Vannevar Bush’s New Deal for Research: Or the Triumph of the Old Order

Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences

Volumn 17, Issue 2, 1987, Pages 299-344

  Reingold, Nathan ^a  

^a SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84968195159     PISSN: 08909997     EISSN: 15338355     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/27757585     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. New York Academy of Medicine, Bulletin, 47(1971), 1248-1251.
2. Pieces of the action (New York, 1970), esp. 39, 84, 248, 368.
3. A. Hunter Dupree, “The Great Instauration of 1940: The organization of scientific research for war,” in G. Holton, ed., The twentieth century sciences: Studies in the biography of ideas (New York, 1972), 443-467.
4. J. Merton England, “Dr. Bush writes a report: ‘Science, the endless frontier,’” Science, 191 (1976), 41-47.
5. A patron for pure science: The National Science Foundation’s formative years, 1945-57 (Washington, 1982).
6. Daniel J. Kevles, “FDR’s science policy,” Science, 183 (1974), 798-800.
7. Scientists, the military, and the control of postwar defense research: The case of the Research Board for National Security, 1944-1946, Technology and culture, 16 (1975), 20-47.
8. “The National Science Foundation and the debate over postwar research policy,” Isis, 68 (1977), 5-26, and The physicists (New York, 1978).
9. Robert Franklin Maddox, “The politics of World War II science: Senator Harley N. Kilgore and the legislative origins of the National Science Foundation,” West Virginia history, 41 (1979), 20-39.
10. Carroll Pursell, “Science agencies in World War II: The OSRD and its challengers,” in Nathan Reingold, ed., The sciences in the American context: New perspectives (Washington, 1979), 359-378.
11. J.L. Penick, Jr., et al., The politics of American science, 1939 to the present (Chicago, 1965).
12. Waterman, introduction to the reprint of SEF (Washington, D.C., 1960), vii-xxvi.
13. Kevles, “The National Science Foundation” (ref. 4).
14. Technology review, 47 (January 1945), 162-163.
15. Bush included “The builders” in the two anthologies of his writings: Endless horizons (Washington, 1946), 179-191.
16. Science is not enough (New York, 1967), 11-23.
17. “Planning in science,” speech of 16 May 1946, 2 (BP/129).
18. Nathan Reingold, “Clio as physicist and machinist,” Reviews in American history, 10 (1982 264-280.
19. George Wise, “Science and technology,” Osiris, 1 (1985), 229-246.
20. “The scientist and his government,” 22 Feb 1946 (BP/128).
21. Cf.Sam Bass Warner, Jr., Province of reason (Cambridge, U.S.A., 1984), 206.
22. “Science, strength, and stability,” address of 8 June 1946, 6 (BP/130).
23. Caryl P. Haskins, Of societies and men (New York, 1951).
24. Bush argued in “The scientist” (ref. 23), 4, that csa “voluntary collaboration of indepen dent men,” that is, a democracy is superior to absolutism, a point repeated in his Modern arms and free men (New York, 1949).
25. Bush, “Military organization for the United States,” 1946-1947, esp. 4 (BP).
26. Alex Roland, Model research, The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915-1958, 2 vols. (Washington, 1985), is a recent and fine history of the agency.
27. A.H. Compton, “Mr. Fermi, the Argonne Laboratory, and the University of Chicago,” 28 Jul 1944.
28. MacLeish to Bush, 12 Jan 1944, with note by Bush of 15 Jan: “Told him we had better leave science out.” (OSRD/NA, 13/70).
29. R.C. Cochrane, The National Academy of Sciences: The first hundred years, 1836-1963 (Washington, 1978).
30. Hunter Dupree, Science in the federal government (Cambridge, 1957).
31. Kevles, Physicists (ref. 4).
32. Bush to John Tate, 8 Feb 1945 (OSRD/NA, 2/3). Medicine had acquired an importance to him in late 1944 it previously lacked. John Patrick Swann, “The search for synthetic penicillin during World War II,” British jour nal for the history of science, 16 (1983), 154-190.
33. R.G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., The new world, 1939-1946 (University Park, Pa., 1962).
34. Kevles “Research Board” (ref. 4).
35. Cf.Irwin Stewart, Organizing research for war (Boston, 1948), chapt. 21.
36. Bush letter appeared in Science, 98 (1943), 571-573.
37. Bush wrote D.W. Bronk on 23 Sep 1946 (BP), the Joint Research and Development Board would reconcile differences with the military while NRC would advise the government and act as its official line to science. SEF, 27f.
38. Horizons (ref. 13), 82-100.
39. Bush, “Memorandum,” 14 June 1945 (OSRD/NA, 2/2).
40. Lyman Chalkley, Prologue to the U.S. National Science Foundation (n.p., 1951), 20.
41. Bush, “Cancer,” 20 Nov 1972 (Bush Papers, MIT).
42. Bush, “Role of the social sciences in modern society,” 10 Dec 1946.
43. Donald C. Swain, “The rise of a research empire: NIH 1930-1950,” Science, 138 (1962), 1233-1237.
44. “The case for biological engineering,” in Scientists face the world of 1942 (New Brunswick, 1942), 33-45.
45. After Hippocrates, 11 Apr 1951 (box 134).
46. Cf. Samuel F. Wells, Jr., “Sounding the tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet threat,” International security, 14 (1979), 116-158.
47. Bush, “Science and war,” 1951, 2-3 (BP/134).
48. Robert Divine, Blowing in the wind, the nuclear test ban debate, 1954-1960 (New York, 1978), 16.