Science, Cold War, and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals (review)

Science, Cold War, and the American State: Lloyd V. Berkner and the Balance of Professional Ideals. By Allan A. Needell. Amsterdam: Harwood, 2000. Pp. xi+404. $60/$28.

Science, big science at least, is applied technology. That is the message that emerges from this biography of Lloyd Berkner, one of cold war America's most influential scientific statesmen. In his own way, Berkner personified cold war liberalism, tirelessly arguing for an expansion of America's scientific infrastructure, paid for by public money, for the benefit of scientists and the national-security state alike. Despite his role in the emergence of this state, Berkner's influence has until now been largely obscured by an iron curtain of security restrictions that descended upon pertinent archives at the start of the cold war and continues to make historical research on this period not unlike conducting covert operations.

Allan Needell of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has pursued Berkner's career for years, patiently chiseling away at restrictions while armed with little more than the Freedom of Information Act. The result is an insightful book on American science policy during the critical quarter century following World War II, an era in which the government's commitment to developing a technology-intensive research infrastructure profoundly affected the scientific community and the public image of science.

Berkner, as Needell shows, was one of a handful of key brokers between scientists and the federal government during this period. This is in itself surprising, for Berkner held no advanced degrees and possessed no degree in any scientific field. Instead, he was a radio engineer who saw in radio a technology critical to national security. His lack of credentials seems never to have seriously encumbered him; most scientists, even Berkner's foes, accepted him as one of their own. So did the military; Berkner joined the Naval Reserve Officers' Training Corps and learned to fly as a college student, and he served as a reserve officer all his adult life. World War II joined the two halves of Berkner's world almost seamlessly. Assigned to the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics, Colonel Berkner became the navy's point man on all matters radar, putting him in contact with the scientific luminaries at MIT's Radiation Laboratory. By the end of the war, he had elevated himself from troubleshooter to policymaker, actively engaged with Vannevar Bush and others in plotting the course of postwar science.

Like Bush, Berkner tried to capitalize on researchers' wartime gains and visibility by expanding their influence in military policy. The two established the Joint Research and Development Board, succeeded later by the new Defense Department's Research and Development Board. Berkner further encouraged the services' use of elite "summer studies" to define military problems and suggest technological solutions. His outspoken advocacy of air and civil defense in the early 1950s--leading to Project Charles, the Distant Early Warning Line, and Project SAGE--was nothing short of courageous, given the air force's resistance and the fate of scientists such as J. Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest U. Condon who irritated officials or powerful interests.

Yet Berkner differed from Bush and other conservatives in his enthusiasm for government-researcher cooperation, even beyond the military. Needell details the evolution of Project Troy, a summer study conducted for the State Department at Berkner's behest that explored potential scientific contributions to America's foreign-policy objectives. A consummate cold warrior, Berkner understood the superpower standoff as a cultural conflict that needed to be fought on a broad front, not just through military force and deterrence. Science and research could help defend the American Way in broader realms than fostering new weapons.

If research could aid the nation, Berkner believed, then the nation should support research. Through institutions such as the Associated Universities Incorporated, which Berkner served...