Alexander Dallas Bache
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| Alexander Dallas Bache | |
 Alexander Dallas Bache
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| Born | July 19, 1806 Philadelphia |
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| Died | February 17, 1867 Newport, Rhode Island |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | physics |
Alexander Dallas Bache (July 19, 1806 – February 17, 1867), American physicist, son of Richard Bache, Jr., and Sophia Burrell Dalles, great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was born in Philadelphia. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825, he acted as assistant professor there for some time and, as a lieutenant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, he was engaged for a short time in the erection of coastal fortifications, including Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island. Bache resigned from the Army on June 1, 1829.
He occupied the post of professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania from 1828 to 1841 and again from 1842 to 1843. Additionally, from 1839 to 1842, he served as the first president of Central High School of Philadelphia, the second oldest public high school in the United States. He spent the years 1836 to 1838 in Europe on behalf of the trustees of what, in 1848, was to become Girard College. Abroad, he examined European systems of education and, on his return, published a very valuable report.
In 1843, on the death of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, he was appointed superintendent of the United States coast survey. He succeeded in impressing the United States Congress with a sense of the great value of this work and by means of the liberal aid it granted, he carried out a singularly comprehensive plan with great ability and most satisfactory results. By a skillful division of labour, and by the erection of numerous observing stations, the mapping out of the whole coast was completed. In addition, a vast mass of magnetic and meteorological data was collected.
After the Civil War, Bache was elected a 3rd Class Companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) in consideration of his contributions to the war effort.
He died at Newport, Rhode Island on February 17, 1867.
[edit] See also
- Richard Bache -- Bache's grandfather
[edit] References
- Slotten, Hugh Richard (1994). Patronage, Practice and the Cuture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U. S. Coast Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521433959.
- C., J. (1868). "Obituary: Alexander Dallas Bache". Monthly Notices of the RAS (MNRAS) 28 (1): 72-75. Royal Astronomical Society.
- Reingold, Nathan (1970). "Alexander Dallas Bache". Dictionary of Scientific Biography 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 363-365. ISBN 0684101149.
- Heyl (1941), “THE ONE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ALEXANDER DALLAS BACHE MAGNETIC OBSERVATORY.”, Science 93 (2412): 272-273, 1941 Mar 21, PMID:17834787, doi:10.1126/science.93.2412.272, <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17834787>
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