Vannevar Bush

More than any other thinker, Vannevar Bush is responsible for laying the foundation of the modern public/private partnership that continues to be the dominant American model for funding basic scientific research. Bush headed the major prewar and wartime efforts, centered in the National Defense Resources Committee and the Office of Scientific Research and Development, that successfully mobilized America’s scientific and technology capacity. Two U.S. government-funded projects, the MIT Radiation Laboratory (RadLab), and the Manhattan Project, ultimately gave Allied forces a crucial technological edge. Bush played an equally important role in designing postwar efforts: in 1945, at President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s request, he wrote Science: The Endless Frontier, which linked government support of basic science to the goal of stimulating the economy. Bush failed to see his clear-eyed vision of one uniform, civilian-controlled federal agency to fund all federally supported research (including all military and non-military applications) enacted. Yet Bush’s primary goal — promoting basic scientific research through policies including federal government funding — was accepted and soon led to the formation of agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).