hoped to provide for research in its purest form. 

 Like the university the foundations found their 

 responsibility in basic research. "The prosecu- 

 tion of fundamental researches," wrote Keppel, 

 "will remain one of the major opportunities, 

 perhaps the major opportunity, of foundations, 

 so long as they themselves endure." 7 Nearly 

 three decades later it was to be remarked by 

 Robert S. Morison, of the Rockefeller Founda- 

 tion, that foundation grant-in-aid programs for 

 basic research since about 1925 had 

 "presumably formed the templates" for govern- 

 ment grant programs after World War II." 



Independent Research Institutes 



Since the first half of the nineteenth century, a 

 few institutions had existed which were 

 privately established and endowed, were 

 broadly educational though not actually 

 schools, and which carried on planned research 

 from time to time. In 1830 the Franklin Institute, 

 one of the most important of the so-called 

 mechanics' institutes of the time, established in 

 Philadelphia in 1824, received a grant from the 

 Federal Government to study the causes of 

 steam boiler explosions. That is generally 

 thought to be the first research grant made by 

 the Government to a private scientific institu- 

 t ion. 



In the twentieth century, a number of other 

 research institutions were founded. In 1915 the 

 Mellon Institute of Industrial Research placed 

 on a permanent basis the Industrial Fellowship 

 Program. This was first conceived in 1906 by 

 Robert Kennedy Duncan, then a professor of 

 industrial chemistry at the University of 

 Kansas. An endowment from the Mellon family 

 enabled the Institute to match suggested 

 research problems with competent scientists 

 willing to undertake their solution. In 1929, 



thanks to an endowment from Gordon Battelle, 

 a Columbus, Ohio, industrialist, the private and 

 independent Battelle Memorial Institute began 

 work. These were soon followed by others — The 

 Purdue Research Foundation in 1930, the 

 Research Foundation of the Armour Institute of 

 Technology in 1936, and in that same year The 

 Ohio State University Research Foundation. 



After World War II, independent research 

 institutes were seen as a reasonable and 

 convenient method of administering funds 

 earmarked for particular research projects. On 

 occasion they were also able to serve as regional 

 facilities through which independent colleges 

 and universities could pool their scientific 

 resources. Before World War II, research 

 problems and funds came predominantly from 

 industry. After the war, they flowed increasing- 

 ly from the Federal Government. 



THE 1920's: SCIENCE SEEKS SUPPORT 



During World War I, Government support of 

 the new National Research Council, founded in 

 1916 as an appendage to the National Academy 

 of Sciences, gave university-based pure 

 research scientists an acquaintance with 

 Federal funding.' 1 But support for pure science 

 remained a problem. Studies ofthe subject were 

 part of the work of President Hoover's Research 

 Committee on Social Trends, which in a 1932 

 report found a steady deterioration of public 

 interest in basic science accompanied by a 

 corresponding rise of interest in both applied 

 science and its commercial uses. 1 " 



In a major attempt to build public support for 

 pure science, leaders of the national science 

 establishment sought from 1926 to 1930 to 

 accumulate a National Research Endowment. 11 



Frederii IV Keppel. The Foundation: /is Place hi 

 Amcni an Lift: [Nev\ York, 1930) pp. 9, 10. 89-90. 

 " Dael Wnlllr [ed |, Symposium mi Basic Research, 

 (Washington, 1959 p. 237. 



1 (in the NRC see Daniel |. Kevles, "George Ellery Hale, the 

 First World War, and the Advancement o) Science in 

 America," (sis. 59 [Winter, 1968). 427-437. 

 111 Hornell Hart, "Changing Social Attitudes and Interests." 

 IliTfnl Social Trends, I. |Ne\v York. 1933), 388-397. 

 11 Ronald C. Tobey, '/'lie American Ideology of National 

 Science, 1919-1930 (Pittsburgh, 1971), pp. 199-232. 



RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES 



