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The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 (1978)

Chapter: 16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age

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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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Suggested Citation:"16 The Academy in the Fifties--Beginnings of the Space Age." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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16 The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) Detlev Wulf Bronk, sixteenth President of the National Academy of Sciences, was born in New York City in ~89~. His ancestors gave their name to the Borough of the Bronx. He did his undergraduate work at Swarthmore, where he received his B.A. degree in two. For his graduate studies he attended the University of Michigan, which awarded him the Ph.D. degree in ~926. He then returned to Swarth- more as Assistant Professor of Physiology and Physics, becoming full professor in ~928 and Dean of Men in ~927-~929. He joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in ~929, where for twenty years he was Johnson Professor of Biophysics and Director of the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Foundation for Medical Physics. Concur- rently, he was Director, Institute of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, in ~ 93~ g4o and in ~ 942-~ 948, and, during ~ 940- ~94~, Professor of Physiology at Cornell University Medical College. His election to the Academy came in ~939. 517

518 / DETLEV WULF B.RONK (1950 - 1962) Detlev Wulf Bronk, President of the Academy, ~ gbo- ~ 962; Chairman of the National Research Council, ~946- ~ 950, ~ 954- ~ 962 (R. F. Carter photograph, courtesy the Rockefeller University). Detlev Bronk's scientific career began in 19zl, when as a graduate student at Michigan, he and two others published a paper that is a classic in infrared spectroscopy and contributed to the evidence for half-quantum numbers. During his tenure at Swarthmore, he was awarded an NRC fellowship and spent a year at Cambridge and London under A. V. Hill. His work with E. D. Adrian at the Univer- sity of London resulted in the first recording of electrical activity in single nerve fibers. He also worked with A. V. Hill on investigations of the heat produced by muscle activity. With this preparation he began the study of neurophysiology, which was his main field of research over the years. According to Milton 0. Lee, Bronk regards himself primarily as a physiologist; he regards physiology as the integration and synthesis of physics, chemistry, and mathematics in the study of life processes. He disclaims being a founder of the field of biophysics, pointing out that Galvani was a biophysicist two hundred years ago, but he has been foremost in establishing biophysics as a recognized disciplined His extraordinary talent for administration manifested itself during Milton O. Lee, "Detlev W. Bronk, Scientist," Science 113:143 (February 9, ~95~).

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age I 519 World War II, when he became Coordinator of Research in the Office of the Army Air Surgeon, Chief of the Division of Aviation Medicine in the Committee on Medical Research of OSRD, and Special Consul- tant to the Secretary of War. At the same time he was Chairman of the NRC Committee on Aviation Medicine and its Subcommittee on Oxy- gen and Visual Problems, and member-at-large of the Division of Physical Sciences. In ~945 he was elected Foreign Secretary of the Academy and, with it, Chairman of the NRC Division of Foreign Relations. As OSRD wound up its operations in ~946, Academy President Jewett appointed Bronk Chairman of the National Research Council. That same year he was appointed to the U.S. Commission for UNESCO, to the Armed Force - NRc Vision Committee, to the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils, and to the editorial board of the Academy's Proceedings. In June ~947 he was named a member of the scientific advisory committee of the Brookhaven National Labora- tory, and, a few months later, of the Advisory Committee for biology and Medicine of the Atomic Energy Commission. As if these demands on his energy and capacity for involvement were not enough, in ~ 948 he accepted the presidency of Johns Hopkins University, succeeding Isaiah Bowman. In November Ago, the year he became President of the Academy, he was appointed to the Board of the recently established National Science Foundation and made Chairman of its Executive Committee. The next year he was elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.2 As President of the Academy, Bronk. was neither the emeritus type nor the virtually full-time President that Joel Hilde- brand had proposed at the meeting with the Committee on Nomina- tions.3 However, it is doubtful that any previous President of the Academy assumed a similar load of administrative activity. The Academy and the Research Council under Bronk responded to world events and their impact on science in a way that could have been only dimly anticipated by the founders of the Academy in 2 Ibid. Bronk was appointed to the Defense Science Board in the Department of Defense in ~6 and to the National Aeronautics and Snare (-,ouncil in 'asp. ~ _ _ _ .. . . .. . ~ . _ For li~ldebrand's proposal, see (;hapter ~5, p. 5~5. The Academy continued to reimburse`Johns Hopkins University for a portion of Bronk's salary, an arrangement begun when he assumed the chairmanship of the National Research Council in ~946. After Bronk left`lohns Hopkins in ~953 to assume the presidency of the Rockefeller Institute, these payments apparently were made to the Institute for an additional two years (NAS Archives: NAS: Officers: President: Bronk D W: Compensation: ~950-~962: ~96~; ibid., ORG: Chairman NRC: Bronk D W: Appointment: ~946).

520 / DETLEV WULF BROOK (195~1962) the previous century. It was said of the confidence and the vision he inspired that these qualities were those of "an abiding believer in the Baconian concept of the scientist as an 'Ambassador of Light'." The imagination of enterprise, of innovation, that he brought to the office of President gave new dimensions to the activities of the Academy.4 New Relationships between the Academy and the Research Council The long-standing question of the relations between the Academy and the National Research Council became Bronk's first order of business in the months after his election. Reluctant to reduce his involvement in the Research Council he had guided so successfully since ~946, Bronk, shortly before assuming the presidency, urged the Academy Council to give thought to a more intimate relationship between the two bodies. At the meeting of the Council on June ~ i, Ago, he "expressed his continued interest in the National Research Council" and his opinion that "it would be unfortunate to make a change in . . . [the Research Council chairmanship at a] time when the National Science Foundation" was being established. Reminding the Council of past conflicts between Presidents of the Academy and Chairmen of the Research Council, he suggested combining both offices in the presidency.5 Bronk pointed to the great surge of Research Council activities and prestige and warned the Council of the "danger . . . of the Academy becoming a distinguished but little known organization which oper- ates the Research Council." To counter this tendency he proposed "a more effective union," with a closer integration of the Academy sections with the divisions of the Research Council and the combina- tion of the Council of the Academy and the Executive Board of the Research Council into a single unit. (President Richards noted that the members of the Executive Committee of the Academy Council had been ex officio members of the Executive Board since ~9~5, but that their attendance at Board meetings had lansed.) Following con- ~ ~ , 4 Quotation from Saturday Review 40:44 (February 2, ~ 957). See also, "Resolution by the Council of the National Academy of Sciences, Detlev W. Bronk, ~897- ~ 975," attached to "Minutes of the Council," April 25, ~976. 5 "Minutes of the Council," June 2~, two. For Bronk's response to the Weed Report (Chapter ~4, pp. 469-470), see "Minutes of the Academy," April 27, ~948, pp. ~9, (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Meetings: Annual).

The AcademyintheFifties Beg2nningsof the Space Age / 521 siderable discussion, and with some reluctance, the Council accepted the principle of a closer relationship, but declined to approve specific measures without further consideration.6 The vigor of the Research Council under Bronk, his activity in the Academy, and the events surrounding his election to the presidency had given him, in effect, a mandate no previous President had possessed.7 Over the next several years, with Council approval but without recourse to a committee study or a change in the Research Council's Articles of Organization and Bylaws, he moved to effect his proposals.8 To allay the "confusion in the public mind" regarding the two bodies, Bronk adopted the terms "Academy-Research Council" and "NAS-NRC" as designations for the Research Council and its commit- tees. And, the Research Council's letterhead, which stated only that the Council had been organized by the Academy in ~9~6, was revised to indicate that the Academy continued to be the primary organiza- tion.9 More substantively, in September Ago, for the first time since ~9~9, the full Academy Council met with the Executive Board for the consideration of Research Council business. Meeting together for one day every six weeks, this combination of the Executive Board, com- prising the chairmen of the Research Council's divisions, and the Academy Council came to be known as the Governing Board of the National Research Council.~° 6 "Minutes of the Council," June 2 I, Ago; E. B. Wilson to Seitz, June ~3, ~8, and 30, ~964 (NAS Archives: ORG: Historical Data). The feasibility, and advantage, of making the President of the Academy also Chairman of the Research Council had been widely discussed following the misadven- ture of the Science Advisory Board, and the dual office was occupied from July ~935 to June ~936 by President Lillie. See correspondence in NAS Archives: E. B. Wilson Papers: W. W. Campbell, David White, F. E. Wright, ~93~-~933; NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Nominations: ~ 934- ~ 935. For a retrospective look at Bronk's reasons for encouraging a closer relationship, see "Minutes of the National Academy of Engineering Meeting," June ~7, ~968, Appendix III. 7 On Bronk's election, see Chapter ~5, pp. 5~5-5~6. 8"Minutes of the Council," January 6, ~95~, and June ~4, ~95~. 9 Bronk's notes for his report at the autumn meeting of the Academy in ~gbo (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Meetings: Autumn); E. B. Wilson to Bronk, June 22, ~950 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: General); "Minutes of the Council," June 6, ~ 95 ~ . JONAS, Ann~lRepo~for1950-51, pp.x, xii, Hi. The customary "Minutes of the .loint Meeting of the Council of the Academy and the Executive Board of the Research Council" after the meeting of June At, ~95 I, became the "Minutes of the Governing Board." The affairs of the Academy itself continued to be handled by the Council of the Academy alone.

522 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) In January ~95~, the first issue of the Academy-Research Council News Report appeared, a bimonthly publication intended to inform the Academy membership and almost three thousand other scientists across the nation of Academy-Research Council activities, new proJ- ects, and sponsored events such as symposia and conferences. "It will be the purpose of News Report," said Bronk, "to inform all those associated with the Academy and Council of our actions and our undertakings." During the period of transition, Douglas Whitaker, Stanford Dean of Graduate Studies, was appointed Bronk's successor as Chairman of the Research Council for a one-year term only, as he had requested; his successor, William W. Rubey of the U.S. Geological Survey, served as Chairman from ~95~ to ~954.~2 With the resignation of Rubey, Bronk assumed the duties of Chairman. Five years later, in ~959, the Council of the Academy formalized President Bronk's assumption of the chairmanship, expressing its satisfaction "with the present effec- tive and harmonious synthesis of all phases of the Academy and Research Council's activities." After Bronk left the presidency in ~96e, the Council of the Academy voted that thereafter "the Presi- dent of the National Academy of Sciences shall serve as Chairman of the National Research Council." Following World War I, the Academy and Research Council had established a relationship affected to some extent by fears within the Research Council of the Academy's conservatism and concern within the Academy over the Research Council's insistence on the necessity ~t NAS—NRC, News Rip - I: ~ January—February ~ 95 ~ ); NAS, Annual Repot for ~ 950 - 51, pp. xiii, ~ I. That Dr. Bronk had for sime time considered such a journal is evident in NAs,annual Reportfor 1947~8, p. no; "Minutes of the Academy," November ~7, ~947, pp. 46 - 48, April 27, ~948, pp. ~8 - 20 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Meetings). In ~95 I, also, the Research Council's Bulletin series and its Reprint and Circular Series were replaced by numbered NAS-NRC publications ("Minutes of the Joint Meeting of the Council of the Academy and the Executive Board of the Research Council," June 24, ~ 95 I; NAS, Annual Report for 1951-52, p. 48). t2 "Minutes of the Council," June 2 I, Ago; Appendix G. "Minutes of the Council," June ~4, ~959; October 6-7, ~962. Precognition of the more complete integration of Academy and Council activities appeared in the Executive Order signed by President Eisenhower on May lo, ~956 (reprinted here in Appendix F), amending the ~9~8 Executive Order, which asked the Academy to perpetuate the NRC. The new Order, sought by Eisenhower's staff to relieve him of the necessity of personally designating governmental members of the Council, in its final form included the suggestion of the Governing Board that the phrase "work accomplished by the Council" be changed to "work accomplished by the National Academy of Sciences through the Council" (NAS Archives: EXEC: EO'S & Directives: EO ~o668: Revision of EO 2859 re NRC: ~955-~956). .

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age Douglas Whitaker, Chairman of the National Research Coun- cil, ~ gbo- ~ 95 ~ (Photograph courtesy the Rockefeller Uni- versity). William Walden Rubey, Chair- man of the National Research Council, ~ 95 ~ - ~ 954 (From the archives of the Academy). / 523

524 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) of close bonds with industry and government.~4 For all the parent- offspring friction during those years, however, the relationship though distant had been a fruitful one indispensable to both, enlarg- ing the horizons and capabilities of the Academy and ensuring the performance of Research Council operations with enhanced prestige. The new world that emerged from World War II found the Academy and Research Council alike challenged by exciting opportunities and sobered by the difficulties that lay ahead. Caryl P. Haskins, President of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, later heralded the result- ing relationship as "one of the most significant 'structural' moves in the history of the Academy": It would seem that when Lincoln initiated the Academy and charged it with the mission of a scientific advisory body to government, the [advisory] function was very much in mind. Between that time and the years of the first World War, however, it is evident that the [Academy's honorific function] tended to predominate.... It was only when an era of major conflict supervened again in the time of the first World War that the earlier function of the Academy was reasserted and the creation of the National Research Council . . . took place. But if I understand the spirit of the post World-War I years correctly indeed, perhaps, of the years right down to the beginning of World War II, science-as culture and science-as implementer-of-national- affairs continued to be regarded as two distinct and separate things, to be handled . . . by two quite different bodies. These notions, of course, were largely dispelled by World War II even before the Korean war completed the disillusionment. By that time, I think, most of the country recognized that the two aspects of science represent in effect the extreme of a continuous spectrum, and that all parts of the spectrum are mutually interacting and dependent.l5 Guided by Bror~k's sure hand, the new association was effected without incident. The restructuring of the Academy contributed nothing, however, to settling the problem of space in the Academy building, which had become increasingly limited under the impact of the postwar years '4 W. A. Noyes to Gano Dunn, December 9, ~924, and Joseph S. Ames to Dunn, February ~2, ~925 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Relationship Between NAS & NRC: Selected Correspondence); Lawrence .1. Henderson, "Universities and Learned Societies," Science 59:477~78 (May 30, ~924). See also R. C. Tobey, The American Ideology of National Science, 1919-1930 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 7 I), pp ~67-~ 85 ~5 Caryl P. Haskins to Bronk, February 5, ~962 (NAS Archives: NAS: Presidency: Nature of Office: Consideration by Members).

The Academyin the Fifties Beg~nningsof the Space Age 1 525 and the growing membership. The Academy was then leasing office space in nine buildings in Washington and seeking more. The recur- ring question of whether to enlarge the Academy building by modify- ing the basic design or to add wings to the structure as originally contemplated was not resolved until ~959, when the Equitable Life Assurance Society made a gift of funds to the Academy for the west wing, the new space to be devoted primarily to the life sciences. Construction of that wing, begun in October ~ 960, was completed two years later.l7 Broadened Range of NAS-NRC Activities The "uneasy peace" in the world that had troubled Dr. Richards ended abruptly in June ~ gbo, just a month before Dr. Bronk formally took office, when North Korean troops crossed the line imposed by the United Nations along the Thirty-Eighth Parallel of that divided country. At once United Nations forces under Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur's command were airlifted from Japan. In November of that same year, when ~ 80,ooo Chinese Communist "volunteers" crossed the Manchurian border with Korea along the Yalu River, the United States returned to a war footing. The war did not end until July ~953, when an armistice was signed after more than two years of negotiations. On April ~5, ~95~, ten months after the invasion of South Korea, |6 The limitation on membership, set at 250 in ~9~5, was raised to 3so in ~937 and to 4so in 1OA 2 Friar the remove of ~nv limitation on tots mmmh~rehir~ q~1 1~' me increase from no to 2~ in the number of members elected each year, see NAS, Annual ~ 7~ ..~ A....—~~~—~—— ~4 ~4 ·——~——EVE_— ~AAAIJ~ C~11~ lCI.~1 ~ ~11 Report for 1949-50, p. 13; 1958-59, pp. 14-15. The three-year work of the Committee on Revision of the Constitution that culmi- nated in removal of the limitation moved E. B. Wilson to reprint in the NAS, Proceedings 36:277-292 (April 1950), the "Minutes" of the organization meeting of the Academy in 863 and the Academy's Constitution and Bylaws as first adopted. 17 On the problem of space, see NAS, Annual Report for 194647, p. 5, 194748, pp. 27-28; 194849, pp. 6, 19-20 et seq. For the subsequent construction, see NAS, Annual Report for 1958-59, pp. 1, 23; 1960~1, p. 38; brochure, The Academy Building: A History and Descriptive Guide (Wash- ington: NAS—NRC, 1971). When the administrative staff rose above 3so in Ago, the Academy authorized establishment of the NAS-NRC Employee Insurance Benefit Plan, adding group insur- ance, group hospitalization, and surgical benefits to the retirement and disability insurance in force since ~944 (NAS, Annual Report for 1949-50, p. 8; "Minutes of the Academy," April 25, ~ 950).

526 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) President Truman established an Office of Defense Mobilization under Charles E. Wilson, President of General Electric, as a policy planning and coordinating agency for the mobilization of the nation in current and future defense activities. At the same time, he created in that Office a Science Advisory Committee (SAC) under Oliver E. Buckley, physicist, Academy member, and President of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, in order to secure high-level policy advisers who would be available to Wilson and h mself for planning new research and development programs in the armed services and in other federal agencies. As had NDRC and OSRD a decade before, the Science Advisory Committee stated in its preliminary agenda its intention of "making more effective use of the National Academy and Research Council" in the defense effort.~9 Although it was inactive during the short re- mainder of Truman's Administration, under President Eisenhower "the committee grew rapidly in status and function . . . [and] evolved into the first scientific body to be located within the Executive Office with a charge that went beyond ad hoc purposes."20 "Helping tat that time] to prevent the scientific isolation from which the armed forces suffered following the First World War," said Bronk, were the thirty-eight contracts then under Academy-Research Council administration for ten federal agencies, many of them trans- ferred from OSRD, including the Committee on Undersea Warfare, an advisory board on quartermaster research, the medical advisory committees to the Surgeons General and the Veterans Administra- ~8 NAS, Annual Report for 1950-51, p. 2~; Truman to Buckley, April ~9, 1951 (NAS Archives: EXEC: ODM: SAC); Bronk, "Science Advice in the White House," Science 186:11~121 (October As, ~974). The ten-member Science Advisory Committee comprised Detlev Bronk, represent- ing the National Academy; William Webster, representing the Department of Defense's Research and Development Board; Alan Waterman, Director of the National Science Foundation; Hugh L. Dryden of NACA, representing the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific Research and Development; and members-at-large lames B. Conant; Lee A. DuBridge; lames R. Killian; J. Robert Oppenheimer; Charles A. Thomas, President of Monsanto Chemical Company; and Robert F. Loeb, Bard Professor, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. Succeeding chairmen of SAC were Lee A. DuBridge, President of the California Institute of Technology ( ~ 952- ~ 956) and Nobel laureate I. I. Rabi ( ~ 956- ~ 957). ~9 SAC, "Agenda of 3-25-5~, revised 4-4-5~"; Buckley memorandum, "An Appraisal of Some Indicated Needs of Defense Research," December 3, ~95~ (NAS Archives: EXEC: ODM: SAC). For the upgrading of SAC, see pp. 552-553. 20 Committee on Science and Technology, Science and Technology in Presidential Policymaking: A Proposal (Washington: National Academy of Sciences, ~974), p. ~5.

The Academy in the Fifties~egannings of the Space Age 1 527 tion, an Armed Force - NRc vision committee, an advisory committee to the Coast Guard, and a number of the advisory committees to the Office of Naval Research.2t The activity under those contracts "in [the initial] period of accen- tuated national danger" at once expanded and accelerated as the Korean War presented "the Estill] greater danger of a worldwide war at an uncertain future date."22 The score or more committees and advisory boards assisting federal agencies were rapidly augmented by others requested by the Office of Defense Mobilization, the Depart- ment of Defense and the Research and Development Board, and the Navy Department. The value of government contracts rose by almost a third that year, to $3,gc8,ooo, as the Academy-Research Council administrative staff approach five hundreds How perilous those years of Cold War and imminent conflict seemed was made evident in the Committee on Disaster Studies requested in May ~95~ by the medical services of the Department of Defense and the Federal Civil Defense Administration, recently created in the President's Office for Emergency Management. In spite of two world wars, the United States had never experienced a sudden and catastrophic attack by enemy action, and very little was known about how the populace would react under such circum- stances. The Research Council was asked to coordinate a broad, nation- wide study to provide a basis for sound planning in the event of a major catastrophe. Calling on medical experts, engineers, and chemists, and with the counsel of representatives of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the armed services, and the Department of Defense, the NRC set up the Committee on Disaster Studies in the Division of Anthropology and Psychology, its Chairman Carlyle F. Jacobsen, psychologist and medical educator at the State University of New York.24 Over the next two years the committee prepared a systematic bibliography on human behavior in disaster situations and a roster of 2~ NAS, Annual Reportfor 1948~9, pp. 3, 35, 43-44; 1949-5O, pp. 47, 65-66, 9~-99. "Greatly expanded and accelerated because of the national crisis," approximately three-quarters of Research Council activities were at that time advisory services to the government ("Minutes of the Academy," April 23, ~95~, and April 29, ~952). 22 NAS, Annual Report for 1950-51, ix, ~2; NAS Archives: ORG: Activities: Summary of Activities Supported Wholly or in Part by DOD or AEC: December ~954. 23 NAS, Annual Report for 1951-52, pp. 6, 4~, 57. For Bronk's reflections on the sense of peril at home and abroad in those troubled years, see Annual Report for 1953-54, pp. ~ -2. 24 NAS, Annual Report for 1951-52, pp. 6, 89.

528 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195(~1962) disaster personnel, dispatched disaster study teams to areas in Europe recently devastated by tidal floods, and made studies in the United States of disaster areas where floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and explosions had occurred. Research planning for studies in evacuation operations and control of refugee movement had begun when the support of the Department of Defense and the Federal Civil Defense Administration was curtailed. With aid from the Ford Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health, the committee operated until ~95', at which time it recommended its dissolution. The staff of the committee, under the name Disaster Research Group, continued to provide the government with consultative services and the results of subsequent research projects until early in the Ages, when it was absorbed in a new Advisory Committee on Behavioral Research.25 In May ~gbo a Food Protection Committee was appointed as an element of the Research Council's Food and Nutrition Board, which had been organized in ~g40 at the request of the Advisory Commis- sion to the Council of National Defense. The Board, charged with aiding the government in its efforts to improve the nutritional status of the general population, comprised thirteen biochemists, nine physicians, three home economists, two agricultural economists, a physiologist, a food industry executive, and a food technologist. Its first report, issued in July ~ 942, was a study of the nutritional deficiencies and needs of industrial workers in wartime.26 In ~943, the Food and Nutrition Board had issued the first of a continuing series of reports, Recommended Dietary Allowances, and also a disclosure, "Inadequate Diets and Nutritional Deficiencies in the United States." In ~944 it produced the study "Enrichment of Flour and Bread: A History of the Movement," and in ~948, "Tables of Food Composition" all widely acclaimed and much reprinted. Beginning in ~95~, the Food Protection Committee produced na- tionally publicized reports on a wide range of related concerns, including the use of agricultural pesticides, the safety of chemical 25NAS, Annual Report for 1952—53, p. 48; 1953—54, pp. 4, 46; 1960~1, p. 54; NAS Archives: A&P: Disaster Research Group: General: ~ 957-60. For the Research Council's cognate Advisory Committee on Civil Defense, requested by the Federal Civil Defense Administration, see NAS, Annual Report for 1953-54, p. 4; 1957-58, p. 65 et seq.; NAS Archives: GOV Bd: Com on Civil Defense: Advisory: ~954 et seq. 26 NAS, Annual Report for 1940~1, pp. 73-74 et seq.; E. C. Andrus et al. (eds.), Advances in Military Medicine [OSRD, SCIENCE IN WORLD WAR II] (Little, Brown & Co., ~948), vol. II, pp. 473-487; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1950-51, p. 76.

The Academy in the Fifties—Beginnings of the Space Age / 5 2 9 additives in food, microbiologic contamination of food, and the hazards of certain food packaging.27 Two other important activities launched in the Research Council in ~95~-~95z were the Building Research Institute in the Division of Engineering and the Agricultural Research Institute in the Division of Biology and Agriculture. Unlike the usual fact-f~nding committees or boards acting for the Academy, these Institutes were clearing- houses, open to manufacturers, contractors, and associations, as well as to educators and government officials. With thirty-five organiza- tions joining during the first year, the Building Research Institute came to have a broad and influential impact on building and housing. It also provided financial support for the division's Building Research Advisory Board under Purdue University President Frederick L. Hovde.28 Similarly, the Agricultural Research Institute, established in ~95e in association with the Academy's eight-year-old Agricultural Board and open to industries, trade associations, and nonprofit institutions con- cerned with agricultural produce, products, and implements, got off to a fine start. It went independent briefly in the Ages and then returned to the Research Council division to continue its highly successful activities.29 New impetus was given to the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils, originally set up in January ~944 to continue the New Deal alliance of social and physical scientists following the dissolution of the National Resources Planning Board (NRPs).30 It comprised the National Research Council, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and, in ~946, the American Council on Education. The principal long-range project of the Conference Board became its Committee on International Exchange of Persons, organized after passage of the Fulbright Act of ~946 and augmented by the Smith- Mundt Act of ~948 and subsequent federal education legislation 27 The Food and Nutrition Board 1940-1965: Twenty-Five Years in Retrospect (Washington: NAS—NRC, n.d.), passim. 28 NAS, Annual Report for 1950-51, p. 53; 1951-52, p. 7, 62 et seq.; "Building Research Advisory Board Silver Anniversary," Building Research 11 (July-December ~974), passim. 29 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1950-51, p. 75; 1951-52, pp. 82-83 et seq. For a historical note on that Board and Institute, see 1961-62, pp. 55-57. In ~973 the Institute became an independent corporation. 30 For the NRPB, see Chapter ~2, pp. 36~-362, and NAS Archives: EXEC: NRPB: Science Com: General: ~943.

530 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) enacted in order to promote international cooperation in education and scholarship. At the request of the State Department, administra- tion of these programs was assumed by the committee in ~948.3~ A second important undertaking of the Conference Board was its Commission on Human Resources and Advanced Training, estab- lished to study the processes by which the nation educates and utilizes its higher levels of talent. The impetus for the Commission came from experience during World War II with the National Roster of Scien- tific and Specialized Personnel. First prepared by the NRPB in June Age, the roster listed almost half a million individuals in professional and scientific fields and had greatly facilitated the recruitment of specialists for war research. The members of the Conference Board were impressed by the important role played by this select group of highly trained individuals in the national defense effort and, at the same time, by the lack of systematic knowledge of the supply and demand processes that affected them. The Commission, under Chairman Charles Odegaard, Dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts in the University of Michigan, and Staff Director Dael Wolfle, then Secretary of the American Psychological Associa- tion, completed its task with the publication of Wolfle's landmark report in ~954, Amer~ca's Resources of Specialized Talent.32 A cognate commission appointed a decade later continued the Board's study of human resources and higher education.33 Similarly concerned with scientific manpower were the fellowship programs under NAS-NRC guidance. Although the Academy had relinquished its role in the troubled AEC fellowship program in the early ~gsos,S4 the Office of Scientific Personnel continued to be responsible for other fellowship programs. In ~ 95 ~ the National 5~ NAS Archives: EX Bd: CBARC: Proposed: ~943; NAS, Annual Reportfor 1947 - 48, p. 7, 45...1957-58, p. 74. For the Fulbright Program, see NAS Archives: EX Bd: CBARC: Com on International Exchange of Persons: Info Sheet: August two; NAS-NRC, News Report3:1~20 (March-April ~953); ~bid., 4:~77 (September-October ~954); Francis A. Young, "The Conference Board of Associated Research Councils in the United States: A Brief Historical Account with Special Reference to National and International Problems," Social Science Information 4 : 111-1 27 (June ~ 965). 32"Minutes of the Council of the Academy and the Executive Board of the Research Council," January 7. ~95~, p. 7; NAS, Annual Report for 1952-53, pp. 4~-42. See also M. H. Trytten, "The Manpower Shortage," NAS-NRC,NeWS Report 1 :53-55 (July-August ~95~); Young, "The Conference Board . . ." (cited above). 55 NAS Archives: C&B: CBARC: Comm on Human Resources & Advanced Education: 1963. S. See Chapter ~ 5, note ~ I.

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space~ge 1 531 Science Foundation requested the Academy to screen applicants and recommend recipients for the 585 NSF predoctoral and postdoctoral grants available for the first time that yearns The administration of that fellowship program, and of other fed- eral scientific research, was again endangered over the question of loyalty, when the Academy learned in the spring of ~954 that the U.S. Public Health Service was requiring security clearance even for per- sons engaged in unclassified research—something chat neither the NSF nor the Office of Naval Research required. Recognizing that federal support of scientific research had become "a substantial part of the research activities of the Nation," the White House in January ~955 requested an Academy committee "to advise the Government in the formulation of policy" on the issue. The Committee on Loyalty in Relation to Government Support of Unclas- sified Research, under Julius A. Stratton, President of MIT, declared that "an allegation of disloyalty should not by itself be used as grounds for adverse administrative action on a grant or contract for unclassified research by scientifically competent investigators." It found . ~ no reason for singling out research for the application of loyalty requirements which set it apart from the multitude of other unclassified activities engaged in by the Government through contracts and grants.36 The acceptance of the Academy report as a statement of policy for federal research marked the end of more than a decade of strained relations between science and government over the question of loyalty and security. 35 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1947—48, pp. 3~40; NAS Archives: FELLOWSHIPS: NRC Fellow- ship Office: ~947; NAS, Annual Report for 1951-52, pp. 4-5, 43-45. 36 MS, NAS, "Annual Report for 1955-56," pp. 2 ~3, 2~239; Sherman Adams to Bronk, January ~ i, ~955 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Loyalty in Relation to Government Support of Unclassified Research: Report: March ~956). See also Ralph S. Brown, Loyalty and Security—Employment Tests in the United States (New Haven: Yale University Press, ~958), p. 69. NOTE: In the mid-~gbos the preparation of the annual reports for the printer began to fall behind, partly owing to the retirement of the staff member responsible for their assembly. As a consequence, the reports for the fiscal years ~955, ~956, and ~957 are available only in incomplete manuscript form (see NAS Archives: PUBS: NAS-NRC: Annual Report). The Annual Report for 1957-58 appeared in both an abridged form and its normal format. A new format was introduced with the Annual Report for 1967-68.

532 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) The BiologZcal Effects of Atomic Radiation (The BEER Committees) The massive but uncoordinated flow of radiation data and informa- tion here and abroad, including Academy studies in radiation biology, prompted President Bronk, with further encouragement from the Atomic Energy Commission and support by the Rockefeller Founda- tion, to undertake in April ~955 a thorough review of all available knowledge of the effects of atomic radiation on living organisms.37 Ultimately, six BEAR committees were appointed: Genetics, under mathematician Warren Weaver, Vice-President for the Natural and Medical Sciences, Rockefeller Foundation; Pathology, under Shields Warren, pathologist at the New England Deaconess Hospital, Boston; Agriculture and Food Supplies, under A. Geoffrey Norman, Di- rector, Botanical Gardens, University of Michigan; Oceanography and Fisheries, headed by Roger Revelle, Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Meteorology, chaired by Harry Wexler, Director of Meteorological Research, U.S. Weather Bureau; and Disposal and Dispersal of Radioactive Wastes, under Abel Wolman, Professor of Sanitary Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University. The committees numbered go members and were assisted by al- most ~45 consultants and subcommittee members. Since Bronk intended from the beginning to make public the results of the survey and therefore did not want any partial or premature disclosure of the findings, he asked that the work of the committees be conducted with discretion; and, lest the association raise speculation, discouraged any meetings of committee members with those of the study groups in Great Britain who were preparing a similar, independent report. The combined report of the BEAR committees, written in nontechni- cal language and subtitled ~ Report to the Public, was released on June ~ 2, ~956, simultaneously with that of the British Medical Council, The Hazards to Man of Nuclear and Allied Rad~ations.39 37 "Introductory Remarks by Dr. Bronk at the Princeton Meeting of the Study Group on Genetics, November 20, Gets (NAS Archives: BEAR Series: ORG: NAS: Coms on BEAR: Genetics: Meetings: General); NAS, Press Release, April 8, ~955 (NAS Archives: BEAR Series:Pus Rel: Press Releases). 58 "Introductory Remarks by Dr. Bronk. . . ," pp. ~ I- ~ 2. The discretion was interpreted as willful evasion by the press and resulted in a needling news story and editorial in the New York Po.st of October 5, ~955, noted by Bronk at the Princeton meeting (pp. To—~ I). 39 An excellent comparison of the Academy report with that of the British appears in

The Academy in the Fifties~eg~nnings of the Space Age 1 533 The Academy report, summarizing the conclusions of the technical reports of the individual panels, warned that "radiation from any source bombs, nuclear reactors, the natural environment and medi- cal X-rays is harmful to life." It found the genetic mechanism of man to be the most susceptible to damage, since any amount of radiation reaching the reproductive cells caused mutations, and al- most all mutations were considered harmful to succeeding genera- tions. Although the report stated that there would be no noticeable pathologic effects if exposure was held to genetically acceptable levels, there was evidence that exposure to moderate levels of radiation led to specific diseases like cancer and leukemia, to premature aging, and to general conditions such as lowered immunity and damaged con- . . necktie tissue. The report also expressed concern about the hazards of strontium-go, one of the radioactive products of nuclear weapons testing: A unique combination of qualities makes this substance especially dangerous. (~) It is one of the more abundant fission products, (~) its half-life is long enough (25 years) to keep it active for many years, yet short enough to make it a strong radiator, (3) it is chemically very similar to calcium and so is taken up and concentrated by bone tissue which has an affinity for calcium, (4) it is known to cause bone tumors in experimental animals, (5) much of it does not fall back to the ground within a short time and a short distance of an atomic explosion. Instead it is carried up into the stratosphere where it spreads over the whole earth and then is deposited gradually, over a period of years.... It appears, then, that strontium-go is not a current threat, but if there were any substantial increase in the rate of contamination of the atmosphere, it could become one.40 Bentley Glass, "The Hazards of Atomic Radiation to Man British and American Reports," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 12 :312-317 (~956). For the United Nations' international survey on biological radiation in ~958, see Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (New York: General Assembly, Official Records, lath Session, Supplement No. ~7, Doc. A13838, ~958) 40 The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Report to the Public (Washington: NAS-NRC, ~956), p. 20, hereafter cited as A Report to the Public (~956); NAS, Press Release, June ~3, ~956 (NAS Archives: BEAR Series: PUB Rel: Press Releases); "Biological Effects of Atomic Radiations," Science 123:1 1 10-1 1 1 1 (June 22, ~ 956). At a time of public concern over proposals to renew atomic bomb testing, consider- able dismay, and vigorous contradiction by some Academy members, resulted from a newspaper statement attributed to the Academy that nuclear tests could lee increased tenfold without serious genetic danger ["Nuclear Weapons Tests," Science 124 :92~926 (November 9, ~ 956)]. The Academy's Report to the Public ( ~ 956), p. a, had said only that

534 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (1950 - 1962) The year-long study by the various BEAR committees resulted in a number of recommendations, including the maintenance of records showing the total accumulated lifetime exposure to radiation for every individual in the population; reduction of the use of medical X rays consistent with medical necessity; limitation of the exposure of the population's reproductive cells, from conception to age thirty, to lo roentgens of radiation (above the natural background of about 4.3 roentgens); and the creation of a national agency to control and keep records of all dumping of radioactive material in the oceans and an international body to set up standards for the marine and air disposal of radioactive materials. Further recommendations stressed the im- portance of accelerated research in fundamental, mammalian, and human and population genetics; radiation pathology; the mixing between various parts of the atmosphere and the oceans; and the geophysical and geochemical aspects of the ultimate disposal of radioactive wastes. The report stated that "except for some tragic accidents affecting small numbers of people, the biological damage from peacetime activities (including the testing of atomic weapons) has been essen- tially negligible" and that "radiation problems, if they are met intelli- gently and vigilantly, need not stand in the way of the large-scale development of atomic energy." However, it pointed out that "in the next couple of decades the atomic power industry will mature and the question of what to do with almost unthinkable quantities of radioac- tive waste products will be upon us." The forty-page report ended with the following statement: It is clear that the safe and rational growth of a nuclear power industry involves more than designing individual plants. The presence of a single large installation will be felt, in various ways, over a wide region. Obviously, it will not do to let nuclear plants spring up ad lib, over the earth. The development of atomic energy is a matter for careful, integrated planning. A large part of the information is not yet at hand. There is not much time left to acquire it.4i A source of considerable public interest in the Academy report, and in the outpouring of commentaries and revised studies in radiation biology that followed, was the speculation on the genetic effects of natural radiation on man. Little was known with any certainty of the 'biological damage from peacetime activities (including the testing of atomic weapons) has been essentially negligible." 4} ~ Report to the Public ( ~ 956), pp. 2-3, 32.

The Academy in the Fifties~eg~nnings of the Space Age 1 535 genetic effects of cosmic rays and terrestrial radiations from radio- activity in the ground, in the air, and in building materials, and, internally, of the radiation from normal body constituents in the bones, blood, and tissues. Dr. Hermann l. Muller, a leading geneticist, had reported in ~94~ that "natural radioactivity . . . may appreciably influence human mutation frequency . . . the amount . . . conceiva- bly. . . enough to be significant in evolution."42 The more recent research led the BEAR Genetics Committee to conclude that back- ground radiation provided sufficient mutations for evolutionary pur- poses and that any unnecessary increase from man-made radiation was to be avoided.43 Four years after the first report, the BEAR committees made a second report to the public. Although the earlier findings required no drastic revisions, some evidence had been found that the genetic effects from low radiation doses might be less than previously esti- mated. No new indication had been found that nuclear tests affected the weather or that the disposal of atomic wastes was yet a significant hazard to the public, its environment, or its natural resources.44 Although the evidence indicated an undoubted increase in dele- terious gene mutations in humans as a consequence of peacetime uses of atomic energy, it nevertheless appeared that ordinary medical uses of radiation produced average population accumulations greater than any anticipated from fallout and other uses of atomic energy.45 A controversy arose between geneticists who shared Dr. Muller's belief that any further increase in the mutation rate would become in time overwhelmingly disastrous to man and those who held with Dr. Sewall Wright, the equally prestigious University of Wisconsin ge- neticist on the committee, that an increase is beneficial in some circumstances and that genetic uniformity may be undesirable for the 42 H. l. Muller, "The Role Played by Radiation Mutations in Mankind," Science 93 :438 (May 9, ~94 i) 4` The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation: Summary Reports (Washington: NAS-NRC, ~ 956), pp. ~4- ~ 5, hereafter cited as Summary Reports ( ~ 956); James F. Crow, "Genetic Effects ofRadiation,"Bulletinof the AtomicScientists 14:19-22(~958). 44 The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Report to the Public (Washington: NAS-NRC, ~960), pp. 3-5, hereafter cited as A Report to the Public (~960); "Academy Radiation Committees Issue Reassuring Reports," Science 131:1428 (May ~3, ~960). . A, ~ Ha.. _._. no. . ., May 4, ~960, pp. 9—lo (NAS Archives: BEAR Series: PUB Rel: Press Conferences); A Report to the Public ( ~ 960), p. 4; UNSCEAR, "The Responsibility of the Medical Profession in the Use of X-rays and Other Ionizing Radiation," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 13:137-138 (~957); Frank B. Livingstone, "The Effects of Warfare on the Biology of the Human Species," Natural History 76 :62 (December ~ 967). 45 NAS. "Press Conference.

536 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) human species.46 Both men were able to sign the report after it was agreed that Wright would prepare a personal addendum to it.47 The findings, and spur to research, of the BEAR reports in no way infringed on the studies of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. They continued to be of the utmost importance and, it was agreed, must be prolonged far into the future. Only in the bombed Japanese cities was it possible to obtain valid measurements on humans of all possible effects of ionizing radiation, not only on the survivors but on their offspring and their descendants. Disposal of Atomic Wastes in the Oceans A growing concern of the Academy was the possible hazard to marine life of atomic wastes dumped in the oceans. The exploration by the Academy of the extent and implications, begun in its studies of the biological effects of atomic radiation, became the special function of the Panel on Radioactivity in the Oceans of the Academy's Committee on Oceanography. The problem of the effects of pollution of the seas on the human environment first came to the attention of the Academy early in ~ 948, when the National Lead Company requested a study of its disposal of acid wastes. A court order the year before had restrained the com- pany from disposing of the wastes in the Raritan River, near its plant in New Jersey, forcing it instead to dump them at sea ten miles off the coast. Commercial and sport fishing interests had immediately protested. Charles E. Renn, Associate Professor of Sanitary Engineering at Johns Hopkins, headed the NRC Committee for Investigation of Waste Disposal, which directed the wastes study made by members of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The preliminary report in June of ~948, though far from alarming, alerted oceanographers, health organizations, the press, and members of Congress to the potential menace of industrial waste disposal in the sea.48 46 "Genetics in Geneva," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 11:31~316, 343 (~955); Muller, ibid., pp. 32~338, and Wright letter, p. 365; "Radiation and Man," ibid. 14:7-8 (~958); Minutes of the Meeting of Executive Committee, BEAR Committees, October 8, ~ 959, p. 5 (NAS Archives: BEAR Series: ORG: NAS: Coms on BEAR: Meetings). 47 The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation: Summary Reports (Washington: NAS-NRC, ~ 960), pp. ~ 8-24, hereafter cited as Summary Reports ( ~ 960). 48 Bostwick H. Ketchum and William L. Ford, "Waste Disposal at Sea: Preliminary

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age / 537 The final report of the committee in ~95 ~ found that, on the basis of the current scale of company operations, dilution of the sulfuric acid and ferrous sulfates in the wastes from its titanium plant was rapid, did not produce significant effects on marine life, and would not accumulate either in the sea or on the shore.49 The committee's assurance of the "very large . . . capacity of offshore waters to receive and disperse soluble or suspended wastes without undesirable effects" was extended in the statement of the Academy Committee on Oceanography that same year that the "great size and vigorous metabolism fof the ocean] make it a useful receptacle for the disposal of the waste products of civilization."50 Subsequent studies of a new element in the situation, radioactive wastes, were to qualify that splendid generality. The problem of waste disposal had first confronted the Manhattan District plants making the materials of the atomic bomb. Both the Manhattan District and, later, the AEC authorized either a three-inch to six-inch burial in sealed drums of low-level wastes, such as rags, mops, gloves, and other contaminated equipment, or their disposal in the oceans. All high- level wastes at AEC plants were stored in underground tanks under rigid controls. It was the safest and most economical method, but admittedly not the ultimate answer.5t In the absence of any real knowledge of the effects of the continued disposal of radioactive wastes in the sea, the practice seemed ques- tionable, and as early as ~gbo oceanographers at Woods Hole com- municated to the AEC their concern. As a consequence, the National Report on Acid-Iron Waste Disposal," tune ~948 (NAS Archives: B&A: Com for Investigation of Waste Disposal: National Lead Co Contract: Preliminary Report); NAS, Annual Report for 194 7 - 8, pp. 7-8, 7 a. 49 Committee for Investigation of Waste Disposal, A Study of the Disposal of Chemical Waste at Sea (NAS-NRC Publication 20 I, ~ 95 ~ ), pp. 2 I, 47. 50Ibid., p. 48; Committee on Oceanography, Oceanography 1951 (NAS-NRC Publication Cog. ~95~), p ~ 2 5i In ~954 the AEC requested the Research Council's Division of Earth Sciences to study the possibilities of disposing of radioactive waste materials on land and to indicate what research was needed to determine feasibility. A steering committee of physicists, chemists, and geologists under Harry H. Hess, Chairman of Princeton's Geology Department, concluded that the most promising method was disposal in salt deposits. Two additional methods, disposal in porous media such as sandstone at comparatively great depth or stabilization in a slag or ceramic material, were also recommended for further research. The committee stated that "it may require several years of research and pilot testing before the first such disposal system can be put into operation" and that "until such time storage in tanks will be required for waste" [Committee on Waste Disposal, The Disposal of Radioactive Waste on Land (NAS-NRC Publication 5 ~ 9, September ~ 957)].

538 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) Committee on Radiation Protection (NCRP), a private body then under Lauriston S. Taylor of the National Bureau of Standards, was asked to establish standards for ocean disposal. Properly packaged radioactive wastes, an NCRP subcommittee reported, should be sunk in waters at least one thousand fathoms (six thousand feet) deep, which in the Atlantic could be some two hundred miles offshore.52 The question of disposal of atomic wastes in the oceans concerned other Academy-Research Council committees and panels, namely, Abel Wolman's BEAR Committee on Disposal and Dispersal of Radioactive Wastes, Roger Revelle's BEAR Committee on Oceanog- raphy and Fisheries, and Donald W. Pritchard's special panel in the Committee on Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Nuclear-Powered Ships. Within the Academy-Research Council Committee on Oceanography, disposal of atomic wastes in the oceans came also within the purview of Revelle's Panel on Radioactivity in the Oceans, Dayton E. Carritt's special Subcommittee on Radioactive Waste Dis- posal into Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Waters, and John D. Isaacs's Subcommittee on Disposal of Low-Level Radioactive Waste into Pacific Coastal Waters.53 The first of the committee reports on the current state of knowledge of such disposal, made public in ~ 956, was cause for some dismay. The committees had considered the probable effects on the oceans and on the marine sciences of weapons tests over or in the seas, the use of radioactive trace substances in ocean and marine life research, and the disposal of radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. The largest quantities of radioactive materials introduced into rivers and oceans up to that time had been fallout from weapons tests. Although these would materially increase for some time, the real problem of the 52 Radioact~ve-Waste Disposal in the Ocean (National Bureau of Standards Handbook 58, ~954), p. 2. It was no secret that atomic wastes were being sunk in the ocean. Despite an Academy report to the public in ~956 warning of the problem, the practice received little publicity until ~959, when it became known on Cape Cod that a Boston firm had for thirteen years been disposing of low-level radioactive wastes fifteen miles off Boston and thirty miles off Provincetown in water 300 feet deep. In the concern that ensued locally, the citizenry had the support of Bostwick H. Ketchum, Woods Hole oceanog- rapher and member of the Academy committee that prepared the ~956 report. The event is reported by E. I. Kahn, Jr., in "The Government and the People," The New Yorker (October ~ 5, ~ 960), pp. ~ o4- ~ 2 3. so Pritchard, Professor of Oceanography at Johns Hopkins, was also Director of the University's Chesapeake Bay Institute; Carritt was Professor of Oceanography at Johns Hopkins; and Isaacs, Director of Marine Life Research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The Academy in the Fifties- Beginnings of the Space Age 1 539 future would be industrial nuclear plant wastes, found to "constitute hazards in extremely low concentrations." The problem of radioactive materials appeared to be "potentially far greater in scope" than any other form of pollution of the seas.54 The studies indicated that there had probably been no serious damage yet to marine life and that nuclear weapons tests and the introduction of tracer isotopes in rivers and seas for scientific and engineering purposes might safely be continued with careful plan- ning if confined to selected locales. Disposal even of low-level radioac- tive wastes, on the other hand, represented both an immediate and a long-range concern, increasing as nuclear power plants proliferated in the industrial nations of the world and the oceans became the eventual dumping grounds of their waste products.55 The problem of disposal was international, and the knowledge necessary to the assessment of the hazard from power plants and upon which sound recommendations could be based could be ob- tained only through the cooperation of all nations in formulating conventions for safe disposal and collaborating in continuous studies of the oceans and marine organisms. A national agency was urgently needed to plan and coordinate the required research with similar agencies abroad and to assist in the evaluation of regulations for the disposal of radioactive wastes.56 A decade later these functions were spread through a complex of national and international organizations watching over world radia- tion. In the meantime, the maintenance of records of all ocean disposal by the United States remained the responsibility of the . S4 Summary Reports ( 1956), p. 74, reproduced as "Oceanography, Fisheries, and Atomic Radiation," Science 124 :13 (July 6, 1956); The Effects of Atomic Radiation on Orerznn~rn.~h~ and Fisheries (NAS—NRC Publication 551, 1957), pp. 1, 6—7. 55 NAS-NRC Publication 551, above, pp. 22-23; Oceanography 1951, p. 12. 56 Studies of the disposal of radioactive wastes appear in The Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation: Summary Reports (1956), pp. 73-83; ibid., (1960), pp. 57-66; A Report to the Public (1956), pp. 25-27; ibid. (1960), pp. g-ll; The Effects of Atomic Radiation on Oceanography and Fisheries (NAS-NRC Publication 551, 1957); Radioactive Waste Disposal into Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Waters (NAS-NRC Publication 655, 1959); Radioactive Waste Disposalfrom Nuclear-Powered Ships (NAS-NRC Publication 658, 1959); Disposal of Low- LevelRadioactive Wasteinto Pacific Coastal Waters (NAS-NRC Publication 985, 1962); and Committee on Oceanography, Oceanography 1960 to 1970 (Washington: NAS-NRC, 1959- 1962), Chapter V. On NAS-NRC Publication 655, see "Minutes of Meeting of Executive Committee, BEAR, October 8, 1959, p. 3 (NAS Archives: BEAR Series: ORG: NAS: Coms on BEAR: Meetings). --as - -r -A

540 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) Atomic Energy Commission.57 The Academy's ad hoc BEAR commit- tees, which had drawn attention to the hazard, were formally termi- nated in 1964 and their principal functions assumed by a new Re- search Council committee advisory to the Federal Radiation Council (FRC).58 The Federal Radiation Council had been formed in 1959 to advise the President on radiation matters affecting the public health and to provide guidance to federal agencies on the formulation of protection policy and standards, in conjunction with the long-established, inde- pendent National Committee on Radiation Protection (NCRP). The world counterparts of FRC and NCRP, and recipients of their reports, were the International Commission on Radiological Units and Mea- surements ACCRUE, organized in London in ~925, and the International Commission on Radiological Protection (SCOPE, set up in Stockholm in ~9~8. The CUP and CRY dealt directly only with other international organizations, including the new United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), formed in ~955, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (lAEA), established in ~957.s9 The immediate responsibility for the nuclear power plants coming into operation around the globe rested with the country in which they were located, but the ultimate responsibility for a new and universal hazard devolved upon this intricate network of affiliated agencies. 57 For the AEC function, see press conference transcript, May 4, ~960, p. ~S (NAS Archives: BEAR Series: PUB Rel: Press Conferences). 58 Seitz to present and past BEAR members and consultants, May 27, ~964 (NAS Archives: BEAR Series: C&B: Coms on BEAR: End of Program); Anthony I. Celebrezze, Chairman FRC, to NAS President Seitz, September ~8, ~963 (NAS Archives: MED: Com Advisory to FRC: Proposed). 59 The NAS—NCRP—FRC—ICRP—ICRU—UNSCEAR network is described in letter, Lauriston Taylor, Chairman, NCRP, to A. Celebrezze, August 8, ~ 963 (NAS Archives: ibid. ). See also P. M. Boffey, "Radiation Standards: Are the Right People Making Decisions?" Science 171:78~783 (February 26, ~97~). The Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation agreed closely with the Academy findings. See Committee on Pathologic Effects of Atomic Radiation, A Commentary on the Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (NAS-NRC Publication 647, ~ 959). In the same resolution that established the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations voted to hold an international conference to explore the promise of atomic energy and to develop methods for its peaceful use. At the first United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva in ~955, Adm. Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman of the AEC, announced the Atoms for Peace Awards. The first award was presented to Niels Bohr of Denmark at a ceremony held at the Academy building on October 24, ~ 957 (NAS Archives: ADM: AWARDS: Atoms for Peace Awards Inc: ~ 957).

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age / 54 The AD-X2 Controversy When Edward Condon resigned as Director of the Bureau of Stan- dards in ~95~, Secretary of Commerce Charles W. Sawyer turned to the Academy for advice on a successor, and from among the five nominees suggested by the Academy, appointed Allen V. Astin as the new Director.60 Dr. Astin had been an NRC fellow at the Johns Hopkins University for two years, had gone to the Bureau as a research associate, and had become a member of the Electrical Divi- sion a decade later. In recognition of his work on the radiosonde, radiotelemeter, and the proximity fuze in NDRC during the war, he had been made Chief of the Bureau's Electronics and Ordnance Division after the war, and in ~95~ an Associate Director of the Bureau. As the new Director, Astin inherited a controversy then troubling the Bureau concerning ~ battery additive called AD-X, claimed by its manufacturer to restore life to aging automobile batteries. In its routine testing of many such products, the Bureau had found no merit in AD-X2. On March 3~, ~953, Sinclair Weeks, Secretary of Commerce in the newly elected Eisenhower Administration, appeared before the Senate Small Business Committee to testify concerning charges that publication of the Bureau's findings was scientifically unjustified and had placed an undue burden on the manufacturer of AD-X2. In the course of his testimony, Weeks announced that he had asked for the resignation of Dr. Astin as Director of the Bureau, charging that the Bureau had not been objec- tive in evaluating AD-X2, because "they discount entirely the play of the market place." The outcry against Astin's dismissal was immediate and forceful, both in the scientific community and the press. Dr. Bronk, at a meeting in Weeks's office on April 3, stressed "the seriousness of the situation" and offered the services of the Academy in its resolution. That afternoon Weeks announced the creation of a committee, its members appointed by leading scientific and engineering societies and its chairman appointed by the Academy, to perform an inde- pendent assessment of the Bureau's current functions and operations. 60 NAS, Annual Report for 1951-52, p. 5. 6~ Excerpts from Weeks's testimony appear in James L. Penick et al. (eds.), The Politics of American Science, 1939 to the present (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., ~965), pp. ~97-202. See also Frank Freidel, "The Dynamite in AD-X2," New Republic 128:5-6 (April ~3, ~953). On the removal of Astin by Weeks, see "Minutes of the Academy," April 28, ~953, pp. 6-9.

542 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) Later that month he announced that he had also asked the Academy to appoint a committee under its own auspices to examine in detail the Bureau's testing of the AD-X compound. In addition, the Secretary agreed to Bronk's suggestion that Astin continue as Director "at least until the issues involved can be carefully and dispassionately studied. . . ,,62 In late October, the Academy's AD-Xe committee of ten members, headed by Zay Jeffries, metallurgical engineering consultant, re- ported that it found the quality of the Bureau studies on storage batteries "excellent . . . without reservations," and fully supported "the position of the Bureau of Standards that the material tin ques- tion] is without merit."63 Meanwhile, the Commerce-appointed ad hoc committee on the general operations of the Bureau had been convened under Mervin I. Kelly, Director of the Bell Telephone Laboratories and a member of the Bureau's Visiting Committee, who had been selected by the Academy at Weeks's request. Asked "to evaluate the present functions and operations of the Bureau of Standards in relation to the present national needs," the committee gave Weeks its preliminary draft report that summer and its formal ~og-page report in October ~953.64 The Bureau program, the report found, had greatly expanded after World War II to serve the needs of war-born science and technology. Since Anglo, weapons research at the Bureau had grown enormously at the expense of its primary obligation, basic research; and the committee recommended that such research be transferred to its initiator, the Department of Defense. The Bureau should also reduce many of its routine and repetitive testing activities and seek greater use of its unique facilities by other government agencies. 62 Bronk to the members of the Academy, April 2~, ~953; Department of Commerce Press Release, "Statement by Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks," November ~3, ~953; Weeks to Bronk, May 4, ~953 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Battery Additives: Beginning of Program); Weeks to George R. Harrison, Chairman, American Institute of Physics, April 3, ~953, quoted in full in the Institute's April ~3, ~953, Press Release, "Lee A. DuBridge Appointed as Physicists' Representative. . ." (NAS Archives: AG&Depts: Commerce: Com for Evaluation of Present Functions & Operations of NBS). 63 NAS, Annual Report for 1952-53, p. s;"Report of the Committee on Battery Addi- tives . ., October 30, ~953, PP i, 34 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Battery Additives); Daniel S. Greenberg, "AD-X2: The Case of the Mysterious Battery Additive Comes to an End," Science 134:2086-2087 (December 29, ~96~); Greenberg, '`Battery Additives: AID'S Chagrin," Science 156:627 (~967). 64 Department of Commerce Press Release, "Statement of Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks," August 22, ~953 (NAS Archives: AG&Depts: Commerce: Com for Evaluation of Present Functions & Operations of NBS).

The Academy in the Fifties~eginnings of the Space Age 1 543 Above all, its fundamental research programs should be greatly expanded and increased appropriations made available, to ensure maintenance of the high-caliber staff necessary to provide the con- tinuing new measurements and standards required to meet the press- ing scientific, industrial, and technological needs of the nation.65 The recommendations of the report, as well as its thorough study of Bureau operations, organization, staff, and objectives, were accepted in their entirety by the Secretary of Commerce and the Bureau. The Bureau began at once the transfer of its weapons research and resurrected and restudied its thirty-year-old plans for the moderniza- tion of the Bureau plant. It was still rebuilding its staff and basic research programs when, in October ~ 957, as the International Geophysical Year began, Russia launched and orbited Sputnik, the first space satellite. The implications reverberated through every agency and element of American science and technology. Dr. Astin saw the Secretary of Commerce and requested, in the light of the event, a restudy of Bureau operations by the Academy. Secretary Weeks seized the opportunity to have an evaluation made of his entire Department, especially its science-oriented agencies, name- ly, Standards, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, Maritime Administra- tion, Patent Office, Bureau of Public Roads, Office of Technical Services, and Weather Bureau. In January ~ 958 he asked the Academy for such an evaluation.66 The nine-member ad hoc Special Advisory Committee on the Role of the Department of Commerce in Science and Technology, again under Mervin I. Kelly, submitted its report to the new Commerce Secretary, Frederick H. Mueller, on March a, ~960. Of more than fifty recommendations to the Department, perhaps the most impor- tant was that which led to the appointment of an Assistant Secretary 65 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1953-54, p. 2; "A Report to the Secretary of Commerce by the Ad Hoc Committee for Evaluation of the Present Functions and Operations of the National Bureau of Standards," October ~5, ~953, pp. 7-~o, ~3-~4, 19-20, 95 (NAS Archives: AG&Depts: Commerce: Com for Evaluation of Present Functions & Opera- tions of NBS: Ad Hoc). Three years later, the Secretary of Commerce requested the establishment of a series of advisory panels in the NAS-NRC Division of Physical Sciences to provide counsel and guidance to the Bureau divisions on a continuing basis (NAS, Annual Reportfor 1957-58, p. 62 . . .1959-60, p. 64; NAS Archives: PS: Meetings: Minutes: ~957 . . . ~66). 66 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1957—58, pp. 5, 62; NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com Advisory to Department of Commerce on Science and Technology: ~958-60. NOTE: As a frame of reference, the NBS research and development budget for fiscal year ~959, $~ ~.5 million, exceeded those of the other five Commerce agencies com- bined.

544 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~}1962) of Commerce for Science and Technology in direct charge of the agencies studied by the committee. In its study of the Bureau of Standards, the report focused on the need for expansion and acceler- ation of its measurement standards program. It recommended "di- rectly appropriated funds. . . for all activities in the Measurements and Standards area that are of broad national interest." It urged that acquisition of new, larger facilities be accelerated,67 that technical and professional staffing be increased, and that review committees of scientists and engineers for certain of its major programs be ap- pointed, as well as special study committees for the operations of the Commerce Department itself.68 The Impact of the Cold War Characteristic of the Cold War tactics pursued by Russia and her satellites under Stalin were the accusations cabled by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to the National Academy in ~952 protesting the use of bacteriological agents by U.S. forces against "the peaceful Korean and Chinese peoples."69 While awaiting the report of an inter- national scientific commission to these two countries, the Academy could only reply that the International Red Cross had been refused permission to investigate the charges.70 Four years later, disquieting reports came from abroad disturbing the traditional unity and cooperative spirit of international science. The gradual easing of world tension and the new freedoms permitted the Communist satellites following Stalin's death in ~953 and Nikita 67 "The NBS Prepares for the ~g70's," Science 165:867-874 (August 29, ~969). 68 "The Role of the Department of Commerce in Science and Technology: A Report to the Secretary of Commerce by a Special Advisory Committee of the National Academy of Sciences," March 2, ~960, pp. 5, 9, 94-96 (NAS Archives: ibid.). The Assistant Secretary for Science and Technology at Commerce, appointed in ~962, was J. Herbert Hollomon, formerly General Manager of the General Engineer- ing Laboratory, General Electric Co. (The Secretary of the Interior the year before had also appointed a science advisor in his office.) For the advisory panels set up by the Academy for NBS (and one for the Coast and Geodetic Survey), see NAS, Annual Reportfor 1957-58, p. 62 . . . 1960~1, pp. 24, 65-66; 1961~2, p. 69 et seq. 69 NAS, Annual Report for 1951-52, pp. 4, 28-29. 70 The Academy regarded as naive and lacking in scientific judgment the report issued in the fall of ~952 by that "international scientific commission" permitted to visit China and Korea (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com to Consider Report of International Scientific Commission on Biological Warfare in Korea and China).

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space~ge 1 5,45 Khrushchev's denunciation of him in ~956, nevertheless had limits. Hungarian leaders, misjudging the encouraging signs, attempted to rebel against Moscow dictatorship in October ~956. On October So Soviet reinforcements entered Hungary and surrounded the capital. Bloody fighting ravaged Hungary for two weeks, a general strike ensued, and one hundred and sixty thousand refugees crossed the frontiers. Of these, more than seventy thousand were Hungarian intellectuals and their families, many of them scientists and engineers, who contrived to escape, first to Yugoslavia and Austria, and then, beginning in December, through the U.S. and Academy offices set up in Vienna, to this country. With the aid of Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation funds, and acting through the President's Committee for Hungarian Refugee Relief, the Academy assisted in placing more than twelve hundred Hungarian refugee scientists, as well as a number of refugees from other Iron Curtain countries, in fellowship programs or in scientific and technical positions in universities and industry.7i Auguring better relations for the future between the scientists of the United States and the USSR was an invitation from the Russian Academy of Sciences received by the National Academy of Sciences on December As, ~955. It suggested an exchange of scientists on a broad scale to acquaint each other with their current activities.72 As increasing numbers of invitations arrived, Bronk encouraged greater travel to the satellite countries and welcomed word in ~956 that Poland and Russia had been admitted to the International Mathe- matical Union, an adherent of ~csu, and that membership applica- tions were pending from Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.73 The rapprochement the "thaw" thus begun in science broadened and grew as one of the most gratifying results of the International Geophysical Year of ~ 957-~ 958. At its conclusion, the earlier rather tentative efforts to bring about a 7~ MS, NAS, Annual Report for ~956—57, pp. 457—458; ~957—58, pp 4, 77; NAS—NRC' News Report 7 :33~0 (May-June ~ 957); ibid., 8 :4-8 ( January-February ~ 958). 72 NAS Archives: IR: Academies & Councils Abroad: USSR; MS NAS, Annual Report for ~955-56, p. 228; "Minutes of the Governing Board," March 3~, ~957, p. At; October ~4, ~956, pp. 5-6; December 9, ~956, pp. 2-3. See also Committee on Educational Interchange Policy, Academic Exchanges with the Soviet Union (New York: Committee on Educational Interchange Policy, ~958), pp. 2-3; Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (New York: New American Library, ~967), pp. 2~6-2~7. 75 MS, NAS, Annual Report for ~ 956—57, pp. 369, 433: ~ 958—59, pp. 3—4; NAS Archives: IR: USSR: US-USSR Exchange of Scientists: ~958. See also NAS, Annual Reportfor 1961-62, p. bob; NAS-NRC News Report 22:8-1 1 (August-September ~972).

546 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) closer understanding between the scientists of East and West were climaxed by a formal document, the Bronk-Nesmeyanov exchange agreement between the National Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, signed in July ~959 and named for the Presidents of the two academies. The agreement permitted scientists of either country to travel abroad under the sponsorship of their academies. In March ~96e a new agreement increased both the number of scientists permitted and the length of their visits, even, in certain instances, long-term visits, for the conduct of research.74 The International Geophysical Year The International Geophysical Year (IGY), conceived as a follow-up of the International Polar Years of ~ 88~- ~ 883 and ~ 93~- ~ 933, was first suggested by Academy member Lloyd Berkner in Ago. Two years later ~csu proposed that world scientists join during the period of July I, ~gs7-December 3~, ~958, in a series of worldwide geophysical measurements and synoptic observations of the earth's atmosphere, interior, crust and oceans and of the sun, for better understanding of the elements affecting life on our planet. The eighteen-month period chosen represented the maximum of the eleven-year cycle of sunspot activity.75 Some forty-six nations initially accepted the invitation on behalf of their national academies (ultimately a total of sixty-seven nations participated); and in March ~953 the National Academy, at the request of Ecu, appointed a U.S. National Committee for the IGY to 74 NAS, Annual Report for 1959-60, pp. 82-83; 1961-62, pp. ~o~o7; 1962-63, pp. 98—99; NA0NRC, News Report 12:44 (May—June ~962). See also M. I. Radovskiy's "The Early Beginning of Scientific Cooperation between Russia and the United States," inPriroda (Leningrad)52:93-94 (~963), with a transla- tion in NAS Archives: ORG: Historical Data. That same year, at the Academy Centennial, Professor Vladimir I. Veksler of the Russian Academy of Sciences was presented, jointly with Edwin M. McMillan of the University of California, the $so,ooo Atoms for Peace Award (NAS, Annual Reportfor 1963 - 4, p. lo; Washington Evening Star, October 24, ~963, p in) 75 For its origin as "the Third International Polar Year," see ~csu Mixed Commission on Ionosphere, "Proceedings of the Second Meeting," September 4-6, two; Sydney Chapman, IGY: Year of Discovery (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, ~959), pp. ~o~-~02; H. S. Jones, "The Inception and Development of the IGY," Annab of the IGY, 1957-58 (London: Pergamon Press, ~959), vol. I, pp. 383-4~3; National Science Foundation, Bibliography for the International Geophysical Year (Washington: Government Printing Office, ~957).

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age / 547 develop and direct the scientific and technological program for the United States and coordinate it with Use. It was to work with the National Science Foundation, which would obtain and administer the principal federal funds for the program.76 In ~955 Congress appro- priated $z million for long lead-time equipment and an additional $ ~ 2 million in ~ 956. The Academy appointed Joseph Kaplan, UCLA Professor of Physics, then on the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, as Chairman of the Academy committee; Alan H. Shapley, physicist with the Radio Prop- agation Physics Division of the National Bureau of Standards, as Vice-Chairman; and Hugh Odishaw, brought from the office of the Director of the National Bureau of Standards, as Executive Secretary (later, Executive Director). Members of the sixteen-member Ameri- can committee included Allen V. Astin, Lyman l. Briggs, Emanuel R. Piore, Paul A. Siple, A. F. Spilhaus, Merle A. Tuve, and Lloyd V. Berkner. Berkner was also Vice President, International Special Committee on the IGY (CSAGI), of which Sydney Chapman of England was Chairman. The U.S. National Committee for the IGY sub- sequently called upon almost two hundred other scientists to staff its five working committees and thirteen technical panels. In March ~956, Alan T. Waterman, Director of NSF, submitted a special report requested by the Senate Appropriations Committee and prepared by the Academy on the programs and objectives of the National Committee. The U.S. program, planned by the nation's leading geophysicists, included projects in aurora and airglow, cos- mic rays, geomagnetism, glaciology, gravity, the ionosphere, lon- gitude and latitude determinations, meteorology, oceanography, seis- mology, solar activity, and rocket and satellite studies of the upper atmosphere, which would be carried out in the United States, Alaska, the Antarctic, the Equatorial Pacific, and in the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.77 _ ~ _ _ — 7 . 76 NAS, Annual Report for 1952-53, pp. 1, 38-39. For a personal account of the organization of the committee, see A. H. Shapley to Philip Handler, August 29, ~972 (NAS Archives: PS: Executive Secretary: Retirement: Reception). 77 National Academy of Sciences for Committee on Appropriations, International Geophysical Year: A Special Report, 84th Cong., ad sees., Senate Doc. ~ 24, ~ 956, pp. vii, 2, 24-27 (copy in NAS Archives: IR: IGY: US Natl. Com: Special Report for Senate Committee on Appropriations). Hereafter cited as Senate Doc. ~24. The work of the U.S. National Committee is reported in NAS, Annual Report for 1957-58, pp. 79-86 . . . 1960~1, p. ~ ~8. For a chronology of membership of the U.S. National Committee and its Executive Committee, see NAS, Report on US Program for International Geophysical Year (IGY General Report No. 2~, ~965), Appendixes 3 and 4.

548 / DETLEV WOLF BRONK (195~1962) Glaciologist examining the interior of a snow cave at Kainan Bay, Antarctica, during the IGY (W. O. Field photograph, courtesy American Geographical Society). ~1 ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . 1ne perloct 1957-1955 had been chosen not only because it coin- cided with the predicted peak in the eleven-year cycle of solar activity, but also because of the advancement of the disciplines comprising geophysics and the new instrumentation and research techniques that had become available in the twenty-five years that had elapsed since the Second Polar Year of ~93~-~933.78 Prominent in the Academy report were plans to make "rocket and satellite studies of the upper 78 In ~95~ the Academy created a new section in its organization for geophysics, reflecting the growing prominence of that field. In ~953 the geophysicists in the Research Council's Division of Geology and Geography led a movement to create a separate division of "geophysics," which was resolved when the division was renamed the Division of Earth Sciences (NAS, Annual Report for 1950-51, pp. lo, ~32; 1953-54, pp. 53 - 54; NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Sections: Geophysics; ibid., G&G: Name Change to Div. of Earth Sciences: June ~953; ibid., G&G: Geology-Geophysics Relationship).

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age I 549 atmosphere," obtaining for the first time direct observations and measurements in the ionosphere, and to "send rockets and satellites to explore outer space."79 Whereas the Polar Year's balloons had obser- vational capabilities limited to heights of less than twenty-f~ve miles, the U.S. rocket program, lofting some six hundred rockets, would include balloon-launched vehicles attaining altitudes of almost sixty miles and the Navy's large, ground-launched "Aerobee," reaching a height of almost two hundred miles. Similar rockets had been or were being developed by other nations for the IGY program.~° An estimated twenty thousand to thirty thousand scientists, en- gineers, and technicians took part in the international effort, and almost as many volunteer observers participated. The "year" was a widely acknowledged scientific success. So successful was it, in fact, that all participating IGY committees continued work on the writing of their reports on the "unprecedented study of the earth, sun, and space" for another three years, the U.S. National Committee in the Academy remaining active until the reports were completed.82 The most dramatic aspect of the IGY was, of course, the satellite program developed by the National Academy and carried out by the Department of Defense which ushered in the Space Age. The possibilities of launching, by means of rockets, a vehicle that would circle the earth beyond its atmosphere had occupied the attention of the military for some years. In the United States, the Army, Navy, and Air Force were working on relevant research, and it could be 79 Senate Doc. ~ 24, pp. I, 2. The most significant discovery during the early satellite experiments was James A. Van Allen's discovery of radiation belts in space, indicating that the earth is surrounded by belts of charged particles trapped in the earth's magnetic field. The finding was reported by Van Allen, "The Observation of High Intensity Radiation by Satellites ~ 958 Alpha & Gamma," in MY Satellite Report Series, No. 3: Some Preliminary Reports of Experiments in Satellites 1958 Alpha and 1958 Gamma (Washington: National Academy of Sciences, ~958), pp. 73-92; in Science 128:1609 (December 26, ~958); and in U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences. Report on the International Geophysical Year. Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, 86th Cong., fist sees., February ~959, pp. ~69-~7 I. Hereafter cited as NSF/NAS. Report on the IGY. 80 NSF/NAS. Report on the ICY, pp. ~ 5- ~ 7. 8~ Hugh Odishaw, "International Geophysical Year: A Report on the United States Program," Science 127:115-128 (January 7, ~958); ibid., 128:1599-1609 (December 26, ~958); ibid., 129:1~25 (January 2, ~959). Correspondence, documents, and publications relating to Academy participation in IGY comprise almost sea feet of archival material. 82 NAS, Annual Report for 1958-59, pp. 89-93; 1959-60, p. 84; 1960-61, p. ~8. Regarding the International Geophysical Cooperation, ~959, see p. 557.

550 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) Geophysicist Edward C. Thiel reading a gravimeter on the Blue Glacier, Olympic National Park, Washington, as part of the IGY Blue Glacier Project (Photograph courtesy the University of Washington). safely assumed that the Russians were similarly engaged. The U.S. program involved the launching of twelve three-stage rocket as- semblies from Cape Canaveral, each capable of placing a spherical 2~.s-pound satellite in orbit at an altitude of about three hundred miles and at a speed of approximately eighteen thousand miles per hour. The orbits of the instrument-laden satellites, covering a band of 4o degrees on either side of the equator, would make possible obser- vations by almost every participating nation. 83NSF/NAS. Report on the IGY, pp. ~7-~9; NAS, "The United States-IGY Earth Satellite Program," lone ~957 (NAS Archives: IR: US National Committee: Earth Satellite: ~957). Russia's announcement late in 1956 of her planned participation in the IGY satellite program appearedinSciencel24:674 (October in, ~956).

The Academy in the Fifties~eg~nnings of the Space Age I 3~51 A "forest" of six NIKE-ASP rockets being erected on the deck of the Navy ship U.S.S. Point Defiance to aid a team of Naval Research Laboratory and other IGY scientists making IGY radiation studies of the sun during the eclipse of October ~ 2, ~ 958 (Official U.S. Navy photograph). It was with some fanfare that the United States announced on July 29, ~955, that its plans for the ORGY included the launching of an earth-circling satellite. James C. Hagerty, Press Secretary to President Eisenhower, gave out the startling news at a White House Press Conference at which representatives of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation were presenter Since the project was of such magnitude, funding fell to the Department of Defense, and the choice of vehicles and launching rockets came to lie between the Navy's Viking and the Army's Red- 84 Walter Sullivan, Science Editor of the New York Times, who covered the IGY with a high degree of technical skill and competence, has told the whole story, including the saga of the satellites, in his book, Assault on the Unknown: The International Geophysical Year (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., ~96~).

552 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) stone, under development at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. The Navy's Viking was chosen and became Project Van- guard. However, it encountered all sorts of difficulties, both in production and subsequently in the attempts to launch it. . The United States was profoundly shaken, therefore, by the Rus- sian announcement on October 4, ~957, that its Sputnik had been successfully launched into orbit, was circling the earth every ninety-six minutes at a maximum of 584 miles out in space, and would be visible over Washington, D.C., at Coo A.M., October 5. Harvard Observa- tory Director Fred L. Whipple said later that day that for some time the satellite would be visible only over Russia and the north and south polar regions. A second Russian satellite was successfully launched on November 3. On December 6, the United States tried and failed to launch its Vanguard from Cape Canaveral. It was three months later, on January 3~, ~958, before the first U.S.- satellite, designated ~gs8-Alpha (later, Explorer I), blasted into space from Cape Canaveral and went into orbit at a maximum of ~,585 miles out in space, its vehicle the Army's Jupiter-C rocket, Wernher von Braun's adaptation of the Army's Redstone rocket.85 The orbiting of Sputnik in space precipitated a new national crisis in this country, raising fears of its potential military application, calling into question the adequacy of U.S. education, and shaking world confidence in the technological supremacy of the United States.86 On November it, ~957, a month after the Russian success and the reorganization of the satellite programs in the services, President Eisenhower announced the creation of the post of Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, naming MIT President lames R. Killian to that office as his full-time personal advisor on all policy matters having a scientific bearing. The President also trans- ferred the high-level science policy group, the Science Advisory Committee (SAC), set up in the Office of Defense Mobilization in ~ 95 ~ following the invasion of South Korea, to the White House as the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). Shortly after, Killian, 85 NAS, IGY Bulletin No. 9, March ~958; NAS, Annual Report for 1957-58, pp. 7g-So; Science 127 :330 (February ~ 4, ~ 958). 86 William C. Davidon, "Soviet Satellite U.S. Reactions," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 13:357-358 (December ~957); A. R. von Hippel, "Answers to Sputnik?" ibid., 14: ~15- ~17 (March ~958); Walter Sullivan, Assault on the Unknown, pp. ~-3.

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age I 553 ~—Y—-_ Three scientists who helped develop the first successful American satellite, Explorer, hold aloft a duplicate of it at a news conference at IGY headquarters in the Academy building, January 3 I, ~ 958. Left to right: William H. Pickering, James A. Van Allen, and Wernher von Braun, the Army's rocket expert who designed the Jupiter-C missile that propelled the satellite (Photograph courtesy Wide World Photos). as Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, was made a member of PSAC and elected its Chairman.87 The reorganization gave Killian the assistance of seventeen of the nation's most distinguished scientists, engineers, and educators. And, early in ~959 President Eisenhower, upon the recommendation 87 For SAC, see p. 526. On PSAC, see Harvey Brooks, "The Science Adviser," in Robert Gilpin and Christopher Wright (eds.), Scientists and National Policy Making (New York: Columbia University Press, ~964), pp. 73-96; and Detlev W. Bronk, "Science Advice in the White House," Science 186:11~121 (October At, ~974); Science and Technology in Presidential Policymaking: A Proposal, pp. ~5-~6. Upon the organization of PSAC, the State Department reestablished its overseas science program, all but abandoned since ~953, and appointed scientific attaches to the embassies in London, Paris, Rome, Bonn, Stockholm, and Tokyo [Wallace R. Brode to Bronk, December ~ 2, ~ 958 (NAS Archives: AG&Depts: State: Of fire of Science Adviser)]. 88 The seventeen PSAC members under Killian were Robert F. Bacher, Professor of Physics, CIT; William 0. Baker, Vice-President (research), Bell Telephone Laboratories; Lloyd V. Berkner, President, Associated Universities, Inc.; Hans A. Bethe, Professor of Physics, Cornell; Detlev W. Bronk, President, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and President, NAS;,lames H. Doolittle, Vice-President, Shell Oil Co.; James B. Fisk, Executive Vice-President, Bell Telephone Laboratories; Caryl P. Hastens, President, Carnegie Institution of Washington; George B. Kistiakowsky, Professor of Chemistry, Harvard; Edwin H. Land, President, Polaroid Corporation; Edward M. Purcell, Professor

554 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) of Killian and PSAC, created still another agency for formulating national science policy, the Federal Council for Science and Technol- ogy, to "promote closer cooperation among Federal agencies in plan- ning their research and development programs." The Federal Coun- cil, which was specifically authorized to consult with the Academy when appropriate, comprised his Special Assistant, Killian, and high- level representatives of the Departments of Defense; Interior; Ag- riculture; Commerce; Health, Education, and Welfare; the Director of NSF; Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Admin- istration; the Chairman of the AEC; the Science Advisor to the Secre- tary of State; and the Assistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget.89 In a world of seemingly tenuous equilibrium that called for accelerated scientific effort, such an organization of policymaking agencies seemed necessary and likely to endure. The immediate imperative of the President and his Advisory Committee was to determine responsibility for the future of the satellite program and the conduct of space exploration.90 Amid gen- eral agreement on a civilian rather than military agency, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota sponsored a bill designed to create a Cabinet-level department of science and technology.9~ Although the establishment of such a department was debated in of Physics, Harvard; Isidor I. Rabi, Professor of Physics, Columbia; H. P. Robertson, Professor of Physics, CIT; Paul A. Weiss, head of developmental biology, Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; Jerome B. Wiesner, Director, Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT; Herbert York, Chief Scientist, Advanced Research Projects Agency, Department of Defense; and ferrold R. Zacharias, Professor of Physics, MIT. Consultants were Hugh Dryden, Director, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics; Albert G. Hill, Research Director, Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, Department of Defense; Emanuel R. Piore, Director of Research, IBM; Herbert Scoville, Jr., Assistant Director, Central Intelligence Agency; and Alan T. Waterman, Director, National Science Founda- tion. [NAS Archives: EXEC: PSAC: ~958; Science 127:805 (April At, ~958)]. Succeeding Killian as the President's Science Adviser and PSAC Chairman were Kistiakowsky in ~959, Wiesner in ~96~, and in ~964 Donald F. Hornig, Chairman, Department of Chemistry at Princeton. 89 White House Press Release, March ~3, ~959, and Executive Order, March ~3, ~959 (NAS Archives: EXEC:FCST);NAS, AnnualReportfor 1959~0,p.~;A.HunterDupreein T:ame.s I. Penick et aL (eds.~. The Politics of American Science, pp. 227,23~. See Science 129:67, 85, 12~136, 886 January-April ~959). 90 Report of PSAC, March 26, ~ 958, "American 'Introduction to Outer Space' ," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 14: 18~189 (May ~ 958); NSF/NAS. Report on the IGY, pp. ~ 55 ff. 9~ Originally proposed by Humphrey three months before Sputnik and subsequently modified, the legislation before Congress was regarded with disapproval by many in the Academy, by the President's Special Assistant, Killian, and by the NSF because of its potential centralization of science. It was finally tabled. See J. S. Dupre and S. A. Lakoff, Science and the Nation: Policy and Politics (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:

The Academy in the Fifties~eginnings of the Space Age 1 555 Congress for over a year, and as in the preceding century finally rejected as unfeasible, both the question of a science department and the space problem had really been resolved. Under Presidential aegis, PSAC and the Federal Council provided all the authority needed for the coordination of the government's science programs. As for space, President Eisenhower conferred with his Special Assistant, James Killian, who, with the counsel of Alan T. Waterman of NSF, Bronk of the Academy, and Hugh Dryden, Director of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), proposed NACA as the nucleus of a new space agency. The President agreed, Congress approved; and on October I, ~958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) came into being, its Administrator T. Keith Glennan, then President of Case Institute of Technology, and its Deputy Adminis- trator Hugh Dryden.92 Bronk anticipated the outcome of the legislation, as well as ~csu plans for continuing space research; and in the late spring of ~958, at the urging of the Executive Committee of the U.S. National Commit- tee for IGY, he appointed a Space Science Board under Lloyd V. Berkner "to survey the scientific problems, opportunities and implica- tions of man's advance into space." More immediately, it was to provide advice on extension of the rocket and satellite work for IGY and on the objectives and programs of space science to the govern- ment, to NASA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense, and to NSF. It would also maintain liaison as Prentice-Hall, Inc., ~962), pp. 69-73, ~62-~63; NAS Archives: CONG: Bills: Science & Technology Act of ~958. Lloyd Berkner's "Federal Department of Science and Technology," appeared in NSFINAS. Report on the ICY. See also U.S. Congress, Senate, Establishment of a Commission on a Department of Science and Technology, 86th Cong., fist sees., Senate Report 408, June ~8, 1959 (copy in NAS Archives: CONG: Bills: Establishment of a Commission on Department of Science and Technology); Science 129: 126~1266 (May 8, ~959); H. H. Humphrey, "The Need for a Department of Science," Annals of AAPSS 327:27-35 (January ~960); Dael Wolfle, "Government Organization of Science," Science 131:1407-1417 (May ~3, ~960); A. Hunter Dupree, "Central Scientific Organization in the United States Government," Minerva 1:453~69 (Summer ~963); Herbert Roback, "Do We Need a Department of Science and Technology?" Science 165:36 43 (July 4, 1969). 92 For the congressional testimony on space research leading to NASA, and the PSAC report to Eisenhower, Introduction to Outer Space (Washington: Government Printing Office, ~958), see NAS Archives: CONG: Coms: Space & Astronautics: Hearings: National Aeronautics & Space Act: ~958; EXEC: PSAC: Introduction to Outer Space: ~958; Dupre and Lakoff, Science and the Nation, pp. ~62-~63; A. Hunter Dupree, `'The Challenge to Dr. Killian," Tech Engineering News (January ~959), pp. 2~-23, 58; A. H. Dupree in Penick et al., The Politics of American Science, pp. 223-228.

556 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) the representative of U.S. space research with ~csu's new Committee for Space Research (COSPAR), organized that October.93 Within a year, a committee appointed by the Board at the request of NASA launched studies in the problems of interplanetary probes and space stations, their objectives Venus and Mars; and the Board itself had begun discussions of "the problems in the detection of extra- terrestrial life."94 Prior to organization of its Committee for Space Research, ~csu had established in August ~ 957 a Special Committee for Oceanic Research (SCOR); in February ~958 another for Antarctic Research (SCAR); and also an International Geophysics Committee (C~G).95 Their correlative and cooperating committees in the Academy-Research Council were the Committee on Oceanography appointed (as previously related) in July ~957,96 and the Committee on Polar Research in February ~ 958 .97 Still another -related committee in the Academy was that on Meteorology, set up in December ~955 and renamed the Committee on Atmospheric Sciences in ~958.98 And in ~960 Dr. Bronk appointed a Geophysics Research Board. Those appointed to the new Board were the Chairmen of the Space Science Board and of the Committees on Atmospheric Sciences, Oceanography, and Polar Research; the Chairmen and one additional representative each from the U.S. National Committees for four international unions of science those in astronomy, geodesy and geophysics, physics, and scientific radio; the Chairman of the U.S. National Committee for the International Geophysical Year; and several members-at-large.99 93 NAS, Annual Report for 1957-5S, pp. 2, 5, 7~-72; 1958-59, pp. 8~-83 et seq.; "Space Science Board: Research in Space," Science 130:195-202 (July 24, ~959); NAS Archives: AG&Depts: National Space Establishment: Proposed: ~957; PS: Space Science Board: General; ORG: NAS: Space Science Board: General: ~958. See also Academy publication, U.S. Space Science Program: Report to COSPAR (Washington: NA0NRC, ~960). 94 NAS, Annual Report for 1958-59, p. 83. 95 NAS, Annual Report for 1958-59, pp. 92-93; 1959~0, pp. 84-88. 96 MS NAS, "Annual Report for ~956-57," p. 422; "~957-58," pp. 2-3, 5, 39, etseq.; and Chapter ~5, pp. 504-506. 97 NAS, Annual Report for 1957-58, pp. 68-69 et seq.; Symposium, Antarctica in the ICY (NAS—NRC Publication 462, ~956). 98 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1957-58, p. 67; NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Meteorology: ~958. A report by the Committee on Meteorology on research and education in that field (NAS-NRC Publication 479) led in ~960 to the establishment by NSF of its National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). See U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Science and Astronautics, The National Science Foundation: A General Review of Its First 15 Years. 88th Cong., ~ st sees., ~ 965, pp. ~ ~9, ~ 23- ~ 24. 99 NAS,Annual Reportfor 1960-61, pp. ~ '2-' ~4; Ad Hoc Com. on Post- Problems of Geophysics, October 2 7, ~ 957; Cornell to Director, NSr, November I, ~ 960 (NAS

The AcademyintheFifties Beganningsof the Space Age / 53~7 All these -inspired elements were to contribute vast quantities of information to the World Data Center set up by the Academy with Hugh Odishaw as its Executive Director just prior to the start of the IGY in ~957. As one of the three data centers set up during the IGY, it cooperated with similar centers in the USSR and in Western Europe, the latter center also directing branches in Australia and Japan.~°° The intrinsic and extrinsic accomplishments of"the international {GY" had been unprecedented, chief among them "a vast increase in international co-operation in science; the transformation of earth science into planetary science; Ethel example of how international relations can be amiably and fruitfully conducted."~°~ So much had been accomplished, yet so much remained to be done that the Year was officially extended another twelve months, as the International Geophysical Cooperation, ~ 959. ~02 Unofficially, the acquisition and verification of data and the prepa- ration of reports continued well beyond that final formal year. The Academy's new Geophysics Research Board was made responsible for the World Data Center and publication of the ICY Bulletin. i°3 The U.S. National Committee, briefly recessed in ~96~, continued active until May ~ 964 when Frederick Seitz, then President of the Academy, and Past President Detlev Bronk, notified some two hundred key participants of the discharge of the U.S. National Committee for IGY. ~04 Archives: ORG: NAS: Geophysics Research Board: General: Igloo; see also ORG: NAS: GRB: Governing Board Agenda Item: October 9, ~960. 100 NAS, Annual Report for 1957-58, pp. 3, 8~; 1958-59, p. 93. For the indefinite extension of its operations, see NAS Archives: C&B: GRB Panels: International Exchange of Geophysical Data: ~ 962. To advise on problems of recording, storage, and retrieval of scientific information and data, the Academy established an Office of Documentation in May ~959 (NAS, Annual Reportfor 1959~0, pp. 78-79 et seq.; NAS Archives: GOV Bd: Advisory Board on Information & Documentation on Science: Proposed: ~958). '°'J. Tuzo Wilson, I.G.Y.: The Year of the New Moons (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 6~), p. 320. 102 NAS, Annual Report for 1958-59, pp. 89-90; 1959-60, pp. 84-85. '°SNAs,AnnualReportforl960-61, pp. ~3-~4;1961-62, pp. ~26-~27. The NAS IGY Bulletin, first appearing as an insert in the AGU Transactions, ran from No. I, July ~957, to No. 96, May ~965. See MS NAS, "Annual Report for ~956-57," p. 444; NAS Archives: GOV Bd: Com on Relations of AGU with us National Committee for IGY-. ~ 957-58. ~°4 NAS, Annual Report for 1959-60, p. 84; 1960~1, p. ~ ~8 et seq., Seitz to Leland l. Haworth, Director of NSF, May 26, ~964 (NAS Archives: IR: IGY: US National Committee: End of Program).

558 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) Project Mohole . As scientifically imaginative and technologically rigorous as the space program launched during the IGY was the deep-sea drilling venture known as Project Mohole. It had its origin at a meeting in March 1957 of the Earth Science Panel of the National Science Foundation. Panel member Walter Munk, University of California oceanographer, dis- mayed that none of the projected research before the panel looked forward to a major advance comparable to the physicists' and en- gineers' planned leap in space, suggested a drilling project of compa- rable magnitude, a plan to penetrate and sample the earth's mantle. Harry H. Hess, Chairman of Princeton's Geology Department and also on the panel, supported Munk's proposal enthusiastically.~05 The project, still only an idea, was brought up a month later at Munk's home in La Jolla, California, at a gathering of the American Miscellaneous Society, or AMSOC for short, a convivial group con- ceived five summers before at the Office of Naval Research by geophysicists Gordon Lill and Carl O. Alexis while sorting over research proposals that defied recognized categories and ended in a precarious miscellany. Joined informally by other congenial scientists on the Washington scene, the Society met, as the spirit moved, to talk of professional matters and share pleasantries. At the AMSOC meeting at La Jolla the project was endorsed highly. On April 27, ~957, at a meeting at the Cosmos Club in Washington, an AMSOC committee was organized to attempt to put the program into action. Under Gordon Lill, the committee included Academy members William W. Rubey of the Geological Survey, Scripps Di- rector Roger R. Revelle, American Geophysical Union President Maurice Ewing, Hess, and Munk. Other members were Carl Alexis of the Office of Naval Research and Harry S. Ladd and Joshua I. Tracey of the Geological Survey. ~06 With outer space and the ocean depths spoken for, Project Mohole |05 Hess was then Chairman of the Research Council's Division of Earth Sciences, which would include a new Committee on Oceanography that July. i06 Hess, "The AMSOC Project to Drill a Hole to the Mohorovicic Discontinuity," December ~957 (NAS Archives: ES: AMSOC Project: Proposed). Later accounts, often conflicting with Hess's December ~957 paper, are found in Hess, "The Amsoc Hole to the Earth's Mantle," American Scientist 48:254-263 (June ~960); Gordon Lill and Willard Bascom, "A Bore-Hole to the Earth's Mantle: AMSOC'S Mohole," Nature 184: 14~144 (July ~8, ~959); Bascom, "The Mohole," Scientific Ameri- can 200 :41~9 (April ~ 959); Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science, PP ~ 7 ~-208.

The Academy in the Fifties~egannings of the Space Age 1 559 AMSOC Committee members who supervised Project Mohole, the deep-sea drilling . venture. Left to right: Harry Ladd, Leonard S. Wilson, Harry Hess, Arthur Maxwell, Joshua Tracey, Linn Hoover, Gordon G. Lill (chairman), Edward B. Espenshade, Willard Bascom, William R. Thurston, Capt. Harold E. Saunders, William B. Heroy, lames R. Balsley, and Lt. Col. George Colchagoff (From the archives of the Academy). _— intended an assault on the last frontier by the drilling of a hole through the earth's crust at points beneath the oceans where it is thinnest to sample the underlying mantle of rock that makes up 84 percent of the earth's volume.~07 The boundary between crust and mantle is known as the Mohorovicic discontinuity in honor of the Yugoslav seismologist Andrija Mohorovitic, whose observations of the seismic waves from the Croatian earthquake of agog led him to postulate the existence of the discontinuity. The drilling would be done in the oceans where the Moho becomes accessible at depths of thirty thousand to thirty-five thousand feet below sea level. On land it would have been nearly one hundred thousand feet, in temperatures too high for drilling equipment. A truly pioneering project, Mohole promised, with even minimal success, a better determination of the age of the earth, its history and internal constitution, of the distribu- tion of elements, and new insight into theories of continental drift. At a meeting of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics in Toronto in September ~957, Hess, Revelle, and British geophysicist T. F. Gaskell jointly sponsored and obtained approval of a resolution urging international cooperation in feasiblity studies of the project. A Russian scientist at the meeting announced his own country's interest in a similar undertaking. The sponsor of the project, for which initial NSF funds of $~s,ooo i07 Not entireIv new. the idea had heen earlier suggested by Frank B. Estabrook in his _ ~ — 7 — "Geophysical Research Shaft," Science 124:686 (October 12, ~956).

560 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~962) were approved, became the Academy-Research Council when in April ~958, with Academy assent, the AMSOC committee of fourteen, with Gordon Lill its chairman, was made a full-fledged unit of the Divison of Earth Sciences. ~°8 By late ~959 the AMSOC committee was ready to test its speculations. A converted Navy freighter barge, equipped with experimental deep-water drilling gear recently developed for the petroleum indus- try, had been positioned over the drilling site, fixed by four huge outboard motors, with the ship's heading monitored by Sperry gyrocompasses. The rig was first tested successfully in 3,ooo feet of water off La Jolla in ~ 960 and then moved near Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Mexico, to develop engineering data and deep-sea drilling experience and to make final tests and modifications for the eventual drill to the Moho.~09 There, in sight of the Mexican coast, in April ~96~, the project achieved a spectacular success, proving possible the drilling of a hole in earth beneath water at- least twelve thousand feet deep, almost thirty times the maximum ever previously achieved. It indicated that the ultimate goal was realistic and attainable.~° At the point where contracts were to be let for construction of the huge buoyant drilling platform necessary for the next stage of opera- tions, the Academy turned the project over to the NSF; and the Foundation, for the first time since its organization, assumed opera- tional responsibility for a scientific program. The responsibility for ensuing events, however, became highly controversial as differences arose between the AMSOC committee and the NSF on the direction and objectives of the project and AMSOC'S interest in an extensive inter- mediate program of sedimentation research.' In addition, there was the hotly debated question of the choice of the prime contractor for the platform. Nor was Congress amenable in ~963 to a funding estimate for the next three years of Project Mohole amounting to "about $68 million," or to the subsequent agreement of the NSF, its National Science Board, and the Bureau of the Budget on a total cost figure of $47.4 million through fiscal year ~967.~2 lox NAS, Annual Reportfor 1957-58, p. 42; 1958-59, pp. 42-43; NSF/NAS. Report on the IGY, pp. 93-94; The National Science Foundation: A General Review of Its First 15 Years, pp. 8s-~os. '09 William E. Benson, NSF Program Director for Earth Sciences, "Drilling Beneath the Deep Sea," Smithsonian Institution, Annual Reportfor 1961, pp. 397-4O3; NAs, Annual Report for 1959-60, pp. 43-44. A NAS, Annual Report for 1960~1, pp. 2 ~-22, 68-69. I" Philip Abelson, "Deep Earth Sampling," Science 162:623 (November 8, ~968). in NAS, Annual Report for 1961-62, p. 68; 1962-63, p. 63; The National Science Founda-

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age / 56 1 cuss I, the deep-sea drilling ship that participated in the Academy's experimental drilling program during March ~ 96 I, near Guadalupe Island, off the coast of Mexico, as part of Project Mohole (National Science Foundation photograph). In January 1964, upon the appointment by NSF of Gordon Lill as Mohole Project Director, the Academy discharged its AMSOC commit- tee and established new Advisory Committees on Site Selection and on Scientific Objectives for the Mohole Project. Despite the counsel bon: A General Review of Its First 15 Years, pp. ~6-20, ~02, cod; Herbert Solow, "How NSF Got Lost in Mohole," Fortune (May ~963), pp. ~38- ~4 I, ~ 98-209. 1l, NAS, Annual Report for 1963-64, p. 65; The National Science Foundation: A General Review of Its First 15 Years, p. go.

562 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (1950 - 1962) Roger Revelle (right) and fellow scientists examining a core sample from the ocean bottom during Project Mohole test drilling (Photograph by Fritz Goro, Time-Life Picture Agency). of the Academy committees, indecision continued over whether to build an intermediate or ultimate ship platform for the project, whether to commence with a thorough exploration of the earth's crust or to drill at once an ultradeep hole to the mantle. Still other problems, organizational and political, added to the growing confu- sion in the undertaking. In August ~966, Congress disapproved the NSF funds budgeted for the project, and the Foundation asked the Academy-Research Coun- cil to terminate its activities on behalf of the program. In December the two advisory committees of the Academy were dissolved.~4 An i~4 NAS, Annual Report for 1966—67, p. ~ ~4; NAS Archives: ES: AMSOC Com: Mohole

The Academy in the Fifties Beginnings of the Space Age I 563 ill-fated venture after its initial success, Project Mohole, though it had not delivered a single fragment of upper mantle rock, was neverthe- less intrinsically sound and scientifically important.~5 And as the Chairman of the Academy Research Council Division of Earth Sciences said, there was no question that the hole would be drilled, "if not now, later, and if not by us, by the USSR." The Challenge of the Space Age As a result of its activities in World War II, the Academy experienced a greater change in the decade and a half that followed than in all the years together since its founding. The reorganization and expansion of science in the federal government in the postwar years was re- flected in the restructuring and revitalization of the Academy serving the new science. "These are not times in which to be complacent," Dr. Bronk had said in his report of ~ 954 as the Cold War settled in and the International Geophysical Year approached, and the Academy reacted to the energizing effect of those events on science and the nation: "The activities of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council are becoming so numerous and diverse that they cannot be adequately described in a document that is reasonably brief. . . ,'ll7 The membership, staff, and expenditures of the Academy in that period reflected the expanding role of science in government. From 349 in ~ 945, the membership rose to 592 in ~ 960; that of the Research Council from 2~£ to e66, with, in ~960, a committee and board membership totaling several thousand. The Academy's professional, Project: General; ibid., ES: Coms Advisory to NSF: Mohole Project: General. The Mohole Project comprises f~fty-four feet of archival material. For a summary of the project and its still "reasonable prospects for proceeding," see Daniel S. Greenberg, "Mohole: The Project That Went Awry," Science 143:115-119, 223-227, 23~237 (January ~964); also T. H. van Ardel, "Deep-Sea Drilling for Scientific Purposes: A Decade of Dreams," Science 160:1419-1424 (June z9, ~968). "5 Gordon Lill and Willard Bascom, "A Bore-Hole to the Earth's Mantle: AMSOC'S Mohole," Nature 184: 14~144 Duly ~ 8, ~ 959); Seitz, "Statement before Subcommittee on Independent Offices, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate," June ~3, ~966 (NAS Archives: AG&DeptS: NSF: Mohole Project: Future Status); Linn Hoover, Executive Secretary of the Research Council's Division of Earth Sciences during Phase I of Mohole, "A Twist-Off in Mohole," Geotimes 11: 11 (November ~966). ·~6], Hoover Makin to Seitz, June 6, ~966 (NAS Archives: AG&DeptS: NSF: Mohole Project: Future Status). See also Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science, p. ~7~, note. ~37 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1953-54, p. I.

564 / DETLEV WULF BRONK (195~1962) executive, and secretarial staff (which had numbered 48 in 19~9), grew from 186 to 643 between ~946 and 1960.~8 The total expenditures of the Academy and the Research Council in 1945-1946 had amounted to a then unprecedented $2,731,000, representing $ 1,48g,ooo in government contracts, $ 1,oog,ooo for studies and projects, and the balance for administrative expenses.~9 Increasing steadily until 1956-~957, when they reached $7,83g,ooo, Academy expenditures almost doubled in the post-Sputnik years, rising to $14,725,000 in 1960, of which $10,446,000 represented government contracts, $2,70g,000 studies and projects, and finally a relatively stable figure, administrative expenses of $1,570,~00.~2° In the chaotic state of the postwar world, science, long on the periphery of government, was now an acknowledged national re- source and science policy a national imperative. Its initial recognition as national resource, set forth in Vannevar Bush's Science, the Endless Frontier in ~ 945 and in the Steelman report, Science and Public Policy, in ~947, took legislative shape in the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission and the Office of Naval Research in ~946, the science- oriented reorganization of the Department of Defense in ~947- ~ 949, the establishment of the National Science Foundation in two, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in ~958, and the restructuring of the National Bureau of Standards authorized in ~960. The array of Presidential advisory committees and councils, heavily weighted with members of the Academy, which counseled these new or reoriented science elements in the federal establishment, measured the revolution that had occurred in the relation of govern- ment to science in less than two decades. Anticipating the new role of science in government, Bronk had reestablished the authority of the Academy and new directions for its Research Council as the operating arm of the Academy. As Chairman of the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation and a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, he linked the Academy with the scientific community and the federal science programs. The Cold War and progress of science that brought about the closer relationship also brought an increase in the responsi- bility of the Academy as adviser to the government. 't~ NAS Archives: NAS-NRC, Organization & Members pamphlets; Telephone Directories. ~9 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1945~6, p. 84. ~20 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1957-58, p. 94; 1959-60, p. ~ o6. ~2~ See Warren Weaver, A Great Agefor Science (New York: Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, ~ 96 ~ ); National Science Foundation, Investing in Scientific Progress, 1961 -1970 : Concepts, Goals, and Projections (Washington: ~ 96 ~ ).

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Among the oldest and most enduring of American institutions are those that have been devoted to the encouragement of the arts and the sciences. During the nineteenth century, a great many scientific societies came and went, and a few in individual disciplines achieved permanence. But the century also witnessed the founding of three major organizations with broadly interdisciplinary interests: the Smithsonian Institution in 1846; the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, which in 1848 became the American Association for the Promotion (later, Advancement) of Science; and the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.

The founding of the National Academy of Sciences represented a momentous event in the history of science in the United States. Its establishment in the midst of a great civil war was fortuitous, perhaps, and its early existence precarious; and in this it mirrored the state of science at that time. The antecedents of the new organization in American science were the national academies in Great Britain and on the Continent, whose membership included the principal men of science of the realm. The chartering of academies under the auspices of a sovereign lent the prestige and elements of support and permanence the scientists sought, and in return they made their scientific talents and counsel available to the state.

The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 describes the National Academies from inception through the beginning of the space age. The book describes the Academies' work through different periods in history, including the Postbellum years, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II.

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