Everett Mendelsohn – författare

Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences presents a sampling of work in the history of science by colleagues and former students and associates of I. Bernard Cohen, one of the most influential figures in the rise of the history of science as a scholarly discipline. The volume is divided into four parts: the history and philosophy of the exact sciences and mathematics; the eighteenth-century tradition; science in America; and scientific ideas in their cultural context. These major themes, each of which has been a subject of study by Professor Cohen, will interest a range of historians interested in the development of science and the history of ideas.

"To earn a degree, every doctoral candidate should go out to Harvard Square, find an audience, and explain his [or her] dissertation". Everett Mendelsohn's worldly advice to successive generations of students, whether apocryphal or real, has for over forty years spoken both to the essence of his scholarship, and to the role of the scholar. Possibly no one has done more to establish the history of the life sciences as a recognized university discipline in the United States, and to inspire a critical concern for the ways in which science and technology operate as central features of Western society. This book is both an act of homage and of commemoration to Professor Mendelsohn on his 70th birthday. As befits its subject, the work it presents is original, comparative, wide-ranging, and new. Since 1960, Everett Mendelsohn has been identified with Harvard Univer­ sity, and with its Department of the History of Science. Those that know him as a teacher, will also know him as a scholar. In 1968, he began- and after 30 years, has just bequeathed to others - the editorship of the Journal of the History of Biology, among the earliest and one of the most important publications in its field. At the same time, he has been a pioneer in the social history and sociology of science. He has formed particularly close working relationships with colleagues in Sweden and Germany - as witnessed by his editorial presence in the Sociology of Science Yearbook.

The extensive interaction between science/technology and the military has become increasingly apparent in the years since the Second World War. New institutional arrangements, new fields of study and research, new patterns of funding and support, new relations with industry, the academy and the state, and new professional roles have marked the sciences and technology; the military transformations have been equally important: new weapons systems of great complexity, new strategies and practices, new reliance on high technologies and advanced sciences, and extensive involvement in the funding of science and technology in the 'civilian' sector. While the literature in the social studies of science and technology has from time to time addressed these issues (especially from the historical perspective), the attention paid to the very extensive interactions and concommitant transformations has not been commensurate with the magnitude of the enterprise or changes undergone. These volumescontribute both reports of new research and stimulating additional study.Volume 12/1 contains Part I: War and the restructuring of physics, and Part II: The military and technological development.Volume 12/2 contains Part III: Transformation of industry and medicine, Part IV: Nuclear weapons and nuclear power, and Part V: R&D: military, industry and the academy.