Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist

Abstract

While US naval officer Matthew Fontaine Maury is frequently celebrated by naval historians, historians of science have treated him more poorly. He is often portrayed as an uneducated amateur who jumped to conclusions about the oceans based on slim evidence and biblical reasoning, and who missed the opportunity provided by the founding of the US Naval Observatory to place American scientists on a competitive footing with their European counterparts. Consigning Maury to the category of disappointing amateur, however, misses the opportunities his case presents to better understand the historical milieu in which he worked, as well as his enduring contributions to the scientific exploration of the deep ocean. This article reconsiders Maury as scientist, siting the origins of his poor historical reputation in arguments over the professionalization of science and of the navy. His reputation also suffered after his departure from Washington, DC, for the Confederacy at the beginning of the American Civil War. The article examines his participation in a practice of science flavoured by its location in the nation’s capital, where science required as much attention to lobbying and leveraged connections as to the calibration of instruments. In this context, Maury was a serious scientist who embraced the task of doing science in the public interest, and he participated in an ongoing effort to further the USA’s ability to be competitive on the world stage, whether that stage was dressed for scientific achievement or commerce. Maury sought authority for his claims with a strong sense of the geopolitics of geophysics. Re-examining Maury as scientist provides a window onto a pattern of scientific practice in Washington, DC, in the middle of the 19th century whose echoes propagated through the rest of that century and into the 20th.