The National Science Foundation is marking 50 years of accomplishment. Please join us in our celebration of knowledge, discovery, and progress to make a better world for us all.

Whether or not you are conscious of it, every taxpayer, educator, policymaker, researcher—in fact, every citizen who used a computer or simply shopped at a supermarket—played a role in the science and technology revolution that marked the latter half of the 20th century.

As we at NSF celebrate this milestone anniversary, we can point with quiet pride to the many, many ways education and fundamental research supported by NSF has served our society in practical, beneficial ways. You’ll find some of them on the cover of this official NSF50 poster (pictured at right), and others described on its reverse side.

We can expect many more science and technology educational advances in the future. The challenges our nation will face in the 21st century will be daunting, but our confidence in overcoming them is even greater. We are looking ahead to a future of exciting discovery.

With warm regards,

Rita R. Colwell, Director