Roosevelt had understood this long before the war ended. He asked Vannevar Bush to study how the federal government could work with scientists and universities in peacetime.

Bush offered a number of ideas to President Truman at the end of the war. He told the president that science was important to America's progress and safety. He called on the federal government to support scientific study and education.

Professor Bush said that the nation's universities should be greatly strengthened. He called for the creation of a new government agency to provide money for science projects.

Truman and Congress agreed with Vannevar Bush. And in the next few years, American research efforts expanded. In nineteen forty-six, the Office of Naval Research was created to support basic science study in universities. In the same year, the government created the Atomic Energy Commission. And in nineteen fifty, it created the National Science Foundation to provide support to thousands of the nation's best scientists.

In the years that followed, American science would grow beyond the wildest dreams of Vannevar Bush and other scientists of his time.

Universities would add thousands of new students along with new laboratories and research centers.

By the middle of the nineteen sixties, the federal government would spend more than thirteen billion a year for research and development. And five hundred new centers of higher learning would be created. All this investment would help make the United States the world leader in such fields as computer science, genetics and space travel.