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William T. Golden’s Chronicle of an Era: an Appreciation
On May 10, 1950, President Harry S. Truman signed into law an Act to establish a National Science Foundation (NSF), "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes."[1] The genesis of the Act was, of course, Vannevar Bush's by now legendary, Science -- the Endless Frontier, requested by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on November 17, 1944, and transmitted to Truman on July 5, 1945.[2] Gerald Holton has aptly characterized Science -- the Endless Frontier as a manifesto.[3] It was a treatise composed during the final, optimistic months of World War II under the guidance of a politically savvy engineer who, having organized and focused the talents of academic physicists and others in related fields to fight a war, now sought legitimacy for the novel proposition that the U.S. government should provide financial support for their self-directed, individualized peacetime pursuits! William D. Carey recalled that, "... the atmosphere was that we had a new world, and all would go well."[4] By 1950, despite five years of legislative vicissitude, the reality of a National Science Foundation, envisioned as part and parcel of that promised new world, seemed at long last assured, even though with a scope and budget considerably more modest than originally proposed.[5] On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel that, five-years earlier, had been established as a temporary demarcation line between the Soviet and American occupation armies of what had been, for 40 years, an integral part of the Japanese Empire.[6] The weakly equipped forces of the Republic of Korea were quickly routed. Within two days Seoul, the capital, had fallen. An emergency session of the United Nation’s (UN) Security Council, convened on June 26 at the request of the United States, condemned the attack and authorized armed intervention. On June 30, 250 American troops from Japan arrived on the peninsula, with the promise of more to come. American reinforcements, joined by contingents from other UN members, delayed, but did not halt the North Korean onslaught. On July 19, President Truman called on the Congress for an emergency $11.3 billion defense appropriation, almost equal to what it had appropriated for fiscal year 1951. At the end of the month UN forces, now under the supreme command of General Douglas MacArthur, barely held on to a narrow perimeter centered on the port city of Pusan in the extreme south.
Pre-Korean Landscape A good deal had intervened between completion of Science -- the Endless Frontier in July 1945 and enactment of the NSF into law in May 1950, and additional, critical changes in the political landscape were to occur before Alan T. Waterman, scientific director of the Office of Naval Research, was nominated by the president as the agency’s first director 10 months later. Failure to implement, until 1950, the centerpiece recommendation of the Bush report to create a single federal agency to support basic research conducted by an autonomous, largely university-based community, had provided a virtual invitation to other agencies to fill the void by adhering to some version of the Bush report’s vision. By May 1950, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and the rapidly expanding National Institutes of Health (NIH) had staked out their own substantial claims to the support of both basic and applied research in the national interest. By 1950, too, competitors had emerged to challenge the claim of Science -- the Endless Frontier as the cornerstone of U.S. science policy. Foremost among these was Science and Public Policy, the so-called Steelman Report of August 27, 1947, which was prepared by the President's Scientific Review Board as government's response to the Bush report.[7] In addition to supporting the creation of a National Science Foundation, the report recommended that, "the President should designate a member of the White House staff for scientific liaison," in recognition of the relevance of science policy to governance at the highest levels. Although that recommendation was never implemented as such, by 1950 influential officials at the Bureau of the Budget (BoB) had for some time been using the tools at their disposal to try to fashion some version of a coherent science policy, Elmer Staats and William Carey among them. As Carey later recalled:[8]
But even as Carey and his compatriots in the executive and legislative branches of government were working with leaders of the scientific community to give substance to the Bush report's vision of an autonomous, publicly-supported scientific community pursuing research in the national interest, the Cold War was intensifying. The stage was being set for a science policy much different than what Vannevar Bush had envisioned in 1945 but which, long before 1950, he had been instrumental in helping to determine. By 1946, Bush had returned to the principal concerns he had set aside for nine months in order to oversee, as a favor to his academic colleagues, preparation of Science -- the Endless Frontier, and the anticipated quick implementation of its centerpiece recommendation. From that time until his death in 1974, he was preoccupied with trying to assure that innovative defense-related research and development (R&D) would be firmly under civilian control. Indeed, Bush’s oversight of Science -- the Endless Frontier can and has been interpreted as an attempt to central control for all federally supported research, military as well as civilian, in a single, civilian-dominated agency.[9] The failure, for five years, to create a National Science Foundation undermined that strategy; Korea was to destroy his hope, and the hope of the largely university-based scientific community he had represented, that defense-related research could be contained within a larger context. The forthcoming marriage of science with the military, while unquestionably required during the Korean period, was accepted with considerable regret both by Bush and those who had served with him during the unquestionable World War II emergency. The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) had achieved its spectacular results in large measure because Bush had insisted that the civilian scientists in the laboratories it managed should be allowed to work under conditions as closely akin to normal, peacetime conditions as possible. Although research projects were selected in consultation with military authorities, Bush and his senior OSRD colleagues determined which projects would be undertaken, as well as the priority for those project. When the OSRD leadership determined that sufficient research had been completed, then the project was turned over to the military -- but never before such a determination had been made. Because of the OSRD’s wartime success, there were serious suggestions that it should be maintained after the end of the war. But Bush would have none of that. Although he had agreed to preside over the massive OSRD bureaucracy because of the wartime emergency, the idea that it should be continued into the post war era conflicted with his visceral distrust of large bureaucratic organizations, whether corporate or governmental. Additionally, he felt he had to devote more time to his position as president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Yet a way had to be found to preserve the connections developed during the war between civilian and military science, and to prevent the concentration of R&D in the military department. To that end Bush agreed, in 1946, to chair a successor-remnant of the OSRD: the Joint Research and Development Board (JRDB) to the Departments of the Army and the Navy.[10] With the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, the JRDB was transformed into the Research and Development Board (RDB) within the newly created Department of Defense. In 1948 Bush, who had grown weary of formal service as an advisor to government, turned over the chairmanship of that body to Karl Compton, chairman of the Corporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Compton, who was then in his 70’s, assumed what was primarily a caretaker’s role while a more active successor was sought. In 1949, William Webster, a well regarded New England utilities company executive, assumed the RDB chairmanship. The organization over which he presided was chartered to evaluate new weapons concepts and provide advice to the Secretary of Defense about promising directions for military R&D. But the RDB lacked any operational authority, and its effectiveness was limited by rivalries among the uniformed members of the three services who sat on it. By October 1950, Webster was admitting privately that a substantial reorganization of the RDB would be necessary, and making no secret of the fact that he looked forward to stepping down from his position and returning to New England the following year.[11]
Militarization of the Cold War Vannevar Bush’s prescience encompassed more than his well remembered vision of a civilian-oriented science policy grounded in federal support for basic research in the nation's universities. In May 1940 he, along with James B. Conant and Karl Compton, the respective presidents of Harvard and MIT, and Frank Jewett, president of the National Academy of Sciences, foresaw U.S. involvement in World War II and convinced President Roosevelt to establish a National Research Defense Committee. A year latter that body, under Conant’s chairmanship, was incorporated into the newly established OSRD, directed by Bush. In 1948, following the fall of Prague and while still chair of the RDB, Bush foresaw the militarization of the Cold War that was to become an established fact of life in the latter half of 1950. Accordingly, he requested Irvin Stewart, his executive assistant during the heady OSRD days and in 1948 president of the University of West Virginia, to prepare a report for President Truman on how the scientific resources of the country might be mobilized for a full scale war, should ever occur. The centerpiece of the Stewart committee report entitled, "Plans for Mobilizing Science," was a recommendation to reconstitute something resembling Bush's wartime OSRD.[12] In addition, it elevated the position of White House science liaison officer recommended by the Steelman report to the status of Scientific Advisor to the Secretary of Defense, with access to the president. The report also hinted that Stewart himself might be available to serve in that capacity. On the day he signed the National Science Foundation Act into law the Stewart report, completed two years earlier, had yet to reach the president’s desk. Very probably, the military services were reluctant to recreate what they perceived as a rival civilian-controlled authority with direct access to the Oval Office. Additionally the United States was, as Carey recalled, still "riding very, very high." While the Soviet Union was generally thought to be bent on undermining the West through subversion, such foreign crises as the Berlin blockade or the fall of Prague were not widely regarded as the first elements in the militarization of the Cold War. Indeed, defense appropriations had declined from fiscal years 1946 through 1950. Appropriations for fiscal year 1951 (July 1, 1950 through June 30, 1951) were $13 billion, a post war low. By July 1950, however, the issues addressed by the Stewart report, if not its detailed recommendations, had gained considerably more urgency than they had had a bare two months earlier when the National Science Foundation Act had become law. On July 19, in a radio address to the nation, Truman asserted, in effect, that the invasion of South Korea demonstrated that communist strategy to undermine the "free world" had escalated from subversion to direct military confrontation. He called on the Congress for an immediate $11.3 billion emergency defense appropriation, both to increase the U.S. military presence in Korea and to prepare for what might well become a wider conflict, a supplementary request almost equal to what had already been appropriated. By the end of fiscal year 1951, additional supplemental appropriations had raised the total defense budget for that year to $48 billion. For fiscal year 1952, the president requested $60 billion for defense, to which the Congress acquiesced. Funding for defense-related research and development (R&D) benefited from this astronomical rise in overall defense appropriations. Total federal R&D expenditures for fiscal year 1950 had been approximately $1.3 billion, with half that amount, or $650,000 million, for defense and half for non-defense purposes. In fiscal year 1952, total estimated federal R&D expenditures were $2 billion, with the defense-related share having doubled in two years to $1.3 billion. In view of the expectation that non-defense R&D would almost certainly remain flat during the Korean emergency, what were the prospects that the still nascent National Science Foundation would be provided with even the minimal appropriations it would need to survive, let alone begin to function? Returning to Carey:
The Budget Bureau Commissions a Study Frederick J. Lawton, the director of the Bureau of the Budget (BoB), and his senior staff, were mindful of their responsibility to assure that the president remained fully informed about significant policy options. In view of the outbreak of the Korean War, the resultant unanticipated reversal in the trend in defense expenditures, and the genuine possibility of future surprises, they foresaw that as in World War II, organized science would play a pivotal role in any widening military crisis. Among the related factors they regarded as essential for the president to consider were the following:[13]
In late August, with UN forces still bottled up in the Pusan perimeter, Lawton's senior staff initiated exploratory talks with William T. Golden, a New York investment banker, about the possibility that he might undertake a detailed investigation and prepare a report for the president dealing with these matters. Golden, who had served in Washington with the U.S. Navy in World War II and had returned for a time in 1946 to help organize the Atomic Energy Commission, was well positioned to undertake such an assignment: he knew, or had access to, most of the principal civilian and military officials in the government, as well as many of the most influential scientists; and he had no personal axe to grind. Accordingly, on October 20, President Truman approved a memorandum from Lawton appointing Golden as a consultant to the Bureau of the Budget, in order to:[14]
Lawton’s memorandum assured the president that Golden would pay particular attention to:
The Golden Memoranda Even before Truman's approval of his consultancy, Golden was arranging meetings with key individuals to obtain information that would assist him in his study. Early in September, he traveled to Southern California where he met with Ralph Johnson, of the Hughes Aircraft Corporation and Jesse Greenstein, Professor of Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology ("Caltech") in Pasadena. On his way back from the West Coast, he spent several days talking to administrative and technical staff at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico. On October 10, 1950, Golden met with George Hines in the office of John McCormack of Massachusetts, Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. McCormack had expressed to Truman his interest in the Stewart Report. Ten days later, on the same day that his consultancy was approved, Golden had a conversation with Herman A. Spoehr, a retired biochemist who had recently been appointed as science advisor to Undersecretary of State James Webb, about Spoehr's expectations that he would be able to establish science liaison offices in the capitals of the friendly countries of Europe to facilitate the exchange of mutually-beneficial scientific information. Four days later, on October 24, he had a two-hour meeting with Vannevar Bush, who expressed only lightly concealed bitterness about his role as an "outsider" to government, to seek his views on the conduct of his assignment from the BoB. Beginning with the Hines meeting on October 10 and continuing through late April when he completed his consultancy, Golden dictated detailed memoranda which recounted the highlights of his conversations with more than 150 individuals in science and government. Transcripts of those dictations resulted in almost 400 pages of single-spaced memoranda. A number of these recount the perspectives on science policy and related matters in the context of reports from Korea on the part of such influential individuals as Vannevar Bush, National Academy of Sciences president Detlev W. Bronk, former commander of the U.S. occupation forces in Germany Lucius Clay, James B. Conant, Caltech president Lee DuBridge, former Manhattan Project director Leslie R. Groves, MIT president (and later presidential science adviser) James R. Killian, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, Institute for Advanced Studies director J. Robert Oppenheimer, Nobel Prize Laureate I. I. Rabi, soon-to-be-appointed National Science Foundation director Alan T. Waterman, and Undersecretary of State James Webb. The dominance of physicists among the scientists with whom Golden conversed, including both academic and industrial physicists, reflects the temper and reality of the times. Although most prominent physicists returned to their universities from their secret World War II laboratories, many also became prominent advisors to government during the years before Korea, and they were to retain and expand their influence as the government became more heavily involved in defense R&D. Golden’s charge and his overriding concern during the months of his consultancy had to do with mobilizing science for war, not with advising the BoB on a balanced, broadly-based science policy. In October 1950, with a wider war not out of the question, it was only natural that he should seek advice primarily from physicists, even while noting the long-term importance of support for other disciplines, most prominently in his February 15, 1951, "Memorandum on Program for the National Science Foundation." Vannevar Bush was the most notable of the non-physicists interviewed by Golden. Another notable exception was Conant, a chemist who had been president of Harvard since 1933. Otherwise, most of Golden’s conversations with non-physicists such as Bronk (a biologist), Killian (an administrator), and Don K. Price (a political scientist, formerly with the BoB) were arranged because of the positions those individuals occupied rather than their disciplinary expertise. Interestingly, Bronk and Killian were among the few who appear to have stressed the desirability for the National Science Foundation to support the social sciences, Killian expressing a particular interest in the importance of connections between the social and physical sciences. Possibly because of the interest of two such prominent individuals Golden did make occasional inquiries about social scientists he might profitably seek out. But with the exception of Price, who suggested a few names, the only such meetings recorded in Golden’s memoranda were two with Bernard Brodie, Professor of International Relations at Yale (on September 28 and November 4, 1950), and one on March 7, 1951, with Donald Marquis, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. With the exception of Bronk, Golden’s February 8 conversation with Alan Gregg, director of Medical Sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation, is the closest he came to any recorded meeting with a life scientist. Nor were rising stars who had possessed their PhDs for less than a decade among those whom Golden met. Of the 18 individuals with whom his conversations are reproduced in this volume the youngest, in 1950, were James Killian and Robert Oppenheimer (both aged 46), Robert Bacher (age 45) and Kenneth Pitzer (age 36). The oldest were Theodore von Karman (69), Herman Spoehr (65), and Oliver Buckley (65). Given the temper of the times, the nature of his consultancy, and the dominance of physicists among those Golden spoke with, it is not surprising that only one conversation with a woman is recounted: Ruth Miller, a member of the President’s Materials Policy Commission who, along with her colleague, Eric Hodgins, came to see him on March 14 at their request, seemingly in an attempt to determine exactly what the Truman administration really had in mind by materials policy!
Emergence of the Cold War Model Golden's memoranda recount the impressions of many who were then influential and are still remembered, along with others long since forgotten, to the shifting news from Korea. They capture the mood in Washington during the critical months when the first presidential scientific advisory committee was emerging and the National Science Foundation, conceptualized five years earlier as the lynch-pin of peacetime U.S. science policy, was being activated. That mood was dominated by the expectation that a wider war was all but inevitable. Bush's October 24 recorded reference to the "recent war in Korea," is curious in light of the fact that American troops were still heavily engaged in that conflict. He may have been thinking of the recent outbreak of that war. An alternative possibility is that by October, the national mood regarding a wider war had swung from deep concern to relief. On September 15, troops under the command of General MacArthur had made an amphibious landing at Inchon, the port city near Seoul. Three weeks later, having recaptured Seoul, they crossed the 38th parallel into North Korea and thereafter continued to advance to the north. Although never tacitly acknowledged, it now appeared that the objective of the war was to reunite Korea rather than simply to restore the status quo that had prevailed up to the June 25 invasion. That the Bureau of the Budget was not as sanguine as Bush in dismissing the Korean war as an accomplished fact is clear from the historical record, including the fact that Golden's consultancy was approved approximately a month after the Inchon landing when United Nations forces were advancing rapidly toward the Chinese border. Nevertheless, on October 15, Truman and General MacArthur had an historic meeting on Wake Island, ostensibly for the purpose of discussing the final campaign in Korea. On November 20, 1950, despite official warnings from the Pentagon, MacArthur’s forces reached the Yalu river, the dividing line between Korea and China. Six days later, Chinese "volunteers" intervened massively, and UN troops began a rapid retreat. On December 5, the same day that they abandoned the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and began their retreat south of the 38th parallel toward Seoul, Bush responded to a question from Golden by stating that he could not yet appraise the implications of events in Korea: "... maybe we should [pull out] but I don't think we will." Whereas in October Bush had spoken of a wider war in rather abstract terms, on December 5, according to Golden:
The most revealing example of the changed perception among scientific leaders as a result of the Korean conflict are suggested by memoranda on two successive conversations with I. I. Rabi, Professor of Physics at Columbia University who had received the Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1944. Golden's record of their November 16, 1950, meeting contains no mention of war. Rather, their conversation focused on the advisability of a presidential science advisory system and on the need for a reconstituted OSRD: not now, said Rabi, "don't disturb the good work being done in universities." In contrast, Golden's January 5, 1951, memorandum recounts Rabi's impressions of his recent trip to Europe:
Perhaps the most somber of the discussions recounted by Golden involved his December 14, 1950, meeting with James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard University and elected, two days earlier, as first chairman of the National Science Board, the policy-guiding body of the National Science Foundation. Conant confessed that:
The impact of Korea on national policies and expectations was underscored in Golden’s account of an emergency meeting at the Bureau of the Budget on Sunday, January 5, 1951, that involved, among others, Conant, Elmer Staats, assistant director of the Bureau, and William D. Carey, who had been the principal BoB official responsible for crafting acceptable legislation to create the National Science Foundation. Golden recounted that the National Science Board (NSB) had, at its January 3 meeting, expressed strong opposition to the appointment of a scientific advisor to the president on the grounds that this would dilute its own statutory authority. Military considerations had already come to dominate U.S. science policy and prominent NSB members, at least, wanted a piece of the action. "Somehow," Golden noted, "National Science Foundation needs a National Defense label to get appropriations and manpower (and hold off General Hershey)[15] and keep its Board happy." Conant, as National Science Board chairman, explained that although he did not agree with the position of the majority of his colleagues, he was obliged by reason of his position to explain the reasons why they opposed the appointment of a scientific adviser to the president. Thereupon Staats suggested that an advisory committee to the scientific advisor ought to be created with the director of the National Science Foundation as one of three statutory members, along with the president of the National Academy of Sciences and the director of the Research and Development Board. Conant’s impression that this might satisfy the majority of the NSB turned out to be correct. The opening paragraph of Golden’s February 15, 1951, "Memoranda for Program for the National Science Foundation" notes that the importance of NSF to national defense was demonstrated by the fact that the yet-to-be designated NSF director would have a seat on a soon to be established Scientific Advisory Committee to the White House Director of Defense Mobilization. However, neither the military situation in Korea nor the increasingly rancorous political atmosphere occasioned by General MacArthur's vocal opposition to the Truman administration's policy of containing the conflict by avoiding any attack on China are mentioned in subsequent memoranda. By early January, Golden had already forwarded a memorandum to President Truman recommending the appointment of a scientific adviser, one of whose principal responsibilities would be to lay the groundwork for the establishment of a new OSRD-like organization that could be activated in the event of a full scale war. Many of the remaining memoranda recount attempts to implement that recommendation. In late January, UN troops under General Matthew Ridgeway, the newly appointed field commander, once again began to advance northward toward Seoul and the 38th parallel. The crisis atmosphere that had followed the Chinese intervention two months earlier began to abate. However, the militarization of the Cold War -- and of U.S. science policy -- was already an accomplished, irreversible fact, as the implementation of the scientific adviser proposal and the fate of the still largely nascent National Science Foundation were to indicate. The domestic fall-out from Korea during the first months of 1951 poisoned the political atmosphere in which these far reaching science policy decisions were being made. On April 11, Golden and Oliver Buckley, president of Bell Laboratories, met with Charles Stauffacher, executive assistant director of the BoB. Buckley had agreed to accept the chairmanship of what by then had become a Science Advisory Committee to the White House Office of Defense Mobilization, and was being briefed by Stauffacher in preparation for a meeting with President Truman. On that same day, the White House announced that Truman had fired General MacArthur for insubordination, an announcement that resulted in widespread vilification of the president. Eight days later, on April 19, Truman signed a letter drafted by Golden formally inviting Buckley to accept the chairmanship of the committee. On that same day, MacArthur was given a hero's welcome to Washington, which culminated in an emotional speech to a joint session of Congress.
A Presidential Science Adviser? In view of the importance that the presidential science advisory system has now attained, Golden's many conversations dealing with the evolution of that concept and the initial attempts to implement it are among the most interesting features of his memoranda.[16] Vannevar Bush had, of course, served as de facto science adviser to President Roosevelt during World War II, and the suggestion for peacetime a high level science policy coordinator of some sort had been around for sometime: for example, in the Steelman report's 1947 recommendation for a liaison officer between the White House and the science agencies, and the Stewart report's 1948 recommendation for a scientific adviser to the Secretary of Defense with access to the president. However, even though his original concept of a presidential-level scientific advisory system was almost entirely defense oriented, Golden appears to have been the first to argue that such a system should be instituted on a permanent basis even in peacetime. It is not clear from his memoranda how or when he actually conceived of the idea. However, it is among the principal topics he discussed with Bush on October 24, less than a week after Truman had approved his consultancy. (Bush was unconvinced, primarily because he doubted that Truman would make much use of such an advisor -- a prediction that turned out to be on the mark!) Golden's assertion in his memorandum on a December 8 conversation with Special Adviser to the Secretary of the Air Force Louis Ridenour that "at last" he had "flushed out" a strong opponent to the concept of a science adviser to the president may indicate that he regarded the opposition expressed by other influential interlocutors as only moderate. For instance, during their December 14 meeting Conant, who in 1941 had conceived of the OSRD along with Bush and had worked closely with him during the war years, conceded "... somewhat reluctantly that a Scientific Adviser to the President might be a useful device and might in effect be necessary because of the times." Golden's memorandum recounting a December 20, 1950, meeting with J. Robert Oppenheimer recalls that initially he:
Despite the misgivings of such prominent individuals, Golden recollected that a substantial majority of those with whom he discussed the matter were enthusiastic about the prospect of a scientific adviser to the president. Advocates included prominent individuals such as I. I. Rabi, Professor of Physics at Columbia University who had received the Nobel Prize in 1944, and Lee DuBridge, president of the California Institute of Technology. DuBridge was the person named most frequently by Golden's interlocutors as best qualified to fill such a position. On November 22, Golden reported that Detlev Bronk, president of both Johns Hopkins University and the National Academy of Sciences, had expressed considerable enthusiasm for the concept, although he wondered, "in the abstract," whether the responsibilities of that officer might best be fulfilled by the president of the National Academy of Sciences! Most tellingly, on December 16, an ad-hoc group convened to evaluate and recommend steps to reform the Research and Development Board chaired by James Killian, president of MIT, expressed its strong support for the scientific advisory concept as Golden then conceived of it. The considerable enthusiasm that Golden's scientific adviser concept evoked among the people he met appears to have been due, in part, to the virtually universal rejection he encountered of the Stewart Committee's 1948 recommendation to reconstitute the OSRD. For example, on October 24, 1950, Bush stated that he was opposed to any reconstitution of the OSRD at present, on the grounds that it would have little to do and would "grow rusty." Oppenheimer, too, believed that there would be little for a new OSRD to do. The attitude of DuBridge, Killian, and Stewart on October 25 was, that, "... when the crisis comes, the new organization will spring up almost virtually automatically around the scientific leaders who will come to the fore spontaneously." And, as noted earlier, Rabi feared that any attempt to reconstitute an OSRD would disturb, "the good work going on in universities." Only Lee DuBridge thought that a new OSRD might be viable, provided it was initiated on a small scale and dealt with risky projects that the Department of Defense (and in particular the RDB) could not yet consider. In view of the strong opposition he encountered on the matter of the OSRD, Golden began to conceive of two primary functions for a scientific adviser to the president:
By December 6, Golden was sufficiently confident about his concept that he shared it with Elmer Staats, assistant director of the Bureau of the Budget, who urged him to write a memorandum to the president expressing his views. On December 27 Golden presented his memorandum, dated December 18, to John Steelman, the Assistant to the President, who assured him that he would transmit it to Truman expeditiously. It appeared, at the beginning of 1951, that both a presidential scientific advisory system and a fully functioning National Science Foundation would be in place within a very few months. But two unanticipated obstacles which also had an impact on the National Science Foundation stood in the way of the scientific adviser plan. First, as already noted, at its second meeting on January 3, 1951, the National Science Board opposed the scientific adviser concept, on the grounds that it would dilute its own authority. This challenge was countered on January 5 by means of Staats’ proposal that the single scientific adviser might be replaced by an advisory committee, on which the NSF director would have a statutory position, along with the president of the National Academy of Sciences, the chairman of the RDB (then William Webster), and the chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission (Oppenheimer). A more serious challenge emerged on January 19, 1951, from General Lucius Clay, hero of the Berlin Airlift and at that time assistant to Charles E. Wilson, director of the White House Office of Defense Mobilization. Although, as Golden recounted, Clay was in complete accord about the need for an individual to carry out the presidential scientific advisory functions, he:
Faced with Clay's barely concealed ultimatum and the accommodation reached with Conant on January 5, Golden sought a further compromise that would remain acceptable to the scientific community. He replaced the single scientific adviser to the president with what he first refereed to as a Committee on Defense Scientific research which would report to the Defense Mobilization director, but whose chairman would also have access to the president. He met with Clay again on January 26, equipped with a draft letter from Truman to the undesignated chair of the proposed committee which spelled out these conditions. Clay accepted Golden’s compromise, subject to the approval of mobilization director Wilson -- which was soon forthcoming.[17] The problem now was to locate a suitable chairman of what finally became the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Office of Defense Mobilization who would be acceptable both to the scientific community and to General Clay. Golden had been soliciting nominations for the putative science adviser position from the outset. Lee DuBridge, president of the California Institute of Technology and wartime director of the Radiation Laboratory at M.I.T. was the candidate who emerged most often by far from Golden's informal inquiries. Rabi was particularly enthusiastic, characterizing DuBridge as an outstanding scientist who was widely respected in the scientific community. The single prominent dissenter was Bush who stated categorically, on December 5, that although DuBridge was certainly very capable, he did not believe he was the man for the job. DuBridge himself was obviously interested. When on October 25 he was asked his opinion about the scientific adviser concept, he not only approved but began to ponder such logistical matters as whether that official's office ought to be in the Pentagon and which government agency would pay the travel vouchers for the adviser and his consultants and/or committee. But when, on December 13, Golden asked him directly whether he would accept an appointment as scientific adviser to the president, DuBridge admitted that he could do so only on a part time basis. He was committed to Caltech and believed he had a strong moral commitment to devote a substantial fraction of his energy to that institution. The problem of whether DuBridge could be persuaded to serve part time as the scientific adviser to the president was made moot by Charles Wilson's January 26 agreement to establish a Scientific Advisory Committee to his Office of Defense Mobilization. Wilson made it clear that that committee should be chaired by a man with an industrial rather than an academic background. And the man he wanted was Mervyn Kelly, vice president of the Bell Telephone Laboratories. In the course of his conversations prior to January 19, Golden had occasionally raised the question of whether an individual with an industrial background should be considered in preference to one with a university background? Conant (December 13) said no, on the grounds that most of the scientists who would need to be recruited for a new OSRD-type arrangement in a time of crisis would come from universities. Rabi (January 5) answered the question implicitly when, weighing the relative merits of Killian and DuBridge, he selected the latter as the better candidate for the scientific advisory position because Killian, although a good administrator, lacked scientific credentials. Among those who did not dismiss Golden's suggestion of an industrial scientist out of hand, Mervyn Kelly's name emerged most frequently. Thus, when Wilson indicated that Kelly was the man he wanted to serve as chairman of his Scientific Advisory Committee, Golden must have been convinced that he had, at last, identified a candidate acceptable both to science and government. But the white hope represented by Kelly soon evaporated. On February 22 Oliver Buckley, president of Bell Laboratories, informed Golden that Kelly would not accept the position. He (Buckley) was about to retire and Kelly had long looked forward to succeeding to his position. For a few days it seemed that Charles A. Thomas, executive vice president of the Monsanto Chemical Company, might be a suitable candidate. However, Golden’s memorandum on a February 26 conversation with Oppenheimer refer to "the Thomas matter" in such a way as to suggest that he did not expect him to accept the position which, in fact, turned out to be the case. Thereupon, for reasons not clear from Golden's memoranda, Buckley then became the leading candidate to chair the scientific advisory committee. But Buckley was dubious: was there really a "job to be done?" Would Golden object if he discussed the matter with his colleagues on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences? Whom would Golden suggest he talk with? Bush? Conant? DuBridge? Bronk? Oppenheimer? Golden, whose normally temperate memoranda could scarcely conceal his frustration, told Killian bluntly in a March 24 telephone conversation, that unless he and others whom Buckley respected could persuade him to accept the chairmanship of the committee, the whole question of who was qualified to fill that position would have to be reopened, with the possible result that the entire concept would be rejected by Wilson and Truman. Apparently Killian and others prevailed, since Buckley consented to accept the offer, which was formally extended in writing by the president on April 19. Truman’s letter was only a slightly modified version of the draft that Golden had prepared for General Clay’s approval on January 26. In particular, access to the president was assured by means of a critical phrase, carried over from that draft, in which Truman asserted that the SAC
Thus, Oliver Buckley became the first in a succession of presidential science advisers that has been maintained, albeit in differing organizational forms, from the Truman through the Clinton administrations. Truman’s letter made four statutory appointments to the SAC: Detlev Bronk (president of the National Academy of Sciences), William Webster (chairman of the Research and Development Board), Alan Waterman (director of the National Science Foundation), and Hugh Dryden (chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, but designated in his capacity as a member of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific Research and Development). The non-statutory members appointed were: James B. Conant, Lee DuBridge, James R. Killian, Robert E. Loeb (professor at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons), J. Robert Oppenheimer (named in his personal capacity rather than that of chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission), and Charles A. Thomas. Consistent with Vannevar Bush's political instincts and Oliver Buckley's retiring character, the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Office of Defense Mobilization seems to have been largely ignored by both the director of the Office and by the president during the 21 months that remained of the Truman administration. However, it provided the basis of what was to be elevated, in November 1957 in the wake of Sputnik, to the full-fledged President's Science Advisory Committee that Golden had advocated in all of his conversations six years earlier. As chair of that committee and his full-time science adviser, President Dwight Eisenhower selected the sole non-scientist from the original SAC, James Killian, who had been one of Golden's major supporters in his campaign to establish such a system.[18]
The National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) was slowly taking shape in parallel with the presidential scientific advisory system and involved many of the same actors, with developments in Korea never far from sight. According to the May 10, 1950, Act, the Foundation consisted of "a National Science Board and a Director." The National Science Board (NSB) was to consist of 24 presidentially-appointed members, "eminent in the fields of the basic sciences, medical sciences, engineering, agriculture, education or public affairs."[19] Golden has appended to his full set of memoranda a November 2, 1950, White House press release announcing the president's 24 nominees to the NSB, although the memoranda themselves take no note of that event. Among these nominees, Golden had already had conversations with Bronk, Conant, and DuBridge on more than one occasion. The National Science Board met for the first time on December 12, 1950, two weeks after the Chinese intervention in Korea. According to the minutes of the meeting, the principal items of business were to elect a chairman (Conant), appoint a nine-member executive committee and elect its chairman (Bronk), and to devise a procedure for drawing up a list of candidates for the NSF directorship for consideration at the next meeting, scheduled for January 3, 1951. The minutes also note that business was suspended at noon for informal remarks by President Truman, and resumed at 12:30. However, they provide no information about the content of those remarks. The president may have had other matters on his mind. Four days later, Columbia University announced that Dwight Eisenhower would take a leave of absence as its president in order to return to active military service as Supreme Commander in Europe, a clear signal that the United States and its Western European allies did not discount the possibility that the Soviet Union might take advantage of American preoccupation in the Far East to launch an attack on West Germany. Golden's memoranda recount a December 13 meeting with DuBridge and a meeting the next day with Conant. A remarkable aspect of both accounts is their failure to make any reference to the December 12 NSB meeting which literally marked the birth of the National Science Foundation. The Conant memo does state that, "we talked a bit about the National Science Foundation," but provides no insights beyond those covered in earlier conversations with other people. Rather, both NSB members focused on the Korean situation, the travails of the RDB, and the functions of a possible presidential scientific adviser in mobilizing science for war. Golden had, however, discussed matters related to the National Science Foundation with DuBridge and others on earlier occasions, and continued to do so throughout the period of his consultancy. Although his principal concern was with scientific mobilization, including the creation of a presidential scientific advisory apparatus and the reorganization of the RDB, Golden also set himself the task of recommending to the NSB a specific program for the National Science Foundation consistent with the defense-oriented priorities of the times. His recollections of these conversations suggest that he was receiving a somewhat unanticipated education in the ways of the federal bureaucracy and the attitudes of leading scientists (mainly physicists) toward the conduct -- and autonomy -- of basic research! Even supporters of NSF recognized that it would be subject to severe budget constraints from the outset. A December 6, 1950, memorandum of a conversation with Robert F. Bacher, chairman of the Department of Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology states:
Golden and others (e.g., Bush -- see memorandum on December 5, 1950, conversation) made the not unreasonable assumption that since the concept of a single federal agency with primary responsibility to support basic research and science education had been the centerpiece of Science -- the Endless Frontier, now that a National Science Foundation had finally been created, agencies such as the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and Office of Naval Research (ONR) that already supported basic research in universities, would feel obliged, indeed relieved, to turn over their basic research programs to NSF, with the implication that in future years funds appropriated by Congress to support those programs would go to NSF instead. It followed that Congress would only have to appropriate additional net funds for NSF during the first few years for a fellowship program, which could be justified on the grounds that the long-term strength of U.S. science required an adequate number of qualified individuals with PhD degrees. Kenneth Pitzer, director of the AEC’s Research Division, was the first to disabuse Golden about that line of reasoning. In the course of a November 1 meeting, Pitzer agreed that getting a fellowship program underway ought to be a top priority for the Foundation, and volunteered that he would be pleased to see NSF handle the AEC’s pre- and post-doctoral fellowships. When asked how much of the AEC’s basic research programs would be turned over to NSF, Pitzer estimated "perhaps one or two million dollars per annum out of a 20 million dollar per annum basic research budget." He went on to explain that there would be a "... strong tendency to hold control over basic research activities in institutions which were also performing classified programmatic research for the AEC, for in general the unclassified basic research work is much more attractive to universities." Golden mused to himself that that attitude might also prevail in other agencies. If so, then "... this suggests that the NSF will be left with a rather hodgepodge field to support in basic research, at any rate, in the beginning." On November 29 Alan T. Waterman, Chief Scientist at the ONR, conveyed essentially the same message:
The realization that moderate funds, at best, would be forthcoming from agencies that already supported basic research, coupled with perceived defense-related budgetary constraints, reinforced Golden’s view that fellowship support should be the NSF’s initial top priority. During the course of a December 21 dinner meeting, Robert Oppenheimer carried out a back-of-the-envelope calculation and concluded that NSF could usefully spend a minimum of $6 million per year for a fellowship program. The Bureau of the Budget was thinking in terms of a budget request of $10 million for NSF for fiscal year 1952.[20] If so, then whatever remained in addition to the fellowship funds and administrative expenses might be used to conduct careful surveys on scientific personnel and on the basic research conducted in the country, with the objective of developing an effective long-range plan for NSF. Several of his interlocutors seemed to agree with this line of thinking. On November 22, Detlev Bronk, "... had the idea that it [NSF] should get under way slowly after careful study of the fields of activity." Bronk said he was pleased that fiscal year 1951 appropriations were limited to $225,000 for administrative start-up costs, since that would oblige the NSB to conduct those studies before jumping immediately into large scale program support. Thus, he agreed that the $10 million being mentioned for fiscal year 1952 was too high. Bush was even more emphatic than Bronk. Golden quotes him as saying, on December 5:
There were dissenters, however. Oppenheimer, along with Bacher and Charles Lauritsen who also attended the December 21 dinner meeting with Golden, urged that grants for support of basic research were essential, "Oppenheimer being particularly strongly of the opinion that research in this country had never recovered from the diversion to applied fields that basic research had suffered because of World War II."
About one issue there was no apparent dissent: the Foundation should not become involved in military-related research. DuBridge and Bronk had been particularly emphatic on that point. For that reason, Conant’s January 5 announcement that the National Science Board had taken exception to the presidential scientific adviser proposal on the grounds that an official who would be concerned primarily with military matters would undercut its own authority came as a considerable surprise.[21] DuBridge explained what had happened on January 8. Based on procedures agreed on in December, the Board had come up with a list of 10 rank-ordered candidates as possible nominees for NSF director. The top three candidates were Bronk, Baird Hastings, a Harvard biologist, and Lloyd Berkner, a physicist then on the staff of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Conant, as NSB chairman, was instructed to present those three names to President Truman, with whom he was scheduled to meet on January 6. The minutes of the January 3 Board meeting indicate that Bronk was the second choice of one member, the fourth of another, and top choice of everyone else. Yet, as DuBridge reported, Bronk said he would take the job only if it encompassed military scientific activities. "As DuBridge put it, ‘things just snowballed.’ Apparently Dr. Conant as Chairman did not have the meeting under as close control as one might have looked for." DuBridge, Golden noted:
The views of DuBridge and Conant prevailed. At the Board’s February 13-14 meeting, Bronk withdrew his name for consideration as director, possibly because of the military question possibly, also, because he had failed to convince the trustees of Johns Hopkins (with whom he met on January 8) that he could do justice to the presidency of the university while serving simultaneously as president of the National Academy of Sciences and director of the National Science Foundation. Since Hastings and Berkner, the second and third ranking candidates on the Board’s original list had also withdrawn by that time, Conant was instructed to submit the remaining seven names on the list to the White House for the president’s consideration. At the conclusion of that same meeting, the Board issued a public statement, apparently drafted by DuBridge, that disavowed NSF involvement in military matters and included a statement that:
The matter of NSF’s involvement in defense research having been resolved, the director of the Bureau of the Budget felt free to transmit to Conant, on February 15, Golden’s "Memorandum on Program for the National Science Foundation," with a covering memo noting that it would be inappropriate for the Bureau officially to endorse the paper on the grounds that it did not want to appear to prejudge the Board’s actions. That memorandum laid out a detailed rationale for a set of surveys and reviews on which an effective, long-range program might be based. The minutes of the March 8-9 NSB meeting note that all members had received and read the memorandum, and agreed that no action was indicated at that time. Presumably, it assigned a higher priority to other tasks, since it then turned to the matter of confirming the proposed budget for the Foundation for fiscal year 1952 that it had considered in draft in February. A total of $13.5 million was proposed, rather than the full $15 million established as an upper annual limit by the Act of May 10, 1950. Of that amount, $9 million was proposed to support research and $2 million for fellowships.[22] The minutes also recount that on March 9, the NSB was informed that the president would shortly announce his intention of nominating Alan T. Waterman as the first NSF director. That same afternoon, the nominee took his seat at the table. Although he had ranked only seventh on the original list of 10 candidates drawn up by the Board, Bush had told Golden on October 24 that Waterman was the man for the job, and Rabi expressed the same opinion independently. In any event on March 9, with an operating budget ready for submission to the Bureau of the Budget and a well regarded and experienced individual in line for the directorship, the National Science Foundation was at last on the threshold of becoming operational.[23]
Insights In addition to chronicling the emergence during the early months of the Cold War of two government organizations that have come to be regarded as essential components of the U.S. science policy system, Golden's memoranda provide insights into the perspectives of the relatively small number of men who qualified as leaders and spokesmen for the scientific community during that era, as well as the perspectives of several who were outsiders, by choice or otherwise. That the number of "insiders" was, in fact, limited is evident from the memberships of three important government advisory bodies: four of those who were appointed to the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) to the Office of Defense Mobilization when it was created in April 1951-- Buckley, Conant, DuBridge, and Oppenheimer -- were already members of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission (GAC/AEC). Three of those designated in April as members or the SAC - - Bronk, Conant, and DuBridge -- had also been appointed to the National Science Board the previous November. Conant and DuBridge were members of all three bodies. This informal "interlocking directorate" system often simplified logistical matters. For example, since both Conant and DuBridge were due to attend a meeting of the GAC on Monday, January 6, 1951, it was reasonable to schedule a meeting of the National Science Board for Friday, January 3. A measure of consistency across advisory bodies could also be forthcoming, at least in principle. Thus, Oppenheimer was able to assure Golden that he, Rabi, Conant, and DuBridge would try to persuade the still wavering Buckley to accept the chairmanship of the SAC on the train they would all be taking to a March 15, 1951, meeting of the GAC in Chicago. However, the NSB's short lived revolt against the presidential scientific advisory concept demonstrates that such consistency could also be undermined by a strong ego. Detlev Bronk, who seems to have been widely admired as a first-rate scientist as well as a humane individual, may actually have dreamed of becoming a one-man directorate. When Golden first broached the scientific adviser concept to him on November 22, Bronk wondered, "abstractly," if that job could best be done by the president of the National Academy of Sciences. At the second meeting of the National Science Board the following January, neither Bronk nor any of his colleagues perceived any conflict (either of time or interest) in his assuming the directorship of the National Science Foundation, in addition to the two influential positions he already held. Bronk even insisted that the scope of the Foundation had to be expanded to include military matters if he were to assume that third position. DuBridge's attitude was somewhat different. Although he was virtually everyone's first choice as scientific adviser to the president and certainly relished the prospects of assuming that position, on December 18 he admitted to Golden, somewhat reluctantly, that he assigned a higher priority to his duties as president of Caltech.[24] From around March 1 onward, Golden’s memoranda deal increasingly with efforts to persuade Oliver Buckley to accept the position as chairman of the SAC. They suggest that Buckley was a modest individual who, although well regarded by the movers and shakers, fully recognized that he was not really one of the insiders. Although he was president of a leading industrial research laboratory and a member of the Council of the National Academy of Sciences he did not, as Golden commented, wear the "class ring" of academia that both Rabi and Conant had insisted would be an essential attribute for any effective scientific adviser! Since he was on the point of retiring from Bell Labs, Buckley was certainly aware that he had been selected to fill the position of SAC chairman primarily by default, and seems to have accepted the position mainly out of loyalty and perhaps deference to those who did wear the class ring. Buckley emerges from these memoranda as a man who wanted very much to retire from public service. For example, during his second meeting with Golden on February 27, he seemed more interested in talking about his volunteer work with the Multiple Sclerosis Society than in the science policy issues that concerned Golden's other interlocutors.[25] The very different styles of Oppenheimer and Rabi -- two strong individualists who were also acknowledged leaders both by virtue of their scientific achievements and their contributions to science policy -- are evident from Golden's transcriptions. Oppenheimer emerges as decisive, if somewhat arrogant. He does not hesitate to fault Golden's scientific adviser concept, and ridicules as "fantastic" his colleague Charles Lauritsen's idea that such an official should have cabinet rank. He was also used to striking while the iron was hot. While others had agreed in general terms with Golden’s contention that a fellowship program should be the first priority for the National Science Foundation, Oppenheimer’s first instinct was to estimate the number of awards required, then calculate the funds needed to make them available. Rabi bursts with ideas, biases, and insider information. During his first meeting with Golden, he stated that Waterman should be NSF director, while volunteering that Lloyd Berkner of the Carnegie Institution was, ". . too much a live wire for your concept of NSF." He pointed out that Bush had many enemies both in the military and the scientific community, referred to Oppenheimer as possibly the most brilliant person he could think of, and quoted an unnamed source to the effect that Conant had red tape running in his veins. On January 5, having just returned from Europe, Rabi stated categorically that research on defensive weapons must be the highest priority. The Europeans, he emphasized, had no will to fight; the French regarded it as more prudent to be anti-American than anti-Russian. On that occasion he was also completely informed about the January 3 revolt of the National Science Board against a presidential scientific adviser, even though he was not an NSB member and did not participate in the meeting. Memoranda of conversations with self-acknowledged outsiders demonstrates that although a handful of men had what might now be considered to be excessive influence within the scientific community and the interlocking circle of government science advisory bodies, their influence in the wider world was limited. When on January 19 Golden presented to General Lucius Clay his concept of a presidential adviser who could plan for the coming mobilization of the scientific community, Clay appeared to like the idea. However, he strongly objected to the notion that that individual should report to anyone but his superior, Charles Wilson, director of the Office of Defense Mobilization. When, a week later, Clay announced that Wilson wanted an industrial scientist in that position, the scientific leaders from academia had little choice but to acquiesce. Although Lt. General Leslie Groves had retired from active service and apparently retained little influence when Golden met with him on December 17, 1950, some of his views may have been more pervasive among outsiders than one would like to believe. After almost a decade, he still respected Conant and referred to Oppenheimer as "brilliant". However, he regarded the ideas of M.H. Trytten, director of the Office of Scientific Personnel at the National Research Council, as "a menace". Trytten "believes in supporting all science students free forever out of the public treasury and Groves is very much against such paternalism." Groves also "... spoke of Rabi and Bacher as having prevented his uniforming of scientists at Los Alamos, which he clearly still resents." Golden's memoranda confirm the rising influence of James R. Killian, an acknowledged insider despite his lack of scientific credentials or even a PhD in some other field. Rabi had briefly favored him as scientific adviser to the president because of his administrative abilities, then rejected him in favor of DuBridge who was also a credible scientist. But it was Killian who, while chairing a December 16, 1950, meeting of an ad hoc committee to evaluate the RDB, rallied the participants behind Golden's scientific adviser concept. And it was Killian, along with Oppenheimer, to whom Golden finally turned to convince Buckley to accept the chairmanship of the SAC. The continuing influence of Vannevar Bush in both scientific and military circles is also evident. He is referred to, favorably and otherwise, by almost all of Golden's other influential interlocutors. Buckley, for example, agreed to assume the chairmanship of the SAC only after an April 8 meeting with Bush who by then, according to Golden, had swung around in favor of the concept. Despite his intimate knowledge and understanding of the nuts and bolts of defense research, Bush constantly professed to be an outsider, and claimed to like it that way. But it is not clear that he really did. On October 24, he emphasized that while President Truman was cordial, he did not ask his advice on any important matters a situation, in Golden's opinion, "which he clearly resents." On December 5, Bush spoke of the desirability of having scientists in policy-making positions in the Defense Department, and reflected about what he would do about military research if he were Secretary of Defense. He made it clear on October 24 that he did not want to be considered for membership on the National Science Board and, on March 1, made the same statement about membership on SAC. "He said he could get all the information he wanted anyway and that he preferred to operate from outside. When I was leaving he asked me to please be sure to keep him posted on developments." Bush comes across as being sharp, contrary, and shrewd, while occasionally off the mark in his judgments -- such as his certainty that the BoB would compel the AEC and ONR to transfer most of their basic research appropriations over to NSF. Since Bush is now remembered by most people primarily as the author of Science -- the Endless Frontier, he is also regarded as the prophet of the system of government support for basic research in universities. Yet in January 1951, he doubted whether the National Science Foundation was ready to spend more than $200,000 per year effectively. Two months later, on March 1, he belittled the pretensions of those scientists who insisted on being represented on SAC. In his judgment the chairman should not be a scientist, but should be someone with engineering background in an industrial field:
Golden’s memoranda confirm the impression from other sources that Bush was very much an anomaly, if not an enigma. Despite the fact that he laid the cornerstone for a civilian-oriented science policy centered on support for basic scientific research, Bush remained an engineer whose abiding interest from 1940 onward was in trying to assure that defense-related research remained in civilian hands perhaps because, like George Marshall or Dwight Eisenhower, he was an old fashioned conservative firmly convinced of the wisdom of the constitutional principle of civilian control over military policy. On December 5, a bare week after the Chinese intervention in Korea when General MacArthur and others were already calling for massive retaliation, Bush assured Golden that:
Precedents Between October 1950 and April 1951, Golden completed two of the three implicit charges he read into his October 19 commission from the Bureau of the Budget:
The one aspect of his charge to which Golden devoted the lion’s share of his time and energy was the one on which he ultimately felt most frustrated: namely, how to improve the effectiveness of the RDB. In a March 7, 1951, meeting with Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Lovett, Golden offered some suggestions to that end. Yet the underlying tone of his memorandum of that conversation all but confesses that the problems of the RDB confounded him, as they had baffled all others who had examined its organizations and functions. Official frustration with the RDB was to continue, with the result that it was abolished early in the Eisenhower administration. Despite his failure to resolve the problems of the RDB, Golden's December 18, 1950, "Memorandum to the President" includes a detailed argument for the desirability of replacing the RDB with a civilian-controlled agency consistent with the description of what was ultimately to be established as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense in 1958. The ideas set forth in that December 18 memorandum -- as in his "Memorandum on Program for the National Science Foundation" -- indicate that, while Golden frequently incorporated the ideas garnered in his wide ranging conversations into his action memoranda, he also weighed and sometimes modified the judgments of others before putting forth his own recommendations. For example, while important aspects of his December 18 memorandum to the president that presage a civilian-oriented Advanced Research Project owe a great deal to conversations with Rabi (November 21, 1950), Waterman (November 29), DuBridge (December 13), and Conant (December 14), they also include ideas not recounted in memoranda on those or other conversations. The principal recommendations in his "Memorandum on Program for the National Science Foundation" demonstrate even more emphatically Golden’s ability to listen, then interpret. Those four recommendations were consistent with the assumption (on which he had thought had the support of prominent NSB members such as Bronk, Conant, and DuBridge) that, particularly in view of the current military mobilization requirements of the country, the NSF should conduct careful studies before it embarked on major programmatic support endeavors. He therefore recommended that four substantial surveys should be undertaken:
The second of these recommendations was presented at considerable length and notes that initiating a fellowship program need not wait upon the results of the proposed study, a point made by several interlocutors. But on the matter of the number of fellowships and their cost, Golden differed from Robert Oppenheimer's December 21, 1950, back-of-the-envelope estimate. Whereas Oppenheimer had spoken in terms of 500 predoctoral and 500 postdoctoral fellowships per year at $3,000 each for a total of $6 million, assuming the tenure of those fellowships were for two years, Golden makes a more conservative (but more generous) recommendation of 150 fellowships per year at $4,000, for a total of $600,000 for one-year tenure, or twice that amount for two-year tenure. A final significant aspect of Golden's memoranda is the record they provide of the emergence of several important ideas and institutions that have since become staples of U.S. science policy: some of them with knowledge afore-thought, some without. The importance, to U.S. science, of tracking developments abroad ranks high among recorded precedents in the latter category. On October 20, 1950, Herman A. Spoehr, newly appointed science adviser to the Under Secretary of State, described his plan to establish science liaison offices in the capital of friendly European countries. These officers would,
After many years of fits and starts, the essence of Spoehr's idea emerged as what the State Department now refers to as the Environment, Science, and Technology Officers Program of representatives in major U.S. embassies abroad. On December 21, 1950, Theodore von Karman handed Golden a copy of a memorandum which he had delivered two days earlier to Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett recommending that a science liaison unit be attached to General Eisenhower's staff, "... in the Supreme Command of the European Army." This memorandum was based on von Karman's belief that, "... valuable brains and laboratory facilities exist there and that effective work is being done which it would be worth our while to know about." The initiative of von Karman in delivering such a memorandum to the Defense Department less than a week after Eisenhower had been appointed as Supreme Commander of NATO is praiseworthy. But neither he nor Golden could have foreseen that the idea of establishing a modest scientific presence within NATO would evolve into the NATO science programs which, over the past decades, have come to be widely admired and which now comprise an important bridge between the United States and its NATO allies, and the former Soviet-bloc countries whose alleged military prowess created such concern for Golden and most of his interlocutors, von Karman included, 45 years ago. No doubt the presidential science advisory system ranks as the most significant of the precedents that Golden observed or attempted to establish with reasonable knowledge of what was intended. Other, somewhat more subtle precedents are presaged by the four recommendations contained in his February 15, 1951, "Memorandum on Program for the National Science Foundation." The first recommendation -- that a comprehensive survey should be conducted on the basic research being conducted in the United States and in friendly foreign countries -- includes an explicit reference to the social sciences, reflecting conversations with Bronk on November 22, 1950, and with Killian on December 29. But his suggestion about the inclusion of basic research being conducted in friendly foreign powers is not presaged in any of his memoranda of conversations, save for passing suggestions from Spoehr on October 20 and von Karman on December 21. Although the National Science Board at its fourth, March 8-9, 1951, meeting declined to consider Golden's February 15 recommendations in detail, their significance has since been recognized, at least implicitly, as the periodic involvement of the Foundation in reviews on the status of basic research and scientific personnel indicates. Unwittingly, perhaps, the NSF ultimately came to accept the significance of Golden's conclusion that various reports it might issue on the status of science, "... should become documents of widespread public interest." Golden’s third recommendation, calling for reliable quantitative data on existing and projected scientific personnel, provides a particularly striking case in point about his prescience. Two decades later, the National Science Board concluded, in 1972, that it could perform a significant service to the nation by issuing a series of Science Indicators reports based on quantitative data, including the data on scientific personnel that Golden had recommended in his February 15, 1951 memorandum. This series of volumes, since 1987 the Science and Engineering Indicators reports, probably ranks as among the National Science Board’s most valuable and enduring contribution to national -- and international -- science policy. The single recommendation in the February 15 memorandum which was not destined to be realized was the fourth, which foresaw the transfer, to NSF, of appropriations for the support of basic research from other agencies. Influenced, perhaps, by Bush’s December 5 assertion to the effect that "the budget boys" will see to it that such transfers would be forthcoming, Golden clearly underestimated the tenacity of the entrenched bureaucracies in guarding their turf from intrusion by even the highest authorities of the federal government.
Coda It is, of course, tempting if idle to speculate on how U.S. science policy might have evolved had the Korean War not intervened. How might the National Science Foundation have been implemented in full peacetime conditions? When (if ever) would a proto-presidential scientific advisory system have been created? It is equally idle to speculate on whether a science policy centered on federal support for basic research in universities would have evolved in the absence of World War II, or whether the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Office of Defense Mobilization would have been elevated into a full-fledged Presidential Science Advisory Committee in November 1957 without the shock of Sputnik. In fact, World War II, the Korean War, and Sputnik did occur and had undeniable consequences for U.S. science policy. Golden's memoranda recount a critical period of a few months when what has come to be called the Cold War science policy model was becoming firmly established. They also underline the oft noted truism that significant changes in centrally important policies are most likely to occur in times of real (e.g., World War II, Korea) and perceived (e.g., Sputnik) military crises. The establishment of a defense-oriented science policy, whose validity vanished with the Berlin Wall, was accomplished during the first year of the Korean conflict. For the past five years, the United States has been faced with a mirror image of what Golden recounted 45 years ago: the disappearance of a Cold War justification for support of scientific research by the federal government. It remains to be seen whether, in the absence of either a real of perceived military crisis, the United States can devise a coherent rationale for a long-term science policy to replace the one that was established during the months of crisis that Golden's memoranda recount. *William A. Blanpied, National Science Foundation. The opinions of the author are his own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the National Science Foundation. Notes
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