Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) was an American electrical engineer and science administrator who directed U.S. wartime research and wrote the 1945 essay "As We May Think," which described the 📝Memex.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Manhattan Project history records that Bush was born in Everett, Massachusetts, on March 11, 1890. He received a bachelor's degree from Tufts University and, in 1916, a doctorate in electrical engineering awarded jointly by the 📝Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University. At MIT he worked as an engineer and professor, eventually rising to Dean of Engineering and vice-president of the university. In 1939 he left that post to become president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. He died of a stroke on June 28, 1974.
In June 1940 President Roosevelt approved the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) with Bush as director, and later established the Office for Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) with Bush at its helm. The IEEE Computer Society's biography records that in 1931 Bush and colleagues completed the Differential Analyzer.
Science—the Endless Frontier, which the DOE history calls "his important 1945 manifesto," called on government to institutionalize science. "As We May Think," published in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1945, described the memex: in the IEEE Computer Society's account, a desk giving instant access to microphotographed books, periodicals and documents, with a trail that let earlier searches be retraced quickly. Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen name Bush among the past visionaries of 📝Tools for Thought (TfT) in a joint essay.