Page "Vannevar Bush" Paragraph 2

Bush was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics ( NACA ) in 1938, and soon became its chairman.

As Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee ( NDRC ), and later Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development ( OSRD ), Bush coordinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare.

Bush was a well-known policymaker and public intellectual during World War II, when he was in effect the first presidential science advisor.

As head of NDRC and OSRD, he initiated the Manhattan Project, and ensured that it received top priority from the highest levels of government.

In Science, The Endless Frontier, his 1945 report to the President of the United States, Bush called for an expansion of government support for science, and he pressed for the creation of the National Science Foundation.