In Memoriam: Melvin Kranzberg (1917–1995)

Abstract

In Memoriam MELVIN KRANZBERG (1917-1995) Spring of 1977 brought the NCAA basketball finals to Atlanta the same week that Mel welcomed me as his house guest. He celebrated my first evening with a party, wanting his circle of friends to meet the young man who was writing a dissertation on Technology and Cul­ ture and had come for research in thejournal’s files. Next morning, Mel set me up at a work table, gave me access to the Xerox machine, and led me to a daunting array of four-drawer cabinets, perhaps twenty or thirty of them, packed with manuscripts and correspon­ dence from the journal’s eighteen-year history. One week to read and photocopy; I stood dismayed. Mel took in my appearance and, with characteristic gusto, said something like: “You can copy any­ thing that you think will be helpful. But there’s so much that you might miss some of the really good stuff. Come down here.” He led me to a cabinet and pulled open a drawer. “This drawer has all the files from the time they tried to get me fired. They thought I acted too much like a clown. It’s all in here and you shouldn’t miss it.” And there it all was, urgent and sometimes angry salvos fired at Mel by longtime colleagues arguing that his antics too often went beyond the pale of academic respectability. More than any other encounter, that moment introduced me to this man. It mattered to Mel that I get the whole story and that he personally introduce me to one of its least flattering moments. More than that, he seemed to think the whole messy business was very funny, a joke on him at least and probably on the other protagonists too. This pastJanuary when those of us not locked in by the blizzard of ‘96 gathered for Mel’s memorial in Atlanta, I listened to the trib­ utes from his friends and tried to understand this lovely man whole, the way one does at burial time. Mel, it seemed to me that afternoon, lived out a choice that faces each of us as we gradually shape our character with day-to-day decisions. We can define our life mostly as a series of strategic campaigns in which we identify our interests and work to achieve as much of each goal as possible. In that mode, we tend to assess our life by wins and losses, according to measurable Permission to quote from or reprint any part of this memorial may be obtained only from the author(s). 403 Mel Kranzberg In Memoriam 405 achievements. Alternately, we can define our life as a story full of interventions and surprises where receptivity and playfulness often trump our planning. In this mode, it matters less how we or others measure our achievements. The loves ofour life ultimately define us. Mel was like that. Surely he planned and recognized his wins and losses. But no one who knew him, including his five professional colleagues whose remembrances follow here, could miss the play and the passion that meant more to Mel than anything else. His loves—the great women who shared his life, his long-standing friends, ICOHTEC, SHOT, T&C—they resided in him as a habit of affection that has left its mark on all of us who knew him. John M. Staudenmaier, S.J. Inventor With a fresh Ph.D. I spent much ofmy first meeting of the History of Science Society in 1953 in a Boston bar, commiserating with two others of the disadvantaged, Melvin Kranzberg and Carl Condit. We all had secret yearnings for various aspects of the history of science and technology, but not onlywere there “nojobs” (I quote Marshall Clagett, from an interview at that time), but we were unfortunate in our specialties—French and medieval history, and English. And of course we deplored the apparent indifference of the “clique” that “ran” the Society. Neglect was widespread in those days. As an academic topic, the history of science barely existed, and resided mainly in the mind of George Sarton, whose indignation at the American tendency to ig­ nore “the world of learning” was...