ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PHYSICS 1 5 



Your Committee believe it best to consider all privileges 

 and appointments as emanating from the Institution and none 

 as being obtainable on solicitation from without. Vacancies 

 which may be filled b}' the best applicant who happens to 

 present himself, should not exist. The full justification for such 

 honors as may be conferred, should be found in the testimony of the 

 annals of physical science. In recommending the following course 

 of action, the Committee, therefore, beg leave to state at the outset, 

 that it is not their design to hav^e all the privileges to be hereinafter 

 mentioned, conferred either continuously or at once; that it would 

 rather be their policy to find the physicists first, and then to build 

 the facilities around them. Furthermore, they have, throughout 

 their work, proceeded from the conviction that as it is the purpose of 

 a university to develop the untried inv^estigator, so it should be the 

 function of the Carnegie Institution to begin with the physicist 

 whose development is acknowledged; that it should extend to him 

 its unstinted opportunities, in proportion as his powers of research 

 are keener and more mature. 



The following specific recommendations for efiectively encour- 

 aging research in pure physics in the United States, are given first 

 in outline, secondly in detail, and supplemented bj' a provisional plan. 



II. Recommendations in Outline. 



The recommendations of your Committee are: 



( \) Laboratory. — To establish a well equipped physical laboratory, to 

 be devoted to research in pure physics, exclusively, and particularly to 

 investigations which, from their character, from the lack of apparatus 

 necessary, etc. , can not be advantageeusly done elsewhere. The com- 

 pletion of the laboratory is to be approached gradually by appropriat- 

 ing a definite fund each year, which fund shall be used as a minimum 

 permanent endowment forever after. The resources which so accu- 

 mulate will in due time suffice for the construction of buildings, for 

 equipment, salaries and the general maintenance of the said labor- 

 atory, in the way hereinafter to be more definitely specified. An 

 annuity of 150,000 dollars is estimated as sufficient for this purpo.se. 



(2) Temporary Associates. — To secure the co-operation with the 

 Carnegie Institution, of physicists of recognized eminence, who are 

 already provided with working facilities at other institutions of 

 learning or elsewhere, by an annual grant for a specified term of 

 years, in recognidon of their continuous contributions to the scien- 



