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

SAMUEL WESLEY STRATTON 51
fessor of physics and electrical engineering, another subject he acquired on
his own.
In 1892 the University of Chicago opened its doors, startling the aca-
demic world by paying its head professors "the princely salaries, for those
days, of $7,000 each." At the invitation of the renowned experimental
physicist, Albert A. Michelson, then organizing his department at Chicago,
Stratton came as assistant professor of physics, his salary of $2,000 as great
a persuasion as the opportunity to work with Michelson.
Although Stratton, in addition to his teaching, worked on numerous
experiments with Michelson or at his direction, and was promoted to associate
professor in 1895 and to full professor in 1900, the association was not a
happy one. According to Robert A. Millikan, who came to the university in
1896 as a $900 instructor in physics, Michelson was an intense individualist
and did not like cooperative ventures in the laboratory. His absorption in
his scientific work made him wholly indifferent to people in general and
almost impossible to work with. As he once told Millikan, he wanted only
a hired assistant who would do just as he was told, not expect any credit for
himself, or make any demands other than to ask for his pay check. For
Stratton who was outgoing, accessible, and without a trace of affectation, it
must have been difficult, and as director of the National Bureau of Standards
he was never to forget the Chicago lesson.4
How much of Stratton's work at Chicago came out in the stream of
papers Michelson published is impossible to say, but at least two bore both
their names, one on a new form of harmonic analyzer, a device for high-
precision measurement of electrical frequencies, the other a note on the
sources of X rays.5 Millikan, a supreme egoist himself, was to say that he—
never collaborated with Professor Michelson in any of his re-
searches as both of my predecessors, Professors Wadsworth and
Stratton, had done with somewhat unfortunate results in •both
cases. He never used me as an assistant, as he did some of the
younger members of the staff. When Professor Stratton left about
1900 to assume directorship of the Bureau of Standards he warned
me •that my "turn would come next," meaning, of course, 'that
friction would develop.6
Autobiography of Robert A. Millikan, p. 224.
Ibid., pp. 87—88; s.v., S. C. Prescott, "Stratton," DAB.
'Michelson and Stratton, "Harmonic analyzer," Am. J. Sci., 5, 1—12 (1898); "Source
of X.rays," Science, 3, 694—696 (1896).
Stratton's principal research efforts in Michelson's laboratory were in interferometry,
he said later, "the field of measurement in which I am personally interested and in which
I was engaged when called to take charge of the bureau" (Hearings * * 1923, Nov.
16, 1922, p. 191).
'Millikan, Autobiography, p. 86.