Research and National Purpose 



ment and the scientists of the United States how to cooperate 

 and keep world leadership in scientific research and develop- 

 ment here in this country." 



Within the framework of the convocation program, the same 

 theme reaches an even sharper focus in the addresses of the 

 opening session which preceded the principal convocation lec- 

 tures and whose task was preeminently that of providing quint- 

 essential appraisals of the Office of Naval Research — as agent 

 on the past and as resource for the future. The three viewpoints 

 from which this was to be undertaken correspond to the three 

 distinct worlds which the work of ONR brings to an inter- 

 section: The scientific community; the engineering and indus- 

 trial sphere of the makers of military technology, the builders 

 of military systems; and — finally — the consumer community 

 out at sea— the Fleet. In the end each of these assessments 

 presents the judgments of history, the challenges of the future, 

 in terms of the revolutionary changes which the entire process 

 has wrought during these last two decades in the ways in which 

 the world of science participates in and draws sustenance from 

 the pursuit of national purposes. 



These discussions found their natural conclusion in the an- 

 nouncement of the establishment by the National Academy of 

 Sciences of the Edwin Bidwell Wilson Award "for outstanding 

 contributions in the service of the Federal Government to the 

 effectiveness of its efforts to encourage and to benefit from the 

 advancement of science," and its conferral on Alan T. Water- 

 man, whom the past twenty years have consistently found at the 

 center of the developments here at issue, as its first recipient. 

 It was our good fortune that the presentation could be made 

 by the Honorable Emilio Q. Daddario of Connecticut, so that 

 the ceremony acquired a certain hieratic depth in the fleeting 

 linkage of recognition with which it tied the Office of Naval 

 Research to the Congress and the Academy. 



Thus, it set the stage for the main convocation addresses 

 to deal at depth and in full generality with four central issues 

 in the domain of science and public affairs. As we come to look 



VI 



