Carnegie Institution for Science
Encyclopedia
- This article is about a scientific institution headquartered in Washington, D.C., and is not to be confused with the Carnegie InstituteCarnegie Museums of PittsburghCarnegie Museums of Pittsburgh are four museums that are operated by the Carnegie Institute headquartered in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...
, the Carnegie Institute of TechnologyCarnegie Institute of TechnologyThe Carnegie Institute of Technology , is the name for Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering. It was first called the Carnegie Technical Schools, or Carnegie Tech, when it was founded in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie who intended to build a “first class technical school” in Pittsburgh,...
, or the Carnegie Science CenterCarnegie Science CenterThe Carnegie Science Center, located in the Chateau neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, opened in 1991.With a history that dates to October 24, 1939, the Carnegie Science Center is the most visited museum in Pittsburgh...
all of which are located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Carnegie Institution for Science (also called the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW)) is an organization in the United States established to support scientific research.
Today the CIW directs its efforts in six main areas: plant molecular biology at the Department of Plant Biology (Stanford, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
), developmental biology
Developmental biology
Developmental biology is the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop. Modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation and "morphogenesis", which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs and anatomy.- Related fields of study...
at the Department of Embryology (Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
), global ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...
at the Department of Global Ecology (Stanford, CA), Earth science
Earth science
Earth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...
, materials science
Materials science
Materials science is an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates...
, and astrobiology
Astrobiology
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe. This interdisciplinary field encompasses the search for habitable environments in our Solar System and habitable planets outside our Solar System, the search for evidence of prebiotic chemistry,...
at the Geophysical Laboratory (Washington, DC); Earth
Earth science
Earth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...
and planetary sciences as well as astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (Washington, DC), and (at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington (OCIW; Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
, CA and Las Campanas, Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
)).
Financial position
The CIW as of June 30, 2009 had assets of $817 million, of which $660 million were financial, having suffered a $262 million investment loss in the previous year; it received just under $35 million in donations and paid out about $75 million in grants in each of 2007-08 and 2008-09. Grants in 2008-09 were about $19.5 million to the observatories, $14.2m to the geophysicial laboratory, $11.6m to Terrestrial Magnetism, $10.5m to plant biology, $8.9m to embryology and $8.1m to global ecology, plus $1.3 million to other programs.History
"It is proposed to found in the city of Washington, an institution which...shall in the broadest and most liberal manner encourage investigation, research, and discovery [and] show the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind..."
— Andrew Carnegie, January 28, 1902
The Carnegie Institution was founded by Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and entrepreneur who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century...
in 1902. Its first president was Daniel Coit Gilman
Daniel Coit Gilman
Daniel Coit Gilman was an American educator and academician, who was instrumental in founding the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College, and who subsequently served as one of the earliest presidents of the University of California, the first president of Johns Hopkins University, and as...
, founding president of the Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
. One of the first grant recipients was George Hale in 1904.
The guiding doctrine during the institution's history has been to devote its resources to “exceptional” individuals who can explore, in an atmosphere of complete freedom, complex scientific problems . Realizing that the institution’s success depended upon flexibility and freedom, Carnegie and his trustees established that tradition as the foundation of the institution which continues to support Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, space
Outer space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....
, and life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
sciences.
The name
Beginning in 1895, Andrew Carnegie donated his vast fortune to establish 22 organizations around the world that today bear his name and carry on work in fields as diverse as artArt
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, international affairs
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
, world peace
World peace
World Peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. World peace is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare. The term is sometimes used to...
, and scientific research. (See Andrew Carnegie's 23 Organizations). The organizations are independent entities and are related by name only.
In 2007, the institution adopted the name "Carnegie Institution for Science" to better distinguish it from the other organizations established by and named for Andrew Carnegie. The new name closely associates the words “Carnegie” and “science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
” and thereby reveals the core identity. The institution remains officially and legally the Carnegie Institution of Washington, but now has a public identity that more clearly describes its work.
Observatories of the CIW
The Institution's grant to George Hale was used for the construction of a telescopeTelescope
A telescope is an instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation . The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s , using glass lenses...
built around a large mirror blank that he had received as a gift from his father. The OCIW funded the completion of the 60 inches (1,524 mm) Hale Telescope
Hale telescope
The Hale Telescope is a , 3.3 reflecting telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California, named after astronomer George Ellery Hale. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, he orchestrated the planning, design, and construction of the observatory, but did not live to see its commissioning...
on Mount Wilson
Mount Wilson (California)
Mount Wilson is one of the better known peaks in the San Gabriel Mountains, part of the Angeles National Forest in Los Angeles County, California. It is the location of the Mount Wilson Observatory and has become the astronomical center of Southern California with and telescopes, and and tall...
in the San Gabriel Mountains
San Gabriel Mountains
The San Gabriel Mountains Range is located in northern Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range lies between the Los Angeles Basin and the Mojave Desert, with Interstate 5 to the west and Interstate 15 to the east...
above Pasadena. Immediately work began on designing the even larger Hooker Telescope (100-inch), completed in 1917. Two solar telescope
Solar telescope
A solar telescope is a special purpose telescope used to observe the Sun. Solar telescopes usually detect light with wavelengths in, or not far outside, the visible spectrum.-Professional solar telescopes:...
s were also constructed with Carnegie support and together they form the Mount Wilson Observatory
Mount Wilson Observatory
The Mount Wilson Observatory is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a 5,715 foot peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles...
, still chiefly supported by the Carnegie Institution after 100 years. The OCIW went on to help Hale design and build the 200 inches (5,080 mm) telescope of the Palomar Observatory
Palomar Observatory
Palomar Observatory is a privately owned observatory located in San Diego County, California, southeast of Pasadena's Mount Wilson Observatory, in the Palomar Mountain Range. At approximately elevation, it is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology...
(although construction was mostly paid for by a Rockefeller grant).
The OCIW's chief observatory is now the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, where two identical 6.5 metre Magellan telescopes operate. OCIW is the lead institution in the consortium building the Giant Magellan Telescope
Giant Magellan Telescope
The Giant Magellan Telescope is a ground-based extremely large telescope planned for completion in 2018. It will consist of seven diameter primary segments, with the resolving power of a primary mirror and collecting area equivalent to one...
, which will be made up of seven mirror
Mirror
A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...
s each 8.4 meters in diameter
Diameter
In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the center of the circle and whose endpoints are on the circle. The diameters are the longest chords of the circle...
for a total telescope diameter of 25.4 metres (83 ft). The telescope is expected to have over four times the light
Light
Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that is visible to the human eye, and is responsible for the sense of sight. Visible light has wavelength in a range from about 380 nanometres to about 740 nm, with a frequency range of about 405 THz to 790 THz...
-gathering ability of existing instruments.
Support for eugenics
In 1920 the Eugenics Record OfficeEugenics Record Office
The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States was a center for eugenics and human heredity research in the first half of the twentieth century. Both its founder, Charles Benedict Davenport, and its director, Harry H...
, founded by Charles Davenport
Charles Davenport
Charles Benedict Davenport was a prominent American eugenicist and biologist. He was one of the leaders of the American eugenics movement, which was directly involved in the sterilization of around 60,000 "unfit" Americans and strongly influenced the Holocaust in Europe.- Biography :Davenport was...
in 1910 in Cold Spring Harbor, New York
Cold Spring Harbor, New York
Cold Spring Harbor is a hamlet in Suffolk County, New York on the North Shore of Long Island. As of the United States 2000 Census, the CDP population was 4,975.Cold Spring Harbor is in the Town of Huntington.-History:...
, was merged with the Station for Experimental Evolution to become the CIW's Department of Genetics. The CIW funded that laboratory until 1939; it employed such anthropologists as Morris Steggerda
Morris Steggerda
Morris Steggerda was an American physical anthropologist. He worked primarily on Central American and Caribbean populations.-Biography:...
, who collaborated closely with Davenport. It closed in 1944 and its records were retained in a university library. The CIW continues its support for genetic research, and among its notable grantees in that field are Nobel laureates
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock
Barbara McClintock , the 1983 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, was an American scientist and one of the world's most distinguished cytogeneticists. McClintock received her PhD in botany from Cornell University in 1927, where she was a leader in the development of maize cytogenetics...
, Alfred Hershey
Alfred Hershey
Alfred Day Hershey was an American Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist and geneticist.He was born in Owosso, Michigan and received his B.S. in chemistry at Michigan State University in 1930 and his Ph.D. in bacteriology in 1934, taking a position shortly thereafter at the Department of Bacteriology...
and Andrew Fire
Andrew Fire
Andrew Zachary Fire is an American biologist and professor of pathology and of genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Craig C. Mello, for the discovery of RNA interference...
.
Support for archeological research
The Institution supported archaeologyArchaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
in the Yucatán Peninsula
Yucatán Peninsula
The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel...
in the 1910s through the 1930s, including extensive excavations (under Carnegie associate and Mayanist
Mayanist
A Mayanist is a scholar specialising in research and study of the Central American pre-Columbian Maya civilization. This discipline should not be confused with Mayanism, a collection of New Age beliefs about the ancient Maya....
scholar Sylvanus G. Morley
Sylvanus Morley
Sylvanus Griswold Morley was an American archaeologist, epigrapher, and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions toward the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early twentieth century....
) of Chichen Itza
Chichen Itza
Chichen Itza is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site built by the Maya civilization located in the northern center of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the Municipality of Tinúm, Yucatán state, present-day Mexico....
, Copán
Copán
Copán is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization located in the Copán Department of western Honduras, not far from the border with Guatemala. It was the capital city of a major Classic period kingdom from the 5th to 9th centuries AD...
, and other sites of the pre-Columbian
Pre-Columbian
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...
Maya civilization
Maya civilization
The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...
.
Presidents of the CIW
- Daniel Coit Gilman (1902–1904)
- Robert S. Woodward (1904–1920)
- John C. MerriamJohn C. MerriamJohn Campbell Merriam was an American paleontologist. The first vertebrate paleontologist on the West Coast of the United States, he is best known for his taxonomy of vertebrate fossils at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, particularly with the genus Smilodon, more commonly known as the...
(1921–1938) - Vannevar BushVannevar BushVannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
(1939–1955) - Caryl P. HaskinsCaryl Parker HaskinsCaryl Parker Haskins was a scientist, author, inventor, philanthropist, governmental adviser and pioneering entomologist in the study of ant biology . In the 1930s he was inspired by Alfred Lee Loomis to establish his own research facility. Along with Franklin S. Cooper, he founded the Haskins...
(1956–1971) - Philip AbelsonPhilip AbelsonPhilip Hauge Abelson was an American physicist, a scientific editor, and a science writer.-Life:Abelson was born in 1913 in Tacoma, Washington. He attended Washington State University where he received degrees in chemistry and physics, and the University of California, Berkeley , where he earned...
(1971–1978) - James D. EbertJames D. EbertJames David Ebert was an American biologist and administrator.-Career:Ebert was trained at Johns Hopkins University as a PhD embryologist and came into embryology at the end of the era of descriptive embryology. His own studies of the chick embryo culminated in the book "Interacting Systems in...
(1978–1987) - Edward E. David, Jr. (Acting President, 1987–1988)
- Maxine F. Singer (1989–2002)
- Michael E. Gellert (Acting President, Jan. – April 2003)
- Richard A. Meserve (April 2003 – present)
External links
- Official website
- Administration
- Carnegie Academy for Science Education and First Light
- Department of Embryology
- Department of Global Ecology
- Department of Plant Biology
- Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
- Geophysical Laboratory
- Observatories