Alexander Dallas Bache

Alexander Dallas Bache
Alexander Dallas Bache
Born	July 19, 1806(1806-07-19) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	February 17, 1867(1867-02-17) (aged 60) Newport, Rhode Island, United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Physics

Alexander Dallas Bache (July 19, 1806 – February 17, 1867) was an American physicist, scientist and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey mapping of the United States coastline.

Biography

Alexander Bache was born in Philadelphia, the son of Richard Bache, Jr., and Sophia Burrell Dallas, nephew of George M. Dallas, and great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825, he acted as assistant professor there for some time. As a lieutenant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, he was engaged for a short time in the erection of coastal fortifications, including Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island. Bache resigned from the Army on June 1, 1829.

Bache spent the years 1836 to 1838 in Europe on behalf of the trustees of what became Girard College in 1848. Abroad, he examined European systems of education and, on his return, published a valuable report. From 1839 to 1842, he served as the first president of Central High School of Philadelphia, one of the oldest public high schools in the United States. 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.

He married on September 30, 1838 at Newport, Rhode Island, Nancy Clark Fowler. She was born in Newport, Rhode Island, and died on January 13, 1870 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was his associate in the preparation of much of his published material.

They were the parents of one son, Henry Wood Bache, born in 1839 and died on November 7, 1878 at Bristol, Long Island, New York.

In 1843, on the death of Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, Bache was appointed superintendent of the United States coast survey. He convinced the United States Congress of the value of this work and by means of the liberal aid it granted, he completed the mapping out of the whole coast by a skillful division of labor and the erection of numerous observing stations. In addition, magnetic and meteorological data was collected. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1845. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 15 March 1858, and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society on 24 May 1860.

After the Civil War, Bache was elected a 3rd Class Companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) in consideration of his contributions to the war effort.

He died at Newport, Rhode Island and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, where a monument was built by American architect Henry Hobson Richardson.

See also

• Alexander Dallas Bache Monument – Bache's tomb in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC.
• Richard Bache – Bache's grandfather
• Richard Bache, Jr. – Bache's father

References

• Jansen, Axel. Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century Book (New York / Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2011). 352 pp. isbn 978-3-593-39355-1
• Slotten, Hugh Richard (1994). Patronage, Practice and the Cuture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U. S. Coast Survey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43395-9. 
• Jansen, Axel (2011). Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century. Frankfurt/New York: Campus. EAN 9783593393551
• C., J. (1868). "Obituary: Alexander Dallas Bache". Monthly Notices of the RAS (MNRAS) (Royal Astronomical Society) 28 (1): 72–75. http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0028//0000072.000.html. Retrieved 2008-03-05. 
• Reingold, Nathan (1970). "Alexander Dallas Bache". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 363–365. ISBN 0684101149. 
• Heyl, PR (1941). "The One Hundredth Anniversary Of The Establishment Of The Alexander Dallas Bache Magnetic Observatory.". Science 93 (2412): 272–273. 1941 Mar 21. Bibcode 1941Sci....93..272H. doi:10.1126/science.93.2412.272. PMID 17834787 
• Odgers, Merle M. (1947). Alexander Dallas Bache: Scientist and Educator (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press)
• Gould, Benjamin Apthorp (1868). "An Address in Commemoration of Alexander Dallas Bache: Delivered August 6, 1868, Before the American Association for the Advancement of Science" (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute Press) [1]

External links

• Finding Aid to Alexander Dallas Bache Papers, 1821–1869