ROBERT S. MORISON 



professorial status before they were thirty. By the twentieth cen- 

 tury the average age for obtaining a permanent appointment 

 seems to have risen by five or even ten years. It is difficult to say 

 whether this change is due to a failure to provide enough profes- 

 sorial posts, to an increasing reluctance to take risks on the 

 part of academic institutions, or to the increasing complexity 

 of science which demands a longer period of maturation before 

 a man can be qualified to hold a senior post. Whatever the 

 reason, it was at any rate clear by about 1920 that something 

 would have to be done to provide support for those who wished 

 further research experience after obtaining their doctorates. 

 The first large-scale effort designed to meet this critical need 

 was the fellowship program instituted by the National Re- 

 search Council shortly after World War I. This program, 

 portions of which are still in existence, has been supported 

 almost entirely by private funds and has by general agreement 

 been outstandingly successful. 



For a time after the war the conventional one- or two-year 

 fellowships provided by the NRC were supplemented by an 

 additional program of more advanced fellowships of longer 

 duration for men entering a career of academic medicine — the 

 Welch fellows. A little later the John and Mary Markle Founda- 

 tion embarked on its currently distinguished program of sup- 

 port for men in the middle passage between doctorate and pro- 

 fessorial chair. 



Again, as was the case with the grant-in-aid programs of 

 the classical foundations, their fellowship programs have served 

 as a stimulus and model to the newly formed private founda- 

 tions and government granting agencies. 



The vast expansion of fellowship funds and special grants 

 made possible by these newer sources of research funds have 

 done much to increase the flow of qualified people into research 

 both basic and applied. In many research groups the number of 



238 



