Shaping Biology: The National Science Foundation and American Biological Research, 1945-1975 (review)

Shaping Biology:The National Science Foundation and American Biological Research, 1945-1975.By Toby A. Appel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000. Pp. xii + 393. $42.50.

Toby Appel is well know to the history of science community as the author of an absolutely splendid book on the controversy, at the beginning of the 19th century, between the anti-evolutionist George Cuvier and the pro-evolutionist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. In the Geoffroy-Cuvier Debate (Oxford Univ. Press, 1987), Appel threw light not only on two of the most interesting of French scientists, but also on the social state of science at that time and on the ideas which did and did not point to evolution.

Coming onto the job market at the worst of all possible times, Appel never snared a regular academic job--she is now a librarian--and thus for a while worked on a grant from the National Science Foundation, researching that body itself. She looked at the ways in which it supported and shaped biology in the decades after the Second World War, that is from the Foundation's founding to its position just as the Vietnam War was at an end. It is this project that fills her new book, Shaping Biology:The National Science Foundation and American Biological Research, 1945-1975. Let me say that it is a worthy successor to her earlier book, and that in its own right it stands up to the work of a similar nature done by such people as Robert Kohler at the University of Pennsylvania. It is a rather dense book, and I doubt it will have a wide readership, but it will prove an invaluable piece of research for those interested in the funding and support of science.

The book begins with the founding of the NSF and the long delays after World War II in getting things done. One problem was that, as the time stretched out, trying to decide if the NSF should exist and who should run it (in the end, it was the administrators who became all-powerful, rather than the scientists), the urgency to do things kept slacking off. It no longer seemed quite so crucial from the defense viewpoint, for instance, and so the monies made available were much reduced. And this a time when biology was speeding ahead and the Watson-Crick model was just around the corner.

In fact, some of Appel's most fascinating figures come in her tables, especially showing how until Sputnik in 1957, the government was really pretty stingy about science, but as soon as the United States was perceived as falling being the Soviet Union, things were changed and quickly.Take overall figures first. In 1951, the overall amount dedicated to science was but $0.2 million (adjusted to give today's figures). By 1956, it was still only $12.5 million for research, and another $3.5 million for education. By 1960, the figure had jumped to over $80 million for research and the same for education. By 1976, it was over $600 million for research and about $100 million for education.

In biology alone, a similar tale was being enacted. In 1952, the money given out was less than a million. In 1956, the money was about $5 million. By 1960, the amount had jumped to $25 million, and then just kept on going up. Some areas got favored, especially if the paid administrators were interested in the fields. Biochemistry did very well. On the other hand, some fields which looked good at one point, like development, never really got going as one might have expected. Not surprisingly, molecular biology did well right down the line. An area like evolution, on the other hand, for all that it is the topic most people think of when they think of biology, never really was that strong. And it...