Military and politics From 1914 to 1915, he volunteered for the Paris surgical staff of the
Ambulance Américain, a group of American civilian doctors serving in Europe. From 1915 to 1917, he directed the
Hôpital 72, Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires, a French charity hospital in Paris. Once the U.S. entered
World War I in 1917, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the
United States Naval Reserve, directing the
2nd Naval District Training School for Reserve Officers at
Newport, Rhode Island, where he served until 1919. In 1919, he was awarded the
Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur for his service to the people of France. In 1922, Rice was the unsuccessful
Republican nominee for
Congress from
Massachusetts's 12th congressional district.
Exploration and academic career in 1919 and 1920 , the home Eleanor Widener Rice planned with her first husband and completed with her second leaving New York on November 16, 1916 As a geographer and explorer Rice specialized in rivers. On seven expeditions, beginning in 1907, he explored of the
Amazon Basin, During a 1920 trip, it was reported that "the party warded off an attack by savages and killed two cannibals""scantily clad... very ferocious and of large stature". A subsequent headline read: "Explorer Rice Denies That He Was Eaten By Cannibals". On an expedition in 1919, he ascended the
Orinoco to its upper reaches in Venezuela, but had a disastrous battle with a group of
Yanomami, who can be belligerent but are in no sense cannibal; this was the only example throughout the twentieth century of a scientific expedition shooting and killing Amazonian indigenous people. That expedition continued, in 1920, to traverse the natural
Casiquiare canal, and descend the
Rio Negro to the Amazon at
Manaus. His most important exploration in 1924-25 was the first to use aerial photography (from a
Curtis Sea-Gull biplane with floats) and
shortwave radio for mapping. This four-month expedition ascended the
Rio Branco and its Uraricoera headwater (past Maraca Island and the mighty Purumame waterfall) and then, leaving its boats, cutting trails into the Parima hills. The team had a peaceful encounter with another group of Yanomami whom Rice found poor and repellent but was impressed by their magnificent conical yano hut. He also established hospitals for Indians in Brazil, researched tropical diseases, and conducted expeditions in Alaska and Hudson Bay. He led his last expedition in 1924–1925. Dr Rice was closely associated with the Royal Geographical Society in London. After being awarded its Patron's Medal in 1914, he lectured there frequently, and published reports of his various expeditions only in its
The Geographical Journal, in 1914, 1918, 1921, and 1928. In 1926 Rice offered to finance a railway for 850 km (500 miles) from Manaus north to Boa Vista (then Rio Branco Territory; now
State of Roraima) if he was granted an operating franchise and land along it; the local governor refused. In 1929 Rice founded Harvard's Institute of Geographical Exploration, to which he and his wife provided a considerable endowment, and which under Rice's directorship became an important center for the science of
photogrammetry. His other positions included curatorship of the South American Section of the
Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; Lecturer in Diseases of Tropical South America at
Harvard Medical School; and Trustee of the
American Museum of Natural History. When the Institute of Geographical Exploration closed in 1952, Rice retired. ==Awards and honors==