Conversations: 1950

December 5, 1950

MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILE

SUBJECT: Conversation with Dr. Vannevar Bush

I spent half an hour with Dr. Bush this afternoon in between two other appointments of his. We talked about the concept of a Scientific Adviser to the President, about the OSRD concept and about the National Science Foundation.

As to the idea of a Scientific Adviser to the President, as described elsewhere, he did not disapprove, and in fact expressed approval, but again, as in my previous meeting with him expressed doubt as to its feasibility in relation to President Truman. As before, his attitude here seemed to me to be subjective. But he did not oppose the idea. He suggested, as a counter proposal, that with some 15 secretaries and under and assistant secretaries in the three Services under the Department of Defense none of them was a scientist or technically trained man, and would it not be useful to have several scientists in assistant secretarial posts; if so, he said they could be the scientific advisers to the President. I agreed that this was desirable but that it could not be accomplished quickly, that very few scientists would have the practical characteristics to fill these posts, and that I would have them in addition to the Scientific Adviser to the President. They were not alternatives. For example, no one of them could reasonably be expected to be the stand-by nucleus of an OSRD, which is one of the two principal functions I visualize for the Scientific Adviser. He agreed, but as before lacks enthusiasm for the idea. I asked him for specific suggestions for a Scientific Adviser, if there were to be one, and he replied, "Oh, I could name a dozen of them." I asked him to name a few offhand, and he said, [Louis] Ridenour [Adviser to Secretary of the Air Force], [Luis] Alvarez [University of California], [Lloyd] Berkner [Carnegie Institution of Washington] and two others. I pointed out that he had not named DuBridge and asked whether this was intentional since his name had frequently been mentioned by others. He said well DuBridge was very capable but he did not think he was the man for this position. I then asked what he thought about having this individual be an industrial laboratory trained man rather than a university man, and said what about Dr. Mervin Kelly [Vice President of Bell Telephone Laboratories] for example. Well, he said, Kelly would certainly be one to be considered in that group.

As to the National Science Foundation, I asked whether, in the light of recent events in Korea and the indication that we should mobilize much more rapidly than heretofore, the NSF should not be kept down to a very limited amount of funds rather than the $10,000,000 amount or thereabouts which had been mentioned by some for Fiscal 1952. He said "yes, I would keep them down to a rate of say $200,000 a year and take another look-see at the end of six months or so. See what they are doing and how they plan to go ahead and decide at that time what additional funds to give them." He said that after the National Science Foundation was organized the AEC and the Office of Naval Research, etc., would turn over large parts of their basic research programs to the NSF. I said that indications were that no such thing would be done, that both Pitzer and Waterman had told me that they expected to turn over only a very small part of their current programs to NSF but that they had lots of ideas for additional work which NSF might underwrite. He said wait until the NSF is going and the Budget boys take the money away from the other organizations and turn it over the NSF. I asked whether he thought this would be a good thing to do under present wartime conditions, and he said yes he thought it would be.

As to the war developments in Korea, he said he cannot yet appraise them. He does not think that we will pull out of there. I asked him whether he did not think we should pull out and he said well, maybe we should, but I don’t think that we will. He said that public opinion would not countenance the United States starting a war say by attacking with A-bombs regardless of whether this would or would not be a good thing to do militarily. He said if public opinion would countenance this we would no longer be a democracy. Getting back to the current situation he said that he thought we probably had two or three years in which to arm etc. He does not think that Russia is ready to "roll across the plains of Germany" or launch a general attack on Western Europe and he does not think they will do so at least for two or three years.

William T. Golden