The Linguistic Culture-10 (Education and Science in the USA) (1157948), страница 3
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During World War II a lot of leading European scientists, many of them of Jewish descent, fled to America from the regimes of their countries. One of the first to do so was Albert Einstein. After him a good percentage of Germany’s theoretical physics community left for the US as well This circumstance gave American science in general and the American academy in particular a mighty boost.
In the mid-1950s the US government gave huge investments to the science sector, which attraced scientists from all over the world to work there. The research facilities in the US were second to none, and scientists were drawn to the US for this reason alone. That led to the situation that since 1950, Americans have won approximately half of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences. (so far over 781). It is also worth mentioning that among the American Nobel Prize winners there are not a few Russian former compatriots (over 60), who moved to the USA during different periods of time and under different circumstances. Undoubtedly, they have left a considerable “Russian” trace both in American and the world science. Alexander Seversky (1894-1974) was a designer of military aircraft. Among his ideas were the autopilot system disprove in the air. Stepan Timoshenko (1878-1972)-scientist-metallurgist, the largest specialist in the world of resistance materials. Nobel laureate economist Leontief, the inventor of television Zworykin, aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky, the great ophthalmologist Elena Fedorovich, Nina Fedorova - geneticist, academician of the National Academy of Sciences, physicist George Gamow and many others.
Being one of the few industrial countries not crashed by war, the US began to occupy a position of unchallenged leadership in the post-war period. Although the USA does not exercise a centralized science and technology policy, it is impossible to say that there is absolutely no central monitoring of science and technology there. The Federal government spends huge amounts of money on science. It is the main source of funding for fundamental research and the biggest customer of military programs.
Modern network of scientific organizations in the United States includes federal financed research centers, state laboratories, private industrial firms and non-profit organization. The US government maintains its own laboratories (such as the Oak Bridge National Laboratory, the National Research Laboratory or the Brookhaven National Laboratory). The governmental and military contracts also encourage the growth of science-oriented industries (e.g. Bell Laboratories).
Scientific organizations formally classified as “independent research institutes “but nicknamed as “Think Tanks” or “Brain Factories” were organized. The main aims of TT or BF, attached to the Federal government and its Agencies by annual contracts, are long-range analysis and ideas necessary for policy-making, problem solving and decision-making. The largest of the “Think tanks” is the RAND Corporation (Research and Development). RAND employs a lot of prominent scholars: mathematicians, chemists, physicists, social scientists, computer experts and others. The most important researches carried out by RAND are connected with military tasks
Thanks to large-scale federal sponsorship the nature of academic research has gone a very substantial change.
The American Academy of sciences occupies at present a whole quadrangle at Constitution Avenue in Washington D.C. It has a great number of programs that include the participation in international scientific undertakings, the development of relationships with other academies, cooperation in worldwide scientific project. Although it does not maintain direct research programs of its own, as, for example, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Academy plays its leading role in various advisory governmental committees and determining scientific policy matters in general. The Academy also established a number of its Councils and Foundations.
The National Research Council. NRC was intended to strengthen and enlarge the role of the Academy in public affairs by adding to its staff a much larger body of American scientists and engineers and acting as the center for intersociety scientific activities.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for the progress of science across astronomical, space, earth and ocean sciences; programs concerned with biological and social sciences; investigations in engineering; encouraging the training of engineers at undergraduate and graduate levels through grants. NSF sponsors work in mathematical sciences, computer research and chemistry; manages and funds the US activities in Antarctica. NSF also administers programs for exchange with other countries of students, scholars and teachers.
The American Physical Society (APS) pursues the mission “to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics”, to be active in public and governmental affairs, and in the international physics community. There is a long list of the names of prominent American physicists awarded with different national and international prizes: Gorge Pullin working on gravitational waves, Kris Larsen, studying astronomy and black holes, David Landau, the Director of the Center for Simulational Physics at the University of Georgia, Timothy Gay with his group investigating polarized electron molecules (e.g. DNA) and many others.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964 as an organization of distinguished engineers, sharing with the National Academy its responsibility for advising the Federal government.
A great part of Research and Development is done at the US universities, sponsored mainly through contract systems.
The organization of research in universities is carried out in two forms: on the basis of grants and contracts. Universities conduct research not only in their laboratories, but also in laboratories belonging to different government departments. The largest Federal research centers are managed under contracts of University administration. An example is the Laboratory Lincoln at the Massachusetts Institute of technology.
Thanks to the cooperation of University research with industry there is the rapid growth of scientific and industrial complexes. Among such complexes the most important are: the Cambridge-Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Princeton and Houston. Big science research is mainly funded not only by the Federal government agencies and private business enterprises, but also by some international organizations, e.g. UNESCO. A considerable part of the money comes from the Pentagon, which remains the biggest supporter of new technologies and developments.
One of the most spectacular-and controversial- accomplishments of US federal technology became the harnessing of nuclear energy. The development of the atomic bomb and its use against Japan in 1945 initiated the Atomic Age, a time of anxiety over weapons of mass destruction. Fortunately, besides military aims, the sophisticated advantages of atomic energy led also to its peaceful uses in economy and medicine.
Almost in tandem with the Atomic Age there has been running the Space Age. American scientist Robert Goddard was one of the first to experiment with rocket propulsion systems even before the Second World War. During the late 1940s, the US Department of Defense pursued upper atmospheric research as a means of assuring American leadership in this field. A major step forward came when President D. Eisenhower approved a plan to orbit a scientific satellite to gather scientific data about the Earth.
In October 1957 the world’s first artificial satellite SPUTNIC 1 was launched in the Soviet Union. The space race began and in 1958 the Congress and the President created the Federal Independent Agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as “An Act to provide for research into problems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere and for other purposes”. NASA was headed by Famous German rocket specialist Werner von Braun and absorbed into itself the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and lots of other organizations. It keeps three major research laboratories and some smaller test facilities (with the annual budget of 100 million dollars and 8000 employees). Eventually NASA created other Centers and a number of affiliates including the Space Center in Huston, where the forming and training of the space crews is carried out.
When in1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin returned to the earth he pronounced a well-known challenge: “Now let the other countries try to catch us”. Several weeks later President Kennedy appealed to Congress: “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth”.
After that NASA began to conduct space missions. On May 5th, 1961 Alan B. Shepard Jr. became the first American to fly into space, and on February 20th, 1962 John H. Glenn became the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth. One of the highlights of the program occurred on June 3, 1965, when Edward H. White became the first US astronaut to conduct a spacewalk.
The main achievement of NASA during its early years involved the human exploration of the Moon. In 1968, after 11 years of major challenges and tragedies – notably 1967 fire in an Apollo capsule, having taken the lives of three astronauts, the Apollo project was launced under the auspices of the NASA. Apollo 7 carried three men around the earth, and then Apollo 8 carried three others around the moon. Apollo 9 and 10 tested the workability of the lunar module. On July 16, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed on the moon in Apollo 11, leaving behind a plaque that read: “Here Men from Planet Earth First Set Foot upon the Moon. We Came in Peace for All Mankind”. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”, said Neil Armstrong on returning to the earth.
Since then, there have been other American flights to the moon. Displays at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. show the developments in space travel. From the scientific point of view, Apollo 15 and Apollo 16 expeditions were especially important, as they were aimed at learning more about the origin of the moon and the universe. During the moon expedition astronauts Scott and Irwin were able to leave the lunar Module to drive around over more than 27 kilometers of lunar ground and bring back a chunk of truly ancient lunar crust. After Apollo 17 the exploration of space shifted from the Apollo lunar program to Skylab, the manned orbital space station.
In 1975, NASA began to cooperate with the Soviet Union to achieve the first international human spaceflight, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). The two spacecrafts were launched within 7.5 hours, docked three hours after and 3 American astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, Vance Brand, Donald Slaytor and 2 Soviet Cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valerii Kubasov met and shook hands in orbit. After that various US space shuttles docked with the Soviet Mir nine times, and 52 American astronauts as well as astronauts from Europe and Japan, visited the station for research and training.
During the 1980s and the 1990s, the USA launched several spaceships to investigate distant planets: Jupiter, Venus and Mercury. The Viking probes landed on Mars and provided valuable information of the planet. Since 1975 there have been a number of space expeditions to Mars, Jupiter and its moon Europa stimulating public interest in aerospace exploration. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990 discovered 16 extrasolar planet candidates. Using innovative technologies, the Mars spacecraft landed on Mars on July 4th, 1997 and explored the surface of the planet. The Mars Pathfinder mission was a scientific success, watched by many via the Internet.
By the 1980s NASA had created the nation’ space transportation system of the future – the Space Shuttle that was a reusable manned spacecraft taking off like a rocket and landing like an airplane. After the number of successful missions of shuttle Columbia, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded soon after liftoff due to the leak of one of two Solid Rocket Boosters. All seven members of the crew including a woman astronaut were killed. On the First of February 2003 American Space Shuttle Columbia again broke up over Texas as it descended for a landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida following a 16-day flight. All its seven crewmembers died. After the Challenger disasters the Shuttle program was stopped for over two years.
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