Vannevar Bush (March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator. During World War II he headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime military R&D was carried out, including initiation and early administration of the Manhattan Project that produced the first nuclear weapons. Bush was the man behind the scenes of the atomic bomb project. He coordinated the activities of some 6,000 leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. Bush was a well-known policymaker and public intellectual during World War II, when he was in effect the first presidential science advisor. He is also known in engineering for his work on analog computers, for founding Raytheon, and for the memex, a hypothetical adjustable microfilm viewer with a structure analogous to that of hypertext. Bush was also chiefly responsible for the movement that led to the creation of the National Science Foundation.
