National Science Policy or International Scientific Programs?
The French Colbertism, 1939-1969
Talk given by Jean-François Picard
(CNRS-IHTP) to the SHOT seminary on 'The
History of Science Policies in Europ'. University of Oslo, Norway, 21-22
Aug. 1992
Science policy suggests, by definition, a national framework. What we
call "science policy" in fact covers an entire process of
decisions -- and financing -- that go beyond the arena of pure science,
in order to direct research into areas that are useful to society. In
other words, in science policy we see the government (or industry)
making directive choices and deciding on programs, driven not by simple
concern for understanding the laws of nature, but rather by the desire
to put the laws of nature to good use in the service of social,
economic or military aims.
In France the constraints generated by the Second World War mark the
birth of a science policy. The year 1939 triggered a scientific
mobilization like that experienced by the other powers involved in the
conflict. But what is remarkable about France, a middle-sized country,
is that a quarter of a century later it continued with the policies of
a great power such as the United States or the (former) Soviet Union.
In the nineteen sixties the France of General De Gaulle was still
programming its research with national mobilization in mind.
The scientific Colbertism
This is what some describe as scientific Colbertism (Jean-Baptiste Colbert,
Secretary of the Treasury of King Louis XIV is considered as the
inventor of the modern centralised State in France during the 17th Cy). The attached table attempts to
describe the various components of this scientific Colbertism . One can
see that it highlights two important periods in science policy à
la française.
1) The first is World War Two. The main scientific bodies in France
that still exist today were born between 1939 and 1946.
2) The second is the early part of the Fifth Republic under the
presidency of General De Gaulle, from 1959 to 1969, with the creation of
certain new bodies, in addition to the preceeding ones.
Another point has to be underlined. The table shows how all main French
research agencies result from a public intervention. I.e. these agencies
are mainly created by what we call great technical ministries (ex, the
ministry of public Health for the INH, the Air ministry for the ONERA in
the 1940's, the CNES (space) as a "product" of DGRST (Délégation
générale à la recherche scientifique et
technique) in the 1960's, etc.). This does not mean there
is no research in manufactory labs in this country, but it reminds us
that in the France of the first mid-20th century what we call R & D
remains far below the level of that kind of research in other
industrial countries. As an exemple, the American model, the fact that
the Nobel prize awarded the manager of the General Electric labs
(Irving Langmuir) is used in the 1930's France by those who are in
charge of the new CNRS (Centre
national de la recherche scientifique).
In 1939 the CNRS arrives on the scene, created by the Ministry of
Education. Different reasons explain the development of this
organization.
- First of all, the fact that France was lagging behind in terms of
university research. At the time, contrary to Anglo-Saxon or Northern
European countries where certain campuses built their fame around the
reputation of their laboratories, there was virtually no budget for
university research in France. As for industrial research, it was doing
badly and the Great Depression of 1929 only made it worse.
What France needed then was to make up for lost time.
- The second reason for the birth of the CNRS has to do with the
increasing cost of research, connected to the constraints of scientific
mobilization as the war approached. An example serves to illustrate this
double mechanism. What in French we call "Big Science" was born in the
nineteen thirties with particle accelerators (Lawrence at Berkeley). At
the end of the thirties Frédéric Joliot set up a nuclear
physics laboratory thanks to the CNRS. It allowed him to demonstrate
the possibility of a chain reaction. And at the same time, in the
Spring of 1939, the CNRS took out patents for the creation of an atomic
motor and an atomic bomb. (This operation was also subsidized by the
Minister of Arms, Raoul Dautry).
The table also gives an indication of the way scientific Colbertism
works, and how a stratégie de l'arsenal, or arsenal
strategy, is set up. What is involved exactly?
First, it remains clear that one of the aim is for military purpose,
the Défense nationale. It is obvious with the creation in
1945 of the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA, or
Commission on Atomic Energy), of which Frédéric Joliot
would be named director, that if the new agency is in charge of nuclear
research it will be waited for him to consider the atom bomb (Among the
CEA assignment, the statutory order of 18 oct. 1945 mentions the
"...use of nuclear energy in military matters").
Secondly, one can observe that the choice of a science policy coincides
neatly with the beginning of a directed economy in France. For example,
right after the war the big nationalized industries (companies such as
EDF, CdF, SNECMA, etc.) are blessed with new research and development
departments. In this way the state, responsible for the management of
huge technical systems (energy, transportation, communication), directs
research and development.
The result is that, as opposed to the United States for example, where
innovation comes from those who construct equipment, in France it is the
other way around. Industrial research follows the principle of
development according to national needs. This explains why the SNCF and
not the rail industry comes up with the idea of the TGV; why EDF and
not the boiler builders come up with nuclear power plants; and why the
ONERA comes out with the "Mirage" fighter for the French Air Force; etc.
In short, R and D à la française is top-notch in
heavy equipment goods. This is precisely the stratégie de
l'arsenal.
The French scientific 'Colbertism' at work from 1939 to 1946
The second important period for science policy in France occurs
in the sixties. In 1958 General De Gaulle regains the power. This is
also the year after the Russians sent Sputnik, the first artificial
satellite, into space (1957).
General De Gaulle undertakes to put an end to the colonial wars France
had been stuck in for fifteen years. He makes a political choice, for
national independence. The "Grandeur of France," will now be based on
its scientific abilities. "Hourra pour la France (Hip hip
hooray for France)," he exclaims in 1960, the day after the explosion
in the Sahara Desert of the first Gallic atomic bomb.
In 1959 De Gaulle sets up a delegation for scientific and technical
research, the DGRST. In reality this is a veritable ministry of research
that anwsers directly to him. For the first time in France, an
administrator (the delegate for research, then the equivalent of
something like an undersecretary) is directly responsible to a head of
state for the entire public research budget.
The main areas at stake are space and nuclear research. Space research
means the creation of rockets for France's force de frappe (striking
power). In 1960, the Centre national d'études spatiales
(CNES, or National Center for Space Studies) is created. Its primary
task is to come up with a satellite launcher. A proposal from the
British to provide a rocket, Blue Streak, can hardly hold out against
the desire to develop a French machine (Diamant, Astérix,
1965). In a rather amusing way, researchers at CNES stop talking about a
stratégie de l'arsenal, and start talking about the
"artilleryman syndrome."
In the nuclear domain, De Gaulle's policy is directly responsible for
the failure of a first attempt at European-wide cooperation, Euratom.
Euratom's primary objective was to manage uranium for nuclear power
plants, a project that was encouraged by the Americans so that they
could keep an eye on the distribution of uranium. But in 1958, since De
Gaulle refuses to share with the Germans and Italians French know-how
in uranium enrichment, France decides to build a factory at Pierrelate
for isotopic separation, essential to the country's force de frappe.
It is only once France has mastered the techniques involved in
uranium enrichment that it allows the civil sector in Europe to benefit
from this technology (Eurodif).
French research and Others
Nonetheless, it would be absurd to describe French research as
having taken place exclusively in the kind of autarky that existed in
certain totalitarian regimes on the eve of the Second World War. The
accomplishments of a determined national science policy should not let
us overlook the essential role of other countries, and what France owed
to international exchange.
This is particularly true in the area we have come to know as basic
research. As opposed to applied research, basic research mostly works
according to a sort of universal sharing of knowledge (even though
there also exist certain geographic centers of pure science). With the
war Europe lost its pre-eminence in basic research to the Americans.
In 1945 the U.S. was the new Mecca of universal science, in disciplines
such as biology or theoretical physics. The French scientists who
undertook the reorganization of French research, in particular at the
CNRS (national committee), were the ones who had emigrated to the U.S.
during the war and come back to France at the moment of la
Libération.
In its relations with international science, French research during the
post-war period thus went through two phases. These two periods
correspond to a sort of gradual disappearance of scientific Colbertism
from 1945 to 1958, and then after 1969:
1) The first period is marked by the reorganization of French research,
strongly influenced by the American model.
2) The second period is above all characterized by a move towards
Europeanization, connected to factors that are political as much as they
are scientific.
In 1945 the United States had undoubtly become the premier scientific
power in the world. Once the war ends, the Americans offer their
services to help rebuild research in a devastated Europe. In France the
architect of this cooperation is the biochemist Louis Rapkine, who
introduced certain organizational methods that were inspired by the war
(operational research). Most importantly Rapkine is the spokesman for
the Rockefeller Foundation. This prestigious foundation not only helps
with the material reconstruction of French laboratories, but also
provides intellectual support and makes the development of new
disciplines easier.
For example, in the area of scientific communication, the Rockefeller
Foundation begins to renew ties between the international scientific
community and researchers who had been isolated from the rest of the
world for four years. They do this through a system of symposia.
In a very direct way the Rockefeller Foundation helps bring about the
birth or the development of new disciplines in France. Take genetics,
for example. For reasons that historians of science like to study,
French biology was very much behind in the field of genetics.
Scientists who had spent time in the U.S., most notably with Thomas
Morgan at Cal. Tech., set up this new discipline in French
universities, at the CNRS, and at the Pasteur Institute: that is to
say, Boris Ephrussi, with George Beadle; or Jacques Monod, whose mother
was American, and who, along with Lwoff and Jacob, won the Nobel Prize
in 1965.
The practice of sending young researchers to the U.S. became even more
popular after 1945, although in France it never reached the same
proportions as in other European countries.
(In numbers of scientists leaving per year)
France : 180/140 ( "French emigration is slight enough to be considered as negligible..." (CNRS Arch. File AN 80284)
Germany : 90/ 615
United Kingdom: 901/ 2015
Developing Countries : 6300/7600
TOTAL : 8500 / 13400
But
even today, French biology is still very much tied to American research.
Attendance at the American "high mass" of Cold Spring Harbor symposia
continues to be the cornerstone for biological research, no matter
where the research is carried out. It was there in fact that the
Pasteur Institute announced the discovery of the retrovirus responsible
for AIDS in 1983.
Aside from intellectual motives, there are also more material reasons
to look at research in an international framework. This is the case for
heavy science; before the war (astrophysics had shown the way with the
creation of enormous telescopes). In 1952 a European initiative, in
which the French physicist Pierre Auger played a major role, lauched
the CERN, or the European Center for Nuclear Research. This center
would eventually build the accelerators essential to particle physics,
leading to a series of Nobel Prizes.
Finally, research also became more international because of the
limitations of a stratégie de l'arsenal.
To begin with one must consider that a medium-sized country does not
offer the minimal means necessary to develop certain programs.
Let's keep in mind also the support that America seems to have given to
France in the building of its nuclear program. Of course the CEA
(Commission on Atomic Energy) was created as a direct result of the
scientific embargo decreed by the United States in 1946 (the MacMahon
Law). But it would seem that the program, once launched, was
significantly helped with guidance from American atomic scientists.
At last, one must say some words about some negative consequences of
national science policies. Certain failures in the stratégie de
l'arsenal Plan Calcul, launched in the mid-sixties,
established the Institut national de recherche en informatique et
automatique (INRIA), with the aim of giving France the
mathematical component necessary to its force de frappe. But
even though the French may have been able to develop computers on a
national level -- hardware -- they did not pay enough attention to the
problem of software. Bull's Gamma 60 was a wonderful electronic
machine, but it offered no Support Operating System. So by the end of
the sixties France was forced to turn to IBM for software. And it had
to use IBM's software, even for its own strategic purposes.
Conclusion
In 1969 General De Gaulle departed. Once assured of the basic
know-how necessary for national independence, and driven by economic
constraints, France looked for a way to insert its scientific programs
and techniques into an international picture. Two examples illustrate
this point: the first being the choice to use foreign technology in a
strategic field, and the second the effort to make France's national
program European.
- For nuclear power plants, France ultimately chose North American
technology (PWR of Westinghouse) to replace the technology developed by
the CEA and for many years imposed on EDF by the government. This
choice was preceded by the painful process of questioning the CEA's
technology (la filière française, or French
nuclear technology, Natural Uranium-Gas-Graphite), but it was followed
by a brilliant indigenous development of this US technology (Framatome).
- The second example, in the area of space research, is the development
of a European Space Agency starting in 1972. This agency undertook the
marketing of the Ariane rocket, built by a European
consortium. Ariane was a direct descendent of the sixties' Diamant
rocket.
On the whole scientific Colbertism appears to have been a success. To
its credit are all the projects listed in the left column (Table): the
TGV, electro-nuclear achievements and also, of course, the hydrogen
bomb (1969), etc.
Undeniably, adopting a science policy allowed France to catch up, when,
since the beginning of the twentieth century, the country had seemed
destined to decline. Nonetheless, De Gaulle's France in the sixties was
a country of fifty million inhabitants. Its scientific determination
perhaps reached the limits of the industrial and financial resources of
a country this size. Has tomorrow research to come out from new Stratégies
de l'arsenal or to emerge from liberal practices? Considering the
stakes, the future of science policies in great countries seem to be
widely assured and the question will be merely to guarantee its brain
needs and to cover its increasing costs. So, in the case of France, if
tomorrow we had to embark on another science policy of such ambitious
scope than in the 1960s, such reasons coulds make think that it could
be more European than Gallic.