The Endless Frontier 75Th Anniversary Edition
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the endless frontier 75th Anniversary Edition VANNEVAR BUSH Reprinted in celebration of the National Science Foundation’s 70th anniversary1 | 1950-2020 Book cover photo: © Arnold Newman Collection via Getty Images SCIENCE THE ENDLESS FRONTIER A Report to the President by VANNEVAR BUSH Director of the Ofce of Scientifc Research and Development July 1945 Foreword by France A. Crdova, 14th Director of NSF Reissued by the National Science Foundation in celebration of the agency’s 70th anniversary and the 75th anniversary of Science—the Endless Frontier CELEBRATING NSF’S 70th BIRTHDAY By France A. Crdova, 14th Director of NSF “...basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress.” That statement is as relevant today as it was in 1945 when Vannevar Bush wrote it in his landmark tract, Science—the Endless Frontier. In the report, submitted to President Harry S. Truman, Bush made the case for creating a new agency that he and others felt was needed to support the underlying basic research essential for combatting disease, ensuring national security, and increasing the standard of living, including supporting new industries and jobs. Bush drew an important lesson from directing the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II: “The most important ways in which the Government can promote industrial research are to increase the flow of new scientific knowledge through support of basic research and to aid in the development of scientific talent.” Bush desired that the benefits of scientific re- search realized during the war could have even wider application postwar. He advocated for government funding of basic research in universities, colleges, and research institutes because that’s where the talent was. He admired the freedom of inquiry he experienced as an administrator at MIT. Bush lauded curiosity-driven research with people working on “subjects of their own choice.” iii | Additionally, he voiced the need to support training a new generation of sci- entific talent. The committee advising him on this issue held that opportunity be provided to all: “that there be no ceilings, other than ability itself, to intellectual ambition... every boy and girl shall know that, if he shows that he has what it takes, the sky is the limit.” Five years later, Congress created NSF. The long gap between Bush’s proposal and the start of the new agency gave other federal agencies—notably the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Institutes of Health, and the Office of Naval Research—the opportunity to expand their portfolios. Thus, the new NSF did not become the funder of all basic research across the federal government that Bush had envisioned. Yet in many ways, the report had the impact Bush sought, and his influence on science policy continues to be enormous. Today, NSF’s basic science and engineering portfolio ranges farther and wider than any other agency; its support of academic research is profoundly felt in our nation’s colleges and universities; and development of a talented scientific workforce continues to be a dominant focus. Bush’s noble arguments in favor of basic research continue to resonate today. We can hear their echoes in powerful statements about the value of basic research made by members of Congress, presidential administrations, NSF, the National Science Board, and science and engineering leaders around the world. Over the decades, NSF’s portfolio evolved in response to various presidential and congressional policies, as well as those made by NSF and the National Science Board, which establishes the policies of the Foundation. The shifting tides of public and political opinion, at scales large and small, shaped the emphases of NSF’s programs and awards, spurring changes not originally envisioned by Bush. What has changed? The portfolio of the agency has grown and evolved since NSF took shape in 1950, transformed by the interests of various stakeholders over the intervening seven decades. Here, I highlight some of the changes. Evolving scientific structures: • An image on NSF’s History Wall in its Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters memorializes the agency’s first grants. NSF’s very first grant, for $10,300, was in the biological sciences and went to the Institute for Cancer Research. In writing his prescription in 1945 for a new agency devoted to the progress of science, Vannevar Bush emphasized the need for government support of basic research in “medicine and the underlying sciences” for “the War Against Disease.” Yet, in the five years between the publication of Bush’s report and the establishment of NSF by Congress, the National Institutes | iv of Health expanded its research scope and funding. NSF thus focused on research designed to understand underlying principles and mechanisms that manifest in living systems, from molecules to ecosystems, including basic re- search in neuroscience and other areas relevant to human health. Indeed, many NSF-funded discoveries in physics and biology have resulted in novel detectors and technologies for medicine. Today’s biological sciences portfo- lio includes studies on genomics and epigenetics, plant biology, organismal systems, ecology and biodiversity. The recent advent of Big Data is cap- tured in biology’s first large facility—the National Ecological Observatory Network, completed in 2019. This new, continental-scale facility is designed to collect long-term, open-access ecological data to understand the living, changing environment. • NSF created a social sciences division in 1957 (at the urging of Vice President Nixon who saw its defense benefits) and it became a stand-alone direc- torate in 1992. This was not in Bush’s original plan; yet over time, its tie to pressing national needs became increasingly recognized. In 1968, Con- gress explicitly added support for social science to NSF’s mandate. NSF’s social science directorate collaborates now, more than ever, across direc- torate boundaries, recognizing that “convergence” of disciplines is relevant to many urgent issues of the day. In addition, economists funded by the directorate dominate the roster of Nobel prizes awarded in that discipline. The applications of their work have demonstrated the social sciences’ broad impact on decision making and quality of life throughout the world. • Since the origin of NSF, the portfolio of the geosciences directorate has expanded significantly. Over the decades that followed its creation, NSF became one of several federal science agencies that funded research on the interactions between oceans, the atmosphere, land, and human activity. Those interactions make up what is now seen as the whole Earth system. New tools and computational modeling helped researchers make important breakthroughs in understanding how catastrophic weather and climate affect human life and property and how human activity affects the Earth’s climate. Arctic-focused research documented accelerating environmental changes and associated feedback cycles that affect the entire planet. This work continues to stimulate national conversation and motivate ground- breaking new research. The geosciences directorate also has oversight for the nation’s Antarctica program—a critically important geo-political responsibility—whose facilities and unique terrain continue to deliver scientific breakthroughs in our understanding of the planet and the cosmos. • Over time, engineering has taken on more prominence at the Foundation. Where basic research in science produces insights on the world that we have, basic research in engineering produces vital knowledge about how to build the world that we want. Since 1973, engineers have facilitated dynamic v | NSF-funded partnerships with government, academia, and industry. While Bush’s original document would have focused the agency on basic research alone and left more applied research to industry, NSF has gone on to fund many programs with technology transfer in mind, including the Engineering Research Centers and the more recent Innovation Corps. These efforts build faster tracks to tangible outcomes, have produced many startups, and have earned approval from the Administration and Congress. Since its origin in 1981, the engineering directorate has created value in many ways, from more effective methods of disaster response, to additive manufacturing, to new medical devices and more. • Computer and information science and engineering became its own directorate in 1986. This would have pleased Bush, who was in the vanguard of those who saw the potential of computers to change every aspect of life. Even Bush could not have envisioned the digital revolution that was about to happen, nor could he have envisioned NSF’s role in expanding the Internet, funding high-performance supercomputers, and creating the means for multiple generations of researchers to access unprecedented computational power. He would have been surprised, perhaps, to see the depth and richness of computation and its increasing ability to handle large quantities of data, offering more discovery potential to every discipline. He would have delighted in today’s discussions of the heady promise of artificial intelligence, and the need to create a safe, transparent, fair and ethical framework for it. • The education and human resources directorate’s portfolio has expanded from funding only graduate student fellowships in 1952 to now including support for primary, secondary and undergraduate education, as well as informal learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In increasingly