In Recognition of This 50th Anniversary he year 1944 is to be remembered as the beginning of the end of World War 11. On this 50th anniversary of that year there has been much lay press coverage of ceremonies and the revisiting of battlegrounds. In contrast, notice by the chemical community and its journals has been almost completely absent. It seems to me that such a momentous year should not go unannounced even if its events are seemingly remote from the mission of this journal. Fifty years ago the Allied forces landed in Normandy, France, to begin the end of a world conflict that exacted a horrendous toll in lives and national cultures, and left a mark on the governance and leadership of Europe and other parts of the world that resonates even today. I think that those of us chemists who were involved in that clash of powers, even if it did not touch us or our families personally (and there were few who truly were so fortunate), should be made aware of how strongly World War I1 and its immediate aftermath have shaped our present world of chemistry. The vital role that technology played in World War I1 brought an acute awareness to our national leaders of the importance of strong national science and technology programs. Establishment of a series of federal agencies to provide support for university research was a direct product of this awareness. The U.S. Navy, a wartime leader in research in the physical sciences, was first off the mark by establishing the Office of Naval Research in August 1946. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research was begun in February 1948 and the (Army) Office of Ordnance Research in June 1951. In July 1945,Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of ScientificResearch and Development, delivered to President Roosevelt a report entitled "Science, the Endless Frontier: A Report to the President on a Program
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for Postwar Scientific Research." This report was in response to a Nov. 17,1944, letter from the President asking 'What can the government do now and in the future to aid research activities by public and private organizations?'and "Can an effective program. . . [develop] scientific talent in American youth so that the continuing future of scientific research . . .may be assured. . .?"Bush's 191-pagereport is fascinating reading and provides an eloquent and persuasive answer to these questions. The National Science Foundation was established in 1950 as a somewhat delayed (by politics) but direct consequence of Bush's report. So the current world of federal support of basic research and graduate education in the sciences, which did not exist before World War 11, was born of that conflict. Those who have encountered graduate education and research in chemistry should be well aware that the above agencies have been and are crucial underpinnings of a successful U.S. graduate education and research effort. The National Institutes of Health, by the way, was not a product of World War I1 but began in 1930 on Staten Island, New York, renamed from the "Hygiene Laboratory," a facility of the U.S.Marines. Many other things could be said about the effects of World War I1 and its aftermath on the chemical sciences and on analytical chemistry. But it is proper that I close this editorial by leaving your attention on a thought about those, on all sides of the conflict, whose lives were cut short 50 years ago, with the ultimate outcome that left most of the world's chemists, by today, in a state of freedom.
