was primarily developmental, only 10 percent being basic or pure research. The President's Scientific Research Board recommended that Government expenditures for basic research be quadrupled by 1957, that those for research in health and medicine be tripled, and that those for nonmilitary developmental research be doubled (45). The provisions for a National Science Foundation made by the Congress in 1947, and vetoed by the President because he declared it to be administratively unworkable, included appropriations to be expended for scientific research by selected universities, research institutions, and other organizations (49). Engineers on construction work, medical laboratory workers in veterans' hospitals, and other scientifically trained persons not engaged in research were also being employed in increasing numbers by Government. In Educational Institutions The demand for both teaching and research scientists has been growing and will continue to grow in institutions of higher education. According to the President's Scientific Research Board, science teaching staffs in 1947, although one-fifth larger than they were before the war, were not adequate for the 80-percent increase in students majoring in the sciences (48). Enrollments in science and engineering were so great in 1946-47 that the Board estimated that 15,000 more instructors in science and engineering were needed to restore the prewar student-teacher ratio, though that ratio was not necessarily a desirable one (45). Although some of this current demand is a temporary result of the attempt of men diverted from education to military service during the war to resume their academic training, the long-time trend in the demand for scientific training is definitely upward. Factors involved in this trend are: (1) The higher educational requirements in scientific fields and in professional fields requiring training in the sciences, such as medicine and nursing. (2) The growth in the general demand for education, due not only to an increasing population, but also to a constantly increasing per capita demand for education. (3) Increasing emphasis on the teaching of science as a background subject for all college as well as high-school students. (4) An increasing number of students from other countries who come to the United States for scientific training. (5) Increasing scholarship and other financial aid to undergraduate and graduate students in science. Further assistance of this sort, to be financed by the Federal Government, has been proposed by a number of authorities and was provided for in the proposed National Science Foundation legislation mentioned above (44) (45) (49). Research as well as teaching programs in institutions of higher education have been increasing, although not so rapidly as those in industry and Government. In 1940, expenditures for scientific research by universities totaled 42 million as compared with 26 million in 1930. During the war, the universities spent less than 10 million a year, as most of their research personnel was diverted to Government projects. Since the war, the universities have been handicapped in resuming their usual research programs, almost three-fourths of which, before the war, were devoted to basic research. Research projects financed at universities by Government and industry usually afford higher incomes for the research staff, and these have been steadily increasing (45). About 300 colleges and universities in 1947 were conducting research projects supported in whole or in part by Federal funds. Most large universities had many small research projects for industry that in some cases ran into the hundreds. Many had established research programs or departments to coordinate such work and to promote cooperative effort (7). University research, particularly in basic science, would be greatly stimulated through a national science foundation similar to that proposed in 1947 (49). Supporting Factors in Demand Essential to the support of Government expenditures for scientific work, and in a large measure responsible for the increasing expenditures in privately supported research institutions, is the interest of the general public in science and scientific research. The personal contributions of the population to such medical research funds as those to fight infantile paralysis, tuberculosis, heart disease, and cancer evidence the increasing support available for scientific research. Attendance at museums, planetaria, zoological gardens, and scientific exhibits and the increasing demand for scientific publications, lectures, and classes are other indications. The foreign demand for scientists and technicians from the United States, insatiable since World War II, is also a factor. Other countries, relatively undeveloped industrially or set back by the devastation of war, were attempting rather unsuccessfully in the face of the local demand to recruit chemists and engineers from the United States. This foreign demand is expected to continue for some years. Tending to reduce the demand, on the other hand, technology and ingenuity are as constantly at work in the laboratory as in the factory, making it possible to do more work with fewer people. Computing machines, particularly, and a variety of automatic testing and counting machines have eliminated many man-hours of work. But to the scientist, his own release from such routine, as well as that of members of his staff, does not mean unemployment but a chance to explore farther into the great unknown or to perform more adequately the testing or other functions assigned him. For behind all current demand for scientifically trained persons backed by financial support stretches what has been called by the head of the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development "The Endless Frontier" (44). Each addition to scientific knowledge opens other vistas that lure the true scientist ever onward. This is true not only in physics, which is popularly considered "the science" of the moment because of the atomic energy development, but in all scientific fields. For example, it is being said that "* recent biological discoveries have opened a totally new realm of technical development" (25) (30). And a physiologist wrote in 1946, " only an infinitesimally small fraction of the reckoned possible aspects and processes of organisms have yet been studied” (1). * * * * * The 10 most important advances in science during 1947 in the opinion of the director of Science Service indicate the lack of monopoly on progress by any one of the scientific fields as well as their interrelationships: 1. Discovery that smell is detected by infrared radiation absorbed by odor material reaching the nose. 2. Pilotless plane that crossed Atlantic untouched by human hand at controls. 3. Attempts at artificial rain making through sprinkling dry ice or water on clouds under certain conditions. 4. Synthesis of protein in long-chain molecules, promising new plastics of medical and industrial importance. 5. Interconversion of proton and neutron fundamental particles and smashing of many more elements yielding new isotopes. and transmutations in world's highest voltage synchro-cyclotron. 6. Largest display of sunspots in over a century. 7. Use of streptomycin in tuberculosis treatment. 8. Development of jet bombers and higher speed jet planes. 9. Discovery of 10,000 year-old Tepexpan man in Mexico. 10. Camera that makes finished photoprint in one-step process. The head of a great engineering laboratory in 1944, speaking of the abilities of the engineer for providing "more goods at less cost for more people to use," called attention to the fact that, even in the years from 1929 to 1939, which included a major depression, engineers and scientists developed among other things: Transoceanic passenger air service; fluorescent lighting; glass building blocks; synthetic rubber, hosiery, and vitamins; sulfanilamide; and many new plastics (24). "The real ceiling on our productivity of new scientific knowledge and its application in the war against disease, and the development of new products and new industries, is the number of trained scientists available," said the head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development in 1945 (44). Beckoning the ablest young men and women scientists of the future are such problems as those listed below: The utilization of atomic energy, Creation of national low-cost housing, Synthesis and improvement of the antibiotics, Cure for the common cold, Extension of electricity to the farm, The use of electronics in medicine, Discovery of the true structure of the protein molecule, Application of radioactive isotopes, The development of microwave transmission (14) (24) (31). Figure 18.-A physicist at the control console of the chain-reacting pile at a laboratory of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission. THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN IN EACH OF THE PRINCIPAL SCIENTIFIC FIELDS The gap between the supply of scientifically trained persons and the demand for them, which was in some cases created and in some widened by World War II, became more marked in some scientific fields than in others. In some, too, it will be bridged more rapidly than it will be in others. The other reports in this series discuss the relation of supply to demand in each of the principal fields and its effect upon women's opportunities for training and employment. Here, only a brief, simplified summary is given for purposes of comparison. Outlook for Women in Chemistry The largest number of positions for women trained in nonmedical science will continue to be in the field of chemistry, where more than 5,000 women were employed in 1946. Although this was three times the number of women employed in chemistry before the war and although more women are studying chemistry than ever before, their numbers were still too small in relation to the total to be a major factor or problem in supply. In this largest scientific field for them, women are distinctly in a minority position, numbering about 6 percent of the total. The demand for well-trained women in chemistry, though far below that of the war peak when even poorly trained persons could obtain work, will continue in educational institutions, in industry, in Government, and in research centers. Women Ph. D.'s, remaining scarce, will be in demand for college teaching or research, especially for basic research or applied research in medicine or foods lines. The great majority of women with bachelor's degrees will be engaged in analytical chemical laboratory work in industrial or medical laboratories. They will be found in every type of industry, but in largest numbers in chemical manufacturing, foods, and petroleum and coal products industries. Another sizable group will become secondaryschool teachers of science. The large, unmet demand for women trained in chemistry for related work as teachers, librarians, editors, and secretaries will act as a cushion to any possible, but unlikely, oversupply of women trained in chemistry. For further information, see Bulletin 223-2. 1-46 |