University Helps Back Atomic Research Plan

Gathering in a series of meetings at Columbia University this summer, members of the science departments of nine universities, including Harvard, are devising a contract for an Army subsidized atomic research program.

After each of the universities, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, M.I.T., Pennsylvania, Princeton, Rochester, and Yale, had tendered separate applications to the Government for equipment and money with which to start such a program, the Army suggested that they meet and form a contract satisfactory to all of them.

The University has been represented at these meetings by George B. Kistiakowsky, Abbot and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry, John H. Van Vleck, Professor of Mathematical Physics, and Kenneth T. Bainbridge, associate professor of Physics.

An independent project, except for the University's position as trustee, it will provide for its own laboratories and hire its own employees, all to be financed by the Army's five million dollar a year allotment.

The main problem faced at the Columbia University meetings was that of tenure and the permanence of such a program. The scientists unanimously agreed that they could not obtain sufficiently skilled technicians under a short, one or two year, contract.