William Golden, financier, key science adviser

NEW YORK - William T. Golden, an investment banker, a philanthropist, and a main architect of American science policy in the 20th century who had the idea for a presidential science adviser, died Sunday in Manhattan. He was 97 and lived in Manhattan and Olivebridge, N.Y.

His death, at Mount Sinai Hospital, was announced by the American Museum of Natural History, where he was chairman for five years and most recently chairman emeritus.

For half a century, Mr. Golden was at the nexus of science and society as a man who knew almost everybody in science and government.

His willingness to "buy the first tank of gas," as he put it, for worthy projects led him to serve as a trustee or officer or board member of nearly 100 organizations, universities, and government agencies. Among them are the Carnegie Institution of Washington; the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which named its Washington headquarters for him; and the Hebrew Free Loan Society, which had lent money to his grandfather, a Lithuanian immigrant.

Mr. Golden was an assistant to the Atomic Energy Commission in 1950 when he was tapped to consult with President Truman about the development of science and technology.

After the outbreak of the Korean War and amid fears of a confrontation with the Soviet Union, Truman was under pressure to reactivate the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which led the atomic bomb program in World War II.

Mr. Golden embarked on a cross-country tour to interview military, industrial, and scientific leaders. He concluded that a new research office would only interfere with the work being conducted by such agencies as the Atomic Energy Commission, the Office of Naval Research, and the National Institutes of Health. The challenge was to coordinate all this activity.

"I got the idea that there should be a science adviser to the president," he recalled. "Truman approved the plan immediately."

Oliver Buckley of Bell Laboratories was appointed chairman of Truman's science advisory committee. John H. Marburger III has the role under President Bush.

Mr. Golden and others guided the formation of the National Science Foundation, established by an act of Congress to provide grants for basic research.

John Gibbons, who was science adviser to President Clinton, recently said, "Without people like him, there would be no infrastructure, no research."

William T. Golden was born in Manhattan. His father was a wool trader who became a banker.

Growing up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, Mr. Golden wanted to be a physicist but found that he disliked mathematics. He studied English and biology at the University of Pennsylvania. After a year at Harvard Business School, he headed to Wall Street in 1931 to work for Harold Linder, an investment consultant he met at Harvard.

"The idea was to make a lot of money on Wall Street and then do interesting things," Mr. Golden said.

In World War II, he helped develop war plans in the Bureau of Ordnance of the Navy in Washington. He went to sea to test a device he invented to control antiaircraft guns. When the war ended, Lewis Strauss, with whom he had worked in the Navy, asked him to be his assistant at the new Atomic Energy Commission.

One job was to head to Albert Einstein's house in Princeton in 1947 after Einstein had asked to talk to somebody about the need for world government to head off nuclear war. Mr. Golden was disappointed in Einstein's politics.

In a memorandum to Secretary of State George C. Marshall, he wrote, "Professor Einstein spoke with deep feeling but with almost childlike hope for salvation and without appearing to have thought through the details of his solution."

In the 1950s, Mr. Golden plunged into his second life, as a philanthropist. Mr. Golden owned a weekend estate in Olivebridge, overlooking the Ashokan Reservoir. Mr. Golden donated land for a park there and helped establish a center for the elderly.

He loved to be outdoors. In 1989, when he bought from Harvard the Black Rock Forest in the Hudson Highlands, which was threatened by development, he explored its 4,000 acres by horseback. He later turned over the forest to a consortium to preserve it.