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Message to the Congress Transmitting 16th Annual Report of the National Science Foundation.

April 06, 1967

To the Congress of the United States:

I am pleased to submit to the Congress the 16th Annual Report of the National Science Foundation.

This Fiscal 1966 Report tells a proud story of continuing progress on many scientific frontiers--of bold and creative men and women pitting their skill and imagination against the challenges and opportunities posed by Nature.

Scientific research is the key with which we can unlock the doors of the future. As a nation we have learned this only recently. Not long ago our scientists usually had to go abroad to learn of the newest discoveries-but now the world often comes here to learn. In our universities, our government and our industrial laboratories, the quality of our scientific research is second to none.

We intend to maintain this high standard. The task we have set ourselves is to wrest from Nature the intellectual treasures with which we will build the world of tomorrow.

Scientific research has given us new insights and provided tools for practical progress:

--New metals which can stand up to the fierce heat of rocket engines make our space flights possible.

--New ultra-miniature electronic devices, born of basic discoveries made only two decades ago, guide our spacecraft in orbit and our aircraft in Vietnam.

--The frontiers of the known universe have been pushed back in the last decade and shown to contain energy sources of unprecedented magnitude, thanks to developments in astronomy, and especially in the new use of radiotelescopes.

--Experiments with the atomic nucleus have led us to power reactors which will make electricity more abundant and cheaper throughout the world.

The already visible horizons of the future are even more exciting.

--Our scientists are increasingly confident that we will be able to modify the weather significantly and perhaps even to do away with drought and flood.

--Computers are already revolutionizing our ways of thinking and our ways of doing things, and we have only just begun to sense the impact they will have on our industry, our education, and the abundance of our society.

--Desalting the waters of the seas and the brackish ground waters which underlie great parts of our own and other countries will help meet the needs of parched and thirsty lands.

--New fuels, new plastics, synthetic materials of a thousand kinds, will make life better for our citizens.

--New technologies will give us better ways to eliminate the pollution of our air and water.

--The work of our researchers who probe the chemistry of life itself, and unravel the marvelous molecular codes which hold the secrets of heredity, will also teach us to avert or to cure disease, and perhaps one day may delay the effects of inevitable aging which afflict us all. We know that we can continue this flow of benefits to mankind only if we have a large and constantly replenished pool of basic knowledge and understanding to draw upon. For the path between basic discovery and its application can be both long and uncertain.

We intend to maintain such a pool with all our talents and resources, so that we can apply it to our needs. Perhaps most important, we intend to maintain this pool of basic knowledge and understanding because of the stimulus it provides to our young minds in the challenge of ideas. Knowledge, as we have learned from our rich experience, is not a laboratory curiosity. It is a critical tool for our national health, our national growth, and the sound education of all of us. The very process of generating knowledge produces the highly trained scientists and engineers that are needed to man our universities, industries and government.

The National Science Foundation is entrusted, more than any other single national institution, with the responsibility to expand our reservoir of basic knowledge through research, and to promote excellence in our scientific education. It is doing this job admirably, as the attached report shows. It must--and will--do even better.

Under the programs proposed to you in the Congress for next year, the National Science Foundation would:

--Sponsor the research of faculties and postgraduate students in more than 450 schools in all fifty states.

--Develop new approaches in science education.

--Provide laboratory facilities in at least 30 graduate schools.

--Assist more than 35,000 secondary school and college teachers to improve their teaching capabilities.

--Help to improve the quality of 25 or more institutions of higher education which have shown the capacity to develop outstanding capabilities in one or more scientific disciplines.

--Provide funds to explore and test the effectiveness of computers in all stages of the educational process.

In these ways, the Foundation is substantially expanding its efforts to improve the quality of science education at all levels. It is helping to increase the number of colleges and universities which can provide truly excellent scientific training and research. In doing this, it is continuing to expand our capabilities for basic research in all fields of modern science.

To be fruitful, scientific and technical information must quickly reach those who can use it. As the volume of research results grows, this becomes harder to achieve. But the stakes are well worth the effort. Every increase of one percent in the efficiency of our $22 billion public and private research and development programs is worth $220 million per year. The Foundation will therefore institute new programs to devise improved systems for handling scientific information, and will work with other govern- merit agencies to establish standards for Federal technical information programs.

Many of the most pressing problems of our times depend for their solution on a better understanding of man and his interaction with the highly technological society in which he lives. For this reason, the Foundation has more than doubled the funds for basic research in the social sciences over the past five years.

The story of scientific achievement and challenge told by this Annual Report is a story of a sound investment which will pay handsome dividends. I commend the Report to the attention of the Congress and the American people.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

The White House

April 6, 1967

Note: The report is entitled "National Science Foundation, Sixteenth Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1966" .(Government Printing Office, 175 pp.).

Lyndon B. Johnson, Message to the Congress Transmitting 16th Annual Report of the National Science Foundation. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/237672

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