24 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



In each of these special cases and in others which arose from time to time, 

 it was necessary for the contracting institution to recruit additions to its 

 staff on a large scale. As the activities expanded, each institution added 

 substantially to its scientific staff and even more to the supporting technical 

 personnel below the staff level. 



The headaches incident to building up the new staffs were many. Scien- 

 tific staff members could be obtained for the most part only from other 

 academic institutions. Granted a desire to assist most effectively in the de- 

 fense program, each institution had its student body to consider as well as 

 research programs in progress which it hoped to complete. Obtaining a staff 

 was not made any easier by the fact that NDRC contracts ran for stated 

 periods which did not correspond with the academic year, so that the scien- 

 tist leaving his own institution to accept employment under NDRC con- 

 tract at another institution was faced with the possibility that he might 

 find himself without employment for several months. A real burden was 

 thrown upon university administrative authorities who had to arrange 

 teaching schedules and maintain a balance between those men who would 

 be released for war work elsewhere and those who would be denied release 

 in order that teaching obligations might be met. The institutions employ- 

 ing scientists from other institutions on war work were in turn confronted 

 with occasional difficulties in the relations between the members of their 

 teaching staffs and the men working on contract. Salary differentials began 

 to creep in, particularly as the manpower situation became tighter and 

 competent men had more than one opportunity to engage in war research. 

 The steps taken by NDRC to cope with the situation so far as its contracts 

 were concerned are reported later in the present narrative. Universities and 

 colleges will continue to feel the effects for a number of years, although it 

 is probable that salary increases were inevitable and that colleges are suffer- 

 ing no more in this respect than other segments of an economy struggling 

 to readjust itself to the aftermath of a great war. 



Inasmuch as the Radiation Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology grew to be the largest single activity of NDRC, a word as to 

 the method of selection of the contractor is indicated. On October 25, 1940, 

 when the contract was originally proposed. Bush reported that both he and 

 the Microwave Section of Division D, acting independently of each other, 

 had made surveys of Government laboratories, including those of the Bu- 

 reau of Standards and of the Army and Navy, as well as of commercial 

 laboratories and had come to the conclusion that no existing laboratory 

 was equipped or manned to carry out the research contemplated under the 

 microwave program. The requirements for the laboratory involved an im- 

 mediate need for substantial space, the equipment of a subsidiary hangar 

 laboratory at a nearby airport, top-flight scientific staff capable of expan- 

 sion and the ability and willingness on the part of the contractor to under- 



