In 1916, the National Academy of Sciences established the National Research Council as "a measure of national preparedness" to organize the country's scientific resources. During World War I, the Research Council fostered cooperation between civilian researchers and the military in "strengthening the national defense." Over the years, thousands of volunteer scientists and researchers have contributed pro bono to the Research Council's work, keeping to the promise of President Woodrow Wilson's 1918 Executive Order to "stimulate research in the mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine and other useful arts…

Today, the National Research Council is known as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

[Members of the National Research Council staff during World War I. Robert A. Millikan, second from left, and other members of the Research Council were commissioned as reserve officers in the U.S. Army Signal Corps in order to set up the Corps' Science and Research Division. Photo courtesy California Institute of Technology Archives]