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Technology and Culture 41.2 (2000) 375-376



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Book Review

Making Physics: A Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1946-1972 *


Making Physics: A Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1946-1972, by Robert P. Crease. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pp. xii+434; illustrations, appendixes, notes/references, bibliography, index. $38.

Brookhaven National Laboratory was established by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947 as one of its first three national laboratories. In contrast to its sister laboratories at Oak Ridge and Argonne, Brookhaven's mission was to pursue basic rather than applied research. Indeed, during the next few decades this multipurpose laboratory developed research expertise in a wide range of fields, including chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, and medicine. Robert Crease's book traces the history of Brookhaven from the post-World War II maneuvering by I. I. Rabi and others that led to its creation to its maturation in the late 1960s. But Crease's account is not comprehensive; he focuses mainly on Brookhaven's reactor and accelerator programs and on the community relations problems it experienced, in large part because of fears about radiation safety that these two programs inspired.

Making Physics has much to offer those of us interested in federally sponsored research institutions. In particular, I was fascinated to learn how local factors and personalities shaped a distinctive Brookhaven approach to building and using research equipment, an approach that was characterized by a dependence on theory, decentralized authority, and an unusual willingness to accommodate visiting scientists. When addressing this issue and others, Crease demonstrates solid scholarship; he documents his research with an abundance of primary and secondary sources, and he carefully situates his discussion within ongoing scholarly dialogues about the development of large-scale research. He also demonstrates a clear, evenhanded perspective of his subject matter and describes technical matters cogently and carefully.

Some might quibble with what Crease excludes. For example, his narrow focus on reactor and accelerator history tends to reduce the story of the development of big science at this important laboratory to the oft-told tale of the growth and expansion of the largest projects. In addition, he focuses mostly on physicists rather than on other laboratory workers and says little about the organization of research, which will disappoint those interested in the sociological microstructure of laboratory life.

But authors are inevitably forced to be selective. And Crease's book will be of interest to others besides specialists, thanks to the suggestive way in which he frames his subject. He explains at the outset that Making Physics "is about Brookhaven as a community, and in its subtitle I have called it a biography because communities lend themselves to biographical treatment" (p. 1). In line with this approach, Crease conducted numerous interviews, which enabled him to spike his account with anecdotes rich in [End Page 375] human detail. At a time when many scholars who study scientific communities and institutions focus on machinery and use abstract, jargon-filled language, Crease writes in an engaging, personalized way about the people who shaped Brookhaven.

This approach leads him to buck current trends even further. As he points out, because he has focused on scientific life from the point of view of scientists, he is able to avoid the current tendency of journalists and "contemporary scholars of science" who "are prone to dismiss the suggestion that science at the fundamental level might be something more than a business of apology, popularization, or the refusal to accept accountability." Crease argues that others should follow his lead and consider the love that scientists have for their work: "If you know science only by its politics, interests, and funding, or material achievements," he writes, " you don't know science" (p. 5).

Crease's account thus poses important questions for scholars in the history of science and technology. In the past it has seemed important to distinguish ourselves both from journalists, who write more quickly (and thus necessarily less carefully) for a general audience, and from scientists, who, we have felt, write simply to glorify themselves and their friends. Is...

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