Helmholtz and the ideals of science and culture in Gilded Age America

Résumé

This paper presents Helmholtz’s visit to the USA in 1893. That visit was the most celebrated of any scientist’s to nineteenth-century America. If part of the explanation for the extraordinary reception that Helmholtz received when he visited the U.S. in 1893 rests with his distinguished scientific reputation, the other part, I’ll argue, lies in the aspirations of his American hosts and the ways in which the ideals and values of science that Helmholtz represented found resonance in a rapidly developing American scientific scene. This story can illustrate my claim that American science in the Gilded Age (that is, from the mid-1870s to 1900) was far more robust than previous scholarship has allowed and that Helmholtz embodied ideals and values of pure as well as of applied science that many leaders of American science and culture hoped to see flourish in America.