72 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



Activities of the Chairman's OflSce were woven all through the opera- 

 tions of the divisions. Thus appointments of all NDRC personnel required 

 the approval of that Office as did the distribution of reports. The semiannual 

 divisional budget requests v^ere reviewed; and the recommendations of 

 the Chairman's Office usually resulted in a downward revision of the re- 

 quested funds because of the better picture of the over-all situation pos- 

 sessed by that OfiEce. Based on this review and the action of NDRC, the 

 Office prepared the justification of the NDRC portion of the OSRD 

 budget estimates for presentation to the Bureau of the Budget and Congress. 



In view of the progress of the war and the shifting of personnel, a 

 reorganization of the Chairman's Office took place in the spring of 1944. 

 Designed to provide more effective service to the divisions, closer super- 

 vision of divisional programs and budgets, and greater assistance to the 

 full Committee in its decisions on policies, it divided responsibility among 

 Conant, Moreland and three Deputy Executive Officers as follows: Conant, 

 Divisions 9, 10, 11; Moreland, Divisions i, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 12; David- 

 son, Administration, Engineering and Transition Office, and Applied Math- 

 ematics Panel; Hogan, Divisions 5, 13, 14, 15, Vacuum Tube Development 

 Committee and the Committee on Propagation; and Haskins, Divisions 16, 

 17, 18, 19 and the Applied Psychology Panel. There was a somewhat com- 

 parable assignment of divisions among the staff aides whose function it 

 was to keep fully informed of the technical and scientific aspects of the 

 work of the divisions and panels. In general, they limited their direct 

 activities to the divisions to which they were specifically assigned but they 

 were also charged with knowing as much as possible about what was 

 going on in the other divisions so that as a group they might provide for 

 cross fertilization between divisions. 



The selection of Davidson to handle administration left the Executive 

 Officer and the other Deputy Executive Officers free to devote more atten- 

 tion to the division programs and to broad policy matters. It also meant 

 a considerable increase in the speed of handling the great volume of paper 

 work necessarily involved in a program of the magnitude which the NDRC 

 program had attained; it included such items as consideration of extension 

 of time on contracts, assignment of Service projects to divisions, recom- 

 mendation to the Director of the appointment of persons serving without 

 compensation, general review of NDRC personnel requirements and ap- 

 pointments, review of budget requests, and general supervision of the 

 Chairman's Office. Davidson devoted full time to the task until Decem- 

 ber 1945, by which time the volume had declined substantially and Paul 

 A. Scherer, Chief of the Engineering and Transition Office, was able to 

 take it on in addition to his other activities. 



In a memorandum dated May 24, 1944, to members, and Division and 

 Panel Chiefs of NDRC, Bush outlined the functions of the Chairman's Office 



