College presidencies, chemists appointed

Fig. 6.1-4. Chemists appointed to permanent college presidencies, by decade of appointment, 1870-1959. (See Table 6.6.)...

By 1978 Harrison was finishing her term on the National Science Board, to which she had been appointed by Richard Nixon in 1972. In the 1980s, she was the fourth woman president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the first woman chemist). Thus she was one of the very few women scientists of the 1970s and 1980s to play much of a role in the whole enterprise that is called science policy. She even ran a meeting on international science at Mount Holyoke (a women s college) in the mid-1980s.4... 

The Society provided a means for the professional self-advancement of chemists, particularly the academic chemists, who quickly acquired the dominant position in the running of the Society s affairs. Its first President was Thomas Graham (1805-1869), who was a former student of Thomas Thomson at Glasgow and who had been appointed professor of chemistry at University College in London in 1837. 

The early visibility and importance of the chemical discipline were reflected in the promotion of chemists to university leadership at the turn of the century. Examples include Thomas M. Drown (President, Lehigh, 1895-1904) James Mason Crafts (President, MIT, 1897-1900) Francis P. Venable (President, North Carolina, 1900-1914) Ira Remsen (President, Johns Hopkins, 1901-1913) and Edgar Fahs Smith (Provost, Pennsylvania, 1911— 1920). The new currents in administration and their intellectual rationale were also studied closely by the period s outstanding president, the chemist Charles W. Eliot of Harvard. The subsequent decay in the visibility of chemistry is reflected in the decline of such appointments. Despite the enormous increase in the number of colleges and universities, the record decade for the appointment of chemists to permanent presidencies was 1910-1919 (Figure 6.1-4). 

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