C. A. ELVEHJEM 



tradition of academic freedom at Wisconsin, a tradition which, 

 because of our history and because of the plaque, is well known 

 to nearly everyone, difficult to attack, and not too difficult to 

 defend. There are possibly private institutions which are at a 

 greater disadvantage than we when the issues of academic 

 freedom arise and our right to pursue the truth as we see it is in 

 danger of infringement. 



But to return to my major thesis, these are all reasons for 

 my conviction that the greatest expansion of facilities and per- 

 sonnel for the nation's basic and applied research programs 

 should come within our university research framework. This 

 is not to say that I believe these two fields of endeavor should 

 be the exclusive property of universities. I fully expect that a 

 large portion of these forms of research, particularly applied 

 research, will continue to be conducted by the larger industries 

 and by the foresighted and ambitious smaller industries. In 

 many highly specialized fields it may even be most efficient to 

 have industry conduct government contract research. In many 

 instances, industry must conduct a certain amount of basic 

 research to solve some immediate problems in applied research, 

 or even to satisfy the innate curiosity of investigators who work 

 primarily on applications but have an urge to conduct research 

 on some phenomenon which has aroused their special interest. 

 I am aware that some of our most important basic work has been 

 done by individuals under just these conditions, but by and 

 large I believe that the opportunities for greater freedom of 

 investigation provided by a university atmosphere will, in the 

 long run, be more productive of the kind of basic knowledge 

 which finds application in many different fields. As an example 

 of basic research with broad possibilities of application, let me 

 point out that it was a basic investigation of the cause of a 

 disease of cattle which led to the discovery of dicumarol in our 

 agricultural laboratories at Wisconsin, and dicumarol, as many 



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