OFFICE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

• Committee on Uranium (S-1 Section)
• DuPont Company
• National Defense Research Committee (NDRC)
• Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)
• University of California

The Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was a direct outgrowth of the deficiencies of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which had been created by President Franklin Roosevelt in June 1940, at the urging of Vannevar Bush, to organize American science for war. The NDRC had been a great step forward, but a year's experience revealed certain imperfections. Although it had a strong focus on research, the NDRC lacked the necessary authority to take the next step in developing and procuring new technologies. The scientists on the committee, including Bush, were not full-time, paid government officials. They served without compensation and remained affiliated with their home institutions. In addition, the NDRC ranked equally with the laboratories of the military services and with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. There was no easy way to correlate the research of these three agencies. The NDRC, in essence, lacked sufficient teeth to move new ideas from the shop floor to the battlefield. Bush lobbied Roosevelt to form a new executive body, not only empowered to develop useful technologies but also more closely linking research efforts to military planning. Bush believed that this more powerful organization must be directly under the authority of the executive because, as he recalled years later, "I knew that you couldn't get anything done in that damn town unless you organized under the wing of the president."

Roosevelt responded by establishing the OSRD by executive order on June 28, 1941. Located within the Office for Emergency Management of the Executive Office of the President, with Bush as director personally responsible to the President, the OSRD was to serve as a center for mobilizing the scientific resources of the nation and applying the results of research to national defense. The NDRC would continue, but within the OSRD. Its function, now headed by James Conant, was to make recommendations on research and development. The Advisory Committee on Uranium, set up in October 1939 to coordinate and fund atomic energy research, remained within the NDRC but was somewhat enlarged and renamed the Section on Uranium. Bush could now, as a result of the changes, invoke the authority and prestige of the White House in his dealings with other federal agencies. As one one New York Times Magazine commentator noted at the time, Bush had become the "czar of research."

In December 1941, Bush, looking for a quick decision on production plants, reorganized the atomic energy program, placing it under his immediate supervision. He set up a Planning Board, headed by Eger V. Murphree, a chemical engineer with the Standard Oil Company. The board would make engineering planning studies and supervise all pilot-plant experimentation or enlarged laboratory-scale investigations. It would, in short, see that the plans were available when the time came to enter the production phase. appointed Harold Urey, Ernest Lawrence, and Arthur Compton as program chiefs directing research. Urey headed up work including diffusion and centrifuge isotope separation methods and heavy-water studies. Lawrence took electromagnetic and cyclotron-related plutonium responsibilities, and Compton ran fission chain reaction and weapon theory programs. Bush's responsibility was to coordinate engineering and scientific efforts and make final decisions on recommendations for construction contracts. The OSRD, with Bush at the helm, continued to let contracts on the advice of the Planning Board and the Section on Uranium, which became the OSRD S-1 Section, dropping the word uranium for security reasons. The research program chiefs, along with Murphree and Conant, now sat with the S-1 Section. In accordance with the instructions he received from Roosevelt, Bush removed all uranium work from the NDRC. From this point forward, broad policy decisions relating to uranium were primarily the responsibility of the Top Policy Group, composed of Bush, Conant, Vice President Wallace, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.

The OSRD research projects, by Conant's count, now focused on five methods of producing fissionable materials: three isotope separation process (electromagnetic, gaseous diffusion, and centrifuge) and two pile processes (uranium-graphite and uranium-heavy water, which Conant referred to as five "horses" in a race. The OSRD, in support of the race, had by early February 1942 entered into ten contracts with twelve institutions totaling more than $1 million. These figures nearly doubled in the next month. On February 20, Conant recommended that all five methods "be pushed vigorously" until July 1, by when he hoped a front runner would begin to pull away. If by then the electromagnetic method demonstrated a clear capability "of producing grams per day," he noted, then work on the other methods might be dropped or continued at a slower pace. Nonetheless, even if all five horses had to be kept running "at full speed down the course" until the end of the year, the OSRD research program might still be completed for between $10 and $17 million.

As the "race" continued with no clear-cut winner and the atomic energy program evolved into the production stage, the role of the OSRD continued to change. In June 1942, arrangements were made for a division of the work between the OSRD and the War Department. The OSRD would continue with research, and all large aspects of the program would be placed directly under the Army. Bush appointed an Executive Committee of S-1 charged with recommending and supervising contracts. The Planning Board was abolished, although its member remained available for consultation. By December 1942, the atomic energy program had progressed to the point where it was possible to tranfer the entire responsibility to the Army Corps of Engineers' Manhattan Engineer District (MED). Ongoing OSRD contracts were terminated and picked up as MED contracts. The OSRD later entered into several contracts where the MED sought to conceal its interest in a subject, but for all practical purposes the OSRD role, by May 1, 1943, had ended. Bush and Conant, however, remained involved as members of the Top Policy Group.

The OSRD was closed down after the war. Total appropriations for the Manhattan Project under the OSRD amounted to $14.6 million (as compared to $0.5 million under the NDRC alone and $2.2 billion under the MED). In 1947 the OSRD was disbanded.

• Committee on Uranium (S-1 Section)
• DuPont Company
• National Defense Research Committee (NDRC)
• Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)
• University of California

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