Article ID: CBB512076368

Private Philanthropy and Basic Research in Mid-Twentieth Century America: The Hickrill Chemical Research Foundation (2017)

unapi

The Hickrill Chemical Research Foundation, located north of New York City on the estate of its patrons, Sylvan and Ruth Alice Norman Weil, had a short (1948–59) but productive life. Ruth Alice Weil received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1947, directed by William von Eggers Doering of Columbia University. She intended that Hickrill contribute to cancer chemotherapy while providing resources for Doering's more speculative research. Ultimately, Doering's commitment to theoretical organic chemistry set Hickrill's research agenda. Lawrence Knox, an African American with a Harvard Ph.D., supervised the laboratory's daily activities. Hickrill's two dozen postdoctoral fellows produced path-breaking results in Hückel aromatic theory and reactive intermediate chemistry, fostering the postwar emphasis on “basic science.” This essay places the Laboratory's successes in the wider context of postwar politics and scientific priorities. Private philanthropic support of basic science arose because it received little pre-World War II government support. In the immediate postwar period, modest organisations like Hickrill still met a need, but the increasing governmental defence- and non-defence-related support for science eventually rendered them unnecessary.

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Authors & Contributors
Cornell, Thomas D.
Cummings, Dolan
Czernecki, Igor
Hellström, Tomas
Jacob, Merle
Jones, Edgar
Journals
British Journal for the History of Science
Cold War History
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
化学史研究 [Kagakushi kenkyū; Journal of the Japanese Society for the History of Chemistry]
Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning and Policy
Publishers
American Chemical Society
Harvard University
Arctic Institute of North America
Research Corporation
Sutton Publishing, Ltd.
University of Alabama Press
Concepts
Research
Research institutes; research stations
Privately sponsored science; philanthropy
Science and economics
Societies; institutions; academies
Laboratories
People
Buckley, Oliver E.
Cottrell, Frederick Gardner
Jewett, Frank B.
Majima, Rikou
Weinberg, Alvin Martin
Doering, William von Eggers
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
21st century
Places
United States
Germany
Brazil
Great Britain
Korea
Soviet Union
Institutions
Tuskegee Institute
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Chelsea Physic Garden
Medical Research Council (Great Britain)
Rockefeller Foundation
Royal Institution of Great Britain
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