Conversations: 1950

October 20, 1950

MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILE

SUBJECT: Meeting with Dr. Herman A. Spoehr and Mr. Walter M. Rudolph, State Department

The appointment with Dr. Spoehr and Mr. Rudolph was arranged by Mr. Stauffacher, via Under Secretary Webb’s office.

Dr. Spoehr is the newly appointed Science Adviser to the Under Secretary of State, the position recommended in Berkner Report entitled "Science and Foreign Relations." Mr. Rudolph is attached to Dr. Spoehr’s office, having in recent years headed the predecessor unit in the State Department as an adjunct to his original duties in the Cartel Section of State. He is an economist, not a scientist. Dr. Spoehr is a biochemist, a little over 65 years of age, with no previous experience in Government. He was, for many years, with the Stanford University branch of the Carnegie Institution and was persuaded to undertake his present assignment largely by Dr. Caryl Haskins of Haskins Laboratories .

Mr. Rudolph described at some length the genesis of the newly established (September 1950) Science Office, starting with the technical missions which went into Germany behind the American Army in World War II. The continuing function was originally assigned to the Department of Commerce and then transferred to the Department of State. At the present time there are only two staff members abroad, both in London. It is contemplated, however, that foreign offices will be opened in about a dozen key points throughout the World. Essentially, the organization will follow the recommendations of the Berkner Report. There will be a central staff in Washington under Dr. Spoehr, whose capacity is a staff one as Scientific Adviser to the Under Secretary of State. In each of the foreign offices there will be from two to five scientists, a total of approximately forty scientists, all of whom have yet to be recruited. The general conception is that there will be a senior man in each of the offices, perhaps someone who, like Dr. Spoehr, has an established position in the scientific community, with a younger man under him. Probably they will be engaged for tours of duty of a couple of years or so. Recruiting is going to be difficult and is the major immediate problem. One of the men Dr. Spoehr is trying to get is Dr. Robert C. Swain, who is Vice President and Director of Research of the American Cyanamid Corporation, aged about 42. Dr. Spoehr hopes that he will take a leave of absence for a period of two years in order to establish the London office.

These offices will officially deal only in unclassified matters and the whole conception is that there will be a two-way flow of information. The collection and dissemination of published matter will be a relatively routine function. More important will be:

a. The function of establishing informal relations with foreign scientists and thereby keeping posted on fields of interest and probable trends and developments in order to pass this information on to interested individuals and agencies in the USA, and,

b. The return flow of information from the USA to foreign scientists and, particularly in Germany and Japan, the encouragement of foreign scientists and technologists to pursue lines of endeavor of particular interest to us.

Back in the USA the Science Adviser's Office will evaluate the reports received and try to assemble fragmentary information into broad intelligible patterns. They will disseminate the information within the various Government agencies, with the assistance of National Research Council, among other agencies, to industry, institutions, and individual scientists in the U.S. They are also intended to recommend and to advise the Under Secretary on matters of scientific interest which should influence the foreign policy of the U.S., or be considered in it.

William T. Golden