ABSTRACT
The superb accomplishments of American science through the Office of Scientific Research and Development were facilitated by the fact that Vannevar Bush was Science Adviser to President Roosevelt. Actually, the Eisenhower Science Advisory Committee was not the first to bear the presidential title. After his retirement from the presidency, he told a friend that some of the best experiences he had at the White House were the meetings that he had with President’s Science Advisory Committee organization (PSAC). There was still another scientific group, the brilliant and decisively influential von Neumann Missile Committee, of which both Doctors Wiesner and Kistiakowsky were members, that helped in establishing a relationship of confidence between scientists and top policymakers. While it was the source of numerous innovations, the PSAC organization was sometimes criticized as too conservative and unimaginative.
