Grant for Science Center Opposite UCI Is Made Official

Orange County industrialist and philanthropist Arnold O. Beckman and officials of the Irvine Co. and the National Academy of Sciences formally announced Monday their agreement to construct a western headquarters for the academy adjacent to UC Irvine.

The announcement, made in Irvine during a press conference, confirmed reports that Beckman’s foundation would grant the academy $20 million for construction and operation of the headquarters and that the Irvine Co. would donate seven acres of fully improved land valued at $6 million.

Academy officials said Beckman’s gift was the largest the organization had ever received. About $9.3 million will be used for construction, $8 million as an endowment for operating expenses and $2.7 million as an endowment to finance academy studies.

According to academy officials, construction of the center should begin next spring and be completed about a year later, in early to mid 1987.

The center, named after Beckman and his wife Mabel, will contain about 50,000 square feet of floor space divided into a 250-to-300-seat auditorium, a 100-seat multipurpose room and a 60-seat meeting room, plus several conference rooms and offices. The center will also offer its members a support staff, computers and telecommunications equipment.

Beckman said no specific design had been made yet but that an architect should be hired soon.

The academy was chartered by the federal government in 1863 as its official adviser on scientific matters. It has since divided into several additional organizations: the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. Together the academies’ projected budget is $100 million for 1986.

Beckman described the work of the academies as “soft science . . . which has to do with dealing with ethical problems” rather than actual laboratory research.

He said Frank Press, president of the National Academy of Sciences, had approached him “a year or two” ago looking for a donation to support the Washington operations.

“I was a little reluctant to go ahead because I have the concept of Washington being sort of a bureaucratic jungle,” Beckman said.

“When this possibility came up to establish a center out here, that tied in directly” with Beckman’s “awareness of the rapidly growing significance of western, especially Californian, activities in the fields of scientific and medical research and related technologies.”

Beckman, 85, a chemist, founded Fullerton-based Beckman Instruments Inc. in 1935. The firm became prominent in the manufacture of scientific instrumentation, making for Beckman a large personal fortune that, he says, he will distribute through his foundation to further scientific causes.

Beckman said he had “long been concerned over the haphazard manner in which many ethical issues related to science, technology and society are handled. Many major new ethical problems have arisen from genetic engineering, for example.”

“Currently such matters are aired in the media by activists who see only a narrow aspect of a problem. Through simplistic sloganeering and mass demonstrations, they seek to establish policies that should be established only after thorough, thoughtful study and discussion by competent leaders in whatever professions may be involved, including the social sciences, economics, religion and politics as well as medical and physical sciences and engineering.”

According to Press, the terms of Beckman’s grant specify that the new center be used for investigation into four broad areas: ethical and social issues of science, technology and medicine; the state of science and technology in the United States, particularly the education of researchers; the transfer of technology to applied use and to other nations, and international collaboration in science and technology.

Press said the academies are already interested in and have launched many studies in these areas. “The terms of the gift emphasize those four areas, but there is an important clause in there that the general activities of the National Research Council can also be supported by the gift.”

Press said that about a third of the academies’ members live in the Western states and that California has more of the membership than any other state.

Yet scientists from the West “have been underrepresented (at academy meetings) in the past, not because of a lack of qualifications but because of the distance between California and the East Coast,” Press said. “This center will correct for that anomaly.”

In addition, Press said, “California is a natural place for a focus on those issues which involve the rim of the Pacific Ocean, an area that is becoming of great importance scientifically and technologically in the years ahead.”

He said the academies already have programs under way involving cooperation with the Asian scientific community.

Press said that the new center’s location is ideal for its proximity to Southern California university campuses because many on their faculties are academy members.

Press stressed, however, that the academy is protective of its autonomy and independence. “The linkages with these universities will be through the scientists and engineers who work there rather than formal relations with the administrations,” he said.