Here My Husband Worked for Twenty-Five Years, but That Was Over Ten Years Ago He Left
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Atomic Heritage Foundation Workshop Transcript This is the full transcript from the workshop hosted by the Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Transforming the Relationship between Science and Society: Interpreting the Manhattan Project” on February 14-15, 2013. The workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation's Informal Science Education program in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) and the Science, Technology and Society Program in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). The workshop considered recent scholarship about the Manhattan Project and determine how the issues of science and society raised by the development of the atomic bomb can inform and be integrated with contemporary issues. The workshop's goals were to advance the inter-disciplinary scholarship and to generate a set of ideas and recommendations for the development of exhibits, programs and media about this topic and its relevance to the 21st Century. The participants grappled with the challenges that arise when presenting issues raised by science in the context of history, society and culture. Please note that because of the length of the transcript, we have not attempted to identify every speaker, nor have we attempted to closely edit the entire transcript. We have left the timecodes in the transcript, but as we have edited the videos, the timecodes do not always correspond to the videos on YouTube. To view videos of the presentations and some of the discussion sections, please visit our YouTube page’s playlist AHF Workshop: Interpreting the Manhattan Project. Introduction Cynthia Kelly: Good Morning. Welcome to the Atomic Heritage Foundation’s new offices. We are very grateful to the law firm of Latham & Watkins where my husband worked for twenty-five years, but that was over ten years ago he left. And it just continues to be very gracious in letting us use their facilities, which are incredibly high tech and gorgeous. They are recording this session. There are people in Los Angeles who are peering in on our conference, but soon we will have the ability to put all, or parts of this, online, which is great. Our idea is that we would at least have the excerpts of the presentations available. We’ll try to transcribe the entire proceedings, and then have a report that will be a synthesis of this. But it will be very helpful to make sure we don’t lose any morsel of good ideas that are contributed in this. I should start by thanking all of you for coming. We are so delighted to have such a distinguished group of humanitarians, scholars, authors, and museum experts that I think will be the best team to try to tackle this issue of how to present to the public the transforming power of science on society in all sorts of predictable and unpredictable ways. Using the Manhattan Project as a case study, which I think is of course, dear to the hearts of many here whose museums are dedicated to interpreting the Manhattan Project and to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving this history and trying to get a Manhattan Project National Historical Park. 1 Atomic Heritage Foundation Workshop Transcript I should probably let everybody know how excited we are that the Congress that kind of ran out of time and energy, as you might have noticed last fall and left our park legislation hanging, has gotten renewed vim and vigor. The Senate Committee is looking to try to get the bills that were left over last year, the top picks, and we are sure we’re one of them, moving forward as early as this spring, March or April. So we’re very excited. Senator Ron Wyden of [00:03:00] Oregon has taken over the chairmanship of the committee, and he is going to be visiting the B Reactor, which is our iconic reactor in Hanford in a couple of days. And as Heather just said, “If you want to see the B Reactor, you have to fall in love with it.” So we’re sure that legislation will be forthcoming, which just makes this conference even more timing. I also want to recognize that we’re very fortunate today that we have several representatives from the National Park Service, both here today at the session, and coming this evening to talk to us about the challenges they face, and then how we might collaborate and work together. We also have a representative of the Department of Energy, because they’re our partners in this. What I’d like to do is to just take a minute and let each of you identify yourselves briefly. My job today is trying to keep the folks on schedule. It’s a difficult position, because I’d love to take each topic and let it play out until the end, but that might be several weeks from now when we finally exhaust each of these topics. So you’ll think I sort of know nothing by saying, “No. That’s enough on that,” because I know these are hugely complex and maybe even delicious topics to discuss. But we’re just going to have to be a sampler. Try to distil the top ideas and we’ll have to continue the conversation in the future. Robert Norris: Hi. I’m Robert Norris, and I’m a biographer of General Leslie Groves. The name of the book is Racing for the Bomb. I’m also on the Atomic Heritage Foundation and Advisory Board, and currently a fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. Cameron Reed: Good morning. I’m Cameron Reed. I’m a physics professor at Alma College in Michigan, a small liberal arts college. My sort of research area is a physics and history project, and I’m currently working on a textbook covering a science and history project to be published I hope later this year. Kirsten Buchner: Hi. My name is Kirsten Buchner and I’m here to document the proceedings. I’m the workshop evaluator. So I will be observing everyone’s participation, and maybe I’ll chime in if it seems prudent. Then afterwards I will be asking you [00:06:00] for your feedback regarding what you thought took place here. Moderator: Just make sure the people who will be trying to transcribe this can hear. These are little mics right before you. Alex, whom you’ll meet in a minute, has control to turn them all on. If you’re a presenter, she’ll have everybody else’s off, except for the three presenters who will sit here. We’re going to do a little musical chairs, because the camera can focus in on the presenters. You can see our picture up there. That’s the whole room where you can see there are people here, but you really can’t tell what color tie he has on and that kind of thing. So we’ll have the camera zoom in on the presenters when they’re presenting, and only their mics will be on. During the discussion, you really need to lean forward and make sure your voice is clearly recorded. 2 Atomic Heritage Foundation Workshop Transcript Kirsten Buchner: And please make sure the tech cards are not covering the microphones. Moderator: Right, that is a problem. Find your mic. Okay, go ahead Alex. Alex Wellerstein: I’m Alex Wellerstein. I’m an historian of science. I’m at the Center for History and Physics at the American Institute of Physics. I work on the history of nuclear secrecy. I have a book eventually coming out, and I have a blog at www.nuclearsecrecy.com. Linda Deck: Hi everyone. I’m Linda Deck. I’m the Director of the Bradbury Science Museum at Los Alamos National Laboratory. I’ve been a museum professional for over thirty years now with a lifelong interest in Informal Science Learning, and how to engage users in science learning, not just visitors or observers. They have to be users. Kelly Moore: I’m Kelly Moore. I’m a Sociologist of Science at Lorelei University in Chicago. I am here to talk in part about conceptions of social responsibility among scientists in the postwar period, based in part on the book that I published in 2008 called Disrupting Science. It’s about scientists in the military in the postwar period. Angela Creager: Hi. I’m Angela Creager. I’m the Historian of Science. I teach at Princeton. My focus is on postwar biology and medicine, and I have a book that’s in press coming out this fall that looks at the history of radioisotopes and especially their connection to the Manhattan Project and the new technology that were developed with the bomb. Alex Levy: Hi. I’m Alex Levy. I’ve been the Program Manager at H-Net for a year now. If you have any questions ask me. Carla Borden: I’m Carla Borden, a writer and editor. I’ve spent thirty-five years at the Smithsonian, and I’m planning to turn these discussions into a cogent and inspiring report. [00:09:00] Alan Friedman: Good morning. I’m Alan Friedman. I’m a physicist who wandered into a science museum in 1972 and never came out. My area is how to communicate through the medium of museums and science centers. And almost as far back I also was coauthor of a book called Einstein as Myth and Muse, which had one chapter on the relationship between Einstein and the bomb, both the real and the supposed much celebrated in fiction, and unfortunately quite a lot of what claims to be nonfiction.