3-35-1. Edgar Odell Lovett to H. Poincaré (draft)

Berlin, den 3 February 1912

Hotel Atlantic — Der Kaiserhof — Berlin

My dear Professor Poincaré,

As far as may be consistent with dignity I desire to press upon you the invitation which M^r Hadamard aided me in presenting a few evenings ago. You cannot estimate what your coming would mean to the new institution. Your presence would be of everlasting value to us in establishing high tradition. Your lectures would represent human achievements at their present level, and the promise and problems of the future. Your coming would be a constant source of inspiration to all future associates and students of the Rice Institute. We could neither point out a room in which Newton lived, as the Cambridge don may do at Trinity College, nor designate a laboratory where Pasteur wrought, as more the doctor of Paris, but we could be able to say “Behold, where Poincaré read and walked, if but for one day in our midst.”

While the new institution is dedicated to the advancement of letters, science and art, by instruction and by investigation, in the individual and in the race, three circumstances make our choice of educational endeavour an easy one: 1° we are in a new and rapidly developing country; 2° there is no school of pure and applied science of the higher grade, in its section of our country; 3° the financial foundations, while large, is nevertheless limited, and not adequate to provide for the equipment of all faculties; for these reasons we propose to begin a university programme of the science and with a view to opening the institution with appropriate ceremonies we are inviting a few distinguished scholars and scientists to come to Houston as our guests on the occasion of the 420th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery, 19th and 20th October 1912, and to prepare say three lectures one of which to be delivered, and all three in each case to be published in a memorial volume that will be made worthy of the lectures and of the high aims of the new foundation.

For various reasons it has seemed wise to limit the fields represented as follows

Mathematics	Poincaré	Letters	Mackail Cato professor in Oxford
Physics	Thomson *	Philosophy	Sir Henry Jones of Glasgow
Chemistry	Ostwald **	History	Lamprecht of Leipsic
Biology	De Vries ***	Art	Altamira of Madrid

In Mathematics we have done ourselves the great honour in asking you; in physics we have invited Sir J. J. Thomson; in chemistry, Ostwald; in biology, De Vries. We propose also to invite a representative of letters, one of philosophy, one of history, and one in art. We are also arranging a conference on national and international methods on organization for instruction and investigation in Pure and applied science, and their functions in modern civilization, to be participated in by representatives of France, Germany, Italy and England. To the publications of this conference representatives of Russia, Scandinavia, Austro-Hungary & Japan will be asked to contribute.

I have written this note to supplement our rather hurried personal interview which was hurried because unfortunately delayed beyond the hour you had been good enough to name.

ADft 3p. Lovett Family Papers, 1849–1979 (MS 494), box 83, folder 36, Rice University Fondren Library.

Time-stamp: " 7.10.2023 20:41"

Notes

• 1 Jacques Hadamard, professor of analytical and celestial mechanics at the Collège de France, was an Adams Fund Lecturer at Columbia University in the fall of 1911. He and Gaston Darboux presented Lovett’s candidacy for membership in the Société mathématique de France at the meeting of 14 February, 1912 (Société mathématique de France, 1912, 24). After the First World War, in March 1920, Hadamard had the occasion to speak in Houston about Poincaré’s scientific contributions (Hadamard, 1915, 1922).
• 2 Louis Pasteur (1822–1895). While Poincaré never set foot in Houston, his colleagues Émile Borel and Jacques Hadamard both delivered lectures at the Rice Institute.
• 3 William M. Rice Institute (1917a, b, c). Lectures by Borel and Volterra appeared in the second and third volumes.
• 4 The two columns on the right-hand-side of the table are barred, while the asterisks in the second column have no clear referent.
• 5 Joseph John Thomson, Wilhelm Ostwald, Hugo De Vries. The representatives of Letters, Philosophy, History and Art appearing in the right-hand columns are John William Mackail (Oxford), Henry Jones (Glasgow), Karl Lamprecht (Leipzig), and Rafael Altamira y Crevea (Madrid). Neither Thomson nor Lamprecht contributed to the proceedings, while Benedetto Croce, Kikuchi Dairoku (Tokyo), Vito Volterra, William Ramsay and Carl Størmer all contributed.
• 6 The precise location and date of Lovett’s meeting are unknown, but they may have met in Paris in late January, 1912.