ABSTRACT
As a preface to this symposium, I would like to remark generally about the larger context of the university research center as a new type of organization-its development, its functions, its problems, and its prospects. First, let us think a moment about the very idea of research. Only during the past century did research on a large scale come to be regarded as an essential adjunct of modern civilization, an activity that is capable of enriching it and also, more recently, of tackling its pressing technological and social problems. Only in the latter half of this century, stimulated by the awesome results of concentrated research during World War II, did research become organized, directed, and focused upon major tasks and goals. In our common usage, this phase is called research and development, or R&D, and it is an item that looms large in the budgets of governments and corporations. In the past 20 years, government and industry in the United States increased their annual expenditures on R&D from $6 billion to $35 billion. A small fraction of this amount, now about $3 billion, is expended in universities, and of that, about $2 billion is from federal funds.
