Helping them do so should be an early priority of internationally funded research, development, and technology transfer institutes. The worId's technological frontiers will be extended. And gradually the developing nations will begin also to make independent contributions to scientific knowledge. In the meantime, some individuals from developing nations will be capable of performing path-breaking scientific work, given the proper environment. Ensuring that such talent realizes its poten- tial depends in large measure on the most developed nations.
Immigration policy is the obvious instrument.
As chapter 6 observed, the leading industrial nations have done well in admit- ting foreign students into their universities, encouraging them, and absorbing them into their faculties and industrial laboratories. More could be done, and the pace of scientific advance would be accel- erated marginally, if Western governments increased the financial support available for meritorious foreign students. Few of the initiatives suggested here will be without cost or pop- ular among politicians' domestic constituencies.