Constituting the Postwar Earth Sciences

Abstract

The earth sciences expanded dramatically during the first decades of the Cold War. Their growth largely resulted from military patronage, for the earth sciences appeared vital to emerging weapons systems, such as guided missiles, and to the pursuit of anti-submarine warfare. The earth sciences were also seen as important for achieving US foreign-policy objectives. By the mid-1960s military funds had helped create myriad new academic institutes in the earth sciences, and military leaders joined with national security advisors in expanding space and oceanography as strategic fields. In the present paper, I explore the history and significance of this transformation. The prominence of the earth sciences after 1945 was unmatched since the wave of geological exploration in the 1870s, and represents an important revival of federal support for the field sciences. But the particular form the rise of the earth sciences took had great implications for the institutional, intellectual, and professional character of the environmental sciences in the US. I argue that patronage for military-relevant fields in the earth sciences shaped the questions that researchers asked and valued, and limited their interactions with colleagues in the biological realms of environmental sciences research.