The last 80 years of American science have been defined by one letter, penned by the president of the United States
In November 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Vannevar Bush, director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, which had become the largest scientific research program in American history over the course of World War II. Roosevelt asked how their work could “be used in the days of peace ahead for the improvement of the national health, the creation of new enterprises bringing new jobs, and the betterment of the national standard of living.”
The essay Vannevar Bush wrote in response, “Science—The Endless Frontier,” described a new system for the federal support of scientific research. Its positive impact—and remarkable success at fulfilling Roosevelt’s request—has been immeasurable, channeling hundreds of billions of dollars into American science and making the U.S. the world leader in scientific research.
The Office of Management and Budget’s proposed rule change that would grant political employees final review of federal research funding is the latest action in a long, bruising 18 months for science. Attempts to shield research from political influence and bureaucratic processes have instead caused more of both. And although bipartisan Congressional efforts have pushed back on some of the deepest cuts, damage was still done, damming the flow of funding, halting experiments, delaying new research, and impeding the work of scientists worldwide.
Our country needs a new consensus on how to support science. With the first quarter of the 21st century behind us, and as we look to the future, we have a duty to address valid criticisms of how we pursue science while recommitting to the most essential elements of Vannevar Bush’s vision: partnership between government, industry, and academia, international scientific collaboration, and support for exploratory basic research. The loss of these tenets would be devastating for science, for the nation, and for human advancement.
Before World War II, the U.S. dedicated minimal government funding to scientific research. The war not only devastated Europe—the continent that for centuries had powered scientific discovery for the world—but also sent European scientists to burgeoning American laboratories, where they found rich veins of government funding that believed science was key to winning the war. Penicillin and anti-malarial drugs kept Allied troops alive; radar and code-breaking computers kept far-flung units in communication; and the atomic bomb helped bring the war, however tragically, to a close.
In “Science—The Endless Frontier,” Vannevar Bush argued for a system in which the federal government would continue funding this kind of scientific research at academic institutions across the country. The governing entity Bush proposed became the National Science Foundation (NSF), which still distributes federal funds via merit-based competitive applications, reviewed by scientific experts rather than political appointees, to support academic and industry researchers. In the 1950s and 1960s, NSF, alongside other government funders such as the National Institutes of Health and Departments of Defense and Energy, created an ecosystem in which science could flourish.
In many ways, Bush’s system has been phenomenally effective. Federal agencies spent nearly $50 billion in 2024 on basic research alone, and as of that year, NIH is the largest funder of health research in the world. More than 99% of the drugs discovered in the United States between 2010 and 2020 relied on federal funding. And the American research and education system has become the most prolific and effective in the world, with 82% of the scientific Nobel laureates who received prizes in the last 25 years doing some part of their education or training in the United States.
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It is also a system we have both benefited from and participated in ourselves: Wendy has spent the better part of 20 years working with scientific researchers, and Eric’s doctorate was funded by NSF. Now, we work to support scientists throughout their careers, providing multi-year, open-ended funding, access to emerging technologies, and a chance to pursue globe-spanning, interdisciplinary collaborations.
But there have long been valid critiques of the American scientific ecosystem, including from scientists themselves. Excessive competition and bureaucratic requirements have created a system in which some scientists spend almost half of their time applying for federal funding. Existing grantmaking rules also favor highly specialized, rather than interdisciplinary, work, even though the challenges the world faces today, from protecting public health to building trustworthy AI to securing our planet’s resources, require diverse expertise to address. Grants also often can’t provide the large-scale technological resources and computing power much of today’s researchers require.
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Reforming how American science is funded could benefit scientists, and science, in the long run. As we imagine the promise of a different future, we have an obligation to honor Vannevar Bush’s vision—a vision that brought us humanity’s most innovative century yet.
Primary to that system is a collaborative scientific research ecosystem, one in which government, academia, and industry each fill different but equally important roles, alongside philanthropy. Philanthropy has long funded American scientific research, from pre-war disease eradication projects to the discovery of DNA, and the share of U.S. scientific funding provided by the private sector has only increased in the past several decades: philanthropic funding now rivals that of some of the largest government funding agencies. Philanthropies, including U.S.-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute, are among the top 10 health funders in the world. Scientific breakthroughs can be funded by a variety of sectors, jointly or sequentially. Though their exact roles may shift in a new scientific ecosystem, we need to support and deepen their collaboration.
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Science should also remain an area of tight-knit international cooperation. The last century gave us ambitious, globe-spanning efforts like the International Space Station, the Human Genome Project, and the Large Hadron Collider—and the advances in robotics, climate, medicine, and physics they enabled. Just as critically, immigration and a culture of multi-national education have fueled the American scientific enterprise for generations. Today, nearly half of all STEM doctoral and master’s students are international, and three of the six 2025 American scientific Nobel laureates were born outside of the United States. Limitations on the flow of international talent and expertise will only constrain American success in the future. Instead, the United States should embrace and expand upon the international character of scientific research, enabling and encouraging high-skilled immigration.
Finally, we should focus on what’s most at risk: basic research, undertaken simply to understand, without immediate utility or answers. When basic science makes an impact, it’s transformative, creating entirely new sectors and jobs, expanding our lifespans and our health, restoring the planet, and bringing us closer to understanding how the universe operates. Historically, financing for basic research has largely been the purview of governments because the outcomes are far from commercializable. Charitable and for-profit private funders can step in, and, much like IBM, Bell Laboratories, and Xerox did in the last century, large, well-resourced companies have the ability and the business interest to fund earlier-stage explorations.
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It is possible that, in the long run, a reformation of the way we approach the endless frontier may benefit science and scientists—not to mention the rest of us. After all, as Vannevar Bush wrote, “without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.”
The endless frontier—the infinite expanse of scientific knowledge, and the world it will allow us to create—is still out there
