Description: Laying the Foundations: Early Schools of ThoughtWith few national institutions on which to model their thinking, many Americans built their plans for the Smithsonian around the notion of a national university.The debate moved quickly from, Should we create a national university? This page describes the 1838-1846 debates about what form the Smithsonian Institution should take.
Description: The Smithsonian Institution Archives recently acquired the papers of Ursula Marvin, a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory geologist who has studied meteorites and lunar samples.
Description: Help us identify images from the 1930s, photographed by Ruel P. Tolman, Curator and Director of the Smithsonian’s National Collection of Fine Arts.