Peter Westwick,
California Institute of Technology
|
Literature on civil-military relations often cites the integration
of civilian and military realms effected by nuclear weapons. Historians
of science support this view with the frequent categorization of the
civilian AEC as a military agency. This paper will look more closely
at the military presence in the AEC, and will thus shed light on the
question of continuity between World War II and the early Cold War.
It will also look at the penetration of science into the military-not
just through use of academic scientists as advisors or consultants,
but via scientists in military uniform. The combination of soldier and
scientist is especially evident in the Armed Forces Special Weapons
Project, a neglected entity whose history may lead to a better understanding
of how the atom changed not only civilian science, but also the military's
institutional structure and culture. |
American Hegemony
and the Promotion of Basic Science in Europe
in the Early Cold War
John Krige,
School of History, Technology and Society, Georgia Tech, Atlanta
| "The premise of this essay is that, given
the basic inequality of resources [between the United States and Europe]
after World War II, it would have been very difficult for any system of
economic linkages or military alliance not to have generated an international
structure analogous to empire. Hegemony was in the cards, which is not
to say that Americans did not enjoy exercising it (once they had resolved
to pay for it)". Thus wrote the Harvard historian of political economy
Charles Maier in the late 1980s. His premise is striking for an historian
of science and technology. It reveals the gulf between what political
and economic historians take for granted about the capacity and behavior
of the United States to build a postwar world order aligned with its interests,
and how we approach such an issue (if it ever occurs to historians of
science at all). For there was not simply an imbalance in economic and
military strength between the two sides of the Atlantic in 1945; there
was also an immense imbalance in scientific and technological capability.
The enormous scientific and technological achievements in the United States
during the war, and the ongoing support for research in the country after
1945, contrasted sharply with the postwar situation in Europe. There laboratories
were ill-equipped, destroyed, pillaged or (in the case of Germany) strictly
controlled, researchers were poor, cold, hungry and demoralized, and national
governments had far more pressing concerns than scientific (and technological)
reconstruction. The United States was not simply the mightiest economic
and military power in 1945; it was also the mightiest scientific (and
technological) power. That granted, given the 'basic inequality of resources'
for science between the two sides of the Atlantic (and indeed globally),
is it not to be expected that any system of U.S. - European scientific
and technological linkages established after the war were also part and
parcel of an 'international structure analogous to empire'? Were those
that were concerned to 'reconstruct' or 'rehabilitate' European science
not also engaged in the American hegemonic enterprise? Should historians
of science not also come to take it for granted, as Maier did fifteen
years ago, that the structural conditions also prevailed for hegemony
in science and technology, that the United States pursued its interests
(in collaboration with European scientists) in the rebuilding of scientific
capabilities and institutions in Western Europe, just as in the economic
and military spheres? This paper will argue that the rehabilitation or reconstruction of science in continental Europe after WWII promoted by foundations, administrators, and scientific statesmen in the US had a dual aspect: it was warmly welcomed by European scientists and it promoted American scientific, ideological and political interests in the early Cold war. The US built a hegemonic regime, but one that was co-produced by transnational scientific and political elites who shared the same overall objectives. Unclassified basic science was the privileged platform in which American hegemony intersected with European scientific reconstruction. It was essential for long-term European economic growth and military security and would help integrate Europe into an American-led Atlantic community. In the short term it did not upset the prevailing balance of power, it could add to the stock of knowledge in the US which had been depleted seriously by the long war years, any worthwhile results of practical importance could quickly be exploited in the US, and it was not as vulnerable to pro-Communist spies and leaks as was applied research.
|
Cold War Social Science: Reworking the Enlightenment Project to Nullify Marxism
S.M. Amadae,
New School University, New York, NY
| "As physicists and other natural scientists were caught up in the Cold War efforts to develop scientific and military supremacy over the Soviets, social scientists took on the task of reconceptualizing the foundations of liberal society. This involved revisiting familiar Enlightment ideals of individualism, rationality, and universalism while simultaneously negating ontologically promiscuous concepts of statehood and the Marxist stress on collective action." |
The Ambivalences of Nuclear History
Itty Abraham,
Social Sciences Research Council
| Abstract to follow. |
Nuclear Ontologies
Gabrielle Hecht,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
| Abstract to follow. |
From the Manhattan Project to the Human Genome Project
John Beatty,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
| I will consider respects in which the histories of the biological and physical sciences in the U.S., from World War II to the end of the Cold War, were 1) intimately related, 2) antagonistically/competitively related, and 3) orthogonal. I will discuss episodes that involve federal funding, the "basic-applied" distinction, the national security dimensions of the biological and physical sciences, and the broader social and political relevance of the biological and physical sciences." |
Nuclear Fallout: Genetic Concerns Post-1945
Soraya de Chadarevian,
Cambridge University, UK
| Accounts of post-World War II science have been dominated by nuclear physics. Until very recently much less attention has been paid to the work of biologists after World War II and to the way they participated in the nuclear age. In my paper I would like to review how especially postwar genetics can be viewed as an 'atomic science' and how geneticists used ressources and concerns of the nuclear age to re-position and advance their science. I shall consider in particular the establishment of biological research stations in proximity of nuclear energy establishments; the fall-out controversy and its disciplinary implications; and the rise of human cytogenetics. If, with the end of the cold war, biology and especially genetics can be seen to take over the dominat role nuclear physics has played in the preceeding decades -most emblematically so in the decision by the American government not to build the Superconducting Supercollider for high-energy physics research but to fund the human genome project-, then not because biologists have avoided the dominance of the nuclear age but for the way they were able to make use of it. |
"Atoms
for Peace"
A European perspective on biology and medicine in the Atomic age
Bruno Strasser,
University of
Lausanne, Switzerland
| Following the first international conference on the peaceful
uses of atomic energy, held in Geneva in 1955, a number of national programs
were set up in Europe to financially support scientific research on civilian
aspects of nuclear physics. Unlike their predecessors, established just
after Hiroshima and who were almost exclusively devoted to encouraging
physical research, the new programs included considerable sums for biology
and medicine. Due to the very large scale of these programs, the portion
made available for biomedical research often represented a considerable
increase over previous funding possibilities. Thus, to understand the
transformation of the biomedical sciences in the post-war period, it is
essential to take these programs into account and examine specifically
the kind of experimental and social practices that they promoted. The
objective of this paper is to move beyond the standard story of individual
physicists entering biology, towards a broader picture of how biologists
and medical researchers adapted to the changing research environment of
the Atomic age and to the dominating role of physicists in science policy.
In this paper, I explore the setting up and the framing of the early policy
of the Swiss Commission for Atomic Science (CSA) between 1958 and 1962.
I highlight how, starting in 1945, biologists and medical researchers
contributed to forge the meaning of the expression "atoms for peace".
I focus specifically on the debates surrounding the 1953 referendum against
the establishment of CERN, the 1955 conference on "peaceful uses
of atomic energy" and the political debates surrounding the creation
of the CSA. Finally, I give an overview of the research that was supported
by this program and reflect on its long-term consequences. |
Guarding the Atomic Secret:
Theory and Theorists in the Early Cold War
David Kaiser,
MIT, Cambridge, MA
| Theoretical physicists emerged as the most consistent whipping-boys of McCarthyism: repeatedly subjected to illegal surveillance by the FBI, paraded in front of HUAC more frequently than any other academic specialists, charged time and again in the media and federal courts with being the "weakest links" in national security, and widely considered to be more inherently susceptible to Communist propaganda than any other group of academics. Lurking behind the formulaic depictions of theoretical physicists in the US during the early Cold War years lay a specific idea of how science works, not just how scientists behave. By tracing discussions of purported "atomic secrets" and their "red" keepers, we learn about the shifting cultural and political valence of "pure science" within postwar America. |
The Making of the Soviet Bomb and the Shaping of Cold War Science
Alexei Kojevnikov,
University of Georgia, Athens
| The specter of the atomic bomb dominated science policy and public discourse about science for approximately a dozen years: from the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima until the 1957 launching of Sputnik and the Soviet victory in the space race. This paper begins by analyzing the strategic choices and managerial approaches employed by the Soviet project to build atomic and thermonuclear bombs. The wealth of recently declassified archival documents allow one to answer with sufficient certainty some questions that previously could only be discussed hypothetically. It is possible, in particular, to find out which aspects of the Soviet atomic effort followed the Manhattan project model, and which differed from it. The paper then discusses how the experience with the atomic bomb influenced structural features of Soviet science in general, and the resulting transformation in its public image and social standing. Finally, I will look at the international implications of the Soviet bomb with regard to science and science policy, and the effects it had on organization of research in the United States and other countries |