Bush is credited with "early" arousing of President Roosevelt to the urgent necessity of using science to defend the nation by coordinated attack on the scientific problems of modern warfare. This foresight by Dr. Bush led logically to his being called to pioneer the initial effort and being entrusted with greater and greater responsibilities for the direction and co-ordination throughout the ware of the greatest planned collaboration of scientists, engineers, industrialists, and military men the world has ever seen. He was often called President Roosevelt's Science Advisor.(The next two appointments made him a central figure in the development of nuclear fission and the Manhattan Project, for which he was best known to the public.)
Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee (1940)
Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (1940-1947)
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Member of the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee (1953-1955)
The NSF was founded upon recommendations in "Science the Endless Frontier"
Chairman of the Development Board of the National Military Establishment (1947-1948)
Chairman of Joint Research and Development Board of War and Navy Departments (1946)
Chairman of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (1939-1941)
President of the Carnegie Institution in Washington (1938)
Chairman of the MIT Corporation (1957-1959)
Vice President of MIT and first Dean of School of Engineering (1932)
Awarded D.Engineering from both Harvard and MIT (1916-1917)