Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/523

Rh held in Philadelphia, and on September 20, 1848, the original organization was changed to the "American Association for the Advancement of Science."

William B. Rogers presided at the dissolution of the Association of Geologists and Naturalists, and yielded the chair to William C. Redfield, the first President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Prof. Redfield was a resident of New York city and a pioneer in the study of meteorology. He published a theory of storms which became well known and was strenuously controverted by Espy, so that the storm controversy was a conspicuous feature of scientific annals. Prof. Redfield's influence had much to do with the establishment of the Weather Bureau of the United States.

The association began with a membership of four hundred and sixty-one, which increased to a thousand and four in 1854: at the Washington meeting under the presidency of James D. Dana. This was high-water mark for the first thirty years of its existence. In 1850 and 1851 two meetings were held in each year, but none in 1852. Thereafter annual meetings were held till 1860. The presidents during this period, besides those already mentioned, were Joseph Henry, Alexander D. Bache, Louis Agassiz, Benjamin Peirce, John Torrey, James Hall, Stephen Alexander, and Isaac Lea.

Of this illustrious roll, James Hall alone survives. He presided at the second Albany meeting in 1856 ,when the old Dudley Observatory was dedicated, the largest, most important, and most representative scientific meeting ever held in America before the war. The glowing eloquence of Edward Everett in his dedicatory oration, delivered in a tent erected for the occasion in the historic park of the Albany Academy, still haunts the memory of the writer, who was then a pupil in that academy. Meetings of the association during the ante-bellum period were held as far east as Cambridge and as far west as Cincinnati, while Montreal and