Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush (1890 - 1974) was an American electrical engineer, inventor, and science administrator who organized the mobilization of American scientific research during World War II and, in his 1945 essay "As We May Think," anticipated central ideas of modern information technology.^[1]

Early life and education

Vannevar Bush was born on March 11, 1890, in Everett, Massachusetts. He studied at Tufts College, where he completed both bachelor's and master's degrees, and in 1916 earned a doctorate in engineering awarded jointly by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.^[3]

Engineering career and inventions

Bush joined the faculty of MIT, where he rose to become dean of the School of Engineering and a vice president of the institute. During the late 1920s and 1930s he and his students built the differential analyzer, an analog computer that could solve differential equations and was among the most powerful calculating machines of its era.^[3]

In 1922 he co-founded a company that later became the electronics manufacturer Raytheon. In 1938 he left MIT to become president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a position that placed him at the center of American research policy.^[3]

Wartime science leadership

As war approached, Bush proposed a new federal body to harness science for defense. He chaired the National Defense Research Committee, established in 1940, and in 1941 became director of the broader Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), which coordinated thousands of scientists and engineers. Under his leadership the OSRD advanced radar, the proximity fuze, and other technologies, and it initiated the atomic-bomb research that grew into the Manhattan Project.^[1]

"As We May Think" and the memex

In July 1945 Bush published "As We May Think" in The Atlantic Monthly. The essay described the "memex," a hypothetical desk-based device for storing and cross-linking books, records, and communications so that a user could follow associative trails of information.^[2]

Legacy

Also in 1945 Bush delivered the report Science, The Endless Frontier, arguing that sustained federal support of basic research was essential to national welfare. The report helped lay the groundwork for the creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950.^[4] Bush received numerous honors, including the National Medal of Science, and he died on June 28, 1974, in Belmont, Massachusetts.^[3]