ROBERT S. MORISON 



United States. The Rockefeller Foundation apparently be- 

 lieved that a reasonably successful program for eradicating hook- 

 worm in our own southern states could be extended to the 

 borders of the known world. It rapidly became clear, however, 

 that the number of college professors in the United States and 

 the number of hookworms in the world were larger than esti- 

 mated and that their powers of reproduction were in both cases 

 almost unlimited. Clearly some other power than private charity 

 would have to be called in to meet the quantitative aspects of 

 the problem. It became more and more clearly seen that the role 

 of private philanthropy was that of the pioneer, the explorer, 

 and the designer of pilot projects. 



3. Somewhat similarly the task of financing universities 

 and so of providing a secure environment for basic research 

 quickly transcended the resources of private philanthropy. 



Under these circumstances it seemed that the foundations 

 could most appropriately select certain individuals whose basic 

 needs were already provided for, and help them to obtain the 

 necessary apparatus and technical help to do a better job. The 

 universities welcomed this new role, even though they regretted 

 the passing of the large gifts for endowment, at least in part 

 because it relieved them of the difficulty of drawing invidious 

 distinctions within their own faculties. Furthermore, it was 

 recognized that universities, like other institutions, are more or 

 less set in a traditional mold and find it difiicult to readjust 

 budgets and personnel to meet the needs of new and rapidly 

 expanding fields of study. The absence of long-term commit- 

 ment to individuals or to classical disciplines makes the founda- 

 tions far quicker on their feet. For example, as the interests ol 

 a new generation of biologists shifted away from morphology 

 and taxonomy to the biophysical world of the large molecule, the 

 foundations could help provide the increasingly expensive in- 



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