William O. Baker's papers, 1959-1972
|
|
William
O. Baker of the Bell Laboratories sat on many of the important committees
related to the Interdisciplinary Laboratories established at US universities
from 1960 onwards. He passed on some of these papers to Jesse
Ausubel, now a Program Director at the Sloan Foundation, who again
has passed them on to us. An overview of the papers follows below. We
have interviewed Dr. Baker; a transcript is forthcoming and the streamed
audio file is avaliable here (QuickTime):
- Letter from Glenn T. Seaborg (Chancellor of University of California,
Berkeley) to Baker
- cover letter, March 25,
1959, calling attention to a proposal described in an attachment
- attachment: proposal (March 10, 1959) authored by Professors Leo
Brewer, E. M. McMillan, K. R. Parker, K. S. Pfitzer, and A. W. Searcy
to establish an interdepartmental Inorganic Materials Laboratory
at Berkeley - page 1,
page 2
- Minutes of meeting, April 8, 1959, Coordinating Committee on Materials
Research - page 1, page
2, page 3, page
4, page 5, page
6, list of committee members.
The CCMR was to "plan for meeting the needs of the federal government
in the field of materials" and to "devise a program for initiating
action using presently budgeted funds". During the meeting the
materials programs and future plans of the following agencies were summarized:
Atomic Energy Commission (p.2), Bureau of Mines (p.2), National Science
Foundation (pp.2-3), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (p.3),
Department of Defense (pp. 3-4), National Bureau of Standards (p.4),
Bureau of the Budget (p.4).
- New York Times article dated July
16, 1960: "U.S. Aids Research in New Materials - Gives Basic-Study
Projects to 3 Universities in Drive to Fill Technological Gap".
It describes the first three contracts awarded by DARPA (Department
of defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency) to Cornell University,
the University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University to start
Interdisciplinary Laboratories for materials research.
- Letter from J. R. Townsend,
Special Assistant in the Office of the Director of Defense Research
and Engineering to Baker, April 2, 1959. Thanks for samples of recent
materials developments by the Bell Labs as illustrations of the products
of materials research. The samples were used at a National Academy committee
meeting on "Scope and Conduct of Materials Research" and also
at a meeting of the Defense Policy Council. Townsends estimates that
the samples "did much to help sell a $20 million augment to the
general materials program and the proposal to do more fundamental research
in materials which may amount to $2 or $5 million." (The samples
provided by Baker themselves are not included here.)
- White House press release,
October 12, 1961, on the award of a DARPA contract to the University
of North Carolina. (The difficult-to-read text at the top reads: Immediate
release, October 12, 1961, Office of the White House Press Secretary,
Chapel Hill, North Carolina). Bound with this release are a short
notice from The Washington Post (at top of middle column)
that President Kennedy had ad-libbed a speech given at the University
of North Carolina and a cover letter
from Earl C. Vicars of DARPA to Baker.
- Presentation by Baker to the President's Science Advisory Committee,
December 16, 1965, arguing for more funding for chemical research. Page
1, page 2, page
3, page 4, page
5, page 6, page
7, page 8, page
9. "[M]odern chemistry represents the closest approach yet
achieved to the smooth translation of new basic science into applications
and eventually into economic benefits
[A] market abundance or
at least sufficiency of chemists trained in basic academic work, with
perhaps a few curriculum or subject matter nudges toward the materials
and bioscience hybridizations, which represent the great growth opportunities
of the next few years, could be a really major force in accelerating
the applications of science for the public good." (pp. 6-7)
- Excerpts from the report on the Interdisciplinary Laboratories as
submitted to the Director of ARPA, 30 August 1966. Page
1, page 2, page
3, page 4, page
5, page 6. Lists the beneficial
effects of the IDLs:
- Student increase of 200% (the aim had initially been 75%) in the
US and the successful export of the field to Japan via visiting
Japanese returning home. (pp.1-2)
- Central research facilities and the intensive use of major research
tools at universities. (p.2)
- Increase in the quality of academic research compared to industrial
labs. (p.2-3)
- Fostering of interdisciplinary exchange. "The original goal
was probably naively conceived in the government
frontal
attempts have not been particularly successful
We specifically
should not look for a "togetherness club" in which everyone
talks and works with everyone else
We should, however, expect
that occasionally the metallurgist should become interested in and
adopt areas of interest from solid state physics, for example, and
vice versa." (p. 3)
- Interdisciplinary Research Overlay and Educational Policy. (pp.
3-4)
- Joint appointments, collocation (this term refers to shared buildings),
and impact on students. (p.5)
- Overall goals and recommendations (pp. 5-6)
- List of attendees for IDL
review, November 10, 1966
- A 1970 review of IDLs:
- Report for members of the Committee on the Survey of Materials Science
and Engineering (COSMAT):
- cover letter from
Victor Radcliffe to COSMAT members and Committee Chairman Dr. Cyril
S. Smith, March 13, 1972
- "The ARPA interdisciplinary laboratory program" by M.
J. Sinnott, O. C. Trulson, and H. H. Test, all members of ARPA's
Materials Sciences Office, February 1, 1971. Page
1, page 2,
page 3, page
4, page 5,
page 6, page
7, page 8,
page 9, page
10, page 11,
page 12, page
13, page 14,
page 15, page
16. Also two tables listing for each of the 12 IDLs: funding
levels in 1972; total funding
from inception to 1972. ARPA "is basically an initiatory,
not an operating agency. It starts programs, gives the momentum,
but then transfers responsibility in order to free its hands to
take on new types of projects. The more it transfers, the more successful
it considers its operation." (p.4)
"The primary
difficulty was not merely that more effort in materials technology
was needed, but instead, that much of what was being undertaken
was lacking in sophistication and effectiveness because it was not
well grounded upon adequate scientific understanding of the physical
phenomena involved." (p.5)
"The Department of Defense
requested interested universities to submit proposals for participation
in the ARPA program. From the 76 proposals received, a total of
twelve major university contracts were initiated during the period
1960-1962
There a now five other IDL contracts in addition
to those supported by ARPA, three receiving funds from NASA and
two from the AEC. (p.6)
The "pattern set by ARPA in
the IDL laboratories has been emulated in a number of other institutions,
both universities and companies. There are a significant number
of university-wide material research centers or their equivalent
which have emerged at universities not directly related to the government
IDL Program. Even the words 'materials science' have propagated
widely." (p.7)
In terms of the original objectives of
expanding education and research in this field, success of the IDL
programs is obvious
The second important result of the IDL
Program has been the development of the recognition of materials
as a generic field. It is now widely recognized that there exists
very significant similarities between many classes of materials
with respect to structure, phenomena, properties and processing.
Another way of saying the same thing is to point out that it is
now accepted that the word "materials" incorporates the
words metals, ceramics, polymers, semiconductors, superconductors
and many other previously existing terms." (p.11)
|