22 Research and National Purpose 



is the scientist in the Federal service. He is making a reality 

 out of the broad ideals that govern the interaction of national 

 goals and technological capabilities. It is he who brings into 

 being, maintains, and adapts the machinery through which 

 the processes of government act in strong support of advance- 

 ment in science. It is his imagination and judgment, his ability 

 to understand in equal measure the hopes of science and the 

 realities of government, which determine the form and sub- 

 stance, as well as the quality and thrust, of Federal programs 

 in research and technology. The man who is honored in the 

 name of the award and the man who is about to receive it 

 exemplify the best in the growing group of public servants 

 who have assumed such responsibilities. 



Edwin B. Wilson, born in Hartford, Connecticut, showed 

 himself by ingenuity, stamina, and breadth of understanding 

 to be, indeed, the proverbial Connecticut Yankee. He suc- 

 ceeded in filling his eighty-five years with what amounted in 

 intellectual terms to no less than three lives. He was the last 

 surviving student of the great American scientist, Josiah Gibbs; 

 he was a faculty member at Yale, M.I.T., and Harvard; and 

 he participated in an advisory capacity in many bold new 

 ventures in science and technology in which the United States 

 engaged — in war and in peace, in the physical as well as the 

 biomedical sciences. He represented American scientific schol- 

 arship at its best. Last but not least, a long and fruitful asso- 

 ciation tied him to the National Academy of Sciences, which 

 now honors him again by this award. This included the 

 Academy's vice-presidency from 1949 to 1953 and an unprece- 

 dented span of nearly fifty years as Editor of its Proceedings. 

 This is the man, then, who on reaching his seventieth year 

 and his retirement from Harvard University, was to function 

 for fifteen more years as a civil servant in the Office of Naval 

 Research, contributing to the long-term clarity of ONR's 

 underlying philosophy and to the quality and productivity of 

 its programs. Attached to the Boston Branch Office of ONR, he 

 would roam over the campuses of New England, using such 



