Foreword 



These Proceedings are the record of a convocation which was 

 held on the 4th of May, 1966, in Washington D. C. as one of 

 the key events to mark the twentieth year since the Office of 

 Naval Research was formally established by Act of Congress. 

 Attended by eleven hundred guests from all over the country 

 and abroad at the invitation of the Honorable Robert W. 

 Morse, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research and Devel- 

 opment, and Rear Admiral John K. Leydon, USN, Chief of 

 Naval Research, it had the purpose of projecting in philosoph- 

 ical perspective the present day interdependence of science and 

 Government whose history of genesis and growth is spanned by 

 the life time and constitutes the story of the Office of Naval 

 Research. Basic issues of principle were to be illuminated, no 

 less than current problems of practice, and guidelines developed 

 for the appraisal of future trends, the aiming of future action. 

 Its theme was therefore set as Science and Public Policy. 



No narrower context could have done justice to ONR's activ- 

 ities in the past or allowed an unconstrained examination of 

 their possible significance for the future. This was well recog- 

 nized by the messages which reached the Office from numerous 

 friends on the occasion. Thus, a well-known physicist states 

 that: "ONR was the model for federal support and very many 

 of us owe the beginnings of our research program to that 

 agency." Reference is made to "the truly major role that ONR 

 has played in bringing the relations between Government 

 agencies and university scientist to the present enlightened 

 state" by another distinguished scientist, and an oceanographer 

 of note — to quote just one more — uses the following words: 

 "The creation of ONR, the selection of its goals and ideals, and 

 the skill and efficiency with which these were carried out in the 

 intervening years have served as a beacon to show the Govern- 



