The National Science Foundation: A Brief History

A consensus among historians is that the Second World War has been the watershed event in 20th century American history at least, and perhaps in world history. Never could there be a return to the earlier days of the century. The war thrust the still historically young United States into the lead as the world's premier power. America emerged from the conflict untouched by the physical destruction that laid waste so many of both its rivals and allies. Its capital infrastructure likewise was intact. At war's end the United States dominated as no nation had done since Great Britain controlled its vast empire in the l9th century. The immediate postwar years nonetheless proved to be a time when the nation would be taxed to provide leadership and policies for not only rebuilding a war-torn world but also returning to a domestic situation that would bring some semblance of normalcy from the crises of the preceding fifteen years.

World War II and the prewar Great Depression--an historic combination of two important epochs--caused a vast expansion of government agencies and services at the federal level. The back-to-back crises of the 1930s and 1940s also caused a majority of Americans to look to the national government to perform a myriad of functions, from providing employment to insuring bank deposits to mobilizing industry and universities for the war effort. Since 1789 the federal government had slowly taken a more active role in the affairs of the nation. Events after 1929, and particularly after the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as president in 1933, accelerated government activism. By early in the Second World War many political leaders, as well as citizens brought into the government to help with the crisis, recognized that in many areas continued government activity after the war would be in the best interest of the nation.

Support of basic scientific research was an area affected by increased government involvement. There had been numerous, if modest, government-science interactions throughout the history of the Republic, but the Second World War vastly intensified that environment. Not only was government support of scientific endeavors sharply escalated, but the relationships among government agencies, universities, private foundations, and industry were altered in ways that disallowed a return to prewar times. The war greatly strengthened, for example, the link between the nation's universities and the government. Even more far-reaching was the role of the military as a large and permanent supporter of basic and applied scientific research. As early in the war as 1942, these accelerating government-science community relationships interested some politicians about whether research support would be continued after the war.

The situation prompted a New Deal senator from West Virginia, Harley Kilgore, to introduce in 1942, 1943, and 1945 successive pieces of legislation aimed ultimately at creating a National Science Foundation. Reflecting his populist New Dealer views, Kilgore envisioned a broad science organization (including the social sciences) that supported through grants and contracts both basic and applied research and incorporated geographic distribution of research funds. The agency would be responsible to political authority. The year-to-year Kilgore hearings and legislation quite naturally interested the scientific community, which had a major stake in the outcome.

One leading science spokesman was Vannevar Bush, a respected engineer and science administrator who headed the government's wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development. Bush agreed with Kilgore that federal support of science should continue after the war, but he disagreed with the senator's approach. Partially to counter it Bush maneuvered to have President Roosevelt request from him a report on how the nation should support science in the postwar period. Bush's 1945 response, "Science -- The Endless Frontier," became famous as the prescription for government support of science. It also was an antidote to the Kilgore suggestions.

"Science -- The Endless Frontier" argued strongly for the concept of continued government support of science, but it proposed carrying out the function in the traditional manner in which Bush was most experienced. The report defined the method: through a government agency that supported only the best "basic research in the colleges, universities, and research institutes, both in medicine and the natural sciences, adapted to supporting research on new weapons for both Services, [and] adapted to administering a program of science scholarships and fellowships." Best science in Bush's mind had to be elitist in the sense of supporting the most excellent scientists; it had no formula for geographic distribution. Bush nonetheless saw support of science as promoting the general welfare and not just a few scientists. From his short catchy title onward, Bush capitalized on a popular American historical theme: "... the frontier of science remains. It is in keeping with the American tradition--one which has made the United States great--that new frontiers shall be made accessible for development by all American citizens." He argued that government support of science research and education would benefit everyone through its contributions to the peacetime economy and national security. The same day the White House released the report, Bush had arranged with Democratic Senator Warren Magnuson of Washington to introduce a bill that incorporated the ideas contained in "Science -- The Endless Frontier."

Five years passed before Congress and the administration found common political grounds on which to create a National Science Foundation. It took that long, and a presidential veto, to work out the many compromises necessary to bring reality from the differences in the Kilgore and Magnuson versions of the idea. Debate revolved around several issues: patent ownership, geographical distribution of funds, inclusion of the social sciences, basic versus applied research, and administrative control of the agency. Nebulous interpretive language eventually bridged the differences. The new agency, for example, was to avoid "undue concentration" of its funds, thus leaving the geographic distribution question to interpretation by the leaders of the Foundation. The thorny question of the social sciences was not resolved; the act's term, "other sciences," could be read to include the social sciences entrance but gave them second-rate status compared to the mathematical, physical, biological, medical, and engineering sciences that were specifically mentioned in the statute.

Administrative control of the agency brought the biggest imbroglio. Bush and his supporters wanted authority placed in a part-time independent board dominated by scientists that would appoint a director who would be responsible to the board. Any other arrangement Bush feared might bring political control of the agency's support of research. Thus he took the elitist position; he thought the best research should be directed independently by those who knew science best--the scientists themselves. After two years of debate, in 1947, Congress passed a measure along the lines Bush advocated, but it was unacceptable to President Harry S Truman. His veto message noted that the act allowed the agency to be "divorced from control by the people to an extent that it implies a distinct lack of faith in democratic processes." In fact, Congress, if not Bush, should have known better. Truman's position was known before his veto. It had been articulated before the congressional committees earlier by his Bureau of the Budget witnesses. The administration wanted a director appointed by the president with a presidentially appointed board acting in an advisory and policy making capacity. Thus the agency would be accountable to the people through the president.

In spite of the arguments that held up the founding of the National Science Foundation, the five year debate never questioned the support of science; rather it always swirled around the issue of how it should be supported. How was the ethic of pure science, with its esoteric subject matter appealing only to a few, to be supported in a nation that was traditionally most comfortable with practical goals that applied to the many? How could "best science" elitism accommodate the geographical and institutional pluralism of America? Those fundamental questions were not answered then and are still discussed vigorously. At the time of Truman's 1947 veto, however, support of basic science research by the federal government had already spread in part to other government agencies.

The explosion of two atomic bombs over Japan in August 1945 ushered in public awareness of nuclear energy. For national security reasons, American policy makers quickly decided that this powerful energy source would continue to be guarded closely by the government. The ensuing Atomic Energy Act of 1946 restricted the use of nuclear data and effectively carved off the field of nuclear energy as an independent area of research. The Atomic Energy Commission, which assumed control of Manhattan Project facilities in January 1947, soon became a leading government scientific agency. It concentrated its support of basic research and fellowships primarily in physics.

"Science -- The Endless Frontier" called for support of biomedical research in the new research foundation. During the war, Bush's Office of Scientific Research and Development had great success coordinating the government's sponsorship of medical research. But when the creation of the National Science Foundation ran afoul of politics in the postwar period, the Public Health Service assumed these responsibilities within its already established National Institute of Health (at the time, there was only one). Much NIH research was conducted in its own laboratories, but after 1945 the agency added a popular extra mural grant program that increasingly gained from Congress sizable appropriations and an enduring political constituency.

Bush's report also called for a continuation of military research in peacetime by the civilian-controlled organization, with close liaison with the Army and the Navy. That recommendation was based on Bush's wartime experience. When the Office of Scientific Research and Development went out of existence in December 1947, the secretaries of War and Navy created a new board to fill the void. In the meantime, the Navy quickly moved to establish close ties with the nation's research universities. It gained statutory approval for an Office of Naval Research in 1946. Although headed by a naval officer, the office had as its deputy administrator a civilian chief scientist to direct the scientific program. While the primary purpose of the office was to perform research of direct use to the Navy, the office also supported wide-ranging unclassified basic research that had little bearing on naval issues. Developing a good working relationship with the civilian science community, the office allowed results of research to be published in the open literature and pioneered in using eminent scientists to evaluate the research projects it sponsored. Thus the Office of Naval Research became a model for a government grant-making agency. The National Science Foundation later adopted many of its techniques.

So by 1950, when the National Science Foundation came into existence, there was already an extensive though disjointed government sponsored research system for the sciences. Although "Science -- The Endless Frontier" still could be claimed as the blueprint for government supported science through a central agency, the intervening circumstances between 1945 and 1950 brought major changes in the government-science community environment. It set the stage for future difficulties. This new context, so different from 1945 when Bush's report was written, would not allow the National Science Foundation the strong central role as the major supporter of basic research that Bush envisioned. Nonetheless, the agency was in place. Only time and the circumstances of the 1950s and beyond would prove whether it would be important to basic science in America.

Sputnik once again elevated the word "competition" in the language of government officials and the American public. Sputnik threatened the American national interest even more than the Soviet Union's breaking of America's atomic monopoly in 1949; indeed it rocked the very defense of the United States because Russia's ability to place a satellite into orbit meant that it could build rockets powerful enough to propel hydrogen bomb warheads atop intercontinental ballistic missiles. Perhaps more importantly, however, Sputnik forced a national self-appraisal that questioned American education, scientific, technical and industrial strength, and even the moral fiber of the nation. What had gone wrong, questioned the pundits as well as the man in the street. They saw the nation's tradition of being "Number One" facing its toughest competition, particularly in the areas of science and technology and in science education.

With its ties to the nation's research universities, the Foundation of course became a key player in the unfolding events during this trying time. An indication is shown by the large increase in Foundation monies for programs already in place and for new programs. In fiscal year 1958, the year before Sputnik, the Foundation's appropriation had leveled at $40 million. In fiscal 1959, it more than tripled at $134 million, and by 1968 the Foundation budget stood at nearly $500 million. Highlights of this phase of the agency's history cannot be told in a vacuum, however, but must be placed within the broad context of American political happenings.

The Congress reacted to Sputnik with important pieces of legislation and an internal reorganization of its own committees. Taken together, the action announced that America would meet the Soviet competition. The National Aeronautics and Space Act, more than any other post-Sputnik law, had great impact on increasing federal funding of scientific research and development. Signed by the president in July 1958, the law created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and gave it responsibility for the technological advancement of the space program. NASA became a major contracting agency and boosted tremendously the extra mural research support of the federal government. NASA not only symbolized America's response to the Soviet challenge, but also dramatized the federal role in support of science and technology.

Within the Congress, members reorganized to form permanent standing committees to deal with the space issue and with science and technology in general. The reorganization provided the Congress with a focal point not present before for science and technology issues. For the first time, too, the legislative branch gained a professional staff trained in science and technology. In mid-1958, the House created the Committee on Science and Astronautics while the Senate established the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Science. Although the latter committee limited itself to NASA and space issues, the House committee's jurisdiction extended over the space program and the nation's general science policies. This included oversight of the Foundation.

Sputnik raised questions about the ability of the nation's education system to compete. Congress responded with the National Defense Education Act of 1958. It emphasized science education and became a significant part of the country's science policy. The act provided a student loan program, aid to elementary and secondary school instruction in science, mathematics and foreign languages, and graduate student fellowships. While it was directed mostly at students rather than institutions, and was administered out of the United States Office of Education, the law had an important impact on federal support of science education. Both its fellowships and its institutional benefits followed geographic distribution patterns rather than the competitive elitist format typical of Foundation programs. Of even greater significance, however, the act opened the way for future legislation that redefined many of the relationships between the federal government and the education community.

The National Defense Education Act of 1958 also directed the Foundation to establish a Science Information Service. The agency always considered the dissemination of scientific information as one of its main support functions. It had, since 1953, run the National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel, a function assumed from the Office of Education. The new Office of Science Information in the agency provided both research and administrative support programs that covered storage and retrieval systems, mechanical translation, support for scientific publications, scientific data centers, and collection of foreign science information. The frequent notation, "Source: National Science Foundation" under graphs, charts, and tables in a wide variety of books and articles attested to the importance of the function.

As early as 1953, the Foundation had supported a few summer institutes for college teachers, but was extremely hesitant to start similar enterprises for high school teachers. It reluctantly did so in 1954 with one small institute, following in the footsteps of successful institutes sponsored by industry, universities, and private foundations. This slowly broadened in the years before Sputnik, as reports of Soviet schooling in science and mathematics raised queries in Congress about American support of education in the hard sciences. Although Foundation officials harbored reservations about its authority to support high school teacher training, and furthermore did not give it a high priority, Congressional pressure in this area taught them that Congress could and would set priorities for the agency through the budget process. By the summer of 1957, for example, there were institutes in all but five states. That fall Sputnik brought a huge boost in the Foundation budget for teacher institutes along with a chance to try other educational projects, including adoption of new curricula in physics, biology, chemistry, and mathematics.

Long before Sputnik, science policy makers were concerned with the state of research facilities and instrumentation, particularly at the nation's colleges and universities. The 1947 Steelman Report (the report of a temporary presidential board, headed by Truman assistant John R. Steelman, that addressed the status of American science) recommended that federal aid be given to universities for construction of facilities and purchase of expensive equipment. The report noted that distribution of surplus government property from World War II made a beginning in this direction, but that a more permanent solution had to be found. As a harbinger of what was to come, in 1956, Congress established a Health Research Facilities Program within the National Institutes of Health. It provided grants for up to 50~ of the cost for construction, remodeling, and equipping laboratories for health related research mostly at medical schools.

Early in 1956, the Bureau of the Budget asked the Foundation to report on the current status and future needs for research facilities and to ascertain the government's role in providing assistance. The Foundation's June 1957 report, "Federal Financial Support of Physical Facilities and Major Equipment for the Conduct of Scientific Research," found three conditions that affected the state of college and university science laboratories. First, the report emphasized the current deterioration of the nation's laboratories through long use, a condition exacerbated by a moratorium on new construction during World War II and current rapidly rising construction costs. Second, the nation was about to enter a period of greatly expanded college enrollment (the post-World War II "baby boom") that would have a tremendous impact over the next few years on the science laboratory needs. Third, the accelerating pace of scientific development and innovation tended to shorten the useful life of much of the equipment and instrumentation presently in place.

Since involvement by the federal government in aid to college and university education had always been a controversial issue, the report recommended a government policy of proceeding cautiously to support only facilities with a predominantly research character and to refrain from supporting facilities with an educational character (the report left unstated how to separate the two). The Foundation underscored that the first responsibility of the colleges and universities should be to seek funds from other than federal sources, and it set conditions before federal support would be considered: that there be an urgent need, it be in the national interest, and funds from other sources not be available. Consequently, the launching of Sputnik a few months later "merely" became a force that propelled the federal government more rapidly along a course that the Foundation had already recommended.

The Foundation's institutional programs, as they came to be called, outlived the immediate crisis of the Sputnik period and expanded into the "Golden Age" of science funding in the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. While Sputnik provided the thrust for the early programs, the burgeoning baby boom college population in the middle years of the 1960s, coupled with a wider role for the federal government in education under President Johnson's Great Society program, became the continuing driving force for many of the Foundation's programs.

In 1963, Congress passed the Higher Education Facilities Act and two years later it was incorporated in the broader Higher Education Act of 1965 as part of the Great Society program. Run by the Office of Education, both acts provided grants for general facilities construction at colleges and universities. Science facilities were a substantial part of the outlay, but the important point is that with passage of the two laws, a major general college building program began, supported largely by the federal government. New and continuing Foundation institutional programs not only fit this milieu but benefited from the larger Great Society philosophy.

The Foundation had started in 1960 with its Graduate Science Facilities program. It provided matching grants to help graduate degree granting universities build or renovate their research laboratories. After 1962, most of its funds went toward new construction. The agency's Institutional Grants for Science, started in 1961, broadened support for already established or first tier institutions through a formula based on awarded grants. In 1964, the Foundation launched its Science Development Grants, better known as the Centers of Excellence program. Spurred on by pressure from the executive branch, the agency wanted to increase the number of institutions of recognized excellence in research and education in the sciences. Criticism had been heavy for some time for the agency to redistribute science funding. By deliberately excluding the top twenty elite universities and concentrating its funding on second tier institutions, and by emphasizing geographical dispersion, the Centers of Excellence program not only responded to outside criticism but reflected the philosophy of the Great Society.

Relatively large awards were made to hire new faculty, support graduate students, and construct new facilities. In 1966, the agency broadened the program to include Departmental Science Development awards and Special Science Development awards to improve those subunits at many of the nation's second tier universities.

Like the construction funded under the Higher Education Acts, most of these agency programs outlasted the Great Society but were scaled back or eliminated in the more austere budgets of the early 1970s. Later surveys showed that in spite of the large increase in construction at the nation's colleges and universities, the increase in the baby boom college population apparently outdistanced construction. While the construction improved the infrastructure, student crowding along with continued use of the new facilities and instrumentation still meant a future need at a lot of places.

Big science projects accounted for a large part of the Foundation's increasing budgets during this period. And despite concerns that such enterprises might affect the budgets for the Foundation's traditional individual researchers, those fears proved unfounded. Expanding astronomy centers, the Antarctica program, and a new atmospheric research center were well-managed enterprises that contributed much scientific knowledge through basic research and continued to receive sizable appropriations. It is true that Project Mohole, a cleverly devised attempt to gain knowledge of the earth by drilling through its mantle from an ocean platform, became a management and financial albatross before Congress terminated it in 1965-66. Mohole opened the way, however, for other deep ocean sediment investigations. The Deep Sea Drilling Project began in 1968 and over the years revealed much new evidence about the theories of continental drift, sea floor spreading, and the general usefulness of the ocean basins. The program also became a model of international cooperation as several foreign countries joined the operation.

The Foundation's role in federal science policy making changed during this era. Alan Waterman had avoided the difficulty of attempting to coordinate federal science activities during the early years. After Sputnik, President Dwight Eisenhower's appointment of the first presidential science adviser unofficially relieved the Foundation of some of its coordinating responsibility. Eisenhower also established the President's Science Advisory Committee in 1957, consisting of a group of eminent scientists who collectively advised on a part-time basis. Thus science policy had a voice for the first time at the White House level. In 1959, the president took the advisory committee's advice and created a Federal Council for Science and Technology, made up of the heads of all federal agencies responsible for scientific research and development. The nine-member council was to consider research-related problems that cut across the missions of their agencies and make recommendations to the president. Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy appointed strong science advisers and the advisory committee rendered good service. The council, however, proved somewhat ineffective, mirroring the view Waterman had so long taken about coordination of the government's pluralistic science and technology policy.

Official notification that the Foundation would no longer be responsible for coordination of federal science policy came in 1962. In June, President Kennedy issued Reorganization Plan No. 2, an executive directive that added to the Executive Office of the President a permanent Office of Science and Technology headed by the science adviser. The plan simultaneously relieved the Foundation of its government-wide evaluation and policy making functions by transferring them to the new unit.

Throughout his two-term tenure, Waterman had vigorously adhered to a policy of support primarily for basic research in the face of growing pressure from several quarters to support applied research as well. In 1958, for example, Congress forced the agency reluctantly to supervise the government's weather modification program, a definite applied science endeavor. But for the most part, Waterman and his successor, Leland J. Haworth, who served from 1963 to 1969, believed that the first obligation of the agency should continue in the direction of basic research in the natural sciences. A physicist like Waterman, Haworth came to the Foundation from a position on the Atomic Energy Commission and prior to that he served as director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

In the aftermath of Sputnik, Congress during the 1960s became more involved with the nation's science policy. Out of that concern, the House Committee on Science and Astronautics established a Subcommittee on Science, Research and Development, best known as the Daddario Committee after its chairman, Democrat Emilio Q. Daddario of Connecticut. In 1965 it began an extensive review of the Foundation's charter that culminated in 1968 with amendment of the Foundation's basic law.

Joined by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts as Senate sponsor, the Daddario-Kennedy amendment required annual review of the Foundation's programs before both the House and Senate science subcommittees and annual authorization for its appropriation. Continuing authorization had been provided prior to the amendment. Organizationally, the deputy director and four assistant directors were to be appointed by the president. Up to then, only the director had to meet that requirement, while the assistant directors were appointed by the director. The amendment also designated the social sciences as a field eligible for Foundation support, elevating it from the vague "other sciences" category in which it had languished since 1950. But the most controversial part of the amendment authorized the Foundation to support applied as well as basic research. It hearkened back to the arguments of the postwar 1940s over the creation and purpose of the Foundation. The Daddario-Kennedy amendment considerably changed the Foundation, but it remained as the only general purpose science agency in the federal establishment that supported basic research.

Shortly before his untimely death, President Kennedy addressed the National Academy of Sciences on its hundredth anniversary. He warned the gathering that "scientists alone can establish the objectives of their research, but society, in extending support to science, must take account of its own needs." The elitism embodied in the science-government relationship dating to the post-World War II years had to give way to a broader, more democratic base. Kennedy's successor, very much a modern democrat and leveler, a graduate of non-elitist Southwest State Teachers College in Texas, probably did more to democratize that relationship through his Great Society philosophy than he is generally given credit for. In 1965 Lyndon B. Johnson told his cabinet that it was "very much the concern of the Federal Government" through funding of basic research to be sure that the nation's "future must rest upon diversity of inquiry as well as the universality of capability." So by bringing a Golden Age to science funding while insisting that those funds be distributed widely, Johnson made his impact.

Toward the end of his administration, however, the Golden Age came to an end. Increased spending on the Vietnam War coupled with outlays for other domestic programs forced reductions in civilian research budgets. The Foundation's budget increases of the previous few years leveled off. The next several years would see the Foundation still supporting basic research as its major endeavor, but also would see it embarking on new ventures in untried areas.

Just as the earlier years of the Foundation's history could not be viewed in a vacuum, so the more recent period must be treated the same way. Two circumstances influenced the Foundation during the period leading to the present. First was the attitude toward basic science taken by the two administrations that occupied the White House during these years. The second condition was the overwhelming effect of the economy on the federal budget throughout the period. Its significance continues beyond the ending date for this short history.

At first glance the administrations of Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan appeared to be dissimilar, and in many ways they were. But they dovetailed in one important tendency. The Carter presidency, the first Democratic administration since 1968, did not fit the liberal image of its Democratic predecessors. The nation had changed its political ideology considerably and by 1976 had moved toward the conservative side of the spectrum. Carter, who came from the moderate right side of the Democratic Party, perceptively rode the changing political environment to victory against his similar moderately conservative opponent, Gerald Ford. Carter campaigned against the Washington bureaucracy and the entrenched interests that he perceived lurking there. Once in office, he attempted to reduce the size of the federal establishment. While he was less than entirely successful, his effort symbolized a trend in the nation away from the big government of the New Deal-Great Society era. By the end of the Carter administration, his position on a smaller role for the federal government became so much in the mainstream of political thought that it was not an issue in his 1980 defeat by Ronald Reagan. In fact, the Republican candidate highlighted that position as something for which he also stood.

Both presidents also found common ground on areas in which the federal government had a major responsibility. National defense is the element most often underscored, but what is frequently overlooked is that the major buildup of the armed forces began in the Carter administration and was just intensified by Reagan. Likewise, both administrations looked upon support of basic research as a responsibility of the federal government, although for different reasons. Carter, trained as an engineer, viewed basic research as an investment in the nation's future and his administration sought to provide real growth in expenditures at the Foundation and in mission agencies that had basic research programs. The Reagan administration also believed strongly in research support, but the rationale changed somewhat: pure science should strengthen national defense and should contribute to economic growth by making the nation more competitive in a high technology world. Where the two administrations differed was in the area of applied research. There the Reagan people believed that federal support should be supplanted by greater private sector funding.

Support of basic research, however, was largely determined by the state of the economy. It was the primary political issue during this time, and both the Carter and Reagan budgets affected the programs of the Foundation. High inflation combined with somewhat stagnant productivity caused federal budgets to show increasingly large deficits. Even though the Foundation's annual budgets increased in sizable amounts during the Carter years, real gains were offset by inflation.

The Reagan administration took drastic budgetary measures in non defense areas to reduce the federal deficit while at the same time remove the government from activities it thought more appropriately belonged to other sectors. Although basic science remained an area that the administration supported in its overall budget, parts of the research spectrum were targeted for reduction. The administration cut the Foundation's budgets for fiscal years 1981 and 1982, with particularly hard hits aimed at the social sciences and science education. In both 1982 and 1983, Congress added funds to the president's request. For the first time, the Foundation's budget went beyond the billion dollar level in fiscal year 1983.

During the Ford-Carter-Reagan administrations, the leadership of the Foundation changed frequently with no director serving a full six-year term. Richard Atkinson, a psychologist who had been deputy director under Stever, assumed the directorship in June 1977. He left in July 1980 to become chancellor of the University of California at San Diego. John B. Slaughter succeeded Atkinson, but remained at the Foundation only until 1982 when he became chancellor at the University of Maryland. A physicist from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Edward A. Knapp, served the next two years. He resigned to return to Los Alamos. President Reagan appointed the current director, Erich Bloch, in September 1984. An engineer recently retired from an executive position at IBM, he is the first director to come from the corporate community.

Within the reduced government, stringent economy context of the early 1980s, the Foundation dealt with issues that moved it in new directions and kept it at the forefront of science and engineering activities. One of the particular areas emphasized was the role of engineering in the agency's programs. Engineering science had been a discipline supported by the Foundation from the beginning of the agency's history, but it never received a lot of funding because most engineering activities were applied in nature. After the change in the statute in 1968 allowing the agency to support applied research, several short-term engineering activities were supported under IRRPOS and RANN, while the long-term high-risk engineering science program was lodged in the directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Engineering.

In the late 1970s, looking to new ways to stimulate economic growth and competitiveness, the Foundation studied expanding its support of engineering sciences. A small division since 1964, in 1979, the Foundation elevated engineering to a separate directorate although the applied science programs were attached to it. Nonetheless, the agency recognized that engineering was different from science in style, traditions, and university institutionalization. In 1981 the applied science programs were distributed to other directorates. The Foundation further recognized engineering that year by including it alongside science in the Science and Engineering Education directorate. The usual cries were heard from segments of the research community that such emphasis would cause the engineering budget to grow at the expense of science. But the net effect removed the heat from Congressional bills to create a separate National Engineering Foundation.

Because engineering supports and interacts with several disciplines, the engineering directorate moved to capitalize on this by establishing an office of interdisciplinary research in 1981. The Foundation, meanwhile, asked the National Academy of Engineering to examine ways in which the agency could better support cross-disciplinary research. The Academy's 1983 report recommended establishment of engineering research centers, composed of larger groupings of researchers focusing on both research and education, as a way for scientists and engineers to build on one another's work. The agency developed a grant program to start the centers based in part on the Academy's guidance. In addition, the Foundation wanted the centers to provide a stronger link between academe and industry. It also hoped the centers eventually would become self-supporting. In 1985, the agency made the first six awards, ranging from a center for robotics systems in microelectronics at the University of California at Santa Barbara to a center for biotechnology process engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Reagan administration greatly reduced the Foundation's budget in fiscal years 1981 and 1982 in the areas of the social sciences and in science education. Both of these areas had always received a smaller share of funds than the physical and life sciences, but they were particularly susceptible to budget cuts under the new administration's philosophy. The administration did not consider social science as an area that supported the long-term economic health of the nation. The elimination of science education fit the philosophy of relinquishing the federal government's role in an area that it thought rightfully belonged to the state and local sectors. Sustained argument with officials of the Office of Management and Budget by the science board and the director, coupled with intense lobbying by the social science and science education research communities kept funds for those areas from being totally removed. Some modest increases resulted in these programs in later years.

The administration recognized that the national interest of the United States was reflected in the ability of the nation to compete in a high technology world. The Foundation, as the only agency providing general science support, has increasingly found itself at the cutting edge of that effort. New areas of research policy are in the offing in science and engineering and in education. Since 1982, the administration has advocated sizable expenditures in the Foundation's programs, especially in the physical and life sciences. The agency has also expanded its relationship with industry and state and local sectors, areas not entirely familiar to an agency accustomed to doing business mostly with the academic research community. At the same time, the agency has encouraged its academic constituency to look at industrial knowledge that would be applicable to both industry and science. All this has provided more visibility to the Foundation as the nation embraces high technology as a main solution to some of its national problems. It is a role the agency has shunned throughout its short history, preferring instead to do its job in the wings rather than close to center stage. How well the Foundation adapts to its changing place in the government establishment and in the expanded world of academic and industrial science and engineering will test all parts and traditions of the agency.

What broad themes, then, does this short survey of the history of the National Science Foundation provide the reader? To start, one would be wise to read or reread Vannevar Bush's classic short report, "Science -- The Endless Frontier." What Bush wanted to convey about the role of basic research in the progress of American science and technology is as appropriate today as it was in 1945. He emphasized that the frontier of science is always present and in keeping with the American tradition should be exploited for the good of the nation. He wrote that scientific research was tied to the nation's quest to avoid economic dislocation as well to create a reservoir of "scientific capital" so that it could remain at the forefront of scientific discovery. Bush argued convincingly and articulately for government support of science through an agency committed to pure science. His theme recurs throughout the agency's history and is particularly prescient in today's environment.

The larger context in which the agency's programs and policies developed are important to keep in mind. No agency operates in a vacuum. What happens in the larger world often drives an institution in a certain direction or at least causes it to vary its course. World War II, for example, affected how policy makers viewed government support of basic research. That event can claim a role as the handmaiden of the Foundation. The Soviet launching of Sputnik had a major impact on the agency, as did the expanding vision of government in America encompassed by the policy makers in the Great Society. Both events helped solidify the ties between the agency and the academic science community. The Great Society environment also provided the context in which the Foundation took on increased roles in applied science and in the social sciences. Indirectly, the Vietnam war had an impact. By draining funds from domestic programs and by helping to create a negative feeling toward the government in general, the war contributed to an uneasy environment for the Foundation, particularly in its relations with its academic clientele. The last few years has seen a shifting context to which the Foundation has had to adapt. International economic competition in a high technology world places a premium on the ability of the United States to provide science and engineering research and education to meet the challenge. That context already has and will continue to shape the direction the agency will take.

Internally, policy and personnel shaped the direction the agency took and affected the place it presently has in the nest of federal agencies. Very early, the Foundation decided to use a flexible grant mechanism to support its programs rather than by purchase of research through contract. Likewise, the agency elected early to evaluate research proposals through various forms of peer review, thereby causing its programs to be science driven rather than bureaucratically determined. Those policies have served the agency well and are a part of the Foundation's tradition. Equally important, highly skilled scientists and engineers formed the basic personnel element of the agency staff. Early in the Foundation's history, the policy of recruiting active researchers from the nation's universities to fill temporary assignments developed into a tradition that has provided the agency with a constant source of new blood and ideas. In addition, the practice has brought closer the association of the nation's colleges and universities with the Foundation.

Early experience with management of contractors who run the agency's large programs--such as Antarctic research, the astronomy and atmospheric research centers, and the ocean drilling program--has been beneficial to the Foundation. These enterprises allowed agency managers to be at the forefront of administering support for the new engineering research centers and the science and technology centers that are presently being developed.

Some issues have been debated since the early days of the Foundation and show no sign of being resolved to the satisfaction of everyone. The question of the fairness of peer review is raised periodically. The issue of geographic distribution of grants versus the objective of obtaining the "best science" has historically brought out advocates on both sides. The concern over applied versus basic science and engineering is a subject that also must constantly be discussed. The proper balance between individual science projects or "little science" and "big science" programs has been a subject of debate since the 1950s. While the arguments are often heated, the debate historically has been good for the agency because it forces policy makers to reassess those themes that go to the heart of the Foundation's mission.

Thus a strong case can be made for knowledge from the past to assist those who are presently creating history. The point is not to belabor the aphorism that "those who fail to study the past are condemned to repeat it," but rather to recognize that both continuity and change in history need to be understood to deal effectively with the present.