Earth as seen from NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Carnegie researchers have pursued science all over the world, carrying out the founder's purpose to encourage research and discovery for the "improvement of mankind."

MR. CARNEGIE'S IDEA

The Carnegie Institution of Washington, a private, nonprofit organization engaged in basic research and advanced education in biology, astronomy, and the earth sciences, was founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1902 and incorporated by an Act of Congress in 1904. Mr. Carnegie, who provided an initial endowment of $10 million and later gave additional millions, conceived the institution's purpose to "encourage, in the broadest and most liberal manner, investigation, research, and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind."

From its earliest years, the Carnegie Institution has been a pioneering research organization, devoted to fields of inquiry that its trustees and staff consider among the most significant in the development of science and scholarship. Its funds are used primarily to support investigations at its own research departments. Recognizing that fundamental research is closely related to the development of outstanding young scholars, the institution conducts a strong program of advanced education at the predoctoral and postdoctoral levels. Carnegie also conducts distinctive programs for elementary school teachers and children at its headquarters building in Washington, D.C.

RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

Carnegie scientists are like explorers who penetrate new areas at the frontier and prepare the way for others. By tradition, the institution seeks out new and promising directions for investigation—directions in which to break new ground. Thus, Carnegie has sometimes discontinued old and successful endeavors—its acclaimed work in middle American archaeology, for example—in order to shift resources to new fields.

In the first half of the century, the institution's leadership in astronomy was sustained by its telescopes on Mount Wilson, California. However, due to the increasing brightness of the night sky resulting from population growth in southern California, the institution discontinued use of these telescopes in the mid-1980s. A nonprofit entity, the Mount Wilson Institute, is today responsible for operations on the mountain, including the refurbishment of the 100-inch Hooker Telescope.

The main observing station of the Carnegie astronomers today is the institution's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, a superb dark-sky site. Situated there are the modern 2.5-meter Irénéé du Pont telescope and the 1-meter Swope telescope. There also, Carnegie Institution, with the University of Arizona, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Magellan Project, has two 6.5-meter telescopes. The Walter Baade telescope saw first light in the fall of 2000, and the Landon Clay telescope started science operations on September 7, 2002.

From left to right: Milton Humason, Edwin Hubble, Charles St. John, Albert Michelson, Albert Einstein, W. W. Campbell, and Walter Adams during a visit by Einstein to Mount Wilson. Hubble, a Carnegie Staff Member from 1919 until his death in 1953, with his colleague Humason discovered that the universe is expanding. The Hubble Space Telescope is named for him.

The institution's administration building in downtown Washington, DC

Changes have also occurred in the institution's other research departments. The earth and planetary scientists and astronomers of the institution's Geophysical Laboratory and Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM), in northwest Washington, DC, have completed plans to transform the historic experiment building and annex on the Broad Branch Road campus into an attractive center for conferences, meetings, and social activities. Construction of the Maxine F. Singer building is underway near the west entrance of the Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus in Baltimore, Maryland—a 79,000 sq. ft. biomedical research facility that will become the new home of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology. Additional renovations at Plant Biology and the Observatories were undertaken in 1998. Carnegie's historic headquarters building in downtown Washington, D. C., underwent extensive renovations during the winter of l997-1998. On July 1, 2002, Global Ecology became the first new Carnegie Department in more than 80 years. Construction of a global ecology complex was completed in 2004. The new buildings minimize the use of nonrecyclable materials and incorporate energy efficient cooling and heating systems.

The historic leadership of Carnegie scientists has been remarkable, both in extent and variety. Foremost examples include Barbara McClintock's discovery in the 1940s of movable genetic elements, a discovery for which she received the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine. Alfred Hershey, McClintock's colleague at Carnegie's former Department of Genetics, shared a Nobel Prize in 1969 for his work in proving DNA to be the genetic material. Humankind's understanding of the universe was revolutionized by the discovery of the velocity-distance relation (i.e., the expanding universe) by Carnegie's Edwin Hubble and Milton Humason at the Mount Wilson Observatory in the 1920s. The theories developed by Norman Bowen from extensive chemical experiments at the Geophysical Laboratory are still the starting point for all discussions of the evolution of igneous rocks in the Earth. Merle Tuve, in a long career as Staff Member and director at DTM, led the way in opening many new areas of inquiry—in radio studies of the ionosphere, nuclear physics, radioisotope geochronology, the development of electronic image intensifiers for optical telescopes, explosion seismology, and radio astronomy.

Work at the Department of Plant Biology during and after the 1930s, by Jens Clausen, David Keck, and William Hiesey, yielded definitive answers to fundamental questions on evolution, adaptation, and the nature of species—questions long controversial among biologists. The Department of Embryology's renowned human embryo collection, collected by Franklin Mall and George Streeter in the early years of the century, provided the foundation for much work leading to our current understanding of early human development. The collection is now available to researchers at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, DC.

Though the Carnegie Institution now represents only a small part of the whole scientific community, its current work in its several chosen areas offers the promise of similarly enduring significance. Staff Member Allan Sandage of the Carnegie Observatories, for his long leadership in observational cosmology, received from the Royal Swedish Academy the 1991 Crafoord Prize—the Nobel equivalent for astronomers. DTM astronomer Vera Rubin is renowned, with her colleague Kent Ford, for observations of many spiral galaxies leading to the revolutionary conclusion that much of the mass of the universe is composed of nonluminous matter—a discovery that bears on the foremost questions in cosmology and has sparked countless investigations worldwide. Rubin received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (London) in November 1996, and in 2001 the John Scott Medal for her "major role in changing the way we think about our universe". Younger Carnegie astronomers have already established their leadership in exploring the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe as well as in various critical aspects of galaxy, star, and planetary evolution. Alan Dressler was co-discoverer of the vast Great Attractor overdensity, Stephen Shectman is a leader in applying a variety of instrumentation systems to the observations of galaxies, and Wendy Freedman is recognized for her leadership of the Hubble Space Telescope key project on extragalactic distances and the resultant revised expansion rate of the universe.

The drive for leadership and excellence is indeed universal in all the Carnegie departments. At the Geophysical Laboratory, experimental geophysicists in the Center for High Pressure Research are employing apparatus developed at the laboratory to attain record-high static pressures. They remain at the forefront in seeking to explain the nature of the transitions and in extending the experimental pressure range with hydrogen ever higher. Widespread recognition of the group's work includes the award of the Arthur L. Day Prize by the National Academy of Sciences to Staff Member Ho-kwang Mao in 1990. Scientists at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism are also widely recognized for their work. Most recently, DTM's director, Sean Solomon received the 1999 Arthur L. Day Prize. Solomon is also the principal investigator for the MESSENGER mission to Mercury. DTM's George Wetherill received a National Medal of Science from President Clinton in 1997, in honor of his pioneering contributions in radioisotope geochronology and studies of solar system formation.Wes Huntress was selected by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics to receive the Dryden Lectureship in Research, in 2003. Russell Hemley received the Hillebrand Prize of the American Chemical Society in March 2003.

At the Department of Plant Biology, Emeritus Staff Member Olle Björkman and colleagues, whose work in physiological ecology and the physiology of photosynthesis has long been recognized as world-class, are extending this work to fashion the new field of excess-energy dissipation in photosynthesis. Chris Somerville, the Department's director, received the first Gibbs Medal by the American Society of Plant Physiologists in 1993; the medal recognizes pioneering advances that establish new directions of investigation. Somerville also received, in 2000, the Kumho Award of the International Society for Plant Molecular Biology, which recognized the contribution of the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative group for completing the Arabidopsis sequence. Winslow Briggs, director emeritus of the department, was awarded the 1994 Stephen Hales Prize from the American Society of Plant Physiologists, and in 2000 he was awarded the Finsen Medal by the Association Internationale de Photobiologie for outstanding research in photobiology.

At the Department of Embryology, Allan Spradling was part of the team that in 2000 sequenced the genome of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. His work is opening new directions for understanding gene amplification, chromosomal replication, and gene elimination. Spradling is also well known for developing with former Staff Member Gerald Rubin the first successful gene-transfer technique in Drosophila, using movable genetic elements as carriers, in 1982. Another former Embryology Staff Member and current trustee Steven McKnight has had more than 30,000 citations for the 40 papers he produced as a Carnegie Staff Member. Andrew Fire won numerous awards for his work on RNA interference: the 2002 Meyenberg Prize from the German Cancer Research Center; the 2002 Genetics Society of America Medal; the 2003 Wiley Prize with colleagues Craig Mello, Thomas Tuschl, and David Baulcombe; the 2003 National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology with Craig Mello; and the 2003 Passano Physician/Scientist Award. In April 2003 Marnie Halpern received the H. W. Mossman Award in Developmental Biology at the annual meeting of the American Association of Anatomists. Director Allan Speradling and former Embryology staff member Gerald Rubin received the 2003 George Beadle Award of the Genetics Society of America.

In 2001, Paul Butler of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) and his UC-Berkeley colleague Geoffrey Marcy were awarded the Henry Draper Medal by the National Academy of Science for their "pioneering investigations of planets orbiting other stars via high-precision radial velocities"; in 2002, Butler, Marcy, and Steve Vogt (UC-Santa Cruz) received the Beatrice M. Tinsley Award from the American Astronomical Society for "pioneering work in characterizing planetary systems orbiting distant stars." Larry Nitler, also of DTM, received the Nier Prize from the Meteoritical Society in 2001, "for a significant contribution in the field of meteoritics and closely allied fields of research." DTM's Alycia Weinberger was awarded the 2000 Vainu Bappu Gold Medal of the Astronomical Society of India.

Basic research is often the forerunner of practical benefits for humankind; examples of this phenomenon abound in Carnegie's past. Research in plant genetics by Carnegie's George Shull early in the century led directly to present-day methods of hybrid corn breeding. Tuve's radio studies of the ionosphere led to radar; and years of work at the Department of Embryology brought improved prenatal diagnosis and care by physicians. Scientists at the Geophysical Laboratory contributed to the fundamental knowledge that led to the invention of Pyrex, provided a wealth of knowledge valuable in mining and petroleum engineering, and recently have pioneered in predicting properties of materials formed only at high pressure. DTM seismologists, whose research and instrumentation bear on the goal of earthquake prediction, today continue to work closely with scholars and officials in earthquake-prone regions around the world.

The institution's strong program of predoctoral and postdoctoral education, where young scientists at the thresholds of their careers come to the Carnegie departments for periods of residency, took form after World War II during the Carnegie presidency of Vannevar Bush. Bush saw that the benefits would be reciprocal: the young scientist would learn from and work with leading investigators at a crucial stage in his or her intellectual development. Meanwhile, the Carnegie departments would gain in vigor by, as Bush wrote, "exposing themselves constantly to the influence of young minds." To Bush, it was important that the younger individuals become genuine participants in the research of each department, and that they should have ample opportunity for self-expression.

The Department of Plant Biology's headquarters and principal laboratories in Stanford, California.

The predoctoral and postdoctoral programs have flourished much as Bush envisioned. Details differ among the institution's five departments, but in all cases the fellows and associates join in the vigorous intellectual life. Their published work, sometimes done in collaboration with staff scientists and sometimes done independently, often brings early and wide recognition. Fellows and associates have equal access with Staff Members to the institution's laboratory and observational facilities, including special equipment when needed. Often the fellow or associate becomes engaged in the design or development of some crucial instrument or technique, which then becomes a focus of his or her research in later years. Where new lines of thought are stirring at a Carnegie department—in the high-pressure experiments at the Geophysical Laboratory, for example—those individuals who serve there as young investigators may go forth to become leaders in extending the new ideas in colleges, universities, and industrial and private research institutions elsewhere. In this way, through its postgraduate and postdoctoral educational role, the influence of the Carnegie Institution is multiplied worldwide.

ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCES

The Carnegie Institution is under the control and direction of a board of trustees. At its annual meeting each May, the board makes the appropriations for the next fiscal year, starting on July 1. A second meeting is held in December. One of the two meetings each year is typically held at one of the research departments, primarily to review the department's scientific program. Between meetings, the board is represented by the Budget and Operations Committee, which convenes in March and September, and by several standing committees. The chief executive officer of the institution, who provides leadership for the departments and staff and is responsible for overall administration, is the president. Each of the research departments is led by a director, who shapes the scientific program and is responsible for the department's administration. Visiting committees to the departments, each generally composed of outside scientists and two or three trustees, serve in advisory roles to the institution's board of trustees, president, and directors.

The institution's activities are financed by income from the endowment, by grants from federal agencies and private foundations, and by gifts and bequests from individuals. Expenses in fiscal 2002-2003 included approximately $33 million paid from endowment and special funds, and approximately $21 million in federal and private grants. Tens of millions of dollars in private gifts and pledges have been applied to the large telescopes at Las Campanas, new facilities at the departments, fellowships, and other projects.