(4 of 10)
¶Almost inevitably, space science was the glamour science. The U.S. sent into orbit satellites Tiros I and Tiros II, which observed the earth's weather from above and sent back thousands of cloud-pattern pictures that are revolutionizing meteorology. The U.S.'s Courier I-B showed what can be done by a satellite packed with electronic equipment and acting as a relay station for forwarding floods of messages almost instantaneously around the curve of the earth. Echo I, the 100-ft. balloon satellite, which is still a striking naked-eye spectacle in the sky, showed the value of a large, passive reflector from which to bounce radio waves. Transit satellites I-B and II-A were U.S. Navy prototypes for a network that will outmode all previous methods of air and sea navigation. The U.S.'s Pioneer V lived up to its name by spinning into an orbit around the sun, still sending radio messages back to earth when it was 22 million miles away. The problem of greatest interest to most laymen (and of little interest to many scientists), that of sending man himself into space and getting him back, came closer to solution. The Russians reported having put up a satellite with two living dogs as its crew and bringing them safely home. The U.S. Air Force's Discoverer program succeeded in recovering three capsules shot down by orbiting satellites.
Although outpaced in certain specific fields by other nations (by Britain in inorganic chemistry, by Russia in mathematics), the U.S. is the recognized leader of the scientific surge. Its leadership .is relatively recent. Before World War I, the U.S. had plenty of practical inventors of the Edison type, but its technology was built almost entirely on basic ideas imported from Europe, and its real scientists were rare. In the years after World War I, young Americans still went to Europe for scientific enlightenment; among them were Rabi and Pauling, who completed their education abroad, then came home to do original research that put them ahead of their teachers.
In the cruel prelude to World War II, many eminent European scientists fled to the U.S. to escape totalitarian tyranny. The U.S. gave them freedom — and in return they contributed their knowledge and disciplines to its science. World War II itself gave U.S. science its decisive impetus, for from the war came the tools and instruments that have made possible the scientific explosion. Out of wartime radar research grew the pure materials that later enabled William Shockley to develop the transistor. From the U.S.'s atomic bomb program came the cheap and plentiful radioactive tracers that have since transformed chemistry, biology and several other sciences. It is no coincidence that where the U.S. had only 15 Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry and medicine in the 39 years before World War II, it has had 42 since 1940.
Against that background, the scientists of 1960 moved to new heights and stood on thresholds of marvelous achievement. By general agreement, the fields of high-energy physics and molecular biology offer the most thrilling prospects.