After the war, Allison was director of the Enrico Fermi Institute of Nuclear Studies from 1946 until 1957, and again from 1963 until 1965. He was the chairman of the Physics Section of the National Research Council from 1960 to 1963, and chairman of its Committee on Nuclear Science from 1962 to 1965. He was active in the "scientist's movement" for the control of atomic weapons. The scientists successfully lobbied for nuclear weapons to be under civilian rather than military control, which was eventually written into the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. He was a strong opponent of secrecy in science, and, in an influential speech announcing the creation of the Enrico Fermi Institute said: