2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

Juliet␣ M. Burba University of Minnesota
HSS Abstracts
Collecting for the “Science of Man”:
Expeditions and Expositions in Physical Anthropology, 1912-1915
This paper will focus on physical anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka’s work for the
1915-1916 Pacific-California Exposition (San Diego) and examine his use of
this public arena to define and promote his discipline. In the early twentieth
century, anthropologists sought to expand the institutional support for their
discipline. Ales Hrdlicka, a curator at the U. S. National Museum, was often
at the center of activities aimed at professionalizing and promoting physical
anthropology. He founded the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in
1918, led the effort to form the Association of American Physical
Anthropologists (which first met in 1930), and wrote countless articles for
popular audiences, in addition to his copious scientific publications. During
his early career at the Parisian Broca Institute, Hrdlicka saw that in Europe
physical anthropology was an established and respected science, a status he
hoped it might achieve in the United States. The Exposition provided Hrdlicka
with an opportunity to further his plans. The organizers chose as one principle
theme “The Science of Man.” Anthropological exhibits would be a centerpiece
of the fair, and the Smithsonian Institution was contacted to assist in creating
them. Ales Hrdlicka received $30,000 from the Exposition corporation to carry
out research and create exhibits that would become the core of the show. For
Hrdlicka, this funding was a windfall. He saw the Exposition as an excellent
venue to define physical anthropology and display the progress researchers
had made in understanding human evolution, diversity, and individual
development. Perhaps more importantly, the funding enabled Hrdlicka to direct
expeditions to Alaska, the Philippines, the Ukraine, Africa, and Australia, and
to personally conduct fieldwork in Peru and Siberia. The exhibition project
allows me to explore the influence that Hrdlicka’s popularizing work had on
his research through the funding it provided and the requirements of presenting
the discipline to a general audience.
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Richard␣ W. Burkhardt, Jr. University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign
The School for Naturalist-Voyagers
Among the multiple interactions between governments and museums that were
so important for the growth of natural history in the 19th century, there may
have been none that looked more promising at its inception than did the special
“school for naturalist-voyagers” that was established at the Museum of Natural
History in Paris in 1819. Proposed initially by the French Minister of the Interior,
who also promised to fund the operation, the idea of the school was to train
young naturalists who could then be sent off to the far corners of the globe in
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