In 1920, Harvey N. Davis, a professor of physics and mechanical engineering at Harvard University, received RC’s first grant for a specific project when he was awarded $5,000 for studies in cryogenics. An article in the July-December 1920 issue of Science announced: “Research work on the manufacture of oxygen from the engineer’s point of view began at the Harvard Engineering School early in the summer under the direction of Dr. Harvey N. Davis, professor of mechanical engineering. The National Research Corporation [sic], founded in 1912 through the efforts of Dr. Frederick G. Cottrell now director of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, has given Harvard $5,000 for the work. Professor Davis and his associates have undertaken to determine the fundamental data concerning air and its properties, believing that present methods of making oxygen are wasteful, and that the industrial use of oxygen in blast furnaces may result from the elimination of this waste.”
Davis earned a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard; taught mathematics at Brown as an instructor; and then returned to Harvard as a Professor of Physics and Mechanical Engineering. The preface of “Practical Physics for Secondary Schools,” written by Davis and N. Henry Black in 1913, states: “In preparing this book, we have tried to select only those topics which are of vital interest to young people, whether or not they intend to continue the study of physics in a college course….In particular, we believe that the chief value of the informational side of such a course lies in its applications to the machinery of daily life. Everybody needs to know something about the working of electrical machinery, optical instruments, ships, automobiles, and all those labor-saving devices, such as vacuum cleaners, pressure cookers and electric irons, which are found in many American homes. We have, therefore, drawn as much of our illustrative material as possible from the common devices in modern life.”
Davis became the third president of Stevens Institute of Technology in 1928 and served in that capacity until 1951. He strongly supported the tradition of a four-year undergraduate engineering education based on fundamentals at a “small but good” college. He built Stevens’s reputation for teaching and supported its competitiveness in research. Davis encouraged broad-based undergraduate curriculums, brought in new faculty and started industrial research laboratories such as the “Human Engineering Laboratory.”
Harvey N. Davis was vice president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers from 1939 to 1940; he served on the Research Corporation board from 1931 until his death in 1952.