Botany
Botany called plant science, plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist; the term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη meaning "pasture", "grass", or "fodder". Traditionally, botany has included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress. Nowadays, botanists study 410,000 species of land plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants, 20,000 are bryophytes. Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early humans to identify – and cultivate – edible and poisonous plants, making it one of the oldest branches of science. Medieval physic gardens attached to monasteries, contained plants of medical importance, they were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities, founded from the 1540s onwards.
One of the earliest was the Padua botanical garden. These gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy, led in 1753 to the binomial system of Carl Linnaeus that remains in use to this day. In the 19th and 20th centuries, new techniques were developed for the study of plants, including methods of optical microscopy and live cell imaging, electron microscopy, analysis of chromosome number, plant chemistry and the structure and function of enzymes and other proteins. In the last two decades of the 20th century, botanists exploited the techniques of molecular genetic analysis, including genomics and proteomics and DNA sequences to classify plants more accurately. Modern botany is a broad, multidisciplinary subject with inputs from most other areas of science and technology. Research topics include the study of plant structure and differentiation, reproduction and primary metabolism, chemical products, diseases, evolutionary relationships and plant taxonomy.
Dominant themes in 21st century plant science are molecular genetics and epigenetics, which are the mechanisms and control of gene expression during differentiation of plant cells and tissues. Botanical research has diverse applications in providing staple foods, materials such as timber, rubber and drugs, in modern horticulture and forestry, plant propagation and genetic modification, in the synthesis of chemicals and raw materials for construction and energy production, in environmental management, the maintenance of biodiversity. Botany originated as the study and use of plants for their medicinal properties. Many records of the Holocene period date early botanical knowledge as far back as 10,000 years ago; this early unrecorded knowledge of plants was discovered in ancient sites of human occupation within Tennessee, which make up much of the Cherokee land today. The early recorded history of botany includes many ancient writings and plant classifications. Examples of early botanical works have been found in ancient texts from India dating back to before 1100 BC, in archaic Avestan writings, in works from China before it was unified in 221 BC.
Modern botany traces its roots back to Ancient Greece to Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle who invented and described many of its principles and is regarded in the scientific community as the "Father of Botany". His major works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants, constitute the most important contributions to botanical science until the Middle Ages seventeen centuries later. Another work from Ancient Greece that made an early impact on botany is De Materia Medica, a five-volume encyclopedia about herbal medicine written in the middle of the first century by Greek physician and pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides. De Materia Medica was read for more than 1,500 years. Important contributions from the medieval Muslim world include Ibn Wahshiyya's Nabatean Agriculture, Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī's the Book of Plants, Ibn Bassal's The Classification of Soils. In the early 13th century, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, Ibn al-Baitar wrote on botany in a systematic and scientific manner. In the mid-16th century, "botanical gardens" were founded in a number of Italian universities – the Padua botanical garden in 1545 is considered to be the first, still in its original location.
These gardens continued the practical value of earlier "physic gardens" associated with monasteries, in which plants were cultivated for medical use. They supported the growth of botany as an academic subject. Lectures were given about the plants grown in the gardens and their medical uses demonstrated. Botanical gardens came much to northern Europe. Throughout this period, botany remained subordinate to medicine. German physician Leonhart Fuchs was one of "the three German fathers of botany", along with theologian Otto Brunfels and physician Hieronymus Bock. Fuchs and Brunfels broke away from the tradition of copying earlier works to make original observations of their own. Bock created his own system of plant classification. Physician Valerius Cordus authored a botanically and pharmacologically important herbal Historia Plantarum in 1544 and a pharmacopoeia of lasting importance, the Dispensatorium
Paleontology
Paleontology or palaeontology is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, sometimes including, the start of the Holocene Epoch. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments. Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC; the science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier's work on comparative anatomy, developed in the 19th century. The term itself originates from Greek παλαιός, palaios, "old, ancient", ὄν, on, "being, creature" and λόγος, logos, "speech, study". Paleontology lies on the border between biology and geology, but differs from archaeology in that it excludes the study of anatomically modern humans, it now uses techniques drawn from a wide range of sciences, including biochemistry and engineering. Use of all these techniques has enabled paleontologists to discover much of the evolutionary history of life all the way back to when Earth became capable of supporting life, about 3.8 billion years ago.
As knowledge has increased, paleontology has developed specialised sub-divisions, some of which focus on different types of fossil organisms while others study ecology and environmental history, such as ancient climates. Body fossils and trace fossils are the principal types of evidence about ancient life, geochemical evidence has helped to decipher the evolution of life before there were organisms large enough to leave body fossils. Estimating the dates of these remains is essential but difficult: sometimes adjacent rock layers allow radiometric dating, which provides absolute dates that are accurate to within 0.5%, but more paleontologists have to rely on relative dating by solving the "jigsaw puzzles" of biostratigraphy. Classifying ancient organisms is difficult, as many do not fit well into the Linnaean taxonomy classifying living organisms, paleontologists more use cladistics to draw up evolutionary "family trees"; the final quarter of the 20th century saw the development of molecular phylogenetics, which investigates how organisms are related by measuring the similarity of the DNA in their genomes.
Molecular phylogenetics has been used to estimate the dates when species diverged, but there is controversy about the reliability of the molecular clock on which such estimates depend. The simplest definition of paleontology is "the study of ancient life"; the field seeks information about several aspects of past organisms: "their identity and origin, their environment and evolution, what they can tell us about the Earth's organic and inorganic past". Paleontology is one of the historical sciences, along with archaeology, astronomy, cosmology and history itself: it aims to describe phenomena of the past and reconstruct their causes. Hence it has three main elements: description of past phenomena; when trying to explain the past and other historical scientists construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and look for a smoking gun, a piece of evidence that accords with one hypothesis over the others. Sometimes the smoking gun is discovered by a fortunate accident during other research. For example, the discovery by Luis and Walter Alvarez of iridium, a extra-terrestrial metal, in the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary layer made asteroid impact the most favored explanation for the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, although the contribution of volcanism continues to be debated.
The other main type of science is experimental science, said to work by conducting experiments to disprove hypotheses about the workings and causes of natural phenomena. This approach cannot prove a hypothesis, since some experiment may disprove it, but the accumulation of failures to disprove is compelling evidence in favor. However, when confronted with unexpected phenomena, such as the first evidence for invisible radiation, experimental scientists use the same approach as historical scientists: construct a set of hypotheses about the causes and look for a "smoking gun". Paleontology lies between biology and geology since it focuses on the record of past life, but its main source of evidence is fossils in rocks. For historical reasons, paleontology is part of the geology department at many universities: in the 19th and early 20th centuries, geology departments found fossil evidence important for dating rocks, while biology departments showed little interest. Paleontology has some overlap with archaeology, which works with objects made by humans and with human remains, while paleontologists are interested in the characteristics and evolution of humans as a species.
When dealing with evidence about humans and paleontologists may work together – for example paleontologists might identify animal or plant fossils around an archaeological site, to discover what the people who lived there ate. In addition, paleontology borrows techniques from other sciences, including biology, ecology, chemistry and mathematics. For example, geochemical signatures from rocks may help to discover when life first arose on Earth, analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to identify climate changes and to explain major transitions such as the Permian–Triassic extinction event. A recent discipline, molecular phylogenetics, compares the DNA and RNA of modern organisms to re-construct the "family trees" of their
Art Deco
Art Deco, sometimes referred to as Deco, is a style of visual arts and design that first appeared in France just before World War I. Art Deco influenced the design of buildings, jewelry, cars, movie theatres, ocean liners, everyday objects such as radios and vacuum cleaners, it took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes held in Paris in 1925. It combined modern styles with rich materials. During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour and faith in social and technological progress. Art Deco was a pastiche of many different styles, sometimes contradictory, united by a desire to be modern. From its outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bold geometric forms of Cubism, it featured rare and expensive materials, such as ebony and ivory, exquisite craftsmanship. The Chrysler Building and other skyscrapers of New York built during the 1920s and 1930s are monuments of the Art Deco style. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the Art Deco style became more subdued.
New materials arrived, including chrome plating, stainless steel, plastic. A sleeker form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s. Art Deco is one of the first international styles, but its dominance ended with the beginning of World War II and the rise of the functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style of architecture that followed. Art Deco took its name, short for Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes held in Paris in 1925, though the diverse styles that characterize Art Deco had appeared in Paris and Brussels before World War I; the term arts décoratifs was first used in France in 1858. In 1868, Le Figaro newspaper used the term objets d'art décoratifs with respect to objects for stage scenery created for the Théâtre de l'Opéra. In 1875, furniture designers, textile and glass designers, other craftsmen were given the status of artists by the French government. In response to this, the École royale gratuite de dessin founded in 1766 under King Louis XVI to train artists and artisans in crafts relating to the fine arts, was renamed the National School of Decorative Arts.
It took its present name of ENSAD in 1927. During the 1925 Exposition the architect Le Corbusier wrote a series of articles about the exhibition for his magazine L'Esprit Nouveau under the title, "1925 EXPO. ARTS. DÉCO." which were combined into a book, "L'art décoratif d'aujourd'hui". The book was a spirited attack on the excesses of the lavish objects at the Exposition; the actual phrase "Art déco" did not appear in print until 1966, when it featured in the title of the first modern exhibit on the subject, called Les Années 25: Art déco, Stijl, Esprit nouveau, which covered the variety of major styles in the 1920s and 1930s. The term Art déco was used in a 1966 newspaper article by Hillary Gelson in the Times, describing the different styles at the exhibit. Art Deco gained currency as a broadly applied stylistic label in 1968 when historian Bevis Hillier published the first major academic book on the style: Art Deco of the 20s and 30s. Hillier noted that the term was being used by art dealers and cites The Times and an essay named "Les Arts Déco" in Elle magazine as examples of prior usage.
In 1971, Hillier organized an exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which he details in his book about it, The World of Art Deco. The emergence of Art Deco was connected with the rise in status of decorative artists, who until late in the 19th century had been considered as artisans; the term "arts décoratifs" had been invented in 1875, giving the designers of furniture and other decoration official status. The Société des artistes décorateurs, or SAD, was founded in 1901, decorative artists were given the same rights of authorship as painters and sculptors. A similar movement developed in Italy; the first international exhibition devoted to the decorative arts, the Esposizione international d'Arte decorative moderna, was held in Turin in 1902. Several new magazines devoted to decorative arts were founded in Paris, including Arts et décoration and L'Art décoratif moderne. Decorative arts sections were introduced into the annual salons of the Sociéte des artistes français, in the Salon d'automne.
French nationalism played a part in the resurgence of decorative arts. In 1911, the SAD proposed the holding of a major new international exposition of decorative arts in 1912. No copies of old styles were to be permitted; the exhibit was postponed until 1914 because of the war, postponed until 1925, when it gave its name to the whole family of styles known as Déco. Parisian department stores and fashion designers played an important
Winter garden
A winter garden is a kind of garden maintained in wintertime. The origin of the winter garden dates back to the 17th to 19th centuries where European nobility would construct large conservatories that would house tropical and subtropical plants and would act as an extension of their living space. Many of these would be attached to their main palaces. Earlier versions would be constructed of masonry with large windows and a glass roof in the Classical or Gothic styles. While in the 19th century many of these conservatories were made out of iron and curvilinear glass. Winter gardens were not just restricted to private residence, many were built for the greater public; the first large public winter garden was built in 1842–46 in Regent's Park in London and was used for evening occasions, large flower shows and social gatherings. Other winter gardens, such as the Crystal Palace by Sir Joseph Paxton in 1851, were soon built and used for a variety of purposes; the modern winter garden is a garden planted either to produce food, or at least to remain visibly planted and develop, throughout the winter, or else a garden whose plants will serve as living decoration all winter.
One basic premise, in temperate or colder regions, to the winter garden is that the plants may indeed become dormant when snow covers the ground, but will grow each time the sun heats at least part of the plant to above freezing in regions where snow cover and below-freezing temperatures are not constant for months at a time. Vegetables that are or can be, used in a winter garden include: Several breeds of winter-hardy cabbage Specific winter-hardy breeds of broccoli Winter rye is grown where a summer garden will be, in order to protect the ground from weeds, provide soil amendment when tilled directly into the soil the following spring beets carrots alliums—onions and their relatives are evergreen, though some may die back during the winter and recover in the spring. Oregano -- known to hardily survive the winter up to Zone 5 Greenhouse Hardiness zone Winter sowing Underneath the arches The Guardian on Sheffield's public winter garden Up From the Ashes Collection
National Museum of Natural History (France)
The French National Museum of Natural History, known in French as the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, is the national natural history museum of France and a grand établissement of higher education part of Sorbonne Universities. The main museum is located in France, on the left bank of the River Seine, it was founded in 1793 during the French Revolution, but was established earlier in 1635. As of 2017, the museum has 14 sites throughout France, with four in Paris, including the original location at the royal botanical garden, the Jardin des Plantes, which remains one of the seven departments of MNHN; the museum was formally founded on 10 June 1793, during the French Revolution. Its origins lie, however, in the Jardin royal des plantes médicinales created by King Louis XIII in 1635, directed and run by the royal physicians; the royal proclamation of the boy-king Louis XV on 31 March 1718, removed the purely medical function, enabling the garden—which became known as the Jardin du Roi —to focus on natural history.
For much of the 18th century, the garden was under the direction of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, one of the leading naturalists of the Enlightenment, bringing international fame and prestige to the establishment. The royal institution remarkably survived the French Revolution by being reorganized in 1793 as a republican Muséum national d'histoire naturelle with twelve professorships of equal rank; some of its early professors included eminent comparative anatomist Georges Cuvier and evolutionary pioneers Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The museum's aims were to instruct the public, put together collections and conduct scientific research, it continued to flourish during the 19th century, under the direction of chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul, became a rival to the University of Paris in scientific research. For example, during the period that Henri Becquerel held the chair for Applied Physics at the Muséum he discovered the radiation properties of uranium.
A decree of 12 December 1891 ended this phase, returning the museum to an emphasis on natural history. After receiving financial autonomy in 1907, it began a new phase of growth, opening facilities throughout France during the interwar years. In recent decades, it has directed its research and education efforts at the effects on the environment of human exploitation. In French public administration, the Muséum is classed as a grand établissement of higher education. In the 19th century Argentine naturalist Francisco Javier Muñiz developed a collection that he intended to be used to create a natural history museum; the artifacts were sent to Juan Manuel de Rosas, the dictator of the Argentine Federation, whose support was required to establish a museum. Rosas, in an attempt to build alliances overseas, sent collected fossils to Jean Henri Dupotet, Rear Admiral of the French Navy. Dupotet sent them to Paris. In France, the Muñiz collection ended up in the National Museum of Natural History where they were studied by Paul Gervais.
In 1762 Jean Baptiste Christophore Fusée Aublet was sent to Cayenne in French Guiana, where he assembled a vast herbarium which allowed him to prepare his Histoire des plantes de la Guiane françoise, published in 1775 and including 400 copperplate engravings. When Fusée Aublet died at Paris in 1778, he left his herbarium to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, though the latter possessed it for only two months before he too died, it was acquired by the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in 1953. During the French Revolution the Museum expanded its collection by claiming objects from the cabinets of the aristocracy and from other institutions, such as the Royal Academy of Sciences and the École Royale Vétérinaire d'Alfort; the museum has as its mission both public diffusion of knowledge. It is organized into three diffusion departments; the research departments are: Classification and Evolution Regulation and Molecular Diversity Aquatic Environments and Populations Ecology and Biodiversity Management History of Earth Men and Societies, PrehistoryThe diffusion departments are: The Galleries of the Jardin des Plantes Botanical Parks and Zoos, The Museum of Man The museum developed higher education, now delivers a master's degree.
The museum comprises fourteen sites throughout France with four in Paris, including the original location at the Jardin des Plantes in the 5th arrondissement. The galleries open to the public are the Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology, the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy, the Gallery of Botany, the famous Gallery of Evolution; the Paleontology and comparative Anatomy Gallery is a 540 million year journey and one of the highlights of the museum. It starts with the famous fossils from the Paleozoic Era from 540 to 250 million years ago, such as the gigantic Dunkleosteus; the Mesozoic Era, 250 to 65 million years ago, marks the golden age of the dinosaurs such as the Diplodocus, Carnotaurus, Triceratops. One contemporary of these animals was a giant crocodile with terrifying teeth; the Muséum's Menagerie is located in the Jardin des plantes. The current Gallery of Botany, erected in 1935, is intended to preserve the vast herbarium of the museum. Referred to by code P, the herbarium includes a large number of important collections amongst its 8 million plant specimens.
The historical collections incorporated into the herbarium, each with its P prefix
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. It was established by the six-generation Rockefeller family; the Foundation was started by Standard Oil owner John D. Rockefeller, along with his son John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Senior's principal oil and gas business and philanthropic advisor, Frederick Taylor Gates, in New York State on May 14, 1913, when its charter was formally accepted by the New York State Legislature. Its stated mission is "promoting the well-being of humanity throughout the world." Rockefeller Foundation's activities have included: Financially supported education in the United States "without distinction of race, sex or creed" Helped establish the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom. Construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's Institute for Brain Research with a $317,000 grant in 1929, with continuing support for the institute's operations under Ernst Rüdin over the next several years. Funding an experiment conducted by Vanderbilt University where they gave 800 pregnant women radioactive iron, 751 of which were pills, without their consent.
In a 1969 article published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, it was estimated that three children had died from the experiment. As of 2015, the Foundation was ranked as the 39th largest U. S. foundation by total giving. By year-end 2016 assets were tallied with annual grants of $173 million. On January 5, 2017, the board of trustees announced the unanimous selection of Dr. Rajiv Shah to serve as the 13th president of the foundation. Shah became the youngest person, at 43, first-ever Indian-American to serve as president of the foundation, he assumed the position March 1, succeeding Judith Rodin who served as president for nearly twelve years and announced her retirement, at age 71, in June 2016. Rodin in turn had succeeded Gordon Conway in 2005. A former president of the University of Pennsylvania, Rodin was the first woman to head the foundation. Rockefeller's interest in philanthropy and Public Relations began in 1904, influenced by Ida Tarbell's book published about Standard Oil crimes, The History of the Standard Oil Company, which prompted him to whitewash the Rockefeller image.
His initial idea to set up a large-scale foundation occurred in 1901, but it was not until 1906 that Senior's famous business and philanthropic advisor, Frederick Taylor Gates revived the idea, saying that Rockefeller's fortune was rolling up so fast his heirs would "dissipate their inheritances or become intoxicated with power", unless he set up "permanent corporate philanthropies for the good of Mankind". It was in 1906 that the Russell Sage Foundation was established, though its program was limited to working women and social ills. Rockefeller's would thus not be the first foundation in America, but it brought to it unprecedented international scale and scope. In 1909 he signed over 73,000 shares of Standard Oil of New Jersey, valued at $50 million, to the three inaugural trustees, Junior and Harold Fowler McCormick, the first installment of a projected $100 million endowment, they applied for a federal charter for the foundation in the US Senate in 1910, with at one stage Junior secretly meeting with President William Howard Taft, through the aegis of Senator Nelson Aldrich, to hammer out concessions.
However, because of the ongoing antitrust suit against Standard Oil at the time, along with deep suspicion in some quarters of undue Rockefeller influence on the spending of the endowment, the end result was that Senior and Gates withdrew the bill from Congress in order to seek a state charter. On May 14, 1913, New York Governor William Sulzer approved a state charter for the foundation – two years after the Carnegie Corporation – with Junior becoming the first president. With its large-scale endowment, a large part of Senior's fortune was insulated from inheritance taxes; the total benefactions of both him and Junior and their philanthropies in the end would far surpass Carnegie's endowments, his biographer Ron Chernow states, ranking Rockefeller as "the greatest philanthropist in American history." The first secretary of the foundation was Jerome Davis Greene, the former secretary of Harvard University, who wrote a "memorandum on principles and policies" for an early meeting of the trustees that established a rough framework for the foundation's work.
On December 5, the Board made its first grant of $100,000 to the American Red Cross to purchase property for its headquarters in Washington, D. C. At the beginning the foundation was global in its approach and concentrated in its first decade on the sciences, public health and medical education, it was located within the family office at Standard Oil's headquarters at 26 Broadway shifting to the GE Building, along with the newly named family office, Room 5600, at Rockefeller Center. In 1913 the foundation set up the International Health Commission, the first appropriation of funds for work outside the US, which launched the foundation into international public heal
