Binary Stars, Neutrinos, and Liquid Crystals:: The First 250 Years of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania

By Paul A. Heiney

This book traces the parallel paths of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, starting with their genesis in the 18th century, through the rising stature of both departments in the 20th century, and concluding with their unification in 1994. Along the way we meet David Rittenhouse, who observed the transit of Venus in 1769, Charles Doolittle, whose remarkable beard would freeze to his telescope on cold nights, Gaylord Harnwell, who transformed first the physics department and then the entire university, and Raymond Davis, who uncovered a mystery in the middle of the sun. The stories are tragic (Arthur Goodspeed failed to discover X-rays through inattention), horrifying (Dicran Kabakjian poisoned an entire neighborhood), and celebratory (three Penn physicists received the Nobel Prize in the late 20th Century). The reader will gain an appreciation, not just of the history of one institution, but of the ways these two disciplines both intersect and complement each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669851578

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Copyright © 2023 by Paul A. Heiney. 846591

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Rev. date:  12/20/2022

Contents

Forward

Prologue

Physics and Astronomy 1740-1827: The Colonial and Early Republican Periods

Physics and Astronomy 1828-1900: Adrain, Bache, Frazer, Barker, Kendall, Flower

Physics 1900-1938: Goodspeed, Richards, and the Old Boys Club

Astronomy 1895-1954: The Doolittles, Barton, and Olivier

Physics 1938-1953: Gaylord Harnwell and the War Years

Physics and Astronomy Facilities 1954-1968: DRL, LRSM, FCO, Mt. John

Astronomy 1954-1968: Frank Bradshaw Wood and the Flower and Cook Observatory

Physics 1954-1968: The Years of Expansion

Astronomy 1968-1994: Binary Stars and Neutrinos

Physics 1968-1982: Polyacetylene and Accelerators

Physics 1982-1994: Quasicrystals and the Top Quark

1994 and Beyond: The Department of Physics and Astronomy

The Undergraduate Programs, 1901-1995

Minorities and Diversity

Staff

Final Thoughts

Appendix: Abbreviations Used

Appendix: Academic Ranks and Governance

Image Credits

Bibliography

Tables

Table 1: 1779 Inventory of Philosophical Apparatus

Table 2: Physics Ph.D. Thesis Topics, 1900-1930

Table 3: Physics Ph.D. Thesis Topics, 1931-1940.

Table 4: Astronomy Ph.D. Topics, 1900-1954

Table 5: Physics Ph.D. Thesis Topics, 1941-1953.

Table 6: Astronomy Ph.D. Thesis Topics, 1955-1968

Table 7: Physics Ph.D. Topics, 1954-1968.

Table 8: Astronomy Ph.D. Thesis Topics, 1969-1994

Table 9: Physics Ph.D. Thesis Topics, 1969-1982.

Table 10: Physics Ph.D. Topics, 1983-1994

Table 11: Flower Observatory Inventory, 1920.

Table 12: Undergraduate Degrees by Decade

Table 13: Current Fields of Physics/Astronomy Alumni

Figures

Figure 1: Academy and College of Philadelphia at 4th and Arch St., around 1780. Sketch by Pierre du Simitière.

Figure 2: Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis, 1778.

Figure 3: Hugh Williamson.

Figure 4: Portrait of William Smith by John Sartain after Benjamin West.

Figure 5: Curriculum of the College, Pennsylvania Gazette, August 12, 1756.

Figure 6: The Kinnersley Electric Air Thermometer , c. 1763

Figure 7: Portrait of John Ewing by Charles Willson Peale, 1788.

Figure 8: Portrait of David Rittenhouse by Charles Willson Peale, 1796.

Figure 9: Rittenhouse’s diagram from his observations of the 1769 transit of Venus [26].

Figure 10: The Rittenhouse Orrery in Penn’s Van Pelt Library

Figure 11: Robert Patterson Sr., c. 1800.

Figure 12: President’s House, viewed from the southeast (after the 1817 addition of the cupola to the Medical Department wing), after a watercolor by William Strickland, c. 1820.

Figure 13: Robert M. Patterson.

Figure 14: Robert Adrain.

Figure 15: Alexander Bache in the field.

Figure 16: Illustration of circular motion from Lardner’s Mechanics.

Figure 17: Course of instruction in 1832.

Figure 18: Text and figure describing an altitude and azimuth instrument, from Gummere’s Astronomy [52].

Figure 19: John Fries Frazer.

Figure 20: College Hall, c. 1890. The towers were removed in 1914. University of Pennsylvania Archives.

Figure 21: George F. Barker, photograph by Frederick Gutekunst.

Figure 22: Demonstration Gramme dynamo. Paul Heiney.

Figure 23: Map of Penn campus, 1893.

Figure 24: Organization of the College, 1893. Left: arranged by pedagogical units. Center and right: arranged by academic departments.

Figure 25: Hector Tyndale, c. 1861, J. E. McCleese artist.

Figure 26: E. Otis Kendall, portrait by William Curtis Taylor.

Figure 27: A page from Kendall’s Atlas (left) and part of the corresponding text from his Uranography (right).

Figure 28: Map of Upper Darby in 1875, showing location of Flower farm [87].

Figure 29: Arthur Willis Goodspeed.

Figure 30: Goodspeed and Jennings’ X-ray image of coins on a photographic plate, 1890.

Figure 31: Randall Morgan Laboratory of Physics in 1902. University of Pennsylvania Archives.

Figure 32: Aerial view of the Frankford Arsenal in 1978.

Figure 33: Doctoral degrees per decade, 1890-2020.

Figure 34: Graduate course requirements in 1903.

Figure 35: Fanny Cook Gates.

Figure 36: Bound copy of Duncan and Duncan thesis. Paul Heiney.

Figure 37: Department of Physics staff and graduate students, c. 1908. University of Pennsylvania Archives.

Figure 38: Undergraduate classes in physics offered in 1903.

Figure 39: Horace Clark Richards in 1906 (Richards family collection).

Figure 40: Charles Bazzoni in 1916.

Figure 41: Harold C. Barker in 1900.

Figure 42: Thomas D. Cope, c. 1950. University of Pennsylvania Archives.

Figure 43: Image from Lucian’s 1934 patent application for a Luminescent Device.

Figure 44: Joseph Razek

Figure 45: Charles Doolittle.

Figure 46: The Flower Astronomical Observatory.

Figure 47: The 18 inch equatorial telescope at the Flower Observatory.

Figure 48: Eric Doolittle in 1891. Special Collections, Lehigh University Libraries, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Figure 49: Samuel G. Barton in 1927. Credit: Rittenhouse Astronomical Society.

Figure 50: Charles P. Olivier. University of Pennsylvania Archives.

Figure 51: Image of a radiant from Young’s Textbook of General Astronomy and Scientific Schools, 1888.

Figure 52: Gustavus W. Cook in the Roslyn House Observatory, 1933.

Figure 53: John Irwin. American Institute of Physics.

Figure 54: Gaylord Harnwell in 1955. University of Pennsylvania Archives.

Figure 55: Electrostatic accelerator in 1940. Left: Interior view. Right: external view facing west, Morgan Lab is in the background. University of Pennsylvania Archives.

Figure 56: Louis Ridenour

Figure 57: Frederick Seitz

Figure 58: Andrew Lawson. University of Chicago.

Figure 59: Leonard I. Schiff.

Figure 60: William E. Stephens.

Figure 61: Penn authors of nuclear fission book. Credit: Philadelphia Inquirer.

Figure 62: Walter Elsasser.

Figure 63: Herbert Callen.

Figure 64: Left to right: William Stephens, Charles Ufford, and Charles Price (Chemistry Department Chair) on the Newport-Bermuda yacht race, 1960.

Figure 65: Julius Halpern in 1963.

Figure 66: Alfred K. Mann.

Figure 67: Sherman Frankel (center) with Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and human rights activist Yelena Bonner, c. 1987. Kislak Center for Special Collections, University of Pennsylvania.

Figure 68: The 35 MeV Betatron at the University of Melbourne. Suzie Sheehy.

Figure 69: Campus map in 1953. Red arrows show locations of accelerators. University of Pennsylvania Archives.

Figure 70: Modern DRL, seen from the east, 2021. Paul Heiney.

Figure 71: The warm, friendly ambiance of a DRL corridor, fall 2020. Paul Heiney.

Figure 72: Observing a transit of Mercury at a Student Observatory public occasion, 1973. Robert Koch.

Figure 73: The LRSM building under construction in 1962.

Figure 74: LRSM electromagnet in 1969. Credit: The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Figure 75: The Tandem Building, c. 2020. The east wing of DRL is shown in the background.

Figure 76: View of the Tandem Accelerator vault. The accelerator was in the large tank to the right and the beam came out through the evacuated pipe to the left. University of Pennsylvania Almanac.

Figure 77: The Princeton-Pennsylvania Accelerator.

Figure 78: Postdoc Vasken Hagopian and graduate student Sharon Hagopian standing on bubble chamber detector at the PPA, 1967. Walter Kononenko.

Figure 79: The Flower and Cook Observatory in the early 1960s. Robert Koch.

Figure 80: Frank Bateson. Audrey Walsh.

Figure 81: The Mt. John Observatory. Fraser Gunn.

Figure 82: Frank Bradshaw Wood.

Figure 83: Leendert Binnendijk.

Figure 84: William Blitzstein.

Figure 85: The Pierce-Blitzstein 2-channel photometric system in 1985. Robert Koch.

Figure 86: William M. Protheroe.

Figure 87: Eva Novotny.

Figure 88: Astronomy and Astrophysics doctoral degrees, 1900-2000. Paul Heiney.

Figure 89: Organizers of 2011 Villanova conference in honor of Robert Koch. Bruce Holenstein.

Figure 90: Kenneth Atkins in 1961.

Figure 91: Max Caspari

Figure 92: Elias Burstein.

Figure 93: Donald Langenberg.

Figure 95: Roger Walmsley

Figure 96: Michael Cohen.

Figure 97: Robert Schrieffer.

Figure 98: A. Brooks Harris.

Figure 99: Paul Soven.

Figure 100: Robert Zurmuhle

Figure 101: Roy Middleton. Credit: AIP Emilio Segré Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection.

Figure 102: Abraham Klein.

Figure 103: Keith Brueckner. Special Collections and Archives, UC San Diego.

Figure 104: Ralph Amado.

Figure 105: Walter Selove. Walter Kononenko.

Figure 106: Howard Brody.

Figure 107: Kenneth Lande.

Figure 108: Walter Wale standing on his deck (see plaque in background).

Figure 109: William Frati (left) with Eugene Beier in 2001. Walter Kononenko.

Figure 110: Henry Primakoff.

Figure 111: A Primakoff Calculation.

Figure 112: Sidney Bludman.

Figure 113: Benjamin W. Lee in 1977. Fermilab.

Figure 114: Tom Wood.

Figure 115: Elizabeth Ralph in the 14C lab. Courtesy of the Penn Museum, Image No. 350075.

Figure 116: Lin Lanying.

Figure 117: Robert H. Koch. Bruce Holenstein.

Figure 118: Benjamin S. P. Shen.

Figure 119: Christ Ftaclas.

Figure 120: Paul Wiita

Figure 121: Raymond Davis. Courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Figure 122: The underground tank of the Homestake experiment when the basin around the tank had not yet been flooded. U.S. Department of Energy.

Figure 123: Bruce Cleveland

Figure 124: Mitchell Struble.

Figure 125: Anthony Garito.

Figure 126: John Ho. Douglas Levere.

Figure 127: Ward Plummer.

Figure 128: Eltanin, 1992, Bronze and Steel. Paul Heiney.

Figure 129: Torgny Gustafsson.

Figure 130: Tom Lubensky. Felice Macera.

Figure 131: H. Terry Fortune

Figure 132: David P. Balamuth.

Figure 134: The Standard Model of particle physics. Stefan Gies.

Figure 135: Eugene Beier.

Figure 136: Hugh Brig Williams.

Figure 137: Manolis Dris. Walter Kononenko.

Figure 138: Gino Segrè

Figure 139: Paul Langacker.

Figure 140: Jeffrey M. Cohen

Figure 141: Paul A. Heiney. Felice Macera.

Figure 142: Paul Chaikin

Figure 143: Arjun Yodh

Figure 144: Gerald Dolan

Figure 145: Jerry Gollub. Lisa Godfrey.

Figure 146: The C60 molecule.

Figure 147: Stellan Östlund.

Figure 148: Eugene Mele. Felice Macera.

Figure 149: Charles Kane. Felice Macera.

Figure 150: Richard Messmer.

Figure 151: CDF group photo, April 14, 1994. Reidar Hahn, Fermilab.

Figure 152: Nigel Lockyer

Figure 153: Robert Hollebeek

Figure 154: Larry Gladney

Figure 155: The Sudbury Neutrino Detector. Courtesy of SNO.

Figure 156: Paul Steinhardt

Figure 157: A Penrose tiling, composed of 2 subunits with quasiperiodic ordering. Paul Steinhardt.

Figure 158: Burt Ovrut

Figure 159: Mirjam Cvetič.

Figure 160: Philip Nelson. Steven Nelson.

Figure 161: Jeffrey Klein (right) and Roy Middleton in 1996.

Figure 162: Keith Griffioen.

Figure 163: The Flower Observatory Telescope at the Dark Sky Reserve, New Zealand. Dark Sky Project.

Figure 164: Wharton Zenith lens from the Flower Observatory. Bruce Holenstein.

Figure 165: Images of active solar prominences collected by Levitt, 1936. White circle indicates size of Earth.

Figure 166: Spectrohelioscope installed at Stellafane Observatory. Credit: Springfield Telescope Makers, all rights reserved.

Figure 167: Siderostat and Brashear objective at the FCO. Robert Koch.

Figure 168: The Warner and Swasey universal 3" transit. Left: from the W&S catalog. Right: Installed at Foxcroft School. Geoff Chester.

Figure 169: 15 inch photographic element for siderostat (left) and its box (right). David Sliski.

Figure 170: Interior of the FCO after it was vandalized. Richard Mitchell.

Figure 171: Howard Brody teaching in DRL, from 1967 promotional video. University Archives.

Figure 172: Albert M. Wilson, a.k.a. Pomp.

Figure 173: Harriet Slogoff. Rick van Berg.

Figure 174: Robert Smith.

Figure 175: Philip Flanders.

Figure 176: Plaque for Arnold Denenstein. Paul Heiney.

Figure 177: Buddy Borders. Walter Kononenko.

Figure 178: Richard Mitchell.

Figure 179: Left to Right, Walt Mueller, Jim Cook, and Ron Pearce outside DRL. Rick van Berg.

Figure 180: Walter Kononenko at Fermilab around 1982. Walter Kononenko.

Figure 181: Rick van Berg.Walter Kononenko.

Figure 182: Mitch Newcomer.

Figure 183: Readout electronics for the TRT.

Figure 184: Lee Feldscher.

Figure 185: Godwin Mayers.

Figure 186: Harry White helping to dismantle Penn Tandem in 1999. David Elmore.

Forward

In 2017, as the Penn Department of Physics and Astronomy was preparing for an external review, I was struck by the obligatory paragraph describing the history of physics at Penn. After extolling the virtues of Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse, and a quick mention of some notable Nobel Laureates, the history synopsis jumped forward to the 21st century. Surely, I thought, something must have happened in the 19th and 20th centuries? Sadly, nobody that I spoke to seemed to know. My curiosity about these missing centuries led to the current document. Along the way, I have been introduced to some remarkable individuals, and I was privileged to spend time with scientists as diverse as Alexander Dallas Bache, Eric Doolittle, Gaylord Harnwell, Elizabeth Ralph, and a host of others. There were also technical areas where I learned a great deal: the Chandler Wobble, use of a Mire House, and design of a Betatron come to mind. I am a scientist, not a historian, and this certainly must be considered to be an amateur effort, but hopefully it will be of interest to other friends of physics and astronomy at Penn.

This history begins in 1740, which is sometimes cited as the founding year for Penn, although the details are more complicated. I myself joined Penn as an Assistant Professor in 1982 and retired as Professor in 2021. I will have relatively little to say about the period after 1994, and faculty or staff hired after 1994 will be mentioned in passing if at all. This is partly because it is awkward discussing the relative contributions of colleagues who are still alive or even still research active. More importantly, some distance will be needed before it will be possible to assess which events and individuals were truly significant; hopefully that part of the story will be told by someone else decades from now.

Starting points for this history were provided by Marvin Gross’s 1970 history of Penn physics [1] and Robert Koch’s witty and often caustic history of observational astronomy at Penn [2]. In what follows, references to Koch all relate to this second work. I have not attempted to improve on Koch’s detailed description of both instrumentation and scientific results. Another invaluable resource has been the University Catalogs and Bulletins, which were published annually starting in 1825. And hurrah for the Internet! For all its failings, it was a source of much information that I could not have otherwise located, including the careers of many graduates of the physics and astronomy programs. I am grateful for assistance provided by Lauren Gala in the Math-Physics-Astronomy library, Timothy Horning in the University Archives, and Alessandro Pezzati in the University Museum Archives. In the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ralph Amado, Gene Beier, Buddy Borders, Terry Fortune, Walter Kononenko, Ken Lande, Tom Lubensky, Millicent Minnick, Philip Nelson, Gino Segrè, Ben Shen, Richard Stephens, Mitchell Struble, Mark Trodden, and Rick van Berg all provided invaluable insights. Additionally, Theodora and Ann Harnwell Ashmead, Bruce Holenstein and Richard Mitchell from Gravic Inc., Bart Fried from the Antique Telescope Society, and Matt Considine from the Springfield Telescope Makers were most generous with their time, memories, and documents. I am particularly grateful to Bruce Holenstein for his assistance in bringing this work to publication. Any errors, however, are purely my own. Additionally, all opinions expressed are my own, and do not reflect those of any other institution or individual.

Prologue

Physics and astronomy followed parallel but rarely intersecting paths for most of their history at Penn. The sciences made a strong start at Penn in the 18th century: physics and astronomy played an important part in the curriculum, David Rittenhouse was an astronomer with an international reputation, and William Smith, Ebenezer Kinnersley, and John Ewing all made significant contributions to Natural Philosophy. The 19th century, on the other hand, must be considered a fallow period for physics and astronomy at Penn. Astronomy (usually taught as a branch of applied mathematics) and physics were part of the curriculum, Alexander Dallas Bache had significant international reputation due largely to his work on magnetism, and Ezra Otis Kendall was the author of a widely used celestial atlas. However, for the most part, Penn was a comfortable finishing school for the sons of the elite, and the faculty were not expected to engage in any kind of research.

This state of affairs was altered by 2 significant events in the 1880s. First, like many of its peers, Penn instituted a Department of Philosophy, i.e., a graduate program, and began graduating Ph.D. students. The first physics degree was awarded in 1881 and the first astronomy degree in 1901. This was the first step in Penn’s evolution towards becoming a research university, in which a doctoral degree was the ticket to a career in academia and professors were increasingly expected to carry on a research program in addition to their teaching duties. Arthur W. Goodspeed was the first of this new breed of physics professor. Second, a bequest by Reese Wall Flower funded both an astronomical observatory and a chaired professorship in astronomy. The Flower Observatory was initially located in Upper Darby and later merged with a private observatory to become the Flower and Cook Observatory in Willistown Township. For the first half of the 20th century the Astronomy Department generally consisted of the Flower Professor and a few assistants: Charles Doolittle and his son Eric Doolittle, Samuel Barton (who was however never Flower Professor), Charles Olivier, and Frank Bradshaw Wood. They managed a small but viable graduate program and made active use of the observatories, especially in the study of binary and other variable stars.

The 1920s and 1930s were however a period of stagnation for Physics. The department hired almost exclusively its own graduates and was not engaged with the great contemporary revolutions in physics (quantum mechanics and relativity). This changed when Gaylord Harnwell was brought in from Princeton to become department chair in 1938. He immediately started a program of hiring high quality nuclear and solid state physicists, and also of pruning unproductive members of the faculty (a slower process). This transformation underwent a hiatus during the Second World War, when a large fraction of the faculty either turned their attention to war work while at Penn or went on leave for war research (including Harnwell himself). However, after the war Harnwell recommenced building up the department. By the mid-1950s, Penn had respected efforts in both nuclear and solid state physics, although it could still not be called a national leader. Meanwhile, the Astronomy program in the first half of the 20th century was small but respectable, with few students or faculty but an ongoing research program.

Both Physics and Astronomy underwent significant expansion in the 1950s and 1960s. David Rittenhouse Laboratory (DRL), the current home of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, was constructed in two stages and was occupied by the departments of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics. The number of faculty in each department increased substantially, and the rate of Ph.D. production went up, driven largely by increased funding by the National Science Foundation and other national funding organizations. The nuclear physics group bifurcated to become a nuclear physics group and a high energy physics group, each of which had its own research accelerator: nuclear physics used a Tandem Accelerator located behind DRL, and the high energy physicists made measurements using the Princeton-Pennsylvania Accelerator (PPA) and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter was constructed across the street from DRL and provided a structural and intellectual basis for interdisciplinary research involving physics, chemistry, and engineering. The Observatory moved from Upper Darby to Willistown Township, and Penn also promoted and invested in the Mt. John Observatory in New Zealand. Penn led the way in developing electronics for astrophysical photometric measurements, particularly useful in the study of time dependent phenomena such as binary stars.

The 1970s and 1980s saw both reverses and substantial successes. The unexpected closing of the PPA left the high energy physicists scrambling, but most of them joined new collaborations at Fermilab and CERN. Penn ceased its funding of the Mt. John Observatory, and with the departure of Frank Wood and the decreasing usefulness of the Flower and Cook Observatory due to light pollution and competition with larger observatories, the Astronomy department lost some of its drive. However, Penn was associated with 3 different Nobel Prizes during this period. Robert Schrieffer won the prize in 1971 for work he had done on superconductivity before coming to Penn, and this instantly raised the profile of Penn’s effort in solid state physics. Physicist Alan Heeger discovered, with chemists Alan MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa, that polyacetylene undergoes a huge increase in conductivity when doped with iodine, and for this work they won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 (unfortunately, after Heeger had left Penn for UC Santa Barbara). From this period onward Penn was known for two separate subfields of condensed matter physics: soft condensed matter, including materials such as polymers, liquid crystals, and colloids, and hard condensed matter including properties of semiconductors and metals. Finally, Penn hired Raymond Davis, an astrophysicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, as an Adjunct Professor and later as Research Professor. During the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s Davis made measurements of solar neutrinos, which eventually proved that 2/3 of the neutrinos produced in the interior of the Sun were mysteriously disappearing en route; for this work he and Masatoshi Koshiba received the Nobel Prize in 2002.

Further changes were to come in the 1980s and 1990s. The Flower and Cook Observatory became less and less useful for research, and the Astronomy Department was not successful in branching out into other areas. At the same time, astrophysics became an increasingly important component of the Physics Department, and many felt this would be the intellectual future of astronomy. In the 1990s, the Observatory was sold and demolished (despite strenuous efforts of local amateur astronomers to repurpose it for public use), and the two departments merged in 1994 to become the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Most of the previous Astronomy faculty retired at about that time. During the same period, the Tandem Accelerator was becoming less research-viable, and the decision was made to make no future hires in nuclear physics. The faculty positions gained through the departmental merger and the termination of nuclear physics permitted the formation of a new Astrophysics group. Building up this group was not easy and took more than a decade, but today the department has widely respected research groups in both experimental/observational and theoretical aspects of condensed matter physics, high energy physics, and astrophysics.

The history of an institution such as Penn is largely defined by the lives of the people who constitute it. The records for this are highly uneven. I was able to learn a great deal about Penn professors and Ph.D. recipients from departmental and institutional records, publication records, obituaries, and similar sources. Less is known about Penn undergraduates, although a survey undertaken by the author in the 1990s was helpful. And then there are other classes of individuals about whom almost nothing is known, including recipients of a Master’s (but not Doctoral) degree, postdoctoral associates, visitors from other institutions, and staff such as secretaries and technicians. There are few cases where we have good data on the numbers of such individuals, let alone their individual names. Where such information has come to light I have tried to incorporate it.

Physics and Astronomy 1740-1827: The

Colonial and Early Republican Periods

This is the story of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. What does that mean exactly? In the 21st century, academic fields in a university are defined by a departmental structure. An academic department is an administrative structure built around an intellectual field, such as physics. The core of the department is the professors who teach and often do original research in that subject, but the students (undergraduate and graduate), staff, visitors, and physical facilities (offices, classrooms, laboratories, perhaps technical facilities) are also important components. A department is known (or not known) nationally or internationally for the quality of its research and teaching, for the fame or infamy of its faculty, and perhaps for the technical quality of its facilities. Almost none of these existed in the eighteenth century: departments per se would not exist for more than a century. Nevertheless, both physics and astronomy played important roles in the early university. Both subjects were important components of the early curriculum, and the institution was affiliated with several notable scientists, most significantly the astronomer David Rittenhouse.

Image16254.JPG

Figure 1: Academy and College of Philadelphia at 4th and Arch St., around 1780. Sketch by Pierre du Simitière.

Philadelphia was founded in 1682, but for the first 60 years of its existence there was little available in the way of formal education beyond a very basic public school founded by the Quakers in 1689. The poor in general received almost no education. The wealthy most often sent their boys abroad for their education, while middle class Philadelphians were mostly educated by tutors at home [3], [4]. Boys might be taught Latin, English Grammar, Navigation, Surveying, Mensuration, Geography, Astronomy, Chronography, and Arithmetic. (Upper class girls, on the other hand, were taught French, Dancing, and Fine Sewing). The teaching of astronomy in this context was highly practical, as a necessary tool for surveying (essential as white settlement expanded westward) and navigation (also crucial for colonies depending on trade). We can think of George Washington as an example of a landed gentleman who got his start as a surveyor.

Philadelphia grew rapidly, and by 1760 it was the largest colonial city in the British empire, with a population of about 19,000, growing to 33,000 in 1774. It was the busiest port on the North American Continent, and a leading manufacturing center, but it also suffered from an ineffective governmental structure, which led to serious sanitation problems and a large population of poor people requiring public support. The first half of the 18th century was therefore also a period of rapid growth of civic organizations, many of them organized through private initiatives. 1740 saw the creation of a charity school (for the education of the poor) and the construction of the New Building at the intersection of 4th and Arch Streets for that school, although it seems that there was little actual activity in the early days of the charity school. Although William Penn’s city plan ran from the Delaware to the Schuylkill River and from South Street to Vine Street, most of the initial settlement was along the banks of the Delaware River, so the New Building would have been near the northwestern outskirts of the settled part of the city [5]. The Academy of Philadelphia, a secondary school for boys, was organized in 1749, and the New Building was then purchased as a site for the new Academy. Part of the agreement of sale required the trustees to establish a parallel Free School, which was to be a continuation of the charity school. Classes began in 1751. In 1753 a charter was granted by Thomas and Richard Penn, incorporating The Academy and Charitable School, and in 1755 this was expanded via a Confirmatory Charter to incorporate The College, Academy, and Charitable School, thus forming the College of Philadelphia as part of a combined institution. In addition to the Philosophical School (the College), there were the Latin School, Mathematical School, English School, and Writing School. Each school was basically a room in which a particular subject was taught, but also included the course of study in that room, and was under the care of a Master who had assistant ushers. As Cheyney puts it Students might enter one or other of the 3 schools, as they or their guardians wished. The Academy was looked upon as simply a combination of such detached courses as were then being offered in Philadelphia by various teachers [6]. Meanwhile, the Charity School boys learned reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the girls learned reading, writing, and sewing.

Image16299.JPG

Figure 2: Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis, 1778.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was involved in almost every Philadelphia civic initiative in the 1730s through the 1750s, including the Library Company, the Pennsylvania Hospital, the volunteer fire company, and the paid night watch (most of which would today be under the purview of local government). It is not surprising then that he played a major intellectual role in organizing the Academy. The University Catalogue of 1886 gives full credit to Franklin for the formation of the Academy, stating "A pamphlet, called: Proposals Relative to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, written in 1749 by Dr. Franklin, led to an association, by certain citizens of Philadelphia, for the purpose of founding a School on the lines suggested by that wise counsellor. Over two thousand pounds, equivalent to at least forty thousand dollars in the present time, were raised and a building, which had been erected to accommodate the thronged congregations of the celebrated Whitfield, was purchased, and in 1751 the Academy...was formally opened [7]. Franklin’s original idea was that the educational program be utilitarian rather than cultural, entirely in English. It should include mathematics, geography, history, logic, and natural and moral philosophy. It should be an education for citizenship, and should lead to mercantile and civic success and usefulness" [4]. In other words, Penn had a pre-professional bent even in 1749, unlike other universities at the time, which were oriented towards producing clergymen. Franklin leaned away from the traditional classical education, and thought it was important to include modern scientific concepts.

Different assessments have been made of Benjamin Franklin’s role in the early Academy, College, and then University. He donated little money, and few of his ideas were explicitly incorporated in the curriculum. He was certainly not a founder in the manner of Andrew Carnegie in founding Carnegie Mellon University much later. Although he was listed as a trustee in the early University, there is no evidence that he ever attended meetings of the trustees. However, it was his active intellectual leadership that led to the formation of the Academy and College, and he was willing to think big [4]. Thus, his personality and spirit have pervaded the University throughout its existence.

Astronomy was a significant component of the early Academy. For the academic year beginning in 1751, Theophilus Grew was appointed [2] Academy Master to teach writing, arithmetic, merchant’s accounts, algebra, astronomy, navigation, and all other branches of mathematics—in other words, the basic boys’ tutoring curriculum for the early 18th century. Grew had advertised himself as a mathematics tutor since at least 1742 [8], and had been the tutor of Franklin’s children. He had also been a consultant to the Pennsylvania colony in the Pennsylvania/Maryland and Pennsylvania/Delaware boundary controversies. Grew had at least 29 scientific publications to his credit, mostly almanacs of various sorts, including for example "Grew’s Tables of the Sun and Moon Fitted to the Meridian of Philadelphia" in 1746, and he wrote a textbook on the Use of the Globe to be used by students in the Academy and College [4].

Image16368.JPG

Figure 3: Hugh Williamson.

Grew’s successor, from 1761 to 1763, was Hugh Williamson (1735-1819). A graduate of the Academy, Williamson was interested in the comet of 1769 and worked on a committee to help to prepare for the transits of Mercury and Venus in 1769 [2]. He was also interested in electricity, and wrote a paper titled "Experiments and Observations on the Gymnotus Electricus, or Electrical Eel" [6]. Williamson is however better known as a military physician during the Revolution and later as a Founding Father, serving in the Constitutional Congress of 1782 and later as a Representative in the first Federal Congress [9].

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Figure 4: Portrait of William Smith by John Sartain after Benjamin West.

A much more significant role was played by the Reverend William Smith (1707-1803), hired in 1754 to teach Logic, Rhetoric, Natural, and Moral Philosophy in the Academy, and then elected Provost of the College in 1755 [1] [3]. Smith was a product of the Scottish Enlightenment, and prior to his migration to the New World had written about his theories of education, including an influential pamphlet titled "The Idea of the College of Mirania [1], [10]. Smith travelled to Philadelphia with the explicit goal of putting his ideas into action, by teaching Logick, Rhetoric, Ethics, and Natural Philosophy." Smith’s ideas were very much in line with those of Franklin (although they later became both personal and political enemies), and he was a natural choice as provost.

We know a great deal about the early curriculum of the College, due to its publication in the Pennsylvania Gazette (Figure 5) [11]. About one third of the curriculum was devoted to the classics, one third to mathematics (arithmetic up through fluxions, i.e., calculus) and science, and one third to logic, ethics, metaphysics, and oratory. In the second year, Natural Philosophy included Properties of Bodies, Mechanic Powers, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, while in the third year students were taught Light and Colors, Optics, Perspective, Astronomy, Natural History of Vegetables, Natural History of Animals, Chemistry, Fossils, and Agriculture. Instruction on these topics was not just theoretical; the trustees made money available for the purchase of philosophical apparatus to be used in lecture demonstrations. However, students would not perform experimental measurements themselves for another century! This emphasis on science was quite different from that of other colonial colleges of the time, which focused almost exclusively on the classics. Indeed, Cheyney claims that this is the first college curriculum in America that did not follow medieval tradition and did not have a specifically religious basis [4]. He also observes that there was a logical and clearly defined order in which the subjects were presented, although The study of many of the subjects must have been extremely superficial, if not perfunctory, judging not only from the inadequacy of the time allowed, but from the youthfulness of the students, who averaged something about fourteen at the beginning and about eighteen at the close of the course [6]. In modern terms, this more closely resembled the curriculum of a high quality high school than that of a college or university.

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Figure 5: Curriculum of the College, Pennsylvania Gazette, August 12, 1756.

The scheme outlined in "The Idea of the College of Mirania formed the basis for the curriculum of the Academy and College until 1828. The physics textbook [12], by Rowning, drew heavily on Newtonian concepts of matter, motion and light [1], [13]. Rowning begins with a spirited defense of the experimental method for natural philosophy, as developed by Bacon and Newton. The first book, covering the properties of bodies and laws of motion and continuing to topics such as pendulums and levers, is not that different in spirit from modern textbooks, although for a modern reader it is harder to follow. Almost all the mathematical derivations are geometrical nature, with few equations but many geometrical constructions. Rowning generally uses a prose description where a modern book would use equations. For example, when discussing a body falling under the influence of gravity, Rowning says The Spaces Bodies fall through in different Times, reckoning from the Beginning of their Fall, are as of the Squares of those Times; thus, a Body will fall four Times as far in two Minutes, as it does in one; and nine Times as far as in three, sixteen times as far in four, &tc. Similarly, when discussing the acceleration of an object on a frictionless inclined plane, he says The Effect Gravity has on a Body falling down an oblique Plane, is that which exerts upon another falling freely, as the perpendicular Height of the Plane is to its length." The section on properties of light is largely devoted to ray optics, with a good discussion of telescopes and microscopes and no mention of the wave theory of light. The different colors of light are presented as arising from different kinds of light. It is now well understood that thin film interference, as observed for example in soap bubbles, arises from the wave nature of light. Rowning discusses this effect but struggles to provide an explanation. Although Rowning’s text includes a section on astronomy, for this topic Smith chose the lecture series by Keill [14]. Most of the text is phenomenological and descriptive; although he cites approvingly Newton’s gravitational theory as an explanation for planetary motions, he is more interested in the mathematics of astronomical calculations and there is almost no discussion of the practical use of astronomical instrumentation. (Keilk was also the author of multiple mathematical texts). Like Rowning, Keill generally uses prose descriptions instead of algebraic equations, and relies heavily on geometrical derivations. There is an interesting mention of the possibility of extrasolar planets orbiting stars, which seems advanced for the time.

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Figure 6: The Kinnersley Electric Air Thermometer , c. 1763

Franklin and Smith were not the only founders of the College to have an interest in physics. Ebenezer Kinnersley (1711-1778) was appointed in 1755 as a professor of English and oratory. His interest in electricity was second only to that of Franklin (with whom he performed experiments and published papers), and he gave public lectures on the topic in Philadelphia and elsewhere [1], [15], [16]. Kinnersley discovered the difference between the electricity that was produced by glass and sulphur globes, which definitely proved that the positive and negative theory of electrical charge was correct. He may have preceded Franklin in suggesting that homes and barns be protected from lightning by rods [6]. When the department of medicine became part of the College in 1765, he delivered lectures on electricity to the medical students, and upon his death in 1778 his collection of electrical instruments was bequeathed to the College. Later, the relative contributions of Franklin and Kinnersley were disputed. Some claimed that Franklin had not given Kinnersley enough credit in their joint efforts, and even that he plagiarized Kinnersley’s work. But Kinnersley himself never claimed this, and the consensus seems to be that Franklin was by far the preeminent scientist while Kinnersley was an able experimentalist and an effective popularizer of the new science of electricity [13].

Considerable space in the original New Building housing the Academy was allotted to scientific apparatus. One of the 4 large classrooms on the main floor was designated in 1762 as a Library and Apparatus Room for the electrical instruments loaned for lectures by Kinnersley, and later the instruments for Experimental Philosophy purchased by Franklin in London, a telescope and micrometer presented to Smith by Thomas Penn, and the Rittenhouse orrery were added to the collection [10]. As seen in Table 1, an Inventory of the Philosophical Apparatus belonging to the University of Pennsylvania," made by Provost Smith in 1797, gives us an idea of