Jan 01 1945The Foundation establishes the Atlantic Awards to assist promising British writers “dislocated and exhausted” after the war, with 47 writers, poets and playwrights receiving awards. In the US, grants are made to Kenyon Review, Sewanee Review and Pacific Spectator to subsidize young writers. Among those authors are: Irving Howe, Flannery O’Connor, James Baldwin, John Berryman and Elizabeth Bishop.
Jan 01 1945The American Library Association purchases and in some instances microfilms 35 sets of books and sets of 350 US scholarly journals for distribution to war-ravaged libraries in Europe and Asia. A similar program for British publications is funded by the Foundation through the Royal Society in London.
Jan 01 1944The Foundation makes a grant to the University of Virginia to support Dumas Malone for his monumental biography of Thomas Jefferson.
Jan 01 1944The first grant of an eventual $2 million total is made to develop Princeton’s Office of Population Research, which demonstrates connections between population and development in the developing world.
Jan 01 1943A Mexican agricultural program designed to increase food crop production through research and development is inaugurated on-site in cooperation with the Mexican Department of Agriculture.
Jan 01 1942A Foundation grant supports the first major study to determine the effects of forced resettlement of the Japanese population as a US war measure.
Jan 01 1942The importance of regional cultures in the US is highlighted in a program assisting the Texas State Historical Association in carrying out studies of the Southwest, the University of Wisconsin in studying the development of that state, and the Huntington Library in Pasadena for studies on the culture of the Pacific Southwest, and others.
Jan 01 1942The complete card catalog of the two-million-volume Library of Congress is reproduced by an early form of photolithography and made available to 50 leading libraries of the world, from Australia to Vatican City.
Jan 01 1941The Rockefeller Foundation supports developmental work on the electron microscope, then underwrites electron microscopy laboratories at several universities.
Jan 01 1941A decade of support for language studies, guided largely by the American Council of Learned Societies, culminates in the development of the methodology of the US Army language training program. The Foundation funds translations, grammars, dictionaries and bibliographies.