Alan Tower Waterman was an American physicist and federal scientific administrator.
Background
Alan Tower Waterman was born in Cornwall, N. Y. , into a middle-class academic family of modest means, the son of Frank Alan Waterman, who taught physics at Smith College, and Florence Tower. Waterman developed wide-ranging interests in outdoor activities such as camping, in sports, and in music. Throughout his life he pursued these activities avidly, as if to suggest that he sought a life of balance and diversity as a well-rounded person. This was indeed to become a key to his persona.
Education
After attending public schools in Northampton, Massachussets, he entered Princeton University in 1909. Waterman almost did not become a scientist; it was not until his second year at Princeton that he enrolled in a science course. His fascination with the techniques and satisfactions of scientific experimentation convinced him to be a scientist. He took his B. A. in 1913, his M. A. in 1914, and his Ph. D. in 1916 from Princeton in experimental physics.
Career
In the fall of 1917 he enlisted as a private in the United States Army and was assigned to the Science and Research Division of the Signal Corps, in which he did meteorological work. He rose to the rank of first lieutenant. In the fall of 1919, he became an instructor in physics at Yale University, where he spent the next twenty-seven years, attaining the rank of assistant professor in 1923 and associate professor in 1931. A full professorship at Yale eluded him. At Yale, Waterman was a researcher of modest productivity. He published fifteen technical papers between 1923 and 1937, chiefly in two major journals, the Physical Review and the Philosophical Magazine. Much of his work centered on the conduction of electricity through solids. It demonstrated a flair for experimental physics and an adequacy in physical theory. Students and colleagues alike judged Waterman a demanding and rigorous teacher who was effective in his presentations and fair in his judgments. He led an active life while at Yale. Thus, he served as chief reader for the College Entrance Examination Board between 1930 and 1942, and chief examiner of physics from 1937 to 1949. Between 1935 and 1942 he was a member of the editorial board of the American Journal of Science, America's oldest continuous scientific journal, published at Yale. In 1942 he went to Washington to work with the National Defense Research Committee, soon renamed the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the agency headed by Vannevar Bush that mobilized science and technology for World War II. The move from New Haven to Washington, seemingly only for the duration, in actuality thrust him upon a new stage, that of the rapidly developing system or establishment of leading science universities and federal agencies. He retained his Yale affiliation until 1948, but for all practical purposes, he had left in 1942. During the war, Waterman was deputy to Karl T. Compton in the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Until 1943 he worked in Division D, becoming deeply involved in reviewing weapons research on projects relating to such things as guided missiles, electronic communications and radio, chemical engineering, and, above all, radar. He assisted Compton in directing the development and application of radar from the original British work in that field. This became an enormous enterprise in which more than 150 different systems were developed for landbased, water-borne, and aircraft radar machines and in which thousands were employed in research and development (almost 5, 000 by the war's end). Radar facilitated the defeat of Axis military forces in multiple ways, and its development forms a fascinating picture of the interplay of science, technology, and governmental institutions. In 1943, Waterman was appointed deputy chief of the Office of Field Service, within the Office of Scientific Research and Development; he succeeded Compton as chief in 1945-1946. He assigned hundreds of scientific advisers to commanders in the field, thus deploying his talents in institutional diplomacy and personal relationships but generating large numbers of contacts. Waterman's technical expertise as a physicist was appropriate to his responsibilities in the Office of Scientific Research and Development, as was his ability to command widespread trust. Compton regarded Waterman as his indispensable deputy, his "first and best move" at the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Waterman guided and persuaded rather than cajoled and dominated. Following World War II, Waterman, as a federal scientific administrator, helped oversee the completion of the new postwar system of relationships between Washington and the nation's scientists and research institutions. Always a strong apostle of basic research, a natural position for a professor of science who also loved the beauties of nature, he insisted upon what has been called the assembly-line notion of the relations of technology and science, which holds that technological "progress" comes only from basic scientific research and that there is no such thing as a distinct knowledge base in technology. What would guarantee economic growth and political stability, then, was disinterested scientific research, not immediately directed toward practical ends, the result of which would be, at the assembly line's terminus, gadgetry, prosperity, and peace through military strength. Such a view buttressed the power and prestige of the nation's scientific elite, to say the least, and it possessed hidden, if powerful, implications for decision-making in public policy. Waterman was appointed deputy chief of the newly established Office of Naval Research in 1946 and rose to chief by 1951. He helped work out a new system of research contracts with universities, experimenting with procedures of review and evaluation that he took with him to the National Science Foundation when appointed its first director in 1951. The Office of Naval Research received much praise for having sponsored "basic" research in many fields when Waterman was there, including electronics, which included some research on computers and undersea acoustics, such as investigation of communication among dolphins. Given Waterman's values and commitments, the Office of Naval Research under his leadership may be more sensibly regarded as having been deeply interested in ultimate military applications at the end of the assembly line of basic research and technological development. And the scientists who won grants were presumably delighted to have support for research. In the new post-World War II era, no longer did private individuals, states, corporations, or philanthropic foundations alone support science and science education. Ineluctably the new scientific establishment was instantaneously politicized. President Harry Truman's appointment of Waterman as the National Science Foundation's first director in 1951 was as astute as it was inevitable, given Waterman's extensive network of allies in leading universities and the federal government. Waterman set many precedents within the foundation. He worked out the complex peer review and panel system in ways that guaranteed the nation's scientific elite and its favored institutions virtual hegemony over priorities and programs. When the National Science Foundation was created in 1950, its annual budget was $400, 000, but so effective an advocate of the agency was Waterman that when he retired on June 30, 1963, its annual budget was almost $500 million. Waterman made "basic science" the National Science Foundation's policy and its public ideology in national politics. This basic-science idea--essentially the assembly-line notion of the relations of science and technology--was ably articulated by Harvard University president James B. Conant, who insisted that applied research was a dead end, mere tinkering by the unschooled. Conant's position appears highly problematic; arguably technology has always had its knowledge base. Conant's thesis became the national scientific establishment's "pure" or "basic" science ideology. As the foundation's public representative, Waterman consistently deployed this ideology of national science, whether appearing before congressional committees, at press conferences, or on ceremonial occasions. The ideology of national pure science enabled Waterman to present a far different picture of science than that suggested by the weapons of mass destruction of the age. Waterman's public relations efforts as director were tireless indeed; his 162 publications and addresses as director extolled the virtues of national science as fully capable of meeting the many needs of the complex industrial society that America had become in peace and in war. He warned that all the nation's intellectual resources should be marshaled, calling for an equitable balance between spending on nonscientific and scientific education. He died in Washington, D. C.
Achievements
Waterman received many honors and awards as recognition of his service during the war and, especially, of his tenure as director of the National Science Foundation, when he received twenty-four honorary degrees from colleges and universities. The National Academy of Sciences finally recognized him when it bestowed its Public Welfare Medal on him in 1960. So did the nation's scientific elite in 1962, when its members and allies elected him president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The crater Waterman on the Moon is named after him, as is Mount Waterman in the Hughes Range of Antarctica. Since 1975, the National Science Foundation has annually issued the Alan T. Waterman Award (named in Waterman's honor) to a promising young researcher.
In his political views, which were characteristically patriotic for his generation but also those of an optimistic, moderate liberal who wished to believe the best of others.
Personality
Of slight build, erect stature, and medium height, he was always trim, for he was never given to excess in these or any other aspects of his life.
In contact with others, he often played the role of the moderator and the guide, as if he projected onto others his conception of a personal life of judicious balance and proportion. Waterman was well suited by temperament and experience to become a widely respected scientific administrator.
Interests
Waterman also pursued his other interests. He qualified as a guide to the Maine woods. With great relish he camped in the remote wilds; he was an expert hiker and canoeist. He participated in such sports as tennis and skiing. He also played viola in a string quartet. Later in life, he took up the bagpipes. He took pride in being self-taught in such activities.
Connections
As an instructor of physics at the University of Cincinnati the next academic year, he met Mary Mallon of Cincinnati, who came from an upper-middle-class family with roots in Columbus, Ohio, and graduated second in her class at Vassar. They married on August 19, 1917; they had five children.
