Science, Technology, and Society

Science and Technology in the 1st Republic of the Philippines (1899-1902)

1899 a. Biological laboratory

b. Direction of Lt. Richard P. Strong
 John Hopkins University medical graduate
 Votary of the new tropical medicine
Months later a. New Board of Health opened a municipal laboratory for Manila
b. Established the Bureau of Government Laboratories
a. Consolidated all the research activities of the colonial period
1900 a. Established Bureau of Forestry which led to the rehabilitation of Philippine
botany
 Successor of the Spanish Inspeccion General de Montes;
 Later known as the Bureau of Science
 Elmer D. Merill built the largest herbarium in Asia (250,000+ mounted
specimens)
b. Bureau of Ethnology
 Surveyed the “non-Christian tribes” and established a museum of local
types which were eventually incorporated in the National Museum of the
Philippines
c. Manila Observatory
 Renamed Weather Bureau, 1901
 Made meteorological observations and predictions, and conducted
seismological research
 Jose Algue, S.J., director of Manila Observatory (1897-1925), studied the
nature of typhoons and investigated on the climatic influences on crop
production in the Philippines
d. Bureau of Mines
 Merged with Bureau of Science, 1905
 Investigated geological resources
1901 a. Paul C. Freer
 Professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan
 Became director of the Bureau of Science
1902 a. Lt. Richard P. Strong
 Took charge of the biological laboratory

Reference:

Anderson, Warwick. (2007). Science in the Philippines. Philippine Studies 55, no. 3 (2007): 287-318.
Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/42633917.