For more than seven decades, Princeton and other leading research universities have played an integral role in building and strengthening America’s research system into the envy of the world — a collaborative effort that advances human health, strengthens national security and gives America a crucial edge in global competitiveness.
The key to that system is a partnership between the federal government and research universities that grew out of make-or-break World War II research efforts like the Manhattan Project. Those projects helped the government recognize the paramount importance of science and scientists to the nation’s success. This remarkable government-university collaboration has led to an unprecedented pace of invention, innovation and discovery, said Michael Gordin, a renowned historian of science and the dean of the college at Princeton University.
“By any metric, the success of the American research establishment is extraordinary,” said Gordin, who is also Princeton’s Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History. “There’s no form of recognition — Nobel Prizes, any other kind of prizes, publications, citations — in which the U.S. is not the world leader. And all of this is based on a deal where the government provides funding, and in exchange it gets products, research, national security, prestige, and the next generation of qualified scientists.” Read more on Princeton’s Website