The Military Moves In

In the past five years, in one way or another, almost every able-bodied U.S. scientist has worked for the Office of Scientific Research and Development. This week OSRD quietly went out of business.* But scientists, who are diehard individualists, fear that they are not through with being bossed. In universities throughout the land, they are beginning to discover that they have acquired a new paymaster--the U.S. Army & Navy.

Contracts & Plans. No one will say what the present Government payroll amounts to; it is a quasi-military secret. The universities are mum. The Navy grudgingly admits that it has signed research contracts for $600,000 with M.I.T., $350,000 with the University of Chicago, $280,000 with Caltech, $220,000 with the University of Texas, $200,000 with Cornell. Undisclosed additional amounts are in the offing. All told, the Navy expects to spend some $45 million on research, much of it for basic science in universities.

The Army plans to invest some $90 million, a third of it in basic research. An additional $40 million of the Army's Manhattan District (nuclear) funds are earmarked for research. By last week the District was well along in arrangements for a chain of regional laboratories across the nation. Biggest: the Argonne Laboratory near Chicago, headed by 39-year-old Physicist Walter Henry Zinn. The University of Chicago, the Mayo Clinic and 22 other Midwest institutions will help run Argonne via an advisory board, will use it as a center for research in nuclear physics, biochemistry and other fields in which neutrons may be useful. Other laboratories in the chain: the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, the Clinton Laboratories at Oak Ridge, Tenn., a new laboratory for universities in the northeastern U.S. (proposed site: Sandy Hook).

This week the Army & Navy announced that they had set up a joint scientific research committee to coordinate their research. Its chairman: Vannevar Bush. Other members are Generals Jacob Devers and Carl Spaatz, Assistant Navy Secretary W. John Kenny, Admiral DeWitt Ramsey.

Peanuts & Meteors. The total annual research budget for all U.S. universities before the war was some $30 million--peanuts compared to the $135-175 million the military are now prepared to spend. Both the Army & Navy, spurred by the results derived from the work of such theorists as Albert Einstein, Ernest Rutherford et al., are thoroughly sold on fundamental science. They are building cyclotrons and betatrons, signing up astronomers, chemists, physiologists, botanists, branching out into such unmilitary studies as meteors, the rare earths and plant cells.

Thoughtful scientists are thoroughly alarmed. Is the military about to take over U.S. science, lock, stock & barrel, calling the tune for U.S. universities and signing up the best scientists for work fundamentally aimed at military results? Many a scientist believes that is exactly what is happening.

While Congress is bogged down over bills for an atomic energy control commission and a national science foundation, which are intended to restore science to the scientists, the Army & Navy are signing contracts.

*The record of its vast labor, in 2,500,000 volumes (almost enough to fill the New York Public Library), will be turned over to the Government by Director Vannevar Bush.

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