Mary Ann Pabis, age 10, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for her question:

How did the Smithsonian Institution get its name?

It was named for a remarkable man whose life is somewhat shrouded in mystery. When the United States broke away from England, he was a school boy in Europe. Though he never visited our young country, he had a great faith in its future. He gave a large fortune to help Americans to understand their great role in world history. This James Smithson was remarkable and his Smithsonian Institution has done all that he hoped, plus very much more than he could have dreamed.

Famous persons make us curious about their private lives. When the details are mysterious, all sorts of stories are invented and circulated around. This may explain why there are so many different stories about the life of James Smithson. Everybody tries to guess why he founded the great Smithsonian Institution and gave his name to it. Actually the few facts we know about him are quite enough to figure out why he did this.

We know that he was born in France in 1765, or thereabouts. His parents were English, and this is where the mystery begins. Both of them were wealthy and it seems that his father was a duke. But they were not married to each other. In those days, this sort of thing was hard on a child. He had no right to his father's name and, of all things, people looked down on a child with no name of his own. Nowadays, this sounds ridiculous, because most of us have grown out of such uncivilized old ideas. Thank goodness, no sensible modern person blames a child for what his parents did or did not do.

But in those days they did. However, the nicest people made a big thing about not discussing the problem. This was meant to be polite. But it did not make young James feel any better and it added a lot of mystery to his life. In the past, many children suffered through this sort of humiliating nonsense. But young James protested and went to court to claim the name Smithson for himself.

No doubt he felt angry because they denied him his father's title. Some guessers claim that he left his fortune to America out of spite. But James Smithson was much too intelligent to let anger or spite rule any part of his life. He studied in England and was rated among the great scientists of his day. He was an expert in  chemistry and minerals and discovered the mineral called smithsonite. But the wholehearted interest of his life was all mankind. He knew better than most people that the progress of civilization depends on spreading truth and knowledge to all the peoples of the world.

Smithson lived when the quarrelsome countries of Europe were torn apart by Napoleon's armies. The Old World seemed doomed to destroy itself and Smithson saw young America as man's best hope for the future. This must be why he trusted us with a fortune to make his dream come true. His logical faith was rewarded because America has made the Smithsonian Institution one of the great living treasures of the world.