0.7 The early cold war: 1950-57  (Page 6/7)

Thus from an institutional perspective, the 1951-1957 period was a time of moderate growth and consolidation—at least on the civilian science side—rather than innovation. It was also a period in which science policy was about support for science rather than the impact of science on government or society. The ostensibly mission-oriented ONR, AEC and NIH gradually expanded their support for university-centered basic research (related only tenuously to their missions) until by 1957 the availability of such support was taken for granted. Wholly or already only partially non-defense national laboratories managed by universities or university consortia became a significant factor in the institutional structure of American science. Although the AEC contracted with the University of California to establish a second weapons laboratory at Livermore, California, in 1952, within a few years its original laboratory at Los Alamos began relaxing some of its stringent security restrictions and establishing several small projects of a more civilian character. During this same period, the AEC’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, managed by the Associated Universities, Inc., emerged as one of the principal sites for the pursuit of the study of elementary particles.

The newly activated National Science Foundation and a relatively passive National Science Board sought and found a safe niche for themselves among supporters of university-centered basic research in those hard science disciplines or sub-disciplines that had yet to identify another willing and forthcoming federal patron. By August 1953, Waterman had succeeded in convincing the Congress to abolish the NSF’s $15 million annual appropriations ceiling. Congress also was dragged reluctantly into support of “big science” by means of a $2 million supplemental appropriation for U.S. scientific participation in the International Geophysical Year, a sixty-seven–nation program intended to allow scientists from around the world to take part in a series of coordinated observations of various geophysical phenomena. In June 1955, the NSF received an additional $10 million for that same purpose, and in August 1957 another $27 million.

The transition from the Truman to the Eisenhower administration was marked by the effort to educate a new generation of federal officials about the need for government support of scientific research outside government. While most non-defense–oriented science agencies endured threatened and actual budget cuts during the early Eisenhower years, they managed to survive and—even before Sputnik—to prosper.

Organization of defense-related r&D

Appropriately, the most significant institutional innovations of the period pertained to defense-related R&D. Creation of SAC/ODM in April 1951 helped improve coordination and oversight, as did the appointment, a year earlier, of a Pentagon “missile czar” with direct access to the Secretary of Defense and the authority to review and establish priorities for guided missile R&D programs throughout the three military branches. York and Greb, op. cit . Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Trevor Gardner, the first missile czar, resigned in 1956 over Eisenhower’s decision to cut the missile program budgets in all three of the armed services.