In 1945, Vannevar Bush, the man that led the nation’s scientific efforts during World War II, delivered a proposal to President Truman for funding scientific research in the post-war world.  Titled Science, The Endless Frontier, it led to the formation of the NSF, NIH, DARPA and other agencies.

The payoff has been nothing short of astounding.  The NSF has funded innovations such as barcode scanners and next generation materials.  NIH backed the Human Genome Project as well as research that has led to many of our most important cures.  DARPA invented the Internet.

It’s an impressive record, but the future doesn’t look nearly as bright.  Part of the problem is funding, which has fallen off in recent years.  Yet the practice of science also needs to be updated.  Much has changed in the 70 years since 

1945. In order to honor Bush’s legacy—and maintain our technological leadership—we need to adapt it to modern times.

The Bush Model

For most of history, scientists were men of means. Although some from of humble origins, like Gauss and Faraday, managed to slip through, it was mainly wealthy people that had the resources and leisure time to pursue serious inquiry.  In the 20th century, the circle was expanded to a small group of university researchers, but it was still an exclusive club.

World War II changed all that.  As head of the OSRD, Vannevar Bush led government into the science business, funding enormous research projects that led to the development of proximity fuzes, radar and, most famously, the 

atomic bomb.  After the war ended, the question arose about what form, if any, scientific funding should take in peacetime.

Bush noted that most research performed in industry and government was of an applied, rather than a theoretical nature.  He also argued that without vigorous funding for basic research to expand the frontiers of knowledge, advances in technical applications would be limited, endangering our national security, health and economic well being.

So the architecture he envisioned would fund research at outside institutions, rather than within government or industry. Grants would be given out on a multi-year, rather than an annual basis, to provide stability, and research would be published widely to ensure dissemination of knowledge.

Bush’s architecture served us well and transformed the US into a scientific and technological superpower. However, to maintain supremacy, we need to innovate how we pursue discovery.