Science: Scientific High Command

In Washington last week, 13 men sat down to plan a history-making project. The men: four admirals, four scientists, three generals, a colonel and, as chairman, Charles E. Wilson, vice chairman of WPB. The project: a permanent scientific high command to prepare the U.S. to defend itself in any future war. It will undertake the first permanent mobilization of scientists in U.S. history.

The project, suggested in TIME’S recent cover story (April 3, see cut) on Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the war-born Office of Scientific Research and Development, derives from OSRD’s extraordinary effectiveness in World War II. Secretary of War Stimson and Secretary of the Navy Forrestal appointed the “Committee on Postwar Research” which last week began to draft plans for the new agency. The committeemen have all been active in OSRD.

Though not yet charted in detail, the new office of military science appeared likely to consist of a board of top U.S. scientists. The board would order and supervise Government-financed research projects, which might either be farmed out to university laboratories under contract or carried out in Government laboratories under the board’s direct control. Its object would be to keep at least a nucleus of civilian scientists at work on preparedness after X-day.

Said enthusiastic Chairman Wilson, “In a nutshell, the purpose of this organization is to keep America not abreast, but ahead of the rest of the world.”