Harry Fielding Reid - Personality and Research Style

Personality and Research Style

Harry Fielding Reid’s life bridged the gap that divided the early years of modern science, when successful men like Sir Joseph Banks and Benjamin Franklin worked on their own or financed the work of their friends, and a later era, from the final decades of the 19th century, when government and institutional financing caused science to become better organized even as it was made into a more bureaucratic enterprise. Reid’s long trip to Europe in 1884-86 appears to have been financed by his father, or so it would appear from a letter his wife later wrote (fall 1886) to J. J. Thomson. There is also the evidence, among his surviving papers at Johns Hopkins, of an account book from Reid’s early years of collecting data for the USGS (1902–14). That account book, which mostly records small amounts for secretarial expenses and the like, implies that Reid was expecting reimbursement from the USGS. He was not, however, earning a salary. Here seems a clear illustration of the turn that scientific inquiry was taking by 1902: there was evidently no regular income involved, yet Reid was not expected to foot the bill entirely on his own. Government subsidy – also taking place at Johns Hopkins as the geology faculty did work for the Maryland State Highway Department after 1898 – also meant greater accountability: hence Reid’s careful recording of expenses.

Beginning in at least 1896 with the death of his father, Reid had a significant private income, at least some of which he decidated to scientific research. He was later memorialized by colleague Andrew Lawson as having been “blessed with a charming character,” that it was “always a joy to meet him.” Lawson also remarked that Reid might seem “austere” to those unknown to him, yet that was typical for the Southern elite of his day. He was a small but physically strong man, a gymnast when young and an active mountain climber through much of his long life. He is not known to have produced any Ph.D. geophysicists through the geology department at Johns Hopkins, but he did serve as an advisor to students in other fields.