Editing Vannevar Bush (section)

=== Carnegie Institution for Science ===
In May 1938, Bush accepted a prestigious appointment as president of the [[Carnegie Institution of Washington]] (CIW), which had been founded in Washington, D.C. Also known as the Carnegie Institution for Science, it had an endowment of $33&nbsp;million, and annually spent $1.5&nbsp;million in research, most of which was carried out at its eight major laboratories. Bush became its president on January 1, 1939, with a salary of $25,000. He was now able to influence research policy in the United States at the highest level, and could informally advise the government on scientific matters.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|pp=83–85}} Bush soon discovered that the CIW had serious financial problems, and he had to ask the [[Carnegie Corporation of New York|Carnegie Corporation]] for additional funding.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|pp=91–95}}

Bush clashed over leadership of the institute with [[William Cameron Forbes|Cameron Forbes]], CIW's chairman of the board, and with his predecessor, John Merriam, who continued to offer unwanted advice. A major embarrassment to them all was [[Harry H. Laughlin]], the head of the [[Eugenics Record Office]], whose activities Merriam had attempted to curtail without success. Bush made it a priority to remove him,{{sfn|Sullivan|2016|p=69}} regarding him as a scientific fraud, and one of his first acts was to ask for a review of Laughlin's work. In June 1938, Bush asked Laughlin to retire, offering him an annuity, which Laughlin reluctantly accepted. The Eugenics Record Office was renamed the Genetics Record Office, its funding was drastically cut, and it was closed completely in 1944.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|pp=91–95}} Senator [[Robert Rice Reynolds|Robert Reynolds]] attempted to get Laughlin reinstated, but Bush informed the trustees that an inquiry into Laughlin would "show him to be physically incapable of directing an office, and an investigation of his scientific standing would be equally conclusive."{{sfn|Zachary|1997|p=93}}

Bush wanted the institute to concentrate on [[hard science]]. He gutted Carnegie's archeology program, setting the field back many years in the United States. He saw little value in the [[humanities]] and [[social sciences]], and slashed funding for ''[[Isis (journal)|Isis]]'', a journal dedicated to the history of science and technology and its cultural influence.{{sfn|Zachary|1997|pp=91–95}} Bush later explained that "I have a great reservation about these studies where somebody goes out and interviews a bunch of people and reads a lot of stuff and writes a book and puts it on a shelf and nobody ever reads it."{{sfn|Zachary|1997|p=94}}