Herbert Hoover is probably best known as the president who was in the Oval Office on October 29, 1929. That day, known ever since as Black Tuesday, began a deep and protracted stock market decline, ushering in the Great Depression. Within 2 days, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about a quarter of its value, and by 1932, the last year of Hoover’s presidency, shares on the New York Stock Exchange had fallen cumulatively by an average of a staggering 90%. The financial collapse that began on Wall Street in 1929 spread across the world, leaving few areas untouched. In the 3 years that followed, the global economy contracted by almost 15%. Hoover’s reputation would forever be tarnished by the economic misery that touched tens of millions of people. By the time he left office, one in four Americans was unemployed, and most of those who were fortunate to have jobs were barely getting by.

Were it not for the Depression, however, Hoover might be remembered for his work promoting science and technology. He came to it naturally, having earned degrees in mining and civil engineering, and believing in progressive Republican principles. He served as Secretary of Commerce from 1921 until 1928 during the presidencies of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge at a time that was challenging financially for America’s scientific enterprise. Federal support of wartime research had not translated into peace time dollars, and any hope the National Research Council harbored for extending the central role it had played during the war was dashed within months of the treaty signing at Versailles that ended the war.

With federal underwriting of the science and technology enterprise existing in little more than name only, industry became the principal player on the research stage. Several giants dominated the scene in the 1920s, among them American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T), Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, General Telephone and Electronics, Kodak, and Westinghouse. They had one thing in common: they were “vertically integrated.” They conducted their own research (R), developed (D) their own technologies, tested (T) their own innovations, evaluated (E) the results of their endeavors, and marketed their products. In modern Defense Department parlance, they conducted their own RDT and E.

With few exceptions, the “central laboratories” of 1920s American industry focused on applied research directed at improving their company’s product lines. The quest to understand nature was not part of the industrial research portfolio. Basic or fundamental research, as it is commonly called, simply didn’t align with industry’s principal goal of generating profits—and it never will.

As Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover well understood and appreciated industry’s research priorities, and he harbored no illusion of being able to alter them. But as Secretary of Commerce, he also understood the importance of scientific research in a broader context. In 1925, his department housed the National Bureau of Standards, the Bureau of the Census, the Bureau of Fisheries, the Bureau of Mines, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the U.S. Patent Office. It was, at the time, and in most respects, the federal hub for scientific research.

Heading the Commerce Department gave Hoover a first-hand look at the integral nature of research. Compartmentalizing it, as an individual company did by focusing on applied programs, was understandable from the company’s viewpoint but he believed the future of American industry and the future of the country required more. They depended on a steady flow of scientific discoveries, and if industry was ill equipped to perform that mission, then others must. But who should they be, and where would the needed resources come from?

For his time and position, Hoover showed extraordinary breadth and depth of knowledge of the science and technology enterprise. In a December 1926 speech before a joint meeting in Philadelphia of the scientific honor society, Sigma Xi, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, he answered these questions with logic and clarity. His words bear close reading, because they remain just as relevant today in the 21st century as they were in the third decade of the 20th century.¹

There are few occupants of the White House who have had Herbert Hoover’s appreciation for science—Barack Obama being a notable contender—as well as the complex nature of the science and technology enterprise and the policies required for the enterprise to thrive. Sadly, Hoover’s words have largely been relegated to the footnotes of history. There are probably few modern-day policymakers who are aware of them, and even fewer scientists. Yet the arguments Hoover made remain applicable today. If anything, the gap between the nature of research performed in industrial laboratories and the nature of research performed elsewhere has grown even larger. And that gap has the capacity to stifle American innovation in the 21st century. More of that later.

Hoover wasn’t just venting or proselytizing at the December 28, 1926 joint meeting of the scientific research honor society Sigma Xi and the AAAS. And he certainly wasn’t bragging. He had been hard at work for months, pressing industry to pony up money for pure science research. But when he spoke about the National Academy of Sciences’ appeal to industry, he didn’t reveal to his audience that he had led it. If any of them had seen a front-page New York Times article on April 21, 1926, they certainly would have known. The headline read in full:

Educators might have seen only hope of progress, but the hue of their crystal ball was far too rosy, as 3-year’s worth of collections would show. By 1930, of the $3,000,000 pledged, only $379,660 had materialized.² The optimism of Hoover and the trustees of the fund had proven woefully misguided.

It is understandable why corporate contributions would have dried up following the 1929 stock market crash, but lack of financial support prior to that can only be attributed to the self-interest of industrial leaders who were focused on near-term results at the expense of long-term growth. If anything, those attitudes are far worse today, for reasons we will come back to.

In the end, Hoover’s dream of a National Research Fund dedicated to pure science turned out to be a fantasy. American support for fundamental research and scientific discovery would remain tepid until the end of World War II. It would take the science policy acumen and political savvy of Vannevar Bush,³ as well as the existential threats of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, to weave the quest for scientific knowledge for knowledge’s sake into the American fabric.

Halfway between P and Q Streets in northwest Washington, D.C. on the east side of 35th Street stands a nondescript neoclassic yellow brick and sandstone building that rarely sees any tourist traffic. Opposite Georgetown University, it’s a site that played a formative role in the story of America’s best-known industrial research facility, Bell Laboratories. During its 71 years of existence, Bell Labs, as scientists and techies called it, was AT&T’s innovation powerhouse, and an exemplar of industrial research facilities, bar none.

It all began on March 10, 1876. That was the day a Scottish immigrant, Alexander Graham Bell, used a telegraph modified with a liquid transmitter and spoke these famous words to his assistant: “Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you.”⁴ Just 3 days prior to the legendary demonstration, Bell had received patent 174,465 for his invention,⁵ which his filing detailed as “The method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically, as herein described, by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds, substantially as set forth.”⁶

Sometimes misfortune can be fortune in disguise, and what happened next is a perfect example. Bell and his partners, Thomas Sanders, a wealthy Boston businessman, and Gardner Greene Hubbard, a friend, financial backer, and soon to be father-in-law, offered to sell their patent to Western Union, for $100,000, but the telegraph company turned them down.⁷ That rejection would ultimately make Bell, Sanders, and Hubbard millionaires, although it would take two decades for their fledgling company, Bell Telephone,⁸ formed in 1877, to produce big returns.

In the meantime, Bell received a small financial reward, when L’Académie Française chose him as the winner of the 1880 Volta prize⁹ for his invention of the telephone. He used the 50,000 francs to found Volta Associates¹⁰ with the goal of developing devices that could record and transmit sound. His success continued, and 7 years later he sold his new patent rights to American Gramophone.¹¹

With his new-found wealth, he turned some of his attention to something and someone close to his heart. Mabel Hubbard, his wife and daughter of his partner, had lost her hearing to scarlet fever when she was five, and for Bell, now 40 years old, helping the deaf had special meaning. In 1887, he opened the Volta Bureau, setting up shop in his parents’ Washington carriage house, and for the next 6 years, in addition to working on inventions, he conducted research on the cause of deafness.

As his work expanded, his need for expanded space grew, and in 1893, he moved into his newly constructed building near his parent’s home on what is now the corner of 35th St. and Volta Place. Although primarily remembered for its work on deafness, the Volta Bureau is often considered the precursor to Bell Labs, because the structure served as Alexander Graham Bell’s first dedicated research laboratory.

Bell and his partners were quick to recognize the potential of long-distance telephone service, and in 1885 they formed AT&T Long Lines as a Bell Telephone subsidiary. AT&T’s rapid success led it to be the dominant corporate entity, and in 1899 it traded places with Bell Telephone, becoming Bell’s parent company. With that change, AT&T’s monopolistic die was cast. It would have major ramifications for science and technology—and the policies that guide them—extending almost 100 years into the future. It would also have significance for the operation, support, and extraordinary success of Bell Labs, which saw first life in lower Manhattan after several of AT&T’s engineering groups merged with Western Electric Research Laboratory in 1925. Bell Labs would ultimately generate eight Nobel prizes and a slew of blockbuster innovations, among them the transistor, the maser (the precursor to the laser), the solar cell, data networking, and cellular phone technology.

Alexander Graham Bell could never have dreamed of the technologies Bell Labs produced and the impact they would have on American life. Bell and his eponymous research laboratory owe their success not only to human creativity and the quest for knowledge, but also to the pillars of American innovation: patent protection, the availability of capital investment, and a free market of ideas. In the case of Bell Labs, itself, the benefits of being part of a regulated monopoly effectively guaranteed it robust, enduring financial support.

The Depression was devastating for America, and, indeed, the entire world. It left few sectors of the economy unscathed, and it damaged the lives of millions of people. Hoover’s plans for a National Research Fund lay in ruin, and by 1934, the National Bureau of Standards had lost 55% of the funding it had only 4 years earlier. Tens of thousands of scientists and technical workers were without jobs, and scores of research projects foundered.¹²

On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office as the 32nd president of the United States. That same day, Henry A. Wallace was sworn in as Secretary of Agriculture, following in the tradition of his father Henry C. Wallace, whom Warren G. Harding had tapped for the position in 1921. But Wallace, the elder, known as Harry, and Wallace, the younger, had dramatically different political philosophies. Harry was a Republican and a member of the protectionist school of trade policy, while Henry A. was a progressive Democrat in the mold of his boss, FDR, and an ardent internationalist.

If science had any advocate in the early years of the Roosevelt administration, it was Henry A., although his views differed sharply from those of the traditionalists who populated such august bodies as the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Wallace came to those views quite naturally. He had an undergraduate degree in animal husbandry, was an expert in statistics and econometrics, and had developed a modest reputation for his work in agricultural research.

From Wallace’s perspective, the full measure of the natural sciences extended well beyond the intellectual worth of discovery and the growing contributions to military technologies, industrial innovation, and agricultural productivity. Wallace believed that natural science’s human impacts—mostly overlooked, as he saw it—constituted an essential part of the measure. His view that the social sciences were as important as the natural sciences was not widely held by the scientific elite, but they meshed well with Roosevelt’s vision of the New Deal. Wallace’s aim was to make certain that economics, sociology, psychology, and political science received as much attention as agronomy, astronomy, biology, chemistry, math, and physics. He hoped that natural scientists would accept his proposition, but he was highly skeptical they would. The verdict was not long in coming. Once again, not surprisingly, it would involve the National Academy of Sciences.

At the time, the chairman of the National Research Council was Isaiah Bowman,¹³ a prominent geographer and director of the American Geographical Society. Later, his reputation would be sullied by charges of anti-Semitism when he was president of Johns Hopkins University. But in 1933, Bowman was well respected scientifically and well connected politically, leading policymakers to take his views seriously.

From its inception, the NRC had organized its activities around individual scientific disciplines, much the way its parent, the National Academy of Sciences, did, in the tradition of universities from which both drew most of their members. Bowman recognized that the government’s science and technology portfolio did not fit neatly into such a mold, and that any work the NRC carried out for the government needed a much broader, more encompassing perspective. He proposed that the federal government create a board under the auspices of the Academy and the NRC, mandating it to examine and advise the government across the breadth of its science and technology activities. Wallace, who viewed such a construct as consistent with his own vision of the integration of the natural and social sciences, put Bowman’s proposal on Roosevelt’s desk. The result was the Science Advisory Board, established by executive order in the summer of 1933 with Karl Taylor Compton serving as its chair.

Compton seemed like an ideal choice. His pedigree extended well beyond his physics research in atomic spectroscopy and electronic and atomic collisions. He had been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He was a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the Franklin Institute. He had served in the State Department and had carried out military research for the Army Signal Corps during World War I. At the time Roosevelt named him to head the Science Advisory Board, Compton was chairman of the board of the American Institute of Physics and president of one of the leading engineering schools in the world, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

To be sure, there were a few gaps in Compton’s résumé: agriculture, biology, and the social sciences were missing, for example. But Roosevelt would have been hard pressed to find anyone else with Compton’s science and technology breadth who could match his enthusiasm for the entire enterprise.

Both Compton and Bowman saw the Board’s strength in its arms-length relationship with the government, which gave it an ability to provide unbiased assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of federal programs, and the bureaus that oversaw them. Under Compton’s stewardship, the Board fully bought into Wallace’s vision of science for the social good, proposing that a portion of public works funds be allocated to research in support of the industrial recovery and relief programs that were key elements of Roosevelt’s “New Deal.”

It seemed like a good idea on paper, but it ran into a major legal obstacle. Funds allocated for public works projects could only be used for construction. As we will see in the narrative about the 2009 America Recovery and Reinvestment Act in Chapter 11, that object lesson was not lost on proponents of the successful science stimulus in 2009. Before Compton and his colleagues could find a legal work-around, the Advisory Board encountered new headwinds. Even though it had adopted Wallace’s worldview, it had not reached out to the social science community. Nor had it brought into its fold scientists who worked for the government. Both mistakes would prove to be a significant impediment to the Board’s success.

But the infighting didn’t end there. Some members of the National Academy, including its president, William Wallace Campbell, believed they had been ignored, as well, and began attacking Compton and Bowman. For anyone who might think of science as a monolithic endeavor, the behavior of the community in 1934 should give great pause. Such backbiting is more the rule rather than the exception to it, and it carries a strong message for policymakers: do not count on the unconditional support of scientists for strategies they do not clearly recognize as benefitting their own self-interests.

Roosevelt’s decision to expand the Board with members whose science pedigrees were either weak or absent entirely only made matters worse. But Compton was undeterred, and later in the year, perhaps recognizing that money might unify the science community, he made a pitch to Roosevelt. Boost federal spending on natural science research by $15 million annually for 5 years, and commit one third of the money to non-governmental research. The amount of money, the non-governmental nature of a large chunk of it, and the multiyear spending plan were all unheard of at the time. Compton did get one thing right, the natural science community swung behind his plan. It was clearly in their own self-interest.

Roosevelt was more circumspect in his response and tasked his Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, with reviewing the proposition. Ickes, Roosevelt’s main go-to man, also chaired the recently constituted National Resources Planning Board, which served as the New Deal’s central coordinating committee. Compton’s proposal reached the highest echelons of Roosevelt’s policy apparatus. All it needed was the thumbs up from Ickes. But on the advice of Frederic Delano, the president’s uncle who served on the Resources Planning Board, Ickes gave it the thumbs down.

There were a number of problems with Compton’s proposal, as Delano and Ickes saw it. First, the magnitude of spending on science was far too large. Second, the multiyear commitment had no legal precedent and no implementation mechanism through the annual appropriations process. Third, there was no provision for continuing activities beyond the 5-year term. Fourth, the social sciences—which were essential parts of Wallace’s vision for the New Deal—had been left out. And fifth, setting up a fund to support unspecified research projects was more than the Roosevelt Administration could countenance.

In a last gasp, the Science Advisory Board scaled its proposal back from 5 to 2 years and slashed the spending total to $1.75 million. But it met with the same fate as the original one.

Compton had given it his best shot, but in the end, Wallace’s skepticism proved correct. Getting all the natural sciences and all the social sciences on the same page and getting them to set goals that were politically realizable proved to be an insurmountable task. With Compton’s proposals consigned to the dustbin, Roosevelt notified the Science Advisory Board in February 1935 that its services were no longer needed. The Science Board would close its doors at year’s end.

Compton’s efforts were not entirely for naught. He had raised the profile of research on the national stage, and the with the demise of the Science Board in the offing, the National Resources Board saw fit to establish its own science committee, but making sure that the social sciences and education were accorded the same stature and representation as the natural sciences. Two years later, at the committee’s behest, Roosevelt called for a reexamination of the “role of the federal government in supporting and stimulating research,” noting that research was “one of the Nation’s greatest resources.”

The study group, chaired by University of Chicago psychologist, Charles Judd, cast its net widely. It’s report, “Research – A National Resource,”¹⁴ which appeared in November 1938, provided the first true look at the full array of America’s science and technologies activities. It’s 21 findings and 8 recommendations provided a framework for the federal government’s role in scientific research. They are certainly worth reading for their historical perspective. But there is a more compelling reason. The extent to which they continue to have relevance is truly remarkable, as the following selection illustrates:

Findings

1. From the earliest days of national history the Government of the United States has conducted scientific investigations in order to establish a sound basis for its legislative and administrative activities, Government agencies were pioneers in this country in carrying on research…

3. Research is at the present time universally recognized as highly important. Universities, the foundations, special research institutions, and industrial and commercial concerns are all engaged in the encouragement and prosecution of research in many lines.

4. Competition for research workers and the demand for large funds to support research have created a situation which calls for better coordination of the research facilities of the Nation than now exists.

5. Research is of many different types. There is ample opportunity for all the agencies, private and public, engaged in research to make valuable contributions, especially if further cooperation can be developed.

6. The Congress engages directly in many lines of inquiry through its special committees and special commissions. It often carries on through these committees and commissions researches which contribute significant findings to both the natural sciences and social sciences.

7. When research projects become elaborate and the necessity for continued investigations of particular types arises, the Congress creates permanent research agencies to make these investigations…

10. Most branches of the government are supplied with a research division…

12. Research agencies in the Government have taken advantage of the aid which can be contributed by able scientists not in the employ of the Government…

14. The solution of the problem of the utilization of the research facilities of the country as aids to research in the Government is rendered possible by the existence of national councils made up of specialists in the major lines of research.

15. The Government has developed a pattern of cooperation with research agencies outside the Government by making contracts for the prosecution of special research projects with responsible institutions and national organizations…

17. Research supported by States and municipal governments is now common, the possibilities of cooperation between the Federal Government and the other units of government in the country should be more fully explored than they have been up to the present time.

18. Similarly, the universities in some areas have organized with a view to cooperating with one another and with the Government.

19. International cooperation in scientific research now exists on a large scale. It could be encouraged to the great advantage of this Nation if the Federal Government would adopt the practice which is common among Governments of other nations of according official recognition and, wherever necessary, financial support to international gatherings of scientists.

20. The methods of securing the funds necessary for research in the Government can be improved. Clear and explicit statements as to the purposes of research projects should be prepared by research agencies. The equipment of the Bureau of the Budget for the consideration of research proposals should be substantially increased…

Recommendations

On the basis of the survey which it has sponsored, the Science Committee makes the following recommendations:

4. That research agencies of the Government be authorized and encouraged to enter into contracts for the prosecution of research projects with the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, the Social Science Research Council, the American Council on Education, the American Council of Learned Societies, and other recognized research agencies.

5. That official recognition and, where necessary, financial support be given by the Government to international meetings of scientists, and that American participation in international organizations and projects be encouraged.

6. That research within the Government and by nongovernmental agencies which cooperate with the Government be so organized and conducted as to avoid the possibilities of bias through subordination in any way to policy-making and policy-enforcing.

7. That research agencies of the Government extend the practice of encouraging decentralized research in institutions not directly related to the Government and by individuals not in its employ…

“Research – A National Resource” might have had a greater impact had it not been for the gathering storm clouds that presaged the outbreak of the Second World War. The timing for a U.S. science renaissance could not have been worse. Charles Judd’s ad hoc committee released its report on November 21, 1938. Less than ten months later, World War II began when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

About the only area of research that managed to gain a broader mandate before the nation once again turned its attention to military matters, was public health. From its inception, the National Institute of Health, reflecting its Hygienic Laboratory genesis, had been focused solely on infectious diseases. On August 5, 1937, Congress broke new ground when it authorized the creation of a new entity, the National Cancer Institute, as part of the Public Health Service.

The legislation¹⁵ not only expanded the boundaries of federal health research, it explicitly gave the government the ability to sponsor research outside the confines of federal laboratories. The 1937 Act created a National Cancer Advisory Council, authorizing it: “To review applications from any university, hospital, laboratory, or other institution, whether public or private, or from individuals, for grants-in-aid for research projects relating to cancer, and certify to the Surgeon General its approval of grants-in-aid in the cases of such projects which show promise of making valuable contributions to human knowledge with respect to the cause, prevention, or methods of diagnosis or treatment of cancer…”

Had the war not intervened, it is possible that other areas of scientific research might have received equally expansive recognition. But a greater federal role in the science and technology arena would have to wait for the world conflict to run its course. The dawn of a new American research era would not occur until the end of the 1940s. Much would transpire before that time.

Although America’s entry into World War II did not occur until Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. had already been supplying the Allies with military equipment for many months. If World War I had been a war of technology, it was becoming abundantly clear to military planners and policymakers that World War II was going to be a technology conflict on steroids. That posed a big problem for the United States, because the work of the Science Advisory Board, the National Resources Planning Board, and Judd’s ad hoc committee had all pointed to significant shortfalls in America’s research capabilities. The technological demands of a new world war would reveal just how far those deficits extended.

Vannevar Bush was among those who well understood the precarious condition of the nation’s research establishment. An engineer by training, he had left his post as vice president of MIT to become president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1939. From his perch in the nation’s capital and with his ties to MIT, he was in a perfect position to assess both how the war might affect the nation’s science enterprise, and whether the nation’s science enterprise was capable of assisting the impending war effort. Both assessments alarmed him greatly.¹⁶

Striking the correct balance between military research and “civilian” research, both pure and applied, also weighed heavily on his mind. He elaborated on the thorny matter in his 1939 “Report of the President” of the Carnegie Institution, writing:¹⁷

                    The Emergency

Vannevar Bush would reprise the theme at the end of the war in Science the Endless Frontier – A Report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research, July 1945,¹⁸ where he would lay out his vision for American leadership in science and technology that would endure for decades.

Bush’s defense of pure science notwithstanding, America’s science community, including Bush, came to the defense of the nation in major ways during World War II. The war needs largely shaped America’s science and technology policies of that era, and resources for research largely reflected military exigencies. In 1940, Roosevelt was facing both re-election and the inevitability of America’s entry into the war. He had learned two lessons from the Depression: the value of preparedness and the importance of acting boldly. Drawing on both, he established the National Defense Research Committee to help mobilize America’s scientific talent in support of weapons research. The NDRC¹⁹ grew out of a series of meetings the president had convened with four leaders of the science community. James B. Conant, a chemist who was president of Harvard University at the time, and Frank B. Jewett, a physicist who had been the first head of Bell Labs and was then serving as the National Academy’s president, had joined Bush and Compton in helping Roosevelt develop plans to confront the Nazi technological war machine. Strikingly, no social scientists or representatives of the military had seats at the planning table. Nor did anyone from any of the federal agencies.

The composition of the eight-member NDRC was somewhat broader. Rear Admiral Harold C. Bowen, director of the Naval Research Laboratory, and Brigadier General George V. Strong, who represented the Army, complemented the original gang of four, along with Conway P. Coe, Commissioner of Patents, and Richard C. Tolman, dean of the California Institute of Technology graduate school and professor of physical chemistry and mathematical physics. But the NDRC, even with Bush at its helm, still lacked sufficient engineering and industrial expertise on which the military technologies depended. It also lacked both the money and the authority to translate research outcomes into the development and production of instruments of war.

At Bush’s suggestion, Roosevelt established a new organization in June 1941 with far broader representation, more extensive authority, and significantly expanded funding, naming Bush as its chairman. The Office of Scientific Research and Development or OSRD,²⁰ as it became known, would manage all wartime science and technology activities for the military. And with the war effort marshalling most of the nation’s scientific talent, OSRD would become the de facto coordinator of virtually all American research, from the physical sciences and engineering to the agricultural sciences and health. As its chairman, Bush became the most powerful voice of American science and technology. His other Washington responsibilities only enhanced his clout.

Bush was a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics—which he had chaired for 2 years prior to 1940—and in his advisory role to the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, he led the Joint Committee on New Weapons and Equipment. He was the point person for OSRD’s Section S-1, its top-secret Committee on Uranium, and, as Roosevelt’s confidant on all matters technological, he was in effect the first presidential science advisor, even if he didn’t have the title.

In 1945, as the war was winding down, Bush would use his influence and stature to shape American science and technology policy according to his own vision. His paradigm would endure for half a century or more. If he had gotten it wrong, the outcome could have been ruinous. But he didn’t, and the result, as we will see, turned out to be nothing short of remarkable.

From 1941 to 1945, military needs largely dictated America’s science and technology policy. Of the many wartime efforts, the Manhattan Project²¹ undoubtedly is the best known and best documented. It began with discussions among three Hungarian-born Jewish émigrés, Leo Szilárd, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller. Among the most talented nuclear physicists in the world, they had sought refuge in the United States as Hitler began to crank up the Nazi war machine. Believing firmly that an “atomic bomb” was not only feasible, but already on Hitler’s radar screen, they sought Albert Einstein’s help in warning both the Belgian government—which was innocently supplying Germany with uranium from the Congo—and President Roosevelt of the German threat. It was early July 1939. Two months later Hitler would attack Poland.

Szilárd, Wigner, and Teller knew that Einstein’s name would attract more attention than their own, and ultimately, they would be proved right. Belgium was the easy part: Einstein wrote a letter directly to the country’s ambassador explaining the danger.²² But getting a similar message to Roosevelt proved more complicated. To be certain the president would actually see it and grasp its significance, someone had to deliver it and explain it. Szilárd settled on the economist Alexander Sachs, who was a quick study and very close to Roosevelt.

Szilárd drafted the letter, Einstein signed it, and on August 15, they sent it to Sachs. Had Germany not invaded Poland two weeks later, Sachs might have been able to get a meeting with Roosevelt promptly, but with the world in turmoil, he had to wait until October 11. Once in the Oval Office, he made the case in a lengthy discourse, so lengthy, in fact, that the president finally interrupted him, saying, “Alex, what you are after is to see they don’t blow us up.”²³

Roosevelt acted quickly, establishing a small Advisory Committee on Uranium. To chair it, he chose Lyman Briggs, then director of the National Bureau of Standards, adding two military men as liaisons to the Army and Navy. Even though Briggs had no background in nuclear physics, Roosevelt’s choice seemed reasonable, because NBS had been the government’s principal research agency from its inception in 1903. To provide the needed nuclear physics expertise, Briggs invited Szilárd, Wigner, and Teller to the committee’s first meeting on October 21—just 10 days after Sachs had spoken with Roosevelt. Later he added Enrico Fermi, an Italian émigré, and without question, the preeminent American expert in nuclear fission, the essence of the atomic bomb.

The committee suffered no lack of scientific brilliance, but the backgrounds of its immigrant advisors were not in sync with American norms. Fearful of German scientific proficiency, they veered toward extreme secrecy. Whatever progress American researchers might make on a nuclear weapon, they feared, would find its way into Hitler’s bomb development plans. Moreover, their European experience had not prepared them for the more egalitarian nature of American science. Embracing a larger community to build support in order to get things done was simply not part of their DNA. As a result, outside their small circle, only a few physicists understood the urgent nature of the fission program.

Ernest Lawrence, who had won the physics Nobel Prize in 1939 for inventing the cyclotron, was one. Arthur Compton, who had won the prize previously in 1927 for demonstrating the particle nature of light, and was Karl Compton’s younger brother, was another. By the spring of 1940, both of them had become extremely worried that the Briggs committee had made far too little progress during the six months of its existence. Despite their stellar reputations, however, they were unable to do much about it.

That June, the newly formed NDRC, chaired by Vannevar Bush, took ownership of the advisory group, renaming it the Committee on Uranium. But even that transfer and the new oversight that came with it had little impact on the sluggish pace. The committee simply had the wrong leadership and the wrong mix of members and advisors. It is a lesson that policymakers need to take to heart.

Inside the committee, secrecy remained a serious issue, but outside, it was business as usual. The contradiction might have remained, but for a plea from the British government that specifically targeted work at Lawrence’s Berkeley cyclotron laboratory. Britain’s intervention into American nuclear affairs reflected three realities. First, British bomb research was far ahead of the U.S. effort. Second, Britain was already in a death struggle with the Nazis, while America was still debating whether to join the battle. Third, with its resources stretched thin by the war, the British program would benefit from a collaboration with U.S. scientists. The secrecy request and the collaboration proposal both found ready audiences.

Unexpectedly, it was the science community rather than the federal government that reacted first to the British call for greater secrecy. The National Academy of Sciences seized the day. It established a committee to review scientific manuscripts and censor those that might give Germany insight into critical nuclear physics research results. Executing a collaboration agreement was more complicated, but from a scientific perspective, the timing was right.

When the Office of Scientific Research and Development subsumed the NDRC in June 1941, physicists already understood that two kinds of atomic bombs were potentially realizable. One would require uranium-235, an “isotope” that occurs in natural uranium ore only at a level 0.7%, and the other would need plutonium-239, an isotope of a synthetic element that does not occur in nature at all. Producing a sufficient amount of either fissile material was a monumental task and far beyond the scope or funding of the Uranium Committee.

British physicists had been looking into the feasibility of an atomic bomb since April 10, 1940. In early 1941, they tried to get Briggs to share their preliminary findings with his committee. But Briggs, consistent with his peculiarly plodding personality, simply sat on the material, not letting anyone else see it. Finally, out of frustration, the British team—code named “MAUD”—decided to bypass Briggs entirely, and that August they sent one of their members, Mark Oliphant, to meet with Lawrence at his Berkeley, California cyclotron laboratory.

The meeting was successful: the findings were solid. And on October 3, 1941, the British delivered a copy of their final report directly to Vannevar Bush, once again bypassing Briggs. Before the week was out, Bush had the report in Roosevelt’s hands and requested the president’s approval for an American program to validate the British findings. Roosevelt gave it a green light, and on December 18, 11 days after Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, Bush convened the first meeting of OSRD’s Section S-1, dedicated to the development of an atomic bomb. A month later Roosevelt formally authorized the project.

Briggs remained chairman of the committee, but the addition of new members injected a new dynamism into its operations in spite of him. Plutonium production work began under Fermi at the University of Chicago in January. And with an executive committee comprising Bush, Compton, Conant, Lawrence, and Harold Urey (a professor of physical chemistry at Columbia University) the committee authorized construction of a uranium isotope separation facility in Tennessee that June. Two months later, the Army Corps of Engineers became operational arm of the project, taking on its massive construction needs.

The “Manhattan Engineering District,” as it was called in recognition of the central role New York physicists had been playing, took on a distinctly military flavor. Brigadier General Leslie Groves assumed command of the project in September, and a month later appointed J. Robert Oppenheimer to coordinate the scientific research. Now known as the “Manhattan Project,” or simply “Manhattan,” the main research and development effort moved from New York to Los Alamos, a remote mesa in New Mexico, which the scientists and engineers who worked on the top-secret project called, “The Hill.”

But the Los Alamos facility did not have responsibility for producing the highly-enriched (U-235) uranium or the plutonium needed for the weapon. That task fell to other sites: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; Chicago, and later Argonne, Illinois; and Ames, Iowa. In all, the Manhattan Project was an immense undertaking, employing 130,000 workers and costing almost $2 billion in 1945 dollars, or nearly $20 billion in 2016 dollars.²⁴

At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer assembled a brilliant team, inspiring them with a fanaticism rarely seen in any research arena. Groves kept tabs on their activities, ever watchful for breaches of security. On July 16, 1945, their work came to fruition at the “Trinity Test Site” in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The plutonium bomb, they called “The Gadget,” worked better than they had imagined. It exploded with an equivalent energy of 20 kilotons of TNT, producing a mushroom cloud that reached an altitude of 7.5 miles in the sky, melted the desert sand, and sent a shock wave felt more than a hundred miles away.²⁵

Three weeks later, Harry S Truman, who had assumed the presidency after Roosevelt’s death on April 12, authorized nuclear strikes on two Japanese industrial cities. On August 6, a B-29 bomber, carrying the inscription, “Enola Gay,” dropped a uranium-235 bomb called “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. Three days later, “Bockscar,” another B-29, flew over Nagasaki and released “Fat Man,” a replica of the Trinity Gadget. The devastation was terrifying. Although the exact death toll will never be known, estimates run as high as 200,000–300,000.

The two bombings, which ushered in the nuclear age, demonstrated the destructive power of modern physics. They elevated killing to a new and frightening level. But they also revealed the extraordinary capabilities of American scientists and showcased the effectiveness of wartime science and technology policy—at least once the kinks were ironed out. Science had won the war, not only with the atomic bomb, but with radar, sonar, aviation, and medicine. Whether the policies that produced such scientific and technological breakthroughs could be adapted to advance an America at peace was yet to be determined.