National Defence Research Committee
| NDRC | |
 A picture of most of the members of the National Defense Research Committee at the first official meeting on July 2, 1940. Seated, left-to-right: Brigadier General George V. Strong, James B. Conant, Vannevar Bush, Richard C. Tolman, Frank B. Jewett; standing: Karl T. Compton, Irvin Stewart, and Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen, Sr.. Missing is Conway P. Coe, the Commissioner of Patents. |
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| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | June 27, 1940 |
| Preceding |
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| Dissolved | June 28, 1941 (reduced to advisory body) January 20, 1947 (formally dissolved) |
| Superseding agency | |
| Jurisdiction | United States Government |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| Agency executives |
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| Parent agency | Council of National Defense, a suspended World War I agency briefly revived for World War II |
| Child agencies |
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The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was an organization created "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare" in the United States from June 27, 1940, until June 28, 1941. Most of its work was done with the strictest secrecy, and it began research of what would become some of the most important technology during World War II, including radar and the atomic bomb. It was superseded by the Office of Scientific Research and Development in 1941, and reduced to merely an advisory organization until it was eventually terminated during 1947.
The NDRC was created as part of the Council of National Defense, which had been created during 1916 to coordinate industry and resources for national security purposes, by an order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on June 27, 1940. Vannevar Bush, the director of the Carnegie Institution, had pressed for the creation of the NDRC because he had experienced during World War I the lack of cooperation between civilian scientists and the military. Bush managed to get a meeting with the President on June 12, 1940, and took a single sheet of paper describing the proposed agency. Roosevelt approved it in ten minutes. Government officials then complained that Bush was attempting to increase his authority and to bypass them — which he later admitted he was:
In his June 15 letter which appointed Bush to the head of the committee, Roosevelt outlined that the NDRC was not meant to replace the research work done by the Army and Navy in their own laboratories or through industry contracts, but rather to "supplement this activity by extending the research base and enlisting the aid of the scientists who can effectively contribute to the more rapid improvement of important devices, and by study determine where new effort on new instrumentalities may be usefully employed." (Quoted in Stewart 1948, p. 8).
The NDRC was managed by eight members, one of which was the chairman and two of which were appointed automatically by virtue of their positions as President of the National Academy of Sciences and the Commissioner of Patents. One member was appointed by the Secretary of War and another by the Secretary of the Navy; the other four members were appointed without reference to other offices. The original eight members of the NDRC were: Vannevar Bush, President of the Carnegie Institution (Chairman); Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen, Sr.; Conway P. Coe, Commissioner of Patents; Karl Compton, President of MIT; James B. Conant, President of Harvard University; Frank B. Jewett, President of the National Academy of Sciences and President of Bell Telephone Laboratories; Brigadier General George V. Strong; and Richard C. Tolman, Professor of Physical Chemistry and Mathematical Physics at California Institute of Technology. Strong was succeeded by Brigadier General R.C. Moore on January 17, 1941. During its first meeting on July 2, the NDRC elected Tolman as its Vice-Chairman and appointed Irvin Stewart as its Secretary. The NDRC members met approximately once a month until September 1942, after which it met either weekly or bi-weekly until the end of the war with Germany, after which it met irregularly.
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