Vannevar Bush: Biography from Answers.com

Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) was a leader of American science and engineering during and after World War II. He was instrumental in the development of the atomic bomb and the analogue computer, as well as an administrator of government scientific activities.

By any standard, Vannevar Bush was one of the movers of the 20th century. A prominent engineer, he rose through the ranks to become the first vice president and dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1939 he moved to Washington, D.C. to assume the presidency of the Carnegie Institution, one of the country's most prestigious and important private foundations and sources of support for scientific research. Within a year, however, the gathering clouds of war turned his energies in other directions. With the advantage of location in Washington and drawing on acquaintanceships with the leaders of American science and engineering, Bush moved quickly into the lead mobilizing the scientific community for war.

The roots of this man who became the czar of wartime science reach deeply into the soil of New England. Bush was the descendant of a long line of sea captains who made their home in Provincetown and he always kept something of the salty independence of the sea about him. He returned frequently to Cape Cod throughout his life, and often found himself drawing upon images of the sea in talking of his work in engineering. His father had left Provincetown in the 1870s, probably to escape religious tensions and a declining economy, and taken up residence in the suburbs of Boston in the small community of Everett to be near the new Universalist Tufts College. There he studied for his degree in divinity and over the next decades became one of the area's well known and well loved pastors. And there Vannevar was born to Richard Perry and Emma Linwood Bush March 11, 1890, one of three children.

For over two decades Bush was associated with two of the country's best engineering schools. One was MIT; the earlier and, in some ways, the more formative was Tufts. While small, this Universalist school had nevertheless towards the end of the century encouraged the development of a strong and innovative engineering program under the guidance of Gardner Anthony, a master of drawing and mechanical design. Here Bush developed a lifelong romance with invention which eventually culminated in a series of pioneering analogue computers during the 1920s and 1930s. Here also he acquired that graphic mathematical approach to things which became a characteristic of his work in engineering. Not least, the profoundly ethical context in which the profession of engineering gestated at Tufts combined with the pastoral commitments of his father to shape Bush's deep belief that engineering could, in fact, be a ministry devoted to social welfare and public good. Bush graduated from Tufts in 1913 with both bachelor's and master's degrees.

Between 1913 and 1919 he worked at General Electric, taught mathematics to the women at Tufts, worked as an electrical inspector in the New York Navy Yard, earned his doctorate in electrical engineering at MIT in one year in 1916, and returned again to Tufts as a young assistant professor. Here he taught for part of his time and consulted for the rest with a small company devoted to the development of radio equipment. From these modest beginnings came the Raytheon Corporation, one of New England's largest companies and a mainstay of its defense industry. Bush was one of the company's founders in the early 1920s and maintained his connections until World War II.

In 1919, just as the academic market for engineering was turning bullish after World War I, Bush joined the faculty of MIT. Starting as an associate professor of electric power transmission, he rose rapidly through the department, bypassing the chairmanship to become in 1932 MIT's first vice president and dean of engineering under the new president, Karl Compton. During these years Bush became involved in many of the issues percolating through the country's community of engineers. They ranged over the curricula and conceptual development of electrical engineering, the relationship of the engineer and the government, the characteristics of professionalism, and the large role of the engineer in American society. In his early years at the institute, Bush cooperated with the department's dynamic chairman, Dugald Jackson, in modernizing the curriculum; assumed direction of graduate training; and coordinated the research activities of the department. By the middle 1930s, as Compton's righthand man, Bush had become not only a major figure at MIT but a respected spokesman within the country's technical community.

His inventive activity during these years revolved around the notion of mechanical analysis and the development of machine methods for the solution of mathematical problems in engineering. Between 1927 and 1943 Bush developed a series of electromechanical analogue computers which greatly facilitated the solution of complex mathematical problems. In 1936 the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a major grant to MIT which resulted in the famous Rockefeller differential analyzer of World War II. The analyzer was quickly superseded by faster digital computers, but in its time it was a significant achievement and clearly revealed the possibilities for machine computation not only in engineering but in more basic fields of science. Moreover, it embodied in a concrete way the culture of engineering in which Bush had come of age.

During the war Bush headed the vital National Defense Research Committee and its successor, the Office of Scientific Research and Development. From these organizations and the laboratories they oversaw came radar, the proximity fuse, penicillin, and, of course, the atomic bomb. Such accomplishments brought fame to Bush and enormous public respect to the country's scientists. They also provided Bush great influence in the public debates and legislative battles which followed the war and which eventually gave birth to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947 and the National Science Foundation in 1950.

In the calmer times after the war, Bush returned to his responsibilities at the Carnegie Institution. When he retired in 1955 he went home to Cambridge. He took up duties as a member of the boards of directors of Merck and Company, AT&T, the Metals and Controls Corporation, and the MIT Corporation, becoming honorary chairman of the last in 1959. He died in 1974.

After his career took its pronounced public turn with the events of World War II, Bush became a prolific and popular author of books dealing with the nature of science and the problems of science and public policy in the period of the Cold War. Science - The Endless Frontier (1945), a report written for President F. D. Roosevelt dealing with the organization of postwar science, quickly became an influential bestseller, as did his 1949 book, Modern Arms and Free Men: A Discussion of the Role of Science in Preserving Democracy.

In many ways, Bush is the outstanding example of the expert whose role at the hub of an increasingly complex society captured the imagination of American society in the early part of the 20th century. These were years in which the figure of the engineer became not only a necessary fact of life but a value-laden symbol which presaged the contributions of science and technology to human progress. If the consequences of this turning to science and engineering, especially in the light of the nuclear predicaments which followed the war, have proved ambiguous blessings, Bush himself never lost faith. The pioneering spirit helped us conquer plains and forest, Bush wrote at the end of his life in his autobiographical Pieces of the Action. Given the chance, it would do so again.

Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush, ca. 1940-44
Born	March 11, 1890(1890-03-11) Everett, Massachusetts
Died	June 28, 1974 (aged 84) Belmont, Massachusetts
Institutions	MIT
Alma mater	B.A. Tufts College 1913 Ph.D. MIT 1917
Doctoral students	Claude E. Shannon

Life and work

Vannevar Bush was born in Everett, Massachusetts, to Richard Perry Bush and Emma Linwood Paine. He was educated at Tufts College (now Tufts University), graduating during 1913. From mid-1913 to October 1914, Bush worked at General Electric (where he was a supervising "test man"); during the 1914-1915 academic year, Bush taught mathematics at Jackson College (the partner school of Tufts). After a summer working as an electrical inspector and a brief stint at Clark University as a doctoral student of Arthur Gordon Webster, Bush entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) electrical engineering program. Bush was vice-president and dean of engineering at MIT from 1932 to 1938. In June 1940 he convinced Franklin Delano Roosevelt to give him funding and political support to create a new kind of collaborative relationship between military, industry, and academic researchers-without congressional, or nearly any other, oversight.^[5] This post included many of the powers and functions subsumed by the Provost when MIT introduced this post during 1949 including some appointments of lecturers to specific posts. While at MIT, Bush urged Col. Edward C. Harwood to found the American Institute for Economic Research as an independent, scientific research institute.

Spurred by the need for enough financial security to marry, Bush finished his thesis in less than a year. During August 1916 he married Phoebe Davis, whom he had known since Tufts, in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He received a doctorate in engineering from MIT and Harvard University, jointly, in 1917—after a dispute with his adviser Arthur Edwin Kennelly, who tried to demand more work from Bush.^[6]

During World War I he worked with the National Research Council with about six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. Such as developing submarines, trip hammers, and better microscopes. He joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at MIT in 1919 and was a professor there from 1923–32.

During 1922, Bush and his college roommate, Laurence K. Marshall, set up the American Appliance Company to market a device called the S-tube. This was a gaseous rectifier invented by C. G. Smith that greatly improved the efficiency of radios. Bush made much money from the venture. The company, renamed Raytheon, became a large electronics company and defense contractor.

Starting in 1927, Bush constructed a Differential Analyser, an analog computer that could solve differential equations with as many as 18 independent variables. An offshoot of the work at MIT was the beginning of digital circuit design theory by one of Bush's graduate students, Claude Shannon.

World War II period

A 1940 meeting at Berkeley with (from left to right) Ernest O. Lawrence, Arthur H. Compton, Bush, James B. Conant, Karl T. Compton, and Alfred L. Loomis

During 1939 Bush accepted a prestigious appointment as president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, which awarded large sums annually for research. As president, Bush was able to influence research in the U.S. towards military objectives and could informally advise the government on scientific matters. During 1939 he became fully involved with politics with his appointment as chairman of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which he directed through 1941. Bush remained a member of NACA through 1948.

During World War I, Bush had known the lack of cooperation between civilian scientists and the military. Concerned about the lack of coordination in scientific research in the U.S. and the need for mobilization for defense, Bush in 1939 proposed a general directive agency in the Federal Government, which he often discussed with his colleagues at NACA, James B. Conant (President of Harvard University), Karl T. Compton (President of M.I.T.) (both pictured with Bush in photo right), and Frank B. Jewitt, President of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bush continued to urge for the agency's creation. Early in 1940, at Bush's suggestion, the secretary of NACA began preparing a draft of the proposed National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) to be presented to Congress. But when the Germans invaded France, Bush decided speed was important and signalled President Roosevelt directly. He managed to get a meeting with the President on 12 June 1940 and took a single sheet of paper describing the proposed agency. Roosevelt approved it in ten minutes.

NDRC was functioning, with Bush as chairman and others as members, even before the agency was made official by order of the Council of National Defense on June 27, 1940. Bush quickly appointed four leading scientists to NRDC: NACA colleagues Conant, Compton, and Jewitt, and also Richard C. Tolman, dean of the graduate school at Caltech. Each was assigned an area of responsibility. Compton was in charge of radar, Conant of chemistry and explosives, Jewitt of armor and ordnance, and Tolman of patents and inventions. Government officials then complained that Bush was attempting to by-pass them and to acquire more authority for himself. Bush later agreed: "That, in fact, is exactly what it was." This co-ordination of scientific effort was instrumental for the Allies winning the Second World War. Alfred Loomis (photo above) said that "Of the men whose death in the summer of 1940 would have been the greatest calamity for America, the President is first, and Dr. Bush would be second or third."

During 1941 the NDRC was subsumed into the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) with Bush as director, which controlled the Manhattan Project until 1943 (when administration was assumed by the Army) and which also coordinated scientific research during World War II. In all, OSRD directed 30,000 men and oversaw development of some 200 weapons and instrumentalities of war, including sonar, radar, the proximity fuze, amphibious vehicles, and the Norden bomb sight, all considered critical in winning the war. At one time, two-thirds of all the nation’s physicists were working under Bush’s direction. In addition, OSRD contributed to many advances of the physical sciences and medicine, including the mass production of penicillin and sulfa drugs.

Of the war, Bush said in "As We May Think", "This has not been a scientist's war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much." ^[7]

Another good example of the close working relationship between Bush and President Roosevelt was in a brief memo, dated March 20, 1942, providing approval for development of the atom bomb and what became the Manhattan Project. Roosevelt wrote Bush, "I have read your extremely interesting report and I agree that the time has come for a review of the work of the Office on New Weapons.... I am returning the report for you to lock up, as I think it is probably better that I should not have it in my own files."^[8]

Bush's method of management at OSRD was to direct overall policy while delegating supervision of divisions to qualified colleagues and letting them do their jobs without interference. He attempted to interpret the mandate of OSRD as narrowly as possible to avoid overtaxing his office and to prevent duplicating the efforts of other agencies. Other problems were obtaining adequate funds from the President and Congress and determining apportionment of research among government, academic, and industrial facilities. However, his most difficult problems, and also greatest successes, were keeping the confidence of the military, which distrusted the ability of civilians to observe security regulations, and opposing conscription of young scientists into the armed forces. The New York Times in its obituary described him as “a master craftsman at steering around obstacles, whether they were technical or political or bull-headed generals and admirals.” Dr. Conant commented, “To see him in action with the generals was an exhibit.”

Post-war years

OSRD continued to function actively until some time after the end of hostilities, but by 1946 and 1947 it had been reduced to a minimal staff charged with finishing work remaining from the war period.

Bush and many others had hoped that with the dissolution of OSRD, an equivalent peacetime government research and development agency would replace it. Bush felt that basic research was important national survival for both military and commercial reasons, requiring continued government support for science and technology. Technical superiority could be a deterrent to future enemy aggression. During July 1945, in his report to the President Science, The Endless Frontier, Bush wrote that basic research was: "the pacemaker of technological progress” and "New products and new processes do not appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science!" He recommended the creation of what would eventually become in 1950 the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Simultaneously during July 1945, the Kilgore bill was introduced in Congress proposing a single science administrator appointed and removable by the President, with emphasis on applied research, and a patent clause favoring a government monopoly. In contrast, the competing Magnuson bill was similar to Bush's proposal to vest control in a panel of top scientists and civilian administrators with the executive director appointed by them, to emphasize basic research, and to protect private patent rights. A compromise Kilgore-Magnuson bill of February 1946 passed the Senate but expired in the House because Bush favored a competing bill that was a virtual duplicate of the original Magnuson bill.

During February 1947, a Senate bill was introduced to create the National Science Foundation to replace OSRD, favoring most of the features advocated by Bush, including the controversial administration by an autonomous scientific board. It passed the Senate on May 20 and the House on July 16, but was vetoed by Truman on August 6 on the grounds that the administrative officers were not properly responsible to either the President or Congress.

In the meantime Bush was still director of what was left of OSRD and fulfilling his duties as president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. In addition, Bush postwar had helped create the Joint Research and Development Board (JRDB) of the Army and Navy, of which he was chairman. With passage of the National Security Act, signed into law during late July 1947, the JRDB became the Research and Development Board (RDB). It was to promote research through the military until a bill creating the National Science Foundation finally became law.

It was assumed President Truman would naturally appoint Bush chairman of the new agency, and behind the scenes Bush was lobbying for the position. But Truman was displeased with the form of the just-vetoed NSF bill favored by Bush, considering it an attempt by Bush to acquire power. His misgivings about Bush were revealed publicly on September 3, 1947: He wanted more time to think about it and reportedly told his defense chiefs that if he did appoint Bush, he planned to keep a close eye on him. However, Truman finally relented. On September 24 Bush met with Truman and Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, where Truman offered the position to Bush.

Initially the RDB had a budget of 465 million dollars to be spent on "research and development for military purposes." Late during 1947, a directive issued by Forrestal further defined the duties of the board and assigned it the responsibility and authority to "resolve differences among the several departments and agencies of the military establishment."

However, the authority Bush had as chairman of the RDB was much different from the power and influence he enjoyed as director of OSRD and the agency he hoped to create postwar almost independent of the Executive branch and Congress. Bush was never happy with the position and resigned as chairman of the RDB after a year, but remained on the oversight committee.

Despite his later ambiguous relationship with Truman, Bush’s advice on various scientific and political matters was often sought by Truman. When Truman became President and first learned of the atomic bomb, Bush briefed him on the scientific aspects. Soon after, during June 1945, Bush was on the committee advising Truman to use the atomic bomb against Japan at the earliest opportunity. In “Pieces of Action,” Bush wrote that he thought use of the bomb would shorten the war and prevent many American casualties. Bush's vision of how to apply the lessons of OSRD to peacetime, Science, The Endless Frontier, was commissioned by Roosevelt in a letter of Nov 1944, was written during the following months, and—Roosevelt having died in the meantime—delivered to Truman in July 1945.

Immediately after the war, there were debates about future uses of atomic energy and whether it should be placed under international control. During early 1946, Bush was appointed to a committee to develop a plan for United Nations control. According to Truman in his memoirs, Bush advised him that a proposal to Russia for exchange of scientific information would promote to international collaboration and eventually to effective control, the alternative being an atomic bomb race. Bush wrote in a memo, “The move does not involve ‘giving away the secret of the atomic bomb’. That secret resides principally in the details of construction of the bombs themselves, and in the manufacturing process. What is given and what is received is scientific knowledge.” Bush felt that attempts to maintain scientific secrets from the Russians would be of little benefit to the U.S. since they would probably obtain such secrets anyway through espionage while most American scientists would be kept ignorant of Soviet science.

During September 1949, Bush was also appointed to a scientific committee reviewing the evidence that Russia had just tested its first atomic bomb. The conclusions were relayed to Truman who then made the public announcement.

Bush continued to serve on NACA through 1948 and expressed annoyance with aircraft companies for delaying development of a turbojet engine because of the huge expense of research and development plus retooling from older piston engines. [4]

From 1947 to 1962 Bush was also on the board of directors of American Telephone and Telegraph. During 1955 Bush retired as President of the Carnegie Institution and returned to Massachusetts. From 1957 to 1962 he was chairman of the large pharmaceutical corporation Merck & Co..

Miscellaneous

One of Bush's PhD students at MIT was Frederick Terman, who was later instrumental in the development of "Silicon Valley".

Canadian government documents from 1950 and 1951 involving the Canadian Defence Research Board, Department of Transport, and Embassy in Washington D.C., implicate Bush as directing a very secret UFO study group within the U.S. Research and Development Board.^[9] (See also Majestic 12) Bush's participation in this group is further documented by Stanton Friedman in his book "Top Secret/Majic" (Marlowe & Company, New York, NY 1996).

Bush was opposed to the introduction of Nazi scientists into the U.S. under the secretive Project Paperclip, thinking that they were potentially a danger to democracy.

Bush believed in a strong national defense and the role that scientific research played in it. However in an interview on his 80th birthday he expressed reservations about the arms race he had helped to create. “I do think the military is too big now—- I think we’ve overdone putting bases all over the world.” He also expressed opposition to the antiballistic missile (ABM) because it would damage arms limitation talks with the Soviets and because “I don’t think the damn thing will work.”

Bush and his wife Phoebe had two sons: Richard Davis Bush and John Hathaway Bush. Vannevar Bush died at age 84 from pneumonia after suffering a stroke during 1974 in Belmont, Massachusetts. A lengthy obituary was published on the front page of the New York Times on June 30.

The Memex

Bush introduced the concept of what he called the memex during the 1930s, which is a microfilm-based "device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory." He wanted the memex to behave like the "intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain"; essentially, causing the proposed device to be similar to the functions of a human brain. The important feature of the memex is that it ties two pieces together. Any item can just select another immediantly. ^[10]

After thinking about the potential of augmented memory for several years, Bush set out his thoughts at length in the essay "As We May Think" in the Atlantic Monthly, which was published July of 1945. In the article, Bush predicted that "Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified." A few months later (10 September 1945) Life magazine published a condensed version of "As We May Think," accompanied by several illustrations showing the possible appearance of a memex machine and its companion devices.

Michael Buckland, a library scientist, regards the memex as severely flawed and blames it on a limited understanding by Bush of both information science and microfilm. Bush did not refer in his popular essay to the microfilm-based workstation proposed by Leonard Townsend during 1938, or the microfilm- and electronics-based selector described in more detail and patented by Emanuel Goldberg during 1931^[11].

Contributions to Digital Media

Due to the linear fashion of the memex machine, the term "Bushian" has been coined to express the linearity of html structure and also text. The "Bushian" philosophy of digital media is more focused on using facts to build something creative that will better our world. Bush sees art as a tool to help with that process. Instead of using emotion as a base, the "Bushian" view uses reason and logic. His goal is to untangle the labyrinth-shaped book and then mold it into something linear and reasonable. Bush is constantly in search of a shortcut to the end of the trial.^[12]

Conservative approach

This section may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (July 2009)

Vannevar Bush overestimated some technological challenges. His name has been applied to such underestimates in jargon. [5] He asserted that a nuclear weapon could not be made small enough to fit in the nose of a missile. In his book Modern Arms and Free Men (1949), he predicted originally that it would be ten more years before the USSR developed nuclear weapons.

Bush wrote in the foreword to Modern Arms and Free Men:

As I have been writing, the scene has continually changed, and it is still changing as the last few words are added. The President's announcement of evidence of an atomic explosion in the Soviet Union appears as the volume goes to press.

In addition, the first chapter's epigraph is the following quote from James V. Forrestal:

There are many sciences with which war is concerned, but war is not such a science itself, and any forecast for the indefinite future presupposes a certitude that is not possible.

He also predicted "electronic brains" the size of the Empire State Building with a Niagara Falls–scale cooling system.^{[citation needed]}

Bush privately, and then publicly, opposed NASA's manned space program and criticized the moon exploration goals announced by President John F. Kennedy at a time when the U.S. was nearly united in supporting it.^{[citation needed]} His opposition was based on fiscal reasons and on his calculated judgment that human lives would be lost in what he considered to be an extremely risky adventure, from an engineering standpoint. His warnings were largely ignored.

Honors, memberships, and affiliations

As of 1947, Bush had received fourteen honorary degrees and ten medals.
In 1943, he received the AIEE's Edison Medal 'For his contribution to the advancement of electrical engineering, particularly through the development of new applications of mathematics to engineering problems, and for his eminent service to the nation in guiding the war research program.'
After World War II, President Truman awarded Bush the Medal of Merit.
President Lyndon Johnson awarded Bush the National Medal of Science.
During 1970, he received the Atomic Pioneers Award from the Atomic Energy Commission .
The Vannevar Bush Award was created by the National Science Foundation in 1980 to honor contributions to public service.
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, American Institute of Electrical Engineers, American Physical Society, and National Science Foundation.
Member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Mathematical Society.
Trustee of Tufts College, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Johns Hopkins University, and the Brookings Institution.
Life member of the M.I.T. corporation and a regent of the Smithsonian Institution.

Quotes

"A belief may be larger than a fact."
"Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic; it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation. "
"If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability."
"Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission."
"The scene changes but the aspirations of men of good will persist."
"To pursue science is not to disparage the things of the spirit. In fact, to pursue science rightly is to furnish the framework on which the spirit may rise."

Publications

1922, Principles of Electrical Engineering.
1929, Operational Circuit Analysis.
1945, July, "As We May Think", Atlantic Monthly.
1945, Science: The Endless Frontier, a report to president Truman outlining his proposal for post-war U.S. science and technology policy
1946, Endless Horizons, a collection of papers and addresses.
1949, "Modern Arms and Free Men", a discussion of the role of science in preserving democratic institutions.
1967, Science Is Not Enough, essays.
1970, "Pieces of the Action", an examination of science and the state.

Notes

^ Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think". The New Media Reader. The MIT Press.
^ Murray, Janet H. "Inventing the Medium." The New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Nick Montfort. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. pp. 3-11.
^ Zachary, Endless Frontier, p 3. Full quotation: "To the public, Bush was the patron saint of American science, 'one of the most important men in America.'"
^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, ed (2003). The New Media Reader. p. 35. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-23227-8.
^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, ed (2003). The New Media Reader. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-23227-8.
^ Zachary, Endless Frontier, pp 11-34
^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, ed (2003). The New Media Reader. p. 37. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-23227-8.
^ "Memorandum for Dr. Vannevar Bush". Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box2/a13c01.html.
^ Arthur Bray, The UFO Connection, 1979, Jupiter Publishing, ISBN 0-9690135-1-5, 46-75; Grant Cameron & T. Scott Crain, UFOs, MJ-12, & the Government, 1991, MUFON, 4-7, 55-60; Timothy Good, Beyond Top Secret’’, 1996, Pan Books, 183-188, 464-66, ISBN 0-330-34928-7 [1] [2][3]
^ New Media Reader: Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think"
^ Buckland, Michael. “Emanuel Goldberg, Electronic Document Retrieval, And Vannevar Bush's Memex.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 43, no. 4 (May 1992): 284–294.
^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah & Montfort, Nick (2003). The New Media Reader. The MIT Press.

References

Nyce, James M.; Kahn, Paul (eds.) "From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind's Machine". San Diego, London (...) 1991. [A reprint of all of Bush's texts regarding Memex accompanied by related Sources and Studies]
Waldthorp, MItchell, 2001. The Dream Machine: J. C. R. Licklider and the Revolution that Made Computing Personal. Penguin Books. Ch. 2.
Zachary, G. Pascal. Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century. The Free Press, 1997. ISBN 0-684-82821-9
Vannevar Bush biography in Current Biography 1947, 80–82
New York Times Bush obituary, June 30, 1974, p. 1

External links

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Complete roster: 1909–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present

National Medal of Science laureates

Behavioral and social science

1960s	1964: Roger Adams · Othmar H. Ammann · Theodosius Dobzhansky · Neal Elgar Miller

1980s	1986: Herbert A. Simon 1987: Anne Anastasi · George J. Stigler 1988: Milton Friedman

1990s	1990: Leonid Hurwicz · Patrick Suppes 1991: Robert W. Kates · George A. Miller 1992: Eleanor J. Gibson 1994: Robert K. Merton 1995: Roger N. Shepard 1996: Paul A. Samuelson 1997: William K. Estes 1998: William Julius Wilson 1999: Robert M. Solow

2000s	2000: Gary Becker 2001: George Bass 2003: R. Duncan Luce 2004: Kenneth Arrow 2005: Gordon H. Bower

Biological sciences

1960s	1963: C. B. van Niel 1964: Marshall W. Nirenberg 1965: Francis P. Rous · George G. Simpson · Donald D. Van Slyke 1966: Edward F. Knipling · Fritz Albert Lipmann · William C. Rose · Sewall Wright 1967: Kenneth S. Cole · Harry F. Harlow · Michael Heidelberger · Alfred H. Sturtevant 1968: Horace Barker · Bernard B. Brodie · Detlev W. Bronk · Jay Lush · Burrhus Frederic Skinner 1969: Robert Huebner · Ernst Mayr

1970s	1970: Barbara McClintock · Albert B. Sabin 1973: Daniel I. Arnon · Earl W. Sutherland, Jr. 1974: Britton Chance · Erwin Chargaff · James V. Neel · James Augustine Hannon 1975: Hallowell Davis · Paul Gyorgy · Sterling Brown Hendricks · Orville lvin Vogel 1976: Roger C.L. Guillemin · Keith Roberts Porter · Efraim Racker · E. O. Wilson 1979: Robert H. Burris · Elizabeth C. Crosby · Arthur Kornberg · Severo Ochoa · Earl Reece Stadtman · George Ledyard Stebbins · Paul Alfred Weiss

1980s	1981: Philip Handler 1982: Seymour Benzer · Glenn W. Burton · Mildred Cohn 1983: Howard L. Bachrach · Paul Berg · Wendell L. Roelofs · Berta Scharrer 1986: Stanley Cohen · Donald A. Henderson · Vernon B. Mountcastle · George Emil Palade · Joan A. Steitz 1987: Michael E. Debakey · Theodor O. Diener · Harry Eagle · Har Gobind Khorana · Rita Levi-Montalcini 1988: Michael S. Brown · Stanley N. Cohen · Joseph L. Goldstein · Maurice R. Hilleman · Eric R. Kandel · Rosalyn S. Yalow 1989: Katherine Esau · Viktor Hamburger · Philip Leder · Joshua Lederberg · Roger W. Sperry · Harland G. Wood

1990s	1990: Baruj Benacerraf · Herbert W. Boyer · Daniel E. Koshland, Jr. · Edward B. Lewis · David G. Nathan · E. Donnall Thomas 1991: Mary Ellen Avery · G. Evelyn Hutchinson · Elvin A. Kabat · Salvador Luria · Paul A. Marks · Folke K Skoog · Paul C. Zamecnik 1992: Maxine Singer · Howard M. Temin 1993: Daniel Nathans · Salome G. Waelsch 1994: Thomas Eisner · Elizabeth F. Neufeld 1995: Alexander Rich 1996: Ruth Patrick 1997: James D. Watson · Robert A. Weinberg 1998: Bruce Ames · Janet Rowley 1999: David Baltimore · Jared Diamond · Lynn Margulis

2000s	2000: Nancy C. Andreasen · Peter H. Raven · Carl Woese 2001: Francisco J. Ayala · Mario R. Capecchi · Ann M. Graybiel · Gene E. Likens · Victor A. McKusick · Harold Varmus 2002: James E. Darnell · Evelyn M. Witkin 2003: J. Michael Bishop · Solomon H. Snyder · Charles Yanofsky 2004: Norman E. Borlaug · Phillip A. Sharp · Thomas E. Starzl 2005: Anthony Fauci · Torsten N. Wiesel 2006: Rita R. Colwell · Nina Fedoroff · Lubert Stryer 2007: Robert J. Lefkowitz · Bert W. O'Malley

Chemistry

1980s	1982: F. Albert Cotton · Gilbert Stork 1983: Roald Hoffmann · George C. Pimentel · Richard N. Zare 1986: Harry B. Gray · Yuan Tseh Lee · Carl S. Marvel · Frank H. Westheimer 1987: William S. Johnson · Walter H. Stockmayer · Max Tishler 1988: William O. Baker · Konrad E. Bloch · Elias J. Corey 1989: Richard B. Bernstein · Melvin Calvin · Rudoph A. Marcus · Harden M. McConnell

1990s	1990: Elkan Blout · Karl Folkers · John D. Roberts 1991: Ronald Breslow · Gertrude B. Elion · Dudley R. Herschbach · Glenn T. Seaborg 1992: Howard E. Simmons, Jr. 1993: Donald J. Cram · Norman Hackerman 1994: George S. Hammond 1995: Thomas Cech · Isabella L. Karle 1996: Norman Davidson 1997: Darleane C. Hoffman · Harold S. Johnston 1998: John W. Cahn · George M. Whitesides 1999: Stuart A. Rice · John Ross · Susan Solomon

2000s	2000: John D. Baldeschwieler · Ralph F. Hirschmann 2001: Ernest R. Davidson · Gabor A. Somorjai 2002: John I. Brauman 2004: Stephen J. Lippard 2006: Marvin H. Caruthers · Peter B. Dervan 2007: Mostafa A. El-Sayed

Engineering sciences

1960s	1962: Theodore von Karman 1963: Vannevar Bush · John Robinson Pierce 1964: Charles S. Draper 1965: Hugh L. Dryden · Clarence L. Johnson · Warren K. Lewis 1966: Claude E. Shannon 1967: Edwin H. Land · Igor I. Sikorsky 1968: J. Presper Eckert · Nathan M. Newmark 1969: Jack St. Clair Kilby

1970s	1970: George E. Mueller 1973: Harold E. Edgerton · Richard T. Whitcomb 1974: Rudolf Kompfner · Ralph Brazelton Peck · Abel Wolman 1975: Manson Benedict · William Hayward Pickering · Frederick E. Terman · Wernher von Braun 1976: Morris Cohen · Peter C. Goldmark · Erwin Wilhelm Müller 1979: Emmett N. Leith · Raymond D. Mindlin · Robert N. Noyce · Earl R. Parker · Simon Ramo

1980s	1982: Edward H. Heinemann · Donald L. Katz 1983: William R. Hewlett · George M. Low · John G. Trump 1986: Hans Wolfgang Liepmann · T. Y. Lin · Bernard M. Oliver 1987: Robert B. Bird · H. Bolton Seed · Ernst Weber 1988: Daniel C. Drucker · Willis M. Hawkins · George W. Housner 1989: Harry George Drickamer · Herbert E. Grier

1990s	1990: Mildred S. Dresselhaus · Nick Holonyak Jr. 1991: George Heilmeier · Luna B. Leopold · H. Guyford Stever 1992: Calvin F. Quate · John Roy Whinnery 1993: Alfred Y. Cho 1994: Ray W. Clough 1995: Hermann A. Haus 1996: James L. Flanagan · C. Kumar N. Patel 1998: Eli Ruckenstein 1999: Kenneth N. Stevens

2000s	2000: Yuan-Cheng B. Fung 2001: Andreas Acrivos 2002: Leo Beranek 2003: John M. Prausnitz 2004: Edwin N. Lightfoot 2005: Jan D. Achenbach · Tobin J. Marks 2006: Robert S. Langer 2007: David J. Wineland

Mathematical, statistical, and computer sciences

1960s	1963: Norbert Wiener 1964: Solomon Lefschetz · H. Marston Morse 1965: Oscar Zariski 1966: John Milnor 1967: Paul Cohen 1968: Jerzy Neyman 1969: William Feller

1970s	1970: Richard Brauer 1973: John Tukey 1974: Kurt Gödel 1975: John W. Backus · Shiing-Shen Chern · George Dantzig 1976: Kurt Otto Friedrichs · Hassler Whitney 1979: Joseph Leo Doob · Donald E. Knuth

1980s	1982: Marshall Harvey Stone 1983: Herman Goldstine · Isadore Singer 1986: Peter Lax · Antoni Zygmund 1987: Raoul Bott · Michael Freedman 1988: Ralph E. Gomory · Joseph B. Keller 1989: Samuel Karlin · Saunders MacLane · Donald C. Spencer

1990s	1990: George F. Carrier · Stephen Cole Kleene · John McCarthy 1991: Alberto Calderón 1992: Allen Newell 1993: Martin David Kruskal 1994: John Cocke 1995: Louis Nirenberg 1996: Richard Karp · Stephen Smale 1997: Shing-Tung Yau 1998: Cathleen Synge Morawetz 1999: Felix Browder · Ronald R. Coifman

2000s	2000: John Griggs Thompson · Karen K. Uhlenbeck 2001: Calyampudi R. Rao · Elias M. Stein 2002: James G. Glimm 2003: Carl R. de Boor 2004: Dennis P. Sullivan 2005: Bradley Efron 2006: Hyman Bass 2007: Leonard Kleinrock · Andrew J. Viterbi

Physical sciences

1960s	1963: Luis W. Alvarez 1964: Julian Schwinger · Harold Clayton Urey · Robert Burns Woodward 1965: John Bardeen · Peter Debye · Leon M. Lederman · William Rubey 1966: Jacob Bjerknes · Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar · Henry Eyring · John H. Van Vleck · Vladimir K. Zworykin 1967: Jesse Beams · Francis Birch · Gregory Breit · Louis Hammett · George Kistiakowsky 1968: Paul Bartlett · Herbert Friedman · Lars Onsager · Eugene Wigner 1969: Herbert C. Brown · Wolfgang Panofsky

1970s	1970: Robert H. Dicke · Allan R. Sandage · John C. Slater · John A. Wheeler · Saul Winstein 1973: Carl Djerassi · Maurice Ewing · Arie Jan Haagen-Smit · Vladimir Haensel · Frederick Seitz · Robert Rathbun Wilson 1974: Nicolaas Bloembergen · Paul Flory · William Alfred Fowler · Linus Carl Pauling · Kenneth Sanborn Pitzer 1975: Hans A. Bethe · Joseph Hirschfelder · Lewis Sarett · E. Bright Wilson · Chien-Shiung Wu 1976: Samuel Goudsmit · Herbert S. Gutowsky · Frederick Rossini · Verner Suomi · Henry Taube · George Uhlenbeck 1979: Richard P. Feynman · Herman Mark · Edward M. Purcell · John Sinfelt · Lyman Spitzer · Victor F. Weisskopf

1980s	1982: Philip W. Anderson · Yoichiro Nambu · Edward Teller · Charles H. Townes 1983: E. Margaret Burbidge · Maurice Goldhaber · Helmut Landsberg · Walter Munk · Frederick Reines · Bruno B. Rossi · J. Robert Schrieffer 1986: Solomon Buchsbaum · Horace Crane · Herman Feshbach · Robert Hofstadter · Chen Ning Yang 1987: Philip Abelson · Walter Elsasser · Paul C. Lauterbur · George Pake · James A. Van Allen 1988: D. Allan Bromley · Paul Ching-Wu Chu · Walter Kohn · Norman F. Ramsey · Jack Steinberger 1989: Arnold O. Beckman · Eugene Parker · Robert Sharp · Henry Stommel

1990s	1990: Allan M. Cormack · Edwin M. McMillan · Robert Pound · Roger Revelle 1991: Arthur L. Schawlow · Ed Stone · Steven Weinberg 1992: Eugene M. Shoemaker 1993: Val Fitch · Vera Rubin 1994: Albert Overhauser · Frank Press 1995: Hans Dehmelt · Peter Goldreich 1996: Wallace S. Broecker 1997: Marshall Rosenbluth · Martin Schwarzschild · George Wetherill 1998: Don L. Anderson · John N. Bahcall 1999: James Cronin · Leo Kadanoff

2000s	2000: Willis E. Lamb · Jeremiah P. Ostriker · Gilbert F. White 2001: Marvin L. Cohen · Raymond Davis Jr. · Charles Keeling 2002: Richard Garwin · W. Jason Morgan · Edward Witten 2003: G. Brent Dalrymple · Riccardo Giacconi 2004: Robert N. Clayton 2005: Ralph A. Alpher · Lonnie Thompson 2006: Daniel Kleppner 2007: Fay Ajzenberg-Selove · Charles P. Slichter

v • d • e Computable knowledge

Topics and Concepts	Alphabet of human thought • Automated reasoning • Commonsense reasoning • Computability • Formal system • Inference engine • Knowledge base • Knowledge-based systems • Knowledge discovery • Knowledge engineering • Knowledge representation • Knowledge retrieval • Logic programming • Ontology • Question answering • Semantic reasoner

Proposals and Implementations	Zairja • Ars Magna (Ramon Llull, 1300) • An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (John Wilkins, 1688) • Calculus ratiocinator & Characteristica universalis (Gottfried Leibniz, 1700) • Dewey Decimal Classification (Melvil Dewey, 1876) • Begriffsschrift (Gottlob Frege, 1879) • Mundaneum (Paul Otlet & Henri La Fontaine, 1910) • Logical atomism (Bertrand Russell, 1918) • Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921) • Hilbert's program (David Hilbert, 1920s) • Incompleteness theorem (Kurt Gödel, 1931) • Memex (Vannevar Bush, 1945) • Cyc (1984) • True Knowledge (2007) • Wolfram Alpha (Stephen Wolfram, 2009)

In fiction	Dr. Know (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) • The Librarian (Snow Crash)

Persondata
NAME	Bush, Vannevar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American engineer
DATE OF BIRTH	March 11, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH	Everett, Massachusetts, USA
DATE OF DEATH	June 30, 1974
PLACE OF DEATH	Belmont, Massachusetts, USA

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Vannevar Bush

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