The Research Corporation for Science Advancement is celebrating its centennial this year, making it the oldest foundation in the United States devoted to science. Over the decades, Bowdoin College has played a key role in the foundation’s history and been greatly enriched by it, receiving grants topping $1.25 million. Only two other liberal arts colleges have received more: Hope College in Michigan and Denison University in Ohio.

In addition, Bowdoin’s ninth president, James Stacy “Spike” Coles, served as the foundation’s president from 1968 to 1982. He was president of Bowdoin from 1952 to 1967, and earned his PhD in chemistry from Columbia University in 1941.

RCSA supports the research of faculty members in the physical sciences-mainly astronomy, chemistry and physics-at U.S. colleges and universities. RCSA was founded by Frederick Gardner Cottrell, a physical chemist who helped fund the foundation’s endowment from the proceeds of a smokestack pollution-control device he invented called the electrostatic precipitator.