PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA 299 



plants of North America, and form a grand contribution to knowledge. 

 His collections, on which these researches arc based, were annotated 

 and arranged by him with scrupulous care and exactness, and are 

 treasured as among the most important of all scientific material in 

 America. 



Joseph Henry 



By Dr. ROBERT S. WOODWARD 



THE CARNEGIE INSTITUTION 



This time, one hundred years ago, Joseph Henry, whose name and 

 fame we honor to-day, was a lad seven years of age. He was born at 

 Albany, New York, of Scotch parentage, his grandparents on both 

 sides having come from Scotland in the same ship to the Colony of 

 New York, in 1775. 



Doubtless he had himself in mind when in his mature years he 

 affirmed that " The future character of a child, and that of a man 

 also, is in most cases formed probably before the age of seven years." 

 At any rate, he found himself early, for at the age of sixteen he had 

 determined to devote his life to the acquisition of knowledge. Thus 

 be became, in turn, student, teacher, civil engineer in the service of his 

 native state, professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in the 

 Albany Academy, professor of natural philosophy in the College of 

 New Jersey — now Princeton University — and a pioneer investigator 

 and discoverer of the first order before he was thirty-three years of age. 



His inventions and discoveries in electromagnetism especially art 

 of prime importance. They include the inventions of the electro- 

 magnetic telegraph and the electromagnetic engine, and the discovery 

 of many of the recondite facts and principles of electromagnetic science. 



From the age of thirty-three, when he took up the work of his pro- 

 fessorship at Princeton, till the age of forty-seven, when he was called 

 to the post of secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, he pursued his 

 original investigations with untiring zeal and with consummate experi- 

 mental skill and philosophic insight. It was during this period that 

 Henry and Faraday laid the foundations for the recent wonderful 

 developments of electromagnetic science. The breadth as well as the 

 depth of Henry's learning is indicated by the fact that he found time 

 during this busy period for excursions and for lectures in the fields 

 of architecture, astronomy, chemistry, geology, meteorology and min- 

 eralogy, in addition to his lectures and researches in physics. 



He was a man rich in experience and ripe in knowledge when, in 

 1846, he assumed the administative duties implied by the bequest of 

 James Smithson. " To found at Washington, under the name of the 



