The Scientific Method

1796

Shipping mogul Elias Hasket Derby donates a stuffed zebra to Dartmouth. President Wheelock is said to be especially fond of the creature.

1808

William Tully enrolls in the Dartmouth Medical School after studying at Yale under Benjamin Silliman, the "father of American scientific education." Tully complains that Professor Silliman used more scientific apparatus in a single lecture than was available in all of Hanover.

1828

No scientific publications are available on campus. Students interested in science transfer to Yale.

1836

Oliver Hubbard, Dartmouth's newly appointed chemistry professor, inventories the contents of his lab. "There is no bell glass or any article for pneumatic Chem. No means of making oxygen. Cistern of wood...will not hold water pestles without mortars...one flask, no test tubes, reagents and chemicals decomposed...the utmost of every object & only the ruins of what was."

1848

Dartmouth buys a telescope.

1852

Shattuck Observatory becomes the first scientific building on campus.

1855

Scientists are the highestpaid faculty members. The others petition the Trustees for a raise. The Trustees refuse.

1892

Professor Griswold cites improvements to Dartmouth's science curriculum. "Until recently," he notes, "dried plants and the dried skins of animals and their dried bones were considered amply competent to impart all the information needed by students of natural history. Instead of biology the subject might have been more appropriately termed dry-ology."

1959

Students write a language for the College's new computer. They call it DOPE,

1975

Dartmouth joins Michigan and M.I.T. and opens an observatory on kitt Peak in Arizona.

1990

The Women in Science Project is created. Within four years the number of women majoring in science doubles.

1995

Dr. Mae Jemison, chemical engineer, physician, and the first African-American woman astronaut, teaches in the Environmental Studies Department.

Students often had a bone to pick over the sciences.