Topic: Science & Innovation

Two white men in suits and ties address a room full of mostly male journalists at the United Nations Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974.
1970s

“A very small number of men control all the money and the ideas”: Women Revolutionize Population Programs in the 1970s

Women and technocratic elites clashed at the 1974 World Population Conference. At stake was women’s control over their own bodies.

1990s

Centering Women’s Rights in the Population Field: The Ford Foundation and Sexual Health in the 1990s

A 1994 meeting moved women’s empowerment front and center for grantmaking in global population.

Laboratories, Talent, and New Technology: the Rockefeller Foundation and the Physical Sciences

One philanthropy invested in scientists and pushed the atomic age forward.

1930s 1940s 1950s 1980s 1990s

The Rockefeller Foundation and the Birth of Molecular Biology

A new program in the natural sciences increased funding and attention to the life sciences, and coined a new term along the way.

1960s 1970s

The Rockefeller Foundation Makes its First Foray into Environmentalism

A short-lived environmental research program in the 1970s was an early foray into climate change funding.

1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s

Early 20th Century Reforms of Medical Education Worldwide

Working to change US medical education was one of the Rockefeller Foundation’s biggest endeavors in the 1910s and 1920s, extending from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to Beijing, China.

1920s 1930s 1940s

Building the Hale Telescope

A 20-year-long project, funded by Rockefeller philanthropies, took technologies enabling astronomy to an unprecedented scale.

1920s 1930s

“For Initiative and for Experiment”: The International Education Board, 1923-1938

Incorporated in 1923 with funding from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the IEB built a major scientific network in Europe and the US in only five years.

1930s 1940s 1960s 1970s 1980s

Rockefeller Foundation Support for Communications Media in the 1930s and 1940s

The mid-20th century was an era influenced by mass communications, and a handful of philanthropic programs sought to tap into the possibilities of film and radio.

1930s 1940s 1950s

“A Roomful of Brains”: Early Advances in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

At midcentury, Rockefeller Foundation staffers hoped new technologies might find solutions to complex problems.