Broca's Brain: The Romance of Science

WHEN I WAS ASKED to chair the 75th Anniversary Committee of the American Astronomical Society in 1974, I thought it would provide a pleasant opportunity to acquaint myself with the state of our subject at the end of the past century. I was interested to see where we had been, where we are today, and if possible, something of where we may be going. In 1897 the Yerkes Observatory, then the largest telescope in the world, was given a formal dedication, and a scientific meeting of astronomers and astrophysicists was held in connection with the ceremony. A second meeting was held at the Harvard College Observatory in 1898 and a third at the Yerkes Observatory in 1899, by which time what is now the American Astronomical Society had been officially founded.

The astronomy of 1897 to 1899 seems to have been vigorous, combative, dominated by a few strong personalities and aided by remarkably short publication times. The average time between submission and publication for papers in the Astrophysical Journal (Ap. J.) in this period seems to be better than in Astrophysical Journal Letters today. The fact that a great many papers were from the Yerkes Observatory, where the journal was edited, may have had something to do with this. The opening of the Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wisconsin-which has the year 1895 imprinted upon it-was delayed more than a year because of the collapse of the floor, which narrowly missed killing the astronomer E. E. Barnard. The accident is mentioned in Ap. J. (6:149), but one finds no hint of negligence there. However, the British journal Observatory (20:393), clearly implies careless construction and a cover-up to shield those responsible. We also discover on the same page of Observatory that the dedication ceremonies were postponed for some weeks to accommodate the travel schedule of Mr. Yerkes, the robber-baron donor. The Astrophysical Journal says that “the dedication ceremonies were necessarily postponed from October 1, 1897,” but does not say why.

Ap. J. was edited by George Ellery Hale, the director of the Yerkes Observatory, and by James E. Keeler, who in 1898 became the director of the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton in California. However, there was a certain domination of Ap. J. by Williams Bay, perhaps because the Lick Observatory dominated the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP) in the same period. Volume 5 of the Astrophysical Journal has no fewer than thirteen plates of the Yerkes Observatory, including one of the powerhouse. The first fifty pages of Volume 6 have a dozen more plates of the Yerkes Observatory. The Eastern dominance of the American Astronomical Society is also reflected by the fact that the first president of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America was Simon Newcomb, of the Naval Observatory in Washington, and the first vice presidents, Young and Hale. West Coast astronomers complained about the difficulties in traveling to the third conference of astronomers and astrophysicists at Yerkes and seem to have voiced some pleasure that promised demonstrations with the Yerkes 40-inch refractor for this ceremony had to be postponed because of cloudy weather. This was about the most in the way of interobservatory rancor that can be found in either journal.

But in the same period Observatory had a keen nose for American astronomical gossip. From Observatory we find that there was a “civil war” at the Lick Observatory and a “scandal” associated with Edward Holden (the director before Keeler), who is said to have permitted rats in the drinking water at Mount Hamilton. It also published a story about a test chemical explosion scheduled to go off in the San Francisco Bay Area and to be monitored by a seismic device on Mount Hamilton. At the appointed moment, no staff member could see any sign of needle deflection except for Holden, who promptly dispatched a messenger down the mountain to alert the world to the great sensitivity of the Lick seismometer. But soon up the mountain came another messenger with the news that the test had been postponed. A much faster messenger was then dispatched to overtake the first and an embarrassment to the Lick Observatory was, Observatory notes, narrowly averted.

The youth of American astronomy in this period is eloquently reflected in the proud announcement in 1900 that the Berkeley Astronomical Department would henceforth be independent of the Civil Engineering Department at the University of California. A survey by Professor George Airy, later the British Astronomer Royal, regretted being unable to report on astronomy in America in 1832 because essentially there was none. He would not have said that in 1899.

There is never much sign in these journals of the intrusion of external (as opposed to academic) politics, except for an occasional notice such as the appointment by President McKinley of T. J. J. See as professor of mathematics to the U.S. Navy, and a certain continuing chilliness in scientific debates between the personnel of the Lick and Potsdam (Germany) Observatories.

Some signs of the prevailing attitudes of the 1890s occasionally trickle through. For example, in a description of an eclipse expedition to Siloam, Georgia, on May 28, 1900: “Even some of the whites were lacking in a very deep knowledge of things ‘eclipse-wise.’ Many thought it was a money-making scheme and what I intended to charge for admission was a very important question, frequently asked. Another idea was that the eclipse could be seen only from the inside of my observatory… Just here I wish to express my appreciation of the high moral tone of the community, for, with a population of only 100, including the immediate neighborhood, it sustains 2 white and 2 colored churches and during my stay I did not hear a single profane word… As an unsophisticated Yankee in the Southland, unused to Southern ways, I naturally made many little slips that were not considered ‘just the thing.’ The smiles at my prefixing ‘Mr.’ to the name of my colored helper caused me to change it to ‘Colonel,’ which was entirely satisfactory to everybody.”

A board of visitors was appointed to resolve some (never publicly specified) problems at the U.S. Naval Observatory. A report of this group-which consisted of two obscure senators and Professors Edward C. Pickering, George C. Comstock and Hale-is illuminating because it mentions dollar amounts. We find that the annual running costs of the major observatories in the world were: Naval Observatory, $85,000; Paris Observatory, $53,000; Greenwich Observatory (England), $49,000; Harvard Observatory, $46,000; and Pulkowa Observatory (Russia), $36,000. The salaries of the two directors of the U.S. Naval Observatory were $4,000 each, and at the Harvard Observatory, $5,000. The distinguished board of visitors recommended that in a “schedule of salaries which could be expected to attract astronomers of the class desired,” the salary of directors of observatories should be $6,000. At the Naval Observatory, computers (exclusively human at the time) were paid $1,200 per annum, but at the Harvard Observatory only $500 per annum, and were almost exclusively women. In fact, all salaries at Harvard, except for the director’s, were significantly lower than at the Naval Observatory. The committee stated: “The great difference in salaries at Washington and Cambridge, especially for the officers of lower grade, is probably unavoidable. This is partly due to Civil Service Rules.” An additional sign of astronomical impecuniosity is the announcement of the post of “volunteer research assistant” at Yerkes, which had no associated pay but which was said to provide good experience for students with higher degrees.

Then, as now, astronomy was besieged by “paradoxers,” proponents of fringe or crackpot ideas. One proposed a telescope with ninety-one lenses in series as an alternative to a telescope with a smaller number of lenses of larger aperture. The British in this period were similarly plagued but in perhaps a gentler way. For example, an obituary in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (59:226) of Henry Perigal informs us that the deceased had celebrated his ninety-fourth birthday by becoming a member of the Royal Institution, but was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1850. However, “our publications contain nothing from his pen.” The obituary describes “the remarkable way in which the charm of Mr. Perigal’s personality won him a place which might have seemed impossible of attainment for a man of his views; for there is no masking the fact that he was a paradoxer pure and simple, his main conviction being that the Moon did not rotate, and his main astronomical aim in life being to convince others, and especially young men not hardened in the opposite belief, of their grave error. To this end he made diagrams, constructed models, and wrote poems; bearing with heroic cheerfulness the continued disappointment of finding none of them of any avail. He has, however, done excellent work apart from this unfortunate misunderstanding.”

The number of American astronomers in this period was very small. The by-laws of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America state that a quorum is constituted by twenty members. By the year 1900 only nine doctorates had been granted in astronomy in America. In that year there were four astronomical doctorates: two from Columbia University for G. N. Bauer and Carolyn Furness; one from the University of Chicago for Forest Ray Moulton; and one from Princeton University for Henry Norris Russell.

Some idea of what was considered important scientific work in this period can be garnered from the prizes that were awarded. E. E. Barnard received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in part for his discovery of the Jovian moon Jupiter 5 and for his astronomical photography with a portrait lens. His steamer, however, was