Steven Turner - The Science of James Smithson: Discoveries from the Smithsonian Founder

The Long Road to Staffa

Edinburgh, London, and Paris

Tabasheer

Calamine

Minium

The Sulphuret from Huel Boys

On the Composition of Zeolite

Ulmin

A Saline Substance from Mount Vesuvius

The Colouring Matters of Some Vegetables

A Sulphuret of Lead and Arsenic, and Plomb Gomme

Fibrous Copper and Capillary Metallic Tin

Sulphate of Barium and Fluoride of Calcium

A New Test for Arsenic and Smithsons Pile

Smithsons Lamp and the Sappare

An Aristocratic Science Dabbler?

Chloride of Potassium

Compounds of Fluorine

Egyptian Colors

Kirkdale Cave and Penns Theory

The Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge

W HO WAS J AMES S MITHSON ? That question has been asked since the 1830s, when a little-known Englishman left his fortune, as his will specified, to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.

This was not Smithsons first choice. He initially left the estate to his nephew, who controlled it until that nephew died in 1835, after which it was then supposed to go to his heirs. But the nephew had been childless, and in that case the will, in its very last clause, required the money go to the United States.

Smithson had not talked to anyone about this, and the phrase an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men served as the only instructions he ever gave for how the money should be used. In 1838, when Smithsons estate arrived in New York harbor, it consisted of his clothes and personal possessions, his papers, scientific instruments, and extensive mineral collection, and several boxes of gold coins. The coins were promptly melted down and reminted into $508,318.46 in US currencyabout 1.5 percent of the entire federal budget at the time. It was an enormous sum, and it took Congress almost eight years to decide what to do with it. Eventually Congress decided to honor Smithsons request, and in 1846 the funds were used to found the Smithsonian Institution, the vast museum complex whose buildings now line the National Mall in Washington, DC.

The Smithsonian thrived and grew, but there was always a desire within the institution to learn more about its founder. Smithson was known to have been a man of science, but beyond that little was known about him. The Smithsonian Annual Report for 1857 announced that a list of the papers published by Smithson, and a record of all the facts which could be gathered in relation to him, have been made, to serve hereafter for a more definite account of his life and labors than has yet appeared. That project was not yet completed when a fire that ravaged the Smithsonian Castle in 1865 destroyed most of Smithsons papers and all of his artifactsincluding his huge mineral collection.

The Smithsonian Castle was rebuilt, and in 1879, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Smithsons death, the institution made another attempt to reconstruct its founders history. Requests for information were posted in major American newspapers and journals and privately circulated in England.

Around the same time, an effort was made to understand Smithsons science and identify his scientific articles. Twenty-seven published scientific articles were found and subsequently reprinted in The Scientific Writings of James Smithson (1879). Along with the articles, this commemorative volume also included two reviews of Smithsons scientific character. One had been written by American chemist Walter R. Johnson in 1844, and the other was a newly commissioned work by twenty-five-year-old American mineralogist John Robin McDaniel Irby. Johnsons review was primarily factual, but Irbys expressed an opinion that would become the standard assessment of Smithson for the next century. He wrote:

We could wish Smithsons name to have been coupled with some great discovery, or with the apprehension of some far-reaching law that would have formed a worthy inscription for the portal of his institution. Though this be not gratified, we shall find that he appreciated the great problems before him and attempted their solution; that he knocked earnestly and worthily at the portal of great knowledge, and that although it was denied him to be the first to enter into the greater chambers, he was, nevertheless, no unworthy seeker.

This conclusion and its unspoken sense of disappointment set the tone for all subsequent assessments of Smithsons work. Even within the Smithsonian, the view was taken that although Smithson had been dedicated and hardworking, he had been little more than a scientific dabbler or a second-tier figure.

In 1904, Samuel Langley, the Smithsonian secretary, wrote in the Scientific American Supplement that Smithson is not to be classed among the leaders of scientific thought; but his ability and the usefulness of his contributions to knowledge, cannot be doubted. Twenty-five years later, on the centenary of Smithsons death, no one in the Smithsonian objected when the respected journal