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AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



There are extraordinary differences or dis- 

 crepancies in the relation between the value 

 of the buildings and grounds of different in- 

 stitutions and their annual incomes for cur- 

 rent expenses as given in the report of the 

 commissioner of education. Some institu- 

 tions, as Michigan and Illinois, are said to 

 spend nearly as much annually on their edu- 

 cational work as the total value of their build- 

 ings and grounds, whereas others, as New 

 York, Stanford and Tulane, are said to 

 spend scarcely more than a tenth as much. 

 Apparently but little reliance is to be placed 

 on such figures. In so far as they are correct 

 the Massachusetts Institute has one scientific 

 man of standing for each fifty-three thousand 

 dollars invested in buildings and grounds. 

 The other institutions having at least one 

 scientific man for each hundred thousand dol- 

 lars so invested are Clark, Michigan and 

 Indiana. The institutions having but one 

 scientific man of standing for four hundred 

 thousand dollars or more invested in build- 

 ings and grounds are Vassar, Tulane, Syra- 

 cuse, New York and Wellesley. The Johns 

 Hopkins supports one leading scientific man 

 for each ten thousand dollars that it spends. 

 The other institutions which have at least one 

 scientific man for each twenty-five thousand 

 dollars spent annually are Clark, the Massa- 

 chusetts Institute, Harvard and Princeton. 

 Vassar, Northwestern and Minnesota are the 

 institutions that spend the most in proportion 

 to the number of their scientific men. 



Men who stand toward the upper end of the 

 list are of far greater consequence than those 

 toward the bottom. Here too Harvard shows 

 its primacy and in unmistakable terms. Of 

 our hundred leading men of science nineteen 

 are at Harvard, as compared with nine at 

 Chicago and seven at Columbia and the 

 Johns Hopkins. 11 Of the second hundred 

 Harvard has 10.5, Chicago 15, Columbia 6 

 and the Johns Hopkins 3. 



"The membership of the National Academy of 

 Sciences corresponds closely with these figures 

 18 at Harvard, 9 at Chicago, 8 at Columbia and 

 7 at the Johns Hopkins. 



It is not possible to estimate the value of a 

 great scientific man in terms of other men. 

 It may even be argued with plausibility that 

 the progress of science depends exclusively on 

 the few men of genius, while the mass of sci- 

 entific men erect obstacles, and are only of 

 use as a group which on occasion supplies the 

 great man. But in a comparison of this kind 

 we have in mind men such as Galileo, New- 

 ton, Laplace and Darwin. In the list of a 

 thousand living American men of science, 

 those in the lead are not incomparable with 

 the others. As a matter of fact, we under- 

 take to measure them by the salaries we pay. 

 These are obviously imperfectly adjusted to 

 merit, and there are kinds of merit other than 

 scientific distinction. If, however, a univer- 

 sity pays its more distinguished professors 

 three times as much as its younger assistant 

 professors,' it estimates the one to be worth 

 three times as much as the other. In the case 

 of the salaries and earnings of psychologists, 

 it appears that those in the first hundred of 

 the thousand earn about three times, and 

 those in the second and third hundreds about 

 twice as much as those in the lower half of the 

 list. With numerous individual exceptions 

 some men of high standing even paying for 

 the privilege of doing scientific work, while 

 some men of medium standing may receive 

 comparatively large salaries 12 we find that 

 the salaries increase with distinction and 

 roughly measure it, placing it about three 

 times as high in the upper hundred as in the 

 lower third of the list. It is also the case 



u It is scarcely necessary to point out again 

 the failure of our competitive system to reward 

 scientific research, but it may be illustrated by 

 an example. Lord Kelvin made a large fortune 

 by his inventions and engineering advice; he 

 earned a modest salary as professor at Glasgow; 

 he was paid nothing for his great contributions 

 to mathematical physics, though he might have 

 earned large sums in the time devoted to these. 

 His technical work was doubtless worth far more 

 to society than he was paid for it, but it was 

 worth less than his scientific research. In his 

 three lines of work he was paid inversely as the 

 value of his services. 



