The Physicists: Reshaping a Profession

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D aniel J. Kevles, a historian of science strategically located at the California Institute of Technology for over a decade, has written a large and readable book on the rise of the physics community in the United States. First of all, it is a chronological account of the men (and the very few women) who, from the end of the Civil War to our day, changed the profession from a curiosity that preoccupied some seventy-five people, chiefly experimentalists doing little of significance, to a group of 50,000-as productive and ingenious as any in the world. Now, however the physicists are often beset by problems that have little to do with the physical laws governing the universe. Second, as Kevles remarks, is a book about scientists as human beings. Since he avoids graphs, tables, equations, and sociological theories, one can read it as an engaging story of the feats in science and science policy in peace and war, of such tribal heroes as Joseph Henry, Henry A. Rowland, George Ellery Hale, Robert A. Millikan, the brothers Compton, Ernest 0. Lawrence, Warren Weaver, I. I. Rabi, Vannevar Bush, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Jerome Wiesner. We also meet some of the rankand-file, distinguished visitors, and refugee-immigrants. At a third level, the book is a helpful reference work, with footnotes and a long bibliographical essay. Historians of science and of science policy are likely to find it an excellent guide to the primary and secondary sources documenting the rise of physics in this country. Of all scientific professionals, the physicists have undertaken the documentation of their own history most seriously during the last twenty years, and this book is one of several recent products in a ripening harvest. If we look deeper still-for illumination, say, of the ethical issues-we risk trying to analyze the book along lines that were not of primary importance in the author's design. There is, however, enough to make a start. Not surprisingly, the main lesson is that today's chief issues have existed in similar form for about a century, and that there are still no real solutions in sight. Thus, what should be the main thrust of physical and hence the main justification for its support in our democracy? Since its start, the debate in the United States has been polarized along the same axis, roughly characterized as knowledge for its own sake versus social usefulness. At one pole is what Kevles dubs best-science elitism, typified by the superb spectroscopist Henry Rowland. In his influential address A Plea for Pure Science (1883), Rowland called on a practical-minded America to cease referring to telegraphs, electric lights, and such conveniences by the name of science, and to set up a system of support for pure research. An opposing salvo was fired in the same year by Alexander Graham Bell's journal, Science, which declared editorially, Research is none the less genuine, investigation none the less worthy, because the truth it discovers is utilizable for the benefit of mankind.