Venerable Institutions.

The two most important American scientific organizations existing in 1815 were the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. Most members of both societies were "gentlemen scholars," affluent laymen with a broad interest in the natural sciences. Both organizations fostered networks of correspondence and established libraries and reading rooms to serve their members. Each organization aspired to be national in scope, emulating counterparts in Great Britain and France. Although both remained prominent throughout the antebellum period, attracting local men of eminence and providing honorary membership to leading scholars outside the two cities, neither succeeded in becoming a truly national organization. Another attempt to form a national scientific organization was made in 1816, when the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Science was chartered in Washington, D.C. The nation's capital, however, was a cultural backwater. The...