Shaping Biology : The National Science Foundation and American Biological Research, 1945-1975

by Appel, Toby A.

• ISBN13: 9780801863219
• ISBN10: 080186321X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-07-03
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Historians of the postwar transformation of science have focused largely on the physical sciences, especially the relation of science to the military funding agencies. In Shaping Biology, Toby A. Appel brings attention to the National Science Foundation and federal patronage of the biological sciences. Scientists by training, NSF biologists hoped in the 1950s that the new agency would become the federal government's chief patron for basic research in biology, the only agency to fund the entire range of biology--from molecules to natural history museums--for its own sake. Appel traces how this vision emerged and developed over the next two and a half decades, from the activities of NSF's Division of Biological and Medical Sciences, founded in 1952, through the cold war expansion of the 1950s and 1960s and the constraints of the Vietnam War era, to its reorganization out of existence in 1975. This history of NSF highlights fundamental tensions in science policy that remain relevant today: the pull between basic and applied science; funding individuals versus funding departments or institutions; elitism versus distributive policies of funding; issues of red tape and accountability. In this NSF-funded study, Appel explores how the agency developed, how it worked, and what difference it made in shaping modern biology in the United States. Based on formerly untapped archival sources as well as on interviews of participants, and building upon prior historical literature, Shaping Biology covers new ground and raises significant issues for further research on postwar biology and on federal funding of science in general.

Author Biography

Toby A. Appel is Historical Librarian with the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, and research associate of the Section of History of Medicine.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	vii
Foreword	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction Envisioning a Federal Patron for Biology	1	(8)
Making a Place for Biology at the ``Endless Frontier,'' 1945--1950	9	(29)
Fashioning a New Federal Patron for Biology, 1950--1952	38	(30)
Expanding and Experimenting in the 1950s	68	(33)
Government Relations and Policy-making in the Cold War Era	101	(29)
Competing within a Pluralist Federal Funding System, 1952--1963	130	(24)
Funding Individuals and Institutions in the 1960s: Opportunities and Constraints	154	(24)
Promoting Big Biology: Biotrons, Boats, and National Biological Laboratories	178	(29)
Allocating Resources to a Divided Science: The ``New'' and the ``Old'' in Biology	207	(28)
Forging New Directions after the Golden Age, 1968--1972	235	(34)
End of an Era, 1972--1975	269	(20)
APPENDIXES
A. Program Officers, 1951--1975, Division of Biological and Medical Sciences	277	(8)
B. Members of Divisional and Advisory Committees, Biological and Medical Sciences, 1952--1972	285	(4)
Notes	289	(80)
Note on NSF Primary Sources	369	(4)
Index	373