The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

by Siddhartha Mukherjee

In a deeply influential report to President Truman entitled Science the Endless Frontier, first published in 1945, Bush had laid out a view of postwar research that had turned his own model of wartime research on its head: “Basic research,” Bush wrote, “is performed without thought of practical ends. It results in general knowledge and an understanding of nature and its laws. This general knowledge provides the means of answering a large number of important practical problems, though it may not give a complete specific answer to any one of them.… “Basic research leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn.… Basic research is the pacemaker of technological progress. In the nineteenth century, Yankee mechanical ingenuity, building largely upon the basic discoveries of European scientists, could greatly advance the technical arts. Now the situation is different. A nation which depends upon others for its new basic scientific knowledge will be slow in its industrial progress and weak in its competitive position in world trade, regardless of its mechanical skill.”