Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
3.
Staffing, Credentials, and a Fight for Control
During Science Service's first forty years, two men in particular - one
trained as a chemist, the other as an engineer - implemented the Scripps-
Ritter vision of an all-inclusive, market-oriented popular science. They
shared many common perspectives, not the least being a broad definition
of 'science news' which included attention to medicine, engineering and
mining technologies, transportation, and parapsychology, as well as such
predictable topics as relativity and evolution. The differences in the men
reflected the twin impulses of popularization in the twentieth century.
The chemist advocated an approach that was more academic and literary,
that emphasized science's theoretical foundations and romanticized its
practical implementation. The engineer advocated journalistic techniques
and values, favored content tied to invention and innovation, courted
friendly relations with advertising and public relations representatives,
and frequently adopted the language and images of stage and screen
rather than the literary
salon
.
The first director, Edwin Emery Slosson (1865-1929), possessed an
unusual combination of skills and experience, and had been handpicked
by Scripps, Ritter, and their advisors (Rhees 1979).
10
A native of Kansas
with sturdy liberal values and a distinctive flair to his writing, Slosson
had completed a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Chicago in 1902
while teaching at the University of Wyoming. The next year, he moved
to New York to become literary editor of
The Independent
, where he
worked until moving to Washington, D.C., in January 1921 to head Sci-
ence Service. With three degrees in chemistry, Slosson had respectable
credentials as a scientist, but, as he confessed to another chemist, he
much preferred writing to laboratory work:
I too like you am classed as a 'renegade from natural science' since I
have never done any research work in chemistry after having taken my
doctorate at the University of Chicago in that science. But I have like
10
Rhees 1979 remains the definitive analysis of Slosson. Like many other historians, I
have used it as a guide in interpreting correspondence in SIA RU7091, on which this
section draws.
