Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 35
Текст из файла (страница 35)
With the introduction of graduate schools intoAmerican education scientific research began to play amajor role in many universities. American industrybegan to have a scientific foundation; several of thelarger industries established research laboratories ofinternational level. The Federal Government alsodeveloped a number of scientific agencies.
Besidesduring World War I and especially during World War IIa lot of leading European scientists, many of them ofJewish descent, fled to America from the regimes oftheir countries. One of the first to do so was Albert Einstein. After him agood percentage of Germany’s theoretical physics community left for theUS as well This circumstance gave American science in general and theAmerican academy in particular a mighty boost.In the post-war era the US began to occupy a position of unchallengedleadership, being one of the few industrial countries not ravaged by war.By the mid-1950s the research facilities in the US were second to none,and scientists were drawn to the US for this reason alone. This led to thesituation that since 1950, Americans have won approximately half of theNobel Prizes in the sciences137One of the most spectacular-and controversial - accomplishments ofUS technology became the harnessing of nuclear energy.
The conceptsthat led to the splitting of atom had been developed by scientists of manycountries before, but the conversion of these ideas into reality of nuclearfission was accomplished in the US in the 1940s. The development of theatomic bomb and its use against Japan in 1945 initiated the Atomic Age,a time of anxiety over weapons of mass destruction that lasted throughthe Cold War. The sophisticated advantages of atomic energy led also toits peaceful uses in economy and medicine. The first US commercialnuclear power plant of atomic energy started operating in Illinois in 1956.The US government gives huge investments to the science sector,which.
attract scientists from all over the world to work there. Theincreasing number of American Nobel Prize winners (so far over 781)shows that the level of science and the organization of sciencemanagement in the US has become very high.. It is also worthmentioning that among the American Nobel Prize winners there are not afew Russian former compatriots (over 60), who moved to the USA duringdifferent periods of time and under different circumstances.
Undoubtedly,they have left a considerable “Russian” trace both in American and theworld science. Since World War II thanks to large-scale federalsponsorship the nature of academic research has gone a very substantialchange in the humanities and social sciences as well.The increased expenditure on scientific research and educationpropelled the United States to the forefront of the international scientificcommunity. The American Academy of sciences (NAS), whichoccupies at present a whole quadrangle at Constitution Avenue inWashington D.C., has a great number of programs that include theparticipation in international scientific undertakings, the development ofworking relationships with other academies, cooperation in worldwidescientific project.
Although it does not maintain direct research programsof its own, as, for example, the Russian Academy of Sciences, theAcademy plays its leading role in various advisory governmentalcommittees and determining scientific policy matters in general. TheAcademy also established a number of its Councils and Foundations.The National Research Council. NRC was intended to strengthen andenlarge the role of the Academy in public affairs by adding to its staff amuch larger body representing a very wide cross-section of American138scientists and engineers and acting at the same time as the center forintersociety scientific activities.The National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for theprogress of science across all disciplines: astronomical, space, earth andocean sciences; programs concerned with biological and social sciences;investigations in engineering; encouraging the training of engineers atundergraduate and graduate levels through grants.
NSF sponsors work inmathematical sciences, computer research and chemistry; manages andfunds the US activities in Antarctica. NSF also administers programs forexchange with other countries of students, scholars and teachers.The American Physical Society (APS) pursues the mission “toadvance and diffuse the knowledge of physics”, to be active in public andgovernmental affairs, and in the international physics community. Thereis a long list of the names of prominent American physicists awardedwith different national and international prizes: Gorge Pullin working ongravitational waves, Kris Larsen, studying astronomy and black holes,David Landau, the Director of the Center for Situational Physics at theUniversity of Georgia, Timothy Gay with his group investigatingpolarized electron scattering chiral molecules (e.g. DNA)and others.The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964 as anorganization of distinguished engineers, sharing with the NationalAcademy its responsibility for advising the Federal government.There are also in the USA scientific organizations formally classified as“independent research institutes “but nicknamed as “Think Tanks” or“Brain Factories”.
The main aims of TT or BF, attached to the Federalgovernment and its Agencies by annual contracts, are not traditionalresearch and development but long-range thinking and producing analysisideas necessary for policy-making, problem solving and decision-making.The largest of the “think tanks” is the RAND Corporation (Researchand Development). RAND employs a lot of prominent scholars:mathematicians, chemists, physicists, social scientists, computer expertsand others. The most important researches carried out by RAND areconnected with military tasks.A great part of Research and Development is done at the USuniversities, oriented toward not only instructing undergraduates but alsotoward research, sponsored mainly through contract systems. At presentthe US universities are involved in two kinds of research.
Departmentresearch is carried out by the faculty in the traditional academic pattern.139It is supervised by a professor, assisted by graduate students andtechnicians. Such research is not budgeted by outside sources andreferred to “as little science”.Big science research is mainly funded by outside sources: the Federalgovernment agencies, NSF, private business enterprises, different nonprofit institutions and even international agencies, e.g.
UNESCO. Most ofthe research at the best private universities such as MIT (MassachusettsInstitute of Technology), Johns Hopkins University and others is doneby the grantees of above mentioned bodies .As one of the means of aidingthe progress of science and engineering they offer three-year graduateFellowships to the brightest graduates and students. Among those whohave received this Fellowship are 9 Nobel Prize Winners, many membersof the National Academy of Sciences and Space research. A considerablepart of the money comes from the Pentagon, which remains the biggestsupporter of new technologies and developments.
The US governmentalso maintains its own laboratories (such as the Oak Bridge NationalLaboratory, the National Research Laboratory or the BrookhavenNational Laboratory) run by government workers but dependent onuniversities as a source of permanent research personnel. Thegovernmental and military contracts also encourage the growth ofscience-oriented industries nearby (e.g. Bell Laboratories).Almost in tandem with the Atomic Age there has been running theSpace Age. American scientist Robert Goddard was one of the first toexperiment with rocket propulsion systems in the 30s. Over next 10 yearsthe interest in rocketry increased in the US, Britain, Germany, and theSoviet Union. During the late 1940s, the US Department of Defensepursued upper atmospheric research as a means of assuring Americanleadership in this field.
A major step forward came when President D.Eisenhower approved a plan to orbit a scientific satellite as part of theInternational Geophysical Year for 1957 to gather scientific data aboutthe Earth. The Soviet Union quickly followed the suit, launching inOctober 1957 the world’s first artificial satellite SPUTNIC 1.The spacerace began and in October, 1958 the Congress and the President createdthe Federal Independent Agency National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration (NASA) as “An Act to provide for research intoproblems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere and forother purposes”. NASA was headed by Famous German rocket specialistWerner von Braun and absorbed into itself the earlier National Advisory140Committee for Aeronautics and lots of other organizations.
It keeps threemajor research laboratories and some smaller test facilities (with theannual budget of 100 million dollars and 8000 employees).EventuallyNASA created other Centers and a number of affiliates including theSpace Center in Huston, where the forming and training of the spacecrews is carried out.On April 12th, 1961 Russian cosmonaut Major Yuri Gagarin becamethe first man in space.
After returning to the earth he pronounced a wellknown challenge: “Now let the other countries try to catch us”. Severalweeks later President Kennedy appealed to Congress: “I believe thisnation should commit itself to achieving the goal of landing a man on themoon and returning him safely to earth”. Within very short time after thatNASA began to conduct space missions. On May 5th, 1961 Alan B.Shepard Jr.
became the first American to fly into space, and on February20th, 1962 John H. Glenn became the first US astronaut to orbit theEarth. One of the highlights of the program occurred during Gemini 4, onJune 3, 1965, when Edward H. White became the first US astronaut toconduct a spacewalk. The main achievement of NASA during its earlyyears involved the human exploration of the Moon Project Apollo.
In1968, after 11 years of major challenges and tragedies – notably 1967 firein an Apollo capsule, having taken the lives of three astronauts, theApollo project under the auspices of the NASA was under way. Apollo 7carried three men around the earth, and then Apollo 8 carried three othersaround the moon. Apollo 9 and 10 tested the workability of the lunarmodule. On July 16, 1969, the spacecraft Apollo 11 was ready forlaunching. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin weretransferred to the lunar module, the Eagle, and landed on the moon,leaving behind a plaque that read “Here Men from Planet Earth First SetFoot upon the Moon. July 1969 A.D.
![](https://s.studizba.com/z.php?f=/templates/si/i/noavatar.png&w=100&h=100&t=1"){kind=avatar}
