In the second of a limited series, ‘Chapters of Change’ showcases another transformational moment in Penn’s past shaped by changes in society—World War II—during which the U.S.’s drive for knowledge sparked massive investments in research.
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Researchers look through a microscope in a lab at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania around 1940.
(Image: Courtesy of University Archives)
World War II not only changed the world it also shaped the future of the University of Pennsylvania, spurring a new focus on research and results.
Now, in another transformational moment, Penn Forward is helping to shape the next 10 years at Penn and beyond.
Read the first installment in “Chapters of Change”
As Penn considers what the next decade of discovery will look like, Penn Today reflects on WWII—the period during and after the war—when the University adapted to meet society’s needs in the second in “Chapters of Change,” a limited series on key historical moments.
Lasting impact of WWII and the war effort
During the war, Penn affiliates had wide-ranging roles in the fight against the Axis powers, setting the stage for a postwar federal investment in research.
“The Second World War is the watershed here,” says Penn education historian Jonathan Zimmerman.
ENIAC: The first electronic computer was developed at Penn under a federal defense contract.
Gaylord Harnwell: The physics professor and later Penn’s third president led the war research division at the University of California’s naval radio and sound lab.
After the war, physicians who returned to Penn from research posts in government became global leaders in surgery, radiology, dermatology and ophthalmology. The biggest impact came from the Office of Scientific Research and Development, a federal agency created during the war to coordinate scientific research; within five years of the war’s end Penn ranked 10th among schools receiving federal funding.
The resulting atmosphere helped Penn’s faculty grow, as Richards and other stars drew younger faculty into their orbit—many of whom went on to become professors, deans, Nobel laureates, knights, and nobles. Those relationships fundamentally altered how work was conducted, broadening it beyond basic research to include training and mentorship.
“The modern research model is not Thomas Edison or Benjamin Franklin tinkering away,” Zimmerman says. “It’s gigantic, multimillion dollar … laboratories with entire teams working on a question or a problem.”
Another influence on Penn was the G.I. Bill. Its benefits brought veterans onto campuses in tremendous numbers, creating a boom in the student population. That trend continued into the 1960s with the Higher Education Act, which provided financial assistance for students, adds Zimmerman.
The biggest accomplishment of the G.I. Bill, says Zimmerman, was the access it provided to a wider audience. “It showed that working-class people could succeed at college,” he says. The new students flooding campuses were older, more mature, and were more prepared to be successful than their predecessors, Zimmerman says.
Under a new framework now known as the “academic social contract,” notes Zimmerman, the federal government provided funding while the universities conducted the research that powered the economy, improved defense, and enhanced health, with significant autonomy.
The decade following the war’s end was a transformational period, Zimmerman says, with an “enormous investment in research apparatus” across the nation.
Penn was no exception. Before the U.S. joined the war, in 1941, Penn received $250,000 in federal research funding. By 1947, two years after the conflict ended, Penn was managing $1.3 million in federal research, spanning 47 contracts. The vast majority were Army or Navy projects. That number grew to $3.4 million by 1954.
Cold War transformation
A major postwar driver of federal government research funding was the 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union and the ensuing space race. Nationally, federal support grew from 43% to 79% of university research spending during this time. It was, wrote Penn historian Walter McDougall, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of space exploration, “an evolutionary leap in the relationship of the state to the creation of new knowledge.”
In addition to the sciences, languages also got a boost, says Zimmerman. “People realized that if we were actually going to win this struggle with the Soviet Union, you were going to have to know more languages than English,” he says.
Funding also came to medicine and health programs from the National Institutes of Health and the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The School of Nursing became independent during this period, with Theresa I. Lynch appointed as the first dean—the first female academic dean at Penn. And by the 1950s, about 50% of sponsored research funds went to the medical school.
Private research investments also rose. The Rockefeller Foundation’s social science head was former Wharton School Dean Joseph Willits, who made the case for research investments to Penn’s President Harold Stassen in the postwar period.
By the 1960s, for the first time, research funding rather than tuition made up a larger share of the University’s budget. In 1969, Penn ranked 17th among universities in federal research and development funding.
As a result of the increased support and investment in broad scientific research by the federal government, Americans began to dominate research fields, capped by U.S. victories across all but one Nobel Prize category in 1976. Those winners included University Professor Baruch Blumberg, who took home the Nobel in physiology or medicine for identifying the hepatitis B virus.
Over the decades, as investment in research grew, the need for labs and classrooms where the research was conducted drove expansion on campus. The outcome of that growth can be seen in what are now Penn landmarks, including the David Rittenhouse Laboratory, the Wharton School, and what would become Penn Medicine.
In her book on Penn’s history, “The University & Urban Revival,” President Emerita Judith Rodin points to the University’s pivotal transformation during this time. She writes, “With an enormous range of research grants available and highly specialized faculty competing for federal, state, and local grant money, Penn was becoming a major research university.”
Sources consulted include:
Geiger, Roger L. Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities Since World War II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Myerson, Martin, and Dilys Pegler Winegrad. Gladly Learn and Gladly Teach: Franklin and His Heirs at the University of Pennsylvania, 1740-1976. Philadelphia. Pa., University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978.
Puckett, John, and Mark Frazier Lloyd. Becoming Penn: The Pragmatic American University, 1950-2000. Philadelphia, Pa., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
Rodin, Judith. The University & Urban Revival: Out of the Ivory Tower and Into the Streets. Philadelphia, Pa., University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Terino Jr., John George. In the Shadow of Spreading Ivy: Science, Culture, and the Cold War at the University of Pennsylvania, 1950-1970, 2001. University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. dissertation.
Thomas, George E., and David B. Brownlee. Building America’s First University: An Historical and Architectural Guide to the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.
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