Progress Report

"The whole course of science is proof that destiny is irresistible only when it is not resisted."

How democracy's scientists have resisted destiny since 1939 is summed up this week by a top-notch science reporter, George W. Gray of the Rockefeller Foundation, in Science at War (Harper; $3). In 1939 the Germans had a big head start in war technology, but United Nations scientists have already outstripped them.

In the U.S. a generation's advance in science has been packed into the last three years. One agency alone, the Army & Navy's Office of Scientific Research and Development, is spending $100,000,000 a year on research. The scientists' job is considered so crucial that for the first time in U.S. military history a civilian scientist, OSRD's Director Vannevar Bush, now sits on the Army & Navy's war councils. The full story of Bush's scientists cannot be told until after the war. But Science at War tells a good deal.

Biological Front. Scientists have learned so much about nutrition, disease and surgery that, given similar battle conditions, some doctors estimate, a soldier now runs only half as much risk of death from disease and wounds as in World War I. One of the great advances has been in the field of blood plasma. Plasma has been split into several useful components: albumins, which proved even better than whole plasma in treating shock; blood-clotting factors (prothrombin and fibrinogen), which look very promising in the treatment of hemorrhage and burns; antibodies, which have been tried as injections against virus diseases, have already worked well in preventing measles.

Electronic Front. The latest thing in radar, Gray reports, is its use in directing anti-aircraft fire. It gives guns accurate range and direction even against planes hidden by clouds, and in conjunction with instruments that make corrections for plane speed, wind, etc., it makes gunfire virtually automatic.

The U.S. Army now uses more radio equipment than was manufactured for the entire nation in peacetime. The Signal Corps, which operates it, has more men than Napoleon's whole force at Waterloo. Aside from radar, electronics is one of the most versatile developments of World War II. In industry, electronic tubes perform such diversified jobs as shutting off the air in a Bessemer furnace when the molten steel reaches exactly the right white-hot brilliance, tempering shell casings to toughen them, examining all sorts of materials for hidden flaws.

Gray says that it is now possible, by means of electronics, to throw electrical camouflage around a broadcasting station to conceal its location--"it should be unnecessary for radio stations to go off the air at times of approaching air raids."

Air Front. Adjusting to rapid changes in air pressure has been one of the prime problems in flying. When air pressure on the body is reduced by half or more (at 18,000 ft.), nitrogen in the blood begins to bubble out, causing obstruction of the capillaries and severe pains called "the bends." To prevent this, high-flying airmen now breathe pure oxygen or a mixture of oxygen and helium for an hour or so; this forces the nitrogen out of the blood and permits 40,000-ft. ascents without decompression effects. It is also possible to adjust to high-altitude flying by training: one U.S. airman acclimatized himself by living for two months on a 13,000-ft. mountain, thereafter flew as high as 24,000 feet without extra oxygen.

Mathematics Front. Because modern war is largely based on mathematics, the U.S. has been severely handicapped by its shortage of top-flight mathematicians.* But it has had much help from German refugees (e.g., Richard Courant, the former head of Goettingen's world-famed Mathematical Institute) and from amazing new calculating machines developed by U.S. inventors. Among these is a new electronic "differential analyzer" at M.I.T. A vast improvement on its prewar parent, a mechanical analyzer developed by Vannevar Bush, the new device solves problems in dynamics with as many as 18 variables, can complete in a few hours a computation that would take the old machine months and a human brain years. The machine can plot the flight of a shell in only a few minutes more than it takes the shell to make the flight.

* A 1940 survey showed that U.S. industry employed only 150 mathematicians.

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