National Academy of Engineering

Abstract

A brief overview of the need for, and development of, the US National Academy of Engineering is presented. This is an organization through which engineering advice and counsel could be made available to the government and brought to bear on large national problems that is comparable to the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which for over a century has served this purpose for the scientific community. The Academy is still in the process of trying to organize its activities for maximum effectiveness, because there are so many areas in which the services of an organization of this sort have been needed. There seems to be every indication that the Academy is destined to take a place of increasing importance in relation both to the profession and to the US government. By serving as a forum for the exchange of ideas among representatives of the nation's top engineering talent in all specialties and fields, it should be able to bring a measure of much needed un ity to the engineering profession. It should also be able, not only to provide sound engineering judgment to numerous government agencies and policy-making groups, but also, in cooperation with the NAS, to effect a desirable balance in the advice given to those agencies and groups - a balance between the approach of the basic scientist and that of the engineer oriented to the industrial world.