Alexander Dallas Bache
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Alexander Dallas Bache
American educator and scientist Alexander Dallas Bache (1806-1867) was the first president of the National Academy of Sciences.
Alexander Bache, the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was born in Philadelphia on July 19, 1806. He entered West Point at the age of 15. The youngest in his class, he graduated with highest achievement on July 1, 1825, and stayed on for a year as an assistant in engineering. During the following 2 years he worked as an Army construction engineer, assigned to Newport, R.I. There he met Nancy Clarke Fowler, whom he married in 1828. That year he resigned from the Army and accepted a professorship in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. As a member of the Franklin Institute for the Promotion of Mechanic Arts and of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, he conducted notable scientific studies in general mechanics, terrestrial magnetism, and weights and measures.
Bache's interest in the broader problems of education became a full-time occupation in 1836, when he accepted the presidency of a new college for the education of "poor male white orphan children." The college bore the name of its benefactor, Stephen Girard, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who had died in 1831. Bache's first duty was to travel to Europe to find out how such a school could be organized according to Girard's innovative desires. After 26 months of intense investigation into 278 schools, he published the lengthy, exacting Report on Education in Europe (1839). This study of comparative education, covering "the systems of general education" as well as the education of orphans, was very influential.
Ironically, the knowledge that Bache acquired in order to set up Girard College was used more for the advancement of public education in Philadelphia. When the opening of the college was delayed by financial and political problems, he offered to help organize the city's newly established Central High School and became its first principal in 1839. Adapting ideas derived from his observations of the Prussian educational system, he planned the curriculum with emphasis on science (Report to the Controllers of the Public Schools on the Reorganization of Central High School, 1839).
During his years of involvement with public education, Bache continued to engage in scientific study. In 1843 President Tyler appointed Bache superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey, a position he held until his death. Bache directed the expansion of the office's scientific activity. He was influential in establishing the National Academy of Sciences and was its first president (1863-1867). He died after a long, debilitating illness at Newport on Feb. 17, 1867.
Further Reading
Merle M. Odgers, Alexander Dallas Bache: Scientist and Educator (1947), is a substantial biography. A useful work is Benjamin Apthorp Gould, An Address in Commemoration ofAlexander Dallas Bache (1868), which contains a bibliography of Bache's writings. A good background study is Adolph E. Meyer, An Educational History of the American People (1957; 2d ed. 1967).
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Alexander Dallas Bache
| Alexander Dallas Bache | |
|---|---|
 Alexander Dallas Bache |
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| Born | July 19, 1806 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Died | February 17, 1867 (aged 60) Newport, Rhode Island, United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Physics |
Alexander Dallas Bache (July 19, 1806 – February 17, 1867) was an American physicist, scientist and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey mapping of the United States coastline.
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Biography
Alexander Bache was born in Philadelphia, the son of Richard Bache, Jr., and Sophia Burrell Dallas, nephew of George M. Dallas, and great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825, he acted as assistant professor there for some time. As a lieutenant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, he was engaged for a short time in the erection of coastal fortifications, including Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island. Bache resigned from the Army on June 1, 1829.
Bache spent the years 1836 to 1838 in Europe on behalf of the trustees of what became Girard College in 1848. Abroad, he examined European systems of education and, on his return, published a valuable report. From 1839 to 1842, he served as the first president of Central High School of Philadelphia, one of the oldest public high schools in the United States. He occupied the post of professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania from 1828 to 1841 and again from 1842 to 1843.
He married on September 30, 1838 at Newport, Rhode Island, Nancy Clark Fowler. She was born in Newport, Rhode Island, and died on January 13, 1870 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was his associate in the preparation of much of his published material.
They were the parents of one son, Henry Wood Bache, born in 1839 and died on November 7, 1878 at Bristol, Long Island, New York.
In 1843, on the death of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, Bache was appointed superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. He convinced the United States Congress of the value of this work and by means of the liberal aid it granted, he completed the mapping out of the whole coast by a skillful division of labor and the erection of numerous observing stations. In addition, magnetic and meteorological data was collected. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1845.[1] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 15 March 1858,[2] and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society on 24 May 1860.
After the Civil War, Bache was elected a 3rd Class Companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) in consideration of his contributions to the war effort.
He died at Newport, Rhode Island and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, where a monument was built by American architect Henry Hobson Richardson.
Two survey ships were named for him, the A. D. Bache of 1871 and its successor in 1901.
The cydippid ctenophore Pleurobrachia bachei A. Agassiz, 1860 was named for him; it was discovered in 1859 by Alexander Agassiz who was working as an engineer on a ship surveying the United States/Canada boundary between Washington State and British Columbia.[3]
See also
- The Bache Years (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Central Library)
- Alexander Dallas Bache: Leader of American Science and Second Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
- Alexander Dallas Bache Monument – Bache's tomb in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC.
- Richard Bache – Bache's grandfather
- Richard Bache, Jr. – Bache's father
References
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterB.pdf. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
- ^ "Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002". Royal Society of Edinburgh. http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/fellowship/all_fellows.pdf. Retrieved 31 March 2010.
- ^ Agassiz, G.R. 1913. Letters and recollections of Alexander Agassiz, with a sketch of his life and work, ed. by G.R. Agassiz. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 454 pages.
- Jansen, Axel. Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century Book (New York / Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2011). 352 pp. ISBN 978-3-593-39355-1
- Slotten, Hugh Richard (1994). Patronage, Practice and the Cuture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U. S. Coast Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43395-9.
- Jansen, Axel (2011). Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century. Frankfurt/New York: Campus. EAN 9783593393551
- C., J. (1868). "Obituary: Alexander Dallas Bache". Monthly Notices of the RAS (MNRAS) (Royal Astronomical Society) 28 (1): 72–75. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0028//0000072.000.html. Retrieved 2008-03-05.
- Reingold, Nathan (1970). "Alexander Dallas Bache". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 363–365. ISBN 0-684-10114-9.
- Heyl, PR (1941). "The One Hundredth Anniversary Of The Establishment Of The Alexander Dallas Bache Magnetic Observatory.". Science 93 (2412): 272–273. 1941 Mar 21. Bibcode 1941Sci....93..272H. doi:10.1126/science.93.2412.272. PMID 17834787
- Odgers, Merle M. (1947). Alexander Dallas Bache: Scientist and Educator (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press)
- Gould, Benjamin Apthorp (1868). "An Address in Commemoration of Alexander Dallas Bache: Delivered August 6, 1868, Before the American Association for the Advancement of Science" (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute Press) [1]
External links
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