Science: Abbot of Smithsonian

Abbott of Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D. C., chose last week a new secretary (i.e., commander-in-chief), Dr. Charles Greeley Abbot. Technically, he is an astrophysicist. To a few laymen, he is known as the man who has spent his adulthood studying the sun. Why? Because he wishes to forecast weather, weeks or months in advance, by discovering what the gases around the sun have to do with its heat radiation; also to find some feasible means of harnessing the sun's energy in man-made machines.

Several years ago, Dr. Abbot led an expedition 30,000 miles to find the best place in the world from which to observe the sun. Finally, he picked the peak of Mount Brukkaros in the land of the Hottentots,* 200 miles from Windhoek, capital of Southwest Africa. There, scientists with delicate instruments will go to catch sunbeams that have never been caught before.

Dr. Abbot & wife also snared sunbeams from the top of Mount Wilson in California in 1925. They devised a trap (a two-compartment oven) to find that the hottest sunbeams registered 175° Centigrade;† the average ones, 150° Centigrade.

Born in Wilton, N. H., in 1872, educated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Abbot has been with the Smithsonian Institution since 1895. Able scientists who preceded Dr. Abbot as Secretary of the Smithsonian were: Joseph Henry, who like famed Faraday, worked in early electrical experiments; Spencer Fullerton Baird, naturalist; Samuel Pierpont Langley, father of aerodynamics, whom Dr. Abbot assisted in solar work; Charles Doolittle Walcott, geologist.