National Defense Research Committee

On October 3, 1940, at a meeting in Washington called by Division B of the National Defense Research Committee, mention was made of the need for an instrument which could measure and indicate the partial pressure of oxygen in a gas. During the next few days we devised and constructed a simple and effective instrument for this purpose. This instrument measures the volume... 

With the onset of World War II, Hammett took a leave of absence from Columbia to become first associate director and later director of the National Defense Research Committee s Explosives Research Laboratory in Bruceton, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh. During his tenure, the laboratory made a number of important inventions that contributed to the success of the war effort. After the war, Hammett returned to Columbia, where he remained until his retirement in 1961. He spent the last 25 years of his life in the Quaker retirement community of Medford Leas, New Jersey, where he died on February 9,1987. 

Crawford, B. L, Huggett, C., and McBrady, J. J., Observations on the Burning of Double-Base Powders, National Defense Research Committee Armor and Ordnance Report, No. A-268 (OSRD No. 3544), April 1944. 

Speed helped organize, prior to the war years, a rubber program on the synthesis of rubber for the National Defense Research Committee under Adams, which was eventually responsible for the production of rubber during the war. He was also drafted and helped on a research program for the Committee on Medical Research dealing with malaria research. 

Anslow, W.P., and Houck, C.R. Systemic pharmacology and pathology of sulfur and nitrogen mustards. IN Chemical Warfare Agents, and Related Chemical Problems, 2 vol. (Summary Technical Report of Division 9, National Defense Research Committee) Washington, D.C. Office of Scientific Research and Development. 1946. p. 440-478. 

Conant was able to devote his full effort to Harvard for only a few years as the Nazi military threat came to dominate the world, Conant became increasingly involved with national affairs. As Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, he provided effective scientific leadership during World War II. After the war he was appointed the first Chairman of the National Science Board, and in that role helped to initiate the policies that proved so successful in encouraging the development of science, especially in the U.S., but also abroad. 

With the advent of World War II Fieser was obliged to suspend all previous research and teaching to work on problems for the National Defense Research Committee. Thus for three and one-half years he was involved with the development of new incendiaries (e.g., Napalm), antimalarials, and syntheses of cortisone. He became especially interested in the antimalarial program, which included a large number of collaborators, and which yielded some extremely potent new substances in the naphthoquinone series. 

Compns of 91/9 RDX/waxes were furnished by the National Defense Research Committee to PicArsn for evaluation (Ref 13). Results of the investigation showed that the 90/10 Stream 2 (petroleum wax)/Alox 600 (a catalytic air oxidation product from petroleum) is a suitable substitute for beeswax for use in desensitizing RDX so as to make it suitable for use as a shell filler. Other waxes investigated and found acceptable (Ref 23) for use in conjunction with 10% Alox 600 include ... 

Study of Properties of RDX-Beeswax Mixtures Received from the National Defense Research Committee , PATR 1175 (1942) 14) DP. 

During the early years of the Second World War, Emmett directed an important National Defense Research Committee project at Hopkins that involved the use of adsorbents in gas masks to remove poison gases. In 1943 he became a division chief in the Manhattan Project, dealing with enrichment by diffusion of uranium isotopes for use in nuclear weapons. From 1945 until his death he was a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission on peacetime uses of atomic power. 

Geiling, E.M.K., and F.C.McLean. 1941. Progress Report on Toxicity of Chlorine Gas for Mice to Nov. 6, 1941. Office of Scientific Research and Development Report 286. U.S. National Defense Research Committee. 21 pp. 

In the latter years of WWII, agent GE underwent acute inhalation toxicity characterization at a number of research facilities managed by the Office of Scientific Research and Development (National Defense Research Committee). These results, for which the research protocols and exposure concentrations are not available for comparison, were summarized by Gates and Renshaw (1946) and are provided in Table 6.3 as LCtfo values. 

Gates, M., Renshaw, B. (1946). Fluorophosphates and other phosphorous-containing compoimds. In NDRC (National Defense Research Committee) Chemical Warfare Agents and Related Chemical Problems, Part /-// (Conant, J.B., Tolman, R.C., Chair and vice-Chair), Vol. 1, pp. 131-55. National Defense Research Committee, Division 9, Washington, DC. 

NDRC (National Defense Research Committee) (1945). The penetration of vesicant vapors into human skin. Rockefeller Inst. Med. Res. OSRD Report No. 4855, March 24, 1945. 

EMPLOYING AGENCY National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) SECURITY CLASSIFICATION Confidential ... 

Soon after the formation of the National Defense Research Committee, Don was sought out to direct war research He was appointed Section Chairman under the OSRD (Office of Scientific Research and Development), directing research teams at Caltech, Northwestern, and Los Alamos (and Dugway Proving Ground). His achievements in this capacity were to bring him the Presidential Certificate of Merit. 

In the summer of 1942, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) changed completely the nature of our research. In July 1942, a group of imiversity scientists who were working on chemical warfare problems met in Evanston, Illinois this group later became Divisions 9 and 10 of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). By that time many potential chemical war gases had been identified, synthesized by chemists, tested on animals for toxicity, and tested with respect to how well gas masks stopped them. The group discussed what else should be done. 

Chemistry, A History of the Chemistry Components of the NATIONAL DEFENSE RESEARCH COMMITTEE EDITED BY WA. NOYES, JR. 

I did not go to San Jose Island, Panama, and this chapter is built up mostly from quotations written in the 1940s by those who did go there and from pictures taken in 1944. 1 start with two quotations from W.A. Noyes, Jr., Head officer of Division 10 of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). 

This book gives a deep, narrow view of some activities of NDRC, Division 10, during World War II. It concerns a small number of projects and small number of research workers, and it gives details for only two universities that participated in this war work, Caltech and the University of California at Berkeley. In this chapter, I give a brief examination of the breadth of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). 

Throughout this book I have liberally quoted the monograph (c) on chemistry, which W.A. Noyes, Jr. edited. In the Foreword of Noyes book, pages xii and xiii, James B. Conant, Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee and President of Harvard University, and Roger Adams, member of National Defense Research Committee, stated their opinion as to the major achievements of the chemical divisions of NDRC ... 

About the beginning of 1941, as a graduate student at Cal Tech, I started working for the NDRC (National Defense Research Committee)... 

University of California—Ph.D. Chemistry National Defense Research Committee 1947... 

Civilian employee of National Defense Research Committee at Caltech, 1942-43, and field work with Chemical Warfere Service, Bushnell, Florida, 1944-45. 

As a first year graduate student in chemistry at Caltech, in April 1942, I joined Professor Boscoe G. Dickinson s war project in Division 10 of National Defense Research Committee (NDRC). In this project and a similar one at Berkeley, one young participant was a big healthy athletic extrovert, who was deeply trained in the physical sciences, and by age twenty-nine he was world famous in physics and in biology. Another was opposite in many ways a skinny sickly loner, who was minimally schooled... 

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