Facility Focus: National Science Foundation

After World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt envisioned a world with a brighter future than the preceding decades — one in which science and technology could create more productive, more fulfilling lives for all Americans. To plan that scientific future, the nation’s first science agency was created to transition the wartime R&D experience — which yielded new discoveries such as penicillin, radar, and the atom bomb — to peacetime. In 1950, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Science Foundation Act to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense; and for other purposes” to continue this legacy.