Research Corporation Grants for Research

Abstract

SOME 2,500,000 dollars is being offered in grants to educational institutions by the Research Corporation of New York, a non-profit organization devoted to advancing research and technology by the use of revenues from inventions assigned to it by public-spirited inventors. Preference in making these grants will be given, other factors being equal, to smaller institutions and those of more limited financial resources for research. The five-year programme announced by Dr. Joseph W. Barker, acting president, who is dean of engineering at Columbia University and until recently was a special assistant to the Secretary of the U.S. Navy, provides for one to two hundred grants of 2,500—5,000 dollars a year to enable young men of science, engaged for the most part in war research in uniform or as civilians, to undertake at universities and colleges research of peacetime importance in pure science, especially chemistry, physics, mathematics and engineering. The first grants will be made shortly by a special committee of eminent men of science from industrial and university laboratories. Grants will be made to the institutions at which successful candidates will work and teach. The funds allotted will be available for the purchase of needed equipment and for the employment of assistants either as fellows or otherwise. Awards will be based primarily upon the demonstrated ability of the men who will conduct the researches and contribute to the teaching programme of the school. The grants are made possible by the fact that during the war years research programmes that would be normally supported by Research Corporation grants have been laid aside in order to free men and facilities for war research. The Research Corporation was begun in 1912 with the gift, through Dr. F. G. Cottrell, of patent rights on electrical precipitation, which is used for removing dust, fume and mists from industrial gases and from the atmosphere. From revenues derived from these and other patents it has made grants of 1,279,637 dollars in past years to fifty-two institutions. In recent years the Corporation has served universities by administering inventions that may arise in their laboratories. Correspondence in connexion with the grants should be sent to Dr. Robert R. Williams, Research Corporation, 405 Lexington Avenue, New York 17, N.Y.