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American Science in an Age ofAnxiety: Scientists,Anticommunism, and the Cold War by Jessica WangUniversity of North Carolina Press: 1999. 375 pp. $49.95, £37.50 (hbk), $19.95, £14.95 (pbk)

Daniel J. Kevles

In 1946, John and Hildred Blewett wereinvited to join the staff of the newBrookhaven Laboratory. Both were physi-cists who had worked on secret projects dur-ing the Second World War but, even thoughthey would be engaged in unclassifiedresearch, their employment at Brookhavenrequired security clearance. The FederalBureau of Investigation (FBI) questioned theBlewetts extensively about their politics andassociations. David Lillienthal, a member ofthe Atomic Energy Commission (AEC),confided to his diary on hearing of theBlewetts’ plight, “. . . the fact that ten years agoa scientist contributed to the defense of theScottsboro boys, or believes in collective bargaining or the international control ofatomic energy — such things as these aresolemnly reported and regarded as ‘deroga-tory information’.”

The Blewetts ultimately got a hearing,and the AEC authorized them to work atBrookhaven on an uncleared basis. Even thatlimited disposition of their case had requiredthe intervention of influential friends andtaken seven months, and during that timethey were reduced to living virtually on charity.

The Blewetts’ story is only one of severalharrowing encounters between scientistsand the postwar national-security apparatusdescribed by Jessica Wang, a historian at theUniversity of California in Los Angeles, inher informative and eye-opening AmericanScience in an Age of Anxiety. Some stories, likethe Blewetts’ ordeal, comprised sub rosa con-troversies fought in the shadowy interleav-ings of the FBI, academic and industrial con-tractors and AEC loyalty boards. Othersinvolved bitter public confrontationsbetween the House Un-American ActivitiesCommittee (HUAC) and politically left-leaning scientists, including, notably, thephysicist Edward U. Condon, when he head-ed the National Bureau of Standards.

Covering mainly 1945–50, Wang’s prob-ing account of these episodes surpasses mostothers, since she draws on numerous publicand private sources, including FBI recordsshe obtained through the Freedom of Infor-mation Act. Her book is a graphic and dis-turbing analysis of how scientists becamecaught up in the octopus-like obsession withloyalty and security that pervaded American

life in the early years of the Cold War. Yet Wang marshals her hard-won evi-

dence in service of a larger political storycharacteristic of the United States at thebeginning of the Cold War: how the tentaclesof the octopus squeezed much of the life outof left-leaning activism in the politics ofpostwar policy-making, in this case for science.

Wang reminds us that, immediately afterthe Second World War, postwar science poli-cy, especially in the nuclear arena, was vigor-ously contested. Key members of the wartimescientific leadership, like the conservativelyinclined Vannevar Bush, advanced proposalsfor an AEC that would have been dominatedby the military and, like Bush’s proposedNational Science Foundation, insulated fromdirect democratic control. But a number ofscientists, many of them on the liberal left,fought openly for a civilian-controlled AECresponsive to the democratic political system.More generally, they battled for internationalscientific cooperation in atomic energy and ascience policy responsive to social needs.These initiatives gave rise to numerous localscientific political action groups that soonjoined together in the Federation of Ameri-can Scientists (FAS).

Wang demonstrates that the growing

absorption with keeping atomic secretsincited attacks against these groups fromconservatives, and surveillance by the FBI.The bureau monitored FAS chapter mem-bers and obtained information on chapteractivities using informants. Its agents in turnfingered suspect chapter staff to selected FASofficers, who removed some of them fromthe staff to discourage red-baiting of theorganization.

The assaults of the HUAC were energizedin part by its ranking Republican member,Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, who wasconvinced that a civilian-controlled AECwould be security-loose. Politically savvy sci-entists took the HUAC’s condemnation ofCondon, an outspoken advocate of scientificcooperation with the Soviets, to mean thatThomas intended to reclaim atomic energyfor the military.

Wang, with supple understanding of therelationship of executive agencies to con-gressional committees, points out that theJoint Committee on Atomic Energy waseager to protect the AEC from Thomas’sattacks. However, Senator Bourke Hicken-looper, an Iowa Republican and head of the joint committee, pressured the AEC toforestall Thomas by tightening its securityprocedures. As far as Hickenlooper was

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concerned, only those beyond all suspicionshould be granted clearance, regardless ofthe rights of suspects. Lillienthal, belea-guered, flawed, but understanding thestakes better than most, wrote in his diarythat he would be “God damned if I wouldstart lynching these poor devils just becauseHickenlooper or anyone else didn’t have thebackbone to insist on decency in thesethings”.

The FAS intervened on behalf of individ-ual scientists facing clearance difficulties. Italso lobbied the AEC to establish fair rulesand procedures for dealing with securitycases, holding that in practice the agency’ssecurity operations were often subversive ofindividuals’ rights. Wang notes that, whilethe procedures improved, suspect scientistsremained disadvantaged by having to dealwith hearsay evidence about, for example,their associations, relatives and reading matter. The American Association for theAdvancement of Science, the National Acad-emy of Sciences and the FAS each attemptedto forge a position on the threat posed by loy-alty and security procedures to civil liberties.But in the end, Wang shows, each did littlemore than advance tepid recommendationsfor procedural reforms.

Using the records of the National Acad-emy of Sciences and other documentarysources, Wang gives a remarkable account ofthe academy’s refusal to take a strong publicstand in defending Condon against thedefamatory methods of the HUAC. She also

illuminates the controversy that arose when,in 1949, the AEC wanted all its fellowshipholders to sign a loyalty oath and a non-communist affidavit. The academy, whoseNational Research Council selected the fellows for the AEC, accepted the ruling; but when, in the summer, the Senate mandated that all recipients of AEC fellow-ships undergo FBI investigations, the academy drew the line, forcing the AEC tocompromise.

According to Wang, the loyalty and secu-rity procedures established by the Trumanadministration helped prepare the way forMcCarthyism in science. This includedapplying political criteria in decisions onresearch grants, requiring loyalty oaths formembers of university faculties, and denyingpassports to suspect Americans such asLinus Pauling and visas to suspect foreignerssuch as Paul Dirac.

Wang seems at times to push her case toofar. She claims, for example, that, togetherwith its anticommunist justifications, Tru-man’s loyalty programme even “validatedthe more extreme actions of HUAC and, lateron, Senator McCarthy”. Nevertheless, heroverall thesis is convincing: with theirincreasing focus on loyalty procedures,groups ranging from the FAS to the NationalAcademy of Sciences avoided public or eveninternal discussion of the ‘real questions’ ofwhat constituted loyalty in a democraticstate. They thus permitted clouds of disloyal-ty to hang over politically progressive dis-

senters and contributed to the discreditingnot only of them but also of their ideas.Daniel J. Kevles is in the Division of theHumanities and Social Sciences, CaliforniaInstitute of Technology, Pasadena, California91125, USA.

Bewarethe diseasesof the will, my childAdvice for a Young Investigatorby Santiago Ramón y Cajal, translated byNeely Swanson and Larry W. SwansonMIT Press: 1999. 176 pp. $22.50, £15.50

Pere Puigdomènech

Science as a career has never been an easychoice for a young person. For centuries itwas the domain of philosophers and theenlightened rich; it only became a job at theturn of this century. Now, when unemploy-ment and underemployment have becomecommonplace for young postdocs, how is itpossible to envisage science as a choice? Itmay seem surprising to seek the advice ofsomeone who wrote about this question acentury ago, but the author is SantiagoRamón y Cajal, in many respects a uniquepersonality in science.

The son of a country doctor, Cajal(1852–1932) was born in a little village in thenorth of Spain. He trained as a doctor him-self and saw military service as a medical offi-cer in the Cuban War of Independencebefore becoming professor of histology atseveral Spanish universities and developinga deep interest in the study of nerve cells. Acritical and passionate writer, Cajal was soprecise in his work that his drawings are stillused in present-day publications and heremains one of the most cited authors of thelife sciences. He was awarded the Nobel prizefor medicine in 1906, and to this day is theonly Spanish scientist to receive the prize forwork done in his own country. He was activein promoting science, serving for more than20 years as president of the Junta de Amplia-cion de Estudios, one of the first Europeaninstitutions designed to promote the educa-tion of young scientists by helping studentsto travel and carry out experiments.

Cajal’s Advice for a Young Investigatorincludes chapters on the qualities needed tobecome a scientist, the problems the younginvestigator may encounter and the way towrite scientific papers. The book’s curioussubtitle in Spanish — The Tonics of Will — isvery typical of this author’s ideas. The willis, according to Cajal, the main feature that

the young scientist has to cultivate.One hundred years after this book was

written, it evokes mixed feelings.On the one hand, most of theadvice and comments on the prac-tice of science are perfectly valid

spring books

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All the colours of the rainbow are to be foundamong the world’s reptiles and amphibians,judging by a stunning portfolio of pictures of 91 species by the Japanese photographer RyuUchiyama (Reptiles and Amphibians, Chronicle,

$12.95, £8.99). The New Caledonian giant crestedgecko, Rhacodactylus ciliatus (below), can varyin colour from brown and yellow to blue. It livesin trees and was thought to be extinct for morethan 100 years, until it was rediscovered in 1994.

Rainbow reptiles