Book Review: Radio Astronomy in Infancy: Cosmic Noise: A History of Early Radio Astronomy

Abstract

RADIO ASTRONOMY IN INFANCY Cosmic Noise: A History of Early Radio Astronomy. Woodruff T. Sullivan III (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009). Pp. xxxii + 542. $140. ISBN 978-0-521-76524-4.Decades in the making, Woodruff Sullivan's Cosmic noise is an ambitious historical work, researched, organized, and written with great care. Supported by Sullivan's training and experience as a radio astronomer, his exhaustive reading of the scientific publications of his subjects, and over one hundred oral history interviews conducted between 1971 and 1988, the narrative covers early efforts to detect radio waves from the Sun in the late nineteenth century to the watershed in 1953, the year when, according to Sullivan, radio astronomy emerged as a recognizable research specialty. The story begins with physicists and engineers trying to make sense of a variety of radio signals from the heavens and closes with radio astronomers working in established research groups, developing new instruments, and bridging the gap between radio and optical astronomy. As Sullivan admits, this demarcation means that the book ends just as radio astronomy really took off; indeed, the number of radio astronomers and the scale of their activity after 1953 grows too large for Sullivan's careful micro-historical approach to be tenable.At first glance, the book appears to be in danger of pursuing too many interests. Sullivan claims to have set out to write an internalist history, but he is equally guided by his interest in the history of material culture, the impact of social and institutional forces, and the importance of visual culture (especially efforts of early radio astronomers to convert information into images, as well as illustrations of the equipment used in radio astronomy). In its execution, the book is superb; its careful organization and invention and careful use of a number of well-explained conventions make it possible to read the book in several ways. For example, I was particularly impressed with his practice of relegating brief discussions of tangential points to sections at the ends of chapters labelled 'Tangents. Instead of making the choice either to clutter the main narrative with these points or to excise them, Sullivan is able to share these tidbits without sacrificing overall coherence.Some readers will appreciate the book for its close attention to the dynamics of discipline formation, others for the careful explanation of how a research tradition shifts from little science to big science. The book could be read as a case study in the development of a research specialty or of the relationship between wartime and peacetime 'technoscience'. …