Bush’s introductory essay ran 40 pages. The committee reports take 160. Of those, Part Three: Science and the Public Welfare, (beginning with its own introduction, “Appendix 3”) comprises 64 pages (70 to 134). It included seven tables of results from questionnaires sent to 315 leading colleges and universities, of which 188 replied in whole or in part. The data all were generally about staffing and funding and the counts upon which those were built. Much of the specific relevance has been lost to time. However, the broad narrative remains important: leading institutions are primaries because they invest in research.
An interesting counterpoint came from an unidentified school devoted exclusively to teaching: “It is my opinion that the Federal Government should not undertake to establish any far-reaching program for the support of research either in public or private colleges or universities. I do not believe that such relations can be permanently established and maintained without involving political control which has proved so disastrous in Germany and other totalitarian states.”
That warning was presaged by Vannevar Bush himself in his introductory comments and other summaries: centralized political control would prevent the most fruitful research specifically because those advances cannot be predicted and controlled.
Bush says up front (page 88): “But we do not believe that any program is better than no program…” The tabulated data in Part Three reveals the many distinctions that define each of the 188 intellectual enterprises.
Science—The Endless Frontier (1945; republished 1960, 1990, 2020) was Vannevar Bush’s report to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in response to the President’s direct request that four problems be addressed:
First: What can be done, consistent with military security, and with the prior approval of the military authorities, to make known to the world as soon as possible the contributions which have been made during our war effort to scientific knowledge? The diffusion of such knowledge should help us stimulate new enterprises, provide jobs for our returning servicemen and other workers, and make possible great strides for the improvement of the national well-being.
Second: With particular reference to the war of science against disease, what can be done now to organize a program for continuing in the future the work which has been done in medicine and related sciences? The fact that the annual deaths in this country from one or two diseases alone are far in excess of the total number of lives lost by us in battle during this war should make us conscious of the duty we owe future generations.
Third: What can the Government do now and in the future to aid research activities by public and private organizations? The proper roles of public and of private research, and their interrelation, should be carefully considered.
Fourth: Can an effective program be proposed for discovering and developing scientific talent in American youth so that the continuing future of scientific research in this country may be assured on a level comparable to what has been done during the war?
Working on a federal project in 1996, I was exposed to one concrete innovation resulting from these proposals. In 1944, Civil Service was dedicated to clerical, fiscal, and custodial positions (page 112). In order to bring the best scientists to government employment, the committee headed by Isaiah Bowman (president of Johns Hopkins University), recommended requiring college degrees of all scientists employed under Civil Service.
“The standards for entrance into scientific and professional positions in the Government should be approximately those maintained for comparable posts in universities and industries. Civil Service positions are subjected to continuous political pressure to relax entrance requirements; and recently the educational requirements for a number of scientific classifications have been removed. This opens the way to possible appointments by personal favoritism and political preference. Action should be taken immediately to re-establish the requirement of a university or college degree for entrance into all scientific and professional services. Exceptions in especially meritorious cases should be granted only upon recommendation of qualified scientists.” (Page 112. [Note that in all editions, differences in prefaces and introductions do not alter the fact that the canonic text is typeset identically].
When I was on that federal project some 50 years later, several of my coworkers had been newly hired into advanced positions because they had (1) college degrees and (2) been graduated with honors, such as dean’s list, magna cum laude, etc.
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Science Fair: A National Geographic Film
The Philosophical Breakfast Club
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