Abstract
Experimental radiobiology represented a long-standing priority for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), but organizational issues initially impeded the laboratory progress of this government-funded work: who would direct such interdisciplinary investigations and how? And should the AEC support basic research or only mission-oriented projects? Alexander Hollaender’s vision for biology in the post-war world guided AEC initiatives at Oak Ridge, where he created and presided over the Division of Biology for nearly two decades (1947–1966). Hollaender’s scheme, at once entrepreneurial and system-oriented, made good use of the unique resources provided by the AEC and by Oak Ridge’s national laboratory setting, while at the same time it restructured wartime research practices to better reflect biologists’ own priorities. Because Hollaender offered many academic experimental biologists a way of envisioning military-related patronage as integral – rather than antithetical – to their professional identities, his work provides an important lens through which to examine the early post-war intellectual and institutional development of radiobiology.
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Research for this paper was supported, in part, by an NSF STS Program Scholar’s Award (95-21621. This paper was originally prepared for the conference on MASTER BUILDERS: the Reconstruction of American Science after World War II Johns Hopkins University, April 16–17, 1999 – many thanks to the participants for their initial valuable feedback. Another version was delivered in a session on the history of radiobiology at ISHPSSB in Vienna, Austria during the summer of 2003; since that time, I have received thoughtful and generous criticism from both Angela Creager and Maria Santesmases, to whom I am very grateful.
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Rader, K.A. Alexander Hollaender’s Postwar Vision for Biology: Oak Ridge and Beyond. J Hist Biol 39, 685–706 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-006-9109-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-006-9109-1