Some aspects of the endowment of research.

  • Donaldson, Henry Herbert, 1857-1938.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Some aspects of the endowment of research. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    SOME ASPECTS OF THE ENDOWMENT OF RESEARCH.' In the days of ancient Rome the return- ing conqueror borne on his triumphal car must listen to a slave who bade him to re- member some joy-dispelling facts. After the lapse of many centuries the Naturalists, oddly enough, revived this pagan ceremony. By them each year a slave is chosen who, at the next season of their triumph, is permitted to make a few remarks intended to hold down to earth those who are leading the procession. It is a good custom, hut wearing on the slave. One experience generally does for him. Yet, his privilege implies an obliga- tion and in pursuance of this obligation, which our usage thus imposes, I have chosen for my theme ‘Some Aspects of the Endowment of Research.’ The questions which this topic conjures into life have lately pressed themselves on my attention, and it appears that the only way to put them decently at rest is to sentence them to death—in an address —and then allow them to be buried—in the records of our learned society. The events which have brought the en- dowment of research into special notice during the last decade are known to all. As examples of the thing I have in mind, let me cite the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Institute and the Nobel prizes. Such notable foundations have claimed ^ Address at the meeting of the Society of American Naturalists at Ann Arbor, December 28, 1905, by Henry H. Donaldson, chairman of the Central Branch. our attention because they were recent, involved great sums of money and closely touched our interests as working nat- uralists. But we should view them in their his- torical relation in order to appreciate their broader significance, and when this is done it will be plain, I think, that their novelty depends most largely on the fact that in a measure they can be devoted to the aid of biological investigation. Even in our own young country such foundations are by no means new. Our academies and learned societies have long had funds for the encouragement of in- vestigation. To be sure, these have been mainly applied to the domain of the phys- ical sciences—a fact which needs no ex- planation when we recall that the physical sciences were the first to be pushed for- ward by the wave of modern interest. Nevertheless, such foundations as the Smithsonian Institution and the Elizabeth Thompson Fund have for many years con- tributed to biological progress. Inade- quate as these provisions are to meet what we may courteously call the reasonable wants of workers in this field, they serve to show that, here and there, an individual has recognized the need of larger re- sources for scientific work, and has sought to supply them. When we look across the water, we find provisions of this sort to be an old story to the older world. Throughout Great Britain and the conti-