72 



[laughing] 

 "Herlofson. 



Every time he would intervene he would say. 



He always made sense. They were always useful inter- 

 ventions. Brohult convinced him to become the first 

 director of the International Foundation for Science. He 

 devised a system for proposals much along the lines of the 

 National Science Foundation. These proposals were really 

 quite impressive documents. His staff went around and 

 helped people make proposals and he organized a system 

 for appraising the proposals. 



Eventually, the IFS has made about 600 grants to young 

 researchers from developing countries, usually not more than 

 $10- to $20,000 per grant. The grants can be renewed for 

 about four years, maybe five years. 



Sharp: That's very generous. 



Revelle: Eventually the young man is supposed to work his way into 

 support from his own government. We get them started and 

 get them really well underway. 



The research in general is not very high-powered 

 research. It's mostly fairly practical research on such 

 things as aquaculture or [lost on tape] . Harrison decided 

 on six different subjects that he would support, all of them 

 applied biology. 



[lost on tape] are the fungi that attach themselves to 

 the roots of trees and presumably break up the phosphate in 

 the soil and make it available for the tree. Without a 

 [lost on tape] the trees don't grow. The roots have these 

 little hairs all over them and the hairs are these fungi, 

 interestingly enough. 



Another one was vegetable crops . Another one was 

 aquaculture. Another one was small animal husbandry. 

 Another one was natural products and essentially 

 medicinal products of various kinds . 



Sharp: How was it decided what was a developing country? 



Revelle: Well, that's easy. There's no problem about that! Any 



country that's developing is a developing country. I mean, 

 any country that basically doesn't belong to OACD. 



Sharp: So nobody from the United States could apply? 



Revelle: Oh no. Or England or France or Belgium or Holland or Japan 

 or Italy or even Portugal or Spain. But Africa, Asia, and 

 Latin America. Any country in Africa, there was no question 

 about it, except South Africa is a developing country. Any 

 country in Asia except Japan and the Soviet Union and Israel 

 are developing countries. Most any country in Latin America 

 is a developing country, particularly since the Argentines 

 have slipped back so much. We didn't get any applications 

 from Argentina. We got applications mainly from Africa and 

 Asia. 



