Scientist of the Day - Fitzedward Hall
Portrait of Fitzedward Hall, undated photograph, private collection, Annals of Science, vol. 18, pl. 4, 1962 (Linda Hall Library)
Fitzedward Hall, an American Sanskrit scholar and collector of quotations, was born in Troy, N.Y., on Mar. 21, 1825. He received a degree in civil engineering from the local school, Rensselaer Polytechnic, a degree he never used, except perhaps to get into Harvard, where he studied from 1852 to 1856. Just before graduation, he headed off to India, ostensibly to help a friend, and he never returned to the U.S. Hall spent a dozen years in Benares, becoming so adept at Sanskrit that he was appointed Professor of Sanskrit Studies at the University there. He moved to England around 1860 and became Professor at Kings College in London. Then, around 1869, he retired to a reclusive life in Suffolk, where he spent most of his time reading proofs and collecting quotations for the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) project of James Murray.
The project to construct and publish a "New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" had begun under the auspices of the Philological Society in 1858, and Murray had come on as editor in 1870. Murray relied on some 1500 contributors to collect quotations to illustrate historical usage of words, and Hall became one of the most valuable. He had apparently been collecting quotations on his own for decades before teaming up with Murray. Murray, in various prefaces to fascicles and volumes, repeatedly singled out Hall for praise as one of his most valuable collaborators.
But all this has little to do with science, so what is Hall doing here, as a Scientist of the Day. Well, it all has to do with the word scientist, a word for which Hall was an ardent proponent, at a time when most Englishmen, including most English men of science, were unstinting in their criticism of "scientist" as a word for their profession.
People whom we call scientists used to be referred to as natural philosophers, a term that was fine in Isaac Newton’s Day, but less satisfactory by the 1830s. William Whewell coined the term scientist in an anonymous review in 1834 in Quarterly Review, and then less anonymously in his book, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, in 1840, where he advanced the word scientist as a perfectly acceptable analog to artist (he coined the word physicist at the same time).
Portrait of William Whewell, who coined the word scientist in 1834, stipple engraving, undated, Wellcome Collection, London (wellcomecollection.org)
The word may have been invented in 1834 and/or 1840, but it was rejected by many, especially the English, right up into the 20th century. It was regarded as an Americanism, i.e., a barbarism, by the English (who obviously did not know the word's history), and well-known men of science (the preferred term), such as Thomas H. Huxley and Lord Kelvin, publicly refused to apply the label scientist to themselves or any other man of science.
Hall, who was a philologist and knew better than anyone when a coined word was philologically unsound, found nothing wrong with scientist as a word, and in 1895, he wrote a short satire in which Thomas Huxley debated the suitability of the word scientist with the ghost of William Whewell, and the ghost won. The book was privately printed by Hall (it was titled: Two Trifles: I. A rejoinder. II. Scientist, with a preamble), and it is hard to believe it made any difference, but by the 1920s, the word scientist was in widespread use, both in England and the United States. Hall's role in the debate over the word scientist was completely unknown until Sydney Ross published an article in the journal Annals of Science in 1962. That article, by a colloid scientist of all people, reached an unexpectedly large audience, becoming one of the most often-cited articles in the journal's history. Since I cannot show you Hall’s 1895 privately printed pamphlet – I have never seen a copy – I show you Ross’s instead (third image). You can find it online here, where access is free.
First paragraph of “Scientist: The story of a word,” by Sydney Ross, Annals of Science, vol. 18, p. 65, 1962 (Linda Hall Library)
I would like to know a lot more about Fitzedward Hall. Why was he kicked out of the Philological Society? Why did he and James Murray never meet, although they collaborated for 20 years? How did come to be a Sanskrit master so speedily, when apparently, he did not speak or write the language when he moved to India? Why did he collect quotations, and what did he do with them, apart from sending some to Murray? And why did he feel so strongly about scientist as a well-coined word. Some of these questions may be answered in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which unfortunately our library does not have. If anyone wishes to further enlighten us about Hall, we would be grateful.
William B. Ashworth, Jr., Consultant for the History of Science, Linda Hall Library and Associate Professor emeritus, Department of History, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Comments or corrections are welcome; please direct to ashworthw@umkc.edu.
