Alexander Dallas Bache

Model by Ferdinand Engel, 1862

Alexander Bache was born in Philadelphia,[1] the son of Richard Bache, Jr., and Sophia Burrell Dallas Bache. He came from a prominent family as he was the nephew of Vice-President George M. Dallas and naval hero Alexander J. Dallas. He was the grandson of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Dallas and was the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin.[2]

After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825, as first in his class, he was an assistant professor of engineering there for some time.[3] As a second lieutenant in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, he was engaged in the construction of Fort Adams in Newport, Rhode Island.[3] Bache resigned from the Army on June 1, 1829.

Bache was a professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania from 1828 to 1841 and again from 1842 to 1843.[3] He spent 1836–1838 in Europe on behalf of the trustees of what became Girard College; he was named president of the college after his return. Abroad, he examined European education systems, and on his return he published a valuable report.[1] From 1839 to 1842, he served as the first president of Central High School of Philadelphia, one of the oldest public high schools in the United States.[3]

In 1843, on the death of Professor Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, Bache was appointed superintendent of the United States Coast Survey.[1] He convinced the United States Congress of the value of this work and, by means of the liberal aid it granted, he completed the mapping of the whole coast by a skillful division of labor and the erection of numerous observing stations.[1] In addition, magnetic and meteorological data were collected.[1] Bache served as head of the Coast Survey for 24 years (until his death).

He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1845.[4] He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on March 15, 1858,[5] and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society on May 24, 1860.

After the Civil War, Bache was elected a 3rd Class Companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) in consideration of his contributions to the war effort.

He married Nancy Clark Fowler on September 30, 1838, at Newport, Rhode Island. She was born in Newport and died on January 13, 1870, in Philadelphia. She assisted in the publication of much of his work. They were the parents of one son, Henry Wood Bache (1839–November 7, 1878, at Bristol on Long Island, New York).

He died at Newport, Rhode Island, on February 17, 1867, from "softening of the brain".[1] He was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., under a monument designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson.

Two survey ships were named for him, the A. D. Bache of 1871 and its successor in 1901.

The cydippid ctenophore Pleurobrachia bachei A. Agassiz, 1860 was named for him; it was discovered in 1859 by Alexander Agassiz who was working as an engineer on a ship surveying the United States/Canada boundary between Washington State and British Columbia.[6]

Loma Prieta peak in the Santa Cruz mountains once bore his name - Mount Bache. The name is no longer in use. [7]

A K-8 public elementary school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Bache-Martin School) has its 5th-8th grade building named after him.[8]

• Alexander Dallas Bache Monument – Bache's tomb in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C..
• Alexander Dallas Bache School, Philadelphia
• Alexander Bache U.S. Coast Survey Line
• Richard Bache – Bache's paternal grandfather; son-in-law of Benjamin Franklin
• Richard Bache, Jr. – Bache's father
• Sarah Franklin Bache – Bache's paternal grandmother; daughter of Benjamin Franklin

• "Alexander Dallas Bache (1806–1867)", Chambers's Encyclopædia, Vol. II, London: George Newnes, 1961, p. 35
• Baynes, T. S., ed. (1878), "Alexander Dallas Bache" , Encyclopædia Britannica, 3 (9th ed.), New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, p. 196
• Jansen, Axel (2011), Alexander Dallas Bache: Building the American Nation through Science and Education in the Nineteenth Century Book, New York / Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, p. 352, ISBN 978-3-593-39355-1
• Slotten, Hugh Richard (1994), Patronage, Practice and the Culture of American Science: Alexander Dallas Bache and the U. S. Coast Survey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-43395-9
• J.C. (1868), "Obituary: Alexander Dallas Bache", Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 28 (1): 72–75, retrieved March 5, 2008
• Reingold, Nathan (1970), "Alexander Dallas Bache", Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp. 363–365, ISBN 0-684-10114-9
• Heyl, PR (1941), "The One Hundredth Anniversary Of The Establishment Of The Alexander Dallas Bache Magnetic Observatory", Science (published March 21, 1941), 93 (2412): 272–273, Bibcode:1941Sci....93..272H, doi:10.1126/science.93.2412.272, PMID 17834787
• Odgers, Merle M. (1947), Alexander Dallas Bache: Scientist and Educator, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Gould, Benjamin Apthorp (1868), An Address in Commemoration of Alexander Dallas Bache: Delivered August 6, 1868, Before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute Press

Attribution:

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911), "Bache, Alexander Dallas", Encyclopædia Britannica, 3 (11th ed.), Cambridge University Press, pp. 131–132

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alexander Dallas Bache.

• Finding Aid to Alexander Dallas Bache Papers, 1821–1869
• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
• The Bache Years (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Central Library)
• Alexander Dallas Bache: Leader of American Science and Second Superintendent of the United States Coast Survey (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)