The Organization, Direction and Support of Research in the Physical Sciences

Abstract

The American nation is in process of assuming, through the power of her military, naval, and air forces, and the technological organization requisite to that power, a position of major responsibility for peace and civilization in the post-war era. Adequately to meet the commitments which such a responsibility entails, the United States will, of necessity, be forced to enlarge both political and social horizons and at the same time to develop, to a degree hitherto unrealized, the scientific bases which that enhanced influence in the counsels of the world will, in large measure, require. The progress of science and the technological changes that have resulted therefrom have proceeded with auto-accelerating pace over the last thirty years. Some concept of what the coming decades may hold can be learned from the history of this country during World War I and the interwar years with respect to scientific achievement, and the pattern there revealed will be a miniature of what must inevitably follow from the revolutionary changes in technology that the present war has produced. In 1914 American science looked to Europe for leadership. As Dr. C. M. Stine noted in an address to American chemists one year ago: