Joseph Sweetman Ames, founding member and former chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), was a man known for his commitment to the things he loved. One such thing was the field of aeronautics, and for his dedication to it, he is the namesake of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California.
Ames’s interest in aeronautics began with his study of physics. In 1883, he entered the recently founded Johns Hopkins University to pursue an undergraduate degree in the discipline, one that he considered “an entirely new field of investigation and study.”[1] His classmates remembered him as courteous and dignified, not to mention as an excellent student. Ames would remain affiliated with the university long after his undergraduate career – indeed, after spending time at the University of Berlin and doing research at the laboratory of physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, he returned to Johns Hopkins in 1887 to earn his doctorate in physics. During this time, he gained a laboratory assistantship overseeing undergraduate students, and soon after, became Director of the Physical Laboratory at the university. Joining Johns Hopkins’s faculty as an associate professor in 1891 and becoming a full professor eight years later, it was during this time that he met his future wife, widower Mary B. Harrison. They married in 1899, and soon after, created a home together close to the University.
Although Ames participated in a number of scientific organizations over his lifetime, one of the earliest – and the one to which he made the largest commitment – was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). He was one of twelve members appointed to the NACA at its inception in 1915 by President Wilson and would, in the words of United States Navy Admiral Ernest J. King, “[lay] the modern foundations for the science of aeronautics.”[2] His involvement in the NACA was twofold in that his technical background allowed him to contribute significantly to the organization’s research initiatives and that his diligence made him a natural choice for an administrative leader as well. Ames became chairman of the executive committee in 1919, a role that handled concerns essential for the NACA’s internal operations, such as managing the various aspects of the budget, overseeing the construction of facilities, and deciding upon specific research initiatives. In overlap with his leadership of the executive committee, he also became chairman of the NACA’s main committee in 1927. This position gave him great influence over research priorities, and also made him the key player in the NACA’s relationship with other agencies of the federal government. Ames’ influence long outlived him. By handpicking and mentoring young, promising engineers and scientists, like Hugh Dryden (who would later head the NACA) Ames defined the future of the NACA. Under his guidance in these roles, the NACA became a world-renowned, pioneering institution in aeronautics research.
Aside from his participation in NACA, Ames held membership or leadership roles in numerous scientific societies. He became a member of the National Research Council and chairman of its Division of Physical Sciences. Over the course of his career, he also was a member of the National Aeronautic Association and the American Physical Society. On top of his many other commitments, he also served as Provost of Johns Hopkins University starting 1926 and then became its President in 1929.
In 1937, Ames suffered a stroke that confined him to his home for the majority of the rest of his life. Noting his declining health, he resigned from his chairmanship of the NACA’s main committee in 1939 (having resigned from Johns Hopkins in 1935 and from the NACA’s executive committee in 1936). Shortly after his resignation, a resolution recognizing Ames’s contributions to the organization at an October 19th, 1939 meeting stated:
“When aeronautical science was struggling to discover its fundamentals, his was the vision that saw the need for novel research facilities and for organized and sustained prosecution of scientific laboratory research. His was the professional courage that led the Committee along new scientific paths to important discoveries and contributions to process that have placed the United States in the forefront of progressive nations in the development of aeronautics.”
The same year also saw the NACA name its new research facility at Moffett Field, California for him, as the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory. Dr. Joseph S. Ames passed away on June 24, 1943. His deep and lasting influence on the direction of aeronautics research facilitated the technological leaps our nation has made in the last century.
Publications
The Theory of Physics (1897); Elements of Physics (1900); The Induction of Electric Currents (two volumes, 1900); Text-Book of General Physics (1904); Theoretical Mechanics (1929)
Endnotes
[1] Henry Crew, Bibliographical Memoir of Joseph Sweetman Ames (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1944), 184.
[2] King, Ernest J. Letter to Dr. Durand. 26 May 1944. Bibliographical Memoir of Joseph Sweetman Ames (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1944).
