Biographical Memoirs Volume 57 (1987) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Warren Weaver
Warren Weaver
Pages 492-530
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 493... ...
Warren Weaver started his career as a teacher of mathematics. But before his thirty-eighth birthday he became a foundation executive when he accepted the post of director of the Division of Natural Sciences of the Rockefeller Founclation.
|
From page 494... ...
was exemplary; in addition to the Rockefeller and Sloan Foundation positions, he also held responsible posts in the civilian scientific effort that supported the military services during World War Il. After the war his achievements as an expositor of science gave him a distinctive role in the growing movement to promote the understanding of science on the part of the nonscientific public.
|
From page 495... ...
I was accordingly told that this was "engineering"; and from that time until I was a junior in college, I assumed without question that I wanted to be an engineer. ' Warren Weaver, "Careers in Science," in Listen to Leaders in Science, ed.
|
From page 496... ...
Max Mason, a brilliant mathematical physicist who hacT been Weaver's teacher and close friend at Wisconsin, suggested Weaver to Millikan. Mason and Charles Sumner Slichter, professor of applied mathematics at Wisconsin, were the two professors who most influenced Weaver's choice of a career.
|
From page 497... ...
the associated theory. For occasional physicists whom he met in later years, Warren Weaver became "Weaver, of Mason and Weaver." Although his most important writing in the years at Madison was the collaboration with Mason, Weaver also published occasional papers in mathematics, chiefly in probability theory ant!
|
From page 498... ...
In the fall of 193 I, Mason invited Weaver to come to New York to (liscuss the possibility of his joining the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation as head of its program in the natural sciences. Weaver was reluctant to accept the invitation for many reasons.
|
From page 499... ...
The founciation's aim, "to promote the well-being of mankind throughout the worIct," was interpreted by the trustees as being best servecI, in the immediate future, by the support of the scientific research of inclivicluals. (This contrasted with their practice in the immediate past, when large sums were spent on plant and endowment, chiefly at a few major institutions, or on the funding of new research establishments such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.)
|
From page 500... ...
But although the funds available were substantial, they were nonetheless limitect, particularly since the foundation defined its program in the natural sciences as concerned broadly with anything that was science but not medicine. Some principles of selection would need to be establishect.
|
From page 501... ...
First, The life sciences] could 2 Warren Weaver, Scene of Change, a Lifetime in American Science (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, Inc.)
|
From page 502... ...
The decisions gave The Rockefeller Foundation a morle.st share in ~ erect ~rlventllre which is conrinllin~ to unfold.3 _ ~ in, The trustees' clecision involved a major change in the moclus operancti of the foundation. In 1933 the program statement formulatec} for the Natural Sciences Division articulatec} this change and set forth these general principles to provide the desirect direction as well as the necessary flexibility to the program of the clivision: A highly selective procedure is necessary if the available funds are not to lose significance through scattering.
|
From page 503... ...
This is the ~,nclerst~n~lin~ of life.5 With the passage of time, Warren Weaver's career involved him in major responsibilities far from molecular biology, both cluring World War II and afterward, but he continued his enthusiasm for research in this field. In 1970 he wrote in his autobiography: I believe that the support which the Rockefeller Foundation poured into experimental biology over the quarter century after 1932 was vital in encouraging and accelerating and even in initiating the development of 5 Letter from Warren Weaver to Mrs.
|
From page 504... ...
It was indeed a large sum, for between 1932 and my retirement from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1959 the total of the grants made in the experimental biology program which I directed was roughly ninety million dollars.6 Weaver, however, also sought some objective basis to support his view that the Rockefeller Foundation program for the support of molecular biology played an important role in the emergence of this fielc! as one of the most exciting in present-day science.
|
From page 505... ...
Warren Weaver's programme in the natural sciences division of the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930s is an exemplary case of this new relationship between a promoter of science and academic scientists. Weaver played an active role in selecting areas of research to be developed, yet he did not intrude on the actual process of research.
|
From page 506... ...
Wouic! the Academy be willing to carry out a survey of the biological effects of atomic radiation and prepare a report that would set forth the best information then available in a form accessible to seriously concerned citizens?
|
From page 507... ...
In 1957, the National Academy of Sciences announced the award of its Public Welfare Medal to Warren Weaver "for eminence in the application of science to the public welfare." The statement that was issued said, in part: Dr. Weaver .
|
From page 508... ...
The time hac! clearly come when everyone ought to have a broacler and a more authentic understancting of what science is and how it operates." The committee assembled by Weaver proviclecI seventynine intermission talks, each given by a research scientist who cited his own work.
|
From page 509... ...
The variety of ways in which AAAS has succeeded in implementing this new emphasis in its purposes would not be appropriately summarized here. But it is appropriate to mention that Warren Weaver became the first chairman of the AAAS Committee on the Public Understanding of Science
|
From page 510... ...
been science editors on the staff of the magazine Life anct viewed the intermission talks on science that Weaver hacl arranged for the New York Philharmonic Symphony performances as a mode] worth emulating.
|
From page 511... ...
THE SLOAN FOUNDATION Weaver's great facility in making scientific issues accessible to nonscientists was relatecl to his enjoyment of words, his skill in using them, and his consistent willingness to be the member of a committee or board who wrote the summarizing statement or the final report. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research ant!
|
From page 512... ...
One of Weaver's most gratifying activities during his Sloan years resulted in the construction (with partial support from the Sloan Founclation) of a building at New York University that was christened Warren Weaver Hall.
|
From page 513... ...
TWO PAPERS OF SPECIAL INTEREST Weaver combined his enjoyment of words with his enthusiasm for statistics and probability theory in two efforts that were of particular interest to him: an article entitiecI "Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication" and a memorandum on machine translation, both publishecl in 1949. The first made Claude E
|
From page 514... ...
THE WAR YEARS From the beginning, Warren Weaver's duties at the Rockefeller Foundation required fairly regular travel to Europeand later to other parts of the world. During his trips in the early 1930s, he became acquainted with many of Europe's leading scientists whose work lay in the areas of the foundation's interest.
|
From page 515... ...
Florey was convinced that this ingreclient had antibiotic properties so effective that it might play a major role not only in general medicine after the war but also, perhaps, in the immediate medical emergencies of the war. But it was impossible to produce larger amounts of the mold in England because resources were so completely taken up with pressing war neecis.
|
From page 516... ...
But the largest and most useful of the projects sponsored by the section was the design anct development of a successful electrical antiaircraft director. For Army Orcinance, the most pressing problem when the war began was to furnish goof]
|
From page 517... ...
NDRC to begin work anct to take all responsibility for technical supervision and direction. Work on the electrical antiaircraft director continued throughout 1941.
|
From page 518... ...
Such research encouraged further exploration of some wartime beginnings, such as operations research and computer construction and use, and expanded the ongoing mathematization of a number of fields. Warren Weaver's skill in the administration of research and his effectiveness in dealing with military officers and with the Washington bureaucracy greatly facilitatecl the work of the Applied Mathematics Panel.
|
From page 519... ...
This work was the beginning of the effort that expancled from Mexico to a broader base in Latin America, Asia, and Africa and has been referrer! to as the "Green Revolution." For several years the Rockefeller Founciation called this program the "Conquest of Hunger," and it is still committed to a major undertaking to help improve agriculture-lee!
|
From page 520... ...
countries which were perennially faced with starvation with the means not only to become self-sufficient, but equally important, tional pricle." to regain their self-respect and naAlthough Warren Weaver had continuing contact with this program during the war, his associates in the Rockefeller Foundation assumed the principal day-by-day responsibility. At the end of the war, after he had recovered from radical surgery necessitated by repeated and painful attacks of Meniere's disease, he Elevated much of his time and energy to this expanding agricultural program.
|
From page 521... ...
Alice won, with the result that at the ens! of his life, Warren Weaver's Lewis Carroll collection, now at the University of Texas in Austin, was among the important private collections in the world.
|
From page 522... ...
One article, "A Scientist Ponders Faith," was published in the Saturday Review of January 3, 1959, anct was reprinted by nine other publications cluring the next two years. Weaver was convincec]
|
From page 523... ...
IT IS DIFFICULT TO EXPRESS adequately my appreciation of the kindness and hospitality of Warren Weaver's immediate family in helping me to arrive at an adequate understanding of his multifaceted life, some parts of which were quite outside my personal experience of him.
|
From page 524... ...
ea., ed. Warren Weaver.
|
From page 525... ...
In: The Mathematical Theory of Communication, by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, pp.
|
From page 526... ...
Foreword and chapter 1 (entitled "Translation" and based on a memorandum drawn up for the Rockefeller Foundation in July 1949~. In: Machine Translation of Languages, ed.
|
From page 527... ...
Science, 128( July 181: 113. A quarter century in the natural sciences.
|
From page 528... ...
(Speech delivered at the midwinter dinner of the Citizens Advisory Committee of the New York Public Library, January 19.) New York: The New York Public Library.
|
From page 529... ...
In: Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, vol.
|
From page 530... ...
Sloan Foundation.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.