Conversations: 1951

February 22, 1951

MEMORANDUM FOR THE FILE

SUBJECT: Conversation with Dr. Oliver E. Buckley

I had lunch with Dr. Buckley in New York on Lincoln's Birthday and spent the afternoon with him in a discursive discussion. This was at his suggestion as an alternative to telephone conversation. It was Dr. Kelly’s decision not to accept the chairmanship of the Advisory Committee on Defense Scientific Research which impelled me to wish to talk with Dr. Buckley again at this time.

He said that Dr. Kelly genuinely feels that he is more effective as an "operator" rather than as a committee chairman and policy determiner. He told me that he (Buckley) was asked to be chairman of the RDB to succeed Compton, but declined for compelling personal reasons at the time. We had some discussion of the possibility of an older individual serving as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Defense Scientific Research if an ideal younger man were not available.

He spoke of Dr. Karl Compton’s report of his October conference on the RDB matters and he particularly spoke of [Crawford] Greenewalt’s [the Du Pont Company] sharp dissent. He esteems Greenewalt. He spoke of the Killian group's ideas on RDB reorganization, although not in detail as he did not seem to be familiar with them.

The following morning he called me at home to ask whether I would have any objection to his discussing the subject of our discussion with the Council of the National Academy of Sciences which was meeting in Washington on Saturday night and Sunday [March 3-4]. He said he just wanted to discuss the matter in general terms, and I said that I knew of no reason not to discuss it in such a manner and left that entirely to his judgment. I had given him some papers to read and return to me and he expressed some comments of disagreement. His principal disagreement seems to have to do with the details of how the Advisory Committee and its chairman are to function.

At lunch he asked me whether I had any ideas to an individual who might serve as President of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society of which he is Vice President and in which he is very much interested as someone in his family is suffering from it mildly. . . Ralph Straus of the Macy family is President of the Society but wishes to resign since he is abroad for the U. S. Government on an ECA mission or something of the sort in Paris I believe, and has been abroad for a year or thereabouts and is likely to stay there. Straus’s interest also comes about through some member of his family being afflicted. Buckley says that he is doing as much as he can as Vice President, has no desire to be President, and would like to find a live-wire who would undertake the job. . . I asked Dr. Buckley to send me some papers describing the Society's work and naming some of the people associated with it and said that I would try to think about someone who might wish to take on the Presidency, which clearly requires the attention of someone who is willing to do fund-raising as well as organizing of information, distribution, etc.

William T. Golden