The members of the National Academy of Sciences are elected on account of distinguished services to science, and not on account of their cleverness as administrators or organizers. The National Research Council was to be organized for the purpose of “stimulating research in mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine, and other useful arts, with the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthening the national defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare.” The words just quoted are taken from President Wilson’s executive order, and describe a splendid conception. But from conception to reduction to practice is a long pull, requiring efforts along most practical lines of endeavor in which scientific men as a rule do not excel. But it was very fortunate for the National Academy of Sciences and for the people of the United States that among the scientists of the Academy there was one man who had always displayed just as remarkable a genius for organization as he had for original scientific research; I mean Professor George Ellery Hale, director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Several other members of the Academy, including myself, did our best to aid him in the task of reducing to practice many of his ideas relating to the National Research Council. There was, fortunately, one thing which greatly assisted our earliest and most difficult efforts in behalf of this national movement; it was the existence of the Engineering Foundation.