Physicists in Industry February 17, 2009

image links to .pdf file

In light of my recent discussion of Steven Shapin’s Scientific Life (Part 1 and Part 2), I thought it might be useful to promote something rather different on pretty much the same topic: the project report just released by my employers at the AIP History Center on their multi-year “History of Physicists in Industry” project, assembled through the efforts of Joe Anderson, who runs the Niels Bohr Library and Archives, and Orville Butler, who has the office next door to mine.  Some early work on the project was done by Tom Lassman, who is now at the Air and Space Museum downtown in DC.  Click on the image to access the report in .pdf form.

The project’s aim was to survey industrial researchers and research administrators with the goal of finding out what historical records industries preserve, and how; as well as to undertake a preliminary survey of industrial research activities and attitudes since World War II.

I would describe the report as an empirical extraction of “trends” from interview data.  Insofar as it analyzes commentary, it is actually quite similar to Shapin’s work, (more…)