The case for overhauling American science
As the Second world war drew to a close, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tasked his science adviser, Vannevar Bush, with reorganising America’s scientific enterprise for a post-war order. Bush’s answer, a report entitled “Science: The Endless Frontier”, became the blueprint for American government support of basic science. In turn this led to the creation of the National Science Foundation (nsf), a federal agency that supports fundamental research, and shaped the triumphal attitude to science and technology that defined so much of the “American Century”.
