Science: Basic Director

Dr. Alan T. Waterman was appointed last week as first director of the National Science Foundation, whose principal job is to stimulate theoretical research. U.S. scientists were sure to cheer the choice. As chief civilian scientist in the Office of Naval Research, Dr. Waterman was largely responsible for the extraordinary respect which non-Government scientists feel toward ONR. Its ultimate objective was to develop weapons, but it did not limit itself to gadgeteering. Realizing that really new weapons can grow only from new theory, it encouraged all sorts of basic research, much of it far removed from direct weapons work.

Dr. Waterman got his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1916, taught physics off & on at Yale until 1942, joined the Office of Scientific Research and Development (the overall agency headed by Vannevar Bush that guided wartime research). In 1946 he shifted to ONR. As director of the National Science Foundation, he will work for a board of 24 prominent scientists headed by Harvard’s President James Bryant Conant. Last fall Congress appropriated $225,000 to get the foundation going, may give it up to $15 million this year to encourage basic research throughout the U.S.