Topic: Technology

From demonstration farms launched when farming was still unmechanized to confronting climate change in the twenty-first century, American philanthropy has played a key role in shaping and supporting efforts to lift rural communities out of poverty through agriculture.

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

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

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.

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.

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

In the 1980s, critics argued that some groups had been left behind by the Green Revolution.

In the aftermath, Foundation staff struggled to rectify their organization’s involvement with this weapon of mass destruction.

Orson Welles’s 1938 radio performance of The War of the Worlds prompted a foundation to explore issues of media literacy and fake news.