IN SPUTNIK’S SHADOW

IN SPUTNIK’S SHADOW

The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America

Zuoyue Wang

Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wang, Zuoyue, 1963– In Sputnik’s shadow : the President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War America / Zuoyue Wang. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8135-4331-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Science and state—United States—History—20th century. 2. United States. President’s Science Advisory Committee. 3. Sputnik satellites. 4. Cold War. 5. United States— Politics and government—1953–1961. I. Title. Q127.U6W365 2008 338.973'0609045—dc22 2007035777 A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Manufactured in the United States of America To Xu Liangying and Lawrence Badash, My Mentors

Contents

List of Illustrations — ix Preface — xi Note to the Reader — xv Abbreviations Used in Text — xvii

Introduction — 1

Part I Prelude: Before Sputnik

1 American Public Science, 1863–1945 — 13 2 The Origins of Technological Skepticism, 1945–1950 — 23 3 Mobilizing Science for the Korean War under Truman, 1950–1952 — 32 4 Science and the National Security State under Eisenhower, 1952–1957 — 42

Part II Ike, Sputnik, and the Rise of PSAC

5 Eisenhower, Sputnik, and the Creation of PSAC, 1957 — 71 6 PSAC and the Launching of NASA, 1957–1960 — 88 7 Military Technology, 1957–1960 — 100 8 The Search for a Nuclear Test Ban, 1957–1960 — 120 9 The Politics of Big Science, 1957–1960 — 142 10 The Control of Science Policy under Eisenhower, 1957–1960 — 158

Part III The Politics of Technological Skepticism

11 Science at the New Frontier under Kennedy, 1960–1963 — 183 12 Responding to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, 1962–1963 — 199 13 Testing the Limits, 1961–1963 — 219 14 “Scientists for Johnson,” 1964 — 236

vii viii Contents

15 PSAC, the Vietnam War, and the ABM Debate, 1964–1968 — 258 16 The Politics of Technological Dissent under Nixon, 1969–1973 — 287 Epilogue — 311 Conclusion — 318

Appendix — 325 Abbreviations Used in Notes — 329 Notes — 333 Bibliography — 419 Index — 443 Illustrations

4.1. President Eisenhower meeting with the Science Advisory Committee of the Offi ce of Defense Mobilization, 1954. — 50 10.1. President Eisenhower holding his last meeting with the President’s Science Advisory Committee, 1960. — 174 11.1. President Kennedy meeting with the President’s Science Advisory Committee, 1961. — 189 14.1. President Johnson meeting with science adviser Donald Hornig and his predecessor Jerome Wiesner. — 237

ix

Preface

Even though I grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, I did not escape the shadow of Sputnik. Just as it sent a shock wave of apprehension through the West in the bitterly divided Cold War, the satellite stirred a great euphoria for the social- ist system in the East. In China, Communist leader Mao Zedong, armed with party scientists’ supposed “scientifi c proofs” (dissidents had been crushed months earlier in the Anti-Rightist purge), launched the country into an ambitious but ultimately disastrous Great Leap Forward campaign of rapid industrialization and agricul- tural collectivization. My own parents barely survived the resultant famine, but millions of others were not so lucky. When I was born in 1963, the so-called years of natural disasters were just over but their eff ects could still be felt. Offi cially, however, Sputnik and the Great Leap Forward remained positive milestones of the march of communism in China during the decade of the Cul- tural Revolution (1966–1976) when I went to school. It was not until I went to college that I learned on my own—as physics majors we were not taught much beyond technical subjects—the full-scale destruction of the campaign and not until I turned from physics to the history of science in my graduate studies did I under- stand the crucial role that Sputnik played during the Cold War. This book, however, did not start as a study of the impact of Sputnik per se. It had its origin partly in my own political baptism when I took part in a debate between liberal and conservative scientists over the relationship between science and politics in China in the early 1980s. At the time I was a graduate student at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, studying the history of modern physics with historian of science Xu Liangying and astrophysicist Fang Lizhi. Their advo- cacy of science and democracy as the pillars of modern society had a great appeal to young people of my generation. When Fang and Xu were attacked by party philosophers for deviating from orthodox Marxism in their historical interpreta- tion of modern science, my fellow graduate students and I joined in the fray on our mentors’ side.1 The experience left me with two questions, one historical and the other political: What had shaped the relationship between scientists and the state in history in diff erent cultural and national contexts? What should be the proper role of science in a democratic society? By the time Xu and especially Fang were embroiled in Chinese politics leading to the Tiananmen Square tragedy in 1989, I was already in the United States as a PhD candidate at the University of California trying to decide on a dissertation topic with these two questions in mind. With fresh memories of the tension between the Chinese scientists and the state and with growing interest in American science and society in mind, I eventually chose, under the wise guidance of my advisor Lawrence Badash, to

xi xii Preface examine the role of American scientists in national and international politics in the post-Sputnik era through a study of the experience of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). At the time, not all PSAC-related documents had been declassifi ed; even today some still remain classifi ed. Enough of them have now been opened, however, to enable one to piece together at least a fi rst draft of the committee’s history in broad historical context. In addition, in the early 1990s Professor Badash introduced me to Glenn T. Seaborg, the Nobel chemistry laure- ate at Berkeley, to help him write his memoirs as chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission for the decade of 1961–1971. Even though Dr. Seaborg passed away in 1999 before fi nishing that memoir (an autobiography that he wrote with the help of his son Eric did appear in 2001), the access to his papers and journals that he so generously gave me allowed me to gain a unique perspective on PSAC from that of a committee member as well as the head of a major federal agency.2 Taking advantage of all these available sources and the opportunities to interview a number of former PSAC scientists and staff members, I thus started my own journey to understand PSAC and the politics of science in Cold War America, with this book as its result. What I have found, as I have tried to argue in the book, is that the most important contribution of PSAC was not its advice to the government on what technology could do, but, rather, what it could not do. It is this sense of technological skepticism, I believe, that we still need in our own age of global technological enthusiasm and renewed American militarism if we are to prevent future Great Leap Forwards and escape the various shadows of Sputnik. My journey toward the completion of this book has been a long but not a lonely one. My greatest debts are to Professor Xu, who introduced me to the his- tory of science, provided me with support and encouragement, and above all, by his own courageous advocacy of human rights, off ered a model, for me and many others, of what it means to be a socially responsible intellectual; and to Professor Badash, who likewise has not only guided my professional growth as a historian of science and my progress on this book, but also infl uenced in many ways my thinking about American science and society with his scholarship and his social activism on behalf of justice and civil liberty. I am fortunate to have had them as my mentors and proudly dedicate this book to them. This book benefi ted from the interviews that I have conducted with former PSAC members and others associated with it as listed in the Appendix, and many of them—especially William O. Baker, Richard Garwin, Wolfgang Panofsky, and Glenn Seaborg—also kindly gave me access to their fi les. I thank them all for their time, interest, and valuable information and insights. With gratitude and admira- tion I also acknowledge the excellent professional assistance I have received from archivists and colleagues in all the archives that I have visited, especially Robin Chandler, then at the SLAC Archives; Marjorie H. Cianlante at the National Archives; Judith Goodstein at the Caltech Archives; Shannon Jarett at the Johnson Library; Dwight E. Strandberg at the Eisenhower Library, and Roger Launius, then at the NASA History Offi ce. Preface xiii

I am deeply grateful to anonymous reviewers and a large number of mentors, colleagues, and friends who have kindly read parts or all of the manuscript during various stages of development and given me their constructive criticisms, especially Kai-Henrik Barth, Otis Graham, Jacob Hamblin, John Heilbron, Donald Hornig, Marcel LaFollette, Patrick McCray, Peter Neushul, Naomi Oreskes, Michael Osborne, Wolfgang Panofsky, George Rathjens, Jeff rey Stine, Peter Westwick, and Chris Young. Without implying their agreement with my interpretations, I thank them all, as I do the following for fruitful discussions or assistance: Cathryn Carson, Chen Hengliu, Robert Crease, Ronald Doel, Fan Dainian, Paul Forman, G. Allen Greb, Walter Grunden, Intaek Han, Gregg Herken, Elaine Kistiakowsky, John Krige, Li Peishan, Shidong Li, Liu Bing, Haiming Liu, Ronald Rainger, Michael Riordan, Bruce L. R. Smith, Steven Soter, Yunguang Tian, Mark Walker, Jessica Wang, Zhao Zhongli, and Benjamin Zulueta. I thank my colleagues at the California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly), Pomona—especially John Moore, Daniel Lewis, and Mahmood Ibrahim in the History Department; Dean Barbara Way of the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences; Peggy Perry in the Faculty Center for Professional Development; and Kate Seifert in the library— for their support, and my students—especially Jolie Valentine, Fares Alhassen, Tokuo Nakamoto, and Paul Traska—for assistance, discussion, and, in Paul’s case, the Herculean job of preparing the index. Special thanks to Audra Wolfe, Kendra Boileau, and Doreen Valentine, my editors, and the production staff at Rutgers University Press, for their patience and support. A fellowship from the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) of the University of California enabled me to carry out the initial research and writing. I also thank the following institutions for travel and research grants: The American Institute for Physics’ Center for History of Physics, the Eisenhower Institute, the Kennedy Library, the Rockefeller Archives Center, the History Associates at UCSB, and the Faculty Center for Professional Development at Cal Poly Pomona. Finally, I want to thank my family—my wife Hui Shen, my daughter Sophie, and my son Kevin, as well as my parents and parents-in-law—for their love, under- standing, sacrifi ces, and support. In particular, conversations with Hui about her experiences as a computer engineer have enriched my understanding of the role of science and technology in society, and in writing this book I have been inspired by the hope that that it might help, in however small a way, make the future world of our children and their generation a more livable one.

Note to the Reader

To save space, books, book chapters, and journal articles are usually cited with the last name(s) of the author(s) and the year of publication. Full citation can be found in the bibliography. Abbreviations are usually used when citing primary source materials. A list of such abbreviations precedes the notes section. In case several sources for the same primary source material are available, eff orts have been made to cite the most complete or the most widely available ones. Unless otherwise noted, interviews cited were by the author. See bibliography for a complete list of the interviews with details about dates and places.

xv

Abbreviations Used in Text

AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science ABM Anti-ballistic missile ACDA Arms Control and Disarmament Agency AEC Atomic Energy Commission AGS alternating-gradient synchrotron AICBM Anti-intercontinental ballistic missile AID Agency for International Development AIDS Acquired Immunodefi ciency Syndrome ANP Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion APS American Physical Society ARPA Advanced Research Projects Agency ASAT Anti-satellite weapons Bev Billion-electron-volt BNL Brookhaven National Laboratory BOB Bureau of the Budget BTL Bell Telephone Laboratories Caltech California Institute of Technology CBS Columbia Broadcasting System CBW Chemical and biological warfare or weapons CEA Council of Economic Advisers CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research CIA Central Intelligence Agency CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations COSPUP Committee on Science and Public Policy DCPG Defense Communications Planning Group DDRE Director of defense research and engineering DDT Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane DOD Department of Defense DSB Defense Science Board DST Department of Science and Technology EIR Environmental Impact Reports EOP Executive Offi ce of the President FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation FCST Federal Council for Science and Technology FDA Food and Drug Administration FPCB Federal Pest Control Board FY Fiscal Year

xvii xviii Abbreviations Used in Text

GAC General Advisory Committee GNP Gross National Product HEW Health, Education, and Welfare Department IBM International Business Machines ICBM Intercontinental ballistic missile ICSRD Interdepartmental Committee on Scientifi c Research and Development IDL Interdisciplinary laboratories IGY International Geophysical Year IOC Initial operational capabilities IRBM Intermediate-range ballistic missile JCAE Joint Committee on Atomic Energy JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff KIST Korean Institute of Science and Technology MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology MURA Midwestern Universities Research Association NACA National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics NAS National Academy of Sciences NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NDEA National Defense Education Act NIE National Intelligence Estimate NIH National Institutes of Health NMD National Missile Defense NORAD North American Air Defense Command NRC National Research Council NSB National Science Board NSC National Security Council NSF National Science Foundation ODDRE Offi ce of Director of Defense Research and Engineering ODM Offi ce of Defense Mobilization ODM-SAC Science Advisory Committee of the Offi ce of Defense Mobilization OMB Offi ce of Management and Budget ONR Offi ce of Naval Research OSRD Offi ce of Scientifi c Research and Development OST Offi ce of Science and Technology OSTP Offi ce of Science and Technology Policy PSAC President’s Science Advisory Committee PCAST President’s Council (Committee) of Advisers on Science and Technology R&D Research and Development RDB Research and Development Board SAGE Semi-automatic ground environment SAMOS Satellite and missile observation system Abbreviations Used in Text xix

SAC Strategic Air Command SANE National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy SDI Strategic Defense Initiative SESPA Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Actions SLAC Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SSC Superconducting Super Collider SST Supersonic Transport TCP Technological Capabilities Panel TWG Technical Working Group UC University of California UCLA University of California, Los Angeles UNESCO United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USDA United States Department of Agriculture WHSC White House Science Council WISE Women in Science and Engineering WSEG Weapons Systems Evaluation Group WWII World War II ZGS Zero-gradient synchrotron

IN SPUTNIK’S SHADOW

Introduction

When Dwight Eisenhower met with the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) on December 19, 1960 in the White House, he had much on his mind. A little over a month before, John F. Kennedy had defeated Vice President Richard Nixon in the presidential election. Eisenhower told the scientists that he had been so sure that Nixon would win the election that his thinking about the transition “had all been oriented toward that situation.” He now worried that Kennedy’s brand of liberalism would bring an activist administration, with “centralized dictation and attitude of omniscience.” PSAC, Eisenhower said, “could be an offset to such tendencies.” According to the notes taken by presidential assistant Andrew Goodpaster,

The President said that he had a deep sense of obligation to this group. He noted that more and more he has tended to put science advice into more and more subjects of national policy. He thought that this body holds great infl u- ence in our federal system. Ours is not a system based upon centralized politi- cal direction and domination. Rather it is one which derives the initiative from groups such as this working with the government, but not components of the government. He stressed that he was deeply hopeful that this institution would not be lost under the new administration.1 During the hourlong meeting, Eisenhower did not elaborate on how PSAC (pee-sak), a group of about twenty prominent scientists and engineers that he had brought into the White House in 1957 to work on military technology, space policy, and arms control in the wake of Sputnik, could help curb the growth of big government. He spoke of his personal gratifi cation for the group’s “most impres- sive” and “valuable” work, and for “the stimulation of thought he gained and the broadening and deepening of his own understanding.” Although he recognized the necessity for centralized government control during wartime emergencies, he believed that “for the long pull we must rely on free methods such as this [PSAC] rather than on some political head telling everyone just what to do.” George B. Kistiakowsky, the president’s special assistant for science and technology, or sci- ence adviser, and PSAC chairman, reassured Eisenhower that Kennedy’s transition team had already told him that they would retain PSAC and other elements of the science advisory system with only minor modifi cations.2 What exactly did PSAC scientists do to make Eisenhower “put science advice into more and more subjects of national policy”? Eisenhower himself provided a few hints in the years following his retirement. In his memoir, Eisenhower wrote aff ectionately of his science “wizards” who enlightened him on technical issues

1 2 in sputnik’s shadow and helped him control the space race.3 Then, on his deathbed in 1969, Eisen- hower inquired about “my scientists” to the visiting James Killian, his fi rst science adviser and PSAC chairman, commenting, “You know, Jim, this bunch of scientists was one of the few groups that I encountered in Washington who seemed to be there to help the country and not help themselves.”4 In Eisenhower’s eyes, PSAC appeared not only free of self-interest, but also a “good” scientifi c-technological elite that presented a counterbalance to the military-industrial complex that he would warn the nation of shortly in his famous farewell address.5 To what extent this perception corresponded to the reality of PSAC and American politics of sci- ence is a question of more than historical interest. As we enter a new era of tech- nological enthusiasm, we need more than ever to scrutinize the historical forces still shaping our perceptions of what science and technology can and cannot do for social progress. What attracted Eisenhower the most about the PSAC group and made him put science advice into public policy was, I would argue in this book, not just their advice on what technology could do, but, more importantly, on what it could not do. To the extent that one can speak of a shared ethos of a committee of strong- willed individuals, and of an institution that underwent signifi cant changes over one and a half decades, the most striking characteristic of PSAC was its strong sense of technological skepticism, which recognized the limits of technological solutions to social and political problems, both at home and abroad, during the Cold War. For most members, this consensus emerged out of their experiences of struggling with the question of nuclear weapons during and especially after World War II. The illusion of technological fi xes, PSAC scientists believed, often led to not only a waste of societal resources on impractical developmental projects, such as the $1 billion failure to make a nuclear-powered airplane, but also, sometimes, dangerously misguided public policy, such as the perilous arms race and later the war in Vietnam. Thus, with any given project, the allure of the technological imperative must be tempered with a critical, independent evaluation of both its technical limitations and policy implications. Has the necessary basic research been completed and the project’s technical feasibility been proven before going into costly production? Has it passed a rigorous cost–benefi t analysis? Can it fulfi ll its stated mission and, most important of all, does that mission make sense in the context of broad, long-term policy considerations? Indeed, one critical assumption that underlay PSAC scientists’ technological skepticism was their belief that technical issues could never be neatly and com- pletely separated from social, economic, and political factors, and what was techni- cally feasible was not always desirable in the broader context. This inseparability of the technical and the political led PSAC to break with the traditional injunction that experts should be “on tap, not on top” and to consider both technical and policy issues. Thus, in its critique of the nuclear-powered bomber, a poster child for technological excess, PSAC pointed to not only the fatal technical defects due to lack of basic research on materials and reactors and its unacceptable health and environmental risks, but also the lack of a justifi able mission. Similarly, in areas Introduction 3 outside of military technology, such as space and arms control, PSAC produced critical and infl uential evaluations of American technological programs at the height of the Cold War. Crucially, Eisenhower agreed with PSAC on the need for science advising to integrate technical evaluations and policy considerations. Thus, under him and indeed under his profound infl uence, PSAC carried out investigations aimed at strengthening national security and, at the same time, controlling the arms race and space race with the Soviet Union and curbing the military-industrial complex. Unlimited technological development of nuclear weapons might increase Ameri- can military strength, they argued, but would result in less national and interna- tional security due to the logic of the nuclear arms race. Ironically, as Sputnik helped make the Cold War a total war and usher in a new era of technological enthusiasm, PSAC’s became a rare, technically competent voice for moderation that matched Eisenhower’s own political and fi scal conservatism. They both, for example, questioned the glamour surrounding the two leading technologies in the post-Sputnik era—nuclear power and manned space exploration—as unrealistic and undisciplined hype. In essence, Eisenhower and PSAC were responding not only to Sputnik as a technological challenge, but even more as a symbol of the new technocratic push in its shadow.6 Who were these PSAC scientists? Although not always consistent or without internal dissension, most of them tended to be political liberals or moderates who had worked on either the atomic bomb or radar projects during World War II and continued to serve as consultants to the government on nuclear weapons and other technologies after the war. Most also had supported J. Robert Oppenheimer and James Conant in their tumultuous confl ict with physicists Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence over the H-bomb in late 1949. Even though PSAC was formally established in the White House only in 1957, most members had served on its predecessor, the Science Advisory Committee of the Offi ce of Defense Mobiliza- tion (ODM-SAC), which had been created in 1951 amidst the Korean War crisis. Although not iconic fi gures or household names like Oppenheimer, who had served on the ODM-SAC, PSAC members during the late Eisenhower years were all scientists of stature, experience, and self-confi dence, which enabled them to carry on stimulating discussions as intellectual equals not only among themselves, but also with high-ranking government offi cials, including President Eisenhower himself. The physicists dominated the committee with I. I. Rabi of Columbia, Hans A. Bethe of Cornell, Edward Purcell of Harvard, and John Bardeen of the University of Illinois, just to name a few of those who were or would become Nobel laureates. Other prominent physicists on the committee included James Fisk of Bell Labs, Wolfgang Panofsky of Stanford, Emanuel Piore of IBM, H. P. Robert- son and Robert Bacher of Cal Tech, Lloyd V. Berkner of the Associated Universi- ties Inc., Jerrold R. Zacharias of MIT, and Herbert F. York of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and later the Pentagon. The chemists held their own, with William O. Baker of Bell Labs, Donald F. Hornig of Princeton, Kistiakowsky of Harvard, and Glenn T. Seaborg of Berkeley, another Nobel laureate. Electrical engineers 4 in sputnik’s shadow included Edwin Land, famed inventor of the Polaroid camera, and Jerome Wiesner of MIT. Physiologist and biophysicist Detlev W. Bronk of Rockefeller Institute was an ex offi cio member as president of the National Academy of Sciences. Trained in engineering administration, Killian of MIT was the only member of PSAC without any background in scientifi c research (or an advanced degree). Yet, Killian was so highly valued for his management skills that MIT had appointed him president in 1948, and Eisenhower picked him as his fi rst special assistant to the president for sci- ence and technology, popularly known as the science adviser, and PSAC members elected him chair of the committee from 1957 to 1959. Clearly not all American scientists subscribed to PSAC’s technological skepti- cism. As perhaps the most prominent nuclear physicist of the day, Teller, for exam- ple, was conspicuously missing from the committee roster. Indeed, he would often make a formidable one-man anti-PSAC not only by battling the committee’s various arms control proposals but also by advocating technological fi xes, especially nuclear energy, in all areas of national life. As a popular joke among physicists went, “You got a problem? Eddie’s got a bomb.”7 The split in the scientifi c community, which can be traced to the hydrogen bomb debate in 1949–1950, was not only over the direction of American nuclear policy, but also over whether technology off ered a solution to social and political problems. Although neither Teller nor his most ardent followers ever made it into the PSAC system of science advising, they nevertheless wielded enormous infl uence in Congress and with the military establishment. PSAC remained a signifi cant player in American public policy in the Kennedy and early Johnson years, producing, for example, two infl uential reports on the environmental impact of human activities, one vindicating Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1963 and another sounding an early alarm on global warming in 1965. However, its voice of technological skepticism soon was lost in the turbulent Vietnam War years under Johnson and Nixon. Initially and remarkably, some of the PSAC scientists tried to fi nd technological solutions to the war, if not to win it, at least to moderate it, but most of these eff orts ended in frustration or disillu- sionment. Eventually, many PSAC scientists came to agree with critics of the war outside of the committee that the American sense of technological superiority played a signifi cant part in leading the country into the confl ict. When a number of PSAC members or alumni eventually came to clash openly with the Johnson and Nixon administrations over the antiballistic missile (ABM) system, the Supersonic Transport (SST), and the Vietnam War, these actions led to its marginalization and dissolution, by Nixon, in 1973. In a way, PSAC became a symbol of a unique kind of technological dissent both before and after its demise. Attacked from both the left and right, PSAC sci- entists did not always, or even usually, win the battles, despite early presidential endorsement. They often found themselves in the position of loyal opposition when they tried to curb the arms race, to advance various schemes of arms con- trol, to articulate the cultural as well as practical values of science, and to ally themselves with the forces in the burgeoning modern environmental movement. Yet, PSAC’s brand of technological skepticism was neither a Luddite denial of the Introduction 5 value of technology, nor a radical indictment of it as the source of modern social ills, as brought forth by such humanistic critics as Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul. Yes, they consciously tapped into the undercurrent of anxiety in the age of technological enthusiasm, and their technological critique might have contributed to the countercultural movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and even the postmodern questioning of science and technology. However, the radical relativ- ism and the endorsement of irrationality would certainly have seemed alien to these leaders of the scientifi c community. Indeed, PSAC scientists often advocated technological skepticism as a way to redeem science from its perceived immoral association with nuclear weapons, as symbolized by the destruction of Hiroshima, and, later in the Vietnam War era, with American technological arrogance, envi- ronmental degradation, and the militarization of American society. As scientists, they recognized the often revolutionary potentials of technological changes and advised the government on measures they believed would strengthen national security and achieve other desirable objectives. Indeed, for many of the PSAC scientists, what unifi ed their professional life and their advising to the government was their pursuit and promotion of a technological rationality that centered on critical thinking. Rationality, to them, should not stop at the technical but should be extended into the policy arena as well. Thus theirs was not an argument against technology, but one for appropriate technology, for a broadened concept of tech- nological rationality that encouraged technological development not for its own sake but for its benefi ts in achieving social, political, cultural, and economic goals in a democratic society. By insisting on looking at the “big picture” whenever they examined a particular technology, they abandoned a purely technical approach to the evaluation of technology and adopted instead what historian of technology Thomas P. Hughes calls the systems approach to technology.8

Why Should We Care About PSAC? Since PSAC’s demise, six presidents, several generations of American scientists, and the public at large have had to deal with increasingly more complex interac- tions among science, technology, and society both during and after the Cold War. Are PSAC’s experiences still relevant to us as we enter into a new era of tech- nological promises, symbolized by information technology, biotechnology, and high-tech warfare—“shock and awe”—amidst renewed foreign adventures in Iraq and elsewhere after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack? I believe that they are and that a historical study of PSAC is important not only for its inherent value in understanding a scientifi c institution that linked science, technology, and politics in Cold War America, but also for the lessons that its history holds for us today as a precedent of healthy technological skepticism in an era of technological enthu- siasm. Although PSAC was abolished decades ago and the Cold War has fi nally ended, the tension between technological enthusiasm and skepticism with which PSAC grappled during the Cold War has not left us. PSAC also deserves our attention as a key institution at the interface between the scientifi c community and the broader polity during the Cold War.9 As historian 6 in sputnik’s shadow

Sally Gregory Kohlstedt argues, institutional histories can be a powerful “point of convergence” of intellectual, social, and cultural history of science.10 Studies of scientifi c institutions, including laboratories, academies, and societies, have long held a key place in the history of science and blossomed especially in recent years.11 PSAC’s history fi ts this pattern but also represents a departure: it did not conduct scientifi c research on its own; its membership often shifted; its express purpose was not to represent the scientifi c community, but to serve the needs of the government, and yet it played a key part in the political economy of American science. By examining its history in depth, this study should help shed light on the relationship between science and the American state. The committee might have seemed a small stage, but it off ered a rich and fascinating showcase of the drama of Cold War American science, featuring colorful characters ranging from I. I. Rabi to Richard Garwin and covering issues from missile defense and environmental protection to science education and oceanography. Intellectually, perhaps the greatest value of focusing on PSAC as a scientifi c institution is the possibility of making connections between the diff erent aspects of its activities to help form a big picture of the science–state interaction. Many writ- ers, including PSAC alumni, have written on various parts of the PSAC experience, often as part of a concerted eff ort to restore it in the White House. These studies usually divided the activities of PSAC, and science advising in general, into two dis- tinct categories: science in policy, on the one hand, which referred to the scientists’ use of their expertise to solve technical problems in public policy, or “what can science do for the government,” and, on the other hand, policy for science, which dealt with the federal government’s funding of scientifi c research, that is, “what government can do for science.”12 Such a division is useful, but it tends to give rise to a false dichotomy and make science and policy neatly separable arenas, masking the dynamics of the politics of American science during the Cold War. The two sides of presidential science advising were in fact intimately related to each other. It is a major contention of this study that instead of simply “speaking the truth to power,” as some scholars have characterized the process of presiden- tial science advising, PSAC helped forge complex links between the Cold War and American science, often not without considerations of institutional self-interest.13 Fitting into the politics of post-New Deal American liberalism, American scientists became one interest group among many. For their part, PSAC members became prominent players at the interface between science and state during a time when an overwhelming share of the funding for American science came from the federal government. As such they became “public scientists” who took as their duty to justify and strengthen both the moral and material support for the scientifi c enter- prise from the public and the state. When James Killian called PSAC a “beachhead” of science in government, he was referring to not only science in policy but also policy for science.14 At the same time, the American state, especially that part of it responsible for national security, increasingly relied on science and technology as well. The resultant mutual dependency has led many scholars to debate, fruitfully, over who “used” whom in the Cold War political economy of science. This study Introduction 7 contributes to that discussion, but an even more interesting question for me is how mediators such as the science advisers under study here acted to blur the boundary between the two sides, which were not monolithic to begin with.15

Scope and Themes of the Study This is, thus, a study of the social and political vicissitudes of an elite group of sci- entists in the broader context of modern America, especially during the Cold War. Chronologically, the book starts with a brief historical overview of the evolution of the relationship between American science and state through the fi rst half of the twentieth century, which set the scene for a detailed examination of the ODM- SAC (1951–1957) and PSAC (1957–1973). I examine how scientists gained infl uence during World War II, tried to redeem science during the “Red Scare” in the early 1950s, capitalized on the opportunities in the post-Sputnik period to intensify their dual drive to increase federal support of basic research and control the nuclear arms race, and, fi nally, grappled with the shifting social and political environment in the Vietnam War era. Institutionally PSAC was only one component of the vast post-Sputnik science advising system. By and large, I treat the science adviser, who always served as PSAC chairman on election, together with PSAC, but point out their diff erences when these occurred. The science adviser also headed, after 1959, the Federal Council for Science and Technology (FCST), and after 1962, the Offi ce of Science and Technology (OST). Finally, in the epilogue, I touch on briefl y the post-Nixon revival of presidential science advising, including the debate that led to the establishment of the Offi ce of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in 1976, the President’s Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) in the early 1990s under George H. W. Bush, and the National Science and Technology Council in the 1990s under Bill Clinton, as well as the intensifi ed controversy over science and politics under George W. Bush. The sheer size of the operation of the PSAC system of science advising can be overwhelming. Spanning three decades if one starts from the creation of the ODM-SAC, it involved dozens of panels, hundreds of leading scientists and engi- neers, and the often overlooked staff members, who together worked on topics ranging from nuclear weapons to Big Science to pesticides to the Vietnam War.16 Instead of trying for an exhaustive treatment, I have chosen to be selective in my coverage. Several case studies are examined in detail to provide depth in this largely chronological treatment. These cases look at PSAC’s role in the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the debate over mili- tary technology policy, the search for a nuclear test ban, the funding of the Stan- ford linear electron accelerator, the shaping of the Apollo moon-landing project, the Kennedy administration’s response to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and the debates over the Vietnam War, ABM, and SST in the Johnson and Nixon years.17 Again, the tension between technological enthusiasm and skepticism provides a connection between these seemingly disparate cases and allows one to explore the intricate interplay of science, technology, and public policy in post-Sputnik Cold War America. 8 in sputnik’s shadow

Several themes have emerged from this study that might be usefully highlighted here. First, PSAC’s technological skepticism presumed and capitalized on a distinc- tion between science and technology. To accomplish their dual goal of controlling the arms race and promoting basic research, PSAC, following a long tradition of American public scientists, engaged in what the sociologists of science called “boundary work”: they negotiated the boundary between science and technology (or between basic and applied research), and that between expertise and politics or policy.18 Adapting the famous Vannevar Bush doctrine about basic research as “the pacesetter” to technological progress for the Cold War political environment, PSAC scientists formulated what might be called a “negative assembly-line model” to highlight the critical importance of basic research. Instead of showing science’s positive contributions toward technological progress, PSAC focused on the role of basic research in evaluating technology, or, more important, in showing the limits of technology. A technological project would fail if the basic research necessary for the technology to work—knowledge on high-temperature materials for the mak- ing of a nuclear-powered airplane, for example—was not yet done. In this connection, perhaps the most surprising fi nding is that PSAC members, and many other American scientists, justifi ed federal support of science not so much for science’s and scientists’ direct, positive technical contributions to the Cold War eff ort as for their value in detecting and correcting the defi ciencies of technologies. In other words, PSAC tried to redeem the values of science by bank- ing on the utility of scientists’ technological skepticism. Capitalizing on its key position in science in policy, PSAC, perhaps more than any other group, helped boost the national expenditure for science in the aftermath of the Sputnik shock. Of course this did not mean that the more traditional justifi cation for science funding based on promises of direct and positive technological payoff s ceased to exist; it remained a strong argument, especially in Congress. Yet, the Cold War gave rise to new rationales. In addition to highlighting the importance of tech- nological evaluation, the Cold War also pushed national prestige as a powerful justifi cation for funding science, including the $100 million Stanford accelerator, in the wake of Sputnik. Thus, PSAC’s history is a part of the history of the Cold War not only because PSAC played a key part in defense and space policy in that period, but also because its justifi cation of federal funding for science refl ected the profound impact of the Cold War on American life. Inasmuch as PSAC sci- entists, most of whom came from academia, benefi ted institutionally from the science–state partnership they advocated, they were not as pure or disinterested as Eisenhower thought. Indeed, in pointing out the limits of various technological fi xes to social and political problems, PSAC scientists often advocated increased government sup- port for basic research as, at least partly, a remedy for the perceived technological defi ciencies. Thus, basic research was justifi ed not only as a source of new tech- nological initiatives, as Vannevar Bush had argued, but perhaps more important, as a way to prevent the government from going into blind alleys in costly applied research and development. In many ways, PSAC advocated basic research as a way Introduction 9 to compensate for the lack of a market mechanism in the command economy that characterized defense research and development, crucial for the development of a sound and economical system of military technology. Thus, promotion of basic research formed an integral part of PSAC’s technological skepticism, which con- veniently linked the Cold War needs of technological evaluation and the funding of American science. Ironically, in PSAC’s evaluations of various military technologies, nuclear test ban schemes, and space programs and projects, PSAC scientists often employed their engineering skills more than their scientifi c, theoretical expertise. In other words, science in policy was often technology policy, whereas policy for science corresponds to the conventional meaning of science policy. In essence I am carry- ing the thesis of the historian of science Peter Galison—that American scientists depended more on technology than usually recognized in postwar science—from the laboratory to the arena of public policymaking.19 It was no wonder that some of the scientists most infl uential in PSAC were experimentalists. Scientifi c brilliance certainly helped, especially when the prestige of scientists was used to legitimate policies. However, in the everyday life of a science adviser in the trench, technical profi ciency probably counted more than the scientifi c discoveries on which the sci- ence advisers made their reputations.20 This study also reveals the extent to which PSAC was engaged in boundary work on what was technical and what was political. We will see, for example, during the investigation on the technical feasibility of policing a nuclear test ban, that at various stages PSAC members tried to use, alternatively, its claim to “tech- nical” expertise to fend off “political” oppositions, and its insistence to go beyond narrow “technical” considerations to justify its policy recommendations. We will also see how, eventually, PSAC scientists came to repudiate the technological approach to both the arms race and arms control. “The United States will have to make,” they concluded in 1960, “a purely political decision” regarding the risks and benefi ts of a test ban.21 Their recognition of the necessity to view scientifi c and technological solutions within a social and political context underlined their insistence on examining not only the means, but also the ends of technological programs of the government. It was this insistence on examining the broader social and political implications of technology that led PSAC on its road to dis- sent under Johnson and Nixon. In the end, PSAC scientists might be said to have shared both the thinking and fates of technological dissidents in other national and political contexts, such as the Russian engineer Peter Palchinsky that Loren Graham has so eloquently chronicled.22 This book thus serves two purposes: it is the fi rst full-length history of the rise and fall of PSAC, and at the same time an inquiry into the role of scientists as technological skeptics in America during the Cold War and beyond. Its primary aim is neither to celebrate nor condemn wholesale the scientists under study, but rather to understand what motivated them in their interactions with the American state and what the contour of those interactions in turn reveals about the place of science and technology in that particular period of American history. It is a study 10 in sputnik’s shadow in the history of science in that it examines the evolution of the political environ- ment, social status, and public images of American science and scientists. It is a study in American history as it explores a professional community’s role in Ameri- can national policy and the growth of big government. As an investigation into the ways science and state reshaped each other during the global ideological confl ict from Eisenhower to Nixon, this is also a vital part of Cold War history suitable for transnational comparative analyses. PART I PRELUDE Before Sputnik

1 American Public Science, 1863–1945

When the Soviet Union launched the world’s fi rst artifi cial satellite, Sputnik, on October 4, 1957, the feat did more than herald the space age. It also put the spotlight of world attention on the role of science, technology, and their practitioners in the Cold War. Widely viewed as a crowning achievement of Soviet socialism, the satellite launch challenged the perception of Russian technological backwardness, putting an immediate end to the American joke that the Soviets could not sneak a nuclear “suitcase bomb” into the country because they had not perfected the suitcase. Instead, the American public now cried over an apparent U.S. inferiority in science and technology and worried about a menacing “missile gap” with the Soviets. Sputnik, although designated as a peaceful contribution to the Interna- tional Geophysical Year, had carried all the geopolitical signifi cance of a major military-technological project, as it glided into orbit atop a rocket designed to send a hydrogen bomb to its target. It led many, including President Dwight D. Eisen- hower, to realize that a “total Cold War” had dawned in which science, technology, education, and the pursuit of national prestige ranked with military and economic strengths as vital forces.1 Facing an unprecedented challenge to his leadership, President Eisenhower made reform of science policy the centerpiece of his response. He quickly announced the appointment of James R. Killian, Jr., president of the Massachu- setts Institute of Technology (MIT), as his special assistant for science and tech- nology, and the reconstitution of the Science Advisory Committee of the Offi ce of Defense Mobilization, which had existed since the Korean War but fallen into obscurity, into the high-profi le President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) to help him make government science and technology policy. In many ways, PSAC members became “public scientists” engaged in “pub- lic science”—a term used by the historian Frank M. Turner to characterize the attempt of prominent British scientists to justify public support for their profession at the turn of the twentieth century.2 There was, however, a key diff erence between Turner’s British public scientists and PSAC members: the latter were not only advocates for science in the public arena, but also active participants in government science and technology policy. Because Sputnik called into question the adequacy of both the government’s support for and use of science, PSAC scientists took on both “science in policy” to make science better serve the government’s needs and “policy for science” so that the government could support science eff ectively. As PSAC scientists gained infl uence under Eisenhower, controversies ensued over the proper role of expert advisers to the government. Convergence on a

13 14 Before Sputnik number of fundamental issues led President Eisenhower to rely more and more on his science advisers. However, as Killian later refl ected, such an almost total trust sometimes made PSAC scientists and others uncomfortable:

Eisenhower had an exaggerated confi dence in the unbiased judgment of the scientists whom he called upon to help him. He somehow came to have a feel- ing that these advisers, by virtue of being scientists, were endowed with an objectivity in technical matters that he didn’t fi nd in other advisers. Actually he overestimated our capacity for objectivity, particularly when we were asked to advise on controversial problems where elements of policy or politics were interlaced. Nevertheless, Eisenhower did have this somewhat naïve confi dence in science advice.3 As Killian implied, not everyone agreed with Eisenhower about scientists’ objectivity. Before long, critics began to question whether PSAC scientists were there to serve the interest of the government, the needs of which often lay in practical technology, or the promotion of science, their own profession. Despite Eisenhower’s endorsement, PSAC scientists’ ventures into public policy drew criticisms, especially when they challenged presidential policies under Johnson and Nixon. Shouldn’t science advisers “stick to the facts” and render neutral, objective, technical judgments regardless of their political and social views? After all, policymaking involved much more than technical considerations and it was the prerogative of the policymaker to accept or reject science advice. In response, PSAC scientists, although agreeing on the need for independence in rendering technological evaluations, doubted that it was ever possible to draw a clear line between the technical and the political. Any attempt to adjudicate such complex issues in a purely technical setting—such as in a Science Court—would probably fail, they believed, because, as Killian pointed out, most issues in science advising “involve political, ethical, and scientifi c considerations in a way that they cannot be wholly disentangled.”4 Indeed, a central argument of this book is that the dia- lectics over what counted as the technical and the political drove the dynamics of American public science and science advising. The duality question, of course, predated Sputnik and reached far back into the American experience of integrating science and politics. Thus, before an analysis of post-Sputnik developments, a prehistory of the debate over the relations among science, technology, and public policy is necessary both to illustrate the scientists’ long-standing dilemma and to sketch out the intellectual and political landscape during the years when the generation of PSAC scientists came of age. As we will see, American public scientists often had to negotiate three overlapping boundaries: between science and the government, between science and technology, and between the technical and the political. To what extent did the question of duality condition scientists’ initial participation in public policy? Once they did begin to play a role in policy, how did their under- standing of the relationship between science and technology shape their views of the potentials and limits of technological solutions to social and political American Public Science, 1863–1945 15 problems? Finally, how did they defend crossing over from the technical to the political in the policy arena?

A Dual Allegiance? The problematic duality of American public scientists as servants to both the gov- ernment and science accompanied some of the earliest experiments in institution- alized scientifi c advising. In 1863, during the Civil War, for example, a group of elite American scientists, the so-called Lazzaroni, managed to get Congress to pass and President Abraham Lincoln to sign an act to incorporate the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Although this charter only explicitly dealt with science-in-policy by authorizing the NAS to off er science advice “whenever called upon by any depart- ment of the Government,” its promoters clearly intended to advance the interest of American science as well by providing the United States with a “worthy counter- part” to the Royal Society of London and the French Academy.5 Indeed, by the early twentieth century, the NAS had largely evolved into an honorifi c society of scien- tifi c elites, ill prepared to serve the government’s needs when another crisis, World War I, came along. It took reformers within the academy to persuade its leadership and President Woodrow Wilson to establish the National Research Council (NRC), which, as the operating arm of the NAS, utilized scientists both inside and outside of the academy to conduct studies for the government.6 By the time a third crisis, the Great Depression, arrived in the 1930s, it was widely recognized that even the NRC had evolved more to serve scientifi c disci- plines than the New Deal administration. Activist scientifi c leaders, once again, convinced the NAS leadership and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create a Sci- ence Advisory Board (SAB) to help the government “deal with specifi c problems in the various departments” through the machinery of the NAS-NRC.7 Although the press dubbed it FDR’s “Scientifi c Cabinet,” the SAB was not quite an open invitation to scientists to participate in policymaking, and conservative members of the academy feared that it would open the door to political interference in sci- ence. Most prominent scientists, however, welcomed the move. They hoped that it would help to calm the so-called revolt against science, which blamed technologi- cal automation for unemployment, and to protect federal research programs that faced budget cuts. Chaired by Karl Compton, physicist and MIT president, the board was to operate for two years and without federal funds.8 In his new position, Compton soon emerged as a leading public scientist in America.9 When the NAS met at MIT in December 1933, Compton, in his welcome speech, predicted that the government’s need for expert advice, on the one hand, and the “competency and disinterestedness” of his group, on the other, would open ways for “further extending the prestige of the academy and its service to the public.” He hoped that his SAB would help counteract the technocracy movement, which had dramatized technological unemployment and had “unduly shaken pub- lic confi dence in the basic services of science to society.” Specifi cally, he promised to cooperate with social scientists to create a permanent science advisory and pol- icy mechanism so that “science and the government may better serve the public” 16 Before Sputnik and quiet the rising criticism of science and technology.10 In this spirit Compton proposed in 1934, on behalf of the SAB, that the federal government spend $75 mil- lion for academic research as a way to put science to work for national welfare and to ensure the “best possible advancement of science in America.”11 Compton underestimated the duality problem. Despite his professed disin- terestedness and off er of cooperation, FDR’s brain trust of social scientists, who claimed to represent the interest of the government, dismissed the new board as a spokesman for the scientifi c community. Whereas Compton tried to position scientists as one of the many interest groups that began to dominate American politics after the onset of FDR’s New Deal liberalism and argue that science, as a driving force of American economy, deserved federal support, his reasoning failed to impress those infl uential around Roosevelt. The National Resources Board, dominated by social scientists and headed by Frederick A. Delano, the president’s uncle, not only challenged the size of Compton’s proposal, but also disputed the main value of scientifi c research. Research, especially in the social sciences, was needed not to produce more technological progress, but to aid national planning as a way to solve social and economic problems that had in part been caused by technological progress in the fi rst place, they insisted.12 The social scientists’ argu- ment prevailed, and, as a result, most of the requested funds went to direct relief eff orts for the unemployed, not research scientists.13 It was not clear whether the fact that Compton had publicly supported Presi- dent Hoover, FDR’s Republican rival, in the 1932 election colored Delano’s verdict on the scientists’ proposal.14 It certainly did not boost the scientists’ claim of dis- interestedness. Neither did it bode well for Compton’s proposal for a permanent science advisory board as a “guardian” of the technical bureaus against possible political intrusions by the party in power.15 Again, FDR’s advisers rejected the proposal as a special pleading of the scientists, and established, instead, a Sci- ence Committee in the social scientists–dominated National Resources Board.16 Compared with the labor unions or the elderly population, American scientists, although enjoying considerable public prestige, were too small in number and their potential contributions to solving the practical problems of the Great Depression too remote yet to count much in American politics. To American public scientists, the SAB experiment proved a sobering reality check. Although traditional American faith in technological progress remained strong even in the depths of the Great Depression, few were willing to concede broad roles in public policy to scientists and engineers. Indeed, in 1935, when FDR directed federal agencies to turn to a new committee in the NAS on matters of “scientifi c research,” he specifi cally reserved “the consideration of the broader long time scientifi c problems of natural and human resources” for the Science Commit- tee of the National Resources Committee (formerly Board). Frank Jewett, presi- dent of Bell Labs and a leader of the academy who had been deeply involved in the SAB saga, for one, felt “humiliated” by the order. A politically conservative scientist wary of the expansion of the federal government under the New Deal, Jewett resented FDR’s restrictions of the scientists’ role to “details of research problems American Public Science, 1863–1945 17 of the government departments.” “I say this,” Jewett continued, “because of a feel- ing that if my training, experience and judgment were of any value to the scientifi c departments of the Government that value lies rather in the fi eld of matters of scientifi c policies which may or may not embrace research, than in the narrower fi eld of research alone.”17 It would not be the last time that a scientifi c adviser to the government was rebuff ed in his search for a wider purview and policy role.

On the Boundary In their quest to promote science, American public scientists faced, besides the problem of dual allegiance, also what they regarded as widespread confusion between science and technology. In response, they campaigned not only to dif- ferentiate science from technology but also to establish scientifi c superiority by making a two-pronged argument: Although science was basic to technological development, scientists were not motivated by profi ts. Thus, the physicist Henry Rowland issued his famous 1883 “plea for pure science” for both its nobility and its technological benefi ts.18 Then, an “assembly-line model” of science serving as the source of technological innovations, fi rst articulated by British scientists dur- ing World War I, became infl uential in the United States in the interwar years.19 For example, in the 1930s, American paleontologist John C. Merriam, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a member of the SAB, insisted that “Pure science is primary and indispensable,” and scientifi c curiosity, in contrast to profi t making, was “the mother of invention.”20 Indeed, as a result of the scientists’ campaign, the belief in scientifi c superiority in this period became so ingrained in American society and culture that engineers began to defi ne technology as applied science.21 The 1933 World’s Fair (“Century of Progress”) in Chicago captured this faith in pure science with its motto: “Science Finds, Industry Applies, and Man Conforms.”22 Notably, Lewis Mumford, a prominent American public intellectual and one of the fi ercest critics of what he called megatechnics, put an important twist on the thesis of scientifi c superiority when he wrote approvingly in the 1930s about “a liberated scientifi c curiosity” as “acounterweight to the passionate desire to reduce all existence to terms of immediate profi t and success.”23 It should be pointed out that such a clear-cut distinction between science and technology has come under question in recent scholarship in science and technol- ogy studies; close examination often reveals a deep intermixing at the boundary.24 Yet, the interesting question here is not whether the science–technology distinc- tion existed in reality, but how scientists perceived such a difference and made political use of it. That a clear distinction existed between science and technol- ogy was doubted by few American scientists. Physicist I. I. Rabi, who served as associate director of the Rad Lab at MIT and consultant to Los Alamos during World War II, for example, once divided physics into two parts: the “science of physics” proper and the application of that science, which he called the “inheri- tance of technology.”25 World War II proved to many the validity of the assembly-line model, as aca- demic physicists emerged as the heroes of military research and received credit for 18 Before Sputnik the making of radar, the proximity fuse, and above all, the atomic bomb. Even Van- nevar Bush, the electrical engineer and director of the Offi ce of Scientifi c Research and Development (OSRD) that was in charge of military technology during World War II, marveled at the surprising versatility of the physicists. “One would not expect a theoretical physicist with a decidedly philosophical turn of mind,” Bush said of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s performance as wartime director of Los Alamos, “to manage a complex aff air of this sort.”26 What was less well appreciated was the fact that the physicists accomplished their feats partly by transforming themselves into engineers. “All science stopped during the war except the little bit that was done at Los Alamos,” recalled Richard Feynman, a talented young group leader at the bomb laboratory during World War II. “And that was not much science,” Feyn- man added, “it was mostly engineering.”27 Again, the British, who made crucial early breakthroughs in both the radar and the bomb projects, led the way in this transformation. “They—the British—had had great success with nuclear physicist- turned-radio engineers,” commented Rabi, “and we followed suit.”28 How did physicists, commonly seen as long-haired ivory-tower types, success- fully make the transition to versatile engineers? Rabi attributed it to physicists’ understanding of the physical world and their “great energy, vitality, self-confi dence and arrogance.”29 Physicist-turned-historian S. S. Schweber pointed to the training of American physicists in the 1930s that emphasized engineering abilities and a proper balance between theory and experiment. Furthermore, in the hard times during the Depression, only the most enterprising experimentalists and most talented theoreticians survived the selection process and got to play key roles in the wartime research projects.30 The centrality of physicists in the bomb project also derived from the fact that the technology built closely on new discoveries in nuclear physics. Although building the bomb was largely an engineering feat, research was a crucial part of an approach that integrated science, engineering, and industry.31 As historians of science increasingly recognize, physics and its practitioners themselves were transformed by this wartime fusion. In the Big Science that emerged out of the war, instrumentation became central to scien- tifi c research, planning was modeled after industrial organization, and scientifi c and engineering staff interacted to create a new culture of physics.32 Such a new material culture of physics would prove to be crucial to the business of science advising as well.

Science and Politics During World War II Crucial for American public science, World War II not only demonstrated the technological potency of modern science, but also fulfi lled Compton’s and Jewett’s dream of gaining entry for scientists into public policy. Bush and his OSRD suc- ceeded where Compton and his SAB had failed by focusing not on policy for sci- ence, but on science in policy. The fi rst step in this direction may well have been the prewar advisory relations scientists established with the military. In September 1940, for example, Rabi and several other prominent scientists, including John von Neumann and Harold Urey, organized the science advisory committee for the American Public Science, 1863–1945 19

Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground.33 Independently, Bush and his supporters in the NAS, especially chemist and Harvard president James Conant, persuaded Roosevelt to establish fi rst the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and later the OSRD system of military research with direct congressional appropriations and independence from the armed forces. Bush himself became the de facto science adviser to President Roosevelt. The coming of the war both softened the FDR White House’s resistance to natural scientists and boosted the scientists’ bargain- ing power and self-confi dence. The OSRD’s autonomy also ensured scientists’ independence, which, ironi- cally, led to better cooperation with the military. When a naval offi cer asked Rabi to make a certain radar device but refused to tell him what it was for—“We prefer to talk about this in our swivel chairs in Washington”—Rabi knew exactly what to do: “I didn’t say anything. Neither did I do anything.” Finally the offi cers relented and the two sides worked together to produce “a fantastically great radar.” Fortunately, Rabi refl ected, “our money did not come from the military directly” but from the OSRD.34 In a similar move in Washington, Bush persuaded Admiral Ernest King, chief of naval operations, to adopt a new, successful antisubmarine strategy by utilizing the radar. He also succeeded in getting scientists deployed as advisers at various levels of military operations.35 The prewar injunction of having scientists “on tap, but not on top” began to weaken. Resistance to scientists’ participation in public policy, however, did not disap- pear completely during World War II. It became an especially contentious issue in the atomic bomb project. In contrast to the Rad Lab, where Rabi and his colleagues found it both necessary and advantageous to mesh the technical aspects of design- ing radars with operational and policy considerations, the technical challenge in making the bomb was so overwhelming and the choices in its use were so few and so stark that it was plausible and even expedient to segregate the technical from the political, the making of the bomb from its use, and the scientists from the policy- makers. Leo Szilard, the gadfl y nuclear physicist who had drafted Albert Einstein’s famous letter to FDR in 1939 warning the government about the possibility of an atomic bomb, for example, faced strong offi cial resistance when he campaigned against the bomb’s use on Japan in early 1945. James Byrnes, President Harry S. Truman’s personal representative on the high-level Interim Committee that was set up at the time to consider atomic policy, questioned not only Szilard’s argument, but also his conduct after a meeting in May: “His general demeanor and his desire to participate in policy-making made an undesirable impression on me.”36 The well-known debate between the Scientifi c Panel to the Interim Com- mittee, headed by Oppenheimer, and the Franck Committee at the Met Lab in Chicago, under physicist James Franck, was as much about the proper role of scientists in policy as it was about the use of the bomb (the former supported it but the latter opposed it). On the one hand, the Franck Committee, as outsiders and dissenters, acknowledged their limitations in policy but emphasized the jus- tifi cation of their involvement: “We believe that our acquaintance with the scien- tifi c elements of the situation and prolonged preoccupation with its world-wide 20 Before Sputnik political implications, imposes on us the obligation to off er to the committee some suggestions as to the possible solution of these grave problems.”37 On the other hand, the Oppenheimer panel, which also included physicists Arthur Compton, Ernest Lawrence, and Enrico Fermi, reversed the latter’s emphasis on scientists’ participation in policy:

With regard to these general aspects of the use of atomic energy, it is clear that we, as scientifi c men, have no proprietary rights. It is true that we are among the few citizens who have had occasion to give thoughtful considerations to these problems during the past few years. We have, however, no claim to special competence in solving the political, social, and military problems which are presented by the advent of atomic power.38 Based on such a technical conception of scientists’ role, Oppenheimer also discour- aged scientists at Los Alamos from signing Szilard’s separate petitions against the use of the bomb.39 Years later, Oppenheimer acknowledged that “we didn’t know beans about the military situation in Japan” or whether there were alternatives to an invasion or the bomb.40 The point is, however, that they, narrowly focusing on the use of the bomb as a technical question, did not attempt to fi nd out about the Japanese situation or the context into which their technical advice would fall. Enforcing a production schedule at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer was following, as historian Charles Thorpe argues, an ethic of “soldierly duty.”41 Yet, to the Interim Committee, the Oppenheimer letter was unequivocal proof that technical demon- stration as recommended by the Franck Committee would not work and that the bomb had to be used on cities. Furthermore, although Oppenheimer viewed the panel as purely advisory to the Interim Committee, Stimson apparently regarded it as representative of project scientists.42 Ironically, a sense of technological determinism that saw nuclear weapons inevitably reshaping the world underlined the reasoning of both the Oppenheimer panel and the Franck Committee. Both believed that the bomb, if technically pos- sible, was bound to be made and, when it was, would inevitably revolutionize national and international politics. Nevertheless, there was a subtle but important diff erence between the two groups. Whereas the former believed that the techno- logical and political momentum would almost dictate the use of the bomb, the latter thought that it was still possible to avoid such a step. By proposing various alternatives to the dropping of the bomb, the Franck Committee argued for the need and feasibility of human intervention in the development of technology as well as the limits of technological solutions to social and political problems. Sci- ence, the Franck Committee noted, could not devise a defense against the atomic bomb: “This protection can come only from the political organization of the world.”43 By questioning the inevitability of technological development and by advocating political activism on the part of the scientists, the Franck Committee sowed the seeds for a technological skepticism that would shape PSAC’s and other scientists’ understanding of the potentials and limitations of technology in the postwar era.44 American Public Science, 1863–1945 21

In the fi nal days of World War II, however, many scientists working on the bomb, including those who would later become leaders in PSAC, knew little of the debate between the Franck Committee and the Oppenheimer panel. They were at Los Alamos continuing a collective technological push to make the bomb into a reality fi rst. It culminated in the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Capping several years of intense teamwork, the experience of pre- paring the test further strengthened the bond that would later help to bind the principals together again as PSAC members. For example, George Kistiakowsky, the Russian-born chemist from Harvard in charge of the implosion program, remembered how his physicist colleague Hans Bethe and his own former student Donald Hornig helped him troubleshoot the last technical glitches during the tense hours before the test.45 Physicist Wolfgang Panofsky, another future mem- ber of PSAC, fl ew in an airplane 10,000 feet away from the tower to measure the bomb’s power, “having to trust the theoretical physicists who predicted that that was a safe place to be.”46 Yet, even Los Alamos could not escape the darker implications of their labor for long. When the bomb exploded with blinding light, thunderous sound, and overwhelming heat, scientists and nonscientists alike were awed both by the force of nature and the potency of theoretical science. At the moment, a sense of scientifi c and technological triumph prevailed. One witness reported that “Dr. Kistiakowsky, the impulsive Russian, threw his arms around Dr. Oppenheimer and embraced him with shouts of glee.”47 However, a mood of sober refl ection soon set in about the implications of the bomb. Even at the test site, Conant had already thought of the end of the world, as did Kistiakowsky, his initial exuber- ance notwithstanding. “I am sure,” Kistiakowsky later said, “that at the end of the world—in the last millisecond of the earth’s existence—the last men will see what we saw.”48 Rabi similarly felt “a chill” about the bomb’s potential destructiveness; as an adviser to Oppenheimer, he had been uneasy about the bomb project from the beginning. Was this to be the “culmination of three centuries of physics,” he had asked Oppenheimer in 1943.49 For Feynman, the celebration of the test came to an abrupt end when he saw Robert Wilson, his physicist friend, “just sitting there moping”:

I said, “What are you moping about?” He said, “It’s a terrible thing that we made.” I said, “But you started it. You got us into it.” You see, what happened to me—what happened to the rest of us—is we started for a good reason, then you’re working very hard to accomplish something and it’s a pleasure, it’s excitement. And you stop thinking, you know; you just stop.50 Trinity made scientists face the real-world consequences of their labor and think about their own social responsibility. The cathartic release of tension transformed the scientifi c community at Los Alamos, leading many scientists to lift their vision above the technical and into the political. Although supporting the use of the bomb to end the war, many believed that it should be put under international con- trol after the war. Bethe, for example, “felt after the end of the Second World War 22 Before Sputnik that we had a great responsibility to explain atomic weapons, and to try and make the government do sensible things about atomic weapons.”51 The political activism that had originated with the Franck report now began to spread.

Conclusion Before the Sputnik shock turned American attention to science and technology, it was the atomic bomb that had the most impact on the relationship between science and society in the United States. When the atomic bombs destroyed Hiro- shima and Nagasaki, thus helping to end World War II, scientists at Los Alamos and elsewhere knew that they now stood at a crucial moment in the history of American public science. From the birth of the NAS during the Civil War to the rise and fall of the SAB in the Great Depression, the question of dual allegiance to science and government had long frustrated American scientists’ pursuit for a role in public policy. The bomb not only demonstrated the power of modern science and technology but also, evidently, the validity of the assembly-line model that highlighted the primacy of pure science, both of which should help public scien- tists justify future federal funding for scientifi c research. Of equal importance was the fact that the bomb enhanced the scientists’ public prestige and their relevance to the emerging national security state. Although the resistance to scientists’ role in social and political matters never completely disappeared, it was at least tempo- rarily muted in the shadow of the mushroom cloud. Thus, by the end of World War II, the bomb made possible a new division of labor in the American scientifi c community. Although many scientists continued to concentrate on their science either as a personal preference—Feynman claimed to practice “active irresponsibility”—or as a matter of principle to leave the policy issues to the democratic process, a number of the wartime scientifi c leaders who would become PSAC members became involved in public policy as a way to exercise their social responsibility.52 Yet other public scientists would take on the additional duty to promote the public support of science, a move that had already been undertaken by the Oppenheimer panel when it advocated to the Interim Committee that, in the words of Lawrence, “Only by vigorously pursuing the necessary plant expansion and fundamental research, and by securing adequate government support could this nation stay out in front.” Here we see that both the rationale of science for national security and the science–military partnership carried seamlessly from wartime to peacetime. It marked one of the earliest eff orts to link science in policy with policy for science.53 Clearly, for American public scien- tists, the postwar political, social, and technological developments held great and many promises.