In line with the expectations of Wilsonian universalism, after the First World War, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial under the management of Beardsley Ruml not only oriented the field of social sciences towards a clearer disciplinary and methodological definition, but also allocated substantial funds from 1924 onwards to grant fellowships to a number of young American and European scholars. They thus found themselves assuming a crucial function in the construction and redistribution of knowledge on the international chessboard.

Europe, in particular, was perceived as a fertile terrain in which to develop a model of social sciences that, by lowering the threshold of formalisation, promoted empirical research, quantitative data analysis and fieldwork, to which was added the desire to modernise an academic system obsolete due to the weight of the 19th century tradition and the inability to form elites ready to confront large-scale collaborative practices. In turn, Memorial grants, from the perspective of crossfertilisation, could serve to identify the European scholars most functional to the process of producing the new version of the social sciences being developed in the US. This explains why graduates funded to conduct a two-year research project in universities on both the Old and New Continent were under a strict obligation to return home at the end of their stay¹.

The Rockefeller Foundation and its associated philanthropies have occupied a dominant position in the historiography of Southeast Asian medical history¹. Sustained efforts at archival curation have made the Rockefeller Foundation an indispensable point of departure for scholars specializing in the History of Science and Technology Studies. The online search engine of the Rockefeller Archive Center, DIMES (https://dimes.rockarch.org/), lists three recipients from the Netherlands Indies. The Rockefeller Foundation sponsored Mohammad Djamil and Mas Sardjito to undertake further medical training at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA) during the 1920s. At the same time, Soemedi was offered a fellowship to study Public Health at the University of the Philippines (Manila), during the 1930s. Out of these three, Mas Sardjito cuts the most important figure.

1. Anderson, Warwick. 2002. ‘American Public Health and Colonial Mimicry,’ American Literary History 14:4, p. 686-719; Stein, Eric. 2006. ‘Colonial Theaters of Proof: Representation and Laughter in 1930s Rockefeller Foundation Hygiene Cinema in Java,’ Health and History 8:2, p.14-44. [↩]

14650 individual mobility awards granted to 13633 beneficiaries who moved between 4203 different institutions and organisations in 153 countries and territories. Four different organisations funded by the Rockefeller family, with different award policies and areas of intervention, which existed over different periods of time and did not operate in the same geographical areas. And over a period of 66 years. Is it possible to write a short research note that encompasses all this?

İhsan Doğramacı was born in 1915 in Erbil (now in the north of Iraq), the son of an important family of Ottoman bureaucrats. He attended the International College of the American University of Beirut until 1932 and then studied medicine at Istanbul University, graduating in 1938. Later that year, thanks to the connections of his uncle Lutfi Kırdar, who was a doctor and the provincial governor of Manisa, he met Dr. Albert Eckstein, a prominent expert in the field of paediatrics and one of the German-Jewish scientists who had found refuge in Turkey in 1935. This was a turn in his career.

In 1950, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a fellowship to Jacques Freymond, a professor of history in Lausanne, Switzerland, in order to visit various universities in the United States. This year abroad represented a turning point in his professional career. In the following years, the professor’s career accelerated, and in 1955 he became director of the prestigious Graduate Institute of International Studies (Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales, IUHEI) in Geneva. The rest of his career did not depend solely on this fellowship, but what it gave him facilitated a certain sequence of activities and duties.

En 1950, Jacques Freymond, un professeur d’histoire à Lausanne en Suisse, séjourne dans différentes universités aux États-Unis grâce à une fellowship de la Fondation Rockefeller. Cette année passée à l’étranger représente un moment charnière dans son parcours professionnel. Dans les années qui suivent, la carrière du professeur s’accélère et il prend en 1955 la direction du prestigieux Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales (IUHEI) à Genève. Toute la suite de son parcours ne dépend pas uniquement de cette bourse, mais ce qu’elle lui apporte facilite un certain enchaînement de mandats.