Vannevar Bush, (born March 11, 1890, Everett, Mass., U.S.—died June 28, 1974, Belmont, Mass.), U.S. electrical engineer and administrator. He taught principally at MIT (1919–38, 1955–71). In the late 1920s and ’30s, Bush and his students built several electronic analog computers to solve differential equations. He helped found Raytheon Co., and he served as president of the Carnegie Institute (1939–55). In 1941 he became director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, in which capacity he helped organize the Manhattan Project. By providing government support for university-based scientific research, the agency paved the way for postwar federal support of basic scientific research. As adviser to Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, he laid the groundwork for the establishment of the National Science Foundation (1950). An information retrieval and annotation system he described became the theoretical prototype of hypertext, the basis of the World Wide Web.
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