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The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 (1978)

Chapter: 15 The Years between the Wars

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Suggested Citation:"15 The Years between the Wars." National Academy of Sciences. 1978. The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/579.
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2~ '[he Years between the Wars ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (~947—i950) After the dynamic wartime presidency of Frank B. Jewett, that of Alfred Newton Richards was in the nature of an interregnum, low- keyed and lasting just three years. Yet, during that brief period the Academy and its President were involved in some of the most urgent and intensive inquiries in its history. Trained at the turn of the century in the new science of physiologi- cal chemistry, Richards had been for almost forty years Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania. His was a career with few interruptions apart from a brief tour of duty in ~9 ~8 setting up a field laboratory for the study of problems of chemical warfare at Chaumont, France. Behind Richards's deceptive gravity of mien lay a lively sense of humor and a pungent wit. He delighted in teaching and frequently declared it as important to him as his research. His classroom manner and even his research papers were characterized by a lifelong habit of 475

476 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) Alfred Newton Richards, Pres- ident of the Academy, ~947- ~gbo (Photograph courtesy Chase News). self-deprecation. This, however, did not conceal the importance of the discoveries he made in the physiology of the kidney and in the chemistry of digestion, adrenal glycosuria, the action of cyanides, and histamine. Among his most significant contributions were his classic paper with Dale in ~9~8 on the effect of histamine on the circulation of the blood, and his verification in ~923, by microexperimental methods he devised, of Karl Ludvig's f~ltration-reabsorption theory of urine formation proposed more than half a century before.2 He was elected to the Academy in ~927. Richards's term as Chairman of the Academy Section on Physiology and Biochemistry, his first Academy office, was just ending when he was called to Washington by Vannevar Bush in ~94~ to direct the Committee on Medical Research (CMR) of the OSRD. In Bush's words: It soon became evident that the one man for chairman was A. Newton Richards. He had a distinguished record in medical research. But, more ' Car! F. Schmidt in HAS, Biographical Memoirs 42:271-318 (~97~). See also DetIev W. Bronk's "Alfred Newton Richards ( ~ 876- ~ 966)," Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 19:413~22 (Spring ~976). 2 Charles l. Singer and E. Ashworth Underwood, A Short History of Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2d ea., ~962), pp. 302, 559.

The Years between the Wars 1 477 important, he was a wise man, trusted by all who knew him. It was a fortunate choice. Many years later, for he lived to be ninety, I concluded that, of all the able men I have known, of all the men of science I have known, he was the most fully respected, yes, the most beloved by his colleagues and by everyone who knew him., As Chairman of the Committee on Medical Research, Richards pre- sided over more than three hundred wartime projects in the medical sciences, showing "great patience and skill in piloting the CMR in a difficult role," guiding the huge research and development programs in plasma, penicillin, and the new sulfa drugs; in infectious diseases; in insecticides; and in aviation medicine. In these and other pro- grams, CMR made effective use of two major operating agencies of the National Research Council, the Division of Medical Sciences headed by Lewis Weed and the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Technol- ogy headed by W. Mansfield Clark.4 When his duties as Chairman of CMR ended early in ~946, Newton Richards returned on a full-time basis to the University of Pennsyl- vania, where he resumed his duties as Vice-President in Charge of Medical Affairs. A year later, at age seventy-one, he was elected President of the National Academy. He was reassured by Hewett that with the postwar confusion easing and Academy affairs in good shape he would not find the presidency "unduly onerous." Admitting some apprehension "The unknown is full of terrors" Richards accepted Jewett's offer of help and his assurance that the complicated process of selecting and sending to Japan the group of scientists requested by Gen. Douglas MacArthur to advise on the rehabilitation of Japanese science would be ac- complished before Richards took over.5 Richards, like Hewett, was to spend just two or three days each week in Washington, conducting much of the routine of the Academy office, with the help of a part-time secretary, from his office in Philadelphia. He felt a strong sense of personal responsibility for the Academy, however, as well as increasing distress over the postwar world. He was aware of the turmoil of reorganization and adjustment in federal agencies, and in his first annual report he called attention to ~ Vannevar Bush, Pieces of the Action (New York: William Morrow & Co., ~970), p. 4. 4 Memorandum, Carroll L. Wilson to Vannevar Bush, May lo, ~943 (OSRD Box 39). 5 Frank B. Jewett to Alfred N. Richards, May 5, ~947, and replies on May 7 and May 9, ~947; Jewett to Richards, May 9, ~947 (NAS Archives: Jewett file solo).

478 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) "the paucity of direct requests from departments of the Goverr~- ment."6 During those years the involvement of leading Academy members in the angry debates in and out of Congress over the organization of the National Science Foundation and the Atomic Energy Commission reflected for a time on the Academy's reputation for detachment. The Loyalty Issue The controversy over atomic legislation caused some Congressmen to resent the scientists who had worked on the atomic bomb and who had been active in seeking transfer of control of atomic energy from the army to the civilian AEC. Rumors of foreign and domestic Communist activities in connection with the development of the bomb began to appear in the press. On July ~7, ~947, the press reported that Representative l. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, was investigating Edward U. Condon, atomic physicist, member of the Academy, and recently appointed Director of the National Bureau of Standards, concerning his acquaintance with Russian scientists and with alleged Communist sympathizers in this country. Dr. Condon, at Los Alamos during the war, had been scientific adviser to the McMahon committee that secured civilian control of atomic energy. Congressman Thomas pointed out that Condon, as the current head of the National Bureau of Standards, directed "one of the most important national defense research organizations in the United States, the target of espionage agents of numerous foreign powers."7 Innuendo became allegation in March ~948, when Thomas handed a report of his subcommittee to the newspapers, charging that "the Soviet Union and her satellite nations have been desperately attempt- ing ... to secure our complete atomic knowledge.... From the evi- dence at hand, it appears that Dr. Condon is one of the weakest links in our atomic security." He has, said Thomas, "knowingly or unknow- ingly, entertained and associated with persons who are alleged Soviet 6 NAS, Annual Report for 1947~S, pp. i, 6; fewest to members of the Council of the Academy, June lo, ~947 (NAS Archives: lewett file solo). 7 The quotations here and background of the episode are from Stephen K. Bailey and Howard D. Samuel, Congress at Work (New York: Henry Holt & Co., ~952), pp. 32~-336, 487.

The Years between the Wars 1 479 espionage agents." As he had repeatedly since the previous July, Condon again asked to be heard by the subcommittee. He was ignored. At the annual meeting of the Academy in April ~948, President Richards reported on a statement approved earlier by a majority of the Academy membership condemning the Thomas subcommittee's refusal to hear Condon and pointing out that such treatment was certain to deter scientists from entering government employment and to diminish the respect of citizens for service in the government. The statement, presented by Richards to Thomas at an interview on April ~4, produced the promise of a hearing on April 23. When none was held, Richards on May 3 gave a report on the Academy statement to the press.8 Although he had long been cleared by the loyalty board of the Department of Commerce, by the two Commerce Department Sec- retaries under whom he had served, and most recently by the Atomic Energy Commission, Condon continued to be the object of the subcommittee's defamation by innuendo. One consequence was that scientists in large numbers, particularly in the atomic field, left government laboratories to return to their universities. In September ~95 I, convinced that he would not be heard and that the calumny had destroyed his usefulness to the Bureau of Standards, Condon submit- ted his resignation to President Truman. The Condon episode coincided with a series of crises in this country's relations with Russia, a period also marked by a temporary stasis in the debate on science legislation in Congress. Using its veto in the United Nations to sabotage every effort to restore the war- wrecked economies of Europe or to come to any agreement on the international control of atomic energy, Russia began moving into the political vacuum, raising the spectre of a third world war. When in ~946 Russia threatened to draw Greece and Turkey into the Soviet orbit, the Truman Doctrine, announced in March ~947, promised U.S. support to nations resisting Russian aggression. In February ~948 Czechoslovakia fell to Communist domination, an event followed by the attempted takeover of Finland, the blockade of Berlin, and the threat of Communist Party domination of France and Italy. The Marshall Plan, formulated by the United States in April NAS, Annual Report for 1947~8, pp. 5-6. For the Academy's Committee on Civil Liberties appointed in November ~ 948 under James Conant, with members O. E. Buckley and J. Robert Oppenheimer, see Annual Reportfor 1948-49, pp. 2, lO; NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Civil Liberties: Ad Hoc: ~948-~949

480 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947 - 1950) ~948, began the restoration of European economies. With the organi- zation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March ~949, Canada, the United States, and ten nations of Northern Europe agreed to joint action in the event of attack by Russia. World fears continued to grow when Chiang Kai-shek fled to Formosa in January ~949, and eight months later the Chinese mainland was taken over by the Communist armies of Mao Tse-tung. In the summer of ~gbo a new menace came from another quarter when North Korean troops crossed the border into the two-year-old Republic of South Korea. The United States dispatched American forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and wartime controls were . . ~ ~ . . again in ettect in t AS country. Establishment of the National Science Foundation As the international situation deteriorated, the new research agencies in the armed services urged prompt establishment of the National Science Foundation in order to mobilize science planning in the event of an emergency. When the Cold War threatened to become an active war, Congress instead made sharp cuts in research appropriations, diverting the funds to procurement. Fearful of the consequences to their fundamental research programs, both the Research and De- velopment Board of the Department of Defense and the Office of Naval Research urged legislative action on the science foundation, as a supporting agency for their endangered projects.9 In March ~949, almost twenty months after Truman's pocket veto of S. 5~6, Representative }. Percy Priest's Subcommittee on Public Health, Science, and Commerce in the House Committee on Inter- state and Foreign Commerce convened hearings on new proposals for the science foundation, all of them salvaged from the wreckage of the earlier science bills.~° An amendment to the most likely of the House bills, Priest's H.R. 4846, brought a sharp reaction from the National Academy of Sciences. Just prior to its passage in the House on March I, Ago, 9 See Science 105:171-172 (February ~4, ~947) and John E. Pfeiffer, "The Office of Naval Research," Scientific American 180:14 (February ~949). to U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, National Science Foundation. Hearings, on H.R. 12, S. 247, and H.R. 359, gist Cong., fist sees., March 3~, April I, 4, 5, 26, ~949. Page one of the Hearings noted eight new bills under consideration. See also Science 109 :267 (March ~ I, ~ 949); Dael Wolfle, "A National Science Foundation: ~gbo Prospects," Science 111:79-81 (January 27, two).

The Years between the Wars 1 48 ~ Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia attached an amendment to the bill that required FB! investigation and clearance of every member of the foundation and of every individual awarded a fellow- ship or scholarship. On March ~8, Senator Daniel l. Flood of Pennsyl- vania added a similar amendment to his companion bill, S. ~4~. The scientific community was aroused; the Council of the Academy protested the amendments as unjustifiable and menacing to the spirit of research, declaring the likelihood remote that any re- search under a National Science Foundation scholarship would in- volve national security. The stand had support in Congress, and an oath of allegiance was substituted for the loyalty amendments.' On April ~7, Ago, after five years of debate and last-minute resolution of minor differences in the Priest and Flood bills, the House passed its revised version, and a day later the bill passed in the Senate. The act was signed into law by President Truman on May lo. The long-debated National Science Foundation, as a new inde- pendent agency in the Executive Branch, had come into being. Established to "promote the progress of science; to advance the ""'Statement of the Council of the National Academy of Sciences," Science 111:315 (March 24, two); NAS, Annual Reportfor 1949-50, pp. 3-4, 39-4O. This was the second protest by the Council of the Academy concerning unnecessary security investigations (see U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship Program, Hearings before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 8 ~ st Cong., ~ st sees., May ~ 949). In August ~949 the Senate passed a rider to the ~gbo Independent Offices Appro- priations Act, introduced by Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming, requiring FB! loyalty and security investigations of all AEC fellows, then numbering over four hundred. When no modification for nonclassified projects could be effected, the Academy, whose Research Council administered the AEC fellowship program under contract, requested that the AEC take over the program. Pressed to continue, the Academy negotiated a new and more limited agreement with the AEC, which made no offer of predoctoral fellowships for two- ~ 95 ~ and provided Research Council admin- istration of postdoctoral fellowships during that year only for fellows whose intended research involved access to classified data. Thereafter the Research Council limited its role to the evaluation of the scientific qualifications of candidates until the AEC terminated the program in September ~ 953 [Committee of the Federation of American Scientists, "Loyalty and Security Problems of Scientists: A Summary of Current Clear- ance Procedures," Science 109:621-624 (rune 24, ~949); Science 110:103 (July 22, ~949); "Statement of the National Academy . . . ," Science 110:64~651, 670 (December ~6, ~949); NAS, Annual Report for 1949-50, pp. ~-3, YO-YO; 1950-51, p. 36; Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, Final Report, Atomic Energy Commission Predoctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships in the Physical and Biological Sciences, May 1, 1948 to September 30, 1953 (Oak Ridge: n.d.), p. v]. See also the NAS position paper prepared by A. N. Richards (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Council of the Academy: Meetings: January 22, HOBO). ~2 Science 111:396 (April ~4, Go); ibid., 506 (May 5, Mao); ibid., 558 (May 26, Mao).

482 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national de- fense and for other purposes," the Foundation was empowered to initiate and support by grant or contract basic research in the mathe- matical, physical, biological, and engineering sciences, and, upon the request of the Secretary of Defense, to contract for research relating to national defense. Patent rights resulting from research initiated by the Foundation were to be disposed of "in a manner calculated to protect the public interest and the equities" of the researcher or . . researc ~ organization. The Foundation would take over and maintain the National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel (accomplished in the National Register of Scientific and Technical Personnel in ~953) and foster the interchange of scientific information between scientists here and abroad. It was also to evaluate the research programs of federal agencies and to "develop and encourage the pursuit of a national policy for the promotion of basic research and education in the sciences." From the point of view of the Academy, the legislation represented an acceptable compromise of differences that had split its member- ship. The Science Foundation was by no means the central scientific agency originally conceived, but instead supplemented existing agen- cies, acting to promote the advancement of science, to fill gaps in the support of basic research, and to provide funds that were unavailable from private organizations for the training of young scientists. The Foundation got off to a slow start when the House failed to appropriate the full half million dollars authorized for its organiza- tional activities and diverted half that sum instead to current emergency spending.~4 It was November Anglo, seven months later, before President Truman appointed the twenty-four-member Na- tional Science Board, which was to establish its general policies and guide its operation. On the Board were Academy members Detlev W. Bronk, Gerti T. Cori, Tames B. Conant, Lee A. DuBridge, Edwin B. Fred, Robert F. Loeb, H. Marston Morse, and Elvin C. Stakman.~5 t5 National Science Foundation Act of 1950, P.~. 5O7 (64 Stat ~49-~57), Use Cong., 2d sees., May lo, two; U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Science and Astronautics, The National Science Foundation: A General Review of Its First 15 Years, 88th Cong., fist sees., ~965, pp. 3 ff. ~4 Science 112 :288 (September ~5, Ago); The National Science Foundation: A General Review of Its First 15 Years, p. 32. ]5 "The National Science Board," Science 112:607 (November ~7, two). For subsequent notes on the operation of the National Science Board, see Science 155:1063-1066 (March 3, ~ 967); ibid., 156:474 177 (April 28, ~ 967).

The Years between the Wars / 483 Early the next year, on March 9, 1951, the President appointed as Director of the Foundation Alan T. Waterman, Yale physicist and wartime Deputy Chief of the Office of Field Service, OSRD, then in his fifth year as Director of the Office of Naval Research. A decade after its establishment, Alan Waterman reported on the state of the Foundation. He saw it as initially overshadowed by the array of new scientific organizations set up in the government after the war and as only recently gaining its place among them and completing the edifice based on the principles that Bush had pro- jected in Science, the Endless Frontier. ~7 The responsibility of the Foundation for the development of a national science policy proved "an extremely troublesome and dif- ficult problem," and its evaluation and correlation functions proved "unrealistic." Yet, in its principal objectives, the support of basic research and education, it developed into the institution envisioned in the Bush report, reflecting with new relevance Alexander D. Bache's dictum of ~85~, that the utilization of science in the nation's welfare was a fundamental responsibility of the federal government. Despite the troubles and uncertainties that afflicted the country and the Academy during the brief period between World War II and the Korean conflict, Richards's short presidency was marked by many positive accomplishments. These included the establishment of the Pacific Science Board and the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission; a fresh and greatly broadened approach to the field of oceanography; and, finally, active support of the State Department's concentrated effort to include science more significantly in the conduct of foreign relations. The Pacific Science Board The Pacific Science Board grew out of a National Research Council conference, held in ~946, the year prior to Dr. Richards's election, to plan resumption of scientific research in the Pacific, particularly in the vast island area of Micronesia, recently taken from the Japanese, ~6 Science 113 :340 (March 23, ~ 95 ~ ). ~7 Cf. Bronk in NAS, Annual Report for 1950-51, p. xi. '8 Alan T. Waterman, in Science 131 :1342, 1344 (May 6, ~960); Waterman, "Introduc- tion" to Science, the Endless Frontier, National Science Foundation reprint, July ~960, pp. vii, xix, xx, xxii-xxiii, xxvii. See also The National Science Foundation: ~ General Review of Its First 15 Years, passim.

484 ~ o .: ~ C ~ C o o . ~ C a, o ~ o ~ .E o o ~ o . . : ~ ~ o - 8 ~ o ~ ^ .E ~ C o o _ C o o ~ S o C G c ~ o - o ~ ~ o o ._ o ~'@? . ~ C ~ ~ G C o a a = o C ~ o ~ ~ .H ~ - C - - C ~ of o ~ 'O ~ °

The Years between the Wars 1 485 who had totally excluded other nations from that region for more than thirty years. Micronesia, or Oceania, as it appeared on prewar maps, comprises ~,~4~ islands scattered over more than 3,ooo,ooo square miles in the Pacific. Fewer than loo of those islands were inhabited when the Japanese seized the area from the Germans at the beginning of World War I. In the absence of other national interests, the Japanese had been granted a mandate by the League of Nations in Ago. In ~947 the area was made the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, a United Nations trusteeship administered by the United States. There the Pacific Science Board undertook "the largest coordinated field pro- gram ever attempted by anthropologists."~9 Academy interest in research in the Pacific was by no means new, going back to the turn of the century when the United States made Hawaii and Eastern Samoa territories and annexed the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. But Academy plans proposed in ~ go3 for scientific explorations in the Philippines, and in ~ 9 ~ 5- ~ 9 ~ 6 for studies of the Coral Islands of the Pacific, failed to obtain financial support.20 Somewhat better success attended a Research Council Committee on Pacific Exploration, organized in ~ 9 ~ 9 under University of California paleontologist John C. Merriam. Two years later it was reconstituted as the Committee on Pacific Investigations, for the promotion of research and exploration in the area. Its Chairman was Herbert E. Gregory, physiographer and Director of the 13ernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu, and the Vice-Chairman was Thomas Wayland Vaughan of the U.S. Geological Survey. Prior to its dissolu- tion in Ado, the Merriam committee organized the first Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference (thereafter called Pacific Science Congress), attended by scientists from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, England, China, Hawaii, the Philippines, and the United States. The Congress became, with few exceptions, a continuing triennial event. '9 NAs, Annual Report for 1946~ 7, p. 8 I; 1 947~S, p. 7. 20 NAS, Annual Report for 1904, pp. 2 I-33; 1916, p. 23. The Academy's new Proceedings (I :14~157, ~9~ 5) included William Morris Davis's "The Origins of Coral Reefs" and a year later (2:391-437, ~9~6) his Academy-sponsored symposium on the exploration of the Pacific. Discussions at this symposium resulted in the appointment in ~9~6 of an Academy Committee on Pacific Exploration with Davis as Chairman. This committee was later absorbed by the Research Council's Committee on Pacific Exploration under John C. Merriam. 2~ NAS, Annual Report for 1920, pp. 48, 52, 74; 1921, p. 22; "Minutes of the Committee on Pacific Investigations, lone 9, 1921" (NAS Archives: PR: Com on Pacific Investiga-

486 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) At its meeting in Tokyo in 19~6, the Congress formed the Pacific Science Association, a permanent international organization repre- senting the leading scientific institutions of many countries with interests in the Pacific. By the time of the Sixth Pacific Science Congress in 1939, attendance had grown to 472 representatives from twenty-eight of the forty-four countries within or bordering on the Pacific. The 700 papers given that year filled six volumes of proceed- ings. Before dispersing, the Congress, despite growing international tension, announced plans for the next Congress, to be held in Manila early in 1943.22 That Congress was subsequently canceled. The limitation of international cooperation in science during the war prompted this observation in the Academy's Annual Report: In ~8~3, when France and England were fighting each other, Sir Humphrey Davy visited Paris, was awarded a gold medal by the Academie des Sciences, and elected a corresponding member. Such amenities have long since van- ished.23 Several months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. strategy for the Pacific required extensive information about the people and geography of its least known area, Japanese-dominated "Oceania," whose island groups, the Gilberts, the Marshalls, the Carolinas, and the Marianas, were to be the stepping stones for the return to the Philippines and the conquest of Japan. In June ~94z, the National Research Council, the American Coun- cil of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, and the Smithsonian set up what was to become the Ethnogeographic Board, to act as a clearinghouse in assembling for future invasion forces everything that was known of Oceania.24 All during the military advance up the island chain, the Board provided a continuous stream lions: Meetings: Minutes); Proceedings of the First Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference (Hon- olulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum Special Publication No. 7, Part I, ~92~), pp. iii-vii. 22 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1926-27, p. 37; 1939-40, pp. 47-49; reports of the Congress in NAS Archives. 25 NAS, Annual Report for 1942~3, pp. 33-34. The Tenth Congress, in ~96~, brought together 2,654 members and auditors from sixty-six countries and territories ["Annual Report of the Pacific Science Board Admin- istration," December 3~, ~96~ (NAS Archives: Pacific Science Board Series)]. 24NAS, Annual Report for 1941~2, pp. 3~-32, 67 et seq.; correspondence in NAS Archives: A&P: Committee on Anthropology of Oceania: ~942-43; Ethnogeographic Board, "Report of Progress, ~942-~945" (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Ethnogeographic Board: General); Wendell Clark Bennett, The Ethnogeographic Board (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Pub. 3889, April ~4, ~947).

The Years between the Wars 1 487 of strategic intelligence reports, drawn largely from the available literature of exploration and research of the islands and their people. Early in ~946, with most of Micronesia under Navy control, NRC Chairman Ross G. Harrison received several suggestions that the Research Council serve as a meeting ground for the large number of scientists interested in "this vast area which previously had been closed to American sc~entists."25 The conference that Harrison called in June ~946 was attended by more than ninety researchers interested in the Pacific, representing the anthropological, plant, zoological, and earth sciences; oceanog- raphy and meteorology; and public health and medicine. Also present were seventy-f~ve officials from government agencies concerned with problems of the Pacific.26 The conference agreed that the Pacific was, scientifically speaking, terra incognita, and that the United States had "done less to carry out explorations tin the Pacific Ocean ~ than has any nation in the north- ern hemisphere." The lack of interest in the Pacific and Pacific problems up to that time had been "indeed striking," and, without support, many fields out there remained "literally untouched."27 A Navy spokesman, acknowledging that "little twas ~ known about tropical oceanography," discussed the fundamental information that his department urgently required in the anthropological sciences; earth, plant, and zoological sciences; hydrography; meteorology; public health; and medicine. Representatives of other federal agencies agreed with the Coast Guard delegate that they were "in- terested in almost everything on the [proposed] program" of the Academy. As a result of the responsibilities thrust upon it by the war, "our country's interest in the Pacific," one member of the conference observed, "has suddenly grown from apathy to intelligent concern." The Navy Department, with its hegemony recently established over the government of the widely scattered islands and atolls comprising Micronesia, had become responsible for the rehabilitation of the island economies and needed basic knowledge of the people and their resources. In December ~946 the Navy requested the Research Coun- 25 NAS, Annual Report for 1945-46, p. 27. "Proceedings of the Pacific Science Conference of the National Research Council," NAS, Bulletin 1 14: 76—79 ( ~ 946). 27 Ibid., pp. 6, 33-46, 53, 6~, 67, 68; NAS Archives: Jewett file 50.7, Pacific Science Conference. 28 Ibid., pp. ~-~2, ~5.

488 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947 - 1950) cil to sponsor the organization proposed at the conference and to direct the required research in Micronesia.29 The Research Council proceeded at once to set up the Pacific Science Board, its central office in Washington under Executive Secretary Harold I. Coolidge, Jr., brought from Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. Advisory offices were established in Hon- olulu and, briefly, on Guam. Under its Chairman, Knowles A. Ryer- son, Director of the University of California's College of Agriculture, the eleven-member Board began seeking additional support for the research projected at the conference, to be carried out by selected university groups.~° Two projects were initiated in ~947, a two-year Coordinated In- vestigation of Micronesian Anthropology (CIMA) and a long-range Invertebrate Consultants Committee for the Pacific ('ccP), to carry out biological and ecological field investigations and provide continu- ing advice to the administrative authorities on the control of insect and other pests in the area. With grants from the Viking Fund (renamed in ~ 95 ~ the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research) and from the Office of Naval Research, a party of forty-two CIMA scientists representing more than twenty universities and research institutions boarded Navy transports in the early summer of ~94~. The an- thropolog~cal, geographical, and linguistic surveys that were made were the beginning of programs that still continued In ~949, with additional support from the Office of Naval Re- search, the CIMA surveys became the basis for a broader program of Scientific Investigations in Micronesia (SIM). U.S. scientists initiated 29 Memorandum, S. D. Aberle, "Pacific Islands," January 4, ~946 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Pacific Science Conference: General); Rear Adm. P. F. Lee, Chief of Naval Research, ONR, to Detlev W. Bronk, December 24, ~946 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Pacific Science Board: General). 3° NAS, Annual Reportfor 1945-46, pp. 27-28; 1946-47, pp. 36, 43-44. The Committee on Pacific Investigations, its purpose subsumed by the new Board, was discharged effective July I, ~947 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: PSB). 3t Rear Adm. P. F. Lee, ONR, to NAS, May An, ~947 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: PSB), established the initial contract with the Academy for the work of the Board and the NRC Pacific committee on the anthropological sciences that recommended and reviewed the projects carried out under CIMA through the Pacific Science Board (NAS, Annual Report for 1 94647, p. 81 ). 32 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1947-48, pp. 40-4~; Pacific Science Board, First Annual Report, 1947, pp. 12-15 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: PSB: Annual Report: First). For the transfer of the Board to the office of the Academy's Foreign Secretary, see NAS, Annual Report for 1962~3, p. Don.

The Years between the Wars / 489 field work throughout the area in botany, forestry, marine biology, geology, zoology, and ecology. The fifteen-year SUM program concen- trated its attention on the ecology of coral atolls and studies of the environmental factors affecting life on atolls. Two years later the Board set up a short-term program of Scientific Investigations in the Ryukyu Islands (S1Ri, ~95~-~954) to provide the military adminis- trators of the islands with fundamental studies of the people. This was basic, among other things, to their medical care.34 The Pacific Science Board found that, although some of the islands had been heavily settled and developed by the Japanese before their devastation during the war, elsewhere administrators had left the islanders largely to themselves.35 The anthropologists found at least nine separate cultures, involving linguistic, social, and economic differences that Navy administrators would meet in dealing with problems of rehabilitation, health, and welfare. They made studies of health conditions, dietary habits, and the nutritional composition of the islanders' basic plant and animal foods. Visiting conservationists carried out intensive ecological sur- veys of the islands; of the plant life, forests, marine invertebrate and fish resources; of animal and insect life; and of land resources and land utilization. Representing a comprehensive survey of the natural history and resources of Micronesia, the reports of the an- thropolog~sts and conservationists proved particularly useful in the studies made by the medical and public health groups in the islands.36 Associated with the community of more than To American scien- tists in the Pacific science programs were two international groups, the South Pacific Commission and the Pacific Science Association, ~, The Pacific Science Board, with ONR support, launched the first number of the Atoll Research Bulletin in the fall of ~95~. Its editors, Marie-Helene Sachet and F. Raymond Fosberg, also prepared Island Bibliographies: Micronesian Botany, Land Environment and Ecology of Coral Atolls, Vegetation of Tropical Pacific Islands (NAS-NRC Publication 335, ~ 955) 34 The reports of all research programs are in NAS Archives: Pacific Science Board Series. 35 An excellent brief account of the wartime information gathered on Micronesia and the early observations made in the islands after the war appears in George P. Murdock, "New Light on the Peoples of Micronesia," Science 108:423-425 (October 22, ~948). Murdock was an organizer with Harold Coolidge of the Pacific science conference of June ~946 and later Chairman of the Pacific Science Board (PSB). 36 See the graphic report, "Ten Years of Pacific Science Board Field Programs, ~947-~956"; PSB, "Final Report on Ecological and Other Biological Investigations of the Pacific," November ~954; and Coolidge, "Final Report on Scientific Investigations in Micronesia," luly ~966, p. 5, passim (NAS Archives: Pacific Science Board Series).

490 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) whose broad purpose was to make scientific and technological infor- mation available for the economic and social development of the Pacific islanders through their local institutions and educational facilities.37 That effort at development inevitably began to effect changes in the way of life of the Micronesians. The Navy Department, with the encouragement of the scientific missions, had from the beginning accepted the anthropologists' "zoo theory" of administration, believ- ing with them that the island people would fare best if left largely to their own ways of life and not exposed to Western customs. The Department of the Interior, on assuming the administration of Mi- cronesia from the Navy under an Executive Order in ~ 95 I, maintained a similar policy and continued it for more than a decade before pressures from the United Nations spurred more active development. By degrees, the ameliorations provided by science, the organization of native industry, the rise of Western political consciousness, and the introduction of tourism and the teaching of English throughout the territory began to change the old patterns of life.38 It remained to be seen what succeeding decades of aid and enlightenment would bring. The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission Another long-range postwar Academy program in the Pacific was the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC), whose work was con- cerned with the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first, dropped on August 6, ~945, on Hiroshima, a city of a quarter of a million, killed 78,~50, injured 37,425, and destroyed 6,820 homes. The second atomic bomb, dropped three days later on Nagasaki, with a population of 200,000, was said to have killed 23,753, injured 23,345, and destroyed ~4,~46 houses.39 The 57 Harold J. Coolidge, "The Pacific Science Board," NAS-NRC, News Report 14:17-21 (March-April ~964). A roster of participants in the PSB field programs appears in PSB, Tenth Annual Report, 1956, pp. 4~-45. so E. J. Kahn, Jr., A Reporter in Micronesia (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., ~966), pp. 22-24, 3~-32, 303; Kahn follow-up report in The New Yorker (December ~8, ~97~). 39 Data from the initial official Japanese surveys, cited in Austin M. Brues, Paul S. Henshaw et al., "General Report, NAS-NRC Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission," Janu- ary ~947, pp. 86-87 (NAS Archives: Com on Atomic Casualties: Reports). An official census taken in ~949 reported g8,ooo exposed survivors and ~5o,ooo nonexposed in Hiroshima and g7,ooo exposed survivors and lo8,300 nonexposed in Nagasaki. See "NAS-NRC Ad Hoc Conference . . . on the Recent Survey of the ABCC," November 27, ~955, App. I, p. 9, hereafter cited as the Francis Report (NAS Archives: MED: Com on

The Years between the Wars 1 4g ~ world confronted a new force, and humanitarian as well as scientific considerations called for both immediate and long-range study and care of the survivors in those cities. One month after the surrender of Japan, on August ~4, ~945, the joint Army-Navy-Manhattan District medical team arrived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to assess the situation, identify and examine survivors, conduct autopsies, and assemble information. In May ~ 946, the Surgeon General of the Army transmitted to the Research Coun- cil their primary recommendation, that the "National Research Coun- cil be requested to make recommendations for the planning and supervision" of a long-term study of the survivors.40 In November ~946, the Division of Medical Sciences of NRC ap- pointed Austin M. Brues, Director of Biological Research at the Argonne National Laboratory, Paul S. Henshaw of the Manhattan District's Clinton Laboratory, Lts. Melvin A. Block and James V. Neel of the Army Medical Corps, and Lt. Frederick W. Ullrich of the Navy Medical Corps as an interim commission, which left for Japan to assess the scope and means for a program of studies.4~ They were in Japan when President Truman on November 26 approved a Navy request to the Academy to establish and operate, with funds subsequently supplied by the Atomic Energy Commission, "a long-range continuing study of the biological and medical effects of the atomic bomb on man." The Academy, usually called upon only for advice to the government, in this instance accepted operational re- sponsibility for the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.42 The ABCC was designated a field agency of the Research Council, its activities supervised by a Committee on Atomic Casualties in the Division of Medical Sciences, headed by Thomas M. Rivers, bac- teriologist and Director of the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute.43 Atomic Casualties: Conference to Review Reports on Survey of ABCC: Ad Hoc). See also Herbert Feis, The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ~966), p. ~93. 4° Col. Ashley W. Oughterson to Surgeon General, U.S. Army, May ~5, ~946 (NAS Archives: MED: Com on Atomic Casualties: Beginning of Program). 4' Lewis Weed to Bronk, June ~4, ~946 (NAS Archives: ibid.); Austin M. Brues, Paul S. Henshaw et al., "General Report . . . ," January ~ 947, previously cited. 42 Maj. Gen. Norman T. Kirk, Surgeon General, to Weed, May 28, ~946, and reply, June 28; Secretary of Navy James Forrestal to President Truman, November ~8, ~946, with Truman approval subscribed, November 26 (NAS Archives: ibid.); Jewett to Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, February ~3, ~947 (NAS Archives: Jewett files, 50.725); "Report of the Committee on Atomic Casualties, NAS, ABCC,-January ~947, to December ~ 949" (NAS Library). The NAS-AEC contract, signed by President Richards on April ~3, ~948, is in Ascc, Annual Report /uly 1, 1961, to /me 30, 1962, p. ~ 2 I. 45 The members of the Committee on Atomic Casualties were George W. Beadle,

492 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (~947—aglow Within a year, the ABCC, operating out of headquarters in Tokyo under Lt. Col. Carl F. Tessmer of the Army Medical Corps, had begun its first genetic and hematological studies in Hiroshima and in Kure, its control city, and had drawn up plans for the construction of permanent laboratories in those cities, as well as in Nagasaki and its control city, Sasebo.44 A survey of projected studies made a year later suggested a duration of the work of the ABCC on the order of one hundred years.45 As a civilian agency in an occupied country, the ABCC initially operated under the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. With the signing of the peace treaty in April ~952, it was attached to the U.S. Embassy.46 Organizing the work and obtaining the necessary cooperation pro- ceeded slowly, but in the decade that followed the survey and research programs of the ABCC produced more than four hundred reports, their conclusions summarized in a number of articles in the open literature. The staff of the Commission had stabilized at slightly more than seventy professional members, two-thirds of them Japanese, and a total work force of almost one thousand American and Japanese physicians, surgeons, nurses, statisticians, technicians, interpreters, and field workers.47 Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology; Detlev W. Bronk; Austin M. Brues; George M. Lyon, Chief, Division of Atomic Defense, Navy Bureau of Medicine; Cornelius P. Rhoads, Director, Memorial Hospital, New York City; Shields Warren, pathologist, New England Deaconess Hospital, Boston; Stafford L. Warren, Dean of the Medical School, UCLA; George H. Whipple, Dean, School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester; and Raymond E. Zirkle, Director of the Institute of Radiobiology and Biophysics, University of Chicago. Subsequent chairmen of the committee were Detlev W. Bronk (~95~-~953), Shields Warren ( ~ 953- ~ 956), A. Baird Hastings ( ~ 956- ~ 957), and Lee E. Parr ( ~ 957- ~ 968). 44 NAS, Annual Reportfor 1946~7, pp. 36, 72-73; 1947~8, pp. 67-69. Succeeding ABCC directors were H. Grant Taylor, Associate Dean, Duke University School of Medicine, then in Hiroshima (~95~-~953); John J. Morton, Director of Cancer Research, University of Rochester School of Medicine (~953-~954); Robert H. Holmes, Instructor, Army Medical Service Graduate School, Walter Reed Army Medical Center; and George B. Darling, Professor of Human Ecology, Yale University (~957-~972) 45 Everett I. Evans and Eugene P. Pendergrass, "Report . . . by Consultants," p. At, attached to memorandum, Philip S. Owen, Executive Director, Committee on Atomic Casualties, for members of the committee, December So, ~948 (NAS Archives: MED: Com on Atomic Casualties). 46"Note Verbale," October 22, ]952, in ABCC, Annual Reportedly 1, 1961, tontine 30, 1962, p. ~ 22; ABCC, Semi-Annual Report, Manual l-June 30, 1955, Part I, p. 2. 47 ABCC, Annual Report July 1, 1961-June 30, 1962, p. 34; July 1, 1966-June 30, 1967, p. 67.

The Years between the Wars 1 493 Hiroshima survivor being interviewed by ABCC representative to determine location at time of bombing and shielding from nearby buildings (From the archives of the Academy). Enormously helpful to the work of the Commission was the Japanese national census of Ado, which provided for the first time an official roster of approximately two hundred and eighty-three thousand persons who claimed to have survived exposure in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although all of these came under its obser- vation and were of medical concern, the Commission of necessity limited its principal efforts to a homogeneous population of one hundred thousand representing survivors in the immediate impact area; survivors believed to have been well beyond the effects of radiation; and a control group, none of whom had been in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki in ~945.48 The Commission originally planned to determine the incidence of new diseases uniquely associated with radiation, altered incidence of 48 These figures and much of the account of ABCC research that follows are from R. Keith Cannan, Chairman, NRC Division of Medical Sciences, "The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission: The First Fourteen Years," NAS-NRC, News Report 12 :1-7 (January-February ~96~), and Robert W. Miller, "Delayed Radiation Effects in Atomic-Bomb Survivors," Science 166:569-574 (October 3~, ~969). See also, George B. Darling to Seitz, March 25, ~969 (NAS Archives: PUBS: NAS History).

494 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) known diseases, altered natural histories of particular diseases, and changes in physiological status without overt disease. Certain of these categories were later more sharply defined in the intensive studies made on the incidence of leukemia and other blood abnormalities in exposed and unexposed adults and children; cataracts; genetic effects in the offspring of exposed parents, with preliminary observations for planned long-range studies; the prevalence of disease in the exposed; and possible acceleration in the aging process in the exposed. The frequency of developing leukemia long an orcllr~tionn hazard of radiologists- appeared inversely proportional to the dis- tance of the survivor from the hypocenter of the detonation. A rare disease in ordinary populations, leukemia occurred in survivors closer than one thousand meters at more than fifteen times the normal rate observed in survivors beyond two thousand meters of the hypocenter, the incidence based on the ~ 66 cases found among the exposed group in the first eleven years of the study. The expected increase in the incidence of other forms of cancer proved to be very much smaller than that for leukemia, and appeared only after a much longer time following irradiation. Many more years of observation will be required to obtain the full story. A slightly higher incidence than normal of minor eye lesions was found in the survivor population, but radiation cataract~the latter a known hazard to those working with cyclotrons were considerably fewer than expected.49 Initiated in ~948, a five-year study of some seventy-six thousand pregnancies in the two cities yielded results indicating that radiation exposure did not measurably affect reproductive cells. In approxi- mately so percent of the pregnancies, either one or both of the parents had been exposed, but in comparison with the unexposed no increase was found in the incidence of abortions, stillbirths, or major malfunctions, at least in the first generation. On the other hand, it was found that children who were in utero at the time of the bombs experienced an increased incidence of chromosomal aberrations and of mental retardation, the effect being proportionate to the radiation 49 The findings in this country of two NRC committees were to corroborate and supplement those made in Japan. These were Alexander Hollaender's Committee on Radiation Biology, set up in ~gbo to prepare a new edition of the Academy's ~936 publication, Biological Effects of Radiation, subsequently published as Hollaender (ed.), Radiation Biology (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 3 vole., ~954-~956), and Philip H. Abelson's Committee on Radiation Cataracts, set up at the request of the AEC in ~949 (see NAS, Annual Report for 1948-49, pp. 75, 8~-8z, and Alan C. Woods, "Cyclotron Cataracts," American Journal of Ophthalmology 47:2~28, May ~959).

The Years between the Wars 1 495 Eye examination at the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission laboratory in Hiroshima, Japan (From the archives of the Academy). dose. It was found, as well, that during the ~950-~960 period the mortality ratios for exposed persons who had been within twelve hundred meters of the hypocenters were elevated by about ~5 per- cent.50 Prominent throughout the early years of work in the two cities, but wholly beyond assessment, were the psychological traumas suffered by the survivors, visible in the lingering effects of the stresses induced by the disaster itself and "the fears engendered by the constant reiteration in the press of the hazard of ultimate sickness and death from 'A-Bomb Disease'." Yet the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission reported in the fifteenth year of the program that most of the survivors were still alive and in apparent good health and that 50 Cannan, NA0NRC, News Report 12:5 (January-February ~962); James V. Neel and W. J. Schull, The Effect of Exposure to the Atomic Bombs on Pregnancy Termination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (NA - NRC Publication 46~, ~956), pp. ~92-~94; ABCC Technical Report 13~5, ~965, p. ~ 2; Cannan, NA - NRC, News Report 20:~9 (November INTO); Miller, "Delayed Radiation Effects . . . ," previously cited.

496 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947 - 1950) approximately 4o percent could be expected to continue to live to the year 2000.5~ The survivors called themselves hibakusha, a coined word adopted particularly by the young, including many who had suffered little or no injury. It signified their profound guilt at being alive and their sense of identity with the shadows of the dead. A number of the survivors, both those whose burns had scarred or darkened their skin and many who were unmarked, had assumed the role of pariah. Still others thought themselves an elect, a people set apart from the rest of the nation and the rest of mankind.52 The psychosomatic phenomenon of the hibakusha was but one of the many difficulties encountered by the ABCC in its first decade. The Com- mission operated in borrowed facilities until ~95~, when its first per- manent laboratory was completed. Establishing relations with Japanese medical authorities and institutions took time, as did overcoming recurring criticism that the Commission was interested only in re- search, at the expense of medical care.53 The Korean War also had its impact on the conduct and priorities of the program. A period of crisis in the project began in the spring of ~954, heightened by the accidental contamination of a Japanese fishing trawler, the Fortunate Dragon, and its crew during the test of the hydrogen bomb on Bikini.54 The difficulties in the administration of the program of the milieu interieur, as someone called it and in the relationships wth Japan persisted for almost two years. A searching report made in November ~955 by a group headed by Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr., Chairman of the Department of Epidemiol- ogy at Michigan, led to the reconstitution of the NRC Committee on Atomic Casualties as the NAS-NRC Advisory Committee for the ABCC, reorientation of the long-range objectives of the program, and in ~957 the appointment as ABCC Director of George B. Darling, Profes- 5~ Cannan, in NAS-NRC, News Report 12:5, 6 (~962). 52 Robert J. Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Random House, ~968), pp. 6-7, ~65 ff. That there may be some exaggeration in Lifton's study was suggested at the First Interdisciplinary Conference on Selected Effects of a General War, the "Princeton Conference," in lanuary ~ 967 (Report number so ~ 9- I, {)efense Atomic Support Agency Information and Analysis Center, ~968). 53 MED: Com on Atomic Casualties: Conference to Review Reports on Survey of ABCC; Ad hoc: ~955 [Francis Report]. 54 For the test accident, see "Chairman Strauss's Statement on Pacific Tests," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 10:163-165 (May ~954); "Effects of the Recent Bomb Tests on Human Beings," ibid., 347-348 (November ~954); "Japan and the H-Bomb," ibid., 11 :289-292 (October ~ 955).

The Years between the Wars 1 497 Members of the Advisory Committee on the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission at a meeting in March ~959. From left, seated: Thomas Francis, Jr., Averill A. Liebow, Alexander Langmuir, R. Keith Cannan (Chairman, National Research Council Division of Medical Sciences), Lee E. Farr (Committee Chairman), George B. Darling (Director, Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission), William G. Cochran, and Curt Stern. Standing: James V. Neel, Jacob Furth, and Eugene P. Cronkite (From the archives of the Academy). sor of Human Ecology at Yale and able wartime Vice-Chairman of the NRC Division of Medical Sciences. Appointed as Associate Director was Dr. Hiroshi Maki, head of the Japanese National Institute of Health.55 By the end of its first decade, the reassurance offered by the hopeful findings of the Commission had eased relations, and the future of the program became assured as all research was made a joint responsibility of the ABCC and the Japanese National Institute of Health. By then, too, the ABCC had enlarged its surgical and medical care programs, greatly increased Japanese participation in the pro- gram, and instituted bilingual preparation of all research plans, manuals, and reports.56 A New Look at Oceanography Academy participation in the wartime research of the NDRC Division on Subsurface Warfare was continued in the Committee on Undersea Warfare organized in the Research Council in ~946 under contract 55 Reports and correspondence in NAS Archives: MED: Com on Atomic Casualties: ~954, ~955, ~956; MED: Com on ABCC; Adv: ~957; Francis Report, previously cited. 56 ABCC, Annual Report July 1, 1957-fune 30, 1958, Forword and Introduction; ABCC, Annual Report July 1, 1966-fune 30, 1967, Introduction. A chronology and summary history of the Commission appears in ABCC, Annual Report July 1, 1961-fune 30, 1962,

498 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947 - 1950) with the Navy Department.57 Other oceanographic studies during the next decade included those conducted by the Pacific Science Board and the Academy Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation on Oceanography and Fisheries. These early studies made it clear how relatively little was known in the science of oceanography, and equally obvious that it was a field whose challenge "in magnitude approaches that of space."58 Academy interest in oceanography was almost simultaneous with its founding, in the person of Louis Agassiz, who had never observed marine animals in their natural habitat before coming to this country in ~846. His immediate and enduring interest in them led to his founding in ~873, the year he died, of the first American seaside laboratory, on Penikese Island in Buzzards Bay off Cape Cod, Mas- sachusetts.59 Agassiz's son Alexander continued the research at a new laboratory near Newport, Rhode Island; but the principal center of marine biology, and later, oceanography, became Woods Hole, Mas- sachusetts, where in ~ 87 ~ Spencer F. Baird, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian under Joseph Henry and head of the U.S. Fish Commis- sion (later, the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries), had established his Atlantic Coast laboratory. The creation in ~888 of the Marine Biological Laboratory, also at Woods Hole, under Charles 0. Whitman, Agas- siz's student at Penikese, would later influence the choice of that site for the present-day Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutiorl.60 Besides the diversified environment of Woods Hole~wing much to its glacial origins which favored marine biological research, its geographic setting, remote from large population centers and with pp. ~ ~ 2- ~ ~ 8, ~ 25- ~ 3 ~ . The joint ABCC-JNIH agreements are in the Annual Reports for 1961 -1962, p. 634, and 1967-1968, pp. ~ 95- ~ 96. For a report of ABCC Operations under Darling, see Philip Boffey, "Hiroshima/ Nagasaki," Science 168 :679~83 (May 8, ~ 970). Other studies by the Academy on radiation effects are covered in Chapter ~6, pp. 532-536, on the work of the Committees on the Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation. 57 Roger Revelle, "The Age of Innocence and War in Oceanography," Oceans Magazine 1:6-~6 (May-lune ~969), is a personal account of the wartime research in oceanog- raphy and the progress in the field since the Ages. 58 Committee on Oceanography, Oceanography 1960 to 1970 (Washington: NAS-NRC, ~ 959- ~ 962), Chapter I, p. 3. Before the end of its first decade, the expanding program was to earn the inevitable sobriquet, "the wet NASA." 59 Regarding Agassiz, see Chapter 2, pp. 36-39. 60 Frank R. Lillie, The Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ~944), pp. ~5, o2-~5, 35; Susan Schlee, The Edge of an Unfamiliar World, ~4 History of Oceanography (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., ~973), pp. 67-79.

The Years between the Wars 1 499 ready access to the open sea, made it potentially the most strategic center for oceanographic research on the Atlantic coast. There, as in Europe earlier, marine science began with the study of the natural history of seaside flora and fauna, progressed to experimental studies of marine organisms from the surrounding waters, and moving offshore, to environmental studies in aid of navigation, fisheries, and other economic considerations. Oceanography, as a world science concerned with the meteorology, geophysics, geochemistry, and biology of the seas, was still in infancy at the turn of the century, the word itself less than two decades old and the science limited to speculations concerning the character of the ocean depths and their possible economic resources. In the classic work of Sir John Murray and Johan Hjort, The Depths of the Ocean, which appeared in ~9~2, oceanography achieved a history and a program. Yet still valid was the note in the Academy Proceedings of ~9~6 on the meager extent of oceanography, particularly that of the Pacific, described as wholly deficient, and even its surface knowledge as very limited. The science remained "a realm of unsurpassed promise for the fruits of investigation." The National Research Council appointed its first Committee on Oceanography in ~ 9 ~ 9, when Harvard zoologist and pioneer oceanographer, Henry Bryant Bigelow, persuaded the Division of Biology and Agriculture to "undertake a cooperative survey of ocean life." But without financial support, the plans of Bigelow and his fellow committee members, Henry F. Moore of the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries and Alfred G. Mayor of the Carnegie Institution's marine laboratory, were frustrated. In ~923, as it appeared that it could serve no useful purpose, the Bigelow committee was discharged.63 61 See A. Daubree, "Deep-Sea Deposits," Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1893, pp. 545-566; W. K. Brooks, "The Origins of the Oldest Fossils and the Discovery of the Bottom of the Sea," 1894, pp. 359-376; M. J. Thoulet, "Oceanography," 1898, pp. 407-425. 62 Charles Gravier, "Recent Oceanographic Researches," Smithsonian Institution, An- nual Reportfor 1914, pp. 353-362; G. W. Littlehales (U.S. Hydrographic Office), "In Relation to the Extent of Knowledge Concerning the Oceanography of the Pacific," NAS, Proceedings 2 :419~21 ( ~ 9 ~ 6). 63 NAS, Annual Report for 1919, p. cot; Bigelow to C. E. McClung, July 25, ~9~9; Frank R. Lillie to Henry F. Moore, January 4, ~923 (NAS Archives: B&A: Com on Oceanography). Even shorter-lived was the Committee on an Economic Survey of the Sea, under J. Russell Smith, University of Pennsylvania Professor of Economic Geography [NAS, Annual Reportfor 1919, p. loo; "Minutes of Meeting of the Executive Board . . . ," June 10, 1919 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Meetings: Minutes)].

500 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) Henry Bryant Bigelow at the wheel of the schooner Grampus (Photograph courtesy the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University). Another project presented to the Division of Biology and Agricul- ture in 1919 concerned the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, then in need of financial support. A committee to investigate the situation was appointed under Frank R. Lillie, Chairman of the Department of Embryology at Chicago and Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory. The committee recommended that the National Research Council lend its aid in securing funds for a new building and extension of the library. Subsequently, with the endorsement of the Council's Executive Board and the assistance of C. E. McClung, Chairman of the Division of Biology and Agriculture, and Vernon L. Kellogg, Permanent Secretary of the Research Coun- cil, the plan received the support of the officers of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and Charles R. Crane's

The Years between the Wars / 50~ Friendship Fund. By ~9~3 a building and endowment fund amount- ing to more than $~.4 million had been obtained.64 In the spring of ~927 Academy President Michelson appointed a new committee under Lillie to consider this country's role in a worldwide program of oceanographic research. Two far-reaching studies resulted, one on the scientific and economic importance of oceanography, by Bigelow, and the other on its international aspects, by Thomas Wayland Vaughan, geologist and oceanographer, who since ~g20 had been a member of the Research Council's Committee on Pacific Investigations and was then Director-elect of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.65 The formal report of Lillie's committee, two years later, declared that the United States, without research vessels or shore facilities, was far behind the nations of northwestern Europe in research in physical oceanography and marine biology. It recommended the development of a central oceanographic institution on the East Coast to promote research and education in the science of the sea and provide a center for coordinating the isolated aspects of the science currently pursued by private institutions and by such federal agencies as the Hydro- graphic Office, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Coast Guard, and Bureau of Fisheries.66 64 Correspondence in NAS Archives: B&A: Com on Marine Biological Laboratory: ~9~924. See also Detlev W. Bronk, "Marine Biological Laboratory: Origins and Patrons," Science 189 :613-617 (August 2 2, ~ 975). 65 Correspondence in NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Oceanography: ~927. Bigelow's 6-page study, submitted in November ~9~9, became the comprehensive report of Lillie's committee and the basis of Bigelow's Academy-sponsored volume, Oceanography: Its Scope, Problems and Economic Importance (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., ~93~). Vaughan's 223-page study, The International Aspects of Oceanography: Oceanographic Data and Provisions for Oceanographic Research, was pub- ished by the Academy in ~937. 66 NAS, Annual Report for 1927-28, pp. 33-34; 1929-30, pp. 2-3, 8-9, 30; Frank R. Lillie, The Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, pp. ~ 77- ~ 82. The members of Lillie's committee were Edwin G. Conklin, Princeton Professor of Zoology; John C. Merriam, paleontologist and President of the Carnegie Institution of Washington; T. Wayland Vaughan; Benjamin M. Duggar, plant physiologist at Wiscon- sin; William Bowie, Coast and Geodetic Survey geodesist; and Bigelow, the committee secretary. Subsequently, Bigelow and Arthur L. Day, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, were added to the committee's membership. Other projects successfully completed with the advice and support of the committee included the expansion and stabilization of the Bermuda Biological Station for Re- search, toward which the Rockefeller Foundation contributed £5°,°°°; the establish- ment in Puget Sound of the Oceanographic Laboratories of the University of Washing-

502 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) Aerial view of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Photograph courtesy the Archives, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution). In 1930, with $2.5 million made available by the Rockefeller Foun- dation for the construction of facilities and support of a staff and program, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was founded, with Lillie as President and Chairman of the Board, and Henry Bigelow as Director. The slow progress in oceanographic research over the next three decades was owing largely to the sheer immensity of the task, but also to the lack of new technologies required for the scientific exploration of the depths.67 The wartime development of sonar, LOON, the radio buoy, and other electronic devices represented significant advances much of the work carried out at the New London, Woods Hole, and San Diego laboratories under Jewett's Division C of NDRC. The Navy research continued after the war, assisted by the Com- mittee on Undersea Warfare in the Research Council, set up in October ~946 under John T. Tate, Professor of Physics at the Univer- ton; and the erection of Ritter Hall, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California, La Jolla. 67 Two important works were published in that period, the s8~-page survey, Oceanog- raphy, initiated in ~926 by Joseph S. Ames, Chairman of the Division of Physical Sciences, which appeared in June ~ 932 as Volume 5 in the NRC series, Physics of the Earth (NRC, Bulletin 85); and the ~,o87-page work of Harald U. Sverdrup, Martin W. John- son, and Richard H. Fleming, The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry, and General Biology (New York: Prentice-Hall, ~942).

The Years between the Wars / 503 sity of Minnesota and wartime Chief of the NDRC Division on Subsur- face Warfare.68 That postwar research, and progress in the next two decades in the application of electronics to geophysical instrumenta- tion and to vehicles for transporting men and instruments to increas- ingly greater depths in the sea, brought a new dimension to the science of oceanography.69 In the spring of ~949 President Richards arranged a conference to review the state of the science in this country and the prospect for an expanded and accelerated research effort. The conference found still valid the twenty-year-old reports of Bigelow and Vaughan on the status of oceanographic research and their estimates of "the tremen- dous resources within the seas Awaiting ~ development." On the recommendation of the conferees, a new committee on oceanography was organized under Detlev Bronk to make a survey and assessment of oceanographic research here and abroad prelimi- nary to the preparation of a long-range national program.~° The United States, the Bronk committee reported, was far behind other maritime nations in supporting research to obtain better knowl- edge of the oceans and their relevance to national defense, to trans- portation, and to the exploitation of natural resources. Although oceanography impinged on many fields of science, its study was still so new in this country that those calling themselves oceanographers, perhaps half a dozen prior to Age, still numbered fewer than a hundred. Thus the first imperatives were the training of oceanog- raphers and federal support for basic research in biological and chemical oceanography. The committee recommended an initial an- nual expenditure of up to three quarters of a million dollars, to be devoted entirely to training and basic research. Not even that sum, however, could be obtained after the Korean War began; and, with the publication of its report, the Bronk committee was discharged.7 68 H. G. Bowen, Chief of Naval Research, ONR, to Bronk, October 23, ~946 (NAS Archives: EX Bd: Com on Undersea Warfare); NAS, Annual Report for 1946-47, p. 43 et seq. 69 Among new vehicles were Piccard's bathyscaphe, the cubmarine, the aluminum submarine, the remote underwater manipulator, a saucer-shaped vehicle operable at ~,ooo feet, and the nuclear-powered submarine. 70 Memorandum, Columbus Iselin, Director, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, for Richards and Bronk, September I, ~ 948 (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on Oceanography); NAS, Annual Report for 1948~9, pp. 5, lo, ~9. 71 Committee on Oceanography, Oceanography 1951 (NAS-NRC Publication 208, ~952), pp. iv, 4, ~9, 28. Also, Edward John Long (ed.), Ocean Sciences (Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, ~ 964), pp. ~ 74- ~ 75. The latter is an excellent brief history of oceanog- raphy and, in the chapter by Richard Vetter, of the Academy's role in that history.

504 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947 - 1950) In the meantime, an imminent threat to oceanographic research arose, first through unilateral declarations of sovereignty of the oceans by certain maritime nations and then the proposal placed before the United Nations in August 1953 that would give coastal nations sovereign right over the continental shelf for the purpose of "exploring and exploiting" its natural resources. In March ~954, the Academy offered to consider the problem with the United States representative in the United Nations and at his request appointed an ad hoc committee under William W. Rubey to prepare a resolution on scientific research in the oceans, which was subsequently transmitted to the U.S. Secretary of State and the Secretary General of the International Council of Scientific Unions (~csu).72 When the Convention on the Continental Shelf was adopted by the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in ~958, the assembly requested its national members to ask their governments, when ratifying the Convention, to signify that in doing so they granted general permission to any scientific research vessel to conduct investigations of the bottom and subsoil of the continental shelf, provided the program had been specifically approved by ~csu and the results of the investigations would be published openly.7S The growing importance of the ocean depths in research and military operations led the Academy's Committee on Undersea War- fare to propose a joint symposium with the Office of Naval Research on the potential of new developments for exploring and measuring the properties of these "vast uncharted and relatively inaccessible regions." At the conference, held early in ~956, it was agreed that the time had come for a national program of deep-sea research; and, to that end, intensive development of air, surface, and submarine vehi- cles should be promoted.74 Subsequent to the conference, in the late summer of ~956, the Office of Naval Research, the Fish and Wildlife Service of the De- partment of the Interior, and the Atomic Energy Commission re- 72 MS Annual Report for 1954-55 [p. 1]; NAS Archives: GOV Bd: Com on Continental Shelf: Ad hoc: 1954; "National Sovereignty, the Continental Shelf, and Marine Re- search," Nature 172: ~ 063- ~ 065 (December 1 2 , 1 953). 73 Wallace W. Atwood, "cash," Science 128: 156~1561 (December 18, 1958); correspon- dence in NAS Archives: ES: Com on Oceanography: Law of the Sea: Proposed; NAS, Annual Report for 1958-59, p. 44; U.S. Department of State Bulletin 38:1121 (rune SO, 1958). For the Academy's continuing efforts in this area, see NAS, Annual Report for Fiscal Years 1973 and 1974, pp. 54-55. 74 Proceedings of the Symposium on Aspects of Deep-Sea Research, February 29-March 1, 1956 (NAS—NRC Publication 473, 1957), pp. ii, 112, 176—178.

The Years between the Wars / 505 quested the Academy to form a new Committee on Oceanography. The planning for it began with a restudy of the program for oceanog- raphy proposed by the Academy-Research Council committee four years earlier and reassessment of the status of U.S. knowledge of inner space.75 A year later, in November ~957, Dr. Bronk appointed the committee, its Chairman Harrison Brown, Professor of Geo- chemistry at the California Institute of Technology.76 The surveys and recommendations of the committee panels on oceanographic research ships, new devices for exploring the oceans, ocean resources, international cooperation in the marine sciences, and radioactivity in the oceans became the bases for the twelve Academv reports published as Oceanography 1960 to 1970.77 Armed 75 Correspondence in NAS Archives: ES: Com on Oceanography: Proposed. Further impetus came from the marine science program established in UNESCO and the Special Committee for Oceanic Research with Roger Revelle as Chairman set up under the auspices of ~csu in ~957 [Revelle, "International Cooperation in Marine Sciences," Science 126: 1319-1323 (December 27, ~957)]. Oceanography had become a world interest and concern. Where in ~g30 it was represented by the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, the Interna- tional Association of Physical Oceanography, and Vaughan's International Committee on the Oceanography of the Pacific (NAS, Annual Report for 1929-30, pp. 65-66), by ~ 959 thirty-one international organizations were involved in ocean research, according to a mimeographed report, "International and National Organization of Oceano- graphic Activities," October ~959 (copy in NAS Library). The appointment of the committee coincided with the International Geophysical Year, ~957-~958, with its extensive program for oceanographic study and research in the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, and Antarctic Oceans. For the ten-year program in oceanography recommended by the Academy, see U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences. Report on the International Geophysical Year. Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropria- tions, 86th Cong., fist sees., February ~959, pp. 76-87, 92-93. 76 Bronk to Harrison Brown, July ~8, ~957 (NAS Archives: ES: Committee on Oceanog- raphy: General); Bronk to committee members, November I, ~957 (NAS Archives: ES: Committee on Oceanography: Appointments); NAS, Annual Reportfor 1957-58, p. 39 et seq. The original members of the committee were Maurice Ewing, Director of Columbia's Lamont Geological Observatory; Columbus Iselin, senior physical oceanographer, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Fritz Koczy, geochemist at the Institute of Marine Science, University of Miami; Sumner Pike, former commissioner, AEC; Roger Revelle, Director, Scripps Institution of Oceanography; Gordon A. Riley, oceanog- rapher, Yale gingham Oceanographic Laboratory; Milner B. Schaefer, biologist, Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, Scripps; and Athelstan Spilhaus, Dean of the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology. 77 A special report, Economic Benefits from Oceanographic Research (NAS-NRC Publication 1228, ~964), revised Bigelow's report of ~929. The program was described in Harrison Brown and Richard Vetter, "A National Oceanographic Program," Transactions of the

506 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947 - 195O) ME ~~£ ~Qffimiti~£E Gtt ~~dD00faphp ~umncr~ik~Pontrit~harb ~,~-,~ ,L 3FriLrA°~p ~~nnor3B~rrIlr Len Band arrison~iromn am.= Arising larI'ansc Richarb9~rr 1 "Ye Olde Committee on Oceanography." Detail from the frontispiece of The Light of Navigation (~6~) by Willem Jantszoon Blaeu to which were added names of several members of the Academy Committee on Oceanography (From the archives of the Academy). with the program set out in this study, the committee became one of the most important and productive ever established by the National Academy. The operation of the committee led to an innovation in Academy- government relations. The report had an unquestioned impact, owing to the successful efforts of the committee chairman to gain the inter- est of congressmen and of the Science Adviser to the President, George Kistiakowsky, who saw in its comprehensive plan an oppor- tunity to coordinate the research programs of a number of federal agencies with oceanographic interests. The members of the commit- tee, bridging a traditional gap, worked carefully and closely with Congress and federal agencies, their efforts leading to the appoint- American Geophysical Union 40 :323-330 (December ~ 959). See also "Ocean Frontier," Time 74:4~54 (July 6, ~959); George A. W. Boehm, "The Exploration of 'Inner Space'," Fortune 60: 163-180 (November ~959); U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Marine Science. Hearings before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 87th Cong., ~ st sees., March ~ 5- ~ 7, ~ 96 ~ . The committee report may have inspired the parody by Academy member Warren Weaver, then Vice-President of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, in his "Report of the Special Committee: A Suggestion for Simplifying a Procedure, Now Almost Traditional by Which Various Agencies Reach Decisions," Science 130:139~1391 (November 20, ~959)

The Years between the Wars / 5°7 ment in February ~959 of a Special Subcommittee on Oceanography in the House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries.78 The Academy report thus provided the impetus for a federal program supported by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, the Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, and other government agencies and a federal budget for oceanography that rose in the next decade from $z ~ million to $~? ~ million. The program witnessed the launching of twenty new oceanographic vessels, construction of eight new labora- tories, and the availability of courses in oceanography at fifty univer- sities and colleges.79 An Academy Role in International Science Policy In the spring of ~944, the Academy, working through the State Department, began planning resumption of cooperative efforts in international science and restoration of amenities between scientists of the Allied nations and the Axis powers.~° A brief of the Academy position and interest in international relations in science, prepared by Walter B. Cannon, Harvard physiologist and wartime Chairman of the Research Council Division of Foreign Relations, and Princeton geologist Richard M. Field, urged an end to the long period of scientific isolation and disruption of the work of the international scientific unions. The Cannon-Field report became highly relevant upon the estab- 78Manne Science, cited above, pp. 4~-45; Roger Revelle to Frederick Seitz, March lo, ~969 (NAS Archives: PUBS: NAS History); NAS, Annual Reportfor 1958—59, p. 44; Long, Ocean Sciences (cited above), pp. ~ 79- ~ 80, ~ 87 ff. 79 Committee on Oceanography, Oceanography 1966: Achievements and Opportunities (NAS—NRC Publication ~492, ~967), p. I. See also U.S. Library of Congress, Legislative Reference Service, Abridged Chronology of Events Related to Federal Legislation for Oceanography, 1956-1966, printed for House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, 89th Cong., Ed sees., ~966. 8° A singular instance of cooperative international research unrelated to the war was that of the Research Council committee appointed in ~944 to study, with Mexican scientists, a rare phenomenon, the eruption of a new volcano named Paricutin. The history of Paricutin, born on February no, ~943, and abruptly expiring on February e5, ~952, is reported in the Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, vols. 26-35 (~945-~954). See also NAS, Annual Reportfor 1944-45, pp. To-do et seq. 8~ Walter B. Cannon and Richard M. Field, "A Memorandum on . . . International Scientific Organizations, ~ 9 ~ 9- ~ 944" (NAS Archives: FR: International Organizations: Activities & Future Plans: ~9~9-~944: Cannon-Field Report: ~944); NAS, Annual Report for 1944-45, p. 33.

~o8 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) lishment of the United Nations in October 1945 and the initiation of planning for its related but independent agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (uNESCo).82 To act until UNESCO was formed and prepare concrete proposals for the American program in science and technology, the State Department in April ~946 appointed a Science Advisory Committee, among its members Bronk, Harlow Shapley, W. Albert Noyes, Jr., Merle Tuve, and Howard Meyerhoff.~3 Three months later, on July So, an act of Congress authorized participation by the United States in UNESCO and establishment of a U.S. National Commission as this country's advisory and liaison agency with UNESCO. Its members included Academy members Bronk, Shapley, Arthur H. Compton, Ross G. Harrison, Tames B. Conant, and Alexander Wetmore.84 UNESCO itself held the first session of its General Conference in Paris, November ~9 to December lo, 1946. UNESCO, which had no powers like those of the United Nations' Security Council, had been created, as its preamble stated, "for the purpose of advancing, through the educational and scientific and cultural relations of the peoples of the world, the objectives of international peace and of the common welfare of mankind for which the United Nations Organization was established."85 It was to be a world center for the exchange of ideas and mingling of cultures and for the promotion of scientific research that could be most advan- tageously undertaken on an international basis, as in meteorology, oceanography, education, epidemic disease, and other international health problems.86 82 For the decision to include the "s" in UNESCO, see Nature 156:553-561 (November lo, ~945); NAS Archives: Hewett file 50.7~6, UNESCO; Bart J. Bok, Science in UNESCO, Scientific Monthly 63 :327 ( ~ 946). 83 Reports of its meetings from April ~ ~ to June 5 are in NAS Archives: IR: UN: UNESCO: Preparatory Commission: us Science Advisory Committee; NAS, Annual Report for 1945~6, p. 32 et seq. For the Committee on Science in UNESCO, see 1950-51, p. 43 et seq. 84 U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. Report on the First Meeting, September 1946 (Washington: Department of State Publication ~7~6, 1947). 85 Quoted in Bart l. Bok, "Science and the Maintenance of Peace," Science 109: 131-137 (February ~ I, ~ 949). As the constitution of' UNESCO said, its purpose was "to contribute to peace and security by promoting collaboration among the nations through education, science and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, for the rule of law and for the human rights and fundamental freedoms . . . affirmed . . . by the Charter of the United Nations." 86 One of UNESCO'S first acts was to provide a continuing subvention for the Interna-

The Years between the Wars / 509 A principal function of UNESc~to aid in the reconstruction of science in war-devastated countries and provide an agency through which scientists might contribute to the promotion of peace was supported by a number of National Research Council-committees, particularly the Council's Committee on UNESCO, appointed in May ~947 for the purpose of enabling American scientists to give collective informal advice concerning UNESCO'S scientific agencies and activities. The Council committee Chairman, Bart I. Bok, Professor of As- tronomy at Harvard, was one of the most ardent and articulate publicists for UNESCO in its formative years.87 Yet overshadowing every consideration of commitment and coop- eration in science of the new world organization was the cloud of the atomic bomb and the growing threat of the cold war in Europe. UNESCO faced a supranational dilemma with which it was powerless to cope. The international character of science made such new weapons as chemical and biological agents, guided missiles, and the atomic bomb accessible to every nation with any industrial capacity. Only the freest possible exchange of scientific and technological information among nations appeared to offer any hope for the futures On this premise, in ~947 the Steelman report, Science and Public Policy (see Chapter ~4, pp. 463-465), sought to remedy the fact that "The United States has no unified or comprehensive policy on scien- tific research or the support of science. Until World War II, we had never consciously defined our objectives or organized our resources tional Council of Scientific Unions (~csu) and to recognize that association of scientific organizations as its coordinating and representative body ["Statement of December ~9, ~949..." by the NRC Committee on International Scientific Unions," reproduced in International Science Policy Survey Group, Science ~ Foreign Relations (Washington: Department of State Publication 3860, May Ago); copy in NAS Archives: AG&Depts: State: International Science Policy Survey: Science & Foreign Relations: Report]. For the December I, ~946, agreement between UNESCO and ~csu, see NAS Archives: FR: International Unions: ~csu. Cf. Harrison Brown, NAS Foreign Secretary, to Alvin C. Eurich, Chairman, U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, May ~ I, ~969 (NAS Archives: GOVT: IR: UN: UNESCO: General). 87 NAS, Annual Report for 1946-47, p. 48; Bok, "UNESCO and the Physical Sciences," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 4:343-347 (November ~948); Bok, "UNESCO: A Work in Progress," Physics Today 2: 17, 28-31 (July ~949). For a ~949 compilation of uNEsco-related NAS and NRC activities see NAS Archives: IR: UN: UNESCO: National Commission: National Organizations Represented on Commis- sion: NAS—NRC Report. 88 See International Science Policy Survey Group, Science ~ Foreign Relations, pp. -, 76, 81.

510 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947 - 1950) for science."89 Furthermore, this country had nothing even resem- bling an international science policy. The policy emerged two years later in President Truman's inau- gural speech in January 1949. To support the United Nations' pro- grams for world economic recovery and strengthen friendly nations against the dangers of aggression, he called for a four-po~nt program of assistance by this country, Point IV of which declared that through the United Nations We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.90 The Point IV program became the responsibility of the State Depart- ment; and, after consultation and deliberation, Bok, as head of the Research Council Committee on UNESCO, on June ~ 2, ~ 949, requested the Research Council Chairman, Detlev Bronk, to suggest the ap- pointment of a full-time special adviser in science to the State De- partment and the assignment to our embassies abroad of foreign officers with training in some branch of sciences On October 4, ~949, the State Department appointed Academy member Lloyd V. Berkner of the Carnegie Institution of Washington Special Consultant to the Secretary of State, asking him to survey the Department's responsibilities in international science as a conse- quence of recent developments in science and technology.92 Berkner was then Chairman of the Section on Exploratory Physics of the Atmosphere of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Ter- restrial Magnetism. His special field of interest was the earth's outer atmosphere and radiowave propagation. During World War II he had organized the Radar Section and the Electronics Materiel Branch of the U.S. Naval Bureau of Aeronautics. In ~945 he served as captain aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise in the Okinawa campaign. In ~946 Berkner was named by the Secretaries of War and Navy to 89 The President's Scientific Research Board, Science and Public Policy. A Report to the President by John R. Steelman, vol. I, A Program for the Nation (Washington: Government Printing Of fire, ~ 947), p. 9. 90 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States. Harry S. Truman, 1949 (Washington: Government Printing Of fire, ~ 964), pp. ~ ~4- ~ ~ 5. 9~ Bok to Bronk, June As, ~949 (NAS Archives: IR: Com on UNESCO: General); "The NRC Committee on UNESCO," Science 110 :2~26 (July I, ~949). 92 The study originated in the recommendations of the report on foreign affairs in February ~949 prepared by the Hoover Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government (NAS, Annual Report for 1949-50, p. 4).

The Years between the Wars / 51 1 the post of Executive Secretary of the Joint Research and Develop- ment Board, of which Vannevar Bush was then Chairman. Returning to the Carnegie Institution in ~947, he remained there until March ~949, and the billion-and-a-half-dollar assistance program proposed pointment as Special Assistant to the Secretary of State to organize the Military Assistance Program for the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Greece and Turkey. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established for joint action against Communist aggression, came into being in April ~949, and the billion-and-a-half dollar assistance program proposed by Berkner to help arm the NATO countries was intended to mesh with the U.S. national security program and the earlier Marshall Plan for economic recovery abroad. The Military Assistance Program was awaiting congressional action when the State Department requested Berkner to review its role in international science. Berkner was a dynamic and articulate leader. The pursuit of his research had taken him all over the world, and he had had unusual opportunities to observe the effectiveness of cooperation among scientists of many nations. He was also a dedicated and very active member of the Academy, who saw in science a time-tested means of promoting international understanding and good will. When he was asked to undertake the State Department study, he had at once sought to involve the Academy by suggesting to James Webb, Under Secretary of State, that the Department call upon the Academy, in its role as adviser to the U.S. government, to make its advice and facilities available for the survey of the role of science in international affairs. The resulting study had three major organization units: Depart- ment of State International Science Steering Committee, headed by Berkner; Department of State International Science Policy Survey Group, of which l. Wallace Joyce, on loan from the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, was Director; and the Advisory Committee on Interna- tional Science Policy of the National Academy of Sciences, of which Roger Adams was Chairman. Other members of the Academy's committee were Vannevar Bush, I. I. Rabi, Alexander Wetmore, Robert E. Wilson, and Alfred N. Richards and Detlev W. Bronk, ex officio. 93 Other significant Academy inputs were the report, "National Re- search Council Report on Studies for the International Science Policy 93 Richards to dames Webb, May I, Ago; Richards to Bronk, May 22, Ago; Minutes of Meeting, Committee on International Science Policy, April 26, ~gbo (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Com on ~ sP).

512 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947 - 1950) Survey Group of the Department of State," prepared by an NRC committee under the chairmanship of Douglas Whitaker, Dean of Graduate Studies, Stanford University, and "Statement of December 19, 1949, by the NRC Committee on International Scientific Unions," prepared under the direction of John A. Fleming, Chairman of the committee.94 Academy members who made personal studies of various kinds were: Karl T. Compton, James B. Conant, I. Robert Oppenheimer, and Merle A. Tuve. On April e6, Ago, Roger Adams informed President Richards that his review committee had unanimously approved in principle the report submitted to it by Dr. Berkner, Science and Foreign Relations; and with this endorsement from the Academy, Berkner forwarded it on April 28 to James E. Webb, Acting Secretary of State. A few days later, President Richards sent Webb a brief report of the observations of the Adams committee on the desired distribution of the Berkner report and on the implementation of its recommendations.95 The premise of the Berkner report reflected the international tensions of the times: The international science policy of the United States must be directed to the furtherance of understanding and cooperation among the nations of the world, to the promotion of scientific progress and the benefits to be derived therefrom, and to the maintenance of that measure of security of the free peoples of the world required for the continuance of their intellectual, material, and political freedom.96 Further supporting that shield of science, the report recommended establishment of a science office in the State Department under a highly qualified scientist who would maintain liaison between the Department and scientific activities in this country and render scien- tific and technological advice where appropriate in the formulation of foreign policy. The report urged establishment, with full diplomatic status, of overseas science attaches in the major diplomatic missions abroad, including those in occupied Germany and Japan. Their function 94 Whitaker, "NRC Report on Studies for the International Science Policy Survey Group of the Department of State," January 7, ~gbo (NAS Archives: IR: ISP Survey for State Department); correspondence in NAS Archives: AG&Depts: State: asp Survey; Science Foreign Relations, p. viii. 95 Roger Adams to Richards, April 26, two; Lloyd Berkner to Webb, April 28, two; and Richards to Webb, May I, Ago, in Science ~ Foreign Relations, pp. iii-V. 96 Science Of Foreign Relations, p. 2.

The Years between the Wars / 513 would be similar to that of the science groups of the State Department and Office of Naval Research already in London, that is, to speed the flow of scientific information between nations and help as necessary with current and future exchange and assistance programs.97 Accepting the counsel of Berkner's committee, the State Depart- ment, upon the recommendation of the Academy, appointed Joseph Koopfli, research associate in chemistry at CalTech, who had recently served as Senior Science Officer in the American Embassy ire London, to head the new Office of Science Adviser and maintain close relations with the Academy and the National Science Foundation.98 The Berkner report recommended, as well, increased utilization of the National Research Council's Division of International Relations (prior to ~947, known as the Division of Foreign Relations). To this end, Bronk reorganized the division, replacing its society representa- tives and members-at-large with an eight-member Policy Committee and a Committee on Science Policy, both chaired by Roger Adams, Foreign Secretary of the Academy and, as such, Chairman of the .. . . olvlslon. A full-time Executive Secretary for the division, Wallace W. At- wood, Jr., former Professor of Physiography at Clark University and then with the Research and Development Board, was brought in to maintain continuing relations with the State Department, with the national academies and research councils abroad, the international scientific unions, and scientific representatives of other countries here in the United States. Also assisting Adams was a twenty-six-member board of consultants, comprising the heads of the major Research Ibid.' pp. 2, 9-~4, 33-34, 65, 75; NAS, Annual Report for 1949-50, pp. 4-5, 29-30, 60~. 98 Succeeding Joseph Koepfli in the post were James Wallace Joyce, Navy Department geophysicist, Acting Science Adviser (~953-~954); and, after an interim, Wallace R. Brode, chemist and Associate Director of the National Bureau of Standards (~958- ~960); Walter G. Whitman, head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT (~960-~962); and Ragnar Rollefson, Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin (~962-~964) In the period ~954-~958, stripped of funds and staff for reasons of economy, the Office was ably served by Walter M. Rudolph, a career economist in the State De- partment, who, preparatory to and during the International Geophysical Year, under- took all Department arrangements made through the embassies and scientific attaches abroad for the use of facilities and cooperation of foreign scientists. See NAS, MS Annual Report for ~955-56, pp. 228-229; "What's Happened to Science in State?" Chemical and Engineering News 34:112-115 (January 9, ~956); "Science and International Relations," Science 123:1067 (June ~5, ~956); Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (New York: New American Library, ~967), p. 275, note.

514 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947—1950) Council units and representatives of governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations actively involved in international ac- tivities.99 With increased funding from the Department of State, on July 1, 195z, the Division of International Relations no longer fitting the traditional divisional pattern became the NAS-NRC Office of International Relations, with greatly broadened functions.~°° Although the Office of Science Adviser in the State Department never attained the high goals set for it in the Berkner report, Koepfli's appointment was nevertheless a milestone in the long effort of the Academy to make scientific counsel available on a continuing basis at the highest levels of government. The brief years of Dr. Richards's presidency were marked by unprecedented changes in Academy affairs. At the outset govern- ment departments, still adjusting to the peculiar peace, had made "only two direct requests . . . to the Academy," as Richards observed in his first annual Report, but three years later, with U.S. involvement in the Korean War, the Academy was overwhelmed with requests.~°i Once again, office space on Constitution Avenue became in- adequate and committee staff were housed in rented quarters nearby. The staff of the Academy, from the postwar low of slightly more than two hundred, rose to almost five hundred. Already expending more funds than it had at any time during World War II, Academy disbursements for staff operations, for administration of government contracts, and of funds from private resources more than doubled in that period, from $2,73~,ooo to $s,'~g,ooo.~02 They would continue upward. Those years witnessed that significant function of the Academy- Research Council to define and catalyze research. It was the unique capability, stated four decades earlier in the order creating the Na- tional Research Council: To survey the larger possibilities of science, to formulate comprehensive projects of research, and to develop effective means of utilizing the scientific and technical resources of the country for dealing with these projects.~°3 99 Science ~ Foreign Relations, pp. ~ OC~ ~ O I; NAS, Annual Report for 1950-51, pp. x-xi, 4 ~-44 1o0 NAS Annual Reportfor 1951-52, pp. 50-53. pi NAS, Annual Report for 1 94 7-48, p. i; 1 950-51 ; pp. iX, ~ 2. 02 NAS, Annual Report for 1945-46, p. 64; 1950-51, p. 82. ~05 "National Research Council Executive Order Issued by the President of the United States, May At, ~9~8" (NAS, Annual Report for 1946-47, p. ~6~); reprinted here as Appendix F.

The Years between the Wars I 5 ~ `5 A Break with Precedent The "uncertain, unstable" times that held "little promise of peace" nevertheless weighed on Dr. Richards. On January 7, Ago, he asked the Academy to accept his resignation, a year before his term ended, believing, as he ~aid, "that the increasing responsibilities of the Academy and opportunities for usefulness require the energies of a younger person."~04 He was nevertheless the longest lived of Academy presidents up to that time. His retirement to his home in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, lasted sixteen years, quietly ending two days after his ninetieth birthday. At a meeting of the Council of the Academy with the Committee on Nominations two weeks after giving notice of his resignation, Presi- dent Richards called attention to a two-page list recently prepared in his office on the duties of the President. To it Richards had added one more, to have future consequences, that "he should assume the privilege of initiating discussions with those in public office on matters of science which affect the public welfare." The list had been com- piled in response to a proposal on December e8, ~949, from Council member Joel H. Hildebrand that would alter the nature of the Academy presidency dramatically. In view of the accretion of presi- dential obligations, Hildebrand proposed that the office carry a salary of $~s,ooo annually. The duties of the office had become "so exten- sive and onerous as to require practically full time," and the field of choice for candidates was "now practically limited to the few men, mainly emeriti," likely to be willing to undertake the job without remuneration. In the discussion it was agreed that the membership of the Academy should be made aware that "the presidency is no longer simply an honor but an important full-time working job," and the potential nominees should be so informed. And in view of the coming task of the Committee on Nominations, which as customary would propose only one man for the office, the four-member Committee was doubled in size.~05 At the annual meeting of the Academy in April two, the Nom- inating Committee announced its selection of James B. Conant. ~04 NAS, Annual Report for 1949-50, p. 9. The quoted words in assessment of the times were Dr. Bronk's, not Richards's, in 1948-49, p. 35, and 1949-50, p. 47. ~05 "Conference of the Council of the Academy with the Committee on Nominations," January As, ~gbo (NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Committee on Nominations). Joel Hilde- brand's and Richards's notes on the duties of the President are in NAS Archives: ORG: NAS: Council of the Academy: Meeting: January 22, ~950.

516 / ALFRED NEWTON RICHARDS (1947-1950) A brilliant organic chemist, Conant had been a member of the Academy since 1929, when he was thirty-five, and President of Harvard University since 1933. He had become Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee when it was reorganized in the Office of Scientific Research and Development under Vannevar Bush in ~94~. With Bush and Karl Compton, Conant had been a key figure in coordinating the development of the atomic bomb and establishing the Manhattan Project. Affable and quietly self-confident, he was a man reputed to have very emphatic ideas on administration at Har- vard, but had seldom frequented the halls of the Academy. Although nominated at the meeting in Ago, Conant, who had absented himself on that occasion, was not elected. In an unprece- dented event, initiated by members of the Chemistry Section of the Academy, the membership was persuaded that the nominee had shown little interest in Academy affairs, that the Academy must have virtually a full-time President, and that as President of Harvard, Conant would have little time to give to the Academy. On the initia- tive of members of the Chemistry Section, the Chairman of the National Research Council, Detlev W. Bronk, over his protests as a friend of Conant, was nominated and formally elected the new President. ~07 The essential facts of the election was later related by Joel Hildebrand: No one is in a position to assess the motives of the individuals who voted to elect Bronk. There were undoubtedly some whose experiences with the National Defense Research Committee had convinced them that its rather authoritarian structure was inappropriate for peacetime operations, but surely the number whit had any cause t`' seek "vengeance" were far too few to account for the election of Bronk. Efforts to vitalize the Academy into the effective organization that it has become under the leadership of Bronk and Seitz began ~ years before the nomination of Conant, and had acquired sufficient momentum by April ~gbo to override a nomination that to the majority meant a return of the Academy to the functions of "electing members and writing obituaries."'°8 ·06 Henry F. Pringle, "Mr. President," The New Yorker (September ~ 2, ~ 936), pp. 20-24; ibid. (September ~9, ~936), pp. 23-27; "Dr. Conant: In Science Pure, in Education Controversial," Newsweek 40 :72-77 (September 22, ~ 952). ~07 "Minutes of the Business Session," April 25, taco (NAS Archives: Elections: Officers: President: Bronk D W); D. S. Greenberg, "The National Academy of Sciences: Profile of an Institution (II)," Science 156:36~361 (April 2~, Ago); Joel Hildebrand, letter, Science 156:1177-1178 (June a, ~967). ~08 Hildebrand, ibid. See also James B. Conant, My Several Lives (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Ago), pp. 4g7-4gg.

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The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 Get This Book
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Among the oldest and most enduring of American institutions are those that have been devoted to the encouragement of the arts and the sciences. During the nineteenth century, a great many scientific societies came and went, and a few in individual disciplines achieved permanence. But the century also witnessed the founding of three major organizations with broadly interdisciplinary interests: the Smithsonian Institution in 1846; the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, which in 1848 became the American Association for the Promotion (later, Advancement) of Science; and the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.

The founding of the National Academy of Sciences represented a momentous event in the history of science in the United States. Its establishment in the midst of a great civil war was fortuitous, perhaps, and its early existence precarious; and in this it mirrored the state of science at that time. The antecedents of the new organization in American science were the national academies in Great Britain and on the Continent, whose membership included the principal men of science of the realm. The chartering of academies under the auspices of a sovereign lent the prestige and elements of support and permanence the scientists sought, and in return they made their scientific talents and counsel available to the state.

The National Academy of Sciences: The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 describes the National Academies from inception through the beginning of the space age. The book describes the Academies' work through different periods in history, including the Postbellum years, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II.

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