Historical Background

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND JOHN P.BURKE* The recession of the 1970s and the concomitant inflation and unemployment confronted the developed economies with the dramatic choice of innovation or stagnation and decline. This was not a unique situation, as Braudel [1] has noted; fear of such a disaster preceded each of the major advances in economic growth over the centuries ("and technology always came up with an answer") [1, p. 435]. In the United States, the economic downturn was accompanied by reduced opportunities for young scientists to obtain tenured positions in the universities. Complex factors were involved, including the end of the expansion of facilities and departments that had followed the "baby boom" population surge earlier and the projected decline in the collegeage population in the 1980s and 1990s. As the new decade began, the U.S. government, confronted with the prospect of growing deficits, embarked on a general program of reducing the rate of expenditures. Other Western countries had reduced their rate of spending or had cut back on disbursements; in some nations, for example, the United Kingdom , the universities were particularly hard hit. During these times of declining opportunities, there was a perception in many quarters that young scientists were reluctant to travel abroad to study and do research. Anecdotal reports abounded that young people were concerned that their absence from home might cause them to miss an employment opportunity. In addition, there appeared to be a growing belief that augmenting one's scientific training in the laboratory of a distinguished foreign scientist was no longer advantageous. Before the early twentieth century, it was mandatory for Americans pursuing advanced study to travel to Europe. As U.S. centers of scientific excellence developed and expanded, particularly in the decades following the Second World War, Americans often elected to stay home. The large influx of refugee scholars from Germany in the 1930s strengthened the Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20205.© 1986 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 003 1-5982/86/2932/$01 .00 S4 I John P. Burke ¦ Historical Background scientific position of the United States, and Americans were able to work in the laboratory of an outstanding European-born scientist without traveling to Europe. In Europe, the tradition of foreign study was more firmly grounded. By the end of the twelfth century, universities were already well established at Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Montpelier, and Salerno [2]. Bologna alone housed four universities corresponding to the four nations of the Lombards, Tuscans, Romans, and old Ultramontanes (a fusion of French, German, English, and other nations) [3]. In the early 1400s, attendance at anatomical dissections at Bologna was subject to "national" quotas, cadavers being scarce and the subject of much quarreling [4, pp. 283-284]. In Paris, the arts faculties were divided into "nations" by region of birth: students from southern France, Italy, and Spain, into France; individuals from the low countries into Picardy; visiting students from Central and Eastern Europe, into England. So many students came from Germany that that country was delayed in establishing its own universities [5,6]. At the medical faculty at Salerno, the expositions were not quite scientific (and a long way from Rembrandt's "Lesson in Anatomy"), but at least treatments were simple and sensible [2, pp. 368396 ]. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the universities, the source of most scientific activities, increased greatly in number [7]. In the early seventeenth century, Francis Bacon in his Advancement of Learning had recommended the advantages of travel as part of one's education, and the "grand trip" was subsequently "de rigueur" for those who could afford it as a cap to their formal education. The foreign travels of Henry Oldenberg, often accompanied by students, led in part to the initial flowering of the Royal Society. Oldenberg and his companions visited the salons of the French scientists where the "invisible colleges " were flourishing [8]. Robert Boyle had christened this informal companionship of scientific enthusiasts wherever they were the "invisible college" [9], and it was Oldenberg's task to write all letters for this new parliament of science. His extensive foreign correspondence led to the Philosophical Transactions, considered by many...