Bush, Vannevar 1890-1974

BUSH, VANNEVAR 1890-1974

Electrical engineer, administrator

Directing Wartime Research

"I'm no scientist, I'm an engineer," Vannevar Bush claimed late in his life. Yet as head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) during World War II, he presided over the development of the atomic bomb and made a major impact on the course of scientific research in the United States both during and after the war.

Education

Born in Boston to a Universalist minister and his wife, Bush put himself through Tufts University by tutoring football stars in mathematics. Bush earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering from Tufts in 1913, and in 1916 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University jointly awarded him a doctorate in electrical engineering.

Early Career

Bush returned to the faculty at Tufts, where he had taught before pursuing his doctorate. In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, Bush was selected to work at the U.S. Navy antisubmarine laboratory in New London, Connecticut. He developed a submarine detector that was never used and drew the conclusion that lack of communication between scientists and government leaders and lack of coordination of scientists' efforts had led to the underuse of scientists' talents in the war effort. In 1919 Bush joined the MIT faculty as associate professor of electrical-power transmission. By 1923 he was a full professor, and in 1932 he became first vice-president and dean of engineering.

Research at MIT

At MIT Bush's research resulted in improvements in the designs of vacuum tubes and four-engine bombers and inventions such as the justifying typewriter, the cinema integraph, and especially the differential analyzer, which has been called the most important calculator of its time. Designed to solve lengthy equations and capable of calculating the answers to as many as twenty-five sets of data in a few minutes, it was used during World War II for purposes such as calculating ballistics tables and the curvature of radar antennas.

Carnegie Institution

In 1939 Bush became president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. At the same time, he became chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Organizing Government Science

With the outbreak of World War II, Bush became concerned about the need to mobilize American scientists and coordinate their efforts for national defense. Deeply troubled by the prospect that the Germans might be making an atomic bomb, he sought the establishment of a federal agency to ensure that scientists, not politicians or military technicians, would direct wartime science. Bush joined with President Karl Compton of MIT, President James B. Conant of Harvard, and Frank B. Jewitt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, to devise the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which President Franklin D. Roosevelt established in June 1940 with Bush as chairman. A year later President Roosevelt created the larger OSRD—including the NDRC, a newly created Advisory Council and Committee on Medical Research, and other groups—appointing Bush to head the OSRD.

The OSRD

Bush's greatest challenge and major achievement at the OSRD was to maintain the confidence of the military, which distrusted civilian compliance with security regulations, while fighting the drafting of bright young scientists into the armed forces. Bush also had to get adequate funds for research and make certain that projects were fairly distributed between government, academic, and industrial facilities. The OSRD oversaw the development of new technologies and many new weapons (including the atomic bomb), as well as production of the antibiotic penicillin and improved blood substitutes and antimalarial drugs. Bush showed exceptional ability in administering the huge numbers of individuals and facilities involved in work for the OSRD.

Postwar Work

In September 1947, after the OSRD had been dissolved, Bush was appointed director of the Joint Research and Development Board, responsible for resolving "differences among the several departments and agencies of the military establishments." He was also instrumental in creating the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1950. He also backed the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946, which many scientists felt would lead to the military domination of atomic research but which Bush considered a necessary control to ensure responsible experimentation. Bush's view of science has been called elitist, but he has been justifiably praised for his often successful attempts to protect what he considered the "best science" from fleeting political interests. After the war Bush stayed close to the Truman administration, but in the 1950s he found his power considerably diminished. He tried unsuccessfully to delay the testing of the hydrogen bomb in 1952, and in 1954 he stood behind J. Robert Oppenheimer when his loyalty was questioned for opposing the development of that weapon. Bush retired as president of Carnegie Institution in 1955 but remained active on the boards of MIT and various corporations until his death in 1974.

Sources:

Colin B. Burke, Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra, and the Other Memex (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1993);

Vannevar Bush, Pieces of the Action (New York: Morrow, 1970);

Daniel J. Kevles, The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (New York: Knopf, 1978);

James M. Nyce and Paul Kahn, eds., From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind's Machine (Boston: Academic Press, 1991).