RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES: 

 A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 



1 



INTRODUCTION 



As the United States counts its assets at the 

 Bicentennial it can include a strong capability in 

 scientific research. From a modest start, a 

 continuity of effort has developed this resource 

 to its present worth. 



Through two centuries, that effort has had as 

 one of its main purposes the building of social 

 institutions both public and private for the 

 training of scientists and for performing and 

 supporting research. At the same time effort has 

 been devoted to the necessary task of defining a 

 mutally satisfactory relationship between 

 research and the society within which it 

 proceeds. 



Debate as to the terms of that relationship 

 continues, and some of the issues are not fully 

 resolved today: among them, how to insure 

 adequate and stable funding for research; how 

 to maintain the vitality of existing research 

 institutions, particularly by insuring for them a 

 steady supply of competent new people; how to 

 uphold freedom in the conduct of research while 

 drawing upon it to serve national purposes; how 

 to develop an informed understanding and 

 support of research on the part of government 

 and the public. Dominant views on these issues 

 at any given time have had much to do with the 

 development of the structure of research and the 

 level of research capability. 



In the twentieth century science has proved 

 its worth to the Nation during two world wars 

 and the pressure of international competition in 

 space, and in so doing strengthened its 

 capabilities. As a sequel in each case, the gains 



of science were consolidated in organizations, 

 some new, some old, which together formed a 

 new system of research support. During the 

 1920s, industrial research laboratories and 

 philanthropic foundations took their places 

 alongside universities and government agencies 

 as important contributors to the research 

 enterprise. The period after World War II 

 witnessed the addition of important new 

 science agencies. This was carried further with 

 the opening of the space age. Indeed, this period 

 saw an extensive federalization of the Nation's 

 research establishment. 



The history of the first two centuries closes 

 with what many regard as a new crisis, at the 

 moment less coherent than those earlier in this 

 century, and one challenging rather than 

 confirming the prevailing structure forresearch 

 and its interactions with society. The historical 

 record highlighted in the following pages 

 perhaps gives ground for hope that this crisis 

 will be met by new creative change in the 

 institutions for research and new progress in 

 devising the terms of their relationship to 

 society. 



THE BUILDING OF INSTITUTIONS 



During the nineteenth century, American 

 scientists were successful in convincing many 

 private and public patrons that science was 

 useful in a very practical sense. In the first 

 decades of the twentieth century, there emerged 

 a system — not exactly matched outside this 

 country — in which new knowledge flowed from 

 laboratory to application. In a Nation growing 



