The peak was reached in the summer of 1952 when there were 10 science attachés in 5 European embassies. But then appointments waned. Last year there were 4 attachés, 1 each in London, Stockholm, Paris, and Tokyo. But their terms have expired. By the 15th of this month, all 4 will have reported in to Washington on their way home. To date, no replacements have been named. The field aspect of State's science function has ground to a halt.

Will this be the end of science in the State Department? Probably not, because State's Science Office is still operating. The Department's experience with the science attaché program and with the Science Office has demonstrated how frequently science is intertwined with foreign relations. The office is an active one and is constantly being called upon by various desks and divisions within the Department of State for advice and assistance.

The State Department's experience with science had roots in several studies during the late war and early postwar period. One of these was Vannevar Bush's Science, the-Endless Frontier (1945), a study undertaken at the request of President Truman to determine how the knowledge acquired by the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development could be applied to the problems of peace. Another was Science and Public Policy (1947) by the President's Scientific Research Board under John R. Steelman. This study explored the interrelationships of science in various branches of the Government and how they could be coordinated. The report led directly to the formation of the Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific Research and Development and laid the groundwork for the National Science Foundation.

Another root was inside the Department of State itself. It was the London Office on Science and Technology that had been taken over from the Department of Commerce in 1946. The mission was attached to the American Embassy in London for the purpose of facilitating liaison between British and American scientists and exchanging scientific and technological information between the two countries. Behind this move was the backlog of unpublished wartime research and the inability of periodicals to handle it expeditiously because of the paper shortage.

Because the basis for this office was an economic one, responsibility in the Department of State was assigned to the Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs to carry out the project experimentally. Before the office was set up, scientists inside and outside the Government were called on for advice. They suggested that scientists should compose the group, that their concern should be primarily with the promotion of interchanging unclassified scientific information, that the group should be a permanent staff of the Embassy, but that membership should be rotating, and that the products of the Office should be as widely available as possible to American scientists.

First head of the London office was Earl A. Evans, Jr., a biochemist from the University of Chicago. He served for 1 year. From his appointment to the end of 1949, 11 other scientists representing various disciplines served in the London office with tenures ranging from 4 months to 1 year. Occasionally, there were as many as 6 men assigned to the office at one time.

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NOT FOR INFORMATION

The operation of the London office indicated to the Department of State that scientists have a place in the conduct of foreign relations. As the work of the staff developed, it became clear to those concerned with the experiment, however, that if scientists were to function effectively they had to orient their functions more closely to the problems of foreign relations. The experience emphasized that the department had no responsibilities itself for disseminating information to American scientists and had no facilities for doing so.

As a part of the State Department reorganization in 1949, and in cooperation with the National Academy of Sciences, several committees reviewed State's responsibilities in international science. On the basis of this review and on the experience of the London Mission, the department's International Science Steering Committee, under the chairmanship of Lloyd V. Berkner, issued the definitive report, Science and Foreign Relations. This document, which has come to be known as the Berkner report, is the taproot of State's science operations. It demonstrates repeatedly that modern foreign relations consist of scientific and technical elements as well as political, economic, and military. It proposed that mechanisms be set up in the Department and in the embassies that would insure adequate consideration of scientific and technical matters that have a bearing on foreign relations. It proposed that these functions be carried out mainly by men with background in international affairs and training in science.

To carry out these recommendations, the Berkner report suggested that a science office be established in the Department of State at the policy level, headed by a science adviser appointed as special assistant to the Under Secretary of State. It also recommended that the science adviser "be supported by a small staff comprised of a deputy science officer, three scientists representing the physical life, and engineering sciences, respectively, liaison officers from the political, economic, and public affairs areas, and from other Government agencies having international interests in science and technology, and such other personnel as are required to make the staff effective in the discharge of its responsibilities." First to be appointed as science adviser was Joseph B. Koepfli, an organic chemist from California Institute of Technology who had served in the London office with Evans. Appointed as science adviser early in 1951, he served 8 months past his original 2-year term before returning to Cal-Tech.

Serving under Koepfli for 2 years as deputy science adviser was James W. Joyce, a Navy Department geophysicist. Now with the National Science Foundation, he had served as Director of the Department's International Science Policy Survey Group, one of the committees that led to the Berkner report. Joyce continued as acting science adviser for 6 months after Koepfli left to go to the Department of Defense in January 1954. Since that time, the office of science adviser has been vacant.

At present, the Science Office is being operated by the assistant to the science \adviser, Walter M. Rudolph, and two secretaries. Rudolph, an economist, is the State Department career man on permanent assignment to the office as executive officer under the science adviser. He also served on the International Science Survey Group.

Rudolph has enormous responsibilities but little authority to implement the top-echelon work that the science adviser should be doing. Nevertheless, those who have worked with him agree that he has done an outstanding job of keeping the office going since its beginnings. Helping the office out of emergencies, Koepfli has frequently commuted from his California laboratory to Washington. But helping on emergencies and being active head of the Science Office are two different things.

STATE USES SCIENCE OFFICE

The Science Office has become well known in the Department, and Rudolph reports that there are few desks or offices in the Department that do not call him from time to time for information or assistance. During a typical day recently he was called upon to write a statement for a Department committee, to advise one of the desks concerning a delegation of visiting scientists, and to advise another office concerning a proposed change in regulations involving a scientific body elsewhere in the Government. Several of these requests involved liaison with offices outside the Department. Between these duties, Rudolph took part in four committee meetings.

In the department, Rudolph represents science. Toward science, he represents State. For instance, in the absence of a science adviser, Rudolph represented

the Department of State at the meeting of the Interational Union of Scientific Unions in Oslo last August.

To implement its recommendations concerning operations abroad, the Berkner report suggested that the State Department appoint scientists as attachés who would be integrated into the normal foreign service structure of the embassies. Two attachés who had been appointed to the London office continued under the new plan, and in 1951 6 new attachés were appointed: 2 to London, 2 to Stockholm, and 2 to Bern. Six more were appointed in 1952, but in 1953 appointments began to slack off. The last appointee was Robert S. Mulliken of the University of Chicago, who went to London a year ago. He is returning this week. During that interval, 19 scientists served in embassies abroad.

To find out how the science attaché program had functioned abroad, C&EN asked the men who should best be able to answer-the science attachés themselves.

The question that is asked again and again is whether the Department of State wants a science operation such as it envisioned when it established the Science Office and the attaché program. For nearly 3 years, the office operated without a science adviser and for 2 years without a scientist. The effects of this curtailment were harmful to the science attachés themselves. While they, like other officers of United States missions abroad, are responsible immediately to the Ambassadors, they feel that "home base" is, after all, the Science Office in Washington. They have a common interest in science with that office. They believe it is only common sense that an office of the science adviser should be headed by a scientist. They feel that the Department either is not aware of the importance of science to foreign relations, or has been too slow in filling the vacancy.

The effects of having a Science Office without a scientist are harmful from the standpoint of public relations, the attachés indicate. Since their duties require them to confer with scientists abroad in universities, research institutions, government offices, and elsewhere, science attachés frequently were obliged to discuss their individual place in the organization of Government. They felt embarrassed when they had to report the development in the Office of Science Adviser.

The curtailment of the science staffs in the European embassies from 2 or more several years ago to 1, was also bad for public relations. The attachés feel that many scientists and others abroad took this reduction as a slap at their science. The attachés believe that the curtailment had the effect of creating an attitude on the part of Europeans that Americans are vacillating and unreliable.

In direct contrast to this situation in Washington, the attachés report glowingly of their work and of the program's reception abroad. The Ambassadors and other mission officers have been cordial and helpful. Some Ambassadors relied directly on the science attachés for detailed advice and guidance on scientific matters affecting foreign relations. Good working relations were established between science attachés and other officers of the embassies with whom they frequently had to work on matters of common interest.

At Bonn, for example, Walter W. Greulich was able to contribute significantly toward formulating policy in Germany. In one instance, he reported the bitter opposition of German scientific and other organizations to the efforts by our industries and by some of our governmental agencies to recruit German scientists for work in the United States. These activities were misinterpreted by the Germans as an attempt on the part of our people to deprive them of their most valuable natural resource their gifted young scientists. He was able to reassure the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (a research coordinating body) in this matter and to work out with them a mutually acceptable, modified policy of recruitment.

Greulich called to the attention of the head of the mission and to the Department in Washington the rapidity with which German science was recovering from the effects of the war and climbing again toward the position of world leadership which it considers properly its own. In his report, he stressed the grave consequences for our country, if, in the rapid and unpredictable course of history, the scientific resources of the Federal Republic of Germany should ever be lost to the West.

The science attachés at Bonn were in a somewhat different position from those in other missions because they were science advisers to the United States High Commissioner. On the other hand, the type of services they performed was not necessarily unique.

United States science attaché work found wide acceptance among scientists and others in foreign countries. The idea that science attachés were some sort of espionage agents was quickly dispelled, if the idea ever existed at all. Science attachés were accepted as officers representing at once the United States Government and American scientists. The attachés felt that this cordiality strengthened an important segment of foreign relations. They pointed out that no other officer in the Embassies could effect this relationship because no other officer had access to influential foreign scientists.

The demands for the attachés' services were increasing all the time. Science in foreign countries is on the upswing and is active. Not only do the attachés have more work than they can do but they see many useful jobs they should be doing but cannot get around to doing.

One such job, for example, is that of coordinating the visits of American scientists. A science attaché may be asked to arrange that an American scientist visit a foreign laboratory. He does so. The next week a group of Americans visit the same laboratory unannounced and without his knowledge. They want to look at the same things the previous visitor looked at, ask the same questions, and go over the same material. Later the attaché is requested to set up another visit for an American scientist to the same laboratory to look at the same things, ask the same questions, and go over the same material. The process continues. The head of the foreign laboratory becomes irritable. The science attaché is embarrassed, frustrated. He feels Washington has let him down; it should have coordinated these visits and told him about them. The need for coordination was obvious.

Nearly all the attachés express the feeling that more than one scientist is needed in the science attaché office abroad. Some note the disparity between the number of military attachés and science attachés at various missions (19 to 1 in one case). Most of the attachés indicate that a tour of duty of 1 year is definitely not long enough. They feel that 2 years would be preferable.

A recent Hoover Commission report suggests that the backstopping of science attachés be placed with the Central Intelligence Agency. The science attachés view this recommendation with alarm.

Some believe that at best such a transfer would enervate the work of the science attachés, and at worst would create downright resentment abroad to the detriment of our foreign relations. Others believe that the recommendation must have been made without an understanding of the functions of the science attachés. Most of the science attachés are in agreement that the backstopping of their work should remain in the Department of State. Backstopping by the National Science Foundation has been mentioned as another possibility. Some feel, however, that this does not recognize State's day-to-day needs.

The science attachés are unanimous in expressing a strong belief that a lot of good has come from the functions they performed or are now carrying out. They have seen the benefits both in this country and in the country of their assignment. Some of the former science attachés have noted after their return to this country the snowballing of the private scientific exchanges they themsleves had a part in promoting. They point out that scientists in this country feel that scientific cooperation can be one of the strongest instruments for furthering our foreign relations.

In the past, State has been successful in getting the funds it asked for the science program from Congress. It has been suggested that if money is the problem it stems from within the Department. The fact that the Office of Naval Research has operated a much larger office in London than any of the science attaché offices may be significant as far as congressional approval is concerned.

SCIENTISTS FOR SCIENCE

A scientist who served early in the program mentioned a view that was then current in the United States foreign service that the position of science attaché provided special official representation of a field that is properly a function of the cultural attaché. It is rare, he adds, that a cultural attaché has the necessary scientific qualifications for the work. The scientific development in some countries, he points out, can greatly outweigh their economic affairs and should receive official Embassy attention by qualified officers.

Occasional references are made to the fact that State is reevaluating its science program, that the Department hasn't made up its mind about what kind of pattern it wants if any. Obviously, the Department has found its Science Office to be a useful arm of its day-to-day operation, even if it does not have a scientist.