Wesley Powell, a national hero after his explorations of the 

 Colorado River, to add human studies to his interest in 

 geology. In time, Powell established the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology, predecessor to the Department of Anthropology 

 and its National Anthropological Archives in the National 

 Museum of Natural History. The bureau documented the 

 languages and customs of what were then assumed to be 

 vanishing American Indian cultures (later augmented by 

 materials associated with other global communiries) in a 

 series of studies, field notes, photographs, and eventually 

 sound recordings. This remarkable and still developing body 

 of materials has been called by the great French 

 anthropologist Claude Levi-Srrauss a "living inspiration." 



Research at the Smithsonian has anothet "godfather" from 

 its early years, Henry's assistant and successor as Secretary, 

 Spencer Fullerton Baird. Baird never saw a contradiction 

 between the Smithsonian's research and museum functions 

 and committed himself, at first discreetly, to the 

 accumulation of extensive collections for study and public 

 display. Henry might have guessed at Baird's intentions when 

 the young man arrived in 1850 to take up his new position 

 with two railroad boxcars filled with his personal collections. 



In time, Baird's deteimination added to the Smithsonian's 

 research goals a commitment to collection-based 

 investigations. Inspired by Henry's own strategy of recruiting 

 a netwotk of scientific observers, Baird established 

 connections to individuals throughout the country — farmers 

 and soldiers, as well as committed naturalists — who wete 

 inspired to send to the Castle in Washington, D.C., a range of 

 items, from Indian artifacts (which have grown to the 

 Smithsonian's unequaled collections of well ovet 2 million 

 items today) to specimens of plant and animal life (now well 

 over 100 million in the National Museum of Natural History 

 alone). Participants in the government's explorations of the 

 West were encouraged to collect for the Smithsonian as well, 

 instructed by Baird, as wete all in his army of volunteer 

 collectors, in the proper preparation and documentation of the 

 specimens. 



Baitd's Smithsonian took a leadership role that the 

 Institution continues to maintain in systematics research, 

 which builds systems of classification of plants and animals 

 derived from the study of theit physical characteristics. The 

 National Museum of Natural History's Laboratory of 

 Molecular Systematics, for example, uses molecular biology to 

 examine an organism's DNA as additional aids to 

 classification. In the scientific sense, fossils have taken on new 

 life. And, in another example of new uses for old collections, 

 scientists have used the Smithsonian's vast collection of North 

 American bird eggs, collected in the nineteenth century, to 

 assess damage done to the eggs of bird populations exposed in 

 our own time to DDT. 



Neither Henry nor Baird could have imagined the 

 enormous scope of activities of the modern-day Smithsonian, 

 but elements of their research philosophies have shaped much 

 of its developmenr. Henry's ideal of a research institute has 



been realized in such units as the Smithsonian Astrophysical 

 Observatory and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute 

 (STRI), both ranked among the top centers of theit kind in 

 the wotld. Baitd's ideal of museum-based tesearch has 

 expanded from the activities of the single National Museum 

 he presided ovet to the proliferation of great museums 

 devoted to individual fields in science, history, and an, each 

 with their community of scholars. 



While the many hundreds of researchers in the modern 

 Smithsonian cover an extraordinary range of topics, they share 

 the impulse ar the heart of all research: to know what has 

 nevet been known before. The astrophysicist, the natural 

 scientist, the anthropologist, the historian, and the an 

 historian keep in mind rhe fundamental questions of their 

 particular field — whethet about the origins of the cosmos, the 

 intettelationship of life on Eanh, the patterns of human 

 behavior and events, Of the brilliance of individual 

 creativity — while devoting themselves to the process of 

 uncovering in theit own work one piece of a larger puzzle. 



One example in the sciences is the painstaking work done 

 by Anthony Coates, deputy directot of STRI, and his 

 colleagues in an eight-year project to srudy the 

 10-million-year geological and biological record represented 

 by an isolated archipelago in Panama. In the end their wotk 

 will produce maps of rock layers and a time range of fossil 

 species among other measures of environmental and 

 biological change. The period covered is one that saw the 

 cteation of the Isthmus of Panama, separating the Atlantic 

 and Pacific Oceans and, by changing ocean currents, possibly 

 providing the moisture that triggered an Ice Age. 



A fascinaring example of Smithsonian research in history is 

 provided by the wotk of Paul Johnsron, maritime curator in 

 the Division of Transponation at the National Museum of 

 Amencan History, who conducted 211 dives in two years in 

 Lake Superior to tecovet anifacts and gain information abour 

 a propeller steamship wrecked in 1858. One of the earlier ships 

 to travel the Great Lakes, the Indiana, well preserved by the 

 cold water, gives modern researchers a way to document 

 mid-nineteenth-century propulsion machinery and to 

 understand better, in Johnston's words, the role of the steamet 

 "in the development of maritime trade, travel, and the 

 settlement of the Great Lakes region." 



Late-rwentieth-century research in an history has provided 

 new strategies to answer questions about the creative process. 

 One of the most remarkable examples is provided by a 

 collaboration undenaken a few years ago berween Elizabeth 

 Broun, director of the National Museum of American An, 

 and Ingrid Alexander, an an research historian specializing in 

 technical analysis at the Smithsonian Conservation Analytical 

 Laboratory (now the Smithsonian Center for Materials 

 Research and Education). In pteparation for her 

 groundbreaking exhibition and publication on Alben 

 Pinkham Ryder, who is counted among America's grearest 

 anists, Broun sought to understand with Alexander's help the 

 nature of Ryder's experimentation with color and marerials, 



