Download or read book The Smithsonian Institution written by Walter Karp and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Smithsonian Institution an Establishment for the Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge Among Men written by Walter Karp (journaliste) and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Smithsonian Institution written by Walter Karp and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Funding Smithsonian Scientific Research written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-01-28 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report assesses whether the Smithsonian Institution should continue to receive direct federal appropriations for its scientific research programs or if this funding should be transferred to a peer-reviewed program open to all researchers in another agency. The report concludes that the National Museum of Natural History, the National Zoological Park, and the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education in Suitland should remain exempt from having to compete for federal research dollars because they make unique contributions to the scientific and museum communities. Three other Smithsonian research programs should continue to receive federal funding since they are performing science of the highest quality and already compete for much of their government research money.
Download or read book The Lost World of James Smithson written by Heather Ewing and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1836 the United States government received a strange and unprecedented gift - a bequest of 104,960 gold sovereigns (then worth half a million dollars) to establish a foundation in Washington 'for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men'. The Smithsonian Institution, as it would eventually be called, grew into the largest museum and research complex in the world. Yet it owes its existence to an Englishman who never set foot in the United States, and who has remained a shadowy figure for more than a hundred and fifty years. Smithson lived a restless life in the capitals of Europe during the turbulent years of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; at one time he was trailed by the French secret police, and later languished as a prisoner of war in Denmark for four long years. Yet despite a certain a penchant for gambling and fine living, he had, by the time of his death in Paris in 1829, amassed a financial fortune and a wealth of scientific papers that he left to the new democracy America. Spurned by his natural father and his country, he would be acknowledged for his own achievements in the New World. Drawing on unpublished diaries and letters from archives all over Europe and the United States, Heather Ewing tells the full and compelling story for the first time, revealing a life lived at the heart of the English Enlightenment and illuminating the mind that sparked the creation of America's greatest museum.
Download or read book The Science of James Smithson written by Steven Turner and published by Smithsonian Institution. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accessible exploration of the noteworthy scientific career of James Smithson, who left his fortune to establish the Smithsonian Institution. James Smithson is best known as the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, but few people know his full and fascinating story. He was a widely respected chemist and mineralogist and a member of the Royal Society, but in 1865, his letters, collection of 10,000 minerals, and more than 200 unpublished papers were lost to a fire in the Smithsonian Castle. His scientific legacy was further written off as insignificant in an 1879 essay published through the Smithsonian fifty years after his death--a claim that author Steven Turner demonstrates is far from the truth. By providing scientific and intellectual context to his work, The Science of James Smithson is a comprehensive tribute to Smithson's contributions to his fields, including chemistry, mineralogy, and more. This detailed narrative illuminates Smithson and his quest for knowledge at a time when chemists still debated thing as basic as the nature of fire, and struggled to maintain their networks amid the ever-changing conditions of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.
Download or read book The Stranger and the Statesman James Smithson John Quincy Adams and the Making of America s Greatest Museum written by Nina Burleigh and published by New Word City. This book was released on 2015-03-13 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In her illuminating and dramatic biography The Stranger and the Statesman, New York Times bestselling author Nina Burleigh reveals a little-known slice of history in the life and times of the man responsible for the creation of the United States' principal cultural institution, the Smithsonian. It was one of the nineteenth century's greatest philanthropic gifts - and one of its most puzzling mysteries. In 1829, a wealthy English naturalist named James Smithson left his library, mineral collection, and entire fortune to the "United States of America, to found... an establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men" - even though he had never visited the United States or known any Americans. In this fascinating book, Burleigh pieces together the reclusive benefactor's life, beginning with his origins as the Paris-born illegitimate son of the first Duke of Northumberland and a wild adventuress who preserved for her son a fortune through gall and determination. The book follows Smithson through his university years and his passionate study of minerals across Europe during the chaos of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Detailed are his imprisonment - simply for being an Englishman in the wrong place - his experiences in the gambling dens of France, and his lonely and painstaking scientific pursuits. After Smithson's death, nineteenth-century American politicians were given the task of securing his half-million dollars - the equivalent today of $50 million - and then trying to determine how to increase and diffuse knowledge from the muddy, brawling new city of Washington. Burleigh discloses how Smithson's bequest was nearly lost due to fierce battles among many clashing Americans - Southern slavers, states' rights advocates, nation-builders, corrupt frontiersmen, and Anglophobes who argued over whether a gift from an Englishman should even be accepted. She also reveals the efforts of the unsung heroes, mainly former president John Quincy Adams, whose tireless efforts finally saw Smithson's curious notion realized in 1846, with a castle housing the United States' first and greatest cultural and scientific establishment.
Download or read book The Smithsonian Institution written by Smithsonian Institution and published by . This book was released on 1879 with total page 1044 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Who Owns America s Past written by Robert C. Post and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From an insider's perspective, Robert C. Post ... offers insight into the politics of display and the interpretation of history. Never before has a book about the Smithsonian detailed the recent and dramatic shift from collection-driven shows, with artifacts meant to speak for themselves, to concept-driven exhibitions, in which objects aim to tell a story, displayed like illustrations in a book"--Dust jacket flap.
Download or read book Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley written by Ephraim George Squier and published by . This book was released on 1848 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Smithsonian Institution written by Paul H. Oehser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Smithsonian Institution has grown and prospered since the first edition of this book appeared in 1970, and Paul Oehser's revised edition is badly needed. New and expanded structures (the Air and Space Museum, the Hirshhorn, the National Museum of American Art, the National Portrait Gallery) and new undertakings (Smithsonian magazine, the Handbook of North American Indians series, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and prestigious symposia) richly serve the original purpose James Smithson envisioned in his will: " To found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." The heart of Oehser's original work has been left intact in this second edition. His is the only survey that combines the dramatic story of the Smithsonian's influence and expansion with the behind-the-scenes details of daily operations, structure, and administrative problems. The book has been updated to include all important developments of the last thirteen years, as well as to describe current plans for future expansion and program additions. The whole picture leads one to the conclusion that the world's largest museum complex, housing over seventy million objects, has succeeded—despite its air of old-fashioned traditionalism—in reflecting the adventure of the American experience and the insatiable curiosity and dynamics of the American spirit.
Download or read book The Smithsonian Institution written by Smithsonian Institution and published by . This book was released on 1901 with total page 1112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Science the Endless Frontier written by Vannevar Bush and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic case for why government must support science—with a new essay by physicist and former congressman Rush Holt on what democracy needs from science today Science, the Endless Frontier is recognized as the landmark argument for the essential role of science in society and government’s responsibility to support scientific endeavors. First issued when Vannevar Bush was the director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during the Second World War, this classic remains vital in making the case that scientific progress is necessary to a nation’s health, security, and prosperity. Bush’s vision set the course for US science policy for more than half a century, building the world’s most productive scientific enterprise. Today, amid a changing funding landscape and challenges to science’s very credibility, Science, the Endless Frontier resonates as a powerful reminder that scientific progress and public well-being alike depend on the successful symbiosis between science and government. This timely new edition presents this iconic text alongside a new companion essay from scientist and former congressman Rush Holt, who offers a brief introduction and consideration of what society needs most from science now. Reflecting on the report’s legacy and relevance along with its limitations, Holt contends that the public’s ability to cope with today’s issues—such as public health, the changing climate and environment, and challenging technologies in modern society—requires a more capacious understanding of what science can contribute. Holt considers how scientists should think of their obligation to society and what the public should demand from science, and he calls for a renewed understanding of science’s value for democracy and society at large. A touchstone for concerned citizens, scientists, and policymakers, Science, the Endless Frontier endures as a passionate articulation of the power and potential of science.
Download or read book Life on Display written by Karen A. Rader and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rich with archival detail and compelling characters, Life on Display uses the history of biological exhibitions to analyze museums’ shifting roles in twentieth-century American science and society. Karen A. Rader and Victoria E. M. Cain chronicle profound changes in these exhibitions—and the institutions that housed them—between 1910 and 1990, ultimately offering new perspectives on the history of museums, science, and science education. Rader and Cain explain why science and natural history museums began to welcome new audiences between the 1900s and the 1920s and chronicle the turmoil that resulted from the introduction of new kinds of biological displays. They describe how these displays of life changed dramatically once again in the 1930s and 1940s, as museums negotiated changing, often conflicting interests of scientists, educators, and visitors. The authors then reveal how museum staffs, facing intense public and scientific scrutiny, experimented with wildly different definitions of life science and life science education from the 1950s through the 1980s. The book concludes with a discussion of the influence that corporate sponsorship and blockbuster economics wielded over science and natural history museums in the century’s last decades. A vivid, entertaining study of the ways science and natural history museums shaped and were shaped by understandings of science and public education in the twentieth-century United States, Life on Display will appeal to historians, sociologists, and ethnographers of American science and culture, as well as museum practitioners and general readers.
Download or read book Animal Care and Management at the National Zoo written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2004-03-24 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interim report assesses issues related to animal management, husbandry, health, and care at the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park. The report finds that there are shortcomings in care and management that are threatening the well-being of the animal collection and identifies the "most pressing" issues that should be addressed.
Download or read book An Exhibit Denied written by Martin Harwit and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At 8:15 A.M., August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay released her load. For forty three seconds, the world's first atomic bomb plunged through six miles of clear air to its preset detonation altitude. There it exploded, destroying Hiroshima and eighty thousand of her citizens. No war had ever seen such instant devastation. Within nine days Japan surrendered. World War II was over and a nuclear arms race had begun. Fifty years later, the National Air and Space Museum was in the final stages of preparing an exhibition on the Enola Gay's historic mission when eighty-one members of Congress angrily demanded cancellation of the planned display and the resignation or dismissal of the museum's director. The Smithsonian tnstitution, of which the National Air and Space Museum is a part, is heavily dependent on congressional funding. The Institution's chief executive, Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman, in office only four months at the time, scrapped the exhibit as requested, and promised to personally oversee a new display devoid of any historic context. In the wake of that decision I resigned as the museum's director and left the Smithsonian.
Download or read book The Smithsonian s History of America in 101 Objects written by Richard Kurin and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Smithsonian Institution is America's largest, most important, and most beloved repository for the objects that define our common heritage. Now Under Secretary for Art, History, and Culture Richard Kurin, aided by a team of top Smithsonian curators and scholars, has assembled a literary exhibition of 101 objects from across the Smithsonian's museums that together offer a marvelous new perspective on the history of the United States. Ranging from the earliest years of the pre-Columbian continent to the digital age, and from the American Revolution to Vietnam, each entry pairs the fascinating history surrounding each object with the story of its creation or discovery and the place it has come to occupy in our national memory. Kurin sheds remarkable new light on objects we think we know well, from Lincoln's hat to Dorothy's ruby slippers and Julia Child's kitchen, including the often astonishing tales of how each made its way into the collections of the Smithsonian. Other objects will be eye-opening new discoveries for many, but no less evocative of the most poignant and important moments of the American experience. Some objects, such as Harriet Tubman's hymnal, Sitting Bull's ledger, Cesar Chavez's union jacket, and the Enola Gay bomber, tell difficult stories from the nation's history, and inspire controversies when exhibited at the Smithsonian. Others, from George Washington's sword to the space shuttle Discovery, celebrate the richness and vitality of the American spirit. In Kurin's hands, each object comes to vivid life, providing a tactile connection to American history. Beautifully designed and illustrated with color photographs throughout, The Smithsonian's History of America in 101 Objects is a rich and fascinating journey through America's collective memory, and a beautiful object in its own right.
