Jan 01 1949The Foundation launches a 12-year program in area studies, designed to promote research leading to “increased understanding of one culture by members of another.” Universities in the US, Canada, Great Britain, France, Turkey, Germany, India and Japan receive grants.
Jan 01 1949Erwin Chargaff, a biochemist at Columbia University, announces the "Chargaff Ratios”—This work proves critical to the 1953 Nobel Prize-winning description of the structure of DNA by James D. Watson and Francis Crick that describes the structure of DNA. Chargaff began receiving Foundation support in 1933 as an Austrian refugee fleeing from Nazi persecution.
Jan 01 1948The Foundation divisions of social sciences, health and natural sciences combine to fund the first effort to comprehensively survey socio-economic conditions in developing countries. The work is carried out on the island of Crete in order to develop techniques and procedures applicable to developing areas where an interdisciplinary approach is appropriate.
Jan 01 1948A Foundation fact-finding team visits the Far East at the urging of John D. Rockefeller III and concludes that only Asian professionals can come to grips with Asian population problems. Over the next eight years, the Foundation makes 45 grants exceeding $2.2 million toward that goal.
Jan 01 1947The Foundation grants $10 million to the China Medical Board as the concluding grant for Peking Union Medical College.
Jan 01 1946The Massachusetts Institute of Technology receives Foundation support to study the design and construction of Vannevar Bush’s mechanical differential analyzer, the forerunner of the computer.
Jan 01 1946Further grants are made to support completion of the 200-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory, San Diego County, which received its first Foundation funds in 1928.
Jan 01 1946The Foundation’s single largest appropriation of the year, $7.5 million, goes to the General Education Board to boost its declining resources. The Board’s work is now focused almost exclusively on the promotion of education for blacks and whites across the South.
Jan 01 1946Columbia University’s Russian Institute is established with Foundation support, creating the first “area studies” center in the US. Others follow.
