In its preoccupation with immediate, practical results, the U.S. is badly neglecting pure scientific research. The warning was sounded last week by Nobel-Prize-winning Atomic Chemist Glenn T. Seaborg* before a joint meeting in San Francisco of the Atomic Industrial Forum and Stanford's Research Institute. Seaborg's clincher: of the nation's huge ($3 billion) annual outlay for science, "no more than 5% . . . is used for basic research."
Seaborg outlined the real difference between "basic" and "applied" science. Actually, most "pure" scientists have long been closely involved with practical applications of their studies, e.g., the H-bomb, radar, rocket...
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