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. 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. He died at Newport, Rhode Island.
See also
- Richard Bache -- Bache's grandfather
Obituaries
Further reading
- Hugh Richard Slotten. Patronage, Practice and the Cuture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U. S. Coast Survey (Cambridge, 1994).
- See an 1858 map Preliminary chart of entrance to Brazos River, Texas / from a trigonometrical survey under the direction of A. Bache ; triangulation by J.S. Williams ; topography by J.M. Wampler ; hydrography by the parties under the command of E.J. De Haven & J.K. Duer., hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
- Reingold, Nathan (1970). "Alexander Dallas Bache". Dictionary of Scientific Biography 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 363-365. ISBN 0684101149.
