Science: Bigger & Better U.S. Science

Shortly before he died, Franklin Roosevelt asked Dr. Vannevar Bush to blueprint a new deal for U.S. science. Last week the chief of the wartime scientific high command dropped his blueprint on President Truman’s desk. The plan, drafted by Dr. Bush and four committees composed of leading U.S. scientists, would require the Federal Government to spend some $122,500,000 a year to support basic scientific research and the education of young scientists.

Their plan:

¶Government grants, amounting eventually to $90,000,000 a year,* to universities, medical schools and research institutes for long-range research.

¶Federal science scholarships for 6,000 undergraduates and 300 graduate students each year.†

¶An immediate comb-out by the Army & Navy of all uniformed personnel with scientific training or aptitude (perhaps 100,000) for assignment to schools to complete their scientific education.

¶ Prompt release from censorship of all scientific military secrets which no longer involve security (for a step already taken in that direction, see below).

¶U.S. leadership in international exchange of scientific information after the war, aided perhaps by the assignment of scientific attaches to U.S. embassies abroad.

¶Appointment by the President of a National Research Foundation to guide U.S. science.

In favor of this plan Dr. Bush and associates offered some stern arguments: despite vast expenditures on wartime research ($720,000,000 in 1944 alone), the U.S. is on the brink of scientific bankruptcy. Reason: it has used up its backlog of basic scientific knowledge. During the war U.S. scientists, drafted almost to a man for work on new weapons, gadgets, drugs, etc., have done virtually no basic research. Moreover, the U.S., unlike every other great power, has stopped training young scientists: Dr. Bush’s group estimates that the war will cost the nation 167,000 potential scientists and doctors who would otherwise have got degrees.

Wanted: A National Policy. Although the U.S. is the world’s No. 1 technological power, most of the fundamental scientific discoveries on which its technology has been based originated in Europe. Even in prewar years, U.S. laboratories spent nearly six times as much on applied research as on pure science. In contrast, the British, for example, spent almost as much on pure science as on technology.

Said Bush’s group: the U.S. must adopt a “national policy for science” forthwith if it hopes to 1) keep abreast of other nations in military research, 2) “get ahead” in international trade, 3) achieve full employment. Bush’s scientists unanimously agreed that this could be accomplished only by federal subsidy. Among those who concurred in his report were representatives of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Standard Oil of Indiana, Du Pont.

*$20,000,000 for national defense, $50,000,000 in the natural sciences, $20,000,000 in medicine. A bill to carry out the Bush plan was introduced in the U.S. Senate last week by Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington.

†To get a scholarship (good at any approved college, and worth roughly $ 1,000 a year), a candidate would apply to his school principal, take an aptitude test, be passed on finally by a State selection committee. After graduation, all scholars would be enrolled in a “National Science Reserve,” on call for national emergencies such as war.