SUMMARY 



To the question asked of you by President Roosevelt, "Can an effective 

 program be proposed for discovering and developing scientific talent in Amer- 

 ican youth so that the continuing future of scientific research in this country 

 may be assured on a level comparable to what has been done during the 

 war?", wur committee reports affirmatively, stating their considered judg- 

 ment that an effective program of support from the Federal Government to 

 that end can be organized and, indeed, must be organized in order to assure 

 the continuation of scientific and technological training and research on a 

 scale adequate to the needs of the Nation, in peace or war. There is a long 

 history of support granted by the Federal Government for training and re- 

 search and it is our judgment that that type of support needs to be, and can 

 be successfully, extended to provide for those highly talented youth with 

 scientific interests and ability who must be assisted else they will not be able 

 to obtain the scientific and engineering training which they merit and which 

 the good of the Nation requires that they obtain. 



Our proposals to these ends have two phases: 



I. Long-term plans, aimed at ensuring through the long future an ade- 

 quate supply of scientists and engineers by discovering and developing scien- 

 tific talent in American youth; and 



II. Plans for the immediate future, aimed at making up, in part, the 

 deficits in the ranks of scientists and engineers resulting from the war and 

 the Nation's Selective Service policy. 



/. Long-Term Plans 



The Evidence for Our Conclusions 



The intelligence of the citizenry is a national resource which transcends 

 in importance all other natural resources. To be effective, that intelligence 

 must be trained. The evidence shows that many voung citizens of high 

 intelligence fail to get the training of which thev are capable. The reasons 

 for that failure are chiefly economic and geographical and can be remedied. 



Existing provisions, by scholarships and fellowships, are inadequate to 

 meet the needs of this group, nor will State, local, and private plans for such 

 assistance, which are now under discussion, be adequate. Our plans, simply, 

 are plans — as respects science and engineering — to train for the national 



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