I reflect on a career that has featured developing an advanced torpedo for submarine warfare during World War II, designing alternative nuclear reactors at the advent of nuclear power, guiding the development of the first institutions for technology assessment, assisting several of the early efforts at environmental policy analysis, and promoting experiments that have led to insights regarding the humanization of work. A recurring concern of mine, still unresolved, is how to give due weight, simultaneously, to two different visions of the scientific enterprise: an endeavor that must remain autonomous and an endeavor that must be driven by societal needs.