Gravitational Physics at the National Science Foundation: Origin and Evolution

The National Science Foundation (NSF) was authorized by Congress in 1950 as a way to foster science in the US and was established shortly thereafter. While highlights of NSF and its grantees' achievements can be found on its website, details — such as those obtainable today from the NSF Award Database — are unreliable and/or unavailable prior to the mid 1970s. Information from acknowledgments in publications indicates that NSF funded some research in gravitational physics in the 1960s, well before the current "gravity" program existed and when US military services were permitted to fund "basic" research. By the early 1970s, Gravitational Physics (GP) at NSF was a subprogram of Theoretical Physics, even though some experiments were funded. GP became a stand-alone program in the mid-1970s. The origin and subsequent evolution of GP will be discussed.