Mr. FOLK. I had mentioned in one of the statements of what we thought should be preserved the fact that we approved the provision which gives the Foundation authority in the execution of contracts to provide for the disposition of inventions produced thereunder as contained in section 9. Hence, we approve of that provision and we think it is ample.

The NAM has taken the position that the broadening of the field of research to be covered by the Foundation so as to include the social sciences is out of place in a bill establishing a Foundation of the nature recommended in the Bush report. However, if a division of social sciences is to be included in the Foundation, the bill minimizes the objection thereto voiced by the NAM. My advice would be to not disapprove it in its present form.

Mr. PRIEST. The bill in its present form makes it permissive and in the discretion of the Board.

Mr. FOLK. As far as I, personally, am concerned, I would approve it, but I have no authority from the NAM to speak on that subject. Attention is also called to the fact that the bill specifically provides that all members of the Board, except those first appointed by the Fresident, shall be apointed for a term of 4 years, and yet at least 5, and possibly 8, members of the board shall consist of chairmen of committees within the division, which chairmen are merely elected annually.

There seems to be some inconsistency that a member elected annually should serve for 4 years.

Mr. PRIEST. I think this is the first time it has been called to the attention of the committee, but I had a call this morning on that very subject from an interested party who felt that there was an inconsistency there and that it should be clarified, particularly with reference to the annual election of chairmen.

Mr. FOLK. The bill also fails to specify the terms for which the members of the committee within the divisions are to be appointed. The bill also fails to specify the terms for which the two deputy directors shall be appointed.

The phrase "at least two terms," on page 3, line 11, apparently should read, "the terms of at least two members."

Now, for my own convenience, I had prepared a table so that I could check this up without having to read the bill over, and the clerk who prepared this statement and who got the statement together, attached it as a part of the paper. I found it very useful to me in seeing the different officials of the organization, and the number of each case, and how they are appointed and their term of office and their compensation.

I will leave it with you.

Mr. PRIEST. I am sure it will be helpful, also, to the Committee in analyzing problems relating to these appointments.

Mr. FOLK. I hope it will be as useful to you as it was to me.

Mr. PRIEST. Are there any other questions?

We certainly thank you, Mr. Folk. Have you studied, also, in this connection the Senate bill 1850, Mr. Folk? You are familiar with that?

Mr. FOLK. Yes, I am.

Mr. PRIEST. There are a few differences in policy and philosophy of government in handling a foundation of this sort in the two bills, but primarily they are more or less alike in most of the fundamental provisions. There are some differences that might become major differences in the years ahead.

May I ask this question: Has the NAM taken an official position on 1850 as presently drafted?

Mr. FOIK. It has, it has objected to it. I mentioned what I considered the four essential differences between 1850 and this bill, and I did not refer to them as differences, but you can readily see.

Mr. PRIEST. If there are no other questions, we certainly thank you for your statement and your interest.

Mr. FOLK. Thank you for giving me the opportunity of make it.
Mr. PRIEST. Is Dr. Bronk here?

STATEMENT OF DR. DELTEV BRONK, DIRECTOR, JOHNSON
RESEARCH FOUNDATION, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Dr. BRONK. Mr. Chairman, my name is Deltev Bronk, I am professor of biophysics and director of the Johnson Research Foundation of the University of Pennsylvania.

During the war, I served as Chief of the Division of Aviation Medicine of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and as Coordinator of Research in the Office of the Air Surgeon of the Army Air Forces.

I would also like to speak personally as a citizen and as an engineer and as a physicist who has been working for 25 years in biology and medicine. I am, therefore, concerned with the impact of a complex technological civilization on human welfare.

I have frequently heard it said, Mr. Chairman, that because scientists have disagreed on the form of the science legislation which has been considered in Congress, that many scientists have doubts as to whether a national science foundation should be created. I have talked with hundreds of scientists, and I am convinced from those conversations that that is not the case.

Scientists, by and large, throughout the country, so far as I am able to assess their opinions, are strongly in favor of some form of legislation. Furthermore, during the last 6 months I have spoken before more than a score of general audiences in 10 different States, from Rhode Island to Louisiana and from Georgia to Missouri, and I have not heard a single dissent on the part of the general citizens to the legislation which is generally under consideration.

I think it is entirely irrelevant to consider whether or not the proposed legislation is going to be to the advantage of science and of scientists, except insofar as science and scientists can benefit the Nation and the individual citizen.

Having said that, however, I would hasten to add that it is my deep conviction that scientific knowledge and trained scientific personnel are among our most important national resources. Fortunately for the country, it is a resource that can be increased indefinitely for the common good, but it is also important to bear in mind that it is a resource that can very easily and very quickly be lost through indifference and neglect.

As a young, vigorous nation, we have been profligate with our national resources. I need not remind you, Committee, that we have paid dearly for this wastefulness, but fortunately for both the present and the future, we have wisely checked this waste.

In the field of science, we have done as we have done with our other natural resources. During the war we squandered our future scientific manpower to gain a few untrained soldiers and sailors, while our allies and our enemies developed their scientific manpower against their future needs.

We have, furthermore, given relatively little support to science compared with the expenditures we have made for activities that have done absolutely nothing to increase our national welfare. Furthermore, the money we have expended for scientific research has, in large measure, been devoted to immediate practical ends, with little regard for the longer-range objectives of the future.

We have lived off the scientific capital, to a very large measure, accumulated by other nations. It has been pointed out frequently in the past that the number of distinguished scientists per capita in the United States is far lower than in countries such as Denmark and Holland and England.

The days when we could do this safely seem to me to have disappeared. In our present position of world leadership and in competition with other countries, we must give careful thought to how we are going to fit ourselves to meet the challenge of the future.

During the war there has been an extraordinary development of scientific activity in this country; and, as Mr. Patterson testified yesterday, I believe, one of the most important contributions to our national victory was the scientific effort, largely effected through the Office of Scientific Research and Development and through other forms of military research.

I would like to point out, however, that the success of these undertakings in the Office of Scientific Research and Development and in the Army and in the Navy depended upon three important factors which did not originate with the war effort. The first of the three factors to which I refer was the utilization of existing laboratories, which were established long before the war emergency was upon us. It depended also upon the availability of trained scientific personnel which could be trained only over long periods of years, and depended upon the utilization of the accumulated body of scientific knowledge with which our scientists had first-hand and intimate knowledge.

Our future strength, both in peace and in war, will, it seems to me, depend upon how well we maintain and develop these resources, of laboratories, of personnel, and of basic scientific information.

Because of these considerations, the great majority of scientists I am familiar with believe that the scientific effort of the country must be increased and increased now.

There is an urgency about this matter for several reasons. The first, as I see it, is the deficit of trained scientific personnel caused by the war. Figures are available which show that it will be 10 years before we can regain our former position because of the long period of time necessary to train men who have not been trained during the past 6 or 7 years. That is one of the reasons for urgency.

Also, universities are confronted with an important problem of how to train this scientific personnel; and unless they have assistance, I frankly do not see how they are going to meet their responsibility. Another reason for the urgency is the fact that we are faced by problems which have been created by a complex civilization and which can only be solved by scientific methods. It has been said that we have taken the world in our hands, and I would like to add that we must learn how to handle it.

A final consideration with regard to the urgency of this legislation is the fact that inflation has hit our universities and our laboratories at a time when they should be prepared to meet heavier problems which now face them.

In the laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, of which I am director, we have had men who spent 8 or 10 years in scientific training who are receiving from $2,500 to $3,000 a year, and that is no exception. I was responsible for getting back into scientific activity some. 225 scientists serving in the Army Air Forces. I can report that the average salaries offered these young men was $2,800 a year.

This cannot continue. Salaries must be raised; and if that be done, and if the increased cost of operating scientific effort is to be met, funds must be derived from some source which is not apparent, unless they come from the Government.

Because of these several factors, scientists generally have been gratified to find that Congress is interested in doing something to implement and aid their efforts in the national good. I take it that it is not for me to consider the relative merits of bill H. R. 6448 and others which have been presented in the subcommittees of the Senate, but I would make these comments on the bill which you are now considering.

It seems to me that it is a good bill in that it sets up the general framework for a foundation, without encumbering the future operation of that foundation with too much detail. That, I think, is an extremely important consideration.

Secondly, it covers the several fields of fundamental, as well as applied, science. It is a very easy thing to be impressed by the immediate practical gains which science gives us. This can be done by directed effort, but scientific investigation in the basic fields which contribute to the foundations for the practical discoveries is exploration in unknown territory, and I, for one, do not see how it is possible to direct an exploration through unknown country.

Mr. PRIEST. May I interrupt at that point? Is that not in effect, substantially what we have been inclined to do on a national basis in the past depend on Europe, let us say, for our fundamental research-and we have given most of our attention to the applied technical development of what was discovered in, and developed in, the fundamental research?

Dr. BRONK. That was certainly so up to the beginning of this century. Fortunately, we have been swinging away from that, and there has been a great development of fundamental research in this country. That is a development which must be aided and accelerated.

It seems to me that the Government is a proper agency to concern itself with this type of development. The Government has always concerned itself with the development and protection for the future,

of basic natural resources, such as forests, water power, soils, and fisheries. It has not been primarily concerned with their immediate conversion into lumber products, industrial manufactures, and foods. Basic research is not unlike such resources, because it provides new scientific knowledge of future value for our national welfare. In our system of economy, private initiative is more likely to apply new knowledge to a useful end than it is to foster the original exploration. Many are able to see the desirability of applying a new discovery in the development of materials, machines, or weapons, in the treatment of disease, or in the improvement of agriculture.

Few, however, have the wisdom or the faith to finance abstract research in the exploration of the unknown for the benefit of future generations. That, it seems to me, makes it a very important responsibility of the National Government. No other agency can better take on the responsibilities of future generations without regard to present costs.

I do not wish, however, to imply that the Federal Government should refrain from the support of applied research directed to a very specific objective. In many instances such support will be necessary if the application is ever to be made. Nor do I wish to imply any sharp distinction between basic and applied research. What I wish to stress is that future scientific developments of value for the welfare and security of the Nation require the present support of research, even though it appears to have not the least practical usefulness.

The bill which you are considering places important responsibilities for scientific decisions in a strong board, while at the same time it tries to insure effective administration through a high-grade director. I have felt from the beginning of this consideration of science legislation that no one man, and no small group of divisional chairmen, however wise they may be, can be wise enough to judge the values of research.

I am not able to conceive of an individual capable of doing that. The lessons of past scientific activity give abundant evidence for this. Michael Farraday's researches in electromagnetic induction were questioned as to whether or not they were worth doing except to satisfy his own personal curiosity. But they laid the foundation for our entire electrical industry and all of the many human advantages that have come from that.

Mendell, who worked quietly in a garden, discovered some of the laws of gentics, which are basic to our whole modern agricultural development and in the creation of new types of food products. Pasteur's work was criticized and questioned, criticized and questioned by scientists themselves, and yet he paved the way for a new understanding of human disease.

Our own Willard Gibbs, of Yale, scarcely known to some of his own faculty colleagues, in his abstract reasearch paved the way for vast developments in our chemical and electrochemical industries.

These considerations, it seems to me, give point to the fact that we must have a broad basis for judgment as to what type of research should be supported. Because of that, I would like to see the responsibility for the decisions vested in as many individuals as is consonant with effective administration.