Empire & Emperor

The Carnegie Institution of Washington is the biggest scientific empire under one management in the world.* Its expeditions study archeology in Mexico, terrestrial magnetism in Peru, anthropology in Java; but its eight major provinces lie in the U. S.: Mount Wilson Observatory, perched on a mountain top near Pasadena; its division of plant biology, with headquarters at Stanford University; its department of embryology at Baltimore; its department of genetics at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island; its geophysical laboratory and its department of terrestrial magnetism at Washington; its nutrition laboratory in Boston; its division of historical research, whose headquarters are in Washington.

Andrew Carnegie--who was a practical man, but believed in pure science, and was especially fascinated by astronomy--set up the Institution in 1902. His total endowment was $22,000,000, since grown to $34,000,000. This week, the Institution completes its 1939 disbursements--from a total budget of $1,519,000.

The new emperor of this well-revenued scientific empire is Dr. Vannevar Bush. Dr. Bush's annual report and the Institution's Year Book are packjammed with accounts of what the empire got for its money in the 16 months ending last November. Samples:

Stars & Galaxies. At Mount Wilson, Dr. Seth Barnes Nicholson discovered two new, tiny satellites of Jupiter--only 19 and 15 miles in diameter--bringing the known total of Jupiter's attendants to eleven (of which four have been known since Galileo turned one of the first telescopes on the big planet). Professor Alfred Harrison Joy plotted the rotation of the Milky Way--the great star galaxy, six hundred thousand trillion miles across, to which the sun and all other visible stars belong. The regions near the centre of the galaxy are rotating fastest, the outermost regions slowest. By measuring the speeds of Cepheid variable stars, Professor Joy found that the region of the sun, two-thirds of the distance from the centre, rotates once every 207,000,000 years.

Mice & Men. Leukemia is a blood disease in which white blood cells proliferate wildly, invade organs and tissues. At the Department of Genetics, Dr. Edwin Carleton MacDowell and his co-workers found that leukemia is not transmitted by a bacterium or virus, that it is a malignant disorder resembling cancer. Moreover, they discovered that some mice could be made immune by shooting into them leukemic cells inactivated by mild heat (115DEG F.). So far, this work has not produced a cure for leukemia in man, but may lead to one eventually.

Eleven-Day Eggs. A research crew at the Department of Embryology got hold of two human ova only eleven days old, the youngest fertilized human eggs known. Since human ova usually spend about nine days after fertilization in the Fallopian tubes and uterine cavity before attachment to the wall of the uterus, these ova had probably been attached only two days. They were extracted from unidentified women for unnamed surgical reasons, and supplied to the Institution's embryologists by Dr. Arthur Tremain Hertig of Harvard. The ova show that the early stages of embryonic development are not, as used to be thought, significantly different in man and other animals. The Hertig ova convinced the Institution's embryologists that these early processes are practically the same in man and the rhesus monkey.

Uranium Attack. The Department of Terrestrial Magnetism has a powerfully equipped atom-smashing laboratory, headed by Dr. Merle Anthony Tuve. Early this year, when two Germans announced disintegration of the heavy uranium atom with release of 200,000,000 electron-volts of energy (most powerful man-made atomic explosion), Dr. Tuve and co-workers promptly confirmed the discovery, added the find that the uranium fragments become radioactive, continuing to emit particles for a few seconds after the impacts have stopped.

Emperor. Only 49, a small, keen-eyed, fast-thinking, tireless, eloquent Yankee, Vannevar ("Van") Bush year ago stepped into the presidential shoes of Dr. John Campbell Merriam (who is officially retired but continues his own researches in paleontology). Dr. Bush takes his new job in his stride. Besides learning the ropes of the Carnegie Institution, he finds time to chairman the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the National Academy of Sciences' division of engineering. Besides, he loves symphonies, himself flutes, hunts, sails, quotes Kipling and Omar Khayyam by the yard. In New Hampshire he has a farm where he raises turkeys.

Son of a clergyman, grandson of a whaling sea captain, Van Bush went to Tufts, taught there, moved on to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he became vice president and dean of engineering.

* Not to be confused with the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh (art exhibitions, museum, school of technology, library school, music hall) or Carnegie Corp. of New York City, whose flexible charter enables it to grant money for scientific research and social experiments.

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