American Science in an Age of Anxiety

by John Wang

No professional group in the United States benefited more from World War II than the scientific community. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists enjoyed unprecedented public visibility and political influence as a new elite whose expertise now seemed critical to America's future. But as the United States grew committed to Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union and the ideology of anticommunism came to dominate American politics, scientists faced an increasingly vigorous regimen of security and loyalty clearances as well as the threat of intrusive investigations by the notorious House Committee on Un-American Activities and other government bodies.
This book is the first major study of American scientists' encounters with Cold War anticommunism in the decade after World War II. By examining cases of individual scientists subjected to loyalty and security investigations, the organizational response of the scientific community to political attacks, and the relationships between Cold War ideology and postwar science policy, Jessica Wang demonstrates the stifling effects of anticommunist ideology on the politics of science. She exposes the deep divisions over the Cold War within the scientific community and provides a complex story of hard choices, a community in crisis, and roads not taken.

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 8, 1999

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reviewed by RAH by Brian Balogh, who sees this as "90s" history in which "even the losers -- especially the losers -- effect change." Turning her sites to the community of atomic scientists in the cold war, Wang finds "agency within the agencies." She pits the progressive scientists of the Federation American Scientists (FAS) against the conservative "elite science administrators" of an older generation. In setting up the the Atomic Energy Committee (AEC), the progressives won civilian control of atomic energy. Controversy soon arose over the National Science Foundation (NSF), in which Vannevar Bush sought to establish an autonomous board and the progressives sought to make the foundation more responsive to the needs of the broader society by providing political oversight and allowing grant money to flow to non-elite scientists. Under the pressure of the HUAC and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), progressive scientists were soon under intense pressure. A regime of intimidation set in where the FBI conducted social sabotage to socially isolate the less prominent scientists with left leanings. Staunch Civil Libertarians live David Lilienthal were complicit in this "purge" as loyalty oaths, non-communist affidavits and FBI background investigations were put into place. By 1950, the progressive left had been silenced. While Wang condemns the lack of a more public campaign of resistance by the liberally inclined scientists, Balogh finds that the institutional politics and larger setting of public opinion renders her view simplistic. Rather than condemning the progressive scientists, perhaps we should cast their "quiet diplomacy" in defense of civil rights as a reasonable approach to the question in the face of overwhelming public anxiety over the bomb? Perhaps, as Daddy King said to his son Martin "Its better to be a living dog than a dead lion"?