most responsible for the wartime science effort 

 were drawn mainly from the tradition of 

 academic research. Vannevar Bush was former 

 vice president of the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology, president of the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion of Washington and chairman of the 

 National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics; 

 James B. Conant was president of Harvard 

 University; and Karl T. Compton waspresident 

 of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

 and former chairman of the now defunct Science 

 Advisory Board. A fourth principal was Frank 

 B. [ewett, president of the National Academy of 

 Sciences and the director of Bell Telephone 

 Laboratories. 



A fundamental decision of OSRD was that its 

 war effort should be carried on with as little 

 disruption as possible of the existing scientific 

 structure. This meant that OSRD would act to 

 coordinate and stimulate rather than rearrange 

 scientific activities. Through the use of careful- 

 ly worked out contracts, OSRD concentrated 

 work in major scientific institutions and was 

 thus able to get work underway almost im- 

 mediately. One consequence of this system was 

 that the best men and ihe best equipped 

 laboratories were able to make a maximum 

 contribution to the technical problems of the 

 war. 



Another consequence was that the strong 

 gained strength. Two hundred educational 

 institutions between 1941 and 1944 received a 

 total of $235 million in research contracts— but 

 19 universities got three-fourths of it. Two 

 thousand industrial firms received almost $1 

 billion in research contracts— but fewer than 

 100 firms got over half of it. Bell Laboratories 

 had $200,000 worth of government contracts in 

 1939, and this accounted for a mere one percent 

 of the laboratory's activities. By 1944 Bell's 

 work for the Government represented 81.5 

 percent of its activities, and amounted to $56 

 million. 24 The contract system got the 

 Government's work done and vastly increased 



the funding available for industrial and univer- 

 sity scientists— but these new funds were 

 heavily concentrated in the largest and most 

 prestigious institutions. 



It is hardly possible to trace the fate of basic 

 research during the war. Obviously, the 

 Nation's research and development effort was 

 concentrated on making practical application of 

 knowledge already at hand. The Manhattan 

 District, organized to bring the atomic bomb 

 into being, was an exemplary model of effort of 

 this sort. So heavy was the reliance on previous 

 basic research that the Department of Defense 

 in the mid-1960s reported that its weapons at 

 that time were still based upon that "organized 

 body of physical science extant in 1930."-' At 

 the same time, not all American scientists were 

 wholly engaged in the war effort and in some 

 fields, such as astronomy, geology, and biology 

 (as opposed to physics and chemistry), the 

 involvement was relatively slight. 



POSTWAR PLANNING: 

 CREATING A NEW SYSTEM FOR 

 SCIENCE 



As early as 1943 scientists, military men, and 

 civilian administrators within the Government 

 began to plan for the extension of governmental 

 responsibility for the funding of science into the 

 postwar period, using the crisis-tested grant 

 and contract devices. Their motives were 

 varied. Within the Department of the Navy a 

 small group of reserve officers laid plans for 

 establishing an Office of Naval Research to 

 keep the fleet abreast of developing science and 

 technology.- 1 * Within the Army Air Corps such 

 planners as General Lauris Norstad dreamed of 

 increased service contact with university- 

 based scientists in order to stimulate both 

 scientific research and an active goodwill 



• U.S i Senate, Subcommittee on War Mobiliza- 



l ion. Report, "Tin' Government's Wartime Research and 



Development, 1(140-44; Pari II— Findings and Recommen- 

 dations," 79th Cong., 1st sess. (1945), pp. 20-22. 



■ Quoted in Scieni e, 154 (November 1H. 1966), 872. 



1 Sit "The Evolution ol the Office of Naval Research," 

 Physics Todoy, 14 (August. 1961), a0-35. 



10 



RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES 



