Chapter 1 6 



The Scientific 

 Staff 



COUN 1 ING EVERY LIBRARIAN, carpenter, and guard, 

 it is nearly impossible to pinpoint the number of 

 people currently employed in the Museum of Natin al 

 History. Given constant change and the very size of the 

 building, that is no surprise. But it is extremely difficult 

 to determine even the number of people pursuing re- 

 search in the Museum during any given year, as criti- 

 cally important as this figure is to any museum director. 



"At the beginning of the year the Assistant Secretary 

 was placed in immediate charge of the Museum, the 

 direction of which rests with the Secretary of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, its keeper ex officio," Rathbun re- 

 ported in 1901. "The scientific staff has consisted, be- 

 sides the three head curators, of 18 curators, 12 assistant 

 curators, 14 custodians, 10 aids [sic — the customary 

 spelling in the early days], 4 associates, and 2 collabo- 

 rators, making a total of 63 persons, of whom, however, 

 only about one-half were under salary from the Mu- 

 seum, the remainder serving in a voluntary or honorary 

 capacity, though nearly all of the latter were in the 

 employ of other bureaus of the government.'" These 

 figures included those in the Castle and those in the 

 old National Museum, and thus encompassed more 

 fields than natural history. 



Staff Numbers Low 



Just before the move to the new Museum building be- 

 gan late in 1909, the scientific staff for the Museum 

 was given in the Annual Report as seventy-eight, and the 

 listed administrative staff for the Institution was nine."^ 

 However, the term curator was used for both those 

 paid by the Museum and those paid by associated agen- 

 cies; at least two of the curators recorded were not paid 

 by the Museum and never had offices in either the old 

 or new Museum buildings. In 1910, one may again 

 count seventy-eight on the scientific staff (not dupli- 

 cating those who held multiple appointments), and still 

 an administrative staff of nine; eight of the scientific 

 staff were designated aides and nine associates. ' From 

 these figures one can see that moving to a huge new 



Doris M. Cochran examining pari of the snake colleclion 

 preserved in alcohol, possibly in the 1950s. 



building did not result in employment of a huge new 

 staff. 



If the move across the Mall did not result in an in- 

 crease, neither did World War I. In 1920, the formal 

 managerial positions for the Institution had shrunk to 

 eight. The staff list for the National Museum contained 

 eighty-five names; of these eighty-five, nine were in the 

 Department of Arts and Industries, and one, W. H. 

 Holmes, was in the National Gallery of Art.^ Included 

 in the seventy-five names for the three natural history 

 departments, established by Walcott in 1898, are nine 

 persons designated as aides. This hardly qualifies as a 

 postwar boom, particularly when it is evident that al- 

 most half of the increase in staff since 1910 resulted 

 from the addition of Department of Agriculture bot- 

 anists. 



By 1932 the administrative staff heads for the Insti- 

 tution had risen to ten; and as before, these people 

 were responsible for libraries, correspondence, repairs, 

 and similar activities for all the Smithsonian buildings. 

 A count of the three natural history departments shows 

 ninty-eight names. In the Department of Geology, sev- 

 enteen persons were listed, of which one was a chief 

 preparator and two were aides. Three associates listed 

 were not paid by the Museum, nor were two custodians 

 and one associate curator. The actual scientific staff of 

 the Department of Geology was eight, and this included 

 Paul Bartsch, who was really a specialist in modern 

 mollusks, not fossil ones. Of course, there were Geo- 

 logical Survey paleontologists in the building, but ex- 

 cept for two active members and one retiree, they were 

 not listed.^ A decade later the scientific staff of the 

 Department of Geology still consisted of eight people. 



The 1920s and 1930s figures for the other two de- 

 partments. Anthropology and Biology, were similarly 

 inflated by the names of "staf f"' who were not paid by 

 the Museum. Unless one knows the career of a partic- 

 ular person, it is risky to assume that a listing means 

 that he was salaried by the Museum or even had an 

 office on the premises. As in Geology, the staff in these 

 two departments remained nearly static for two dec- 

 ades. During World War II, the staff declined in all 

 departments. 



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