16 



temporary agency to be disbanded at the end of the war. At that 

 time, Congress would be asked to decide the future of Federal sci- 

 ence support. Few people — scientists or Government officials — de- 

 sired a return to pre-World War II conditions. Most wanted to 

 maintain the close links between the Government and universities. 

 Many of the issues that have become standard fare for science pol- 

 icymakers during the 40 years after World War II were thus ad- 

 dressed in the debates of this period. 2 



Office of Scientific Research and Development 



This contract system — and the overall coordination of research 

 during the war — was developed largely by the National Defense 

 Research Committee (NDRC) and its successor organization, the 

 Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). 3 These of- 

 fices provided a new framework for science policy in the United 

 States. Most notably, they tightened the link between universities 

 and Government research. They also brought science policymaking 

 mechanisms directly into the Executive Office of the President. 



The urgency of the war lessened the advisability of Congress es- 

 tablishing policy because the nation simply could not afford to wait 

 for legislation. Executive orders under temporary war powers 

 became the norm. A notable example of this rise in Presidential 

 authority was President Roosevelt's establishment of the National 

 Defense Research Committee on 27 June 1940, which was funded 

 through the President's emergency funds. By coordinating the na- 

 tion's nonmilitary science resources, the NDRC attempted to sup- 

 plement the weapons development programs being carried out di- 

 rectly by the Army and Navy. It became the key to the formulation 

 of a deliberate wartime science policy. 



In establishing the NDRC, Roosevelt was responding to the rec- 

 ommendations made to him by Vannevar Bush, whom Roosevelt 

 promptly appointed chairman of the new Committee. Bush, the son 

 of a Universalist minister, grew up near Boston and attended Tufts 

 College as an undergraduate. In 1916 he was awarded a doctorate 

 in electrical engineering from a joint Harvard University/Massa- 

 chusetts Institute of Technology program. Working briefly during 

 World War I on problems related to submarine detection, Bush 

 joined the faculty of M.I.T., where he remained for twenty years. 

 He left his post as vice president and dean of engineering at M.I.T. 



2 A good summary of these debates are presented in National Academy of Sciences, Federal 

 Support of Basic Research in Institutions of Higher Learning (Washington: National Research 

 Council, 1964), pp. 1-56. The original draft of this section of the Academy report was written by 

 A. Hunter Dupree. See also, James L. Penick, Jr., Carroll W. Pursell, Jr., Morgan B. Sherwood, 

 and Donald C. Swain (eds.), The Politics of American Science: 1939 to the Present (Cambridge: 

 The MIT Press, 1972); and J. Merton England, A Patron for Pure Science: The National Science 

 Foundation's Formative Years, 1945-57 (Washington: National Science Foundation, 1982). 



3 For the history of NDRC and OSRD, see James Phinney Baxter III, Scientists Against Time 

 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1946); Irwin Stewart, Organizing Scientific Research for War: The Admin- 

 istrative History of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (Boston: Little, Brown 

 1948); A. Hunter Dupree, The Great Instauration of 1940: The Organization of Scientific Re- 

 search for War," in Gerald Holton (ed.), The Twentieth-Century Sciences: Studies in the Biogra- 

 phy of Ideas (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972), pp. 443-467; and Carroll Pursell, "Science Agencies 

 in World War II: The OSRD and Its Challengers," in Nathan Reingold (ed.), The Sciences in the 

 American Context: New Perspectives (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1979), pp. 359- 

 378. Perhaps the best short description of the accomplishments of the OSRD is George H. Dan- 

 iels, "Office of Scientific Research and Development," in Donald R. Whitnah (ed.), Government 

 Agencies (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1983), pp. 426-432. 



