“Science is decisive, both in war and peace.”
U.S. Senator Harley Kilgore, 1946
Between 1944 and 1950, America’s leaders determined the United States ought to turn out to be the world’s dominant superpower in science and technology, and they constructed the very best mannequin ever devised to make it occur. The nation’s success in realizing this purpose stands as certainly one of its most towering accomplishments – and as a core pillar of American prosperity at this time.
This essay is the second in a six-part George W. Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative collection on how America’s distinctive mannequin for innovation and financial progress got here to be. U.S. preeminence in science and technology, like different elements of the American mannequin, was not inevitable. It resulted from visionary management and an audacious guess on the nation’s future.
America’s science dominance over the previous eight a long time has translated into steep benefits over international friends in enterprise innovation, productiveness, and alternative for strange Americans. This is due to a easy fact of financial geography: Ideas journey greatest at a short distance. Even in at this time’s networked world, commercialization of latest concepts disproportionately happens near the place they originate.
American science earlier than 1939
The United States was a scientific backwater earlier than 1939, in contrast with main European nations. While America matched its rivals in sensible engineering, Europe led the world in science and medication. European scientists dominated cutting-edge work on infectious ailments (Louis Pasteur of France), antibiotics (Alexander Fleming, Scotland), radioactivity and radiation therapy for most cancers (Marie Curie, France), radio technology (Guglielmo Marconi, Italy), computing (Alan Turing, England), and radar (Heinrich Hertz, Germany and Robert Watson-Watt, England).
Europe’s lead was particularly pronounced in probably the most revolutionary subject of its time: particle physics. Germany dominated physics analysis till the Hitler regime fired all Jewish students from German universities – together with 11 future Nobel Prize winners – in 1933. Even then, high scientists principally moved to the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Denmark, residence of Niels Bohr, godfather of atomic physics in the Thirties. Top U.S. schools tried to recruit European physicists however had little success till the outbreak of battle in 1939, based on Richard Rhodes’ e-book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb and David C. Cassidy’s Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg. Albert Einstein, who got here to Princeton University in 1933, was a notable outlier.
One measure of the hole between Europe and the United States: As of 1939, European scientists had earned greater than 5 occasions as many Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, and medication as American scientists, as a U.S. Senate report highlighted in 1946.
The preliminary push in 1939 to launch a U.S. atomic bomb program got here not from American physicists however from three Jewish Hungarian scientists – Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, and Eugene Wigner – who had simply arrived in the United States and understood the advances of Hitler’s nuclear weapons program. They requested Einstein to ship a now-famous letter of warning to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a result of they knew nobody in FDR’s White House would have heard of them. European émigré scientists performed main roles in the Manhattan Project, because the 2023 movie Oppenheimer depicts.
Germany, which created the trendy analysis college, had an outsized share of premier establishments earlier than Hitler’s rise to energy, together with the University of Göttingen, worldwide capital of atomic physics. Copenhagen, Denmark; Leyden, the Netherlands; and Zurich, Switzerland, additionally had top-ranking universities. By distinction, Ivy League colleges in the United States like Harvard and Yale remained devoted all through the nineteenth century to the perfect of classical schooling. This excluded “practical” topics like science and engineering, which had been solely regularly integrated in the early twentieth century. Innovative establishments impressed by the German mannequin – above all, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – helped lead modernization of U.S. analysis universities in the early twentieth century. But as of 1939, the United States was clearly behind.
As for science coverage, Congress supported solely a tiny price range for analysis and devoted most of it to agricultural R&D, a notable U.S. energy. Military leaders had been notoriously stodgy towards new applied sciences. Nor did the Roosevelt Administration present a lot curiosity in science. FDR at the least partially subscribed to the favored principle that technological advances enabling industrial automation had been responsible for prime unemployment all through the Thirties, based on Daniel J. Kevles in The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America.
World War II modifications all the pieces
America’s entry into World War II after Pearl Harbor led to the best mobilization of science for army functions in historical past. The federal authorities elevated its R&D spending by 20 occasions in inflation-adjusted phrases and devoted nearly all of it to successful the battle. Congress established the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which helped fund and coordinate profitable tasks on radar, the Norden bombsight, artificial rubber, penicillin, antimalarials, and the atomic bomb.
When the battle got here to an finish in 1945, folks understood that science had performed a big position in the Allied victory. In distinction to the ambivalent emotions many Americans have at this time in regards to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the overwhelming feeling on the time was gratitude that U.S. troopers wouldn’t die in an invasion of Japan. Scientists reported that, for the primary time, they may stroll into cocktail events, and everybody wished to speak with them, as Daniel S. Greenberg wrote in The Politics of Pure Science.
At the identical time, wartime expertise satisfied many Americans that science doesn’t simply occur – it requires management and cash. Americans emerged from the battle way more optimistic that concerted efforts may enhance most cancers survival charges and different medical outcomes. Military leaders now embraced science and insisted on technological superiority over the Soviet Union. Federal officers got here to know that personal companies wouldn’t make investments in primary analysis at a big scale as a result of they couldn’t patent scientific findings and seize the financial advantages as they may with completed merchandise. In sum, America was primed for a name to pursue U.S. science preeminence in peacetime in addition to in battle.
Two heroes of our story: Dr. Vannevar Bush and Sen. Harley Kilgore
Historians of science usually consider Vannevar Bush because the chief architect of America’s postwar science institution. I recommend that U.S. Sen. Harley Kilgore, Democrat of West Virginia – nearly unknown at this time – deserves credit score as a co-equal creator of the insurance policies that took America to the head of world science.
Vannevar Bush, son of a Massachusetts pastor and a mathematical prodigy, rose to prominence as a number one engineering professor at MIT. While educating and doing analysis, he constructed one of many world’s first computing machines, did work that later impressed the inventor of the World Wide Web, and – on the aspect – co-founded the protection technology agency Raytheon. In 1939, Bush moved to Washington to turn out to be president of the Carnegie Institution, one of many nation’s high funders of college analysis. He quickly turned the chief voice calling for mobilization of American science for what he considered as an inevitable battle. In 1940, Bush satisfied FDR to ascertain what turned the Office of Scientific Research and Development and make him its chief. From this perch, Bush pushed into excessive gear the struggling Manhattan Project, which constructed the atomic bomb.
In late 1944, FDR requested Bush to chair an professional fee to advise on postwar science coverage. Bush printed his legendary report, Science, The Endless Frontier, in July 1945, presenting a broad imaginative and prescient for why and how America ought to pursue worldwide preeminence in science and technology. The report drew a transparent distinction between primary and utilized analysis – learning the basic nature of matter versus turning this data into sensible merchandise that enhance human life – and argued that U.S. management in the previous was important for achievement in the latter. It additionally proposed that Congress ought to generously fund primary science however depart utilized analysis to the personal sector.
Kilgore, in the meantime, grew up in a low-income household in rural West Virginia. He served in World War I, taught faculty, turned a lawyer and county decide, and, in 1940, gained a longshot race to turn out to be a U.S. senator. Kilgore arrived in Washington with what he later characterised as “utter, absolute ignorance” of science. But when he obtained assigned to a committee on wartime industrial mobilization, he rapidly grew fascinated by the position of science and technology in the battle and their potential peacetime advantages. Intensely curious, Kilgore introduced in exceptionally educated staffers, together with Dr. Herbert Schimmel, an Orthodox Jew with a physics Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania who couldn’t get a tutorial job due to his faith.
Kilgore’s views on science coverage began from the liberal rules of FDR’s New Deal social reform program. They additionally grew from a well-founded conviction that patent monopolies held by massive companies had slowed America’s battle mobilization. He got here to consider the United States ought to goal not simply to turn out to be preeminent in science in the postwar world however to make sure broad and democratic distribution of its advantages. In 1944, he began engaged on a invoice that might create a National Science Foundation (NSF) to advertise peacetime analysis and scientific coaching.
The debate over postwar science coverage and its compromise decision
The six years from 1944 to 1950 noticed an intense debate over the path of postwar science coverage. While accounts typically deal with it as a two-sided battle between Bush and Kilgore, the fact was extra advanced. Five questions confronted policymakers as they thought of Bush’s Endless Frontier report and Kilgore’s legislative proposal:
- Should Congress fund R&D at a a lot bigger scale than it did earlier than 1939?
- Should Congress transcend protection R&D to fund primary physics, chemistry, biology, and medical science? Should it fund utilized product improvement in addition to primary analysis?
- Who ought to resolve what particular tasks to fund – personal sector scientists or federal officers?
- Who ought to do the analysis – federal staff, business employees, or tutorial scientists?
- Should researchers be allowed to patent the fruits of federally funded analysis?
The debate of 1944-1950 was a five-sided contest in which everybody achieved a few of their targets, however nobody obtained all the pieces they wished.
- Moderate Republicans led by Sen. Alexander Smith, a Republican of New Jersey and former basic counsel of Princeton University, shared the views of Bush, high leaders of elite universities like Harvard and MIT, and main company CEOs. They wished to direct most funding to primary science at premier analysis universities, to permit patenting of federally funded innovations, and, above all, to empower personal sector scientists to decide on tasks and restrict the ability of presidency officers.
- Kilgore, liberal New Dealers in Congress, and smaller universities – noting that some 15 high establishments dominated OSRD analysis contracts – wished federal grantmakers to supply for geographically various analysis funding, to broaden assist for scientific coaching, to limit patenting rights, and to be democratically accountable to the president and Congress.
- Conservative Democrats and Republicans in Congress – along with personal sector leaders fearful about federal management of science – usually opposed a big federal position in analysis.
- The army wished large-scale funding of protection R&D, with Pentagon leaders selecting which tasks to fund – and universities, business, and federal labs doing the work.
- A bunch of principally feminine activists headed by Mary Lasker, a New York philanthropist, pressed for dramatic will increase in federal funding for medical analysis. The group’s congressional allies had been ideologically various however usually motivated by private expertise with most cancers or different ailments, based on information from the eightieth Congress.
Kilgore was unable to push his plans via in 1945 and 1946 due to opposition from Bush’s camp in addition to from Congressional conservatives and the army. Smith obtained a invoice representing his camp’s views via in 1947 after Republicans gained management of Congress, however President Harry Truman vetoed it on the urging of his trusted buddy Kilgore. Kilgore and Smith in the end labored out a compromise NSF invoice that gained the assist of all camps and was signed into legislation in 1950.
Meanwhile, the proponents of protection and medical analysis made dramatic headway. Congress, responding to the intensifying Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, elevated protection R&D tremendously. Congress additionally elevated medical analysis funding via a previously obscure company, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), by greater than 50 occasions in inflation-adjusted phrases from 1946 to 1951.
The compromise decision reached by 1950 gave rise to all of the core elements of America’s postwar mannequin for science and technology improvement. It has continued with solely modest shifts ever since:
- Congress funds primary science at a bigger scale than any nation in historical past however principally leaves product improvement to the personal sector.
- Democratically accountable companies – NSF, NIH, the Department of Defense, and NASA – select tasks, usually based mostly on merit-based peer evaluation.
- Scientists at autonomous universities and the nationwide labs do a lot of the analysis work.
- Researchers in addition to personal companies might patent federally funded innovations.
Bush was upset by this compromise setup, as a result of he thought it gave an excessive amount of energy to army and medical decision-makers and too little to personal sector scientists. He additionally warned it might dilute science funding by spreading it too far past the handful of Northeastern universities that had dominated American science earlier than 1939. Kilgore, alternatively, succeeded in establishing postwar science on extra democratically accountable and geographically various foundations than would have occurred with out his management. He led the way in which in constructing a bipartisan consensus for U.S. preeminence in civilian in addition to protection science.
The progress and success of American science and technology, 1950-2010
The mannequin they created proved sturdy and profitable. In the late Fifties, President Dwight Eisenhower and Congress boosted science funding dramatically in response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite tv for pc launch. In the Sixties, President Lyndon B. Johnson superior Kilgore’s imaginative and prescient by spreading science funding extra absolutely throughout the nation and increasing assist for social science analysis. President Richard Nixon declared battle on most cancers in the early Nineteen Seventies. Congress allowed universities to carry patents on federally funded innovations in the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all presided over massive funding will increase, particularly for medical analysis.
Federal science funding more than sextupled in inflation-adjusted phrases from 1953 to 2010. University analysis spending rose by roughly 30 occasions over the identical interval. While critics argued in the Sixties that college analysis was too oriented to army purposes, life science and medical analysis got here to make up nearly three quarters of college funding by the 2000s. University science analysis additionally turned much less concentrated in a handful of establishments. By 2010, the highest 50 universities for analysis spending accounted for half of all spending by the upper schooling sector – an enormous transformation from the late Forties, when the highest 15 simply accounted for greater than half.
Booming federal analysis funding and college science decisively contributed to enterprise sector innovation. U.S. companies – which relied on college science for greater than 73% of the papers cited in their patents, based on one study – elevated R&D spending by 16 occasions from 1950 to 2010 in inflation-adjusted phrases.
Data on native stage innovation exhibits the shut connections between tutorial science and enterprise innovation: Metro areas with excessive ranges of college analysis see extra enterprise R&D, extra patenting, extra enterprise capital funding, and quicker financial progress, based mostly on Bush Institute-SMU analysis of knowledge from the NSF and the U.S. Census
America has realized beautiful advantages from merchandise developed by U.S. business from college science. These embrace novel antibiotics, chemotherapy brokers and cell therapies for most cancers, COVID-19 vaccines, GLP-1 agonist medicine for diabetes and weight problems, fluoride toothpaste, pacemakers, fashionable water purification, the spreadsheet, the Google search engine, lithium-ion batteries, ChatGPT, and rather more. Defense R&D has produced numerous spinoffs for the civilian economic system – just like the web, world positioning methods, and superior prosthetics – in addition to contributing to America’s nationwide safety.
Pulling away from peer international locations
America’s funding mannequin differed from that of peer international locations all through the interval from 1950 to 2010. The United States invested significantly greater than peer nations in R&D. In 1990, federal funding exceeded that of Germany, France, the U.Okay., and Japan on a per capita foundation by 35% to 84%, although every of those international locations elevated R&D quickly from the Fifties to the Nineties. Though the United States nonetheless allotted greater than half of presidency R&D funding to protection work as of 1990, federal nondefense analysis funding per capita nonetheless outpaced nondefense spending in Germany, France, and the U.Okay. by 10% to 100%, based mostly on NSF knowledge.
In addition, the three-sided relationship between U.S. authorities, academia, and business has lengthy functioned in another way than in peer nations. U.S. universities – together with state establishments – have loved far higher autonomy than most international friends. The German, French, and Japanese governments immediately managed most universities and categorized researchers as civil servants throughout a lot of the twentieth century. Even in the U.Okay., which has one of many world’s oldest methods of self-governing universities, authorities has exercised a lot tighter management because the Eighties. Greater autonomy plus intense competitors amongst establishments has performed a big position in fueling America’s edge in analysis excellence, economist Miguel Urquiola exhibits in his e-book Markets, Minds, and Money: Why the U.S. Leads the World in University Research.
America’s federal grant system has emphasised merit-based grants to particular person tasks to a a lot higher diploma than international friends, which rely extra closely on block grants to complete establishments. Block grants coupled with authorities management imply that European and Asian friends principally allocate a bigger share of funding on the idea of seniority, private connections, and different nonmerit issues. Virtually all peer nations have implicitly acknowledged the American system’s superiority by shifting towards merit-based challenge grants, however massive variations stay, as a landmark 2024 report on European innovation by former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi exhibits.
America has benefited, furthermore, from a freer, extra decentralized marketplace for mental property transfers from universities to private-sector companies than foreign peers. By the 2000s, most massive U.S. analysis universities operated subtle technology commercialization places of work.
These variations along with a lot bigger funding have put American science effectively forward of international rivals. Before the 2010s, U.S.-based researchers far outperformed European and Japanese friends on measures of scientific excellence like citations in high skilled journals and patents, my calculations from NSF knowledge present. Between 1950 and 2010, U.S.-based scientists won greater than twice as many science Nobel Prizes on a population-adjusted foundation as European-based scientists and greater than 5 occasions as many as scientists in Japan.
America likewise carried out far forward of peer nations for creating modern firms. As of 2010, the United States dominated the software program, web, and info technology companies sectors. In biopharmaceuticals – an space of relative energy for Europe – the United States created greater than twice as many new medicine as Europe between 2002 and 2012 and employed 60% extra staff than Europe, adjusted for inhabitants, based mostly on my calculations utilizing European pharmaceutical figures. America’s innovation efficiency has translated to a stark benefit in worth creation: The United States gave rise to some 250 new companies from 1975 to 2024 that got here to be valued above $10 billion, in contrast with about 14 in Europe and 12 in Japan. (Estimates for Japan come from my calculations based mostly on a rating of companies by market capitalization.)
America’s lead erodes, 2010-2025
Since 2010, America’s commanding science place has slipped. Federal R&D funding fell nearly 10% in inflation-adjusted phrases from 2010 to 2022. Federal R&D per capita continues to be above peer nations, however America’s lead has narrowed as different international locations have stepped up funding. Federal nondefense R&D per capita is now under that of Germany and France, whereas college spending per capita has fallen under that of Germany and the U.Okay. As for economywide analysis together with enterprise R&D, the United States now invests much less as a share of GDP than Germany, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, and Taiwan.
The United States nonetheless outpaces all friends in enterprise R&D on a per capita foundation. But primary science analysis constitutes a smaller share of complete R&D than it did all through America’s years of best dominance, between 1950 and 2010. If Vannevar Bush continues to be proper that utilized R&D relies on primary science, gradual progress in primary analysis at this time might result in slower enterprise innovation in future a long time. Also, the big tech companies Wall Street is aware of because the “Magnificent Seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla – now account for absolutely one in each three enterprise sector R&D {dollars}, despite the fact that they make use of fewer than 1% of American staff. Stripping out these companies, America’s edge over Germany, Japan, and Korea in enterprise R&D seems to be rather more modest.
The most potent problem to U.S. preeminence in science and technology at this time comes from China. China has nearly caught up with the United States in analysis funding – and has moved forward if one adjusts for the lower salaries for Chinese scientists. China is forward in patents and gaining quick on measures of primary science like paper citations in high skilled journals. China now leads in 57 of 64 nationwide security-relevant important applied sciences, together with quantum cryptography, drones, and hypersonic detection, based on an Australian study. China’s authorities has additionally launched new initiatives to draw high Chinese-born researchers now working in America again to China – with rising success.
An American success story
America’s resolution to pursue world science preeminence – embodied in the insurance policies developed by Vannevar Bush and Harley Kilgore and bolstered for greater than 60 years by Congress and 9 presidents – has succeeded by any measure. Since innovation takes place with lengthy lags from the emergence of breakthrough concepts to their most industrial affect, the results of at this time’s insurance policies will play out over the subsequent 20 to 40 years. If America chooses to construct on the innovation mannequin that made at this time’s prosperity attainable, America will likely be effectively positioned to maintain its preeminence into the late twenty first century and past.
