Letter to the Editor

I read Robert Post’s article on Mel Kranzberg’s career in the October 2009 issue of Technology and Culture with a great deal of interest. Post had contacted me on several occasions in the past. Neither in his article nor in the earlier set of articles published in T&C shortly after Mel’s death, “In Memoriam, Melvin Kranzberg (1917–1995),” is there mention of another program in the Division of Special Interdisciplinary Studies at Case Institute of Technology. I don’t think that Bob Post really understood that there was a separate program, staffed largely by social scientists.

Mel invited me to join the first group of historians of technology who came to Case in January 1958 to talk about establishing the Society for the History of Technology. I recall at the lunch in Tomlinson Hall that T. Keith Glennan, Case’s president, came by to greet the guests. He mentioned his envy of the assembled scholars who were able to spend their full time studying the interrelationship of technology and society. Lynn White, who had just retired as president of Mills College, jocularly suggested that the situation was easily remedied: “Just resign and join us,” he said.

I was the director of the program titled “Science, Technology and Public Policy” (STPP) that we initiated at Mel’s urging and assistance after the “History of Technology and Science” program was formalized. I mentioned this program while chatting with Carroll Pursell at lunch this past summer in Berkeley. Carroll said that he was unaware of the program, though he knew one of its students, John Holmfeld. When I mentioned that we graduated three students with Ph.D.s (as well as several with M.S. degrees) who went on to careers in science, technology, and urban affairs he was quite surprised.

Carroll left our division of humanities and social studies before the STPP program was formalized, then returned many years later as professor in the Department of History in the federated university, now called Case Western Reserve University. Mel had already left for the Georgia Institute of Technology.

It is for these reasons that I have written this letter to you as the editor of Technology and Culture, to provide information about an important realization of Mel’s expansive view about the role of multiple disciplines in studying technology and science.