david kaiser* cold war requisitions, scientific...

DAVID KAISER

Cold War requisitions scientific manpower and the production ofAmerican physicists after World War II

HSPS Volume 33 Part 1 pages 131-159 ISSN 0890-9997 copy2002 by The Regents of the Universityof California All rights reserved Send requests for permission to reprint to Rights and PermissionsUniversity of California Press 2000 Center St Ste 303 Berkeley CA 94704-1223

Program in Science Technology and Society and Department of Physics Building E51-185 MIT Cambridge MA 02139 dikaisermitedu

My thanks to Shane Hamilton for his research assistance and to Alexis De GreiffKenji Ito John Krige Elizabeth Paris and John Rudolph for their helpful comments on anearlier draft

The following abbreviations are used AIP-EMD American Institute of Physics Edu-cation and Manpower Division Records Niels Bohr Library American Institute of PhysicsCollege Park MD BAS Bulletin of the atomic scientists BDP University of CaliforniaBerkeley Department of Physics Records Bancroft Library Berkeley CA HDP HarvardUniversity Department of Physics Records Pusey Library Cambridge MA PDP PrincetonUniversity Department of Physics Records Seeley G Mudd Manuscript Library PrincetonNJ PDP-AR Princeton University Department of Physics Annual Reports Seeley G MuddManuscript Library Princeton NJ PT Physics today RTB Raymond Thayer Birge Corre-spondence and Papers Bancroft Library Berkeley CA1 Birge to William M Roth 31 May 1955 in BDP Folder 5143 Birgersquos ancestry was

1 RAYMOND BIRGErsquoS ldquoMAIN OBJECTIVErdquo

ldquoTHE MAIN OBJECTIVE of this department of physicsrdquo Raymond Birge wrote inlate May 1955 ldquois to train PhDrsquos in physicsrdquo Birgemdashiconic somber a displacedYankee who traced his New England ancestry nine generations backmdashhad beenchair of Berkeleyrsquos physics department for twenty-two years by the mid-1950s itwas the nationrsquos largest At the time he explained his departmentrsquos ldquomain objec-tiverdquo Birge was the retiring president of the American Physical Society (APS)Birge and his colleagues in Berkeleyrsquos physics department had emphasized theimportance of its graduate program many times before in annual budget requeststo the university administration and in funding reports to private industries it wouldbe easy to read such remarks as thinly-veiled requests for more funding sincetraining physics PhDs became expensive after World War II This time howeverBirge articulated his departmentrsquos mission in a letter to a local citizen far outsideof the university bureaucracy who had no funds to offer and who had requested nosuch pronouncement1

132 KAISER

Nor was Birgersquos letter unique in its emphasis upon the graduate training ofyoung physicists In a survey of 1954 the Berkeley physicists claimed to spendonly 10-15 of their time on undergraduate instruction but 40-95 on teachinggraduate students Yet even that seemed insufficient the new department chairCarl Helmholz circulated a memo to the department faculty in December 1958reminding his colleagues that ldquoAlthough research per se is important the funda-mental concern of the department is the education of studentsrdquomdashand lest there beany doubt ldquothe graduate student class is the one which we should consider mostseriouslyrdquo2 The ldquoproductionrdquo of trained physicistsmdashBirgersquos ldquomain objectiverdquo buta theme largely overlooked by historians of sciencemdashbecame a central at timeshysterial concern for American physicists and politicians during the decades afterWorld War II

ldquoBig sciencerdquo has usually been considered along two axes funding and thescale of experimental apparatus3 Both the source and the scale of funding for sci-entific research changed dramatically with World War II By 1953 the level ofspending for ldquofundamentalrdquo physics research within the United States was 20 to 25times greater than it had been in 1938 even after adjusting for inflation and the

noted in Yvonne Young (Birgersquos secretary) to Larkin Kerwin (President of the CanadianAssociation of Physicists) 24 May 1955 in RTB A Carl Helmholz who became depart-ment chair in 1956 pleaded with Berkeleyrsquos chancellor in a 1956 budget request that ldquowehave an obligation and an increasing need to train more PhDrsquos in physics and this doesrequire research moneyrdquo Helmholz to Clark Kerr 28 Mar 1956 in BDP Folder 120 Seealso Helmholz to Kerr 5 Mar 1958 in BDP Folder 128 and Helmholz to Glenn Seaborg6 Mar 1959 in BDP Folder 1292 See Birgersquos summary on ldquoForm 2A (Academic year) Percentage distribution of time offaculty members among services performed for academic year 1953-1954rdquo completed aspart of the ldquoRestudy of the needs of California in higher education 1954rdquo Birgersquos reportdated 2 June 1954 is in BDP Folder 115 along with data for individual faculty membersAC Helmholz mimeographed agenda 8 Dec 1958 in BDP Folder 223 Derek de Solla Price Little science big science (New York 1963) Alvin WeinbergReflections on big science (Cambridge 1967) Daniel J Kevles The physicists The historyof a scientific community in modern America 3rd edn (Cambridge 1995 [1978]) chapts21-23 Robert Seidel ldquoA home for big science The Atomic Energy Commissionrsquos labora-tory systemrdquo HSPS 161 (1985) 135-175 Paul Forman ldquoBehind quantum electronicsNational security as basis for physical research in the United States 1940-1960rdquo HSPS181Ecirc(1987) 149-229 Everett Mendelsohn M Roe Smith and Peter Weingart eds Sci-ence technology and the military (Boston 1988) Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly eds Bigscience The growth of large-scale research (Stanford 1992) James Capshew and KarenRader ldquoBig science Price to the presentrdquo Osiris 7 (1992) 3-25 Stuart Leslie The ColdWar and American science The military-industrial-academic complex at MIT and Stanford(New York 1993) Andrew Pickering ldquoCyborg history and the World War II regimerdquo Per-spectives on Science 3 (Spring 1995) 1-48 and Peter Galison Image and logic A materialculture of microphysics (Chicago 1997) esp chapts 4 5 and 9 Many patterns for whatbecame postwar big science had precedents during the interwar period at Berkeleyrsquos Radia-tion Laboratory JL Heilbron and Robert Seidel Lawrence and his laboratory A history ofthe Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Vol 1 (Berkeley 1989)

TRAINING AMERICAN PHYSICISTS 133

4 Forman (ref 3) 1905 Cf Chandra Mukerji A fragile power Scientists and the state (Princeton 1989) chapt1 Mukerji focuses on oceanographers in the 1980s For physics in Cold War Europe cfJohn Krige ldquoThe Ford Foundation European physics and the Cold Warrdquo HSPS 292 (1999)333-361 and ldquoNATO and the strengthening of Western science in the post-Sputnik erardquoMinerva 38 (2000) 81-108

vast majority of this spending came from defense-related agencies within the fed-eral government4 This outpouring of defense dollars paid for instruments and equip-ment on an unprecedented scale

Yet there was a third axis of ldquobignessrdquo that rarely appears in these accountsbig enrollments of graduate students in the sciences The number of new physicsdoctorates granted each year within the United States ballooned immediately afterthe war growing at a faster rate than any other field The growth in graduate-student enrollments took on an explicitly political formulation Some physicistsand government bureaucrats advanced a Cold War logic according to which thetraining of exponentially-increasing numbers of professional physicists was usedto justify all the other ldquobigrdquo expenditures commonly associated with ldquobig sciencerdquoFor others graduate-student training assumed equal importance with the otherldquobigsrdquo For more than two decades after World War II most physicists govern-ment officials and nationally-syndicated journalists equated the nationrsquos securitywith the production of young physicists Most American physicists did not spendthe bulk of their time working on weapons during the 1950s Yet they receivedmoney from defense-related bureaus to create an ldquoelite reserve labor forcerdquo ofpotential weapons-makers in the ranks5

The Cold War logic of wartime requisitions and physicist-manpower points toa less overt yet longer-lasting form of politicization for the nationrsquos physiciststhan those usually considered by historians More was at stake than the visiblesigns of American physicistsrsquo political engagement after World War II either aselite government consultants or as special victims of McCarthyism6 The demandsfor physicist-manpower were tied directly to the contours of the Cold War risingimmediately after the war receiving a strong jolt with the United Statesrsquo entry intothe Korean War and again after the surprise launch of Sputnik and crashing onlywith deacutetente Vietnam-era protests against defense-related research on campusesand massive cuts in defense spending

Questions of pedagogy and scientific ldquomanpowerrdquo provide a framework withinwhich to re-examine the vexed question of whether the sudden sea-change in sourceand scale of funding matter to the content of postwar physics Did military-derivedldquobig sciencerdquo leave a lasting epistemic impression The question can be addressedfrom the everyday exigencies of training students and pursuing research The man-power question also allows consideration of the effects of the Cold War mobiliza-tion on theoretical physics and not only on the experimental physics with whichmost previous literature on ldquobig sciencerdquo is concerned The new demands for trainingever-rising numbers of students helped to solidify American physicistsrsquo style ofwork after the war Physicistsrsquo attitudes and judgments about what counted as ap-

134 KAISER

0

30

60

90

120

150

180

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940

6 Kevles (ref 3) chapts 22-23 Ellen Schrecker No ivory tower McCarthyism and the uni-versities (New York 1986) 149-160 272-275 Jessica Wang American science in an age ofanxiety Scientists anticommunism and the Cold War (Chapel Hill 1999) Silvan SchweberIn the shadow of the bomb Oppenheimer Bethe and the moral responsibility of the scientist(Princeton 2000) David Kaiser ldquoNuclear democracy Political engagement pedagogical re-form and particle physics in postwar Americardquo Isis 93 (June 2002) 229-2687 M Lois Marckworth Dissertations in physics An indexed bibliography of all doctoraltheses accepted by American universities 1861-1959 (Stanford 1961) ix-xi Figure 1 isbased on data from Douglas Adkins The great American degree machine An economicanalysis of the human resource output of higher education (Berkeley 1975) 278-81 Adkinsrsquo

propriate topics for research and teaching make most sense when set within thecontext of the postwar escalation in manpower

2 THE POPULATION EXPLOSION

Yale University became the first domestic institution to grant a PhD in phys-ics when it bestowed one on Arthur Williams Wright in 1861 for his study oforbital mechanics One thousand physics PhDs followed between 1861 and 1929while just over fourteen hundred were produced during the decade 1930-1940alone despite Depression conditions (figure 1)7

Based on similar growth in research funding pages published in the professionaljournals and membership in the professional societies during the 1930s SpencerWeart has suggested that the postwar expansion of American physics had its rootsnot initially in World War II but rather in the prewar decade Surveying the period

FIG 1 Total number of PhDs in physics granted each calendar year by US institutions 1890-1941Source Based on data in Adkins (ref 7) 278-281


0

250

500

750

1000

1250

1500

1750

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

numbers agree to within 10 of Marckworthrsquos as well as with the data in Spencer WeartldquoThe physics business in America 1919-1940 A statistical reconnaissancerdquo in NathanReingold ed The sciences in American context New perspectives (Washington DC1979) 295-3588 Weart (ibid) 3309 Adkins (ref 7) 278-81 for 1890-1971 and in National Research Council Postdoctoralappointments and disappointments (Washington DC 1981) 79 for 1972-79 The data for1960-71 in these two sources always agree to better than 8 and usually to within 2

1920-70 Weart concludes provides an overall ldquoimpression of continuityrdquo Thewar on this telling cemented pre-existing exponential growth trends for the ldquophysicsbusinessrdquo in the United States8

Growth during the 1930s however proved to be but a shadow of the growth tocome As figure 2 reveals the postwar boom in physics PhDrsquos made a dramaticbreak with the past in both absolute numbers and rates of change9

FIG 2 Total number of PhDs in physics granted each calendar year by US institutions 1890-1979Source Based on data in Adkins (ref 7) 278-281 and National Research Council (ref 9) 79

Averaged over the period 1890-1941 the annual number of PhDs granted in physicsby US institutions doubled steadily every thirteen years the corresponding num-ber for 1945-71 is seven years nearly twice as fast (Appendix tables A1 and A2)Though the overall number of new physics PhDs continued to grow throughoutthe Depression the rate slowed considerably at the rate of increase during 1930-39 it would have taken eighteen years to double the annual output of physicsdoctorates The immediate postwar years on the other hand saw lightning growthbetween 1945-51 the number of physics PhDs awarded annually by US institu-tions doubled every 17 yearsmdasha rate increase of over tenfold During the mid-1950s with the number of new physics PhDs per year fluctuating around 500 it

136 KAISER

10 David Kaiser ldquoThe postwar suburbanization of American physicsrdquo in Kaiser Makingtheory Producing physics and physicists in postwar America (PhD dissertation HarvardUniversity 2000) 57-11211 Ibid12 Kevles (ref 3) 38813 The ldquobaby boomrdquo powered the general expansion the class that entered college in 1964was the largest ever up 37 from the previous year alone Todd Gitlin The sixties Years ofhope days of rage rev edn [New York 1993 (1987)] 11-21 164 Berkeleyrsquos physicsdepartment chair cited enrollment projections as early as 1959 as a reason to begin increas-

took only two years to produce as many as the United States had produced duringthe seventy years separating the Civil War and the Great Depression Followingthe Sovietsrsquo surprise launch of Sputnik in the fall of 1957 the number of PhDs inphysics awarded by US institutions took off steeply once again doubling every62 years during the period 1958-68 (tables A3 and A4)

During the 1950s and 1960s the tremendous and rapid growth in Americanphysics departments resulted in lack of office space overcrowded laboratory con-ditions proliferation of new bureaucratic procedures a widespread feelings ofldquofacelessnessrdquo and a perilous loss of ldquointimacyrdquo Routine social events such asthe annual picnics of Berkeleyrsquos physics department became logistically exhaust-ing affairs10 The frequent complaints about overcrowding from both students andfaculty may explain the flattening of the physics PhD-curve during the 1950sdespite strong demand Enrollments had swollen to over three times their prewarhighs far faster than the departmentsrsquo faculties and physical plant Despite a boomin new physics buildings and building extensions department chairs across thecountry complained bitterly about their lack of adequate space11 The next dra-matic rise in the annual output of physics PhDs after Sputnik was accomplishedprimarily by increasing the number of doctoral institutions rather than by squeez-ing more students into the existing graduate programs the number of institutionsgranting PhDs in physics within the United States doubled between 1959 and196712 The number of physics PhDs granted each year jumped by a factor ofthree to over 1500 by the late 1960s

These trends may be compared usefully with the more general expansion inAmerican higher education over the course of the 20th century Between 1890 and1941 the rate of increase in physics PhDs awarded each year was 87 of thegrowth-rate averaged across all fields between 1945 and 1951 on the other handthe factor was 200 No other field came close physics grew nearly twice asquickly as chemistry for example and fully 12 faster than its nearest competi-tors engineering and psychology During the 1950s most fields like physics settledinto a steady state Exponential growth resumed across the boards following Sput-nik Although the margin had shrunk compared with the immediate postwar pe-riod physics once again outpaced all fields in its rate of growth except for engi-neering and mathematics13

Demand for new physics PhDs far outstripped the ever-increasing supplyThe Placement Service of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) reported in 1952


ing the departmentrsquos faculty and overall budget in anticipation of the baby boom Helmholzto Glenn Seaborg 6 Mar 1959 in BDP Folder 12914 Henry Barton ldquoAIP 1952 annual reportrdquo PT 6 (May 1953) 4-9 on 615 ldquoPlacement register statistical comparison APS-AAPT Annual Joint Meeting 1963 to1969rdquo nd ca 1970 in AIP-EMD Box 13 Folder ldquoPlacement literaturerdquo16 Russell G Meyerand Jrrsquos remarks at the conference on ldquoThe supply need and utiliza-tion of graduate scientists and engineersrdquo (May 1970) are quoted in Sanborn Brown andBrian Schwartz eds Scientific manpower A dilemma for graduate education (Cambridge1971) 47-48 Meyerand was the Director of Research at United Aircraft Research Labora-tories17 Daniel Elliott ldquoSome economic aspects of physicsrdquo American physics teacher 6 (1938)198 Wheeler Davey ldquoReport of Conference on Applied Physicsrdquo Review of scientific in-struments 7 (1936) 119 both as quoted in Weart (ref 7) 318-319 352n11118 Philip Morse In at the beginnings A physicistrsquos life (Cambridge 1977) 134 HABarton interview with Charles Weiner 3 and 16 Mar 1970 17-8 38-39 44 54 (Niels BohrLibrary American Institute of Physics College Park MD)

that ldquofor three years running the number of positions to be filled has been severaltimes the number of available registrantsrdquo14 A decade later only 449 physicistsregistered with the Placement Service at a meeting of the American Physical Soci-ety at which various employers had hoped to fill 514 jobs15 A senior researchernoted in 1970 that through most of the 1950s and 1960s ldquomost if not all doctoralor masterrsquos candidates [in physics and engineering] could obtain as many job of-fers as he or she was willing to take interviewsrdquo16 Who wanted these physicistsFor what were they being trained

3 FROM ldquoMARKETSrdquo TO ldquoMANPOWERrdquo

ldquoA going concern must find a market for its productrdquo Daniel Elliott explainedto his colleagues in the pages of the American physics teacher in 1938 ldquoand this istrue of the profession of physicsrdquo As another physics teacher put it in the mid-1930s ldquoWe folks in the teaching business have a product to sellrdquo17 Philip Morsedescribed the vigorous ldquosales effortrdquo that people like Karl Compton and RobertMillikan then presidents of MIT and Caltech respectively had to mount duringthe 1930s to help place the newly-minted physics PhDs in industrial jobs sinceuniversity positions had become scarce in proportion to the number of graduatestudents18 American physicists in the Great Depression discussed the fruits oftheir pedagogical effortsmdashthe growing numbers of men and the small trickle ofwomen who earned advanced degrees in physicsmdashin terms of ldquosalesrdquo ldquomarketsrdquoand above all ldquoproductsrdquo

The commodity terminology shifted following the nationrsquos economic recoveryand experience in World War II When invoked after the war ldquocommodityrdquo con-noted rationing and conservation of a precious resource ldquoIn a time of nationalemergencyrdquo opined AIP director Henry Barton in December 1948 ldquothis countrywould think nothing of spending a million dollars to survey develop and conservea short commodity like natural rubber or tin Highly trained and able human re-

138 KAISER

19 Henry Barton ldquoInstitute doingsrdquo PT 1 (Dec 1948) 15 Henry DeWolf Smyth ldquoThestockpiling and rationing of scientific manpowerrdquo PT 4 (Feb 1951) 18-24 on 19 GeorgeHarrison ldquoTestimony on manpowerrdquo PT 4 (Mar 1951) 6-7 on 620 The conference was held in West Virginia from 31 Mar - 2 Apr 1955 and reported in theJune issue of Physics today An unsigned report ldquoNRC-AIP Conference on the Productionof Physicistsrdquo PT 8 (June 1955) 6-12 was followed by subcommitteesrsquo reports and someof the papers presented21 M Trytten ldquoThe organization of scientific manpower Reports of government advisorygroupsrdquo BAS 6 (1950) 355 375-378 the special issue devoted to ldquoscientific manpowerrdquoin Scientific American 185 (Mar 1951) National Manpower Council A policy for scientificand professional manpower (New York 1953) Barton ldquoAIP 1952 Annual Reportrdquo 5-6Weart cites data from the ONR ldquoManpower branchrdquo in Weart (ref 7) 335n2 On the NSFreports see Brown and Schwartz (ref 16) 23n1

sources viewed as a commodity are far more importantrdquo Two years later AECCommissioner and former Princeton physics department chair Henry DeWolf Smythexplained in a speech before the American Association for the Advancement ofScience that ldquoscientific manpowerrdquo was a ldquowar commodityrdquo a ldquotool of warrdquo and aldquomajor war assetrdquo and hence needed to be ldquostockpiledrdquo and ldquorationedrdquo MITrsquosDean of the Sciences George Harrison testified before the Preparedness Subcom-mittee of the Senate Committee on the Armed Forces in January 1951 to the needfor the ldquoproduction conservation and expenditurerdquo of the nationrsquos physicists19

Just as they had before the war ldquoproductrdquo and ldquoproductionrdquo therefore contin-ued to dominate American physicistsrsquo discussions of their studentsmdashas in the con-ference on ldquoThe Production of Physicistsrdquo sponsored jointly in 1955 by the Na-tional Research Council (NRC) and the AIP20 In the postwar period however theconcern for ldquosalesrdquo and ldquomarketrdquo was replaced by a new obsession with ldquoman-powerrdquo The federal governmentrsquos Office of Defense Mobilization issued policystatements during the Korean conflict on ldquoTraining and utilization of scientificand engineering manpowerrdquo and the Office for Naval Research maintained aldquoManpower Branchrdquo of its Human Resources Division to record how many stu-dents emerged from the nationrsquos universities with higher degrees in the sciencesThe AIP established its own Education and Manpower Division to coordinate itsefforts with the governmentrsquos The National Science Foundation (NSF) at the sametime began issuing annual ldquoAmerican Science Manpowerrdquo reports21 The economicmetaphor gave way to a military one in consequence of the new employment reali-ties rather than requiring a strenuous sales effort to create jobs for their studentsphysicists after World War II struggled to graduate advanced degree-holders inphysics quickly enough to meet Cold War demands

Fellowships training and the draft before the Korean War

The first postwar graduate students often cited their wartime service as an in-ducement for pursuing a PhD in physics ldquoMy interest in physicsrdquo wrote a gradu-ate student in Harvardrsquos physics department in September 1948 ldquowas aroused


22 ldquoOpinions of returning graduate students in physicsrdquo 86-page mimeographed report1948 73-82 Harvard University Archives Pusey Library Cambridge Massachusetts UAV691448 Approximately two million veterans took advantage of the GI Bill Roger Gei-ger Research and relevant knowledge American research universities since World War II(New York 1993) 40-4123 Robert Seidel ldquoAccelerating science The postwar transformation of the Lawrence Ra-diation Laboratoryrdquo HSPS 132 (1983) 375-400 on 382-38324 Richard Hewlett and Oscar Anderson Jr The new world A history of the Atomic En-ergy Commission Vol 1 1939-1946 (University Park 1962) 633-634 Allan NeedellldquoNuclear reactors and the founding of Brookhaven National Laboratoryrdquo HSPS 141 (1983)92-122 Seidel (ref 3) Robert Crease Making physics A biography of Brookhaven Na-tional Laboratory 1946-1972 (Chicago 1999) chapts 1-425 Emanuel Piore ldquoInvestment in basic researchrdquo PT 1 (Nov 1948) 6-9 on 6-7 RichardHewlett and Francis Duncan A history of the United States Atomic Energy Commission

while I was working on the Atomic Bomb in New Mexico while in the ArmyrdquoInterest piqued the ldquopromise of money to come from the GI Billrdquo helped to sealthis studentrsquos decision to pursue a PhD The studentrsquos reminiscences were drawnout by an anonymous questionnaire that greeted the 83 Harvard physics graduatestudents who had completed at least one year of graduate study as they queued upfor registration in 1948 Over one-quarter of those who returned the questionnairementioned wartime service experiences as an inducement to study physics Onepeer put it simply ldquoThe war introduced me to the scientific liferdquo Another men-tioned a ldquofeeling that the work [in physics] was important as a result of the warrdquoTwo-thirds of the returning physics graduate students had served in the militaryduring World War II Several mentioned the aid provided by the GI Bill amongthe many factors which had prompted them to pursue a PhD in physics22

The Cold War was an even better recruiter Just six weeks after the end ofWorld War II for example the Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee on AtomicPower recommended to General Leslie Groves that the Army continue to supportuniversity physics research as a training ground for personnel to serve in variousapplied-physics projectsmdasha plan Groves quickly approved23 Nor would these train-ing efforts be restricted to university campuses In March 1946 enterprising EastCoast physicists convinced Groves that the best way ldquoto prevent disintegration of[the Armyrsquos] nuclear research organizationrdquo was to establish new laboratories atwhich students could receive ldquoadvance[d] training in nuclear studiesrdquomdasha pitchthat helped to found the Brookhaven Laboratory on Long Island24

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) was explicit about its rationale for be-coming in the late 1940s the single largest patron of ldquobig sciencerdquo physics projectsin the nationrsquos universities As Emanuel Piore director of the ONRrsquos PhysicalSciences Division explained the ldquo[m]otivation within the Navyrdquo was to make upfor the ldquodeficit in technical peoplerdquo left in the wake of World War II ldquowhich costthe country one to two graduate-school generations of scientistsrdquo The ONR aimedto ldquostimulaterdquo universitiesrsquo ldquonormal function of research and graduate instructionrdquoand evaluated funding proposals according to ldquothe training possibilities the projectwill afford to young menrdquo25 Piore had phrased things differently to an advisory

140 KAISER

Vol 2 Atomic shield 1947-1952 (University Park 1969) 80 SS Schweber ldquoThe mutualembrace of science and the military ONR and the growth of physics in the United Statesafter World War IIrdquo in Mendelsohn (ref 3) 3-45 Harvey Sapolsky Science and the NavyThe history of the Office of Naval Research (Princeton 1990)26 Piorersquos remark to the Pentagonrsquos Research and Development Board is quoted in RebeccaLowen Creating the Cold War university The transformation of Stanford (Berkeley 1997)10627 JL Heilbron ldquoAn historianrsquos interest in particle physicsrdquo in Laurie Brown Max Dresdenand Lillian Hoddeson eds Pions to quarks Particle physics in the 1950s (New York1989) 47-54 on 51 Seidel (ref 23) 393 See also Robert Seidel ldquoThe postwar politicaleconomy of high-energy physicsrdquo in Brown et al ibid 497-507 Daniel Kevles ldquoCold warand hot physics Science security and the American state 1945-56rdquo HSPS 202 (1990)239-264 and ldquoK1S2 Korea science and the staterdquo in Galison and Hevly (ref 3) 312-333Schweber ldquoBig science in context Cornell and MITrdquo in ibid 149-18328 Hewlett and Duncan (ref 25) 249-250 Seidel (ref 23) 394-397 Smyth as quoted inSeidel (ref 3) 148 See also Seidel (ref 10)29 Hickenlooper to Lilienthal 30 Jul 1948 reprinted in Hearings before the Joint Commit-

group to the Pentagon ldquoGraduate students working part time are slave laborrdquo TheNavyrsquos best economic interests would be served by placing more and more of itswork with them26 To the ONR graduate training justified lavish spending

The Atomic Energy Commission founded by Congress in 1946 eventuallytook over most of these Army and Navy installations creating a coast-to-coastnational laboratory system and supporting dozens of university-based laborato-ries Internal AEC memos from early 1947 reported that the Commissionrsquos ratio-nale for funding all of these laboratories was in John Heilbronrsquos paraphrase ldquototrain personnel for employment in the laboratories of federal agencies or theircontractorsmdashit being supposed that university accelerator laboratories would at-tract the best talent and train it in ways useful to governmentrdquo The AECrsquos GeneralAdvisory Committee (GAC) similarly advocated continued funding of nuclearresearch at universities so as to provide training for young physicists27 So impor-tant was the creation and maintenance of this standing army of physicists that theAEC agreed in 1948 to fund not one but two accelerators in the billion-volt rangeat Berkeley and at Brookhaven even though the GAC advised that only one suchmachine would be needed scientifically The AEC decided to build both machineslest ldquomoralerdquo at the losing laboratory suffer As Smyth explained in his role asAEC Commissioner in 1949 the duplication would bring the government not justldquobig equipmentrdquo but ldquobig groups of scientists who will take ordersrdquo28 Manpowerproduction entailed all the other trappings of postwar big science

In 1948 the AEC put together a program of graduate-student fellowships un-der the watchful eyes of the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy Asthe Committeersquos chair Senator Bourke Hickenlooper (R Iowa) remarked to theAECrsquos chair David Lilienthal in July 194829

It is an assumption on the part of the Joint Committee that the purpose of thisfellowship program is to establish a nucleus of highly trained individuals who


will increase the general knowledge in scientific fields and at the same time pro-vide a pool from which some individuals will be drawn to active employment onthe atomic energy program

Lilienthal agreed with this interpretation though he emphasized in later testimonybefore the Joint Committee that ldquono commitments as to employment are made atthe time of the fellowship awardrdquo30 After the Joint Committee learned that anAEC fellowship had been given to a self-proclaimed Communist student how-ever it tightened the rules Applicants to the program in 1950 had to propose top-ics of research ldquosufficiently related to the atomic energy field to justify presumingthat the candidate may be considered a potential employee of the AEC or one of itscontractorsrdquo soon further revisions required that AEC postdoc applicants spendtheir fellowships working on classified research31 That brought what was wantedthree-quarters of the students who completed their physics PhDs in 1953 withAEC funding took jobs with the AEC upon graduation32 Besides federally fundedfellowships from the AEC ONR and NSF physics graduate students during the1950s competed for fellowships from industrial defense-contractors likeWestinghouse General Electric DuPont Raytheon and IBM which amounted toindirect underwriting of physicistsrsquo education by the defense department33

Funding physics students was one task keeping them out of the armed ser-vices was another In the midst of debates during the late 1940s between a pro-

tee on Atomic Energy Congress of the United States Eighty-First Congress First Sessionon Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship Program May 16 17 18 and 23 1949 (Wash-ington DC 1949) 530 Ibid 431 ldquoFootnotes to security AEC fellowshipsrdquo PT 3 (Apr 1950) 28-29 Hans Bethe andCJ Lapp (NRC Fellowship Office) correspondence during March and April 1950 in Folder119 Hans A Bethe Papers Division of Rare and Special Collections Cornell UniversityLibrary Ithaca New York On the controversy over the AEC fellowships see also ref 29ER [Eugene Rabinowitch] ldquoThe lsquocleansingrsquo of AEC fellowshipsrdquo BAS 5 (June-Jul 1949)161-162 ldquoThe Fellowship Program Testimony before the Joint Committeerdquo BAS 5 (June-Jul 1949) 166-178 ldquoLoyalty tests cause cut in AEC Fellowship Programrdquo BAS 6 (Jan1950) 32 ldquoThe curtailment of the AEC Fellowship Programrdquo BASEcirc6 (Jan 1950) 34 62-63ldquoLoyalty tests for science studentsrdquo BAS 6 (Apr 1950) 98 and Wang (ref 6) chapt 732 Heilbron (ref 27) 51 citing an AEC news release dated 30 Apr 195333 Birge to Robert Gordon Sproul (President of the University of California) 15 Apr 1949and 15 Apr 1951 in RTB Birge to Joseph Barker (President of the Research Corporation)28 Aug 1950 in RTB Birge to Clark Kerr (Chancellor of the Berkeley campus) 23 May1955 in BDP Folder 135 JC Street to Julian Hill (Executive Secretary of DuPont) 29Jan 1960 in HDP ldquoCorrespondence 1958-60rdquo Box A-P Folder ldquo1959-60 Grants-in-aidrdquoand William Preston to Glenn Giddings (Educational Relations consultant of General Elec-tric) 15 Feb 1960 in the same folder See also the annual reports from the chair of Harvardrsquosphysics department to the university president in HDP ldquoCorrespondence 1953-57 andsome earlierrdquo Box 1 and ldquoCorrespondence 1958-60rdquo Box A-P and Lowen (ref 26) chapts5-6

142 KAISER

34 Joel Spring The sorting machine revisited National educational policy since 1945(New York 1989) 40-53 James Hershberg James B Conant Harvard to Hiroshima andthe making of the nuclear age (Stanford 1993) 310-312 516-520 538-55235 ldquoNoticerdquo PT 1 (Dec 1948) 34 Henry Barton ldquoInstitute doingsrdquo PT 2 (Jan 1949) 1436 Karl Compton to President Truman 2 Nov 1949 quoted in Kevles (ref 27) 24737 Philip Powers ldquoThe changing manpower picturerdquo The scientific monthly 70 (Mar1950) 170 and ldquoBalance needed Manpower picture changing for sciencerdquo PT 3 (June1950) 2838 Kevles (ref 27) Hershberg (ref 34) chapts 27-28 Lowen (ref 26) 120-121 andWang (ref 6) chapt 8

posed ldquouniversal military trainingrdquo and the ldquoselective servicerdquo model of WorldWar II President Truman had agreed that students studying ldquoessentialrdquo topicsnamely science engineering or medicine should be deferred from active servicebecause of their value to the nation Local draft boards did not always have or acton definitions of ldquonecessary and irreplaceablerdquo scientific specialties34 Physics to-day ran a notice in its issue of December 1948 alerting ldquo[a]ll employers of youngscientistsrdquo to ldquoprepare themselves immediately to handle draft cases Men whoclearly should be classified II-A are being inducted through failure of their em-ployers to learn the regulations and take the necessary steps in timerdquo The noticeadmonished ldquoWrite letters Donrsquot wait for formsrdquo The AIPrsquos director Henry Bartonresounded the alarm in the next issue ldquoThe time has come for those responsiblefor the training or employment of physicists to take seriously their responsibilitiesunder the Selective Service Actrdquo Department chairs and their colleagues shouldbe pro-active with the local draft boards Barton pressed and should move imme-diately to retain deferrals for their physics studentsmdasheven if the students them-selves wanted to be drafted35

Despite such alarmist pronouncements however by the late 1940s it appearedto some commentators that the shortages of trained physicists created by WorldWar II had been eliminated MIT physicist and president Karl Compton confi-dently wrote to President Truman in November 1949 that military research anddevelopment was no longer hampered by shortages in trained personnel36 A fewmonths later the AECrsquos advisor on scientific personnel Philip Powers agreedwith Comptonrsquos assessment that ldquo[f]ar more scientists have been coming off theproduction line in the last few years than was anticipatedrdquo The nationrsquos researchand development capabilities had doubled between 1947 and the beginning of1950 Powers said whereas the Presidentrsquos plan called for doubling by 1957 Theproblem had become the balance of supply and demand37

Fighting in Korea A new phase in manpower requisitions

The outbreak of the Korean War upset the balance ldquoManpowerrdquo in physicsonce again became a matter of national security38 Within a year after the USentered the Korean War in June 1950 the federal government increased its de-mand for physicists by a factor of ten by February 1952 the number of industrial


openings for physicists was also ten times higher than it had been during the win-ter of 195039 The Korean War threw the nationrsquos physics departments into whatPrincetonrsquos department chair aptly termed ldquoa semi-wartime economy of sciencerdquo40

Just weeks into the conflict the chair of the NRCrsquos Division of Mathematicsand Physical Sciences circulated a memorandum among trusted colleagues A policystatement drawn up together with the director of the AIP the memo sought toestablish ldquoprocedures for utilizing our manpower in physics in helping to solveour military and other related problemsrdquo41 Unlike the situation in 1939 the De-partment of Defense and the AEC had already established ldquovery greatly expandedlaboratoriesrdquo manned by ldquoexpanded staffs of physicistsrdquo Whereas the nation hadto scramble in the early 1940s to build up Los Alamos Oak Ridge and the MITRadiation Laboratory the postwar laboratories were already ldquoready to function infar less time than would be required to establish large centralized project laborato-riesrdquo With these labs already up and running the physicist-policymakers hopedthere would be no need to yank physicists and their students into centralized facili-ties no need to repeat the pattern of ldquomanpower utilizationrdquo of the war years Theycontinued

Unless a very short emergency (not more than three years) is contemplated it isof great importance to continue the training of promising students to full compe-tence in physics If this is not done we cannot staff the expansion of physics workalready contemplated and we cannot build for the future scientific strength of thenation We must not have again an almost total interruption of the supply of newphysicists such as occurred from 1941 to 1945 from which we have now barelyrecovered We have now no ldquostockpilerdquo of physicistshellipIf any emergency lastingten years or more is contemplatedmdashand we have been informed that such is thecasemdashit is important to continue fundamental as well as applied research even inthe interests of military security Such security ten years from now will be af-fected by our success now in excelling our enemies in the basic research out ofwhich new kinds of weapons will be developed

The single most important resource the nation could protect was graduate educa-tion in physics42

39 National Manpower Council (ref 21) 19540 Donald Hamilton acting chair of the Princeton Physics Department Annual Report for1950-51 13 in PDP-AR (14 Sep 1951)41 RC Gibbs (NRC) to AG Shenstone (chair of the Physics Department at Princeton) 7Aug 1950 and response 18 Sep 1950 in PDP Box 1 ldquoChairmanrsquos recordsrdquo Folder ldquoScien-tific manpowerrdquo42 RC Gibbs and HA Barton ldquoProposed policy recommendationrdquo 1 Aug 1950 in PDPBox 1 ldquoChairmanrsquos recordsrdquo Folder ldquoScientific manpowerrdquo The visiting committee toHarvardrsquos physics department in 1952 commended its faculty for its valiant contributions toldquodefense mobilizationrdquo though no faculty member had to ldquoabandonhis instruction of gradu-ate students and no professor is so bedeviled by commitments to the mobilization programthat his work is seriously injuredrdquo The visiting committeersquos report dated 14 Apr 1952 is in

144 KAISER

Members of the physics department at the University of Rochester New Yorktook direct action to safeguard the manpower resource Citing ldquothe existing na-tional emergencyrdquo they opened four new teaching assistantships and five newresearch assistantships Several of Berkeleyrsquos physics faculty sent their graduatestudents to work as postdocs at the newly-formed weapons laboratory atLivermore43 Princetonrsquos John Wheeler told his department chair that the hydrogenbomb would be good for Princetonrsquos graduate students ldquoInsofar as graduate stu-dents are going to have to get part of their training working on university spon-sored war projectsrdquomdashan assertion seemingly so obvious that Wheeler felt no needto justify itmdashldquoit will be hard for them to do better than on the thermonuclear projectfor all-around range of ideasrdquo In a classified report of 1954 Hans Bethe explainedthat ldquothe great effort [previously] maderdquo at the nationrsquos universities ldquoto train theseyoung people [in physics] has since borne fruit Only because of that effort werelaboratories like Los Alamos able to gather their large staffs of highly competentscientists in the years since 1948rdquomdashand only with such large staffs could work onthe hydrogen bomb move forward44

In this emergency physicists scrutinized the draft policies that threatened toremove physics graduate students from their studies AIP director Barton offered aproposal in November 1950 to the director of the manpower office of the NationalSecurity Resources Board which had been given the task of reviewing the Selec-tive Service arrangements in the light of the Korean conflict Barton proposed theformation of a ldquoScientific and Technological Servicerdquo in which promising under-graduate and graduate students in the sciences would be classified for serviceDraft-age young men who qualified as bona fide science students ldquowould appearat once in a pool subject to disposition in the national interestrdquo The pool ldquowouldconstitute a national resource of great importance a resource in all too short sup-ply a resource which must be conserved reserved for essential uses only andaugmented and refined through all possible meansrdquo A National Board of Scien-

HDP ldquoCorrespondence 1958-60rdquo Box Q-Z Folder ldquo1958-59 Visiting CommitteerdquoPrincetonrsquos department chair reported in 1951 that five senior professors from his depart-ment were absent for war work during 1950-51 one (Henry Smyth) as chair of the AECothers (such as John Wheeler and Eugene Wigner) in AEC laboratories at Los Alamos andSavannah River Hamilton Annual Report 19501 in PDP-AR43 ldquoSupplementary memorandum for prospective graduate studentsrdquo mimeographed no-tice circulated by the University of Rochester physics department winter 1951 in PDPBox 2 Folder ldquoScientific manpowerrdquo On the founding of Livermore see Seidel (ref 3)151-153 and Herbert York The advisors Oppenheimer Teller and the superbomb 2ndedn (Stanford 1989) 121-135 Lists of Berkeley physics students who planned to work atLivermore may be found in the ldquoStudents advanced to candidacyrdquo filed regularly betweenOctober 1951 and March 1954 in BDP Folders 78 - 71244 Wheeler to Shenstone 8 Jan 1951 as quoted in Peter Galison and Barton BernsteinldquolsquoIn any lightrsquo Scientists and the decision to build the hydrogen bombrdquo HSPS 192 (1989)267-347 on 320 Hans Bethersquos report ldquoObservations on the development of the H-Bombrdquowas declassified in 1980 and reprinted in York (ref 43) 163-181 quotation on 166


45 Henry Barton ldquoEmergency use of manpower A proposalrdquo PT 4 (Jan 1951) 26-2746 Harrison (ref 19) 6-7 Smyth (ref 19) 23 ldquoScientific manpower NSRB AdvisoryGroup calls for actionrdquo PT 4 (Mar 1951) 28-9 See also ldquoPhysicists and military mobiliza-tion Draft deferment of physics studentsrdquo PT 3 (Sep 1950) 23-24 ldquoScience and mobiliza-tionrdquo PT 4 (Nov 1951) 4-5 and Spring (ref 34) 44-4947 ldquoScientific manpower at midyearrdquo PT 7 (Oct 1954) 4-5 on 448 Quoted in Barton (ref 14) 6

tific and Technological Personnel should be established with responsibility tomaintain an ldquoadequate flow of scientists-in-training through professional (gradu-ate) schools and other procedures to augment and improve the quality of the scien-tific and technological force of the United States against the possibility of an all-out emergency and the rehabilitation needs after such an emergencyrdquo45

MITrsquos George Harrison lobbied for the formation of a similar special categoryof selective service in his testimony before the Preparedness Subcommittee of theSenate Committee on the Armed Forces in January 1951 Harrison explained tothe senators that new weapons ldquorequire inventive imagination and rapid develop-ment [and] result mainly from the cooperative effort of young men most of whomare only a short time out of collegerdquo ldquoEvery young scientist can serve as a soldierand carry a gunrdquo Harrison argued ldquobut not every young soldier can help developa new weapon like the proximity fuze that will replace the services of many thou-sands of soldiersrdquo Given that ldquo[p]hysicists are now in dangerously short supplyrdquoHarrison like Barton urged that a National Scientific Personnel Board be estab-lished to induct young physicist-draftees to make rather than use new weaponsSimilar proposals for a ldquoScientific Service Corpsrdquo and a ldquoReserve Specialists Train-ing Corpsrdquo came from the AECrsquos Smyth and from the Scientific Manpower Advi-sory Committee of the National Security Resources Board The AdvisoryCommitteersquos proposal modeled on the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC)suggested that students in the ldquoReserve Specialists Training Corpsrdquo spend fourmonths in the standard military basic training before returning to their classroomswhere they would wear uniforms or badges while continuing their training46

Although the physicistsrsquo proposals for a new form of selective service were notimplementedmdashindeed some physicists complained bitterly after the Korean Warabout the ldquocompletely irrationalrdquo drafting of physics graduate students near theend of the warmdashgovernment bureaucrats did not miss the underlying logic behindtheir proposals47 The Federal Security Agencyrsquos Office of Education and the Bu-reau of Labor Statistics made explicit the link between graduate training in phys-ics and the nationrsquos defense ldquoIf the research in physics which is vital to the nationrsquossurvival is to continue and growrdquo they asserted ldquonational policy must be con-cerned not only with keeping the young men already in the field at work but alsowith insuring a continuing supply of new graduatesrdquo48 Likewise the director ofthe AECrsquos Physics and Mathematics Branch proposed in July 1951 that the AECbuild more accelerators so as to keep physicistsrsquo morale high and their studentssharp He went through a simple calculation if N nuclear physicists were ldquowilling

146 KAISER

able and eager to use particle accelerators and on average five such men peraccelerator is an effective teamrdquo then the AEC should build (N5) accelerators ortwo per year for as long as ldquothe international situation remains roughly as atpresentrdquo49

There was a self-serving note in the physicistsrsquo policy proposals Not onlywere they calling for the continued smooth non-centralized operation of large-scale physics together with special deferment policies for their students but theyalso ignored the interdisciplinary character of weapons work50 Yet few peoplechallenged their proclamations What is remarkable about the physicist-policymakersrsquo response to the Korean conflict was the uniformity with which otherpeople not directly involved with academic physics adopted and amplified theirearly call for vastly increased manpower production in the name of national de-fense From the Bureau of Labor Statistics to the AEC the equation between phys-ics manpower and national security went unquestioned51

After Korea No demobilization

The cries about physics manpower shortages continued well after fighting endedin Korea in July 1953 Complaints predictions and warnings about a devastatingshortage of PhD physicists continued unabated well into the 1960s During themid-1950s neither an AIP annual report nor an APS Presidential Address could goby without a mention of the manpower shortages in physics52 The conference onldquoThe production of physicistsrdquo sponsored by the NRC and AIP in 1955 beganldquowith the premise that there is now a shortage of physicists that is not likely to be

49 Joseph Platt to Paul McDaniel ldquoExtent of Off-Site Research Program in Physicsrdquo 27Jul 1951 as quoted in Seidel (ref 10) 50250 Lillian Hoddeson et al Critical assembly A technical history of Los Alamos during theOppenheimer years 1943-1945 (New York 1993) Pickering (ref 3) Galison Image (ref3) chapts 4 951 Rebecca Press Schwartz argues in an unpublished paper that the physicistsrsquo version ofthe division of labor in weapons work was built into the Smyth Report on the ManhattanProject for security reasons Smyth had to emphasize the contributions of physicists muchof whose work had already been published in the open literature rather than the closely-guarded inputs from materials science and engineering Henry DeWolf Smyth A generalaccount of the development of methods of using atomic energy for military purposes underthe auspices of the United States government 1940-1945 (Washington DC 1945) Fordecades after his report was published Smyth received angry letters from chemists andengineers who complained that he had slighted their contributions My thanks to Schwartzfor sharing a copy of her paper52 See eg Barton (ref 14) 5-6 M Stanley Livingston ldquoEmployment problems of youngphysicistsrdquo PT 8 (Apr 1955) 20-21 Raymond Birge ldquoPhysics and physicists of the pastfifty yearsrdquo PT 9 (May 1956) 20-28 on 23-24 ldquoScientific manpowerrdquo PT 8 (June 1955)22-24 John Phelps and Ernest Pollard ldquoPhysics physicists and securityrdquo PT 9 (Dec 1956)23-26 ldquoManpower and educationrdquo PT 10 (Jan 1957) 50


53 ldquoNRC-AIP Conference on the Production of Physicistsrdquo PT 8 (June 1955) 6-12 on 754 RS Shankland ldquoRecommendations NRC-AIP Conference on the Production of Physi-cists Physics Committeerdquo PT 8 (June 1955) 13-14 on 1355 ldquoNRC-AIP Conferencerdquo (ref 53) 8-9 Birge quoted similar statistics ldquoof the originalprimary school populationrdquo only 04 percent completed bachelorrsquos degrees in physics withcorrespondingly lower numbers for advanced degrees Birge (ref 52) 24 Marsh WhiteldquoEstimation of numbers of physicists in training during the next decaderdquo American journalof physics 22 (1954) 421-422 upon which Birge relied56 John Rudolph argues that many of the efforts to reform high-school and college physicscurricula during the 1950s and 1960s aimed less at closing the manpower shortage than atincreasing basic science literacy and a cultural appreciation for physics Rudolph Scientistsin the classroom The Cold War reconstruction of American science education (New York2002) esp chapts 3-557 Birge (ref 52) 2358 ldquoExtending longevity of scientistsrdquo as reported in ldquoScientific manpowerrdquo PT 8 (June1955) 23-24

relieved for a decade or longerrdquo53 ldquoThe present shortage of physicists and theanticipated worsening of this situation in the futurerdquo exhorted one of the commit-tee chairs from the conference ldquomust be the concern of all career physicists whoacknowledge a responsibility to their profession and to the well-being of the na-tionrdquo54

One of the conference participants asked why so few American boys and girlsgrew up to become physicists Why was it Dael Wolfle asked that ldquoof 10000boys and girls who are bright enough to become physicistsrdquo who ldquopossess theintellectual interest habits and abilities required of a physicistrdquo only fifty com-pleted undergraduate majors in the subject and only fifteen pursued graduate studyThe next speaker reminded his fellow conferees that ldquothe lsquotime of decisionrsquo for apotential science student is often the 8th grade when electives are selected for thefollowing yearrdquo55 Physicists in the mid-1950s pondered how best to reach thislarger untapped pool of elementary school and junior high school students to be-gin to close the manpower shortage56 And this when the nationrsquos universities weregraduating three times as many PhDs a year than the prewar records Nonethe-less leaders of the American physics community aimed at a faster reproductionldquoIn spite of the present importance of physicsrdquo the outgoing president of the APSdeclared in an address in February 1956 ldquowe constitute an extremely small frac-tion of the total [US] populationrdquo57

Efforts to protect and increase the nationrsquos supply of physicists bordered on theabsurd In June 1955 Physics today carried notice that a New York City companyhad offered to arrange for ldquonewly developed medical examinationsrdquo to be given tothose ldquodifficult to replacerdquo scientists who might otherwise have missed work be-cause of food allergies Although by the companyrsquos own estimate food allergiesaffected more than 90 of the nationrsquos population the proposed medical attentionwould be doled out preferentially in the interest of ldquoconserving our present pool ofscientific manpowerrdquo58

148 KAISER

On September 5 1957 exactly one month before the launch of Sputnik revvedthe rhetoric of manpower still higher Senator Henry Jackson (D Washington)released a report entitled ldquoTrained manpower for freedomrdquo Citing both the newopportunities as well as the new challenges of the atomic age Jackson announcedthat ldquothe member states of NATO now face an authentic crisis in the form ofacross-the-board shortages of trained manpowerrdquo where he was quick to add therelevant ldquotrained manpowerrdquo included only ldquoscientific and technical personnelrdquo Itwas a new age Jackson declared in which the ldquothe decisive factor is highly trainedmanagerial and technical brain powerrdquo59 One month before the United States wouldlose the first round of the ldquospace racerdquo and a few years before presidential candi-dates would debate the extent of the ldquomissile gaprdquo Jackson capitalized on thecompetition in scientific education and manpower ldquoThe Soviets are now graduat-ing trained technical people at a per capita rate roughly twice that of the NATOcommunity as a wholerdquo Jackson declared without specifying his source ldquoThequality of Soviet instruction is highrdquo With the Soviets marching forward on thescientific manpower front the US had to make the most of the ldquogreatest resourceof the state and of the free world communityrdquo that is scientific talent ldquoNothing ismore preciousrdquo He outlined various ldquotalent development programsrdquo including fel-lowships for high-school and college students special summer study institutesand awards for students and teachers who excelled in science education Theseresources Jackson explained with a telling metaphor ldquoshould be used as catalyticagents which so to speak can initiate educational chain reactions extending overthe broadest possible scientific and technological frontrdquo60

Immediately after Sputnikrsquos launch President Eisenhower announced that thenation needed to create scientists even more urgently than it needed to pursue ldquoallother immediate tasks of producing missiles [and] of developing new techniquesin the armed servicesrdquo His scientific advisors emphasized even more emphaticallythan before that missiles would come only with investment in education61 Mere

59 Henry M Jackson ldquoTrained manpower for freedomrdquo 16-page report addressed to theSpecial NATO Parliamentary Committee on Scientific and Technical Personnel quotationsfrom pp 3-4 copy in PDP Box 1 ldquoChairmanrsquos recordsrdquo Folder ldquoScientific manpowerrdquoJacksonrsquos advisory committee for preparing the report included several physicists and math-ematicians (Richard Courant Maria Goeppert Mayer Edward Teller and John Wheeler)the president of MIT (James Killian) the former president of the National Academy ofSciences (Detlev Bronk) and the president of the Motion Pictures Association (EricJohnston) For background to Jacksonrsquos report see Krige ldquoNATOrdquo (ref 5) 88-9360 Jackson (ref 59) 4 6-10 Summer study institutes for bringing high school physicsteachers up to date had been in place for several years John Rudolph ldquoFrom World War toWoods Hole The use of wartime research models for curriculum reformrdquo Teachers Col-lege record (in press 2001) See also Frederick Seitz ldquoFactors concerning education forscience and engineeringrdquo PT 11 (Jul 1958) 12-15 United States Department of HealthEducation and Welfare Education in the USSR (Washington DC 1957) and ldquoEducationin the Soviet Union Emphasis on sciencerdquo PT 11 (Jul 1958) 12-1661 Eisenhower as quoted in ldquoAn emerging science policyrdquo PT 10 (Dec 1957) 32


days after the launch of Sputnik the AIP tried to ascertain whether appropriateldquoeducational chain reactionsrdquo could be induced to meet the latest challenge ItsEducation and Manpower Division distributed questionnaires to every departmentwithin the United States that offered a four-year undergraduate major in physicsWithin three months 490 of the 536 departments had respondedmdasha 91 responserate that in itself indicates how seriously the nationrsquos physics departments consid-ered the situation More than ninety percent of the respondents reported some ldquoshort-agerdquo in its physics teaching staff Handling the rising influx of undergraduate andgraduate majors in physics overloaded the staffs of nearly half of the respondingdepartments Almost an equal number reported that the inflated teaching loads hadmaterially reduced the time available for research Although the administrations atthese institutions had authorized a total of 403 new appointments of PhD physi-cists to alleviate the teaching pressures only 254 of these authorized positionswere expected to be filled during the 19578 academic year a large proportion ofthe responding department chairs predicted even worse difficulties in procuringadequate teaching staff for the following year62 By the time the AIP completedthis study the circulation of the monthly newsletter from a private lobbying groupcalled the ldquoScientific Manpower Commissionrdquo which reported vital statistics onfluctuating supply and demand for trained scientific and technical personnel hadrisen above 1200063

4 OVERPRODUCTION

Initiatives similar to Jacksonrsquos proposals were put in place soon after Sputnikthanks especially to the National Defense Education Act of 1958 some had beenoperating for several years64 Fantastic increases in the numbers of physics PhDsawarded annuallymdasha jump from 500 in 1955 to 1000 in 1965 to 1500 by 1970mdashresulted Still there were not enough Analysts projected cataclysmic shortagesldquoManpower crisis found in physics Report says 20000 jobs will go unfilled by1970rdquo announced a New York Times headline on July 6 1964 The newspaper tookits facts from the AIPrsquos Education and Manpower Division ldquoBy 1970 the expertspredictrdquo the Times echoed the AIPrsquos report ldquoindustry and government will have a

62 WC Kelly ldquoReport on a study of the supply of physics teachers in US colleges anduniversities offering a major in physicsrdquo 7-page report dated 1 May 1958 but in circulationsince mid-April The surveys were distributed on 31 Oct 1957 In AIP-EMD Box 5 FolderldquoAIP-publications Kelly WCrdquo63 ldquoScientific Manpower Commission 1958rdquo 2-page pamphlet in AIP-EMD Box 4 folderldquoScientific Manpower Commission Washington DCrdquo64 ldquoAn emerging science policyrdquo (ref 61) CJ Overbeck ldquoThe physicist and the NationalDefense Education Act of 1958rdquo PT 12 (May 1959) 22-24 Rudolph (ref 56) RobertDivine The Sputnik challenge Eisenhowerrsquos response to the Soviet satellite (New York1993) Barbara Barksdale Clowse Brainpower for the Cold War The Sputnik crisis andNational Defense Education Act of 1958 (Westport CT 1981)

150 KAISER

deficit of at least 20000 physicistsmdashabout one-third of the total number requiredrdquoThere had been 29000 physics-related jobs and only 17300 physicists to fill themin 1960 the ldquolow output of key scientific and educational manpower is expectedto result in critical shortages in 1970rdquo Within days word of the impending ldquocrisisrdquohad spread from Londonrsquos Financial Times to the Washington Post and from theWall Street Journal to Business Week65

Under increasingly melodramatic headlines the same story also appeared acrossthe country The New York Herald Tribune trumpeted ldquoPhysicists We need lotsmorerdquo the Philadelphia Daily News ldquoPeril looms in shortage of physicistsrdquo theWilmington Delaware Evening Journal ldquoPhysics keystone of powermost Ameri-cans unaware of meaningrdquo and the Orange California News ldquoPlight of the na-tion lsquoVanishing physicistsrsquordquo The Akron Beacon Journal saw the bright side ldquoLook-ing for job future Just study physicsrdquo In all at least forty-nine different newspa-pers and magazines in twenty-nine different states ran a story based on the AIPrsquosreport66

Many papers peppered their coverage with editorials about the indispensabil-ity of physicists to the nation and the world The UPI story which many localpapers printed while changing only the headline used language only slightly lesssensationalistic than Senator Jacksonrsquos ldquoPhysics is the science which splits theatom produced the H-bomb and the bright peaceful promises of atomic energyand is the indispensable keystone of many technologies It is the science of matterand motion and these are the fields in which nations contend for superiorityrdquo Anarticle which ran in both the Moline Illinois Dispatch and the Beloit WisconsinNews began similarly

It can be persuasively argued that our age is the age of physics Other branches ofscience have made tremendous strides since the turn of the century but it is physi-cists who have transformed manrsquos understanding of the universe Nor is this newunderstanding purely abstract Physics has a practical role in government andindustry The entire space program for example rests upon physicsdiscoverieshellipWhat it all adds up to is that in an age of great emphasis on phys-ics we are not training enough physicists to meet the demand

The Rochester Times-Union in Rochester New York put it more simply physi-cists are ldquoa prime national resource in the nuclear and space agerdquo67

65 Clippings in AIP-EMD Box 6 Folder ldquoNews media coverage 1964 manpower studyrdquoPhysics todayrsquos article based on the AIP report contained none of the histrionics of thenewspaper accounts ldquoThe supply [of physics PhDs] seems to be increasing faster than thedemand Some alleviation of the shortage of physicists can be foreseen but the shortagewill probably persist through 1970rdquo Fred Boercker ldquoEducation and manpower in physicsrdquoPT 17 (Sep 1964) 42-50 on 50 Boercker the Director of Manpower Studies at AIP hadwritten the report he abstracted66 Clippings (ref 65)67 Ibid


The predictions of shortfall could not have been further from the mark Theescalation of PhD production did not run after a lack but produced a glut Thedroves of new physics PhDs slid into the worst job shortage the nation has everseenmdashfar more protracted than any employment-placement difficulties during theDepression years Within just one year of the widely-quoted AIP report of 1964well over twice as many young physicists registered with the AIP placement ser-vice than there were jobs available By 1968 nearly 1000 applicants crowded thehalls of one of the APS annual meetings scrambling for interviews for one of the253 advertised jobs the following year almost 1300 young physicists competedfor 234 jobs At the annual April meetings of the APS held in Washington DCthe numbers turned grimmer 1010 physicists competed for 63 jobs in 1970 1053for 53 in 1971 Only sixteen employers bothered to show up for the APS meetingin April 1971 down by more than one hundred from the number who had flockedto the meeting in 1962 The AIPrsquos Placement Service Advisory Committee esti-mated in October 1970 that by July of 1971 the nationrsquos ldquodemand levelrdquo for scien-tists and engineers would slip to 44 percent what it had been a decade earlier68

American physics had indeed reached a crisis by 1970 exactly when the 1964report had predicted

The employment crisis which lasted for the better part of the 1970s had itsroots in the same ground as the previous boom the Cold War Protests againstclassified research on university campuses heightened by Vietnam-era protestsagainst the defense establishment more generally rattled the Cold War logic thatequated physics manpower with national defense The Mansfield Amendment of1969 which placed restrictions on the Defense Departmentrsquos funding of basic re-search curtailed opportunity69 More immediate in their effects however wererapid deep cuts in defense spending ldquoThe federal government is the largest singleemployer of scientists and engineers in the USrdquo explained an internal memoran-dum from the AIPrsquos Education and Manpower Division in October 1970 The fed-eral government had increased its employment of scientists and engineers by 49percent between 1959 and 1969 new government jobs for physicists rose at a rateof nearly ten percent a year between 1960 and 1968 At the end of that rise onefifth of the nationrsquos physics PhDs worked directly for the government In 1969the Defense Department employed 12000 physical scientists other federal agen-cies another 1900070 And of course the majority of university-employed physicsPhDs had part or all of their research budgets from the federal government

68 ldquoPlacement register statistical comparison APS-AAPT Annual Joint Meeting 1963 to1969rdquo (not dated ca 1970) and ldquoSummary Placement service register The AmericanPhysical Society Meeting Washington DCrdquo dated 3 June 1971 both in AIP-EMD Box13 Folder ldquoPlacement literaturerdquo ldquoSupply and demandrdquo Oct 1970 in AIP-EMD Box 13Folder ldquoPlacement Service Advisory Committeerdquo69 Kevles (ref 3) 24-25 Leslie (ref 3) chapt 9 Robert Serber with Robert Crease Peaceand war Reminiscences of a life on the frontiers of science (New York 1998) chapt 970 ldquoSupply and demandrdquo (ref 68) Robert Albertyrsquos report in Brown and Schwartz (ref16) 23-33

152 KAISER

Deacutetente meant bad economic news for the nationrsquos physicists Deep cuts inspending for defense and space knocked the governmentrsquos science-employmentsystem far out of equilibrium In 1968 ten percent of all jobs in the nationmdashalljobs not just jobs in science or engineeringmdashstemmed from the defense industryBetween 1968 and 1971 one quarter of these jobs disappeared Sixteen-thousandscientists and engineers each holding advanced graduate degrees lost their aero-space-industry jobs during 1970 joining the half-million employees in the nationrsquosdefense plants laid off by October 1970 another half-million were expected tomeet the same fate within the next year The defense-spending cuts combinedwith the wane of baby-boom enrollments cut into the academic job market forphysicists as for everyone else At least 45 and as many as 58 university depart-ments had interviewed candidates for jobs at each of the April APS meetings be-tween 1962 and 1968 The number of academic jobs on offer at the meeting droppedto 21 in 1969 and to 12 in 1971mdasha factor of four decrease in as many years71 Soonthe numbers of physics PhDs awarded each year began to fall (see figure 2)

Four years into the physics-job depression the APS and the American Asso-ciation of Physics Teachers convened a special meeting under the title ldquoTraditionand Change in Physics Graduate Educationrdquo Over 150 representatives from gov-ernment industry and the nationrsquos universitiesmdashthree times more than the antici-pated attendancemdashmet at Penn State during the summer of 1974 They focusedtheir attention on one central question did the ldquotraditional training in physicsrdquomdashatradition forged over a quarter-century of Cold War expansionmdashserve the ldquobestinterests of society of the physics community and of the individual physicistrdquo72

What it meant to do physics and what it meant to be trained as a physicist re-quired serious re-examination in the mid-1970s just as it had after World War II

About half of the students in Berkeleyrsquos department during the early and mid-1950s expressly wanted to lend their hand to the Cold-War cause and half did notwant to have any part in the new form of ldquocivil servicerdquo For every student whoreplied ldquoNot interested in war workrdquo on the departmentrsquos semi-annual survey ofjob preferences another wrote down ldquoAcademic or war researchrdquo or ldquoprefer workconnected with national defencerdquo or ldquolsquoEssentialrsquo industry or Govrsquotrdquo The 50-50split remained steady between 1951 and 1954 during as well as after the KoreanWar73 The obvious Cold War reasoning for training scientific manpower framedstudentsrsquo choicesmdashfor or against a particular coursemdashjust as plainly as it did for

71 ldquoSummaryrdquo and ldquoSupply and demandrdquo (ref 68) An entry to the enormous literaturegenerated by the job crunch that began in 1970 can be made through the records within AIP-EMD Box 13 Brown and Schwartz (ref16) Weart (ref 7) 327-331 Lee Grodzins ldquoSup-ply and demand for PhD physicists 1975 to 1986rdquo in Martin Perl ed Physics careersemployment and education (New York 1978) 52-8672 APS Physics and society The newsletter of the forum on physics and society 6 (Jan1977) ldquoTradition and change in physics graduate educationrdquo PT 27 (Nov 1974) 91 andD Allan Bromley ldquoPhysics in perspectiverdquo PT 25 (Jul 1972) 23-3573 ldquoStudents advanced to candidacyrdquo Oct 1951 through Mar 1954 in BDP Folders 78-712


Senator Jackson or department chair Birge At a time when the textbook for agraduate-level nuclear physics might be the AECrsquos handbook The effects of atomicweapons and job postings within Berkeleyrsquos department as well as Physics todayroutinely included positions in ldquonucleonicsrdquo as well as guided missiles studentsdid not have much trouble detecting the Cold War logic of physicist manpower74

5 COLD WAR PHYSICS

Did the historically bounded Cold-War context influence the research thatAmerican academic physicists undertook after the war Paul Forman has famouslyasserted that they suffered from ldquofalse consciousnessrdquo trading in their intellectualautonomy for defense dollars Physicists ldquopretended a fundamental character totheir work that it scarcely hadrdquo it had merely ldquoinstrumental significancehellipto theirmilitary patronsrdquo In response to these charges of intellectual ldquoseductionrdquo by themilitary Daniel Kevles has argued that certain areas of scientific research ldquocantake on lives of their own as intellectually compelling areas of inquiryrdquo even iftheir initial impetus comes from designs with military relevance There is no trans-historical significance Kevles argues to terms such as ldquobasicrdquo or ldquofundamentalrdquophysics ldquoPhysics is what physicists dordquo75

There is another way to frame the question American physicists were not asconcerned with policing a cordon sanitaire between ldquobasicrdquo and ldquoappliedrdquo physicsas they were with coping with the sudden population explosion of physics studentswhom the Cold War had produced The student overflows and the concrete re-quirements for teaching rooms full of pupils rather than mentoring a handful ofindividual disciples helped to solidify certain research traditions and approachesThe tremendous unprecedented demographic shift helped to drive a pedagogicalemphasis upon efficient repeatablemdashand thereby trainablemdashtechniques of cal-culation thus solidifying a prewar instrumentalist trend Such a pedagogical pro-gram centered increasingly around Feynman diagrams and similar calculationaltechniques could be taught in fine Taylorist factory-production style They wereamenable to teaching and evaluation in ways that other aspects or styles of practic-ing physics were not76 As one former physics graduate student from Harvard later

74 Lists of textbooks 1952-54 in BDP Folders 819-820 collections of incoming an-nouncements for employment possibilities 1945-55 in BDP Folder 427 Hughes Researchand Development Laboratories ldquoGuided missilesrdquo full-page advertisement in PT 9 (Nov1956) 1475 Forman (ref 3) 224-9 Kevles (ref 27) 262-26476 Rudolph (ref 60) similarly notes the postwar emphasis on techniques rather than con-ceptual development in Cold War curricular reforms Andrew Warwick and Ursula Kleinhave drawn attention to the roles of ldquotheoretical technologyrdquo and ldquopaper toolsrdquo in physicalscientistsrsquo work Warwick ldquoCambridge mathematics and Cavendish physics CunninghamCampbell and Einsteinrsquos relativity 1905-1911 Part I The uses of theoryrdquo Studies in his-tory and philosophy of science 23 (1992) 625-656 Klein ldquoTechniques of modelling andpaper-tools in classical chemistryrdquo in Mary Morgan and Margaret Morrison eds Modelsas mediators Perspectives on natural and social sciences (New York 1999) 146-167

154 KAISER

recalled ldquoI went to graduate school [in the late 1950s] to learn about foundationsI was taught instead how to do physics In place of wisdom I was offered skillsrdquo77

Epistemological musings or the striving for ultimate theoretical foundationsmdashnevera strong interest among American physicists even before the warmdashfell beyond thepale for the postwar generation and their advisors78

Physicists sometimes made the pedagogical bases of their research choicesexplicit Freeman Dyson Richard Feynmanrsquos young collaborator who did morethan anyone else to bring Feynmanrsquos new diagrammatic techniques to young physi-cistsrsquo attention framed his efforts in pedagogical terms Writing to a skepticalRobert Oppenheimer in October 1948 Dyson argued that Feynman diagrams wereldquoconsiderably easier to use understand and teachrdquo than any of the rival formal-isms His testimonial to the intertwined intellectual and educational merits of thediagrams was echoed by practically every textbook author on particle physicsquantum field theory dispersion relations and the S-matrix program over the nexttwo decades79

Concern with the pedagogical effectiveness of physicistsrsquo research topics like-wise appears in Birgersquos recommendation for early promotion of one of Berkeleyrsquosexperimentalists Emphasizing that ldquoone of the greatest tasks now confronting thedepartment is the direction of the research work of our graduate studentsrdquo Birgeexplained that ldquomore than any other member of the staff [this professor] has beenlsquoimposed uponrsquo in this connection He now has eighteen graduate students for-mally enrolled for research under his directionrdquo More important he had proven tobe an effective leader of their research as evidenced by their impressive publica-tion record ldquoI have asked [him] to compile a list of the publications of his stu-dents because such publications should be considered effectively as part of hisresearch recordrdquo Success in advising graduate students made the faculty membertoo precious to risk losing to another university80

77 Evelyn Fox Keller ldquoThe anomaly of a woman in physicsrdquo in Sara Ruddick and PamelaDaniels eds Working it out (New York 1977) 78-91 on 8378 Silvan S Schweber ldquoThe empiricist temper regnant Theoretical physics in the UnitedStates 1920-1950rdquo HSPS 171 (1986) 55-98 and QED and the men who made it DysonFeynman Schwinger and Tomonaga (Princeton 1994) Nancy Cartwright ldquoPhilosophicalproblems of quantum theory The response of American physicistsrdquo in Lorenz Kruumlger etal eds The probabilistic revolution (2 vols Cambridge 1987) 2 417-35 Alexi AssmusldquoThe Americanization of molecular physicsrdquo HSPS 231 (1992) 1-34 Andrew PickeringldquoFrom field theory to phenomenology The history of dispersion relationsrdquo in Brown et al(ref 27) 579-59979 Freeman Dyson unpublished memorandum to J Robert Oppenheimer 17 Oct 1948quoted in Schweber QED (ref 78) 522-523 Kaiser Making theory (ref 10) 378-391 andldquoStick-figure realism Conventions reification and the persistence of Feynman diagrams1948-64rdquo Representations 70 (2000) 49-86 Cf David Kaiser ldquoA y is just a y Pedagogypractice and the reconstitution of general relativity 1942-1975rdquo Studies in history andphilosophy of modern physics 29 (1998) 321-33880 Birge to Dean AR Davis 9 Apr 1951 in RTB


For a young theoretical physicist on Berkeleyrsquos faculty however advising gradu-ate students cut the other way After only a year and a half at Berkeley he wasadvised to look for a position elsewhere The professorrsquos problem stemmed fromthe crush of students who required advising81 The young theoristrsquos classroom teach-ing was not at issue nor his diligence ldquoI have on more than one occasion foundhim working in his office on Saturday afternoon or on Sunday when very fewother persons were in the buildingrdquo Birge wrote on his behalf

Despite his merits the man could not attract graduate students ldquoIn general[he] is interested in field theories of a rather abstract nature It is somewhat the sortof thing that Einstein has worked on for many years (without any important re-sults)rdquo That was a mistake82

It is felt here that when one has attained an established position he can afford towork on a highly important but very difficult problem if necessary for yearswithout visible resultshellipBut a young man must choose subjects that show prom-ise of publishable results in a relatively short time It is particularly important toselect subjects of this character for graduate student researchmdashsubjects that arenot trivial but at the same time are not unduly difficult or too time-consuming

Writing in favor of the dismissed theorist to Harvardrsquos Kenneth Bainbridge Birgeexplained83

[He] is interested in field theory and the work he is now doing may turn out to beimportant It is difficult to judge the matter at this time But it is not the sort ofwork that can readily be used for PhD theses nor the kind that leads to rapid orvoluminous publication Hence it seemed to our committee that [he] was not car-rying his fair share of the load of graduate student research and was not likely toin the immediate future It therefore seems desirable to replace him by someonewho will be more useful to us

Assessing the episode two years later Birge made the equation between researchtopic and pedagogical needs crystal clear84

He turned out to be a very good teacher and the main criticism of his research wasthat it was in a rather abstract field In particular the subjects that he was suggest-

81 Leonard Loeb to Birge 14 Oct 1952 in RTB Box 19 Folder ldquoLoebrdquo The theorist hadbeen hired to help fill the gap left by the firing or resignation of the physics departmentrsquostheorists (and two experimentalists) over the loyalty oath (Kaiser (ref 6)) Thus the teach-ing crunch in Berkeleyrsquos department had as specific tie to Cold War politics82 Birge to E B Roessler (University of California Davis) 29 Nov 1952 in RTB83 Birge to Bainbridge 11 Feb 1953 in RTB Birge sent identical letters to ProfessorsHalliday (University of Pittsburgh) Duncan (Pennsylvania State College) Macdonald (Bos-ton University) Ellickson (University of Oregon) Howard (University of Oklahoma) andBengston (University of Nebraska) during the first three weeks of March 195384 Birge to Alfred Kelleher 3 Nov 1954 in RTB Birgersquos designation of the unfortunate

156 KAISER

ing to graduate students for their research seemed too difficult and too abstractfor that sort of thing It was therefore felt that he would not be particularly valu-able to us since we have a very large number of graduate students who must beguided to the PhD degree

Having the nationrsquos largest graduate program Berkeley could not afford certaintypes of research Like the promoted experimentalist the theorist could boast ef-fective classroom teaching and dutiful work habits But there was no room fortheory too difficult for graduate studentsrsquo theses The Berkeley cases probablyrepresent a wider trend most physics departments in the United States reportedhaving too many graduate students for their faculty to handle During the man-power build-up phase of the Cold War physicists had to choose their research soas to support throngs of graduate students on their coattails Pedagogical realitiesconstrained research possibilities85

In reference to the argument between Forman and Kevles it was not militaryspending per se but the pedagogical requirements of training graduate studentsthat shaped the character of postwar physics research in theoretical as well as ex-perimental physics The pedagogical requirements entailed by the sudden expo-nential growth in graduate student numbers during the Cold War reinforced a par-ticular instrumentalist approach to physics Feynman diagrams and similar ldquopapertoolsrdquo flourished within this context while other aspects of theoretical work ap-peared irrelevant or unsupportable By keeping the exigencies of graduate trainingin focus we can begin to unpack the effects of the Cold War on American physics

theoristrsquos research as overly ldquoabstractrdquo was exaggerated he worked on phenomenologicalapplications of quantum field theories and methods to improve approximate calculationsmdashhardly an ldquoEinsteinianrdquo quest for a unified field theory Kaiser Making theory (ref 10)18585 Lowen (ref 26) chapts 4-5 points out that Frederick Terman first as dean of Stanfordrsquosengineering school and later as the universityrsquos provost encouraged faculty to select re-search topics most likely to attract military contracts on which they could hire and traingraduate students


AppendixPhD Production Rates in the United States 1890-1971

This appendix contains information on the growth in the numbers of PhDsawarded each year in various fields by US institutions from 1890 to 197185 Thefields included each accounted for at least 1 percent of the total number of doctor-ates granted in any year The numbers of PhDs awarded each year in physics likethe total number of PhDs in all fields rose exponentially during this period apartfrom World Wars I and II However the doubling period di varied across fields andover time The tables give di (the doubling period for each subject as measured inyears) the ratio dphysicsdi and the multiple-correlation coefficient for each entryR2 which indicates how well the data fit the pure exponential curve a perfect fitwould have R2 = 1000 Note that the smaller the doubling period the more rapidthe growth

Table A1Doubling-period for the number of PhDs granted annually by US institutions 1890-1941

di R2 (dphys di)All Fields 1164 0939 113Physics 1318 0928 100Engineering 768 0935 172Math 1097 0928 120Chemistry 1246 0940 106Biology 1026 0958 129Earth Science 1507 0878 087Economics 1442 0889 091Political Sci 1408 0893 094Sociology 1122 0923 118Psychology 1343 0925 098History 1177 0948 112English 1101 0948 120Foreign Lang 985 0956 132Religion 1650 0894 079

86 Based on data in Adkins (ref 7) 252-429

158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)

All Fields 779 0916 090Physics 700 0811 100Engineering 537 0928 130Math 648 0934 108Chemistry 1216 0819 058Biology 806 0942 087Earth Science 990 0925 071Economics 835 0924 084Political Sci 825 0859 085Sociology 856 0865 082Psychology 700 0812 100History 990 0854 071English 797 0926 088Foreign Lang 937 0869 075Religion 1540 0662 045






DAVID KAISERCold War requisitions scientific manpower and the production of Americanphysicists after World War IIABSTRACTBeginning most explicitly with the American involvement in the Korean War and continu-ing unabated until 1970 the demand for PhD-trained physicists in the United States fol-lowed a particular Cold War logic of ldquomanpowerrdquo and requisitions This logic rehearsedby senior physicists university administrators government commissions individual sena-tors and newspaper reporters from across the country argued that young graduate studentsin physics constituted the nationrsquos most precious resource The purported need to trainever-larger numbers of physics graduate students was often used to justify the structuralrearrangements associated with ldquobig sciencerdquo from huge federally-subsidized budgets tofactory-sized equipment The exigencies of training roomfuls of graduate students ratherthan mentoring handfuls of disciples reinforced the prevailing American pragmatic instru-mentalist approach to theory

132 KAISER

Nor was Birgersquos letter unique in its emphasis upon the graduate training ofyoung physicists In a survey of 1954 the Berkeley physicists claimed to spendonly 10-15 of their time on undergraduate instruction but 40-95 on teachinggraduate students Yet even that seemed insufficient the new department chairCarl Helmholz circulated a memo to the department faculty in December 1958reminding his colleagues that ldquoAlthough research per se is important the funda-mental concern of the department is the education of studentsrdquomdashand lest there beany doubt ldquothe graduate student class is the one which we should consider mostseriouslyrdquo2 The ldquoproductionrdquo of trained physicistsmdashBirgersquos ldquomain objectiverdquo buta theme largely overlooked by historians of sciencemdashbecame a central at timeshysterial concern for American physicists and politicians during the decades afterWorld War II

ldquoBig sciencerdquo has usually been considered along two axes funding and thescale of experimental apparatus3 Both the source and the scale of funding for sci-entific research changed dramatically with World War II By 1953 the level ofspending for ldquofundamentalrdquo physics research within the United States was 20 to 25times greater than it had been in 1938 even after adjusting for inflation and the

noted in Yvonne Young (Birgersquos secretary) to Larkin Kerwin (President of the CanadianAssociation of Physicists) 24 May 1955 in RTB A Carl Helmholz who became depart-ment chair in 1956 pleaded with Berkeleyrsquos chancellor in a 1956 budget request that ldquowehave an obligation and an increasing need to train more PhDrsquos in physics and this doesrequire research moneyrdquo Helmholz to Clark Kerr 28 Mar 1956 in BDP Folder 120 Seealso Helmholz to Kerr 5 Mar 1958 in BDP Folder 128 and Helmholz to Glenn Seaborg6 Mar 1959 in BDP Folder 1292 See Birgersquos summary on ldquoForm 2A (Academic year) Percentage distribution of time offaculty members among services performed for academic year 1953-1954rdquo completed aspart of the ldquoRestudy of the needs of California in higher education 1954rdquo Birgersquos reportdated 2 June 1954 is in BDP Folder 115 along with data for individual faculty membersAC Helmholz mimeographed agenda 8 Dec 1958 in BDP Folder 223 Derek de Solla Price Little science big science (New York 1963) Alvin WeinbergReflections on big science (Cambridge 1967) Daniel J Kevles The physicists The historyof a scientific community in modern America 3rd edn (Cambridge 1995 [1978]) chapts21-23 Robert Seidel ldquoA home for big science The Atomic Energy Commissionrsquos labora-tory systemrdquo HSPS 161 (1985) 135-175 Paul Forman ldquoBehind quantum electronicsNational security as basis for physical research in the United States 1940-1960rdquo HSPS181Ecirc(1987) 149-229 Everett Mendelsohn M Roe Smith and Peter Weingart eds Sci-ence technology and the military (Boston 1988) Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly eds Bigscience The growth of large-scale research (Stanford 1992) James Capshew and KarenRader ldquoBig science Price to the presentrdquo Osiris 7 (1992) 3-25 Stuart Leslie The ColdWar and American science The military-industrial-academic complex at MIT and Stanford(New York 1993) Andrew Pickering ldquoCyborg history and the World War II regimerdquo Per-spectives on Science 3 (Spring 1995) 1-48 and Peter Galison Image and logic A materialculture of microphysics (Chicago 1997) esp chapts 4 5 and 9 Many patterns for whatbecame postwar big science had precedents during the interwar period at Berkeleyrsquos Radia-tion Laboratory JL Heilbron and Robert Seidel Lawrence and his laboratory A history ofthe Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Vol 1 (Berkeley 1989)







134 KAISER

0

30

60

90

120

150

180

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940








0

250

500

750

1000

1250

1500

1750

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980






136 KAISER












138 KAISER











140 KAISER











142 KAISER












144 KAISER









146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)














134 KAISER

0

30

60

90

120

150

180

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940








0

250

500

750

1000

1250

1500

1750

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980






136 KAISER












138 KAISER











140 KAISER











142 KAISER












144 KAISER









146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)









0

250

500

750

1000

1250

1500

1750

1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980






136 KAISER












138 KAISER











140 KAISER











142 KAISER












144 KAISER









146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)








136 KAISER












138 KAISER











140 KAISER











142 KAISER












144 KAISER









146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)














138 KAISER











140 KAISER











142 KAISER












144 KAISER









146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)













140 KAISER











142 KAISER












144 KAISER









146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)













142 KAISER












144 KAISER









146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)














144 KAISER









146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)













146 KAISER











148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)













148 KAISER






4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)










4 OVERPRODUCTION



150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)








150 KAISER












152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)













152 KAISER








5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)










5 COLD WAR PHYSICS




154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)








154 KAISER















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)

















156 KAISER











158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)














158 KAISER


di

R2 (dphys

di)








david kaiser* cold war requisitions, scientific...

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