White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, 25th Anniversary Symposium (pt.1) MIT

CHARLES M. VEST: I want to start by thanking all the many people who've worked so hard to organize this event for us. And I want to extend a very warm welcome to all of you joining us here this morning in Cambridge. As some of you know, my tenure as president of MIT has been punctuated by almost monthly visits to Washington, sitting down with our federal leaders, and making the case for the value and the potential of investing in science and technology-- that is, giving advice, whether it's asked for or not. For the most part, however, I must say I've received a quite hospitable reception.

But I must say occasions like today are a tremendous relief where we can just relax and preach to the choir. We're here today to celebrate something very important-- the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and its impressive record of influence and accomplishment, during a quarter century in which science and technology have become absolutely integral to the vitality of our economy and our society as a whole. It's a privilege to have so many past presidential science advisors joining us for this morning's symposium.

But I want to address for one moment someone who's no longer with us, but who in a very real sense is responsible for all of us being here. Most people believe that the new administration in Washington is the second Bush White House, but in a very important sense it's the third, because when Vannevar Bush became the de facto science advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, he together with Bill Golden, who assumed a similar role with President Truman, changed America forever. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the role that science and technology have played in America's success since the end of World War II, in terms of our economy, national security, health care, and general quality of life. And that is in large part because of Vannevar Bush, Bill Golden, and other visionaries who followed him in that role-- people like Jim Killian, Jerry Wiesner, and all of you who are here today.

After the war, defense remain the dominant driver of physical science, technology, and provided the basic underlying rationale for the support of advanced research and education. And the benefits of this success ended up extending far beyond normal basic national security considerations. But as we all know too well, with the end of the Cold War, much of the broad-based support of science and technology slipped off the radar screen of national priorities.

But I believe we have come to a moment when America needs a passionate new commitment to investing in science and technology. And those of us who understand that need have a special obligation to make it happen. Although we no longer face a single great nuclear superpower, a strong commitment to broad-based fundamental research is still vital to our national security. It's vital to our ability to alleviate suffering and to create opportunity for people around the world. It is vital to improving the health and safety of our citizens, including the disadvantaged and the physically challenged. But perhaps above all, it is absolutely vital to maintaining and extending the benefits of America's economic success.

The truth is that this country's overall prosperity in the last half century is due in no small measure to what I like to refer to as America's innovation system-- a three-way partnership among academia, industry, and government. Our universities educate new generations of scientists, engineers, and students who in turn generate the new ideas. Industry translates these ideas into new products, new services, and moves them into the marketplace. Federal and state governments adopt the policies that make it all possible, and indeed provide the necessary basic financial support.

This winning combination has served our nation well. In the half century since World War II, fully half of the growth of the US economy has been due to technological innovation-- half. And I don't have to tell this audience that tomorrow's economic strength will spring almost entirely from the technologies emerging from our laboratories today. The next few decades are obviously going to be an exciting time to be involved in leading edge science and technology research and its translation into the marketplace in the form of new products, processes, and services. In fact, the promise is so great that it's easy to take for granted that our economy will always be run by the engine of innovation.

But I'm here to say that we cannot let America make the mistake of taking this for granted. The engine of innovation can run only if governments supply the fuel of basic support for fundamental research. The plain truth is that as a nation we are not doing what we must do to ensure our future strength in innovation. In recent years, the number of engineers graduating from our universities has decreased by over 20%. Over half of our doctoral candidates in mathematics and the physical sciences in our nation's universities come here from abroad with an increasing number returning home upon completion of their studies.

And there's another trend that's disturbing, though perhaps easier to correct. Federal spending on research and development as a share of the nation's gross domestic product is lower than it was just 15 years ago. If America is to have a bright future, we need to lay the necessary groundwork today, through education and through policy and research.

First, as we all know by now, we need to improve our K through 12 education system. America's technology-driven economy demands that our educational institutions supply the innovative thinkers who create new industries and who provide the workers who will fill ever more demanding jobs that these new industries generate. Singapore, Japan, Australia, Hungary, England, Canada-- all of these countries leave us in the dust in the tests of student achievements in mathematics and science. Our high schools must not by default deny American students the chance to pursue careers in these ever increasingly important fields.

Second, we need to attract more of our young citizens, especially minorities and women, into careers in science, mathematics, and engineering. As a nation, we simply cannot prosper without drawing on the talents of this large segment of our population. Only about 5% of the 24 year olds in this country have earned degrees in the natural sciences or engineering-- 5%. By that measure, we now trail countries like Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom. Just a decade ago, we were leading them by a mile. Our colleges and universities must make scientific and engineering education more attractive and accessible to bright young men and women. Their workplaces must provide the incentives and opportunity to make the most of that talent.

Third, we need to make sure that we are educating our young scientists and engineers not only in the rigors of their own fields but also in the broader skills that it takes to make things happen in the real world. At MIT, we're addressing that challenge through our Technology and Policy Program, or TPP as we call it. Founded in 1976, TPP is now the largest program of its kind in the world, and it fills a critical gap. Traditional engineering education rightly grounds students in the fundamentals of engineering science and application and hones their technical skills.

The TPP tries to make sure that students also gain an in-depth understanding of the other disciplines, such as economics, law, and politics, that ultimately may have just as much impact on which ideas make it into the marketplace or onto the floor of Congress and why. As an aside, if you're interested in learning more about TPP, I encourage you to look at the materials on display adjacent to the registration tables upstairs.

Well, that's a bit about the educational groundwork. Let me turn to the questions of policy and research. I would say that above all, we simply need to invest more in research across the board. Now, lots of people don't want to hear this, but I believe it's essential. While other nations are increasing their R&D commitments, US investment in broad-based fundamental research, which takes place largely in our universities, is slowing. Certainly industry can and should do more in this regard. At least here at MIT, we're working very hard to cultivate new partnerships with industry in creative ways. In fact, over 23% of our research sponsorship now comes from industry.

But there is also a legitimate necessary ongoing role for federal support of fundamental science and engineering research and advanced education, period. Recently we've all been very, very pleased that the federal government is making an accelerating commitment to research in the biomedical sciences. But truthfully, it's a bit like giving shoes to only one of the champion runners in a relay race. Today, for every dollar that we invest in life science research, we invest only about $0.50 in the physical sciences, engineering, and all the other related fields combined. 30 years ago, we invested roughly equally in the physical sciences, in engineering, and in biomedical research. Our federal investments today, in my view, are dangerously lopsided.

Now, there is a legitimate question-- is this truly an imbalance? Is it really lopsided? Or is it simply a reflection of the fact that this is the golden age of advancement in the life sciences, whereas physical science and engineering are mature and should slip onto the back burner? I believe that it is indeed a fundamental and corrosive imbalance. In this era of intellectual interdependence, when the most interesting and important ideas are emerging at the surprising overlaps and intersections between previously unrelated fields, that unbalanced investment represents a serious strategic error. And there may be no one in the country more better equipped to understand why than the people in the room today.

Finally, as leaders in this field, I believe we personally need to battle the troubling tendency to try to separate science policy from technology policy. It makes no sense to me. This is an intensely interdisciplinary time. Is bioengineering, for example, science or is it technology?

Brain research certainly sounds like a basic scientific field and is, but it would never have been achieved at its current level of sophistication without concurrent joint development of the most advanced kinds of technologies. We must insist on a coherent sustained strategic national commitment to science and technology together. And we must realize that we have not one or two but three partners in this mission-- academia, government, and industry.

As people with the expertise and experience to appreciate these problems and all of their dimensions, I believe it's our job to work hard to make the case in Washington for prompt and continuing action. We need to persuade federal leaders that broad-based fundamental research is an investment, not a cost, that innovation is not something that will just take care of itself, that our future economy, jobs, and security will simply not grow on trees, that the OSTP and the president's science advisor are not some marginal academic constituency but rather represent vital interests of the American people as a whole.

This 25th anniversary of OSTP in its current guise comes at a propitious time to think together about American science and technology policy. The people we are privileged to have gathered here today have led us from World War II to the World Wide Web. Looking backward at our journey, we can come to understand what role science policy has made in creating the infrastructure, the human capital, and the opportunities that have driven one of the most remarkable periods of transformation and change in economic strength in our history.

Looking at the present, we can see strengths and weaknesses but above all opportunity. Just imagine-- we have essentially completed sequencing the human genome. We now know the dictionary of life. We have a breathtaking new understanding of how humans have evolved and how we fit into the total plethora of living things. These insights are simply staggering.

We suddenly have extensions of our eyes and our hands that allow us to work at nanoscale in science and in technology. We can create new materials and devices that are structured one atom or molecule at a time. This will lead to materials with remarkable new properties, to hugely greater strength to weight ratios, to low power, high performance computing, and to medical diagnostic and treatment strategies difficult to believe today.

We have a world that is increasingly tied together through the internet and made accessible by the World Wide Web. The information base that this makes available virtually everywhere and on an as needed basis has begun to totally transform the way we all live and work and learn. Its potential for democratization and empowerment is truly unprecedented in human history. Information appliances are starting to turn the corner toward readily serving our personal and collective purposes rather than making us slaves to an endless progression of computers, fax machines, pagers, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants, et cetera. High-resolution functional magnetic imaging, gene knockout technologies, and our increased understanding of cells and of complex systems have set the stage for a quantum leap in our understanding of the brain and mind and memory, with potentially huge payoffs in improved mental health, communication, and teaching and learning. Boundaries are disappearing-- boundaries between nations, boundaries between disciplines, boundaries between science and engineering, the boundaries between what is fundamental and what is application.

In many ways, the knowledge structures and techniques of the life sciences, physical sciences, and information science are simply merging. I hope that our discussions today will be conducted in the context of this enormous field of opportunity and change. But as we sharpen our focus, it seems to me that moving into the future with no office of technology policy to serve Congress and with few people and structures in place in the new administration yet, we must think together about how we in the science and engineering and policy communities can serve our nation well as it faces great challenges in both the near term and the long run.

Our president and our Congress have many issues with which to grapple that demands serious and objective knowledge and advice based on sound science and engineering. Just to note a few, energy and environment, including a sound strategy around global climate change and sustained economic development, new biomedical research, diagnostics, and therapies, based on learnings from stem cell research, development of a new space transport, the stewardship of our nuclear stockpiles, understanding and deployment of genetically modified organisms in agriculture and medicine, facing new challenges to our security, bioterrorism, cyberterrorism, urban warfare, and indeed thinking about the broad issues associated with the vulnerability of our increasingly complex infrastructures, launching the new systems biology that will move us from the sequenced human genome to a world of improved health and quality of life.

We have our work cut out for us. The bottom line is this-- it's not what we already know, it's what we don't yet know that's going to make all the difference to our future. So today, as we celebrate all the progress that OSTP has achieved over the past 25 years, I hope that we can also come together in another way-- to persuade our many friends in Washington that when it comes to funding broad-based fundamental research, now is not the time to leave the dance floor.

It's now my pleasure to introduce Dan Hastings, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and one of the chief organizers behind today's celebration. Dan received his undergraduate degree from Oxford University, but I'm proud to say that he is also one of our own. He received his PhD from MIT in Aero/Astro in 1980, returned to the department as a faculty member in 1985.

His extensive published record is concentrated on issues related to interactions between spacecraft and their environment, space propulsion, space systems engineering, and space policy. Currently he's focused on space systems and space policy and widely recognized for his work on tethers, plasma contactors, and high voltage arcing on solar arrays. But Dan also has a powerful interest and experience in the broader questions of policy that concern us today, especially but not exclusively when it comes to space.

From '97 to '99, he served as Chief Scientist of the US Air Force, leading several influential studies on where the Air Force should invest, in space global energy projection, and options for science and technology workforces in the 21st century. He currently serves on NASA Space Science Advisory Council. Among his many honors are the Air Force Distinguished Civilian Award. He's a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the International Academy of Astronautics. Ladies and gentlemen, my colleague, Dan Hastings.

DAN HASTINGS: Credit where credit is due, the initial idea for this was not mine but Duncan Moore's who's sitting right there, who actually suggested this to me at some dinner party that we were at in Washington. And so we put together this dais. The dais is actually organized around lunch as the fulcrum. In the morning, we're going to hear about the discussion of OSTP from the people who, of course, were the integral participants in it, as the leaders of OSTP. And then we'll sort of focus around lunch, where President Shapiro will talk to us.

And then in the afternoon, we're going to hear about some of the issues that are on the plate right now in terms of things that the current administration is going to have to face in the next several years. So this is one take on those issues.

So with that, let me actually start by introducing the first panel, which is going to focus on some of the pre-OSTP years. And we have three distinguished speakers here. I'm going to introduce each of them. Each of them will have actually no more than 20 minutes to speak, and then there'll be some time for questions. For those of you on the panel, there's students here who'll be showing you the time so that we can actually stay on time with respect to this. And then at the end of the three talks, there'll be some more time for questions in general to the panel. And essentially, we'll run all of the panels in like manner.

So first of all, let me start by introducing William Golden. William Golden is Chairman Emeritus of the American Museum of Natural History, an officer and trustee of several scientific and educational organizations, including New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Mt. Sinai Medical Center Hospital and Medical School, National Humanities Center, the Hebrew Free Loan Society, Barnard College, Black Rock Forest Consortium. He's also the director of several business corporations, including General American Investors Company and Block Drug Company.

Mr. Golden was co-chairman of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government. He was Special Assistant to President Truman, and as such he designed the first president's science advisory apparatus in 1950. And he was presidential advisor on the initial program from the National Science Foundation. He's edited and co-authored several books on science advising to the highest levels of government, including Science Advice to the President, 1980, Science Technology Advice to the President, Congress, and Judiciary, 1998, Worldwide Science Technology Advice to the Highest Levels of Government, 1991.

Next who's going to speak is Ed David. Ed David is president of EED, Inc, advisors to industry, government, and universities in technology, research, and innovation management. Dr. David's current engagements in business include 20 boards of directors and technical advisory boards, both nationally and abroad. He's also Vice President of the Washington Advisory Group, developing corporate academic research partnerships. Dr. David has served as Science Advisor to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology from 1970 to 1973.

From 1977 to 1986, he was president of Exxon Research and Engineering Company. He spent the first two decades of his research career at Bell Telephone Labs, latterly as the executive director. He also served as US representative to NATO Science Committee. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from this institution, from MIT.

And then Guy Stever. Dr. Guyford Stever has broad experience as a scientist, engineer, educator, administrator. He's a board member of the Science Service University's Research Association, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a member of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government from 1988 to 1993, Director of the National Science Foundation from 1972 to 1976, during which he also served as Science Advisor to Presidents Nixon and Ford. He was the Science and Technology Advisor to President Ford and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from '76 to '77, so he was actually the first director of OSTP.

Before joining NSF, he was professor and department head here at MIT from 1945 to 1965 and President of Carnegie Mellon University from 1965 to 1972. As director of NSF, he strengthened NSF's highest priority mission as supporter of basic research. Under his tenure, NSF's growing biological and social science activities were separated from physical and mass sciences into an independent division.

As Science Advisor, he helped convince President Ford to re-establish the White House Science Structure and then was directed by President Ford to work with Vice President Rockefeller, Congress, and OMB to that end. The 1976 Science and Technology Act created the Office of Science and Technology Policy, with the president's S&T Advisor as director. And he was then appointed to that and put in place there in 1976. I should also point out, he was also one of my predecessors as Air Force Chief Scientist. I never let him forget that. So with that, let me ask Mr. Golden to come up and give your remarks.

WILLIAM T. GOLDEN: Good morning. I'm going to start by quoting Groucho Marx, who once remarked as he stepped up to the podium, before I begin to speak, I have something important to say. Now, it's not what I would like it to be and what you might think I'm going to say, who the next president's Science Advisor is going to be, because I don't know that either.

But I do want to say that we have here the greatest, largest collection of presidential science advisors to the President of the United States in the history of the United States. And I think it's worth mentioning them. They might even be able to get photographed.

There's Allan Bromley, there's Ed David, there's Don Hornig, there's George Keyworth, there's Jack Gibbons, Neal Lane, and Guy Stever. Some of them, like Guy Stever, were both Science Advisor to the President and Director of the National Science Foundation, Neal Lane being another such a one. It's quite remarkable, I think, and we're all glad to be here. And I'm certainly glad to see all of them alive and prospering.

The time is limited, and I'm going to be just really touching on things rather rapidly as to the history, since mine goes back essentially to the Precambrian. And we're concerned with the history of the future rather than the history of the past. But I'll go over the past in somewhat fragmentary fashion.

In the summer of 1950, the Korean War broke out. And things began to stir as to what should be done about science and technology by the government-- the OSRD, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, having been so important in the winning of World War II. President Truman was pressed by various people, including Congressman McCormick of Massachusetts, who was then a leader of what was called the Big Four in the Congress-- the Speaker, I think he was, of the House. They wanted him to re-establish the Office of Scientific Research and Development. They wanted to do some other things.

I got a call at that time when my wife and I were at the Grand Canyon vacationing. And the call was from the Budget Bureau, the Bureau of the Budget, it was then called, Charlie Stauffacher, Assistant Director who I had known in the Navy. He said, Bill, would you come to Washington and help us by advising President Truman as to what he should do about actions in relation to the outbreak of the Korean War?

Well, I couldn't resist that. And a couple of days later, I was in Washington meeting with Fred Lawton, who was then the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, Charlie Stauffacher and Elmer Staats, who were the two assistant directors. I agreed to be advisor to President Truman on this matter and started work within a very few days by interviewing people I thought were knowledgeable or should be knowledgeable about the subject and approach it with an open mind.

I very quickly came to the view that it would not be sensible to re-establish the Office of Scientific Research and Development at that time, that it was premature, and that was not the thing to do. But the thing to do was to have it in mind, possibly to establish it later, if developments in the war made that seem appropriate.

I did relatively quickly come to the idea that the President of the United States should have a science advisor reporting directly to him. And I tried this out on various people who I interviewed. I interviewed many members of the scientific community, government officials, former government officials, businesspeople, academics, and tracked somewhat over 150 people. And I really worked very hard-- day, night, and weekends for about two and a half months-- and then submitted my report to President Truman on December 30, 1950.

The interviews I recorded in somewhat uncharacteristically orderly fashion for me. Every night I dictated my memoranda for the [INAUDIBLE] to an antique Edison dictating machine, which probably none of you has ever seen, and I had never seen before in a sense. But it recorded on a wax cylinder, which was then erased in due course by shaving the cylinder. At any rate, as I recorded them each night and here in this book, probably [INAUDIBLE] mark of 420-some odd pages are the interviews which people have subsequently found of some interest.

This has never been published as such, but it has been-- Xerox copies are available in various libraries, including the Library of Congress, the American Physical Society, Columbia University, the Hoover Library, the Eisenhower Library, and the Truman Library. I think I've made them all. So if any of you people are interested in the written at the time interviews of people of greater or less prominence, they are available.

Now, if someone can put on a transparency, the first one of those would just display-- list the-- let me have the other one first, another one first, the one that's called "Alphabetical List of Interviewees." There'll be several pages. We'll just display them.

I have a few Xerox copies of these papers, which I can leave here at MIT for those who want to see it. Does that start with Archibald Alexander? This is to give you the general idea. You recognize some names, and some you won't. It's not there for the purpose, except to indicate the number of times I saw some of them, and in effect the table of contents. I think we can show the next page too, if you would. I think that's enough to give you the general concept.

I've referred to publications other than my own memoranda. And I think we might show that list now. That's three pages there. And again, just to give you the idea-- and I will leave a Xerox copy for anyone who may want to look into these-- of varied interests, some of which I was editor and co-author, such as Science Advice to the President, which Chuck Vest referred to previously.

It may be of interest-- there are articles in these books by everyone of the Presidential Science Advisors who is here, as well as some who are no longer living. In fact, every Presidential Science Advisor up to date, or yesterday's date, is represented by an original article written by them for me in these volumes. And I've written some relevant papers as well. The only one missing is Oliver Buckley, who was the first Science Advisor.

I'll turn to that. I think that's enough of the display of that. You can take that off. It gets to be a distraction.

Just to wave an actual book at you, or two of them, to show they exist-- this is Science Advice to the President, which the second edition contains today material that did not appear in the first. This little book, published by the AAAS Press and not very easy to get is excerpts from the 420-page book prepared by a member of the National Science Foundation's staff-- and he has a very good article in it himself, namely Bill Blanpied, who some of you know is an old timer in the National Science Foundation, who is now the National Science Foundation's representative in Japan. Bill Blanpied did a splendid job, I think, of excerpting, including in there certain documents such as a summary but not the full copy of my report to President Truman.

In my report, I recommended that the national-- that the, excuse me, that the OSRD not be revived at that time, which was the end of 1950, but that it be kept in mind for possible activation later on, or something equivalent to it, but that the president appoint a Science Advisor to himself, or have one appointed. And this was done-- quite some time passed, several months, while we-- that being the Budget Bureau people on the White House staff and I-- went through names of people we thought were qualified who might be interested.

I won't go through the list. Lee DuBridge, who at that time with President of Caltech, a very prominent scientist in World War II and the OSRD-- some later called him the Eisenhower of Science-- was one of the first thoughts. He declined on the grounds that he couldn't leave Caltech. Another was Mervin Kelly, who probably won't be remembered by many of you, but who was an outstanding BellTel Labs scientist, and was outstanding in assisting the military throughout that whole period of time.

Mervin Kelly was interested, and we were interested in him. We went to BellTel, and they said, well, we'll do even better. We'll give you Oliver Buckley, who is Mervin Kelly's boss. That proved to have been dealt somewhat not from the top of the deck. Mervin Kelly was made president of the BellTel Labs. And Oliver Buckley, who was a very fine man, very able and very active and very important in the OSRD, started off well. But he was ill, and he deteriorated. And he was rather timorous as things went along.

He was followed by Lee DuBridge on a part-time basis. I had established the job to be a full-time one. Lee DuBridge took it on later at a part-time basis, and was then followed by I. I. Rabi.

At this point, when Rabi was the Science Advisor on the part-time basis-- I presume you all know who I. I. Rabi was, a Nobel Laureate in Physics at Columbia University and a very prominent and important figure in American science policy and in military-related science-- he went to President Eisenhower promptly when Sputnik went off in 1957, which was an arresting event for those who were alive at the time, and told Eisenhower that he should select a full-time Science Advisor. And this was done with getting Jim Killian. Jim Killian, who you all will know of, was extremely helpful to me in my study and proved to be a very practical, devoted, and in every way effective Science Advisor to Eisenhower.

I think that covers those aspects that I wanted to talk about. The other things I was expected to do-- and no, I'm not trying to go over any of my time-- was to advise President Truman on some other timely matters. And one of them was the activation of the National Science Foundation. The act had been passed that summer of 1950. In November of that year, the members of the National Science Board were chosen, appointed. And the question was what should their policies be.

And I was asked to study them. And I did. And I submitted a memorandum at some considerable length, which was circulated to the members of the board, in which the basic recommendation that I made was a fundamental question. That was that the National Science Foundation should devote itself exclusively to the support of basic science and should not get involved in military, science-related, or technology-related matters at all. This was quite a debatable issue with the members of the board and others. But they finally came to agree and accept that. And that was done and was maintained for a long time as pure science in the National Science Foundation.

I think that-- well, I'd like to say that in the discussions with these many people, I rather quickly got to a feeling that-- not a feeling, but recognized that the ideas of the President's Science Advisor and a President Science Advisory Committee would be acceptable and perhaps attractive to many of them. But there was some debate about this, arguments about it. And after-- let me say, before I-- no, I shouldn't put it that way.

I submitted my report to President Truman on-- I think it was December 30 of 1950, after about two and a half months or so of work. The question of putting it into effect then came up on the selection of a President's Science Advisor. This was somewhat argued in some places. But I felt that I had, before submitting the report, the essentially complete agreement or acceptance of those ideas.

After it had developed, there was some lack of enthusiasm among some of the scientific people. And this was debated and finally did come to a nihil obstat, at any rate, by the entire National Science Board. I should say that this was prior to my submitting the report to President Truman. So I felt that this was accepted, and indeed enthusiastically in some quarters.

The selection of the scientific advisor I've just described, the selection of the members of the President's Science Advisory Committee, PSAC, was a similar procedure. And all went well.

I should say, I'd rather like to say, that Jim Killian was a very strong supporter of these ideas and was very helpful-- I think invaluably helpful in persuading some members of the scientific community that the recommendations were the things for them to approve, including the basic science only, from the National Science Foundation. Jim Killian was very helpful.

Robert Oppenheimer started very cautiously, and finally came around. He was not opposed at any point, but for those of you who knew him, he was cautious in what he would say. And he would express himself sometimes in rather poetic terms. But he came around to full, enthusiastic support.

Vannevar Bush, another MIT person who was very helpful to me, not only then but in subsequent years, started somewhat skeptically-- not opposed, but he wondered whether the president would use a Science Advisor. And he was supportive. Jim Conant-- and I call him Jim because other people did, I certainly never did, he was a rather formal man-- was opposed to the concept of a single Presidential Science Advisor. He thought there should be a committee but not a person, who became the Chairman of the National Science Board, also came around to accept it, so that everyone did accept the idea, some very enthusiastically, before they had their first meeting. I'm sorry, not before their first meeting-- after they had had their first meeting and went through this, which was in November of 1950, if I remember correctly.

The selection of Alan Waterman to be the first Director of the National Science Foundation was a very important event, I think, in the history of the foundation. There had been active consideration in the White House of appointing-- because the president did the appointing of the director-- of appointing a man who was a faithful Democrat who had been defeated in running for governor of one of the southern states. And this was, I thought, a real hazard, but it was overcome. And Alan Waterman was appointed. And I think that's proven to be a very important historic event. He did very well for many years.

I'd like to add, essentially in conclusion, that the organization, or the apparatus as some call it, the White House Science organization, namely a President's Science Advisor and a PSAC, has been adopted and adapted in virtually every developed country. Now, this is some 50 years later, and every country has something closely equivalent. The reference was made by Chuck Vest to the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, which Josh Lederberg and I were co-chairman.

The work of that commission led to quite a number of publications, with some of which I'm sure some of you are quite familiar. And I think I need make no further reference to it, except to say that one of the developments from that commission, not a direct part of its work but demonstrating the unpredictability, in a way, of evolution, was the creation of something which Allan Bromley named the Carnegie Group. This was and is an informal organization, which is rather too formal a term for it-- an informally organized group that has met semi-annually, ever since it was first convened by invitation of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, about 11 years ago.

It consists of the ministers of science or their equivalents of the G8 countries and the European Union. In the United States, it's a Science Advisor to the President. They meet informally with no staff present, zero staff present, no formal minutes, and have very informal and open discussions, as Allan Bromley can tell you more effectively than I can. This has persisted.

There's no subsidy. The Carnegie Commission invited these ministers for the first meeting. They liked it. They said we'll carry on. And they do that, moving from country to country.

The host country is the host. The ministers pay their own freight. And they talk very openly. I hope there'll be some time here when maybe Allan Bromley can tell you a little about that in his colorful way. I see him smiling over there, so I'm not talking out of turn. The next semi-annual meeting-- and they've literally been six months apart, generally speaking June and December-- the next will be in Canada in the beginning of June.

I wanted to display certain documents. I think I've given you the main idea with the transparencies that have been shown, and the couple of volumes that I've displayed here. So I will thank you for your attention. And if there is a question period-- I don't know whether it comes immediately or at the end. But--

DAN HASTINGS: Are there any questions for Mr. Golden?

WILLIAM T. GOLDEN: Well, I think I'll quit while I'm ahead. Thank you.

AUDIENCE: Can I ask you to talk a little bit about Dr. Bush? Dr. Bush, Vannevar Bush?

WILLIAM T. GOLDEN: Well, I referred to him as Van Bush, but I never called him that to his face. He was Dr. Bush. What would you like to know about him? I would say he had a rather stiff and formal manner sometimes and a very warm heart, a very cool head, and he was a very outspoken man. You knew that he was what my mother called "genuine." What he said is what he felt and believed.

AUDIENCE: How did he come up with this marvelous case for science back then? What prompted that?

WILLIAM T. GOLDEN: I really don't know, other than his whole background and his belief in what he wrote. But how he came to do that I don't know. That was essentially before my time. He became the head of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, as you probably know, and ran that very well, an operating scientific organization with five science divisions. Is that helpful?

AUDIENCE: Thank you.

WILLIAM T. GOLDEN: OK. Thank you all.

AUDIENCE: Not a question, just an addendum to what Bill said. Bill mentioned the book that Bill Blanpied prepared that contains the selection of the memos that he referred to. Yes, the one-- it is indeed out of print. Copies are very scarce. But the full text is up on the web in printable form as a PDF file on the science policy section of the AAAS web-- there's the URL right there.

WILLIAM T. GOLDEN: Glad you mentioned that, Al. I should have.

DAN HASTINGS: Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

WILLIAM T. GOLDEN: Thank you all.

ED DAVID: I always have to lower the microphone. And as somebody said, before I took this job, I was six feet tall.

Looking out into the audience and seeing distinguished people, many of them, I'm reminded of the story about the victim of the Johnstown flood. When he arrived in heaven, he was asked to present a seminar on what had happened at Johnstown and the flood. And when he got up to talk, he felt very, very comfortable because, after all, he'd observed it all-- until he noticed that in the front row Noah was sitting.

So when I look out here, I see many of my old friends and even some enemies. And it reminds me of a saying which applies to the Science Advisor-- or, for that matter, anybody in a high level in the White House, which is a closed system. And one of the laws of closed systems, of course, is conservation. And the thing that's conserved in closed systems like the White House staff, it's influence that's conserved.

And so if you gain influence, somebody else is going to lose it. And that means that friends in the White House can come and go, but the enemies accumulate. And, like entropy, your popularity always declines.

Well, I am not going to follow exactly what was asked for-- namely, to look back at a pre-OSTP period, because I really wasn't there during that time. What I'm going to do is to have a look back as far as I can go and then look forward.

I was at the White House as head of OSTP and the Science Advisor from the late 1970s to early 1973. I replaced Lee DuBridge. In his time there, he had fought and lost a number of battles with the White House staff, especially with that fabled pair of villains, Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

But he prepared the way for important happenings. He brought on a very fine OSTP staff, whom I found quite inspiring when I got there. In addition to the staff that he brought on directly, there were DOD, State Department, Agriculture Department, and NASA people seconded to the office. And I gather that some of that activity, some of that technique of getting people from the agencies to work in the office, is still in place. And I think these sorts of people were absolutely essential to what I'll described that was done during the time I was there.

The science apparatus really had a busy time. There were many issues to be confronted and the programs to be put in place. And among the most pressing were-- and many of you will remember this-- the fate of the SST program, the supersonic transport. There was also a question for the funding of satellites, to establish an X-ray astronomy capability. The Hubble Space Telescope was authorized during that time.

The post-Apollo program was formulated, and the continuation of the moon flights occurred during that period. As many of you may remember, there were 19 such flights that were scheduled but only 17 went off. Two were canceled. They actually had been canceled just before I got there.

There was the Cancer Cure Initiative, as it was called in those days. There was the ABM system activity, which was debated at length. And finally, the ABM treaty, which still exists and is still effective.

There was the nuclear breeder reactor and nuclear energy generally, and the cold question of how to set up the nuclear fuel cycle. There was the question of how much funding could be managed for so-called civilian research-- that is, research beyond the government programs at NASA and the Department of Defense.

There was the effort to make the RND funding overall in the federal budget grow, especially in what was called basic research at that time, and still is called that in many quarters, although I prefer the term "fundamental research." That's a quirk of mine, a hang-up I've got.

Now, it's interesting with the current 30-year perspective looking back to ask about the outcomes of all this activity. Note that federal funding-- and this has already been referred to here-- for R&D in the 1960s was over 60% of the total US funding for R&D in total. Today, at least in 1999, it's only 28% and declining still.

So with that background, what has been the success rate of the federal portion of R&D leading up to that, as judged by the programs that I've just mentioned to you that were established during my tenure there at the White House? Of course, the answer to that about success of these programs hinges on the criterion for success. Perhaps the best is just to ask which ones of these programs met their objectives as stated in the beginning?

In my judgment, the clear successes in those programs that I mentioned were the efforts in X-ray astronomy, the Hubble Space Telescope-- in spite of the fact that it was nearsighted when it was put out there-- the final Apollo missions, which were very successful but which I had to write to the president directly to get the final mission off the ground-- that was Apollo 17-- was a nighttime launch, the only one at Cape Canaveral at that time, Cape Kennedy now. The ABM treaty was a success, and some aspects of the civilian R&D programs that were established at the time.

The rest of the programs that I mentioned went downhill, especially the SST program, the post-Apollo program, which we still are heir to, the breeder and nuclear energy, the effort for overall expansion of federal R&D is still not in place. And this, I think if you look back carefully, is about a 50% success rate.