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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLVI. No. 1190 



sums as may be reserved or retained and 

 held as an endowment fund or working 

 capital and also such other moneys and 

 property belonging to the corporation as 

 the board of directors shall from time to 

 time deem proper, to the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution and such other scientific and edu- 

 cational institutions and societies as the 

 board of directors may from time to time 

 select in order to enable such institutions 

 and societies to conduct such investigation, 

 research and experimentation. 



The efficient business administration 

 which is thus provided and the separation 

 of the scientifiic laboratories or investiga- 

 tors from responsibility for the administra- 

 tion of the funds and exploitations of the 

 inventions combine to render the Research 

 Corporation in many respects an ideal 

 means of accomplishing the ends we have 

 in view. It is impossible, however, for 

 purely physical reasons, for the Research 

 Corporation to handle all of the vast 

 variety of profitable inventions, great and 

 small, which issue or may come to issue 

 from the laboratories of the United States, 

 and it would obviously not be in the best 

 interests of research to too greatly central- 

 ize the control of the means of its con- 

 tinuance and development. Some system 

 is required which, like the Industrial Fel- 

 lowship System, is indefinitely reproduc- 

 ible, and adaptable to all of the great 

 variety of learned institutions which might 

 desire to utilize it, so tliat the system may 

 become an organic part of the investi- 

 gator's environment and numerous foci 

 come into existence from which the means 

 for the furtherance of investigation may 

 proceed. It was to provide a possible solu- 

 tion of this problem and a precedent which 

 might be acceptable to other investigators 

 and other institutions that the subjoined 

 agreement between the regents of the Uni- 



versity of California and myself was 

 drafted. 



There are highly profitable discoveries, 

 of course, which are of such a nature as to 

 demand expensive field-trials, or the ex- 

 penditure of capital to ensure their suc- 

 cessful flotation and protection during the 

 period of tentative ultilization. The plan 

 which I have to propose is not designed to 

 deal with inventions of this type, but 

 rather with the equally numerous inven- 

 tions which are complete in themselves and 

 ready to be leased or sold to existing com- 

 mercial establishments. Public institu- 

 tions, holding their funds on trust, can not, 

 of course, enter into speculative enterpises. 

 For dealing with discoveries requiring ex- 

 tensive initial expenditure and the flotation 

 of new commercial enterprises to handle 

 them, the Research Corporation and an- 

 alogus corporations which may come to be 

 founded for a like purpose provide an ac- 

 ceptable means of ensuring the adequate 

 development of the invention and the re- 

 turn of the proceeds to the support of 

 scientific investigations. 



The fundamental administrative basis of 

 the agreement which has been concluded 

 between the regents of the University of 

 California and myself consists in the pro- 

 vision for as complete a separation as is 

 consonant with stability of the responsi- 

 bility for the business administration of 

 the trust and that for the actual perform- 

 ance of investigations financed from the 

 proceeds of the trust. The successful sci- 

 entific investigator is usually, for the 

 simple reason of his success as an investi- 

 gator, a very indifferent financier. The 

 professional administrator or financier, 

 whose interests and information are far re- 

 moved from the battle-front of the con- 

 quest of nature, and whose preoccupation 

 is rather the consolidation of conquests 

 previously achieved, is usually a very in- 



