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Letter to Dr. Isaiah Bowman on Federal Assistance for Scientific Research.

December 20, 1945

[ Released December 20, 1945. Dated December 14, 1945 ]

My dear Doctor Bowman:

Receipt is acknowledged of your letter dated November 24, 1945, on behalf of the newly organized Committee supporting the Bush report, regarding the science legislation now pending before the Congress.

I am keenly interested in the development of research and of appropriate Federal assistance therefor. Brilliant results have been achieved by the scientists during the war. The people deserve these results in peace as well.

My views on the soundest form of Federal assistance have been stated both in my Message to Congress on September 6, 1945, and in the statements made by the Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion and the Director of the Budget.

These views were expressed after the fullest consideration of the best interests of all concerned, after consultation with scientists, with public administrators and with students of Government, after considering the Bush report and the committee reports on which it was based, and after weighing the views expressed in your letter which had previously been called to my attention.

I appreciate the interest taken in this subject by members of your Committee, and feel sure that their basic objectives of freedom of research, and non-partisan administration of a program of aid to scientific research and education, will be attained under such an organization as I have recommended.

I am confident that I can count on them to support scientific research with the same zeal that has made our scientists so eminent.

Very sincerely,

HARRY S. TRUMAN

[Dr. Isaiah Bowman, President, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland]

Note: The Bush report, entitled "Science, the Endless Frontier" (Government Printing Office, 1945), was prepared at the request of President Roosevelt and was submitted to President Truman by Dr. Vannevar Bush, Director, Office of Scientific Research and Development. The report was reissued in 1960 by the National Science Foundation as part of the observance of the Foundation's 10th anniversary.

Harry S Truman, Letter to Dr. Isaiah Bowman on Federal Assistance for Scientific Research. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/229426

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