Abstract

The Second World War is commonly said to have ushered in theera of `big science' in the United States. However, at least inpractically-oriented biomedical research, the American governmentadopted modes of sponsorship that were commonplace between scientistsand industry before the war. Furthermore, many life scientistsleading wartime projects were already familiar with industrialcollaboration. This essay argues that the new federal regimes introduced in the late 1940s and 1950s were more important than wartime experience in shaping the character of biomedical `big science' in the United States during the second half of thetwentieth century