SCIENCE, RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY, 1970-79 505 



A NEW DIRECTOR FOR NSF IN 1972 



At the end of 1971, NSF Director McElroy left to become chan- 

 cellor of the University of California at San Diego, and he was 

 succeeded by an old friend of the committee, Dr. H. Guyford Stever, 

 president of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Dr. Stever was 

 one of the original members of the Panel on Science and Technology 

 who had met with the committee on numerous occasions since I960. 



The year 1972 represented a shift in attitude within the committee 

 toward the RAN'N program. Some of this shift may have resulted from 

 a softening of opposition from the scientific community. Science 

 magazine once observed : 



The university scientist has traditionally responded to the idea that he do applied 

 research in much the same way a proper Victorian maiden reacted to an improper 

 suggestion. 



When it was discovered that nearly 75 percent of RANN funding went 

 to universities, plus NSF efforts to cover in neglected research and 

 relate it to make it eligible for RANN funding, the opposition was not 

 as strong. Within the committee, Bell was the No. 1 cheerleader for 

 RANN. Bell even went so far as to see the program as the magic answer 

 to the biggest problem plaguing his California congressional district— 

 the high jobless rate among scientists and engineers. This prompted 

 Chairman Miller to use his favorite scare word: 



But what you're talking toward is a WPA for scientists, Mr. Bell. 



Nevertheless, Bell's excitable, machinegun delivery kept RANN's 

 skeptics off balance. To satisfy Bell, Chairman Davis interrupted the 

 subcommittee's markup of the NSF authorization bill to allow Dr. 

 Alfred Eggers, a NASA alumnus heading up the NSF RANN operation, 

 to reappear and brief the subcommittee on RANN's achievements. Dr. 

 Eggers explained how RANN had scientifically studied the workload 

 of New York City's sanitation workers and made some practical sug- 

 gestions for more efficient collection and disposition of the mega- 

 tonnage of solid waste in the Nation's largest city. Along about this 

 time, the work of the McCormack task force on energy (see chapter 

 XIV) was expanding, with the active support of several RANN proj- 

 ects. The upshot was that in 1972 the committee overruled its own 

 staff recommendation and voted to fund RANN with the full $80 

 million authorization budgeted. 



The committee initiated a major step in 1972 to underline its strong 

 support for science education. The original 1950 act stipulated that the 

 NSF should promote "basic research and education in the sciences." 

 Amendments fostered by the committee were enacted in 1972, directing 

 the NSF "to initiate and support basic scientific research and programs 



