Impacts of the Early Cold War on the Formulation of U.S. Science Policy

Appendices

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Robert F. Bacher (1905- ): Golden recorded four conversations with Bacher during the course of his consultancy. The second, a December 21, 1950, dinner meeting that included J. Robert Oppenheimer and Charles Lauritsen, is reproduced in this volume. Somewhat more than a year before that time, Bacher had left the physics department at Cornell University where he had taught since 1935, to become chairman of the Department of Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. He was born in Loudenville, Ohio, and received his BS and PhD degrees in physics from the University of Michigan, the latter in 1930. He held a succession of one-year research appointments at Caltech, MIT, Michigan, and Columbia before joining the Cornell faculty. Bacher took a leave of absence during World War II: from 1941-43 he was a staff member at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, and from 1943-45 head of the Experimental Physics Division at Los Alamos. He was a Commissioner of the AEC from 1946-49, a member of SAC from 1953-55, and a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) from 1957-60. He served as Caltech provost from 1962-70, and retired as an active member of its faculty in 1976.

Detlev W. Bronk (1897-1975): Golden recorded five conversations with Bronk, three of which are reproduced in this volume. By then, Bronk had been president of Johns Hopkins University for about a year and president of the National Academy of Sciences for a few months. Bronk was born in New York City, received his BS from Swathmore College, and his PhD in biology from the University of Michigan in 1926. He directed the Johnson Research Foundation at the University of Pennsylvania from 1929-49, except for the period 1942-46 when he was coordinator of research in the Air Surgeon General’s Office. In 1946 while still directing the Johnson Foundation, Bronk also became chairman of the National Research Council, a position he relinquished in 1950 when he became president of the National Academy of Sciences. He was elected to that position over James B. Conant, the official candidate, by means of a virtually unprecedented revolt by the academy membership against its nominating committee. He completed two six-year terms as academy president, while serving concurrently as president of a major university. He left Johns Hopkins in 1953 to become president of the Rockefeller University, a position from which he retired in 1968. Bronk served on the National Science Board from 1950-64, and was its chairman during the last eight years of that period.

Oliver E. Buckley (1887-1959): Golden recorded 14 conversations with Buckley, four of which are reproduced in this volume. During the five month period spanned by these conversations, Buckley retired as president of Bell Telephone Laboratories and assumed the chairmanship of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Office of Defense Mobilization. He was born in Sloan, Iowa, graduated from Grinnell College, and received his PhD in physics from Cornell in 1914. From 1914-25 he was a member of the research division at the Western Electric Company, and joined Bell Laboratories in 1925. Buckley was commissioned as a major in World War II and served in Paris in the Research and Inspection Division of the Army Air Force Signal Corps. During World War II, he was a member of the Communications and the Guided Missiles Divisions of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), and was a member of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission from 1947-52 Buckley became chairman of the board of Bell Laboratories following his retirement as its president. He retired from both that position and the chairmanship of SAC in 1952.

Vannevar Bush (1890-1974): Golden recorded five conversations with Bush, three of which are reproduced in this volume. During this time Bush was president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a position he had held since 1939. Although he had had no official connection with government since 1948 when he relinquished the chairmanship of the Research and Development Board, Bush still enjoyed considerable personal influence in both scientific and military circles. He was born in Everett, Massachusetts, received his BS and MS degrees from Tufts University, and the degree of Doctor of Engineering from MIT in 1916. After serving in the Mathematics Department at Tufts from 1914-17, Bush assumed a position with the U.S. Navy, conducting research on submarine detection methods. He joined the MIT faculty in 1919 and became dean of engineering in 1932, a position he retained until assuming the presidency of the Carnegie Institution. In 1940 Bush, along with James Conant, MIT president Karl Compton, and Frank Jewett, president of the National Academy of Sciences, conceived of a National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) that would quietly make plans to mobilize U.S. science in preparation for the near certainty that the country would become involved in World War II. In June of that year, Bush convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the NDRC and was named its chairman. A year later the NDRC, under Conant’s chairmanship, was incorporated into the newly established Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which Bush directed. From November 1944 to July 1995, he coordinated the work of four committees whose respective reports comprise a 150 appendix to the 40 pages Bush himself composed as the now legendary Science - the Endless Frontier. Bush became a member of the board of trustees the Carnegie Institution when he retired as its president in 1955, a position he retained until his death. His non-technical writings include: Modern Arms and Free Men (1949), Science is Not Enough (1967), and Pieces of the Action (1970), the latter a collection of autobiographical recollections.

William D. Carey (1916-1998): Although Carey appears only once in Golden’s records of his consultancy -- as a silent witness at the January 5, 1951, meeting at the Bureau of the Budget (BoB) where Conant was obliged to report the National Science Board’s opposition to Golden’s presidential scientific adviser proposal -- by that time he was already well known in Washington circles as a successful advocate of an expanded role for science in government. In 1946, he was designated as the principal BoB officer responsible for overseeing the organization of the newly created Atomic Energy Commission, and subsequently became BoB’s principal officer responsible for crafting acceptable legislation for a National Science Foundation. Carey was born in New York City, received his BA and MA degrees from Columbia University, and a Masters of Public Administration from the Littauer School at Harvard University in 1942. He joined BoB the same year and, and in 1960 was appointed assistant director by President Dwight Eisenhower. After leaving BoB in 1969, Carey became a Vice President of the Arthur D. Little Company in 1969. He became Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 1975, retiring from that position in 1987. Carey contributed an essay to William Golden’s Science Advice to the President (Pergamon, 1980) entitled, "The Pleasures of Advising."

Lucius D. Clay (1897-1978): Golden recorded two meetings with General Clay. The first, on January 16, 1951, is reproduced in this volume; the second took place exactly a week later. At that time General Clay had been retired from active service with the U.S. Army for two years. By April 1951 he had left government entirely to become chief executive officer of the Continental Can Company and, through 1971, held a succession of corporate positions. Clay was born in Marietta, Georgia, and graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1918. He served with the Army Corps of Engineers in his early career, and was instructor in civil and military engineering at West Point from 1924-28. In 1937, he served briefly on General Douglas MacArthur’s staff in the Philippines. Clay was assigned to various staff positions during World War II, becoming a deputy to General Dwight Eisenhower in 1945. From 1947-49 he was Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces in Europe and Military Governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone in Germany. He achieved considerable fame in the latter capacity as organizer of the Berlin Airlift in 1948. In 1961, he was named as President John Kennedy’s personal representative in Berlin, with the rank of ambassador.

James B. Conant (1893-1978): Golden recorded three conversations with Conant, two of which are reproduced in this volume. Conant had by then been president of Harvard University for more than 17 years, and was to remain in that position for almost three more years. He was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and received both his BS and his PhD degrees in chemistry from Harvard, the latter in 1916. He was a member of the Chemistry Department at Harvard from 1919 until he became president of the university in 1933. From 1941-46 he was chairman of the National Defense Research Committee within the OSRD and deputy director of the latter. He served as a member of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission from 1947-52, and as chairman of the National Science Board from 1950-53. He resigned from both Harvard and the NSB in 1953 to become U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. When the Federal Republic of Germany was created in 1955, Conant’s status became that of first U.S. ambassador. Following his return to the United States in 1957, he directed a number of studies on U.S. education for the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the last of them completed in 1963. His numerous non-technical books include: On Understanding Science (1947), Education in a Divided World (1948), Science and Common Sense (1951 - page proofs of which he presented to Golden during their December 14, 1950, meeting), Modern Science and Modern Man (1952), The Citadel of Learning (1956), Germany and Freedom (1958), The Revolutionary Transformation of the American High School (1959), Slums and Suburbs: A Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas (1961), The Comprehensive High School (1967), Scientific Principles and Moral Conduct (1967), and My Several Lives (1970). He also served as editor, in 1957, of the two volumes of the Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science.

Lee A. DuBridge (1901-94): Golden recorded four conversations with DuBridge, three of which are reproduced in this volume. By then, DuBridge had been President of the California Institute of Technology for four years. He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, received a BA degree from Cornell College, Iowa, and a PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin in 1926. He held academic appointments at Caltech and the University of Washington before joining the faculty at Rochester University in 1934, where he served as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences from 1938-42. During World War II, he was director of the Radiation Laboratory at MIT, and assumed the presidency of Caltech in 1946. DuBridge served on the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission from 1946-52, on the National Science Board from 1950-56, and on the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Office of Defense Mobilization from 1951-56 -- as chairman during the last four years. In January 1969 he retired from Caltech to become science adviser to President Richard Nixon, a position he retained until the following September. DuBridge contributed an essay to William Golden’s Science Advice to the President (Pergamon, 1980) entitled, "Science Advice to the President: Important and Difficult."

Leslie R. Groves (1896-1970): Golden’s only meeting with Lt. General Groves is reproduced in this volume, an interview Golden sought even though many thought the idea of talking with him was "radical". At that time Groves had been retired from active service for two years and was a vice president of the Remington Division of the Sperry Rand Corporation. He was born in Albany, New York, and studied for a year at the University of Washington and two years at MIT before entering the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he received his BS degree in 1918. He graduated from the Army Engineering School in 1921. Groves was attached to the Army Corps of Engineers throughout his career. In 1940-41 he oversaw what was, until then, the largest military engineering project ever undertaken by the U.S. Army: construction of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. As a result of his success with that project he became, in 1940, head of the Manhattan District of the Corps of Engineers, and in that capacity had operational oversight of the World War II nuclear weapons development program. Groves retired from his position with Sperry Rand in 1961.

James R. Killian, Jr. (1904-1988): Golden recorded six conversations with Killian, three of which are reproduced in this volume. By then, Killian had been president of MIT for two years. He was born in Blacksburg, South Carolina, and studied two years at Duke University before transferring to MIT where he received a BS degree in 1926. Until his appointment as executive assistant to MIT president Karl Compton in 1939, Killian was associated with the journal, Technology Review, serving as its editor from 1930-39. In 1943 he was promoted to executive vice president of MIT, became vice president in 1945, and succeeded Compton as president in 1948. Killian served on the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Office of Defense Mobilization from 1950-57 and on the President’s Science Advisory Committee from 1957-61. From 1957-59 he was also science adviser to President Dwight Eisenhower. He retired from the presidency of MIT in 1959 and served as chairman of the MIT corporation from that year until 1971. Killian was author Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower, and contributed an essay to William Golden’s Science Advice to the President (Pergamon, 1980) entitled, "The Origins and Use of a Scientific Presence in the White House."

Charles C. Lauritsen (1892-1968): Lauritsen makes only one appearance in Golden’s memoranda, in the account of a December 21, 1950, dinner meeting with Robert Bacher and J. Robert Oppenheimer. At that time he was professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology. Lauritsen was born in Hostebro, Denmark, graduated from the Odense Tekniske Skole in that country, and received his PhD in physics from Caltech 1929. He immediately joined the Caltech Tech faculty on which he served until his retirement as professor of physics in 1962. Lauritsen became associated with the OSRD in 1940, and continued to serve as a scientific consultant to the Department of Defense until his death.

Frederick J. Lawton (1900-1975): Golden records of his three conversations with Lawton are somewhat prefunctory. Thus, his name appears among the memoranda in this selection only in the form of signature blocs on two significant memoranda: an October 19, 1950, memorandum to the president requesting his approval of Golden’s consultancy; and a February 15, 1951, memorandum transmitting Golden’s "Memorandum on Program for the National Science Foundation" to National Science Board Chairman James Conant. It is perhaps fitting that he has been represented in this manner since, as director of the Bureau of the Budget (BoB), he was responsible for assuring that the president remained fully informed on policy matters, and was therefore ultimately responsible for Golden’s consultancy. Lawton was born in Washington, DC, graduated from Georgetown University in 1920, and joined the Treasury Department the next year. Fortuitously, perhaps, 1921 was also the year that the Bureau of the Budget was first created -- in the Treasury Department. Lawton and the BoB seem to have grown up together. He served as its acting assistant director in 1935, and remained on its staff when it was transferred to the newly created Executive Office of the President in 1939. Lawton became assistant director of BoB in 1949 and director the following year. He served in that position until the end of the Truman administration in 1953.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967): Golden recounts seven conversations with Oppenheimer, three of which are reproduced in this volume. Oppenheimer was then near the peak of his influence, having been director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and Chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission since 1947. He was born in New York City and graduated from Harvard University in 1925. Immediately thereafter he spent a year at Cambridge University and a year at Gottingen, where he received his PhD in 1927. Oppenheimer is often credited, along with Rabi, for introducing "the new physics" including both quantum mechanics and what Rabi referred to as the European research style to a rising generation of American physicists. For two years after returning from Europe in 1929, he held concurrent positions in the physics departments at the California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, becoming a full time member of the faculty at the latter institution in 1931. From 1943-45 he took a leave of absence to become director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, and departed permanently from Berkeley in 1947 as director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Oppenheimer became the center of considerable acrimony when, in 1953, a special panel of the Atomic Energy Commission ruled that he should be stripped of his security clearance and his membership on the General Advisory Committee on the grounds that he was a security risk, a ruling later confirmed by the full commission.. The U.S. government offered an implicit apology for what many observers regarded as the baseless accusations of the early 1950s when, in December 1963, President Lyndon Johnson presented him with the Atomic Energy Commission’s prestigious Fermi award, an action that had been approved by President John Kennedy shortly before his assassination. Oppenheimer retained his position as director of the Institute for Advanced Study until his death. His non-technical books include: Science and Common Understanding (1954) and The Open Mind (1955).

Kenneth S. Pitzer (1914-1996): Golden’s single interview with Pitzer, at that time director of the Atomic Energy Commission’s research division, is reproduced in this volume. Pitzer was born in Pomona, California, received his BS from the California Institute of Technology and his PhD in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1937. He joined the Berkeley faculty that same year where, except for occasional sabbaticals and a year as assistant dean of the college of letters and science, he remained until 1961. During World War II (1943-44) he was on leave of absence as technical director of OSRD’s Maryland Research Laboratory, and served in the position the position at the AEC where Golden met him from 1949-51. Pitzer was president of Rice University from 1961-68 and president of Stanford University from 1968-70. In 1971 he returned to Berkeley as professor of chemistry. Pitzer was a member of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission from 1958-65, serving as its chair from 1960-62. He was a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee from 1965-68.

Isidor I. Rabi (1898-1988): Golden’s recorded two interviews with Rabi, the first two of which are reproduced in this volume. In 1950, he had been a member of the physics department at Columbia University for 23 years, and was to remain associated with that institution for the remainder of his career. Rabi was born in Austria and brought to the United States as an infant. He received his BS from Cornell University, and his PhD from Columbia in 1927. Immediately thereafter he studied for two years at various European centers, before returning to join the Columbia faculty in 1927. Rabi is often credited, along with Oppenheimer, for introducing "the new physics" including both quantum mechanics and what he referred to as the European research style to a rising generation of American physicists. He was the single recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944. During World War II, he served concurrently as associate director of the MIT Radiation Laboratory under DuBridge, and as special adviser to the Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory. From 1946-56 he was a member of the General Advisory Committee to the Atomic Energy Commission, succeeding Oppenheimer as its chairman in 1952. He succeeded DuBridge as chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Office of Defense Mobilization in 1955, and served until Killian was appointed full time presidential science adviser in 1957. Rabi is credited with being an originator of several ideas that evolved into significant scientific institutions, among them: the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), and the NATO science program. He is also credited with having been an influential, though unofficial adviser to Dwight Eisenhower during the four years when Eisenhower was president of Columbia University. Rabi became university professor at Columbia in 1964, a position from which he retired three years later.

Herman A. Spoehr (1885-1954): Golden’s single meeting with Spoehr, who had recently retired as chairman of the Plant Biology Division at the Carnegie Institution of Washington to assume the position as scientific adviser to the Undersecretary of State, is reproduced in this volume. He was born in Chicago and received his bachelors degree from the University of Chicago in 1902. After two years of study in Europe, he returned to the University of Chicago, where he received his PhD in chemistry in 1909. In 1910 he joined the Carnegie Institution’s Plant Physiology Laboratory and, except for occasional sabbaticals, remained there until his retirement. Spoehr left the State Department in 1951 due, according to Golden, because of his frustration at not being able to establish the foreign scientific liaison offices he had envisioned during their October 20, 1950, meeting.

Elmer B. Staats (1914- ): Staats was one of the most important individuals associated with Golden’s consultancy, even though Golden’s index to his memoranda list only four conversations. As deputy director of the Bureau of the Budget, he was the senior-most government official who remained in close touch with Golden’s activities. He facilitated access to high level civilian and military officials, and saw to it that Golden’s recommendations to the president and the National Science Board reached their intended destinations. Staats was born in Richfield, Kansas, graduated from McPherson College, and received his PhD in public administration from the University of Minnesota in 1939. He joined the BoB that same year, becoming deputy director in 1950. Staats left the BoB in 1966 to become Comptroller General of the United States, a position he retained until 1981. He served as President of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation from 1981-1984 and became chairman of its board of trustees in 1984, a position he retains. Staats contributed an essay to William Golden’s Science Advice to the President (Pergamon, 1980) entitled, "Reconciling the Science Advisory Role with Tensions Inherent in the Presidency."

Irvin Stewart (1899-1990): Golden had two meetings with Stewart, the first of which took place on October 25 in the company of Lee DuBridge and James Killian and is reproduced in this volume. At that time Stewart had been president of the University of West Virginia for two years and was also serving as chairman of the President’s Communications Policy Board. Two years earlier, he had been head of an ad hoc Committee on Plans for Mobilizing Science under the auspices of the Research and Development Board. Stewart was born in Fort Worth, Texas, graduated from the University of Texas, and received his PhD in government from Columbia University in 1926. He served successively on the faculties of the University of Texas and the American University in Washington, DC, from 1926-30. From 1930-34, he was with the Treaty Division of the Department of State, and from 1934-46 held various positions with the Federal Communications Commission. Stewart was detailed to the National Defense Research Committee as Executive Secretary under James B. Conant in 1940, and retained that position when the Committee became one of two units of the newly created OSRD a year later. He was chair of one of the four committees (the Committee on Publication of Scientific Information) convened by Vannevar Bush in to respond to the four questions addressed to him in a November 17, 1944, letter from President Franklin Roosevelt. The reports of those committees are appended to, and provided the basis for, Science - the Endless Frontier. Stewart served as president of the University of West Virginia from 1946-58, and subsequently as Professor of Government at that institution, until his retirement in 1967. He was author of Organizing Scientific Research for War, the official history of the OSRD, published in 1948.

Theodore von Karman (1881-1963): Golden’s single conversation with von Karman is reproduced in this volume. A year earlier, von Karman had retired from the directorship of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology, but retained his position as chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force which he had held since 1944. Within a year, he was also to become a member of the newly created NATO Scientific Advisory Group. Von Karman was born in Budapest, Hungary, and graduated from the Royal Technical University in that city in 1902. He received his PhD degree in physics from Gottingen in 1908, and taught at that university for the next four years. From 1912-29 he was director of the Aeronautical Institute at the University of Aachen, although he took a leave of absence from 1915-18 to serve as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army. He emigrated to the United States in 1930 to become director of the Guggenheim Laboratories, where he remained until his retirement.

Alan T. Waterman (1892-1967): Golden recorded two meetings with Waterman, the first of which is reproduced in this volume. At the time of both interviews, Waterman was deputy director and chief scientist at the Office of Naval Research (ONR). By the end of Golden’s consultancy in late April 1951, he had been sworn in as director of the National Science Foundation and designated as one of three statutory members of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Office of Defense Mobilization. Waterman was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, and received both his BS and PhD in physics from Princeton University, the latter in 1916. He taught for a year at the University of Cincinnati, before joining the U.S. army in 1917, where he ultimately became attached to the Scientific and Research Division of the Signal Corps. Waterman joined the physics faculty at Yale University in 1919, where remained until 1946. He took a leave of absence during World War II to join the OSRD’s Office of Field Science, eventually becoming its head. Waterman was appointed chief scientist at ONR shortly after that agency was created in 1946, and in that position is credited with establishing the peer review system that later became the linch pin of NSF’s basic research support policy. Waterman was NSF director for 12 years, twice as long as any of his successors only two of whom (Leland Hayward and Erich Bloch) served out his entire six year term. His final two years as director (1961-63) were made possible only because of a special Act of Congress, requested by President John Kennedy, which exempted him from the statutory retirement age of 68, then in effect for federal employees.