Joseph Sweetman Ames

Joseph Sweetman Ames (July 3, 1864 – June 24, 1943) was an American physicist, professor at Johns Hopkins University, provost of the university from 1926 to 1929, and university president from 1929 to 1935. He is best remembered as one of the founding members of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA) and its longtime chairman (1919–1939). NASA Ames Research Center is named after him. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1905 and the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1909. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1911. He was the 1935 recipient of the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution.

Ames was also an assistant editor of The Astrophysical Journal and associate editor of the American Journal of Science; editor-in-chief of the Scientific Memoir Series; and editor of Joseph von Fraunhofer's memoirs on Prismatic and Diffractive Spectra (1898).

Career Joseph Sweetman Ames was born in Manchester, Vermont on July 3, 1864. Ames was the son of George Lapham Ames and Elizabeth (Bacon) Ames and a descendant of the Ames and Bacon families of Connecticut. When he arrived at Hopkins as a freshman in 1883, he began a lifelong affiliation of sixty years, with only a year's hiatus after his graduation in 1886 (the undergraduate curriculum was then three years). After traveling in Europe and attending Helmholtz's lectures at the University of Berlin,

Ames contributed to his field by publishing four textbooks, serving on the editorial staff of the Astrophysical Journal and Harper's Scientific Monthly, delivering Northwestern University's Harris Lectures on "The Constitution of Matter", co-authoring a book, Theoretical Mechanics, and holding the office of president of the American Physical Society, of which he was a charter member. His expertise also led to his being called to chair the Foreign Service Committee of the National Research Council, to direct the educational work of the United States Bureau of Standards, to lead a wartime scientific mission to France, and to head the executive committee of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), predecessor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

At Hopkins, his gift for administration led to his becoming secretary of the Academic Council in 1915, Dean of the College Faculty in 1924, and Provost in 1926. In 1929, when the university searched for a new president, Ames was appointed. He assumed office July 1, 1929 and commenced an administration which spanned six of the most difficult years in the university's history, due to the economic hardships of the Great Depression. The university's deficit grew as the general financial picture worsened.

When the Second World War began, as chair of the Foreign Service Committee of the National Research Council, Ames toured Europe studying scientific developments. Upon his return, he criticized the United States’ isolationist foreign policy, urging that war materials be sent to France as quickly as possible. He also urged that the United States immediately speed up development and production of warplanes.

Towards the end of his life, Ames’ work in aviation gained further recognition. In 1935, he was made an honorary fellow of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences and received from the Smithsonian Institution the Langley Gold Medal for Aerodynamics. In 1939, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics presented him with a testimonial resolution. Perhaps the greatest honor bestowed on him was the naming of the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory in California. Ames died on June 24, 1943, after being in failing health for several years due to a stroke.

Publications 1897: The Theory of Physics 1898: A Manual of Experiments in Physics at Internet Archive 1898: The Free Expansion of Gases at Internet Archive 1900: Elements of Physics 1900: The Induction of Electric Currents (two volumes) 1904: Text-Book of General Physics via Internet Archive 1929: Theoretical Mechanics