support if they are to strengthen their 

 basic contributions to the scientific 

 fife of the Nation. Financial aid may 

 also be required to speed up the 

 transition between basic discoveries 

 in university laboratories and their 

 practical industrial applications. The 

 committee has therefore felt com- 

 pelled to examine from the stand- 

 point of public policy the question: 

 "Is a substantial increase in Federal 

 financial aid to scientific research in 

 educational and other nonprofit re- 

 search institutions necessary and de- 

 sirable?" 



If the necessity were not clearly 

 demonstrable, several considerations 

 might argue for the undesirability of 

 such Federal support. These center 

 upon the fear that Federal aid might 

 lead to centralized control. It is the 

 firm conviction of the committee that 

 centralized control of research by any 

 small group of persons would be dis- 

 astrous whether such persons were in 

 government, in industry, or in the 

 universities. There might be a dan- 

 ger, too, that increased Federal aid 

 would discourage existing sources of 

 financial support. Private individuals 

 might lose interest in contributing to 

 research institutions and the great 

 foundations might turn their atten- 

 tion to other fields. The States might 

 reduce the support given their large 

 universities. These varied sources of 

 support have contributed materially 

 to the development of vigorous 

 centers of independent initiative 

 throughout the United States and 

 prevented control by any one group. 



The committee has had to weigh 

 these considerations against an analy- 

 sis of the adequacy of the over-all 

 support for science in America rela- 

 tive to the needs of society. Our na- 

 tional pre-eminence in the fields of 

 applied research and technology 



should not blind us to the truth that, 

 with respect to pure research — the 

 discovery of fundamental new knowl- 

 edge and basic scientific principles 

 — America has occupied a secondary 

 place. Our spectacular development 

 of the automobile, the airplane, and 

 radio obscures the fact that they were 

 all based on fundamental discoveries 

 made in nineteenth-century Europe. 

 From Europe also came formulation 

 of most of the laws governing the 

 transformation of energy, the physi- 

 cal and chemical structure of matter, 

 the behavior of electricity, light, and 

 magnetism. In recent years the 

 United States has made progress in 

 the field of pure science, but an ex- 

 amination of the relevant statistics 

 suggests that our efforts in the field 

 of applied science have increased 

 much faster so that the proportion of 

 pure to applied research continues to 

 decrease. 



Several reasons make it imperative 

 to increase pure research at this stage 

 in our history. First, the intellectual 

 banks of continental Europe, from 

 which we former Iv borrowed, have 

 become bankrupt through the ravages 

 of war. No longer can we count 

 upon those sources for fundamental 

 science. Second, in this modern age, 

 more than ever before, pure research 

 is the pace-maker of technological 

 progress. In the nineteenth century, 

 Yankee mechanical ingenuitv, build- 

 ing upon the basic discoveries of 

 European science, could greatly ad- 

 vance the technical arts. Today the 

 situation is different. Future prog- 

 ress will be most striking in those 

 highly complex fields — electronics, 

 aerodynamics, chemistry — which are 

 based directly upon the foundations 

 of modern science. In the next gen- 

 eration, technological advance and 

 basic scientific discoverv will be in- 



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