MIT
Reports to the President 1994-95
The Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) passed an important
milepost in 1994-95. In June, the Doctoral Program in the History and Social
Study of Science and Technology (HSSST) awarded the Ph.D. degree to its first
four graduates. In a dismal job market, three of the new graduates have found
employment: Dr. Brian O'Donnell is assistant professor of history at the
University of Detroit-Mercy, Dr. George O'Har is assistant professor of
American studies at Boston College, and Dr. Wade Roush is the Boston
correspondent for Science. The fourth, Dr. Jessica Wang, has a two-year
postdoctoral fellowship in science and technology studies at the University of
Minnesota.
In its seventh year, the HSSST Doctoral Program (a collaborative venture of
STS, the History Faculty, and the Anthropology/Archeology Program) continued to
develop in a satisfactory way. Present and incoming students received a
variety of grants, including Dibner, Javits, Mellon, National Science
Foundation (NSF), and National Science and Engineering Research Council
(Canadian government) fellowships. The Program received 59 applications for
the 1995-96 academic year. Four of the applicants accepted admission to the
Doctoral Program. Important roles in the Program were played by Professors
Kenneth Keniston (Director of Graduate Studies; STS), Jean Jackson
(Anthropology/Archeology Program), and Peter Perdue (History Faculty), all of
whom were members of the Doctoral Program Steering Committee. As Director of
the STS Program, Professor Merritt Roe Smith also served on the Doctoral
Program Steering Committee.
The STS Program received $428,000 in grants for new and continuing research
projects during the 1994-95 academic year. Associate Professor Deborah
Fitzgerald received funds from the NSF for her continuing research, "Yeoman No
More: The Industrialization of American Agriculture," which places the
scientific and technical transformation of American agriculture in the 1920s
within the broader framework of industrialization. Professor Loren Graham
received a three-year grant, "Democracy and Science in Russia and the Former
Soviet Union: An Historical Investigation," from the National Endowment for
the Humanities to fund continued archival research which will result in a book
on democracy and science in Russia. Professor Graham also received a
three-year continuation grant from the MacArthur Foundation for his project
"Science and Technology with a Human Face" which will support activities on the
project. Based on a Sloan Foundation grant that will total $1.754 million over
eight years, "Integrating the American Past: A New Narrative History of the
United States" is a project that aims at producing a one volume narrative
history of the United States that addresses processes of technological and
scientific change and integrates them into the mainstream of the American
experience. The resulting study is intended for the general public as well as
for introductory college level survey courses in American history. The project
is headed by Professor Smith and includes Professors Pauline Maier (MIT), Alex
Keyssar (Duke University), and Daniel Kevles (California Institute of
Technology) as primary authors. In the third and final year of the project on
Humanistic Perspectives on the Environment supported by the John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Professor Emeritus Leo Marx, Professor
Keniston, and Visiting Professor Jill Conway organized eight workshops at MIT
on the theme of "Environmental Movements." Three graduate seminars on
environmental topics were taught by the three project leaders. The project
also provided support for two HSSST graduate students working on the
environment. The fifth (and final) year of the Mellon Project on the History
and Social Study of the Life Sciences focused on "From Molecular Power to
Biological Wisdom: Challenges and Needs in Historical and Social Studies of
20th Century Life Sciences" and was headed by Associate Professor Lily E. Kay.
In addition to a well-attended workshop on the year's theme, the project also
supported a public lecture by Dr. Francisco Varela, Director of Research at
CNRS in France, entitled "Science in the '90s: The Re-enactment of
Organizational and Historical Principles in Modern Neuroscience and
Immunology."
The STS Program's educational work continued at both the undergraduate and the
graduate levels. In all, the Program offered 27 undergraduate subjects and 29
graduate subjects during the past academic year. Undergraduate enrollments
totaled 463 (fall: 279; spring: 184). STS offered two new undergraduate
subjects: "Identity and the Internet" (Professor Sherry Turkle) and "Big Plans"
(Professors Fitzgerald and Jean de Monchaux). On the graduate level, one new
seminar was introduced: "Topics in Early Modern Science" (Professors Jed
Buchwald and Kenneth Manning). During the 1994-95 academic year there were 2
majors, 12 minors, and 64 concentrators (classes of 1995-1997) in STS.
The 1994 Siegel Prize in Science, Technology, and Society was awarded to Mr.
Gregory Clancey of the HSSST doctoral program for his paper entitled
"Architecture in Action." Mr. David Mindell, also an HSSST student, received
Honorable Mention for his paper. The 8th Annual Arthur Miller Lecture on
Science and Ethics was held on September 26, 1994. Dr. Leon Kass, a noted
ethicist-physician who teaches at the University of Chicago, was this year's
speaker. His talk, "The Problem of Technology," dealt with the ethical and
social issues that surround recent developments in biotechnology. A day-long
symposium was held on October 3, 1994 to honor Professor Leon Trilling and
acknowledge his many contributions to the Department of Aeronautics and
Astronautics (Aero/Astro), STS, and the MIT community. In addition to opening
comments by Professors Smith (STS) and Earll Murman (Aero/Astro), seven
speakers gave talks ranging from the History of Course XVI to the History of
NASA. Professor Trilling is among a select number of MIT engineers who have
invested themselves in bridging disciplines in the arts, engineering,
humanities, and sciences.
In its fifth year, the STS Colloquia Series continued to be a core activity of
the HSSST Doctoral Program. The series brought 25 speakers to MIT from such
institutions as Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Williams College, and the
Smithsonian Institution. Beginning in February, 1995, several HSSST graduate
students, under the supervision of Professor Smith, organized seven brown bag
discussions with historians of technology to discuss their current works. The
workshop topics ranged from "J.B. Aiken's Invention, Manufacture, and Promotion
of the `Family Knitting Machine' 1850-1870" to "Criminal Anthropometry and
Finger-Printing, 1880-1910."
The Program continued a number of activities that had been initiated in earlier
years. In the Student Lunch Workshops graduate students meet bi-weekly to
discuss their ongoing research and current literature in the history and social
study of science and technology. The STS Newsletter, ably produced by
staff member Mr. Graham Ramsay, continued with articles of general interest
followed by news and notes on STS faculty, staff, and students. The STS
Working Papers, under the editorship of Professor Keniston, continue to
provide a means of disseminating early versions of work in progress.
Now entering their thirteenth year, the Knight Fellowships continue to attract
science journalists from around the world to MIT to learn more about the
research and innovation they cover. This class of Fellows includes five
newspaper journalists from the United States and one from Canada, and reporters
from both Japan and Korea. During their nine months on campus, Fellows attend
some 60 seminars specially organized for them, as well as other seminars and
workshops devoted to science and technology and their wider impacts. In 1994,
the Institute completed a five year drive to endow the Fellowships, with the
help of a $5 million challenge from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
and $2.5 million raised by the Institute. Senior Research Associate Victor
McElheny (Director of the Knight Science Journalism Program) continued his
research for a biography of Edwin Land.
Professor Buchwald, Director of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science
and Technology, was named a MacArthur Prize Fellow this year. He published two
articles during the past year and initiated a new journal entitled,
Archimedes, and a new book series, Dibner Institute Studies in the
History of Science and Technology. He was elected to voting membership of
the International Academy of the History of Science and serves on the editorial
advisory board of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern
Physics. He also delivered lectures at Yale University and Stanford
University. Effective July 1, 1995, he will chair the MIT Committee on
Discipline. Professor Michael Fischer was on leave during the spring term to
pursue research in India on science autobiographies and filmic judgment and
cultural critique. He received a Fulbright grant to visit Brazil and, among
other lectures, was invited to the University of California Humanities Center
at Irvine. He organized and headed the joint MIT-Harvard Seminar in the
Cultural Studies of the Biosciences and Biotechnologies and served on the
Doctoral Program Admissions Committee, the Colloquium Committee, the
Environmental Workshop Planning Committee and the Graduate Program Steering
Committee. Professor Fitzgerald received tenure effective July 1, 1995. She
continued to serve on the MIT Press Editorial Board and the HASS-D Overview
Committee and also served on the Siegel Prize Committee. Her book project,
"Yeoman No More," received funding from the NSF. In addition to delivering
lectures at UNESCO Headquarters (Paris), Stanford University, University of
Pennsylvania, and Auburn University, she also serves on the Executive Council
and Dexter Prize Committee of the Society for the History of Technology and
1995 Program Committee of the History of Science Society. Professor Graham was
elected a member of the American Philosophical Society and named Donald Kendall
Lecturer at Stanford University for 1995 (the latter, a series of three
lectures to be published by Stanford University Press). During the past year
he published an article in Privoda (a Russian journal on nature) and a
book entitled A Face in the Rock: The Tale of a Grand Island Chippewa
(Island Press/Shearwater Books). Graham's Institute service included
membership on the search committees for the director of MIT Libraries and the
Dibner Professor of History of Engineering and Manufacturing and the tenure
committee for Professor Fitzgerald.
Assistant Professor Evelynn Hammonds spent the year as a visiting fellow at the
Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. Professor Kay published
an article in Experimentalsysteme in den Biologische-Medizinischen
Wissenschaften (Berlin 1995) and received an extension of her grant from
NIH to continue work on a forthcoming book manuscript entitled Information
and the Transformation of Molecular Biology. Her committee service at MIT
included the Advisory Committee for the selection of a graduate dean and the
Committee on Graduate Studies and Policies. She also served as the principal
coordinator of the Mellon Foundation Fellowship and Workshop Program at MIT,
the Advisory Committee to the American Philosophical Society Library, and the
Committee on Honors and Prizes and Nominating Committee of the History of
Science Society. Professor Evelyn Fox Keller received honorary degrees from
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Simmons College in 1995. Her book,
Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth Century Biology, was published
by Columbia University Press and another book, entitled Reflecting on
Science, is in press. In addition to delivering numerous lectures around
the country, she directed the Women's Studies Program at MIT and served on the
Edgerton Prize Committee.
Professor Keniston published (with Dr. David Guston, Assistant Professor of
Public Policy at Rutgers University, formerly an MIT graduate student in
Political Science) The Fragile Contract: University Science and the Federal
Government (MIT Press, 1994). As Director of Graduate Studies, he chaired
the HSSST Doctoral Program Steering Committee and the HSSST Admissions
Committee and served on the Committee on Graduate School Policy. He is the
Principal Investigator of the Mellon Foundation Project on the Life Sciences
and the MacArthur Foundation Project on Humanistic Studies of the Environment.
He also served on the Guggenheim Committee on Selection. Professor Theodore
Postol was the recipient of the 1995 American Association for the Advancement
of Science's Hilliard Roderick Prize in Science, Arms Control, and
International Security. He published two articles during the past year and
served as co-organizer of the Defense and Arms Control Program's seminar on
Technology, Defense, and Arms Control. He received grants from the
Ploughshares Fund, W. Alton Jones Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York,
and the MacArthur Foundation and delivered lectures at Stanford University,
MITRE Corporation, the National Academy of Sciences, and Harvard University.
Professor Smith received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal from the Society for the
History of Technology and a grant from the Sloan Foundation to undertake the
writing of a textbook in American history that brings science and technology to
the center of the story. He was the keynote speaker at the fiftieth
anniversary of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and delivered the
inaugural address to the Netherlands Graduate School in Science, Technology,
and Modern Culture at Limburg University. He also lectured at the California
Institute of Technology and the Technical University of Denmark. He also was
elected a Trustee-at-Large of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown
University. Professor Turkle published two articles during 1994-95 and a book
entitled Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon
& Schuster). She delivered lectures at the annual meetings of the Society
for the Social Studies of Science and the Association for Computer Supported
Cooperative Work. She also serves on the boards of Science, Technology and
Human Values and Harvard Magazine. Professor Charles Weiner was
oral history consultant for the President's Advisory Committee on Human
Radiation Experiments. He lectured at the Edinburgh Science Festival and at
the New England Genetics Conference. He was the organizer and moderator of
three panels: "Scientists and the Cold War" at the History of Science Society
Annual Meeting; "Los Alamos Scientists and Native American Culture" at MIT in
connection with the List Art Center exhibition; and "The Atomic Bombs: Myth,
Memory and History" at MIT's Technology and Culture Forum.
Merritt Roe Smith
MIT
Reports to the President 1994-95