Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

GEORGE KIMBALL BURGESS 237
frequency with which Bureau investigations and undisguised Bureau
ences were drawn on for illustrative material. At the banquet he attended
in Washington in 1926 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of
the Bureau, he said, "I think of you still as members of my staff." 50
GEORGE KIMBALL BURGESS
In his letter in November 1922 appointing Dr. Stratton to the Visiting
Committee, Hoover asked that Stratton at once take up with the Committee
the question of his successor, "as I'd like to have their advice on the subject."
Stratton offered two names to his future colleagues on the Committee, that
of Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, recently promoted from the aviation physics section
to chief of the engineering physics division, succeeding Stratton himself who
had held that position; and of Dr. George K. Burgess, chief of the metallurgy
division.5'
Although as chief physicist and senior in point of service and experi-
ence Dr. Burgess seemed the logical choice, both the Visiting Committee and
the Secretary of Commerce, in deliberations that seem less than flattering,
delayed decision.52 For almost 4 months, until April 21, 1923, Dr. Fay C.
Brown, technical assistant to Dr. Stratton, served as acting director of the
Bureau, On that date President Harding's appointment of the new Director,
Dr. Burgess, became effective.53
Dr. Burgess (1874—1932), who on the death of Dr. Rosa became the
chief physicist at the Bureau, was born in Newton, Mass., and graduated
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He went abroad for gradu.
ate training, receiving his D. Sc. in physics with highest honors from the
Sorbonne in 1901. Histhesis was on a redetermination of the constant of
gravitation, but courses he took under Le Chatelier in high-temperature
measurements aroused a greater interest and led him to translate his teacher's
classic work On the subject. A decade later, as a result of his own investiga-
Speech, Dec. 4, 1926 (NBS Blue Folder Box 3, APW 301c). A brief biographical
sketch of Dr. Stratton appears as app. M.
61 Letter, Hoover to SWS, Nov. 1, 1922, and interview with Dr. Briggs, Nov. 1, 1961.
Announcement of Dr. Burgess' appointment in Am. Machinist, 58, 680 (1923), said
it "followed several months of futile search on the part of Secretary Hoover for an out-
standing physicist who had not been connected with the Government service, with suffi-
cient means to allow him to make the sacrifice of income * * * [in accepting] a Bureau
directorship."
"In his letter of congratulation to Dr. Burgess, Prof. Joseph S. Ames, director of the
Physical Laboratory at Johns Hopkins, wrote: "I heard with interest of your silent and
theatrical way of announcing your appointment, by quietly sitting down in the Director's
chair" (letter, Apr. 25, 1923, NBS Box 43, IDP).