AMERICA'S NEW POLICY MAKERS: The Scientists' Rise to Power

A competent journalistic survey with strong emphasis on recent historical events of the American scientist's relationship to government. The author, a leading Space Age educator and lecturer who has been associated with a number of our space projects, has divided his approach into two parts: The Expanding Role of Science in Government (1790-1963) and Some Controversial Political Questions about Science. In the first part he traces rapidly the sequence of events of concomitant arguments that grew from the achievement in 1942 of the first atomic reaction at Stagg Field in Chicago. It terminates with the recording of the controversy stimulated by the United States exploding a hydrogen device in the atmosphere in 1962. Part two points up such problems as Do we need a national science policy? Should big science have cabinet status? Can scientists advise and make policy too? Is scientific freedom being threatened by too much secrecy? etc. There is a selected bibliography and appendices which include a chronology of significant milestones of the growth of science in the U.S. government and a glossary of abbreviations of U.S. government and professional societies. An adequate introduction to the subject, but not a deep analysis of all the problems attendant on this momentous development.