This project will address an imbalance in the study of the American postwar physics community. Currently, the historical study of this period revolves mainly around two topics: particle physics theory and experimentation, and relationships between the Cold War military-industrial complex and the academic physics community. Developments in physics outside of these areas have received comparatively little attention. Due to vast expansions in the physics community during this period, the social and intellectual development of this community cannot be easily traced through singular narratives. This project proposes two means for undertaking and encouraging new avenues of analysis: the creation of an internet resource and the undertaking of a research initiative. Both revolve around a reconsideration of the nature of the physics elite.
The project will accumulate information on an elite sub-community of roughly 600 members self-selected by the broader physics community (through prizes, appointments, and membership in elite organizations) from 1945-2008. This information will offer insight on the social and intellectual dynamics of the broader community encompassing all of its intellectual, pedagogical, infrastructural, administrative, and advisory facets. With the aid of a Project Assistant, a historical research tool will be created by placing this information on the internet in an Interactive Guide to the American Postwar Physics Elite (IGAPPE). IGAPPE will feature profiles of institutions, lines of research, as well as the ca. 600 aforementioned individuals. The profiles will emphasize precise information (e.g., dates of residency) over commentary; they will be hyperlinked to each other, and will contain references to archives and secondary literature, and links to relevant online resources (many hosted by the American Institute of Physics). IGAPPE will also serve as a pedagogical resource for historians gaining familiarity with this expansive community, and for physics students wishing to understand the background of their own research and discipline.
The research initiative component will entail a prosopographical analysis (a collective study of the lives of members of a group that aims to determine patterns of relationships and activities), and it will focus on the information gathered for the assembly of IGAPPE. That study will result in scholarly articles and eventually a book. These will make assertions concerning the nature, role, and attainment of elite status in this period and historiographical representations thereof; they will identify previously neglected nodes of elite activity; and they will speculate on how classes of elites (as opposed to elite individuals) impact the nature of physics and its role in society.
The resulting internet reference tool and scholarship from this project will advance broader aims. It will foster new historiographical currents in the study of postwar physics, identify and preserve vital records, and better equip researchers to discuss a broader range of issues of concern to them. The project can be expanded in the future to encompass broader swathes of physics and other scientific communities.
