ABSTRACT
The amelioration of the human condition through the advancement of knowledge was one of the original and abiding goals of twentieth-century philanthropic foundations. The mechanism of the research fellowship, mediated through the collective expertise of the councils, proved to be an effective and timely means for foundations to channel support to promising university researchers at critical junctures in their careers. The formation of university research capital during the 1920s had been an outstanding achievement, and the efforts of the foundations made a significant contribution. Conspicuous among foundation activities was capitalizing, and thus essentially founding, new university units that would not otherwise have existed. Changes in the composition of research support, in fact, contributed greatly to the dynamism of the foundation role. Possibly no type of foundation program had more profound benefits for university research than postdoctoral fellowships. The evolution of foundation policies in the natural sciences exhibits some immediate parallels with the developments just described in the social sciences.
