Samuel Wesley Stratton (July 18, 1861 – October 18, 1931) was an administrator in the American government, physicist, and educator. Life and work Stratton was born on farm in Litchfield, Illinois on July 18, 1861. In his youth he kept farm machinery in repair and worked as a mechanic and carpenter. He worked his way through Illinois Industrial University at Urbana (later the University of Illinois), receiving his bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in 1884. He became an instructor in mathematics and physics following his graduation, and in 1889, when Physics department head Theodore B. Comstock, Professor of Mining Engineering and Physics, inexplicably failed to return to campus after the summer vacation, Stratton was appointed head of the Department of Physics by regent Selim Hobart Peabody. As Physics head, Stratton organized a formal curriculum in electrical engineering, which was taught in the Physics Department until a separate department of electrical engineering was established in 1898. Stratton moved to the University of Chicago in 1892 as Assistant Professor of Physics, then Associate Professor in 1895 and Professor in 1898. Stratton served in the Illinois Naval Militia from 1895, as a lieutenant in the Navy in the Spanish–American War, and from 1904 to 1912 served as commander in charge of the Naval Militia in the District of Columbia. In 1899 he was asked to head the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey's Office of Weights and Measures, where he developed the plan for the establishment of a bureau of standards. He won the support for his plans from Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage and in March 1901, President William McKinley appointed him the first director of the National Bureau of Standards. He served until 1923. Under his leadership it grew from 24 to 900 employees scattered over 14 buildings. His operation was designed to recruit recent college graduates, train them, and feed them into private industry and its higher salaries. His team was called "lowest-paid corps of first-rank scientists ever assembled by any government." The Bureau worked hand in glove with industry to undertake research that the private sector required but could not finance itself. In 1904, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. He was awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1912. In 1917 Stratton was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. His boss, then