Abstract
Annual Report For 1945 THE annual report for 1945 of the director of research of the Ontario Research Foundation at Toronto, Dr. H. B. Speakrman, refers to the transition through which the Foundation passed during that year. Steps taken soon after the hostilities to restore to normal the available space enabled the Foundation to respond to the increased demand for fellowship facilities, and before the close of the year the available laboratory space was fully occupied. Available statistics show that there are about eleven thousand industrial units in Ontario, of which only three hundred are large enough to justify the maintenance either of a research laboratory or a fellowship unit at the Foundation, and some of these consist of branch companies looking to a parent company in the United States for research and technical direction. Besides the twenty fellowships which tax the Foundation's present facilities, many firms use the Foundation for short-term investigations; but the director, in noting that the external income of the Foundation is now about 57 per cent of the total revenue, while investment income has decreased by 18 per cent since 1938 and costs have almost doubled, points out that in consequence the Foundation's ability to initiate and sustain investigation in fields of provincial importance, rather than of immediate concern to an industry or a firm, is diminishing. He expresses his firm conviction that societies will prosper in the future in so far as they are willing to authorize research expenditure on a reasonably liberal and long-term basis.
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Ontario Research Foundation. Nature 158, 800–801 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158800a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158800a0