Report of 

 the Provost 



J. Dennis O'Connor 



When the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) is launched 

 from the Kennedy Space Center aboard che space shuttle 

 Columbia later in 1999, the Smithsonian will be there. The 

 Smithsonian Astrophysical Observarory (SAO), a pioneer in 

 X-ray astronomy, played a major role in developing the 

 orbiting observatory and is the site of the Chandra Science 

 Center, which will receive and analyze information from the 

 spacecraft's sophisticated instruments and make it available to 

 the scientific community. SAO will also manage the Chandra 

 Operations Control Centet. 



The Chandra Observarory takes the Smithsonian in new, 

 but not surprising, directions. Since its founding, the Institution 

 has been on the leading edge of research. The first Secrerary, 

 Joseph Henry, one of the most eminent scientists of his time, 

 believed that the importance of the Institution was measured 

 by the knowledge it sent out into che world. Under his 

 successor Spencer Fullerton Baird, a respected naturalist and 

 the quintessential collector, the national collections began to 

 grow. The next Secretary, Samuel Pierpont Langley, an early 

 investigator of variable solar temperatures and the sun's corona, 

 was an astronomer who was also intrigued by aeronautics. The 

 fourth Secretary was Charles Doolittle Walcott, a geologist 

 and paleontologist besr known for one of the grearest finds in 

 paleonrology, the Burgess Shale. 



The fact that this remarkable quartet of scientists shaped 

 the Smithsonian during its first century is a significant 

 statement about the Institution's fundamental purpose. The 

 Smithsonian of Henry, Baird, Langley, and Walcott was on the 

 leading edge of the scientific disciplines of its time: 

 electricity, astronomy, aeronaucics, evolution, comparative 

 zoology, and comparative botany. 



Headed toward the millennium, the Smithsonian remains 

 on the leading edge. Research brings about paradigm 



shifts — changes in the fundamental theorerical framework of a 

 discipline or a body of knowledge. As a result of research, a 

 paradigm is initiated, sustained, or refuted, or existing 

 observations are tested and teinterpreted based on a new 

 perspective. 



In our museums and research institutes and in the field, 

 Smithsonian researchers advance knowledge in dramatically 

 different areas, Hundreds of intriguing examples could 

 illusrrare rhe research that distinguishes the Institution. Here 

 are a few that suggest the immense range of interests being 

 pursued under its aegis: 



Melinda Zederof the National Museum of Natural 

 History's Department of Anthropology has studied museum 

 collections of modern and archaeological bones to develop a 

 new technique for identifying rhe earliest stages of animal 

 domestication. She has used accelerator mass spectrometry 

 radiocarbon dating to directly date the earliest evidence for 

 the domestication of a herd animal (the goat) to 9,900 years 

 ago ar the archaeological site of Ganj Dareh in highland 

 western Iran. 



Wendy Wick Reaves's inquiry into early-twentieth-century 

 caricature in America defined a new art form closely related to 

 the emerging celebrity culture. Her research, which evaluated 

 artists' fresh approaches to traditional caricature, resulted in 

 the National Portrait Gallery exhibition "Celebrity Caricature 

 in America" and the well-received book of the same title. 



For a book manuscript titled Lost Revolutions: The South in 

 the 1950s, Pete Daniel, curator in the History of Technology 

 Division at the National Museum of American History, has 

 analyzed agriculrural transformation, the environment, stock 

 car racing, music, and civil rights. 



Jenny So, curator of ancient Chinese art at the Freer and 

 Sackler Galleries, is looking at some 1,000 pieces of jade 



