Science and the Navy: The History of the Office of Naval Research by Harvey M. Sapolsky

Abstract

172 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE government, to wealthy individuals, and to foundations. They sup­ ported the laboratory to the tune of around $670,000 in the 1930s, “about half the average annual value of gifts and bequests received by the University of California during the 1930s” (p. 225). And this does not include the colossal $1.15 million award made by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1940 to build a 184-inch cyclotron, or the matching pledge of $85,000 a year for ten years from the university, grants that indicated faith not only in the machine but in the new Nobel prizewinner himself. Industrial development in California, and the close links that had grown up between its universities and industry and the state, partic­ ularly during World War I, also facilitated Lawrence’s achievement. And finally, and more ephemerally, there was the rhetorical appeal to potential funders of the language used to describe the cyclotron. There was the fact that it was big, and that Lawrence always wanted money to build something even bigger. Here size and “progress” fused in an easily intelligible and quantifiable way. And the cyclotron could be described in the language of war, and could exploit the associations that that entailed. It “smashed” the nucleus by firing “atomic bullets.” It was useful in the “war on cancer.” “Description of the cyclotrons had always been a parade ground for military meta­ phors” (p. 493). In their next volume, Heilbron and Seidel will describe how the rhetoric became reality in World War II. John Krige Dr. Krige is based at the European University Institute in Florence, where he is leading a project to write the history of the European Space Agency. He is also one of the authors of the three-volume History of CERN (Amsterdam, 1987, 1990—). Science and the Navy: The History of the Office of Naval Research. By Harvey M. Sapolsky. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. Pp. xiii+ 142; tables, notes, index. $24.95. Science and the Navy is an abbreviated account of the founding and basic administrative and political history of the first U.S. government agency to support pure as well as applied science after World War II. H. M. Sapolsky examines the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) organizational position as it constantly struggled with military systems command’s funding of naval hardware/software as well as with pure “mission-free” university science. As Sapolsky documents, most navy career officers have always perceived ONR either as a threat and competitor to systems command or as an expensive boondoggle, rather than as a logical and produc­ tive extension of both pure and warfare technical funding communi­ ties. From ONR’s beginning, the choice of specific (university and TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 173 only rarely defense contractor) projects to be supported was the sole responsibility of qualified scientists, ONR program officers, with almost all funding recipients free to publish openly. Until the estab­ lishment of the National Science Foundation in 1950, ONR carried most of the burden of pure and applied science R&D, inspired sometimes rather loosely by the frequently changing and ambiguous “doctrines of naval needs.” During ONR’s early days (ca. 1946 through the late 1950s), the conflicts with navy establishment and associated defense contractors over the best ways to ensure good science and naval warfare relevancy were apparently not as conse­ quential as they subsequently became. Despite—or perhaps because of—the many unexpected payoffs of ONR research to nonmilitary interests, such as cartography, plate tectonics, and coastal and ocean processes, the pure-science contin­ gent has never been powerful for long enough to counteract efforts at marginalization by (or to seriously collaborate with) other warfarespecific funding sectors. The short tenure of most university profes­ sors and career officers with ONR is another government-wide problem well documented in Sapolsky’s account. Science and the Navy underscores the various roles of entrepreneurship, advocacy, and well-timed initiatives, as well as program management and technology forecasting, in trying to carry out any serious science under bureau­ cratic auspices. Both broad and specific technological thrusts, as well as geographical focus, have been continually reshaped and redefined by new ideas in...