BASIC RESEARCH AND THE PRIVATE UNIVERSITY 



situation our faculty and trustees invented the device of a 

 faculty committee on sponsored research. Before an actual 

 proposal for research support can he forwarded to any outside 

 agency, private or government, it must be reviewed by this 

 committee to be sure that it conforms to our ideas of what con- 

 stitutes basic research. Inasmuch as this committee, with a 

 rotating membership, has been in existence for many years 

 (since 1946), its policies have been well established and are 

 well known to the faculty. It does not often have to veto a 

 project any more. But it has done so, and it can do so at any 

 lime. 



This does not mean that there have been no "practical" 

 projects. There have been many — even in the basic science 

 fields. For example, a few years ago one of our biochemists, 

 Professor Haagen-Smit, who had had one too many sniffs of 

 the notorious Los Angeles smog, went into his laboratory to see 

 if he could artificially create that characteristic odor. With one 

 eye on the Los Angeles motor traffic and the other on California 

 sunshine, he was soon able to show that gasoline vapor plus 

 ultraviolet light did produce a typical smog cloud, and he had 

 soon elucidated the basic ideas of the chemistry of that particular 

 type of air pollution. 



Criteria 



However, it is in the engineering departments that the 

 most difficult questions arise as to what is fundamental research, 

 what is practical development, and which projects could be 

 more appropriately done in commercial laboratories. Engineer- 

 ing is applied science, and engineering research must have 

 some relevance to the practical needs of men. Yet, even here, it 

 is normally possible to distinguish the projects which are aimed 

 toward a basic extension of enaineerina knowledge and toward 

 new contributions to engineering practice from those which 



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