Samuel Wesley Stratton

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Samuel Wesley Stratton (July 18, 1861 – October 18, 1931) was an administrator in the American government, physicist, and educator. A physicist by training, Stratton proposed the U.S. Bureau of Standards and was appointed its first director by President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1923, he moved to Boston to become the eighth president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a position he held for seven years.

Life and workEdit

Stratton was born on farm in Litchfield, Illinois on July 18, 1861. In his youth he kept farm machinery in repair and worked as a mechanic and carpenter. He worked his way through Illinois Industrial University at Urbana (later the University of Illinois), receiving his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 1884. He became an instructor in mathematics and physics following his graduation, and in 1889, when Physics department head Theodore B. Comstock, Professor of Mining Engineering and Physics, inexplicably failed to return to campus after the summer vacation, Stratton was appointed head<ref name="CenturyofPhysics">Template:Cite journal</ref> of the Department of Physics by regent Selim Hobart Peabody. As Physics head, Stratton organized a formal curriculum in electrical engineering, which was taught in the Physics Department until a separate department of electrical engineering was established in 1898.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Stratton moved to the University of Chicago in 1892 as Assistant Professor of Physics, then Associate Professor in 1895 and Professor in 1898.

Stratton served in the Illinois Naval Militia from 1895, as a lieutenant in the Navy in the Spanish–American War, and from 1904 to 1912 served as commander in charge of the Naval Militia in the District of Columbia.

File:Director Stratton in the Evening Star, 1901.jpg

Dr. Stratton in the Evening Star, 1901

In 1899 he was asked to head the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey's Office of Weights and Measures, where he developed the plan for the establishment of a bureau of standards. He won the support for his plans from Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage and in March 1901, President William McKinley appointed him the first director of the National Bureau of Standards. He served until 1923. Under his leadership it grew from 24 to 900 employees scattered over 14 buildings. His operation was designed to recruit recent college graduates, train them, and feed them into private industry and its higher salaries. His team was called "lowest-paid corps of first-rank scientists ever assembled by any government."<ref name="Time">Template:Cite news</ref> The Bureau worked hand in glove with industry to undertake research that the private sector required but could not finance itself.

In 1904, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1912. In 1917 Stratton was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences.<ref name=PublicWelfare>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1922, he was elected an Honorary Member of The Optical Society.

His boss, then Secretary of Commerce (later President) Herbert Hoover had used the occasion of Stratton's departure from government service as an opportunity to bemoan the low salaries paid to government scientists.<ref name="query.nytimes.com">Template:Cite news</ref>

File:Samuel Wesley Stratton, 1905.jpg

Stratton in 1905

File:Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory.jpg

Stratton at the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory, 1910

File:1920 Samuel Wesley Stratton.jpg

Autochrome by Auguste Léon, 1920

Note that the Stratton Student Center on the MIT campus is dedicated to a different former president of MIT, Julius Adams Stratton.

In January 1923 he became the eighth president of M.I.T. and served for seven years. In his inaugural address he said: "The terms pure and applied science have not the same distinction as formerly. The same men, methods and equipment are involved in getting at the facts, whether they are needed in solving problems in industry or in extending our knowledge of principles. There are few cases of the latter that do not find immediate application." Tying education to industry, he said that industry that had once been slow to seize upon scientific advances was now demanding them.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> As recounted by Time magazine, "he demonstrated the economic wisdom of generous support for research in pure science. He said that the automotive industry must find a substitute for gasoline, on which the elder Edison commented that the electric storage battery has already filled the bill. Edison looks for all transportation and industry to be electrified."<ref name="Time" />

In 1927, he served as one of three members as an Advisory Committee to Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller, along with President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard and Probate Judge Robert Grant. They were tasked with reviewing the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti to determine whether the trial had been fair.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Stratton, the one member who was not a Boston Brahmin, maintained the lowest public profile of the three committee members and hardly spoke during its hearings.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

File:Samuel Wesley Stratton.jpg

Stratton in 1918

Upon his retirement in 1930 he became the first chairman of the MIT Corporation under a new plan of organization that he had devised. A lifelong bachelor, Stratton belonged to numerous private clubs. The carpentry he learned in his youth remained a lifelong hobby.

France made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1909, and he received honorary degrees from the University of Cambridge and Yale University among others.<ref name="query.nytimes.com"/>

On October 18, 1931, he died of heart disease at his home in Boston's Back Bay while dictating a tribute to his friend Thomas Edison, who died earlier in the day.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

He is buried at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, California.<ref name="lat-1931oct25">Template:Cite news</ref>

The Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, formerly the National Bureau of Standards, has presented the Samuel Wesley Stratton Award annually since 1962 for outstanding scientific or engineering achievements in support of the objectives of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

NotesEdit

Template:Reflist

SourcesEdit

New York Times: "Dr. S.W. stratton, Educaor, is Dead," October 19, 1931, accessed Dec 18, 2009
MIT: "SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON, 1861-1931", accessed Dec 21, 2009
MIT: "Stratton: Inaugural Address, accessed Dec. 22, 2009

External linksEdit

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