MERLE A. TUVE 



One might call such an investigator a Franklin Research 

 Professor or a Jefferson Research Scholar. If we were to allocate 

 40 to 60 million dollars per year to the creation of such Research 

 Professors or Research Scholars, suitably selected by a very 

 small University Grants Committee, in one decade we would 

 have in this country a solid phalanx of 500 or 600 outstanding 

 investigators dedicated to basic research and unquestionably 

 free to devote their personal time and attention to creative ideas 

 for the rest of their lives. The total investment over a decade of 

 400 to 600 million dollars would amount to perhaps half the 

 cost of one year of our current activity with space rockets or 

 perhaps the cost of operating the U.S. Atomic Energy Com- 

 mission for two months. 



You are all asked at regular intervals to consider and sup- 

 port programs in individual specialties such as nuclear physics 

 or oceanography or space rocketry or meteorology or the chemo- 

 therapy of cancer with sums of public money each totaling 

 from 50 to 800 million dollars per year. If we all believe that the 

 real key to basic research is the continued stable support of the 

 individual research man, to give him full freedom, with mod- 

 erate austerity, to investigate problems in which he is interested, 

 then "What are the blocks which prevent our doing what we all 

 say we believe is important?" 



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