From the News Service
Mass. Institute of Technology
Cambridge 39, Massachusetts

ADVANCE MATTER--CAUTION--ADVANCE MATTER

Note to Editors: Following is the complete text of an address prepared for delivery by Dr. James R. Killian, Jr., President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the Honors Night Dinner of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences at the Sheraton-Astor Hotel, New York City, on the evening of Monday, January 23, 1956.

"AMERICA'S CAPACITY TO MAINTAIN TECHNOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP"

I am grateful for the privilege of sharing in this Honors Night and for the opportunity of joining you in congratulating the recipients of your awards. Before coming to my subject, it is appropriate that I describe to you an endowment now almost completed at my institution-- an endowment which honors your first president, which has been created through the unflagging efforts of your first and long-time secretary, Major Lester D. Gardner, together with General Doolittle, a charter member of your Council, and a committee made up of Admirals de Florez and Land, and Messrs. Douglas, Grumman, Litchfield, and Warner. The funds have come from generous contributions by companies and individuals represented in the I.A.S. membership plus a grant from I.A.S. itself. This support has resulted in an endowment for the Jerome Clarke Hunsaker Professorship of Aeronautical Engineering that now stands at a total just thirty-three thousand dollars under the goal of half a million dollars, certainly the largest endowed professorship at M.I.T. and probably the largest in any field in the country. It is my pleasant privilege to salute Mr. Gardner, General Doolittle and their committee members for their successful work in creating this new resource for aeronautical engineering education and at the same time

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Killian Address - Aeronautical Sciences - New York

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honoring Dr. Hunsaker. The new chair is a happy expression of the
public service of three of your founders, and in saluting them I wish
to thank the generous contributors in behalf of my institution.

Under conditions established by the late Glenn L. Martin in
making his generous contribution to the Hunsaker fund, the holder of
the professorship gives each year a lecture known as the Minta Martin
Lecture. This lecture is presented once at M.I.T. in Cambridge, once
at the University of Maryland, and is repeated a limited number of
times at other places in the United States under the sponsorship of
recognized educational institutions. The I.A.S. has agreed to act as
co-sponsor and to assist with arrangements for each presentation of
the lecture.

The first Hunsaker Professor is Doctor William R. Hawthorne, a
distinguished scientist and engineer particularly noted for his pioneer-
ing work with Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle in the field of gas tur-
bine propulsion for aircraft.

Dr. Hawthorne's Minta Martin Lecture has the title of "Aerodynamics of Aircraft Engines." It will be given in Los Angeles with the sponsorship of the California Institute of Technology and in Cleveland with the sponsorship of the Case Institute of Technology.

And now may I discuss with you some selected factors bearing
upon the technological strength of the United States. The aeronautical
industry and American aviation, private and military, represent one of
our most advanced and impressive achievements of American technology
and one of the national resources most dependent upon the strength of
this technology.

Today, in fact, the economic strength of all nations depends
increasingly upon that combination of science, engineering, and industry

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which we call technology. So, too, does the safety of the free world.
In a frightening degree, the deterrence of total war and the integrity
of the free world depend upon America's capacity to maintain a posi-
tion of great relative technological strength in both the economic
and military measures and counter measures of the cold war.

As we face this challenge to American technology, we watch the
Soviets' steady growth in technological strength. The Soviet success
in achieving an educational output of scientists and engineers greater
than our own has brought an awakened realization of the present res-
ponsibilities of our own educational system. At this critical point
we discover that we face an almost irremedial shortage of teachers as
our man power needs reach their peak, and just at the time the Soviets
seemingly have achieved a nearly adequate cadré of teachers.

As we look more closely at published reports of Soviet progress,
we see other impressive accomplishments in technology. She apparently
has a master plan, a grand strategy, expressing long-range state
objectives for technological advance. Her educational program, the
preferential treatment of scientists, the liberal funds available for
research and development all indicate a massive mobilization to
achieve technological strength.

We observe next that they have an extremely well articulated,
monolithic organization for research and development rapidly respon-
sive to the plans of the state and impressively agile in translating
ideas--sometimes our ideas but many good ones of their own--rapidly
into hardware, including nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver
them. Perhaps one of their greatest secret weapons is their rapid
and consistent follow-through from idea to practice.

We note next that the Soviets have outdone the capitalistic

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nations in their remarkably uninhibited use of capitalistic incentives to extend and better the quality of its education of scientists and engineers. In the past 50 years, as the recent Ruml study showed, the economic position of our top professors has deteriorated relatively more than almost any other group in America. In the past twenty-five years, in sharp contrast, Soviet professors have moved into the top brackets in salary and status of the U.S.S.R. In Russia, when a young man gets the equivalent of our Ph.D. he may be awarded a lifetime stipend, and as a teacher he may receive an additional stipend for every student he helps through to a top degree--a sort of academic piecework arrangement. His scientific papers may be purchased and published by the state, an arrangement that must inevitably lead to a multiplication of papers and many of low quality. Altogether, the professional educator in science and engineering stands at the top of the ladder of prestige and reward in the U.S.S.R., and by American standards they have the benisons that great wealth bestows in this country.

At the insistence of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the top scientists and engineers are apparently induced, if not required, to teach or hold administrative posts in the top academies, universities, and institutes of technology. Thus most of the top aeronautical engineers in Russia have educational responsibilities. General Tupolev, Dean of Soviet bomber designers, is a full professor. Boris Yur'yev, important figure in applied aerodynamics, is Deputy Minister of Higher Education for Engineering Training. This kind of close coupling between practice and teaching contributes to an effective marriage of theory and practice, but there is evidence too that these multiple duties sometimes reduce the quality of teaching.

Fourth, there seems to be good evidence that the Soviets have achieved impressive success in reducing the time lag between ideas and (more)

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hardware. In drawing a comparison with the U. S. decision-making structure with its extensive checks, budgetary reviews, design changes, and congressional debate, an informed American observer has estimated that one to three years are eliminated by the Soviets in the speed with which they are able to move from initial design to production on a complex weapon as, for example, a long-range bomber.

Finally, the Soviets are driving so hard to augment and exploit their basic research that they are willing, in certain fields of critical importance, to let the scientists, rather than the budget officers, determine how much money will be spent and for what purpose. The kind of crash programs we had in wartime they seem to have now--at least, in a limited number of fields.

What I have said so far should not be interpreted to mean that all is rosy for the professional educator in the Soviet Union. I have emphasized strong points which contribute to Soviet scientific successes in security areas. It should also be remembered that the scientific community in those non-critical areas of secondary importance to military security have fared badly at times in terms of the terrible subordination of their intellectual integrity to political dogma.

I have directed your attention to these random samples of how Russia marshals her resources for technological advance not to claim that the Soviets are superior (which I do not believe), not with the thought that we should copy her methods or that these are all better than ours, but to point up the importance of our avoiding complacency with respect to our own.

In avoiding complacency, however, let's not be panicked into unwise competition. I hope we do not set as our goal an academic numbers race with the Russians. The Russian educational system serves

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the state, ours the individual. They are highly specialized in their scientific and engineering education, and we are trending at the undergraduate level toward more fundamental, generalized education. Our objectives and our trends are more likely to serve our nation well and to give us the scientific and technological strength which will be indigenous and, therefore, in accord with our special qualities and ideals.

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Neither do I feel that we should be isolated and parochial
in our science. We need to know what is happening elsewhere and
to profit from this knowledge. The Geneva Conference of last
August left no doubts of the value of internationally exchanging
scientific ideas and information within the limits of prudent
security.

No one with any real understanding of our relative technologi-
cal position as a nation can doubt the evidence that we face stiff
competition and that we must marshal and conserve our resources
wisely if we are to maintain the technological superiority we now
have. Within the context of our American system, we must achieve
a grand plan _by consensus_ and not by centralized control -- a
plan which will give direction and velocity to our technological
advance and maximum incentive to private initiative. I venture
to suggest to this predominately technological audience tonight a
seven point program for achieving these objectives.

First, we must seek quality and excellence even at the expense
of quantity. Our need is for better science, greater creativity,
more advanced engineering, superior weapons. Above all, our need
is for emphasis on superior scientists and engineers.

There is a story about a cello player who saved away continu-
ously on a single note. His wife remarked to him that other cello
players seemed to move their fingers up and down the strings,
producing less monotonous sounds.

"Oh!" replied the cellist, "they are looking for the note.
I've found it!"

I have an uneasy feeling that in our man power discussions we

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have played one note too much, that we may have become bemused by
numbers and by over-simplified quantitative measures and remedies
in evaluating our man power needs. That we have an acute shortage
of available, effectively used competence in many fields of tech-
nology there can be no reasonable doubt. Neither can there be a
reasonable doubt any longer that this scarcity is a clear and
present danger to the nation and to the entire free world. My
view does not involve challenging this scarcity or its danger to
the nation. It does emphasize that the most acute shortage we now
face is a shortage of high intellectual talent adequately educated
and in the right place, a shortage of specific talents and skills
adaptable to specific areas.

One has only to talk with the placement officers of our scien-
tific and technological institutions or with the research direc-
tors and chief engineers of industry to get revealing evidence of
the special kinds of engineering skills now most urgently needed.
These checks indicate a great shortage of young engineers with a
mastery of mathematics and of engineering science and thus a com-
petence to handle new, advancing technologies, or the ability to
enter new fields beyond the grasp of handbook engineers. There
is also an acute shortage of project engineers and men with the
skills and imagination to direct research and development.

In stressing the need for exceptional talent, I do not minimize
the critical shortage of the rank and file of good competent sci-
entists and engineers. Flag officers are not enough to provide
a strong scientific attack force, but the really acute shortage is
now in the flag officer group.

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Second, if these views of our man power needs are correct, they hold important implications for our educational program. They emphasize the need in our secondary schools for greater attention to the superior student. They point up the need to reduce the current loss of exceptional talent, shown by the fact that nearly 60 per cent of the top quarter of ability of high school graduates are failing to complete four years of college.

The shortage of quality calls for more emphasis in our society on the value of hard intellectual labor. So far, we have managed to get along in the United States by displaying an attitude of descension toward hard work in our schools. There has been avoidance, if not evasion, of the intellectual tax which must be paid if our intellectual budget is to be balanced. At a time when we are forced to match wits on every front with an alert enemy of growing prowess, America's survival requires that the American people reduce the anti-intellectualism in our schools.

The need for quality calls also for shoring up the sagging emphasis on science both in secondary schools and colleges, and for bold efforts to replenish the decimated ranks of science teachers -- not with culls from other fields but with teachers possessing a grasp of science and the perception to identify and encourage young people with the bent and capacity for science. In my judgment, it would be a mistake to overemphasize science study and teaching in the high schools. What we need really to emphasize is the identification and encouragement of exceptional talent. In this way all professions, including science and engineering, will benefit.

Knowledgeable people in both education and industry are concluding that engineering education is also due for a thorough reassessment.

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Against the higher compensation and other attractions offered by industry and other non-educational organizations to scientists and engineers, engineering schools are now more vulnerable and more in danger of serious deterioration than other educational institutions. They are more vulnerable, even, than the schools of science. The university and the institute of technology are natural habitats for creative scientists. They are not, generally speaking, quite so natural habitats for engineers, whose professional work lies so much in industry and in the field.

The engineering schools are especially vulnerable now because their young and imaginative graduates and teachers -- especially those in the advancing, growing fields of technology -- are more in demand for non-educational employment than any other group in our educational institutions.

If engineering education is to meet this challenge and reverse or even retard the spreading scarcity of quality in engineering schools that has weakened science teaching in high schools and other kinds of institutions, it must find a way to make more engineering schools a more attractive environment for top-flight engineers.

Even though their enrollments have been down, the teaching loads in our engineering schools -- exceptions exist, of course -- are very high, with the result that their faculties have too little opportunity for the creative work that leads to further professional development both as teachers and engineers. An informed observer recently estimated that only 10-20% of our engineering schools had average teaching loads as low as twelve hours per week or less. When we reflect upon the fact that these institutions are hardpressed

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to maintain their present level of staffing, we can readily surmise
how difficult it will be greatly to increase enrollments without
further burdening faculties and without a reduction in the quality
of education.

The success of engineering education in attracting and holding
more first-rate teachers will depend upon accelerating the develop-
ment of more and stronger graduate programs. The graduate school
and the research associated with it can provide engineer-teachers
with the opportunities for professional activities and growth as
engineers which they now find chiefly in practice outside of edu-
cational institutions. In those engineering institutions where
strong graduate schools exist and where there is a fruitful alliance
with basic science, an environment satisfying to first-rate engineers
has been better achieved.

While qualified bachelor's degree recipients in engineering
frequently go on for graduate study in other fields such as the
physical sciences and management, the amount of advanced study in
engineering still seems small compared to the advanced study required
by law and medicine. The degrees are, of course, not comparable,
but it is nevertheless of some significance that the number of ad-
vanced degrees in engineering, both master's and doctor's in 1953-54
totalled about 4,800 (of this total, only 594 were doctorates) as re-
ported by the U.S. Office of Education, while the total of M.D.'s
and LL.B.'s totalled 6,757 and 9,898 respectively. Without dwelling
on the impropriety of comparing apples and doughnuts, the implication
is clear that the demands placed by our society on the engineering
profession and on engineering education grow steadily greater and

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require more advanced education more comparable to that in other
professions.

There is also a spreading conviction that the engineering curri-
culum must include a larger content of basic science, less of its
traditional compartmentalization, more emphasis on systems engineer-
ing, more emphasis on such fundamental functional aspects of engineer-
ing as materials, thermodynamics, fluid flow and energy conversion.
The trend seems to lead toward a more generalized curriculum for all
fields of engineering, with specialization deferred to the last two
years of the undergraduate program and even reduced in these two
years in favor of pushing real specialization into the graduate
years or into the in-service training programs given by industry
itself. Industry, acutely aware of its needs for engineers of more
depth, power, and versatility, is encouraging these trends. Together
these new goals seem to presage an increasing number of institutions
dedicated to programs of high quality, programs that are less voca-
tional and specialized at the undergraduate level and fundamental
enough in their basic science and advanced enough in their math-
matics and humanities to educate a new breed of engineer more
adaptable to our advancing technology.

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The next plank in a platform for insuring a flourishing technology calls for more attention to long-term objectives. There seems to be general agreement that we need a better balance between basic research and development, between fundamental ideas and hardware, and we are making only slow headway in achieving this better balance. Even though the President, the Hoover Commission, and other influential voices have emphasized the need for basic research, only about 7 per cent of the Government's research and development funds are allocated to basic research. According to a recent National Science Foundation study, only 2.4 per cent of the total research and development expenditures of the aircraft industry go for basic research, compared to 4 per cent for all industry and 10.5 per cent for the chemical industry. Along with the electrical equipment industry, the aircraft industry far exceeds all other industrial groups in the total expended for research and development. It nevertheless spends for basic research a smaller percentage of its total research and development budget than the average percentage for all industries.

I am fully aware that there are good reasons for this but I respectfully suggest that in an industry so dependent upon innovation and sophisticated technology and so receptive to new ideas, this imbalance should be a temporary one.

Fourth, we need better to protect and enhance the status of the scientist and engineer in our society. This is more than a matter of compensation, important as that may be. It is a matter of status and relative prestige in the array of professions. Too often now we

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find an attitude of antagonism toward scientists. The old cliché
about the expert is frequently applied in public circles to the
scientist. The scientist, it is repeatedly said, should be on tap
but not on top. Only rarely do you hear it said that the lawyer or
banker or economist, or production expert, specialists all, should
be on tap but not on top. I do not imply that the scientist has
any right or unique qualifications to be on top. I am disturbed by
the attitude that because a man is a scientist, he is disqualified
for public or private policy-making responsibility even though he
may have the qualifications. We have multiplying examples in
industry of the engineer or science executive, especially in the
aircraft, petroleum, and chemical industries. The scientist and
engineer, in their education and in their breadth of outlook, must
also show that they can be first-rate specialists and still make
managerial contributions to the common account of our society.

Great professional societies, such as the I.A.S., play an
increasingly important role in stressing and augmenting the pro-
fessional status of its members. It plays an increasingly important
role in cultivating the specialties of aeronautical equipment design
but in not permitting individual specialties or disciplines to become
inflated out of all proper relationship to their place in the over-all
systems design or program. A great professional society has a
responsibility to subject overly optimistic forecasts about technical
performance to the test of sober, responsible judgment. The public
has come almost to demand overly optimistic projections and to expect
technical miracles. It may not be good for the professional status
of the scientist and engineer passively to permit their work to be
oversold.

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The fifth point in my seven-point program is the furtherance of present efforts to increase the Government's access to our national scientific resources by increasing the interaction between qualified members of the scientific community and the officers of Government carrying responsibilities for policy or operations affected by technology. The recent recommendations on Research and Development of the Hoover Commission are thoughtfully considered to achieve this objective as well as a strengthening of the coordination of scientific activities at the top levels of Government.

The Government must have a root system which spreads over and draws sustenance from the entire civilian domain of science and technology. Thus our military technology can constantly respond to the rapid progress in basic science.

Next, the Government, in its contracting and budgetary procedures, should recognize still more widely even than it does now the special nature of research and development. Contractual procedures designed for procurement are hardly ever appropriate for research, and short-term budgets are frequently inadequate for effective research. We need in every possible way to simplify the Government's management of research and development and to expedite its decision-making processes. Many here will recall the observation of Karry North that "If Sir Isaac Newton had been a government economist, we would have no law of gravitation. We would have a continuing study of falling apples with daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly reports on the national applefall with graphs, charts, equations, tables and exhibits, showing simple averages, and index numbers by day, week, month, and year, demonstrating to everybody's satisfaction what a fellow can do with an electronic calculator."

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I come finally to the suggestion that we need a broadly conceived strategy for maintaining the U.S.'s technological supremacy. I hope that the means and method can be found to undertake a thorough study of the factors involved in maintaining technological strength and removing the roadblocks to private initiative. I recall the great influence exerted by the ~~Air Policy Commission~~ through its notable report, "Survival in the Air Age." We need a ~~comparably thorough report to chart our~~ technological progress in the years ahead. Not only should it deal with man power and its education. It should look also at the utilization of man power and the personnel policies in government, industry, and elsewhere which affect its efficient use and conservation. It should probe for soft spots in our research and development. Are there systems areas such as aircraft propulsion where we need more research effort? Are there fields such as metallurgy and overlapping fields such as design and fabrication involving mechanical engineering and metallurgy where we need more man power and/development? Is not the whole area of materials one warranting new and more massive effort? Is there now too much loss of time between discovery and application? What are the elements of technological strength in the Russian system which hold lessons for us?

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These are but a few of many questions which could be fruitfully examined in the context of a study devoted to "Survival in the Age of Technological Contest."

If such studies should be amplified by a civilian team of adequate size, competence, and imagination, and with all doors opened for data by government and industry, the results might well become a major document of state as well as a blueprint for maintaining America's technology as an impregnable shield and as a mighty multiplier of our wealth and well-being.

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