RAND Corporation
California
The RAND Corporation grew out of a single meeting in nineteen forty-five when retiring Army Air Forces General Hap Arnold sat down with Douglas Aircraft executive Frank Collbohm and asked a simple question: how do we keep the best scientific minds working on national security now that the war is over? The answer was Project RAND, which began inside the Douglas Aircraft plant in Santa Monica in December of nineteen forty-five. On May fourteenth, nineteen forty-eight, it spun out as an independent nonprofit, taking its name from a contraction of research and development.
RAND became the world's first institution regularly called a think tank, and it defined the field. Its early analysts helped shape nuclear deterrence strategy, applied game theory to military planning, and helped pioneer the systems analysis approach that governments and corporations now use worldwide. Today it remains based in Santa Monica.
