Bush's Elite League

Vannevar Bush insisted that “I hope nobody’ll ever write a biography of me, because I think it probably would be terrible.” “I am not one who keeps a diary,” he observed earlier, “because I do not take myself too seriously” (p. 392). Both statements must be taken with more than a grain of salt. Bush’s vanity, even arrogance, were matched only by his brain power and capacity for contradiction. Indeed, when Time’s cover and related story featured him on April 3, 1944, Bush, who obviously cooperated with the magazine and relished the attention, had the temerity to chastise a magazine staff member for giving the agency he headed unwanted publicity and stressing his importance over that of his numerous colleagues.

If still living, Bush would no doubt respond similarly to this first-ever biography, written by C. Pascal Zachary, a senior writer for the Wall Street Journal, specializing in technology, labor, and global economics. The crusty, blunt-spoken Yankee would unquestionably bask in the glow of Zachary’s warm and generous admiration of and praise for him, but he would also bristle at the author’s unwillingness to turn away from the numerous foibles of a seriously flawed individual.

Zachary draws upon a rich collection of personal papers and interviews in pursuing his subject. His selected bibliography also includes most of the major secondary publications relevant to his subject. Nonetheless, a few important titles are missing, such as Vincent C. Jones, Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb (1985), and Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II (1985).

Vannevar Bush’s principal importance grows out of his role in creating and heading the National Defense Research Committee/Office of Scientific Research and Development (NDRC)/(OSRD) during World War II. Zachary’s biography, therefore, adds further to our knowledge of the most well-documented period in American history. Why the Second World War has this distinction is a fascinating story which begins no later that 1933. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s determination to reorganize the executive branch for purposes of managerial efficiency led to the creation of the President’s Committee on Administrative Management. That committee drew heavily in expertise and personnel upon a group of public administration specialists from or associated with the University of Chicago who had participated in the organization of the Social Science Research Council and the Public Administration Clearing House, financed at the outset by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Spelman Fund. After the 1939 reorganization of the Roosevelt Administration, the ideas of the Chicago group became centered in the Bureau of the Budget, directed by Harold D. Smith. Convinced that wartime government provided an unexampled opportunity for studying public administration, Smith and his colleagues prevailed upon Roosevelt to authorize the bureau to direct federal agencies in maintaining proper records and writing wartime administrative histories. As a result, World War II record-keeping is practically unique, and official and officially sanctioned histories of wartime agencies abound. Regrettably, much of this work remains unexploited. Those mobilization agencies dealing with science, technology, and weaponry, for reasons obvious and subtle, are a major exception.

Vannevar Bush’s rise to prominence during World War II was based upon remarkable achievements before 1940. Born in 1890 to a Massachusetts family of modest means and headed by a father who was a Universalist pastor, Bush throughout his life remained at heart a New Englander. A natural tinkerer and inventor, he received degrees in mathematics from Tufts College, and then went on to receive a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) doctorate in electrical engineering in one year. During World War I he made an unsuccessful stab at assisting a skeptical navy in submarine detection. In 1919, Bush became a faculty member in MIT’s electrical engineering department, where he proved to be a very effective and demanding instructor. Within a few years he headed up the department’s programs in graduate study and research, and increasingly began to serve as...