Nato and the strengthening of western science in the post-Sputnik era

Minerva

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 81-108

  Krige, John ^a  

^a GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33749144729     PISSN: 00264695     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1026549723657     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Ronald E. Doel, 'Scientists as Policymakers, Advisors, and Intelligence Agents; Linking Contemporary Diplomatic History with the History of Contemporary Science', in Thomas Söderqvist (ed.), The Historiography of Contemporary Science and Technology (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997), 215-244, esp. 220.
2. John Krige, 'The Ford Foundation, European Physics and the Cold War', Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 29 (2), (1999), 333-361.
3. A considerable amount of material up to 1965, including that pertaining to the Science Committee, is now available for scholarly research in the NATO Archives. I would like to thank archivist Anne Marie Smith for her cooperation in consulting this material.
4. These three dimensions were stressed by Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), ch. 7.
5. For a general discussion of the impact of these events on academic science, see Roger L. Geiger, Research and Relevant Knowledge. American Research Universities Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), ch. 6.
6. For a general history of NASA see Roger D. Launius, NASA. A History of the U.S. Civil Space Programme (Malabar: Krieger Publishing Co., 1994).
7. Geiger, Research and Relevant Knowledge, op. cit. note 4, 164-165 discusses the NDEA. The quotations are from these two pages.
8. See Roger L. Geiger, 'What Happened after Sputnik? Shaping University Research in the United States', Minerva, 35 (1997), 349-367.
9. See also Roger L. Geiger, 'Science, Universities and National Defense, 1945-1970', Osiris, VII (1992), 26-48.
10. Geiger, Research and Relevant Knowledge, op. cit. note 4, esp. 177 and 178.
11. As Schweber mentions, 'The PSSC (sic) high school physics course and the Berkeley physics courses for undergraduate science majors are examples of some of the impressive coordinated efforts that were stimulated by PSAC to strengthen education in the sciences', in Silvan Schweber, 'A Historical Perspective on the Rise of the Standard Model', in Lillian Hoddeson, Laurie Brown, Michael Riordan, and Max Dresden (eds.), The Rise oflhe Standard Model: Particle Physics in the 1960s and 1970s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 645-684, esp. 652.
12. Thus Killian writes regarding the sharp rise in NSF budgets from $50 million in fiscal 1958 to $136 million in fiscal 1959, 'The increases proposed for basic research proved to be profoundly helpful to the strengthening of science in our universities, and the increase of funds for science education was also important', in James R. Killian Jr., Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower. A Memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 194-195.
13. Strengthening American Science. A Report of the President's Science Advisory Committee (December 1958), 2.
14. The OEEC came into being in April 1948. Its original purpose was to coordinate the allocation of Marshall Aid in Europe. For details, see Derek W. Urwin, The Community of Europe. A History of European Integration Since 1945 (London: Longmans, 1991).
15. Post-war science policy grew in certain key respects from wartime Allied cooperation. See Roy MacLeod, 'All for Each and Each for All': Reflections on Commonwealth Scientific Cooperation, 1940-1945', Albion, 26 (1), (1994), 79-112. The OEEC was succeeded by the OECD, where the Science Directorate under Jean-Jacques Salomon played a key role in promoting the need for science policy, backing his arguments with international data on scientific and technical manpower.
16. Historical Archives of the European Community, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, OEEC Records, Manpower Committee. Shortages and Surpluses of Highly Qualified Scientists and Engineers, Draft Report to Council, document MO (55) 16, 5 April 1955
17. and Manpower Committee. Shortages and Surpluses of Highly Qualified Scientists and Engineers, Report of the Group of Experts, document MO (57) 9, 20 March, 1957.
18. NATO Archives, Brussels (afterwards NATO), Recruitment and Training of Scientists, Engineers and Technicians in NATO Countries and the Soviet Union, C-M (56) 128, 26 November 1956. This report prepared for the North Atlantic Council by Robert Major, Norwegian science policy administrator, summarizes the OEEC data.
19. American Philosophical Society, John A. Wheeler papers (afterwards JAW), Series I, file 'NATO'.
20. JAW, Series VI, M. H. Trytten, 'Our Technical Manpower Situation Today', Speech Before Military Industrial Conference on Technical Manpower, Conrad Hilton Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, February 10, 1955. This and the next two paragraphs are based exclusively on this text, from which all the quotations have been taken. Trytten cites no sources.
21. Nicholas De Witt, Soviet Professional Manpower. Its Education, Training, and Supply (Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, 1951).
22. Major's report to the NATO Council, Recruitment and Training of Scientists, Engineers and Technicians in NATO Countries and the Soviet Union, op. cit. note 14.
23. De Witt, Soviet Professional Manpower, op. cit. note 17, 257.
24. JAW, Letter Wheeler to Jackson, 12 February 1957.
25. Killian, Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower, op. cit. note 10, 192-193.
26. NATO, Report of the Committee of Three on Non-Military Cooperation in NATO, C-M (56) 127 (Revised), 10 January 1957, 5.
27. Ibid., Report of the Committee of Three on Non-Military Cooperation in NATO, 8.
28. Ibid., Report of the Committee of Three on Non-Military Cooperation in NATO, 8.
29. In the Preamble and Articles 2 and 4 of the NATO Treaty.
30. Report of the Committee of Three, op. cit. note 22, 6.
31. Major, Recruitment and Training of Scientists, Engineers and Technicians in NATO Countries and the Soviet Union, op. cit. note 14.
32. Report of the Committee of Three, op. cit. note 22, 19.
33. JAW, Nato File, Resolution on 'The Establishment of a Special Committee on Scientific and Technical Personnel'.
34. JAW, Letter Jackson to Wheeler, 24 January 1957.
35. NATO, Documents C-R (57) 36, and RDC/226/57, 7 June 1957.
36. NATO, Trained Manpower for Freedom, Report by the NATO Parliamentarians' Committee on the Provision of Scientific and Technical Personnel in the NATO Countries, As unanimously approved by the Third NATO Parliamentarians' Conference, 11-16 November 1957, RDC/57/408
37. I quote in what follows also from the summary of the report in Science and Freedom: The Continuing Challenge, which was presented by the Jackson Committee to the Fourth Annual NATO Parliamentarians' Conference in Paris in November 1958, attached to Ford Foundation Grant 58-214 (New York: Ford Foundation Archives).
38. Other proposals included plans for a NATO Defence Missile Training Centre and a North Atlantic Institute for Defence Studies dedicated essentially to operational research.
39. For a history of AGARD (The Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development) see Jan van der Bliek (ed.), The AGARD History: 1952-1997 (Neuilly-sur Seine: NATO/RTO, 1999).
40. NATO, Further Action by NATO in the Field of Scientific and Technical Co-operation. Report to the Council by the Task Force, C-M (57) 130, 4 November 1957.
41. The suggestion that NATO should organize a conference of experts on scientific and technical cooperation was rejected. The Koepfli group thought that a small, high-level NATO policy conference might be more valuable. This idea was never put into practice by the Science Committee.
42. Further Action by NATO in the Field of Scientific and Technical Co-operation, op. cit. note 35, 15-16.
43. 'An arduous task awaits us. It would not have been necessary to organize this meeting at the level of heads of government if we did not feel that, in the present circumstances, a frank and complete examination of our problems demanded it' (my translation).
44. NATO, both quotations from Verbatim Record of the Eighty-First Meeting of the Council, Public Session held on Monday, 16th December 1957 at 12.00 at the Palais de Chaillot, C-VR (51) 81 (Final), 24 February 1958, 6, 8.
45. From the Declaration at the end of the meeting published in NATO Basic Texts, 108-116.
46. NATO, Science Committee. Revised List of Representatives, document AC/137-N/4, 19 March 1958. I have only given some of the many functions occupied by these men. The Greek and Turkish representatives, Cesar Alexopoulos and Cavit Erginsoy, were also physicists.
47. Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland, Oral history interview OH396 (1960), N. Ramsey by J. Safford, Transcript, 341-58, gives Ramsey's account of his experience as NATO Science Adviser.
48. Frederick Seitz, On the Frontier: My Life in Science (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1994), ch. 12, describes his time at NATO.
49. He recounts his experiences in William A. Nierenberg, 'The NATO Science Programme', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XXI (5), May 1965.
50. NATO and Science An Account of the Activities of the NATO Science Committee, 1958-1972 (Brussels: NATO Scientific Affairs Division, 1973) is an early official history of the Committee which presents the four chairmen.
51. NATO, document AC/137-D/1 contains the terms of reference.
52. NATO, Science Committee. Report by the Working Group on Fellowships. Proposed Fellowship Programme, document AC/137-D/14, 28 May 1958.
53. NATO, Advanced Study Institute Programme, Annex to document AC/137-D/29, 7 November 1958.
54. NATO, Science Committee. Funding of the Scientific Programme in 1965, document AC/137-D/213, 25 April 1964.
55. NATO, Financing the Programme of the Science Fellowships and of the Advanced Study Institutes, document AC/137-D/174, 20 May 1963.
56. NATO, Science Committee. Report on the 1961 Fellowship Programme, document AC/137-D/132, Annex II, 8 May 1962.
57. Interview with Safford, op. cit. note 42.
58. NATO, Science Committee. Advanced Study Institutes Programme, Report on the Programme During 1961, document AC/137-D/137, 5 May 1962.
59. NATO, Science Committee. Advanced Study Institutes Programme. Report on the Programme During 1963, document AC/137-D/226, 11 September 1964.
60. NATO, Science Committee. Summary Record of the First Meeting held at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris, XVIe., on 26th, 27th and 28th March 1958, document AC/137-R/1, 25 April 1958, 15.
61. Ibid., Science Committee. Summary Record of the First Meeting held at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris, XVIe., on 26th, 27th and 28th March 1958, 31.
62. NATO, Projet de Fondation Occidentale pour la Recherche Scientifique/Proposais by the French Government Regarding a Western Community Foundation for Scientific Research, document AC/137-D/2, 11 February 1958.
63. NATO, Summary Record of Meetings Held at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris, XVIe, on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 9th, 10th and 11th July 1958, document AC/137-R/2, 22 July 1958, 11.
64. NATO, Ad Hoc Working Party on Western Science Foundation. Summary Record of a Meeting held at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris, XVIe, on 21st and 22nd May 1958, document AC/137(WF) R/1, 30 May 1958.
65. NATO, Science Committee. Summary Records of Meetings held at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris, XVIe, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th January, 1959, document AC/137-R/3, 19 January 1959, 7-8.
66. Ibid., Annex B.
67. Ibid., 8, 41.
68. Eugene B. Skolnikoff, Science, Technology and American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967), 183. Skolnikoff was on the PSAC staff in the White House at the time of these events.
69. NATO, Science Committee. Report by the Ad Hoc Working Party on Western Science Foundation, document AC/137-D/11, 23 May 1958, presents the idea of the programme as a response to the French suggestion.
70. The criteria for awarding grants are spelled out in Science Committee. Meeting of the Advisory Panel on Research Grants, Ankara and Istanbul, 17th-20th October 1962, document AC/137-D/158, 8/12/62.
71. Another, ultimately unsuccessful 'fall-out' of the French proposal, which I will analyse in a subsequent paper, is described by J.R. Killian Jr., 'An International Institute of Science and Technology', NATO Letter 10 (4), April 1962.
72. NATO and Science, op. cit. note 45, 28.
73. NATO, Science Committee. Establishment and Operation of its Subsidiary Bodies, document AC/137-D/189, Annex II, 4 October 1963, surveys the work to date of the group.
74. NATO, The Activities Sponsored by the Advisory Panel on Operational Research, document AC/137-D/192, 8 October 1963, is a summary report of this panel's work, from which the material is taken. Up to 1964, $300,000 was invested in this programme.
75. In 1964, Pierre Aigrain, an expert in semiconductors, was a professor of physics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and a Directeur Scientifique in the Direction des Recherches et Moyens d'Essais at the Defense Ministry - see the interview with him by 'D.C.' in International Science and Technology, July 1964, 69-74.
76. NATO, Letter to the Defence Research Directors from the Exploratory Group, document AC/137(DR)D/4, AC/74(DR)D/4, 30 October 1963. All the quotations that follow in the next two paragraphs are from this text. The members of the group were, in addition to Aigrain, Fabrizio Catalano-Gonzago (Italy), B. Terrence Price (UK) and Arthur W. Robinson Jr. (USA).
77. NATO, Provision of Scientific Advice to the NATO Military Authorities - Views of the Science Committee on the Report of the Exploratory Group, document AC/137-D/207, 20 January 1964.
78. NATO, minutes of the meeting of the Science Committee held on 5-6 June 1964, document AC/137-R/20. Unfortunately we cannot study the changes, if any, implemented by McLucas in depth as the primary source material after 1965 is not yet available.
79. NATO and Science, op. cit. note 45.
80. Major, Recruitment and Training of Scientists, Engineers and Technicians in NATO Countries and the Soviet Union, op. cit. note 14, 4.
81. NATO, Science Committee. Summary Record of a Meeting held at the Permanent Headquarters, Paris, XVIe., on Monday and Tuesday, 15th and 16th June 1964, document AC/137-R/19, 6 August 1964.
82. NATO, Developments in the Soviet Union and their Implications for NATO, Annex B to document C-M(57)50, 1/4/57 (NATO), 11.
83. On 13 October 1957, a US newspaper published a cartoon showing Khruschev holding the hand of a young woman who represented the 'lesser nations' while an enraged Uncle Sam holding a bouquet of flowers looked on. Pointing to Sputnik in the sky overhead the Soviet leader is saying 'Who else can give you a moon?' The cartoon is reproduced in McDougall, op. cit. note 4, 144.
84. NATO, Co-Operation in Scientific Research, Education and Training. Note by the United States Delegation, document RDC/57/428 (Final), 13 December 1957.
85. NATO, The Sino-Soviet Bloc Economic Offensive, 1954-1961. A Summary Review, document C-M (62) 36, 9 April 1962.
86. NATO, Report of the Committee of Three on Non-Military Co-Operation in NATO, op. cit. note 22, 9.
87. NATO, Science Committee. Report by the Working Party on Declassification of Scientific Information, document AC/137-D/17, 4 July 1958, 3.
88. NATO, Further Action by NATO in the Field of Scientific and Technical Co-Operation, op. cit. note 35.