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At 7130 one morning, two men who had just met for the first time sat eating breakfast in Pasadena's Huntington-Sheraton Hotel. One of the men was a U.S. Senator who had come to town to see the jet-propulsion laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. But the Senator seemed to have only the foggiest notion of who the other man was. "What department are you in at Caltech?" asked the Senator. Replied his companion: "Physics."
For modest, stocky Lee Alvin DuBridge, it was a typical answer. He would be the last man in the world to volunteer the information that he is actually president of Caltech, that he heads one of the nation's most powerful advisory boards, and that he was wartime director of the fabulous Radiation Laboratory at M.I.T. He looks like a pleasant, slightly rumpled Mr. Anybody—a man who starts the day with a bowl of shredded wheat and is willing to drop the dry cleaning off on his way to work. Yet, both in his own right and as head of Caltech, Lee DuBridge plays a crucial role in the U.S. He is one of the new breed of men who have become an integral part of the national destiny. At 53, Lee DuBridge can justly claim the title, Senior Statesman of Science.
Old as Archimedes. The kind of science that DuBridge and Caltech stand for is as old as Archimedes, but for the U.S., it has come into its own only within the last generation. It was not until 1907 that an American scientist (Physicist Albert A. Michelson) won the Nobel Prize. It was not until 16 years later that DuBridge's great predecessor, Robert A. Millikan, became the second American to win one in physics. Since then, U.S. science has accumulated 36.
Americans take a certain patriotic pride in that record, but they can take little credit themselves for having achieved it. The tradition of "pure" science is a foreign one that had to be transplanted from Europe and virtually forced on American soil. Even today the nation spends, through the Government, $2 billion a year on science, but only about one dollar in 20 goes to pure science; the U.S. has more than 850,000 scientists and engineers, but only about 3% are engaged in fundamental research. The reason for the imbalance is that 1) such research seems dreamy and impractical, and 2) there are tremendous demands for scientists to work in technological fields, both military and commercial. Pure science, explains Lee DuBridge, is "not the development of new devices or techniques. It is not the discovery of new cures for diseases. It is not the development of new weapons of war." Pure science is "simply knowledge."