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Conversations: 1950
December 14, 1950 MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILE SUBJECT: Conversation with Dr. James B. Conant Dr. Conant spent an hour and a half with me this morning on the general subject of my precept but pointed specifically to the matter of Scientific Adviser to the President and the new OSRD. He left me the page proofs of the last chapter of his forthcoming book[1] which he said are relevant and also some pencil doodlings on organizational ideas. He talked somewhat historically about the OSRD, mentioning how they had to by-pass the National Research Council. He said he preferred to do his planning on the arbitrary assumption that maybe there will be no war for a year or more. Maybe there won’t be any war at all, but he didn't seem very hopeful on this as he had been some three years ago when he expressed optimism that there would be no world conflict in the foreseeable future. On the subject of Scientific Adviser to the President, and the new OSRD, he first spoke about preferring to "strengthen the RDB," but how? He acknowledged that Bush and Compton are both industrious and competent people, but had failed to make much of a go of it. He agreed that probably Webster, whom he esteems, is doing a better job but he seems under no illusion that the RDB was performing only a very small fraction of the tasks that it had been hoped it could accomplish. Nor could he give any panacea. We therefore passed to other things to be done first at any rate. That is, he came to an agreement that we could not wait to remake the RDB in someway that would greatly improve its effectiveness in order to go ahead with any efforts that might be timely in the present mobilization trend. Somewhat reluctantly, therefore, he felt that a Scientific Adviser to the President might be a useful device and might in effect be necessary because of the times; he showed a considerable practical awareness of these kinds of considerations--that is, the urge to take some action. He did not like the idea of the title of Scientific Adviser to the President however. He thought that it would put the occupant in the position of being fired at or appealed to by all manner of people and that virtually every scientist would feel impelled to write to him. He would need a large number of secretaries. He said if you are going to have such a person, he should have a committee of a few specialists in other main branches of science. That is, those in which he is not particularly qualified, both to advise him and to support him and when necessary act as a barrier or shelter between him and other scientists or scientific groups. The Scientific Adviser to the President, or call him what one wishes, should be a younger man. He said not Conant nor Bush, and of course, not Compton because his health could not stand it. He and Bush shouldn’t try to do their same job again. They are valuable consultants. As to whether the Scientific Adviser should be necessarily a full-time commitment or whether he should at least hold the title of his present occupation and perhaps spend a little time it: at first he said it would have to be full time connection, then he said well it is true that maintaining some connection with his present occupation could be useful. The fact that he was the President at Harvard and maintained that title and position added to his ability to perform successfully in the OSRD during the last war. He said immediately that DuBridge would be the man. When I asked him for some others he paused awhile then said, "Well, Dr. Julius Stratton of M.I.T. would be a good man," and said that Harvard had been trying to get him away from M.I.T. in a polite manner. Stratton's name had been mentioned to me by several others including Caryl Haskins and if I recall correctly, Dr. Buckley or perhaps Dr. Kelly of Bell Tel. I asked him what about a different type of man--one with an industrial research background--somebody like Mervyn Kelly, he said, '"Yes, Mervyn Kelly would be a very good man for us." He has an excellent standing as a scientist. However, he felt that the best man for this position would be one with a university connection because the principal source of personnel for success of OSRD would be the university. We agreed that the Scientific Adviser to the President must be regarded as expendable, or rather-must regard himself as that, although neither of us saw any reason why if he were well chosen he should meet any unhappy fate. As to a new OSRD again, he showed a certain kind of indifference. Someone like Bush, with whom he and Compton had created this organization in the last war, should be found. Again he had first said why not the RDB and the AEC between them figuring that the other ten or so Government agencies engaged research are relatively minor. I expressed DuBridge’s viewpoint about these matters and about the significance of perhaps 100, or some such number, top-notch scientists not now engaged in significant amount of military work who could be far better employed in an atmosphere completely free of the military. Conant said that this was probably true with regards to research matters but he had his doubts about whether any such new agency should go into development work, that is, making of gadgets and selling them in three dimensional forms to the military and the like. I said that it was clear to me that the new OSRD should be-a very small enterprise compared with the old OSRD, that there might be a few specialized fields to exploit, certain kinds of operational studies for it to. And in general in a kind of wild manner its place might principally be in looking for military devices and more basic discoveries which would be applicable to only say five years or more in the future and that this could be the place for major discoveries in the event that either the war did not come within say five years or something such or that it were still going on at that., time. He agreed with this proposition. I further said that it seemed to me that it might start on a very small basis, let us say just a project or a few of them as they appeared and that there was no telling at this time how the agency or the new OSRD might evolve but that that may not be determined at this point. It should be left free for evolution as seemed best. I further said that it seemed to me that they should essentially be research workers only, that is pencil and paper workers, and with laboratory apparatus, but that they should not go into manufacturing because by now the atmosphere of appreciation of scientific work by the military was such that if they were able to demonstrate the usefulness of the weapon or scientific conception to the satisfaction of themselves and other scientists the military would very likely seize upon and proceed with the development themselves, which seemed quite appropriate to me. He agreed. He said that as long as they stayed in research he believed it was a desirable thing to plan for and to proceed with. We did not try to determine when it should be started, tacitly agreeing I believe that this depended upon the timing of projects. This I pointed out is what the Scientific Adviser might do. He said upon an entirely different matter, since we rambled a bit that he had favored the May-Johnson bill versus the MacMahon Atomic Energy bill considering the latter a poor one.[2] He thinks Atomic Energy matters are essentially military and should be under military cognizance. The AEC activities he said are almost entirely military and the present conception is wrong. He spoke of the pressure of public opinion--with particular reference to the hydrogen bomb. He is a member of the General Advisory Committee to the AEC and of course was active in the early work on the atomic bomb. We spoke a bit about Carroll Wilson and he said that he imagined the manner of Carroll Wilson’s leaving the AEC pretty much precluded his doing anything in the Government at the present time. He said that he thought Caroll Wilson should either have said more or less at the time of his leaving. I think he indicated that he had said this to Carroll. He said he would be very glad to talk about this further and said that he would be in Washington again. We talked a bit about the National Science Foundation. He would like to see the "new OSRD", discussed above in the Department of Defense, perhaps reporting to the Secretary of Defense on a pari-parsu basis with RDB. This was after he suggested and then abandoned the idea of putting it in RDB itself when I pointed out that this would put the latter in position of both judge over the three services and operator on its own; and anyway with RDB still so far from success in its basic job why should it be expected to capably perform this other one too. He spoke of the importance of basic scientific research work for the long term future, etc. He had some hopes for the fellowship and scholarship program but seemed to recognize that under present mobilization conditions it would be illogical to expect additional funds to be allocated to the NSF for the support of additional basic research work. That is, anything in addition to what it might take over from other going concerned agencies like the Office of Naval Research, AEC, etc. He said he would be glad to talk further about all these matters and said he would be in Washington again for the National Science Foundation’s next meeting on January 3, and staying along through the General Advisory Committee meeting on the 6th if I remember correctly. William T. Golden ____________________________
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