Conversations: 1950

November 1, 1950

MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILE

SUBJECT: Conversation with Dr. Kenneth Pitzer, Director, Research Division, Atomic Energy Commission

On Wednesday, November 1, Kenneth Pitzer and I had a long lunch together. At about Christmas time he is leaving the AEC, as previously planned, and will go to Oxford, England for about six months on a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete a study on which he was working prior to his AEC undertaking. He will then go back to Berkeley, beginning the September term of 1951.

We discussed the National Science Foundation functions. He agreed with the idea that it would have to start slowly and that it would be sound for the first to make a careful study of the fellowship-ship and basic scientific research fields before undertaking active support. However, he thought it could start some activities without awaiting the completion of thorough study particularly he would like it to get into the fellowship field because he would like to turn over to it the handling of AEC pre and post doctoral fellowships, as the present arrangement with the National Research Council is makeshift and not fully satisfactory.

We had some discussion of the magnitude of fellowship support in the United States at the present time. The AEC programs total 2 million dollars per year covering both the physical and medical-biological sciences. The average stipend is about $2500 per year so that something like about 800 individuals receive this support. His impression is that very few individuals of top quality fail to pursue their scientific studies because of unavailability off funds, his point being that additional fellowship support by the Government, which he thinks desirable, would broaden the base by opening opportunities to additional individuals who, although qualified, are not as well qualified as those now being supported.

He thought that fellowships awarded by private industry total perhaps 1 million dollars per year, but this was a very off hand figure and may be substantially inaccurate.

He thought that a scholarship that is, undergraduate program by the Government was an entirely different matter and that geographical distribution might not be a bad idea. But a scholarship program would essentially be an educational matter and not a program for the encouragement of science on a substantial level.

We talked about the function of the National Science Foundation in encouraging basic research, and I asked him how much of the AEC’s program of this kind it would turn over to the NSF. He said perhaps one or two million dollars per annum out of a 20 million dollar per annum basic research budget. I remarked what a small percentage this was and he agreed, but said 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, etc. It is rather evident that this attitude would be quite general and would apply to other Government agencies such as the Public Health Service, the Department of Defense components, etc., as well as to the AEC. Thus the principal volume of basic research to be supported by the NSF would appear to be in those areas which are already being supported by Government agencies with a more or less direct interest in the specific fields. Even the Naval Ordnance Laboratory would probably want to retain--or at any rate the Navy retain--a substantial part of the fundamental research being supported by it. I must of course ask about this when I talk with Dr. Waterman. Pitzer did mention that many proposals came to him which he had to reject because, though he believed them to be meritorious, he could not see his way clear to justifying them through relevance to the AEC's area. All this suggests that the NSF will be left with a rather hodgepodge field to support in basic research, at any rate, in the beginning. This emphasizes the desirability, in fact the need, for NSF to make a thorough survey of what being supported and what should be supported in basic scientific work before undertaking to support any of it itself.

We talked about the idea of a scientific advisor to the President, and this he thought would be a very good thing. He felt this should-be an individual advisor, not a committee.

William T. Golden