, I am happy to make the following comment: A distinguished lawyer, chairman of the board of directors of a large industrial corporation, which maintains a splendid industrial research laboratory, said in my presence recently that he thought every successful and prosperous industrial organization should set aside a goodly portion of its profits from new developments, made possible by scientific research, and turn it over to the universities, to enable them to pay better salaries to their professors and instructors in science and to increase their research facilities. He confessed frankly that the training in scientific research in the universities is the fountainhead from which success is derived in industrial research and development, and that without industrial research American industries will not gain and hold the leading position in the world to which they may rightfully aspire. What a splendid thing it is to hear a lawyer express an opinion which is in perfect harmony with the opinion of every scientific man in the United States! It has been this mental attitude on the part of the American philanthropists and public-spirited captains of industry like Carnegie, Rockefeller, Swasey, Eastman, and others which has helped us to accomplish wonders in scientific advancement during the last twenty-five years. It has been men of this type who have built research laboratories in the American universities and endowed them generously.

Of the many physical laboratories which have arisen in American universities through private munificence since the time when, fifty years ago, Joseph Henry, Barnard, Draper, Andrew White, and other American scientists started the great movement for higher research in science, there may be mentioned, as an illustration, the Johns Hopkins physical laboratory, the Jefferson laboratory at Harvard, the Sloan laboratory at Yale, the Fayerweather laboratory at Columbia, or the Ryerson laboratory at the University of Chicago. Similar research facilities in other departments of physical science have been presented to American universities by the public-spirited men of the United States. But nothing has illustrated so well the possibilities of intelligent public interest in and generosity to science as the rapid rise of organized American science in the last twenty-five years, culminating in the organization of the National Research Council.

To an untrained eye, necessarily looking at scientific things from a superficial view-point, the National Research Council will appear as a splendid institution organized as our third arm of national defense, an indispensable supplement to the Army and Navy. This conception is perfectly natural, because the time and the conditions which called the Council into existence during the World War were such as to demand immediate scientific efforts for national defense. Other somewhat similar organized efforts were made at that time, but those organizations disappeared into thin air as soon as the armistice of 1918 was signed. The National Research Council did not disappear; it is stronger to-day than ever before, because, although designed to be an effective weapon in times of war, it is fundamentally an instrument of peace. Another superficial view will reveal the National Research Council as a splendid organization for the cultivation of an intimate relationship between abstract science and the industries. This also is as it should be; national defense in its broadest sense demands such co-operation. But both these aspects of the Council, prominent aspects to the superficial observer, reveal only the purely material gains to accrue to this country from the Council’s activities. The anxious question will therefore be: What contributions will this organized scientific activity make to the spiritual welfare of the country?

There are people who think that science with all its splendid achievements is nevertheless materialistic, and that it cannot by itself, no matter how well organized, advance the spiritual welfare of a nation. Some even go so far as to maintain that national endeavors in the direction of very extensive scientific research and very elaborate scientific training are apt to interfere seriously with the spiritual development of our national life. This is particularly true of people who are stirred up, from time to time, by imaginary conflicts between science and religion. I may be permitted here to state briefly how science, as I see it cultivated by the men who are associated in the National Research Council, will contribute to the spiritual welfare of our nation by describing briefly some of its ideals.

Fifty years ago Tyndall, as I have already mentioned, came to America and helped to start the great scientific movement which has culminated in the organization of the National Research Council. At that time Andrew White, the famous president of Cornell, spoke the following historic words in behalf of this historic movement, which I have been watching since its very beginning, and actively aiding whenever an opportunity presented itself: