(04/20/20) For the National Science Foundation (NSF), the first few months of 2020 brought an opportunity to look back on decades of continuous effort to promote basic research in the US. But change was also imminent at the top of the organisation, with NSF director France Córdova's six-year term in office due to end on 30 March.

On 6 and 7 February, the NSF celebrated its 70th anniversary at its headquarters in Alexandria, a short distance from Washington, DC. The agency was established by an act of the US Congress in 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; [and] to secure the national defense". Its purpose as an independent federal agency for the funding of basic research dates back to the report submitted by Vannevar Bush in 1945, "Science – The Endless Frontier", in which he called for a continuation of the partnership between government and science successfully begun during the Second World War.

The symposium brought together a host of prominent representatives of US research and science policy. During a panel discussion that formed an especially inspiring part of the programme, the current director asked six of her predecessors about the highs and lows of their time in office. Since the NSF, as a federal agency, is part of the executive branch and is accountable to Congress, it is certainly hardly surprising that the humorous anecdotes of difficult situations – whether in the 1970s or the recent past – always had a political component. There was, however, high praise for the agency's core mission and its dedicated employees, who make the smooth running of funding activities possible.

The 75th anniversary of the publication of Vannevar Bush's report was marked with a contribution by Bush's biographer G. Pascal Zachary. The symposium also provided a convivial setting in which to bid farewell to France Córdova. Sethuraman Panchanathan, Córdova's designated successor and current Executive Vice President of Arizona State University, had not yet been confirmed in office by the Senate. It was therefore announced in a press release at the beginning of April, that the NSF would be led on a provisional basis by Kelvin Droegemeier, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House.