FOUNDING THE GEOPHYSICAL-LABORATORY, 1901-1905 - A SCIENTIFIC BONANZAFROM PERCEPTION AND PERSISTENCE

Charles Doolittle Walcott, during his career as Director of the U.S. G eological Survey (1894-1907) was interested in broad problems of the e arth. Within a few days of meeting Andrew Carnegie in December 1901, h e had laid plans for a geophysical laboratory, relying on the advice o f G. F. Becker. Walcott became Secretary of the new Carnegie Instituti on of Washington (CIW) and Secretary of the Executive Committee and be gan to plan for a major research campus in Washington, advising Carneg ie and others of his activities. A joint advisory committee met in Jul y 1902 and unanimously supported a laboratory as outlined earlier, how ever, the concept of a research campus, and particularly a laboratory for earth sciences investigations, was rejected by the Trustees in the fall of 1902. Nevertheless, Walcott continued to put considerable eff ort into operations of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, made al l the more difficult by the reluctance of the President, D. C. Gilman, to take action. Walcott's view of major centralized facilities was co unter to that of John Shaw Billings, who became Chairman of the Board in 1903. Although Walcott continued to garner outside support for a la boratory and repeatedly wrote Carnegie on the subject, he was unable t o move the project forward. In the fall of 1904, Robert S. Woodward be came the second President of CIW, and the Executive Committee was also reorganized. By December 1905, the laboratory was approved, and even though Carnegie was against any major building projects, Walcott was a ble to satisfy him as to the merits of this laboratory. Throughout the years of campaigning for the facility, Becker supported a broad view of geophysics, but when the Geophysical Laboratory was finally establi shed under Arthur L. Day, it had a more restrictive program oriented t oward the study of the physical chemistry of igneous rocks.