4 Research and National Purpose 



An outstanding asset of the Coordinator's Office in the 

 Navy proved, especially later, to lie in its staff of brilliant 

 young officers, many in the Naval Reserve. Their names are 

 worth noting as pioneers in the career of ONR: Captain 

 (then Commander) Robert D. Conrad, John Burwell, Gordon 

 Dyke, Ralph Krause, Bruce Old, James Parker, James Wakelin 

 and Thomas Wilson. A bit later these were to be joined by 

 Thomas Killian, E. R. Piore and Roger Revelle. 



The foundation was laid for the ONR in June, 1945, by 

 the establishment of the Office of Research and Inventions 

 under Executive Order of the Secretary of the Navy. In it were 

 gathered together the major components of what was to be 

 the ONR under the leadership of Vice Admiral Harold Bowen 

 as Chief and Rear Admiral Luis de Flores as Deputy Chief. 



The Act establishing the Office of Naval Research as a 

 statutory agency was engineered with the cooperation of a 

 discerning Congress, by a distinguished and brilliant group 

 of personalities, notably James R. Forrestal, Secretary of the 

 Navy, Struve Hensel, General Counsel, John T. Connor, his 

 special assistant and previously General Counsel for OSRD, 

 and Admiral Lewis Strauss, a member of his staff. An unprece- 

 dented provision in the new Act was the establishment of two 

 deputies to the Chief of Naval Research — Deputy and Assistant 

 Chief, the usual post held by a Naval Officer, and Deputy and 

 Chief Scientist, held by a scientist. Also a noteworthy feature of 

 the new Act was the designation of a Naval Research Advisory 

 Committee appointed by the Secretary of the Navy to advise 

 him and the Chief of Naval Research regarding research for 

 the Navy and the policies and programs of the ONR. 



For the insight and vision that identified and clarified the 

 research mission of the ONR the man responsible was the 

 head of the ORI Planning Division, Captain Robert Dexter 

 Conrad, as all who worked with him came to know. He it 

 was who was responsible for first stressing the importance to 

 the Navy and to the nation of "pure and imaginative" re- 

 search, as expressed in the ONR enabling Act. Indeed it was 



