was that he had served on several committees appointed 

 by Secretary Carmichael, and that apparently the Sec- 

 retary liked his approach. Stewart was named an assis- 

 tant secretary in early 1966 and served briefly before 

 returning to his first love, physical anthropology. 



Stewart first came to the Museum in 1924 as a tem- 

 porary aide to Ales Hrdlk ka. After working and going 

 to medical school at Johns Hopkins University, he then 

 spent more than five decades in the Department of 

 Anthropology. Anyone who survived under Hrdlicka 

 had to be tough, and had to develop a sense of humor. 

 Hrdlicka did not like the staff to speak during working 

 hours. He criticized Stewart one day for talking, but 

 relented a bit when Stewart said that he was announcing 

 the birth of his first child. Hrdlicka asked what the sex 

 was, and when told it was a girl, lost interest, remarking, 

 "Veil, de first von is generally a veakling." 



Stewart continued in the tradition of physical an- 

 thropology, developing great skill in forensic interpre- 

 tations and applying this skill to skeletal remains re- 

 covered by police. His work for the Federal Bureau of 

 Investigation would have won him a nod from Sherlock 

 Holmes. Stewart's research, like that of many of the 

 Museum's curators, has ranged into new fields over the 

 years, and perhaps his key work has been his contri- 

 butions to paleoanthropology, which have helped revise 

 our notions of Neanderthal man.' 



Richard S. Cowan 



A. C. Smith pointed out to Stewart some of the advan- 

 tages of additional administrative staff, and advised the 

 appointment of an assistant director. It was he who 

 suggested Richard S. Cowan for the position. Cowan, 

 like Smith, was a postwar hiree, having come to the 

 Museum in 1952 after four years at the New York 

 Botanical Garden. He too was a tropical botanist, though 

 he looked at different plants from those that interested 

 Smith. Early in 1963 Cowan became the first assistant 

 director of the Museum of Natural History, and in 

 March 1966 was appointed director, succeeding Stew- 

 art. Cowan held the post until 1973, when, accom- 

 panied by his many office plants, he returned to the 

 Department of Botany as a Senior Scientist. He con- 

 tinues to work on South American floras, especially tree 

 legumes. 



During the time that Cowan served as director, there 

 was a great diversification in the administration of sci- 

 ence within the Smithsonian, with the establishment of 

 special offices for anthropology, ecology, oceanogra- 

 phy, and systematics. In addition to being director, Cowan 

 was head of the Office of Systematics. The Office held 

 five memorable summer institutes in systematics, but 

 the only tangible evidence of the Office was a large 

 coffee pot. 



Donald Squires, from Invertebrate Zoology, was dep- 

 uty director for several years under Cowan. When he 

 left, P. K. Knierim, an administrator who had trans- 



A. Remington Kellogg holding the skull of an Amazon 

 River dolphin (Iniaj,' October 1955. 



ferred from the Department of Agriculture, served as 

 assistant director until he retired in 1972. James Mello 

 transferred from the U.S. Geological Survey to the Mu- 

 seum in 1970 to head up Automatic Data Processing, 

 which had been developed by Squires. When Porter M. 

 Kier of Paleobiology became director, Mello was ap- 

 pointed assistant director; he rose to associate director 

 and then in 1984 gave up administration and trans- 

 ferred to the Department of Paleobiology to resume 

 his long-interrupted study of microfossils. To date, 

 Richard Cowan is the only assistant director to have 

 become director. 



During Cowan's tenure the name of the Museum was 

 formally altered once again, to the National Museum 

 of Natural History. For years, when referring to spec- 

 imen numbers in a manuscript, the curators had used 

 the prefix USNM. The Smithsonian Institution Press 

 decided to adopt the change to NMNH, which lasted 

 for about two weeks before the curators rose in wrath. 

 USNM is still used to refer to specimens in the National 

 Museum of Natural History, and mail addressed to the 

 United States National Museum is still delivered. 



Porter M. Kier 



Porter Kier, described in a newspaper feature story as 

 "a razor-thin, hawk-like . . . man whose exuberance for 

 his work is immediately discernable," took over as di- 



M useum Adininisiralion 



133 



