World War II’s Lesson for After the Pandemic
On June 14, 1940, the day the German army invaded and occupied Paris, a small group of scientists marched to the White House with grave news for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. U.S. military technology, they said, was utterly unprepared to take on the Axis powers. They urged the president to create a new agency—a dream team of techies and scientists—to help win the war.
In response, Roosevelt assembled an agency that became known as the Office of Scientific Research and Development, or OSRD. Led by Vannevar Bush, the former dean of the MIT School of Engineering, the office ultimately employed more than 1,500 people and directed thousands of projects around the country. By the end of the war, it had spawned military inventions such as the proximity fuse, radar, and—after one of its programs spun off to become the Manhattan Project—the atomic bomb.
OSRD’s breakthroughs went far beyond missiles and bombs. It supported the first-ever mass production of penicillin in part by contracting with the chemical manufacturer Pfizer (yep,
