Oswald Veblen and the Capitalization of American ...

Oswald Veblen and the Capitalization of American Mathematics: Raising Money for Research,1923-1928Author(s): Loren Butler FefferSource: Isis, Vol. 89, No. 3 (Sep., 1998), pp. 474-497Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/237143 .Accessed: 03/05/2011 21:19

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Oswald Veblen and the

Capitalization of American

Mathematics

Raising Money for Research, 1923-1928

By Loren Butler Feffer*

ABSTRACT

Between the world wars, all the scientific professions in the United States underwent tremendous growth. The wartime experiences of scientific leaders whetted their appetites for the continuation of some kind of concentrated, well-funded research programs. Turning not to government but instead to philanthropy, physicists and chemists worked to parlay their postwar prestige into greater support for unfettered research. Leaders of the American mathematical community also wanted to expand their base of support but found themselves facing unique obstacles. Attempts to raise money to support mathematical research had mixed results. This article discusses primarily the efforts led by Oswald Veblen in the 1920s to collect funds to support mathematics through Princeton University and the Amer- ican Mathematical Society in the context of this climate of expansion for the physical sciences. The mathematical community in America has not yet received the level of careful study historians have applied to the physics community; this article also attempts to redress that imbalance.

PARTICIPATION IN RESEARCH EFFORTS for the government during World War I gave many scientists a sense of buoyant optimism about the future of science in Amer-

ica. Robert Millikan, one of the nation's most prominent physicists and soon to be named a Nobel laureate, spoke for his colleagues when he voiced the hope that the lessons the war taught the American people would now bring such great support for science that

in a very few years we shall be in a new place as a scientific nation and shall see men coming from the ends of the earth to catch the inspiration of our leaders and to share in the results which have come from our developments in science. If we fail to seize these opportunities then the scepter will pass from us and go to those who are better qualified to wield it.

*163 Lloyd Road, Aberdeen, New Jersey 07747.

Isis, 1998, 89:474-497 ?D 1998 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/98/8903-0004$02.00

474

LOREN BUTLER FEFFER 475

Millikan's vision was quite clear. The decade following war's end was to be a time of expansion for American science and American universities; for the first time, leaders of the scientific communities found themselves within reach of large sums of money that, with proper planning, could be committed to the direct support of research. Wartime research, with its organization and support, whetted the appetites for growth of leaders in American physics, chemistry, and mathematics, and they sought to transform their wartime organization and prestige into access to private capital.'

Physicists and chemists entered postwar fundraising with a new and distinct advantage, as they could make much of their importance to national interests by recalling contributions to dye synthesis, submarine detection, and chemical warfare. The Rockefeller Foundation was moved to support physics and chemistry, first with a program of postdoctoral fellowships for the National Research Council initiated in 1919. With this program, the Rocke- feller Foundation became the cornerstone of a constituency physical scientists worked to assemble during the decade of the 1920s.2 But despite the productive relationships they established with the Rockefeller organization and other philanthropists, another major sector of the scientists' hoped-for constituency-industry-failed to respond with the desired enthusiasm to support unfettered university-based scientific research. The collapse of scientists' largest independent initiative to raise money, the National Research Fund campaign, was clear demonstration of the difficulties they had in publicizing their disciplines to a wide audience. Rhetorical strategies trumpeting the utility of science for progress that had seemed timely in the cultural climate of 1920s America fell short of persuasion when applied to fundraising among industrialists.3

Mathematicians had also joined enthusiastically in wartime projects. Some, such as Max Mason, collaborated on efforts staffed by physicists, chemists, or engineers. Others taught special courses for soldiers under the auspices of the Students' Army Training Corps and other organizations. Probably the most significant mathematical work, however, was on problems in ballistics and ordnance carried out in Washington, D.C., and at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. Led by the Princeton University mathematician Oswald Veblen, this group performed tests and calculated range tables for the redesigned artillery Americans took with them to fight in Europe. While this work was probably as valuable as any done by scientists for the war effort, mathematics was included in neither the rhetoric nor the plans of those who looked to muster support for physics and chemistry after the

1 Robert Millikan, "The New Opportunity in Science," Science, 1919, 50:285-297, on p. 297. On American science during World War I see, e.g., Daniel Kevles, The Physicists: A Scientific Community in Modern America (New York: Random House, 1979), pp. 102-154; and Robert Yerkes, The New World of Science-Its Devel- opment during the War (New York: Century, 1920).

2 The literature on the Rockefeller Foundation is extensive. Recent work directly relevant to understanding its role in the development of American scientific communities includes Alexi Assmus, "The Creation of Postdoc- toral Fellowships and the Siting of American Scientific Research," Minerva, 1993, 31:151-183; Roger Geiger, To Advance Knowledge: The Growth of American Research Universities, 1900-1940 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986); and Robert Kohler, Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Sciences (Chicago: Univ. Chi- cago Press, 1991). On the negotiations behind the establishment of the fellowships see Nathan Reingold, "The Case of the Disappearing Laboratory," in Science, American Style (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 224-246.

3 The National Research Fund Campaign, begun in 1925, aimed to raise $2 million from industry to support scientific research. Led by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover along with George Ellery Hale and Robert Millikan, fundraising efforts continued until 1930. But corporate support fell far below expectations, and the fund ultimately collapsed by 1932. The National Research Fund campaign is treated in detail in Ronald Tobey, The American Ideology of National Science, 1919-1930 (Pittsburgh: Univ. Pittsburgh Press, 1971). See also Lance E. Davis and Daniel J. Kevles, "The National Research Fund: A Case Study in the Industrial Support of Academic Science," Minerva, 1974, 12:213-220; and Kevles, Physicists (cit. n. 1), pp. 185-187.

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476 OSWALD VEBLEN AND THE CAPITALIZATION OF AMERICAN MATHEMATICS

war. Fellow scientists, such as the psychologist Robert Yerkes, did not mention the mathematicians' contributions when enumerating wartime achievements, and mathematics was not among the fields included in the postdoctoral fellowship program underwritten by the Rockefeller Foundation for the National Research Council. Despite an ongoing commitment to disciplinary autonomy and a dearth of shared research interests or borderland research, mathematicians aligned themselves with the more publicized fields of physics and chemistry as one important strategy in their efforts to secure funds.4

While they failed to construct dependable constituencies of their own to support independent institutional initiatives and were reluctant to accept government support, both mathematicians and scientists had better luck within the context of university campaigns. There, willing cadres of donors had only to be persuaded to support science and mathematics as part of general plans for institutional expansion and improvement. An important part of the story of the capitalization of American mathematics can be told featuring the efforts of the Princeton University mathematician Oswald Veblen. Veblen took his wartime experience and connections, fused them to his personal vision for the future of American mathematics, and devoted a great deal of time and energy during the early 1920s to raising money to support mathematical research through the American Mathematical Society and Princeton University. The place of professional mathematics within American science, and American society, is reflected in the successes and failures met by Veblen's efforts.5

MATHEMATICS AND THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL FELLOWSHIPS

The mathematical community in the United States experienced marked growth beginning in the 1880s, when mathematical practitioners first coalesced into a professional community. Looking for paradigms-examples of fruitful topics of research-ambitious Amer- ican mathematicians pursued research programs in dynamic areas of "pure" mathematics such as algebraic geometry, group theory, and abstract analysis that were of interest to the established mathematical researchers of Europe. While this helped enhance the status of American mathematical research, it effectively ended an earlier tradition of American work in mathematical physics and mathematical astronomy-the premier fields of "applied"

4Borderland was a term commonly used by early twentieth-century American scientists to describe work relevant to two or more disciplines. For a historical discussion of some institutional issues that confronted such research see Glenn Bugos, "Managing Cooperative Research and Borderland Science in the National Research Council, 1922-1942," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 1989, 20:1-32. On mathematicians' war work see D. A. Rothrock, "American Mathematicians in War Service," American Mathematical Monthly, 1919, 26:40-44; Leonard Dickson, "Mathematics in War Perspective," Bulletin of the American Math- ematical Society, 1919, 25:289-311; and Mathematical Association of America, "Conference on Wartime Ex- periences," Amer. Math. Mon., 1919, 26:92-103. See also Karen Parshall and David Rowe, The Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community, 1876-1900: J. J. Sylvester, Felix Klein, and E. H. Moore (Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, 1994) (hereafter cited as Parshall and Rowe, Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community), p. 444.

5The American mathematical community is now beginning to receive careful study by historians. A major recent work is Parshall and Rowe, Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community. Other contributions include William Aspray, "The Emergence of Princeton as a World Center for Mathematical Research, 1896-1939," in History and Philosophy of Modern Mathematics, ed. Aspray and Phillip Kitcher (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 11) (Minneapolis: Univ. Minnesota Press, 1988), pp. 346-366; Karen Parshall and David Rowe, "American Mathematics Comes of Age," in A Century of Mathematics in America, ed. Peter Duren (Providence, R.I.: American Mathematical Society, 1988), pp. 3-28; and John Servos, "Math- ematics and the Physical Sciences in America, 1880-1930," Isis, 1986, 77:611-629.

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mathematics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Community leaders and others took note of this growing imbalance, but few steps were taken to correct it.6

In 1919 the Division of Physical Sciences of the National Research Council (NRC) undertook a study of the status of applied mathematics in the United States; the war had brought a new sense of urgency to concerns about the lack of applied mathematical research. A circular letter produced for distribution to mathematics department chairmen throughout the country outlined the perceived shortcomings of domestic work in applied mathematics and strongly suggested that mathematicians take immediate steps to redress the imbalance between pure and applied subjects in their teaching and research. The NRC spokesmen expressed concern for the future development of experimental science and technological industries. "Theory should go hand in hand with experiment, as is the case in Europe," to sustain ongoing progress. Most important, students must be encouraged to take up applied subjects as they begin their research. The letter closed with the following statement: "there is no desire on the part of the Council to depreciate the study of pure mathematics, but rather to stimulate it by suggesting at least a partial return to the earlier methods, by which many of the most important developments of the subject have originated in the study of physical problems, thus maintaining a fresh supply of lines of investigation and produce [sic] closer contact with other branches of science."7 The message that even pure mathematics is truly derivative from, as well as important to, ongoing work in science-and its inverse, that all of science and technology has roots in mathematics- would be taken up by mathematicians many times throughout the next decade as they sought greater financial support and prestige for their work. It was applied soon and with great success in an appeal back to the NRC itself.

Oswald Veblen was, by the conclusion of World War I, one of the nation's most influ- ential mathematicians (see Figure 1). Veblen (nephew of the social theorist Thorstein Veblen) was recognized early in his career as a promising researcher, receiving a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under the supervision of E. H. Moore in 1903. He joined the faculty at Princeton in 1905 and soon established himself as a departmental leader. His involvement in wartime research and his nomination to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1919 brought Veblen into a circle of powerful and ambitious scientists centered in Washington. It was a milieu that suited him well; his fellow mathematician Raymond Archibald described Veblen's work on behalf of mathematics in Washington as "service which he alone was qualified to render."8

In 1923 Oswald Veblen successfully lobbied the Rockefeller Foundation and the Na- tional Research Council to extend their postdoctoral fellowship program to include mathematics. These fellowships, designed to provide young scientists with support so that they could devote themselves completely to scientific research, were a valued and visible en-

6 For samples of the concern voiced about the lack of applied mathematics in the United States see E. H. Moore, "On the Foundations of Mathematics," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 1903, 9:402-424; and Earl Hedrick, "The Significance of Mathematics," Amer. Math. Mon., 1917, 27:401-406. The founding of the Mathematical Association of America in 1915 in part reflected this concern, as well as worries about the balance between teaching and research. See Kenneth May, ed., The Mathematical Association of America: Its First Fifty Years (Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1972), pp. 17-21; see also Servos, "Mathematics and the Physical Sciences," p. 618.

7"The Status of Applied Mathematics in the United States," National Research Council, ca. 1919, Department of Mathematics Records, Harvard University Archives, Nathan Marsh Pusey Library, Harvard University, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts.

I Raymond Archibald, A Semicentennial History of the American Mathematical Society (New York: American Mathematical Society, 1938) (hereafter cited as Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS), p. 209. On Veblen's early promise see Parshall and Rowe, Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community, pp. 384-386.

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Figure 1. Oswald Veblen in the 1920s. (Courtesy of National Academy of Sciences Archives, Washington, D.C.)

dorsement of the importance of the physical sciences. In letters to Simon Flexner of the Rockefeller Foundation and others, Veblen made use of the strategies outlined in the NRC's assessment of the shortcomings of mathematics in the United States. But where the NRC missive had emphasized the lack of research by Americans in areas of mathematics increasingly relevant to physical science and technology, Veblen stressed the overall


importance of mathematics to these vital fields, opening with a strong assertion of the centrality of mathematics to all of the sciences:

In considering the proposal to enlarge the scope of the fellowships in Physics and Chemistry so as to include Mathematics, I should think it is desirable to have clearly in mind the close interdependence of all the sciences. It is well-known, of course, how Medicine constantly uses the results of Physics and Chemistry, and how, in return, the problems arising from Medicine stimulate research in Physics and Chemistry. The relationship between Mathematics on the one hand and Physics and Chemistry on the other, is of precisely this sort.

Claims about the contributions of physics and chemistry to medicine had been used to convince the Rockefeller Foundation, previously pledged only to the support of medicine and public health, to include those disciplines among the recipients of their philanthropy.9 Veblen incorporated this accepted assertion into a longer syllogism: medicine needs physics and chemistry, physics and chemistry depend upon mathematics, therefore medicine needs mathematics, and mathematics should receive commensurate support.

Veblen was not only seeking financial resources for his discipline. He recognized that mathematics would have a difficult time sustaining interest or support from independent sources without strong and obvious connections to physics and chemistry, and he made it clear that inclusion was as valuable as monetary support:

The question might be asked: "Why should not a separate board be created to look after fellowships in Mathematics?" In the interest of mathematics, I think it is very desirable that fellowships in this science should be administered by a Board which contains both physicists and chemists, because this will tend to keep closer contact and will have the effect of stimulating interest on the part of mathematics in physics and chemistry. This sort of a broadening of the interests of the mathematicians is very desirable at the present time.

As the prestige and power to attract funds of physics and chemistry increased in the years following the war, Veblen was among a number of mathematicians who realized that in order to bolster the resources of their own discipline, connections to the physical sciences- both actual and merely rhetorical-would have to be emphasized, but without jeopardizing the privileged place of unfettered mathematical research.10

The encouragement of autonomous research in "pure" mathematics had been an important priority for the organizational leaders of professional mathematics in the United

I9Oswald Veblen to Simon Flexner, 11 Oct. 1923, Oswald Veblen Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C., Box 28. Flexner's role in the establishment of the postdoctoral program is discussed in Reingold, "Disappearing Laboratory" (cit. n. 2). See also Assmus, "Creation of Postdoctoral Fellowships" (cit. n. 2), pp. 165-168; and Kohler, Partners in Science (cit. n. 2), p. 87.

'0 Veblen to Simon Flexner, 11 Oct. 1923. While Veblen was a particularly vocal advocate, the value of links between mathematics and the physical sciences was often discussed by mathematical leaders in the postwar years. For another example see E. H. Moore to University President Harry Pratt Judson, 8 Mar. 1919, E. H. Moore Papers, Department of Special Collections, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, Box 4; and E. H. Moore to Edward Burr Van Vleck, 23 Nov. 1918, E. H. Moore Papers, Box 3. But there was much ambivalence about how to make such links while still retaining autonomy. "Mathematics cannot afford to isolate itself and should heartily welcome the brotherly hand of co-operation held out to it by the physical sciences. Let us accept the offer to take our place beside those sciences in such high repute. The [American Mathematical] Society can and will retain its control of mathematical questions. Mathematics, of all sciences, can not afford to remain isolated, without friends. I am in favor of a league of mathematics and the related sciences, with reservations (i.e., with retention of control over things mathematical)": Leonard Dickson to "Com- mittee to consider proposed American Section of an International Union of Mathematics," 5 Feb. 1920, American Mathematical Society Records, Brown University Library, Providence, Rhode Island, Box 21.


States. A relatively robust research tradition in mathematical astronomy and mathematical physics-represented by practitioners such as Simon Newcomb, George Hill, and Josiah Willard Gibbs-was displaced in the early years of the twentieth century by a new, ag- gressive commitment to "pure" mathematics fostered in young scholars who received their mathematical training at European centers such as Gottingen and Paris during the 1880s and 1 890s. Those mathematicians, including Eliakim Hastings Moore of the University of Chicago, Henry Burchard Fine of Princeton, and William Fogg Osgood of Harvard, devoted themselves to the establishment of mathematics departments where young Ameri- cans could study to become researchers at the frontiers of modem mathematical thought.11 Trained in these departments and thoroughly indoctrinated in the primacy of pure mathematics research, neither Veblen nor any of the other mathematical leaders of his own generation seriously questioned that mathematics researchers in the United States should continue to pursue research valued for its mathematical qualities alone.

But in his rhetorical encouragement of links between mathematics and the physical sciences, Veblen was also not being entirely cynical. Excitement about the "new" theories of quantum and, especially, relativity physics seized a number of mathematicians, including Veblen, who devoted a great deal of his research effort during the 1920s and early 1930s to investigations related to general relativity theory that sought to advance both physics and pure mathematics.12 Optimism about this work, and the expectation of future, fruitful entanglements of physics with interesting, abstract mathematics, helped to create a climate of confidence about the relationship between mathematics and the physical sciences that augmented-although it did not displace-pragmatic concerns and strategies.

PLANNING AN ENDOWMENT CAMPAIGN FOR THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY

During the 1920s, the physical sciences attracted an unprecedented amount of financial support from the major philanthropic foundations. This came in the form of direct support for individual scientists through postdoctoral fellowships for study at home and abroad, including the NRC fellowships, and through large grants to universities for the expansion of research facilities and personnel on their campuses. Fundraising efforts also took place in other contexts, such as the campaign for the independent National Research Fund begun in 1925. In 1923 the American Mathematical Society (AMS) began efforts to raise a relatively modest endowment of approximately $100,000, hoping to provide a financial cushion for dramatically rising publication costs. Previous attempts to raise money had been focused primarily on increasing the membership of the society and the subscription rolls for its journals. While membership grew steadily, and especially rapidly after 1920, even with higher dues the rising cost of the society's several publications could not be met. 13

Mathematical leaders hoped that the campaign would actually serve a dual purpose. In describing it for the society's semicentennial volume fifteen years later, Raymond Archi- bald recalled, "the campaign was to be more than an attempt to put the finances of the

11 On the early leaders of American mathematics see Parshall and Rowe, Emergence of the American Math- ematical Research Community.

12 Veblen's research in general relativity and, later, on the problem of unifying gravitational and electromag- netic phenomena grew out of his long-standing interest in projective geometry. On Veblen and mathematical physics see Loren Butler Feffer, "Mathematical Physics and the Planning of American Mathematics: Ideology and Institutions," Historia Mathematica, 1997, 24:66-85, esp. p. 75.

13 Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, p. 29.


Society on a firm basis; it was to be also a campaign of education of the public concerning the basic character of mathematics in our present civilization and the importance of mathematical research in advancing that civilization." 14 Dissatisfied with the attention given their discipline by others and well aware of the attempts by physicists and chemists to educate the public about the vital importance of those fields, the AMS leadership believed it essential that they find a way to claim for themselves a piece of the general enthusiasm for science that flourished in the years following the war.

Veblen was president of the AMS for 1923/1924, and he selected the Harvard University mathematician Julian Coolidge to be chairman of the committee on endowment. The initial phase of the campaign, which lasted through 1923, was aimed at the approximately 1,200 members of the society. While the organizers did not expect to raise much money from society members, they counted upon using a strong show of support from mathematicians, with their modest incomes, as a helpful public relations tool. The next phase of the campaign, lasting through 1925, was aimed at the philanthropic foundations, individuals outside the society, and "industries dependent on mathematics."'15

Although the AMS retained the public relations services of the John Price Jones Cor- poration to assist in the campaign, by far the biggest efforts on behalf of the endowment were made by a small group of the society's own leaders. In addition to Veblen and Coolidge, they included R. G. D. Richardson, secretary of the AMS, and Arnold Dresden, G. C. Evans, Robert Henderson, and George Roosevelt. Once solicitation of society members was under way, efforts turned to general publicity. Veblen targeted Science Service, a science features news syndicate underwritten by newspaper publisher Edward Scripps, and individual magazine and newspaper editors to try to generate interest in articles on mathematics in general and the endowment campaign in particular. In September 1923 the society voted to establish an annual lectureship in honor of the physical chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs that was intended to give "a larger public, in semi popular form, some idea of aspects of mathematics and its application." 16 In using the name of Gibbs, the leaders of the AMS were laying claim to a share of America's proudest scientific heritage and publicly announcing an interest in the applications of mathematics to physics as well as to practical problems such as insurance.

In an attempt to underscore the connections between mathematical research and practical needs, the first Gibbs address (in February 1924) was given by Michael Pupin of Columbia University. A "charter member" of the AMS as well as the American Physical Society, Pupin was best known for his contributions to the development of the telephone. His lecture, rather mysteriously entitled "Coordination" (it was later printed in Scribner's Mag- azine under the magisterial title "From Chaos to Cosmos"), attempted to sketch for popular

4Ibid., p. 31. 15 Ibid. By early December, subscriptions from members totaled only $13,713. Mindful of the value of ap-

pearances, Coolidge instructed Veblen: "I do not at present favor making an additional appeal to the Society in general, even to feature the one argument of a general response.... In almost every case [in approximately fifty letters to local agents who were given the responsibility of soliciting from their own departments and regions] I stressed the idea that we wanted a one hundred per cent response. I had rather leave the matter so than to cross the wires by additional appeals from this office." Julian Coolidge to Veblen, 3 Dec. 1923, Veblen Papers, Box 3.

16 Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, p. 88. The Jones Corporation, which worked for most major university campaigns during this decade, was probably expecting a return of about 6 percent, or up to $6,000, for efforts on behalf of the AMS. Correspondence among the leaders of the campaign indicates some dissatis- faction with the texts prepared by the Jones Corporation and concern about the cost of their services. See Veblen to Coolidge, 11 Sept. 1923, Veblen Papers, Box 20; and Coolidge to Veblen, 15 Feb. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3. On Science Service and efforts with other editors see Veblen to Coolidge, 19 Sept. 1923, Veblen Papers, Box 3.


view a picture of the aesthetics of modem physics, with only the vaguest of references to the contributions of science and mathematics to material progress. But this did not stop the zealous campaigners from using it in support of their cause: as part of a concerted effort to gain support among engineers, solicitation letters-signed by Pupin-were sent out, accompanied by a campaign leaflet and a reprint of Pupin's Gibbs lecture.17

The second Gibbs lecturer, endowment committee member Robert Henderson, stressed a more mundane arena of mathematical applications drawn from his own field of expertise: "life insurance as a social science and as a mathematical problem." Many Gibbs lectures during the following decade emphasized new fields in theoretical physics and featured well-known physicists, including Albert Einstein, Percy Bridgman, and the physical chemist Richard Tolman. While the selection of the two earliest speakers seems to represent the society's desire to shore up public opinion of its connections to industry and commerce during its campaign, the subsequent emphasis on physics speaks to what was perhaps a deeper wish to encourage better connections between mathematicians and ongoing research in theoretical physics. In connection with the campaign, Veblen also sought ways to stimulate the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society to publish more articles in applied mathematics, but without success.'8

THE AMS, THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, AND MATHEMATICAL PUBLICATIONS

It is no surprise that the AMS turned to the Rockefeller philanthropies early in its endowment campaign. Even before he was certain of his success in getting them to underwrite National Research Fellowships in mathematics, Veblen encouraged Coolidge to approach "Rockefeller interests" for assistance. Well aware of the preferred funding strategies, Veb- len suggested that the AMS request $50,000, conditional on raising a matching amount from other sources. He initially left his own role in the negotiations open: "I think it may be possible that I can be of use in approaching the Rockefeller interests on behalf of the Endowment Fund on the general principle 'To him that hath, it shall be added.' On the other hand, if they turn the fellowship project down, I don't think that it would be wise to use me as an avenue of approach." Veblen's long association with the NRC gave him considerable savvy in dealing with this particular philanthropic patron. Through personal meetings and numerous written appeals over several months, Veblen and Coolidge pressed their connections within the Rockefeller Foundation. Although they impressed some foundation officials individually, the AMS request for $50,000 was tabled at a meeting in May 1924 and never reconsidered.19

17 Michael Pupin, "From Chaos to Cosmos," Scribner's Magazine, 1924, 76:3-10. On campaigners' efforts to use the lecture see Veblen to Coolidge, 21 Mar. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3. On Pupin's work on the telephone see Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, p. 4.

18 Henderson's lecture was given in December 1924 and published as Robert Henderson, "Life Insurance as a Social Science and as a Mathematical Problem," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 1925, 31:227-252. See also Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, p. 88. At least between 1926 and 1936, Gibbs lecturers were selected each year by a committee of three to five members. See "Committee to recommend to the Council a lecturer for the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship," R. L. Moore Papers, Archive for the History of American Mathematics, University of Texas, Austin, Box 30; and Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, pp. 88-89. On efforts to encourage articles in applied mathematics see Coolidge to Veblen, 6 Mar. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3.

19 Veblen to Coolidge, 1 Dec. 1923, Veblen Papers, Box 3. For one favorable voice see Trevor Arnett to H. J. Thorkelson, 11 May 1924, Folder 3678, Box 357, Series 1, General Education Board Archives, Rockefeller Archives Center, North Tarrytown, New York: "I think the GEB might well consider making a pledge large enough to enable them to reach their goal. Practically all sciences depend upon mathematics." Abraham Flexner was continually pressed by Coolidge to be a personal advocate for the mathematicians' cause; see Coolidge to Abraham Flexner, 18 Sept. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3.


But hope was not lost. While the Rockefeller Foundation officials were reluctant to support an endowment for an organization like the American Mathematical Society, whose permanence could not be assured, they had received enough appeals for the support of scholarly publications of various kinds that they believed it timely to consider the problem more generally. Through a series of discussions and correspondence with General Edu- cation Board (GEB) head Wickliffe Rose, Veblen learned that the foundation was interested in considering the support of scientific publications more generally through the Na- tional Academy of Sciences.20 Veblen secured a place on the committee formed by the NAS to consider publication issues (and to administer funds), and in May 1925 the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation voted to grant the NAS a $10,000 annual subvention for publications, renewable for three years. The AMS received $3,100 from the initial grant (additional money went to support mathematics journals that were independent of the AMS).21

Small annual subventions did not, however, cure the society's publication ills. The mathematical publications were perpetually insolvent-a situation that eventually exas- perated their supporters within the Rockefeller Foundation as well as the National Acad- emy of Sciences. Once taken as unequivocal evidence for the maturation of American mathematics, the increase in the amount of mathematical research published and the con- comitant spiraling costs through the 1920s and into the 1930s drew critics, inside and outside the mathematical community, to charge mathematicians with excessive publishing of material of dubious quality. Despite his tireless efforts on their behalf, Veblen himself developed doubts about the quantity of research being published in American mathematical journals. Soon after the conclusion of the endowment campaign in 1928 the AMS once again found itself in financial difficulty and forced to examine the cost of maintaining its four journals. Veblen was a member of the committee called together to examine the situation. In a letter to E. V. Huntington he expressed strong skepticism:

There is another question which I think ought to be discussed by our committee and that is the question whether an increase in the total number of pages in the mathematical journals in the U.S. is advisable. I believe you will find that the total number of pages in the mathematical research journals ... is something like a thousand pages in excess of the total number of pages devoted to the publication of research in Physics. If investigation shows that this statement is correct I think we ought to ask whether such a state of affairs is justifiable in view of the fact that everyone recognizes that the present is the "golden age of Physics."22

The American Mathematical Society finally gave up seeking outside support for its expanding publications in the mid 1930s and (with guidance and assistance from the Rocke- feller Foundation) turned to a scheme similar to that devised by the American Physical

20 Veblen interviews with Wickliffe Rose, 24 June 1924, 1 Oct. 1924; and Veblen to Rose, 27 Oct. 1924, Folder 3678, Box 357, Series 1, General Education Board Archives. Discussion about funding scholarly publications predated the AMS proposal and extended beyond the sciences to fields such as history and theology. See Coolidge to Theodore Richards, 3 Dec. 1923; and Coolidge to Veblen, 3 Dec. 1923, Veblen Papers, Box 3.

21 Raymond Pearl to Rose, 14 May 1925; and W. N. Brierly to Pearl, 8 June 1925, Folder 1955, Box 205, Series 1, General Education Board Archive. See also Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, pp. 31-32.

22 Veblen to E. V. Huntington, 19 Jan. 1928, Veblen Papers, Box 6. Others shared his concern; see, e.g., Dunham Jackson to Huntington, 4 Feb. 1928, Veblen Papers, Box 6: "I believe there is a wide-spread conviction, beginning to come out in authoritative expression, that mathematical research, considered in relation to our academic life as a whole, is no longer an infant industry that can expect unlimited artificial protection without being called upon to render an account of itself."

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Society, creating institutional memberships that assessed a per-page cost to member institutions whose faculty published in any of the AMS journals.23

"OUR DEBT TO MATHEMATICS"

Avowedly pessimistic from the start about the chances of getting a substantial endowment grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Coolidge and Veblen also undertook a parallel effort focused on potential industrial patrons. A small pamphlet prepared for the campaign, entitled "Our Debt to Mathematics," succinctly expressed their rhetorical strategies toward industrialists and engineers. Prominently displayed is a bar graph showing the skyrocketing number of research articles and books published by American mathematicians since 1868 (see Figure 2). In this context, their productivity is presented as an unproblematic achievement. The pamphlet also featured a list of answers to the question, "What do industry and engineering owe to mathematics?" Among the accomplishments credited to mathematical ingenuity are the development of locomotives, automobiles, airplanes, the telegraph, the telephone, and radio. In addition, mathematicians got credit for overcoming "formidable natural obstacles, bridging rivers, and damming floods," along with a host of more familiar mathematical achievements in applications to physics, astronomy, economics, and the social sciences. The text goes on: "the civilization of the future will depend even more on mathematics than does the civilization of the present." In case these claims seemed mys- terious, the remainder of the pamphlet explained how mathematics develops ("by the devoted labors of highly trained scientists who pursue their studies with indefatigable patience, unnoticed by the world, undeterred by the supercilious pity of those who are unable to appreciate their work"), asserted that abstract mathematical principles often evolve into practical results, and extolled the important role of the American Mathematical Society in supporting mathematical work in America.24

This pamphlet was part of a zealous plan to generate support for the AMS among engineers, actuaries, industrial researchers, and their managers through letters and personal visits from society members and officers. In early 1924, the campaign organizers decided also to dangle the carrot of a mathematical information service before potential patrons. They suggested that the service would supply AMS supporters with the names of mathematical experts in particular fields, references to articles in the mathematical literature on desired topics, advice for young men interested in undertaking mathematical study in different areas, and information about "mathematical conditions" in other countries. While the details of this plan may have evolved further in the minds of the organizers, their letters soliciting potential patrons were vague, referring to a "clearing house to help applicants obtain any type of mathematical or mathematico physical information which they desire." Coolidge's account of negotiations at Edison Illuminating Company of Boston displays a typical response to the mathematicians' offer of service:

I saw the President first, who was very well disposed but said they were accountable to the State authorities for every cent they expended. When I suggested selling them service he became

23 Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, pp. 34-35. On the mathematicians' ongoing appeals to the Rockefeller Foundation see Memorandum, Max Mason, 17 Jan. 1931; and Memorandum, Pearl interview with H. A. Spoehr, 25 Feb. 1931, Folder 1844, Box 150, Series 200D, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Archives Center. See also H. A. Spoehr diary, 19 Feb. 1931; Max Mason diary, 8 May 1931, 1 Oct. 1931; Luther Eisenhart interview with Lauder Jones, 4 Feb. 1932; and Norman Thompson to Eisenhart, 25 Feb. 1932, Folder 1541, Box 125, Series 200D, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Foundation Archives.

24 "Our Debt to Mathematics," American Mathematical Society pamphlet, n.d., Veblen Papers, Box 20.

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NUMBER oF IRESARCH ARTICLZS AND BOOKS

BY AMSRICAN MATHEMATICIANS 1700

OUR DEBT 1600 1500 TO 140 MATHEMATICS 1800

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1300

1000 WI 900

goo

700

G00

400

2w W~~~~~~~~~I AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCEr

100 501 Wins 1I6th Ste-t

n ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Now York. City 1MS-72 73.77 76.62 83.67 6692 9(97W v0.74&2 13.17

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Figure 2. American Mathematical Society fundraising pamphlet. Rising publication rates were a source of pride, but also the root cause of the financial difficulties of the American Mathematical Society. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.)

very friendly and said that he approved of the principle, but referred me to his research experts to discuss the details. I saw two of them yesterday. They also were friendly, but intimated that as a strictly business proposition they could not recommend this to their superiors as a paying venture. Now I must write the best letter I can devise to the President urging him to take the higher point of view regardless of his experts' mercenary report.25

The plans for a mathematical information service clearly did not go far enough to convince potential subscribers that they would be getting a reasonable return for their investment. Indeed, the proposed service was perceived by Coolidge as a genteel cloak for charity, a sop to corporate donors who were not in business to be charitable. The plan was quietly dropped from the campaign.

25 On the possible "services" see Coolidge to Veblen, 6 Mar. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3. For a solicitation letter see Coolidge to Samuel Insull, Commonwealth Edison Co., 19 Mar. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3. The response is described in Coolidge to Veblen, 11 Apr. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3.


The campaign officers quickly became disillusioned with the degree of interest shown in their solicitations. Three months after the start of their appeals outside the society, they concluded: "We find it almost impossible to interest any one except members of the engineering profession and executives of companies which depend on scientific research.... It is reasonable to expect that we will get contributions from several of these companies, but there is not much likelihood that any of these contributions will exceed $2500. Certain corporations which might have been expected to contribute, such as the Radio Corporation of America, have declined." Western Electric had donated $1,000; a somewhat larger donation was anticipated from AT&T; and General Electric, Kodak, and General Motors, along with some smaller corporations, were still being solicited. In interviews with rep- resentatives of these corporations, the campaigners pushed the merits of their cause ag- gressively. Recounting a meeting with George Campbell, a representative of AT&T, Coo- lidge wrote to Veblen: "He fully assented to my contention that without pure mathematics there would be no American Telephone & Telegraph, and did not deny my corollary that this places moral responsibility upon them to give us their aid."26 While "moral responsibility" to aid mathematics may have helped sway AT&T-late in 1924, the company gave $5,000 to the campaign-this strategy did not bring many rewards. Veblen was particularly adamant that publishing companies had "a very definite duty" to support the AMS cause, since many of them had made a good deal of money from the publication of mathematical books, but admitted that they had for the most part "turned a deaf ear to all idealistic suggestions."27 Insurance companies were also targeted, largely through the connections of endowment campaign committee member Robert Henderson.

As would be the case in the campaign for the National Research Fund, the lukewarm response shown by potential corporate donors to the scientists' cause was chilled further by legal realities that dissuaded them from making outright gifts. The contracts for mathematical services were one possible solution to this problem, but they proved to be of little appeal or utility. Another scheme was developed, however, that turned out to be somewhat more successful. Since its founding, the American Mathematical Society had relied on membership dues to finance its activities. Turning back to that tradition in the midst of the troubled campaign, Coolidge, Veblen, and their colleagues devised a new category of "sustaining memberships." With the payment of at least $100 in dues annually, the sustaining member had, among other privileges, the right to nominate a number of regular members who did not have to pay dues. The society also designated a category of "patron" for subscribers who contributed $500 or more annually.28

By the campaign's conclusion at the end of 1925, the AMS had obtained pledges from thirty-seven sustaining members and four patrons. Gifts from all sources, excluding the GEB subvention, totaled $55,000, of which more than $25,000 had come from AMS members.29 No support for the endowment had come from the large philanthropies, and

26 "Memorandum on the Endowment Fund of the American Mathematical Society," n.d. (probably 1924), Veblen Papers, Box 17; and Coolidge to Veblen, 3 Jan. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3. General Electric eventually pledged $2,000 over four years; see Veblen to Coolidge, 23 May 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3.

27 Veblen to Coolidge, 19 Feb. 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 3. Daniel Kevles points out in his analysis of the National Research Fund campaign that, as a monopoly, AT&T could safely contribute to support pure science research without fear of stimulating competition; see Kevles, Physicists (cit. n. 1), p. 187.

28 On the National Research Fund campaign see Kevles, Physicists, pp. 185-187; on the new membership categories see Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, pp. 32-33. The tax code of the time had no provision for charitable or philanthropic gifts from corporations; only direct operating expenses could be deducted from income tax. In addition, laws restricting businesses from charitable giving were only beginning to be revised to permit technological industries to support scientific activity. See Kevles, Physicists, pp. 186-187.

29Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, p. 32.


corporate donors had been willing to make only minimal contributions. Appeals to "duty" and "moral obligation" in soliciting industrial support were not only ineffective but be- trayed a remarkable arrogance and naivet6 on the part of the academic mathematicians in the AMS. Their dismissal as "mercenary" of industry expectations that mathematical work should have tangible, measurable, concrete relevance, and their preference for solicitations based on the "higher point of view" and "idealistic suggestions," exposed an enormous gulf between industry and organized mathematics in America in the 1920s. This gulf would remain as mathematicians sought resources to make their position within research universities more secure. It was to this new goal that Oswald Veblen next turned his fundraising energies, as he took part in an ambitious, and successful, development campaign for Prince- ton University that helped to make its mathematics department arguably the most important in the nation by the decade's end.30

FROM GENTLEMEN'S COLLEGE TO RESEARCH UNIVERSITY: BUILDING A CENTRAL ROLE

FOR MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE AT PRINCETON

After more than a hundred years as a provincial college for gentleman, Princeton took an important step toward becoming a research university in 1905 when university president Woodrow Wilson-hoping to improve undergraduate education by providing opportunities for closely supervised study-instituted the preceptorial system. Conceived on the Oxbridge model, this new arrangement allowed Wilson to bring a large collection of dynamic young scholars to his college; many of them would stay and work toward its expansion in the following decades. Wilson's interests, happily, converged with those of department leaders who were looking for ways to foster research and enhance the status not only of Princeton's departments but of American science more generally.

Shortly after Wilson became Princeton's president in 1903, his longtime friend, the mathematician Henry Burchard Fine, was named dean of the faculty. Fine, like most of his colleagues on the faculty, had been at Princeton since his undergraduate days. He did make two brief visits to Germany, one to study for his Ph.D. with Felix Klein in Leipzig in 1884/1885, the other to work with Leopold Kronecker in Berlin in the summer of 1891. These sojourns in the "main current of mathematics" in Europe stirred Fine, as similar experiences did so many other American scientists of his generation, not only to pursue research himself but to try to enhance opportunities for the study and practice of science in domestic institutions.3'

Wilson's planned expansion of the faculty gave Fine the chance to influence decisively the character of the physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology departments, as well as his own Department of Mathematics. Among the men he helped to secure in permanent

30 During the 1920s, major development campaigns at a number of other research universities-including the University of Chicago and Harvard University, which together with Princeton formed the "Big Three" departments of American mathematics and served as the core for its research talent-also enhanced resources for mathematics. On the "Big Three" see Parshall and Rowe, Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community, p. 435.

31 Oswald Veblen, "Henry Burchard Fine-In Memoriam," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 1929, 35:726-730, on p. 727. Wilson, the first non-clergyman to hold the office, resigned the Princeton presidency in 1910 to become governor of New Jersey. Fine continued as dean of the faculty but also carried primary administrative respon- sibilities for the university during the next two years, until the next president was appointed. At that time Fine was named dean of the departments of science, a position he held until his accidental death in 1928. On Princeton's rise to prominence as a research university see Geiger, To Advance Knowledge (cit. n. 2), pp. 74, 200-203; on American mathematicians abroad see Parshall and Rowe, Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community, pp. 189-259.


posts were the astronomer Henry Norris Russell, the physicist Owen Richardson, the bi- ologist Edwin Conklin, and the mathematicians Luther Eisenhart and Oswald Veblen. Nearly as important-at least for mathematics-was the large number of promising younger scholars and distinguished foreigners who passed through Princeton's department for shorter periods. These short appointments foreshadowed in their impact the postdoctoral fellowships and international exchanges that would characterize the expansion of American science during the 1920s and 1930s by bringing both talented young men and established European mathematicians into contact with Fine's permanent group. These visitors helped to disseminate the influence of the Princeton group throughout the country, while at the same time helping to maintain its own high level of energy for many years.32

"THE VALUE OF PURE SCIENCE RESEARCH"

In 1925, to support the expansion of Princeton's faculty and an ambitious building plan, President John Grier Hibben launched the university on an open-ended campaign to raise an endowment of $20 million.33 Princeton's progress-minded scientists made sure that support for scientific research was one important goal; specifically, they sought $3 million to finance research professorships and the construction of new facilities, including a building to house the mathematics department and the mathematics and physics library. The exact parameters of the campaign's goals and its rhetoric were determined by the departmental leaders who worked on its behalf, including Fine, Eisenhart, and Veblen.

The network of connections and the expertise in negotiation that Princeton's scientists had developed through their involvement in wartime research and national organizations guided them to put quickly in motion an ambitious appeal to the General Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. Mathematics figured prominently from the start of their solicitations. The establishment of a mathematical research institute was among the very first projects for which Princeton sought support. Such an institute was of special interest to Oswald Veblen. He began seeking funding for his idea in early 1924, following his successful lobbying the previous autumn to add mathematics to the fields supported by the NRC postgraduate fellowships. In letters to Simon Flexner of the Rockefeller Institute and Vernon Kellogg of the National Research Council, Veblen outlined both the reasons underlying what he perceived as the compelling need of American mathematics for such an institute and the general structure he thought it should take. He argued that while mathematicians were hired by universities on the basis of their research abilities, most of their efforts once appointed were of necessity focused on teaching-largely elementary in nature-rather than research.

He [the chosen mathematician] was preferred to other men, when appointed, because of his scientific distinction. But just because he has a sense of responsibility and reacts in a normal way to his environment, it is only a small fraction of his energy that goes into research. The university authorities never know the difference and give him his rightful share of respect as a loyal member of the community.

So we have arrived at the stage where we recognize ability in scientific research as a basis for university appointments but not as a primary occupation for the appointees. This statement is not strictly true in sciences like physics and chemistry, for the universities which have great laboratories usually recognize the absurdity of maintaining such plants without a respectable

32 Veblen, "Fine-In Memoriam," p. 729. 33 Kohler, Partners in Science (cit. n. 2), pp. 210-211.


output of research. It is brilliantly untrue in astronomy. But in mathematics it is true almost without an exception.34

American mathematicians, according to Veblen, were still struggling with the problem that scientists in American colleges had faced since they began trying in earnest to pursue research in the late nineteenth century: too much teaching, too little time for scientific work. An institute devoted solely to mathematical investigations could remedy this, at least for a few fortunate mathematical workers; it was a natural step to follow the establishment of postdoctoral fellowships in mathematics, as it would provide opportunities for developed scholars to devote uninterrupted time to research. The costs would be almost entirely limited to salaries, with only modest requirements for library materials, computing ma- chines, and support staff. In his request to Flexner, Veblen hastened to add that the appointees to such an institute could be expected to "be provided with the equivalent of the routine work which is always present in laboratory sciences," in addition to their personal research projects, and suggested that editing a mathematical journal and preparing a new mathematical encyclopedia were potential endeavors of this type.35

By the time Veblen had an opportunity to make a concrete proposal for his institute- first to President Hibben and later, on Princeton's behalf, in a preliminary proposal to the GEB-his vision had shifted toward a focus on cooperative efforts between mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers on "the problems of the structure of matter." Veblen argued that Princeton, with its advanced program of research in analysis situs and the geometry of paths and established patterns of cooperation between physicists and mathematicians, was uniquely suited for the establishment of an institute devoted to "attacking physical problems from a mathematical base." He also emphasized that a program such as he suggested would be greatly preferable to the endowment of research professorships: it would enable mathematicians at all stages of their careers to benefit from the ample time for research, whereas he worried that research professorships would tend to be given to men "who would often have passed the most active stage of research."36 Many of Veblen's suggestions were ultimately put into practice with the establishment of the Institute for Advanced Study some years later, but the rhetorical strategies he used to try to sell the institute to the Princeton administration and then to the GEB were soon woven into campaign literature soliciting funds to support Princeton's mathematics department.

The final proposal Princeton submitted to the GEB included no provision for a mathematical institute or for "coordinated research" into broad problems supposedly amenable to multidisciplinary investigation. Instead, it included requests-Veblen's reservations ap- parently ignored-for the support of endowed professorships in several natural science departments, visiting professorships, graduate fellowships, and the construction of a mathematics building. Princeton initially sought more than $3 million from the GEB. The ultimate commitment was for $1 million, contingent on Princeton raising the remainder from other sources.37

34 Veblen to Simon Flexner, 23 Feb. 1924, Faculty Files: Oswald Veblen, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey; and Veblen to Vernon Kellogg, 10 June 1924, Veblen Papers, Box 29.

35 Veblen to Simon Flexner, 23 Feb. 1924. By the time Veblen made his appeal to Kellogg, this suggestion had been dropped. Such an encyclopedia, if it had followed European exemplars such as the Encyclopddie der mathematischen Wissenschaften, would have been a significant research contribution.

36 "Institute for Mathematical Research at Princeton," n.d., Veblen Papers, Box 29; and Veblen to John Grier Hibben, n.d. [1924], Veblen Papers, Box 29.

37 Kohler, Partners in Science (cit. n. 2), pp. 209-212. Kohler recounts how Princeton's "scientific entrepre- neurs" from three natural science departments put together a proposal that was at once sensitive to the GEB's interest in "cooperative research and coordination of disciplines" and also respectful of traditional disciplinary boundaries. Veblen's rhetoric is clearly consonant with this approach.

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While Princeton's loyal graduates were proving themselves in the postwar decade to be remarkably generous toward their alma mater, solicitation of funds from this group for the specific support of scientific and mathematical research required a bit of explanation. Princeton's primary mission had always been the effective education of young men from a certain class. This was not changing in the 1920s; the percentage of private school graduates in Princeton's classes climbed as high as 90 percent through the decade. Pro- fessional schools, appearing on campuses throughout the Ivy League early in the century, were explicitly eschewed by Princeton-an especially clear sign that Princetonians believed that education should remain something other than primarily utilitarian.38 Even graduate training in the sciences and humanities acquired a unique character at Princeton with the establishment during Wilson's tenure (though against his judgment) of a residen- tial quadrangle expressly for graduate students, similar to but removed from the rest of the campus; proponents argued that graduate students would be enriched by the collegiate- like experience.39

Given this perception of the role of their alma mater, Princeton alumni were unlikely to be very receptive to appeals for the support of scientific research grounded in claims of its practicality or its importance for the continuing technological success of American industry-rhetoric that was the hallmark of financial appeals by scientists throughout the postwar decade. Instead, the campaign propaganda for the Princeton Fund emphasized another aspect of "the value of pure science research." A pamphlet with that title began its pitch by stating, "The three great functions of a university are to train young people in the art of living, to guide them in the search for truth and actually to engage in the pursuit of truth."40 While some references to the practical contributions of science occur throughout the campaign literature, the appeals mostly reiterate older, more traditional cultural arguments for the pursuit of science and mathematics within the university.

Both laboratory work and the study of mathematics were felt by late Victorian educators in America to be important aids in the proper moral development of young minds.41 Both, in different ways, taught mental discipline and encouraged the virtuous habit of seeking truth. The virtues inculcated through the practice of science became identifying charac- teristics of scientists themselves, and the image of scientists as sober, hardworking seekers after truth persisted even after alternatives were presented. While depictions of Einstein as an ethereal genius, only tenuously connected to everyday human concerns as he chased after the most fundamental theories of nature, fascinated the American public in the early 1920s, Sinclair Lewis's widely read Arrowsmith (published in 1925) reinforced the older image of scientists. Princeton's campaign propaganda evoked both of these cultural views of science to coax its alumni into the support of scientific research.

The appeals for the campaign stressed two points: that contact with scientists engaged

38 Geiger, To Advance Knowledge (cit. n. 2), p. 136 (private school representation). These sentiments also helped to make expansion of the undergraduate engineering program at Princeton during this decade difficult, although it was a high priority for Hibben. See Kohler, Partners in Science, p. 211.

39Geiger, To Advance Knowledge, p. 201. The struggle that accompanied the planning and construction of Princeton's graduate quadrangle is chronicled in Willard Thorp et al., The Princeton Graduate School: A History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1978), pp. 103-151.

40 "The Value of Pure Science Research," Princeton Fund pamphlet, 1928, Fundraising: 18th c. to 1920s, Princeton University Archives, Princeton, New Jersey. This pamphlet was based on an address delivered by Karl Compton at Lehigh University.

41 See David A. Hollinger, "Inquiry and Uplift: Late Nineteenth-Century American Academics and the Moral Efficacy of Scientific Practice," in The Authority of Experts, ed. Thomas Haskell (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 142-156.


in the pursuit of new scientific truths would enrich the education of young men by devel- oping their mental powers and arousing their creative curiosity, and that the particular truths pursued by Princeton's scientists should be those of pure science and should be as "fundamental" as possible. The first line of argument strategically linked increased support of science with the traditional mission of the undergraduate college; the second helped to create for the alumni an image of a particularly refined style of science, ultimately con- tributing to practical advances but proximately concerned only with expanding the horizons of human knowledge. This style of science, much more than a science justified primarily by its utility, was exemplified by mathematical and theoretical physics, a fact that was exploited by both the mathematics and physics departments in their appeals for support.

A pamphlet produced for the mathematics department illustrated the ideal dual role of Princeton's scientific faculty. It asserted that as every science progresses, it simultaneously yields more applications to everyday life and industry and becomes more mathematical. Therefore, it is "a fundamental duty" of mathematics departments "to provide the general student with such training and instruction as will enable him to have some grasp of the mathematical aspects of our civilization." But emphasis in teaching must be placed upon "understanding of the great concepts of mathematics, rather than skill in technique." In outlining the department's offerings, the pamphlet described a course on "the theory of time and space," intended for general students, in some detail, tapping into the vast reserves of popular interest in relativity theory and tying the activities of Princeton's mathematicians to this revolutionary scientific episode.42

The discussion of the research program of the department began with an account of work in mathematical physics, then emphasized that "the physical sciences are now at the beginning of a new era in which further progress is dependent on the discovery and ex- ploitation of new mathematical ideas and methods" and likened the current situation to the era of the development of the Newtonian theory of gravitation, when "any contribution to mathematical physics is likely to become important." Faint echoes of Veblen's research institute proposal can be heard in the assertion that this "spontaneous" development of interest in mathematical physics provides a special opportunity for establishing a "school of applied mathematics." This theme is elaborated in the pamphlet's final section, entitled "Perpetuating a Tradition," which compared Princeton to the Mathematical Institute at Gottingen. Gottingen, where Felix Klein had established a rich tradition of interactive training and research for mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and others, remained an exemplar for Veblen and the other Princeton mathematicians as they worked to create a similar institutional haven for cooperative research.43

This well-crafted propaganda perhaps served a greater role in justifying the allocation of resources than in raising money. Mathematics and science at Princeton received remarkable support from a single benefactor who -fortunately for the mathematics department-had a special, personal commitment to favor the wishes of Veblen and his colleagues. More than $2 million (the full amount required to match the GEB pledge) was donated by Thomas Davies Jones, of Princeton's class of 1876, and his niece Gwethalyn, whose father, David Benton Jones (who died in 1923), had also been a member of the class of 1876. Both men served as trustees during the early years of the century, and it

42 "The Role of Mathematics," Princeton Fund pamphlet, Fundraising: 18th c. to 1920s, Princeton University Archives.

43 Ibid. On the influence of Klein and his institute on American mathematics more generally see Parshall and Rowe, Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community, pp. 253-254, 353-354.


was during Wilson's time at Princeton that Thomas Jones and Henry Fine became close friends. While David showed an early interest in science-he was the Class of 1860 Fellow in Experimental Science in 1876/1877, studied at Leipzig for a short time, and received an A.M. in science from Princeton in 1879-Thomas Jones's strongest connection to science and mathematics seemed to be his long-standing friendship with Fine. The Joneses' gifts (which coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the brothers' graduation) included money designated for four research chairs in different science departments, support for professors' salaries, and full funding for the construction of the mathematics building. Among the research chairs the Joneses funded were the Henry Fine Professorship of Math- ematics, endowed by Thomas and named-as was the prospective mathematics building- after Fine's tragic death from a cycling accident in 1928, and the Thomas B. Jones Pro- fessorship in Mathematical Physics, endowed by Gwethalyn for joint administration by the mathematics and physics departments.44

Veblen, who was named the first Henry Fine Professor of Mathematics, became inti- mately involved in the design and construction of the new mathematics building (see Figure 3). Fine Hall in many ways made tangible Veblen's personal commitment to facilitating interaction between mathematicians and physicists. The site selected for the new building was directly adjacent to Palmer Physical Laboratory, and the two buildings were joined by a connecting hallway. Along with this proximity to the labs, numerous details throughout the building, from its decorations-which included formulas of Newton, Einstein, and Heisenberg in the stained glass windows (see Figure 4) and a quotation from Einstein carved into a mantle-to its tea room, displayed Veblen's concern for enhancing com- munication between the disciplines. The daily teas, said to have originated over a Bunsen burner in Veblen's office in Palmer, were attended by members of both departments and evidently were intended to provide a convenient forum for informal contact. In an interview soon after the building was occupied, Veblen explained, "This increase of the solidarity of the mathematical group and its closer relationship to the physics group was definitely in mind in the planning of the common room."45

This new intimacy between Princeton's mathematicians and physicists suited Veblen well, as he continued to be deeply interested in pursuing research on the geometrical aspects of general relativity theory. But while Veblen was widely recognized as a skilled geometer, his work on relativity failed to interest many other researchers, particularly physicists. The linkage of mathematics to physics proved to be relatively short lived as a major focus of the Princeton mathematical community. Thanks to the generous resources secured by the efforts of Veblen and his colleagues, Princeton's mathematicians were free

44Veblen, "Fine-In Memoriam" (cit. n. 31), p. 729. The Jones family had previously donated funds to the physics and electrical engineering departments and subsequent to this campaign gave additional money for faculty salaries. While the size of the Jones gift was extraordinary, that the Princeton mathematics department benefited so much from the generosity of a single, malleable donor with personal contacts at the university was not unusual in the fundraising climate of the times. For example, fundraising at the University of Chicago during the same period was shaped to a great extent by the personal charisma of Max Mason, who was president of the university for a short time, and by the connections and commitment of several key trustees, including Harold Swift and Julius Rosenwald. The mathematics building erected at Chicago during the late 1920s was financed by gifts of $250,000 each from Rosenwald and Bernard Eckhart, another local industrialist. See Loren J. Butler, "Mathe- matical Physics and the American Mathematics Community: Disciplinary Values, Professional Interests, and the Place of Borderland Research-1880-1940" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. Chicago, 1992), pp. 188-194.

45Princeton Alumni Weekly, 30 Oct. 1931, p. 1, clipping, Fundraising: 18th c. to 1920s, Princeton University Archives.


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Figure 3. Fine Hall under construction, ca. 1930. (Courtesy of Princeton University Archives, Princeton, New Jersey.)

to pursue all sorts of research; for them, as for the majority of their American colleagues, most often that was research in pure mathematics, not mathematical physics.46

The Princeton mathematics department was further enriched after 1933 by the establishment-with Veblen's guidance-of the privately funded Institute for Advanced Study. For most of the 1930s, the institute faculty in the School of Mathematics and its visitors shared Fine Hall with Princeton's mathematics department. Veblen assumed one of the first institute professorships, further cementing close ties between the institute-which would have no students of its own-and the mathematics department. Along with Veblen, the institute's first faculty members included James Alexander (another Princeton mathematician), Albert Einstein, and John von Neumann. They were soon joined by Hermann Weyl and Marston Morse and hosted many prominent visitors through the decade. These first permanent institute members were selected in part to maintain a careful balance between mathematics and (mathematical) physics, a balance that was strongly advocated by

46On Princeton's importance as a mathematical center in the 1930s see Aspray, "Emergence of Princeton" (cit. n. 5); and Parshall and Rowe, Emergence of the American Mathematical Research Community, pp. 448- 449. Even in the relatively idyllic atmosphere for mathematical physics at Princeton, collaborative efforts continued to meet with various kinds of resistance. Most notable was the difficulty the departments had filling the joint chair Jones endowed for mathematical physics. Despite many offers made and prolonged discussions between the departments, the chair had no permanent occupant until Eugene Wigner accepted the post in 1938. See Research Committee Minutes 1931-1938, Department of Physics Records, Princeton University Archives; and Butler, "Mathematical Physics and the American Mathematics Community" (cit. n. 44), pp. 159-162.


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both Veblen and another mathematician who helped shape the plans for the institute, Harvard University's George D. Birkhoff.47

The celebrated institute helped bring prestige and publicity to the American mathematical profession and stood as the ultimate achievement of the community-building activities of Veblen between the wars. Devoted to the support of a tiny research-oriented elite and divorced from broader educational or technological goals, the institute made no promises it could not keep about the relevance of the work produced within its walls. It did, however, showcase mathematics and its relations to physics and offer mathematicians a special sort of haven-an actual haven for many immigrant scholars who used invitations from the institute as a way to leave troubled European homelands in the years before World War II, and an ideological haven for American mathematicians, for whom the establishment of an exclusive research institution devoted to abstract scholarship was a sign that the mathematics community in the United States had finally emerged from a prolonged professional adolescence.48

While pure mathematics flourished, mathematical physics as encouraged and practiced by Veblen became a stepchild in American science-too abstract for most physicists, not consistently interesting enough for many mathematicians. The flush of enthusiasm shown by American mathematicians for relativity theory and quantum physics faded as the work and institutional activities of their physicist colleagues diverged from their mathematical interests. Cooperative institutional efforts remained rare. Linking mathematics to physics and chemistry had seemed promising in the years after World War I, but the intellectual and strategic reasons for the linkage had more or less disappeared by the mid 1930s, and pure mathematics remained the paramount research focus of American mathematicians.49

CONCLUSIONS

Oswald Veblen's fundraising and institution-building activities helped ensure that the top mathematical researchers in the United States would be recognized and supported by se- curing a place for mathematics in the expansion of university-based research science. These achievements in a few select departments-Chicago and Harvard as well as Princeton-

47 On the establishment of the Institute for Advanced Study see Laura Porter, "From Intellectual Sanctuary to Social Responsibility: The Founding of the Institute for Advanced Study, 1930-1933" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Univ., 1988).

48 On the migration of European mathematicians to the United States and the role of the Institute for Advanced Study see Lipman Bers, "The European Mathematicians' Migration to America," in Century of Mathematics in America, ed. Duren (cit. n. 5), pp. 231-243; and Nathan Reingold, "Refugee Mathematicians in the United States of America, 1933-1941: Reception and Reaction," Annals of Science, 1981, 38:313-338.

49 This essay has traced Veblen's efforts to ensure that mathematics would join physics and chemistry as they sought to distinguish themselves from other university-based disciplines by seeking generous new levels of financial support for their research activities. Mathematicians had other reasons to seek alliances with the sciences in the first four decades of this century, as educational reformers periodically came to question the place of mathematics in secondary and collegiate curricula. Some of these challenges came from proponents of engineering education, while others were aligned with general educational movements of the day. The concern stemming from the latter set of challenges was that mathematics had to be demonstrated to be essential to the modern training of scientists and engineers, rather than merely an outdated adjunct to the classical curriculum (itself out of favor). Advocates for engineering education, on the other hand, suggested that mathematical departments did not give courses suitable for young engineers. For some background on these episodes, which merit further study, see Archibald, Semicentennial History of the AMS, pp. 77-78; E. B. Wilson, "Let Us Have Calculus Early," Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 1913, 20:30-36; Earl Hedrick to William Cairns, 15 Nov. 1933, Mathematical Association of America Papers, Archive for the History of American Mathematics, 68-4; Cairns to Arnold Dresden, 22 Nov. 1933, Mathematical Association of America Papers, 67-4; and Dresden to W. Betz, 27 Jan. 1933, Mathematical Association of America Papers, 67-4.


appear to have had reverberations throughout the American mathematical community. The number of Ph.D.'s awarded in mathematics skyrocketed: almost as many doctors of mathematics graduated in the decade after 1925 as had been produced in all the years prior.50 Although the majority of them came from the handful of elite, research-oriented departments, few of these new mathematicians were committed researchers:

not more than one-third of the persons taking doctor's degrees have made as substantial contributions to research as would be evidenced by the publication of three or more research articles; and ... not more than one-fifth have really been consistently productive in their contributions. About 60 (or 5%) of the doctors are responsible for half of the published pages of research.... Contrary to the general opinion, America seems in recent years to be adding to the quantity of personnel, but not improving the average quality.

Furthermore, the growth of the mathematical community outpaced university employment opportunities, and the Depression seemed to leave young academic mathematicians dis- proportionately unemployed.51 The practice of mathematical research, then, remained primarily an activity of a small fraction of the mathematical community.

But outside the main sphere of interest of the AMS and elite research departments like Princeton's, new kinds of mathematical activity were beginning to take hold in the United States. Activity in areas of applied mathematics, imbedded in the young aerospace and electronics industries, began to strengthen and draw practitioners. While many of the first mathematicians in these fields were educated in Europe, young American-trained mathematicians were also in their ranks. These mathematicians took some care to distinguish their work on mathematical applications from mathematical physics as well as from pure mathematics. Here were mathematicians doing work with immediate relevance and value to industry, and they saw the importance of maintaining a separate identity for their sort of mathematics. They saw mathematics as a set of tools to be applied to the "definite practical demands" of industry.52 By speaking out to distinguish their activities from basic or "pure" mathematics, these industrial mathematicians were also distancing themselves from the kind of empty claims about the value of mathematics to industry that had been made during the AMS campaign.

Applied mathematicians sought their own institutional support and organization, and existing mathematics departments and institutions did little to stop-and often encouraged-their move to independence. Shortly after World War II, stimulated by the success

50 R. G. D. Richardson, "The Ph.D. Degree and Mathematical Research," Amer. Math. Mon., 1936, 43:199- 215, on p. 201. Richardson counted 621 Ph.D. degrees in mathematics granted by American institutions from 1925 to 1934 and 664 from 1862 to 1924. One sixth of the mathematics degrees came from the University of Chicago, which awarded 101 mathematics doctorates from 1925 to 1934. Princeton produced a total of 48 mathematics Ph.D.'s, 22 of them from 1925 to 1934.

51 Ibid., pp. 211-212 (quotation), 208. Richardson noted, however, "Without doubt the unemployment problem for college teachers is aggravated by the financial depression, but in main outlines it might have been foreseen by competent executives." For comparable figures on the employment of physicists, who fared better than the mathematicians, see Spencer Weart, "The Physics Business in America, 1919-1940: A Statistical Reconnais- sance," in The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives, ed. Nathan Reingold (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 1979), pp. 295-358, on p. 310.

52 George Campbell to Thornton Fry, 25 Apr. 1930, Oswald Veblen Papers, Box 20. See also John L. Greenberg and Judith R. Goodstein, "Theodore Von Karman and the Arrival of Applied Mathematics in the U.S., 1930- 1940" (California Institute of Technology Humanities Working Paper 77, 1983), pp. 12-14. Proponents of these two conceptions of applied mathematics-problem driven and engineering oriented or fundamental and physics oriented-were brought into dialogue with one another when the AMS considered the establishment of an applied mathematics journal in the late 1920s. See Feffer, "Mathematical Physics and the Planning of American Math- ematics" (cit. n. 12), pp. 79-8 1.


of wartime projects in applied mathematics, American mathematics cleaved into two nearly distinct communities. One of these was the direct heir to the mathematical research community founded in the early years of the century and situated within elite university departments. The other was born from the technological industries of the interwar years. In the end, the efforts of Veblen and his colleagues to secure a protected place for mathematics within the university-based expansion of science during the 1920s helped bring about that cleavage and insured that the mainstream of American mathematical research would not be diverted toward industry or applications, but would remain free and "pure."

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