The 1940s Science and Technology: Overview

The pace of scientific discovery in the 1940s was staggering. World War II (1939–45) boosted research in science and technology through government funding. It led to new technologies that transformed American life after 1945. The demands of war inspired the production of new substances and materials such as the antibiotic penicillin, the insecticide DDT, and synthetic rubber. New technologies such as radar, the jet engine, helicopters, and electronic computers all were wartime innovations. With the creation of the atomic bomb, American scientists influenced the political and cultural atmosphere of the rest of the century and beyond.

Most scientists in the early 1940s were engaged in research that served military needs. The U.S. government poured millions of dollars into research projects that would help win the war. There were major advances in transportation, communication, weapons, and intelligence-gathering technologies. But government funding also brought science and politics together in a new way. For the first time, the U.S. government funded scientific research that would help it achieve its political aims. Perhaps the most important and controversial of these projects was the research on the atomic bomb.

In 1939, Austrian physicist Lise Meitner and German chemist Otto Hahn, described atoms being split into smaller atoms and releasing huge amounts of energy. The process they described was nuclear fission, the reaction that takes place inside an atomic bomb. German Jewish physicist Albert Einstein settled in the United States in 1933, after escaping from Nazi Germany. Though he had always been opposed to violence and war, his experience with the Nazis convinced him that Western democracies would have to fight to keep their freedom. After news of the fission experiments in Europe reached American scientists, Einstein was persuaded to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt warning him of the danger. He managed to convince Roosevelt that the United States should try to develop an atomic bomb before Germany did. As a result, in 1942 Roosevelt authorized the Manhattan Project to begin research into nuclear weapons. In 1945, the United States became the world's first nuclear power.

Einstein did not contribute directly to the Manhattan Project. But he was one of a number of European scientists who emigrated to the United States in the 1930s and 1940s, and many of these scientists did help develop the atomic bomb. Physicists and chemists such as Germany's Hans Bethe, Switzerland's Felix Bloch, and Italy's Enrico Fermi and Bruno Rossi—along with others from Russia, Hungary, Poland, and Austria—all worked on the Manhattan Project.

Many other important discoveries were made by immigrant American scientists in the 1940s. George Gamows developed the "big bang" theory of the start of the universe. Research on DNA was conducted by Erwin Chargoff and Severo Ochoa. Another significant advance was the development of rocketry. Werhner von Braun, in particular, did important work on rockets during the decade that led to the space program in years to come. Many of these scientists had won Nobel Prizes for their research while in Europe. Others became Nobel laureates (prize winners) after settling in the United States. This "brain drain" of scientists from Europe to America helped make the United States the world leader in scientific research after the war.

In peacetime, scientific researchers can afford the luxury of investigating questions or problems that have no obvious practical use. This is known as "pure" science. Discoveries made in pure scientific research often find practical uses years later. During World War II, American scientists were forced to find much closer links between their research and practical problems. For example, developments in theoretical physics helped create the atomic bomb. In chemistry, synthetic rubber was the practical outcome of years of pure research. Only biologists seemed free from wartime pressures. Researchers working in the field of genetics began laying the foundations for the discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s. Such research had no obvious application to the war effort.

In the 1940s, American scientific research fed into practical technological advances as never before. A great deal of money was made available for research, accelerating the pace of discovery and development. Science and technology came to the fore in American colleges and universities. Before the war, the United States was already a powerful industrial nation. By the late 1940s, it led the world in scientific research as well. But the close link between political needs and scientific development changed the way scientists worked. During the war years, "pure" research lost out to applied research, or work that would provide quick solutions to practical problems. After 1945, American scientists had to rediscover the balance between "pure" and applied science.