1970 was a year of triumph and of crisis in Dutch astronomy. Triumph, because the largest radio telescope in the world was inaugurated in Westerbork, Adriaan Blaauw was appointed Director General of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and Stuart Pottasch from Groningen became editor of the new European journal Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A). But behind the scenes there was also a sense of crisis. Jan Oort, the grand old man of Dutch astronomy, was about to retire. The resulting leadership crisis coincided with dramatic changes in national science policy, funding, and management that also affected astronomy.

The institutional structures of science that had been built up after the Second World War had functioned well for two decades, but the cultural, political and economic developments of the late 1960s and early 1970s put them under increasing pressure. This resulted in a lot of soul-searching by the new generation of astronomers, as they discussed both the future direction of astronomical research in the Netherlands and the way in which it should be organized. The informal way in which the generation of Oort had run scientific institutions had to be replaced by more formalized bureaucracy and accountability. For example, the management of the Westerbork radio telescope was radically reorganized, and A&A introduced a refereeing system.

In this paper I will analyze the sometimes painful change of the Dutch astronomical community in the early 1970s: how the new generation adapted to the challenges of the new decade, and how they dealt with potential conflicts that could split the thriving but fragile discipline. In this way, this paper will improve our understanding of the 1970s, a crucial period in the history of postwar science.