Soon after the end of World War II, Dutch science was reconstituted by novel funding agencies with well-filled coffers. The currently received view is that in a vulnerable and war-torn society the new institutions were created on the basis of technocratic ideals that date back to pre-war years. One of these agencies, the Foundation for Fundamental Research of Matter (or 'FOM'), was founded by the Schermerhorn administration to coordinate nuclear research and it attracted by far the most funds. This imbalance in funding, however, is hard to understand from the perspective of the received view alone. We wish to emphasize instead that particularly relevant for understanding FOM's early history, and, by implication, the early history of Dutch post-war science, is a change in attitudes regarding 'fundamental' physics that followed closely on the heels of the dropping of the atomic bombs in August of 1945. A new and substantial effort in basic physics was suddenly deemed necessary as a precondition for technological development, to keep pace with developments in and discussions about nuclear science abroad, and to remain within the purview of the new hegemon in the sciences, the United States.

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The centennial has revived attention for the First World War. Because of the Netherlands' neutral position, the influence of the horrendous war in this nation has long been qualified as marginal. In the last two decades, this perspective has gradually changed and several studies were published on developments in the Netherlands in [1914][1915][1916][1917][1918]. In these studies the Great War has either been understood as a watershed moment in Dutch history or, adversely, as a continuation of previous times. In this special issue, we present five case-studies of the influence of the First World War on various scientific cultures in the Netherlands. These studies indicate that this interaction transcends the dichotomous image of either continuity or discontinuity.