Narratives of contingency and practices of comparing in the emergence of German molecular genetics (1958-1968).

This article explores the emergence of molecular approaches in German genetic research during the 1958-1968 decade as a period of contingency and alternative possibilities. We introduce "Narratives of Contingency" as an analytical framework to examine how scientists construct a specific narrative - linking past experiences with expectations of future conditions - in order to outline and navigate pathway-decisions in the present. We apply this framework to Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's developmental model of molecular genetics and illustrate how the stages he identifies - the direction of the field, institutional developments, and epistemological demarcations - were already central themes in the comparative practices underlying narratives of contingency in this early period. Narratives of contingency can thus serve as a systematic framework for analyzing the processes through which new scientific fields, institutions, and epistemic horizons emerge, and possibly also for identifying historically plausible fork moments or alternative pathways not taken.

Cold Moves: Cryogenics in Indo-German Research Networks.

By unravelling the complexities and dynamics of a collaboration between scientists in India and West Germany to establish a cryogenic network, this paper intends to contribute to our understanding of the transnational movement of research technologies during the Cold War. In 1971, a cryogenic laboratory including a helium and a nitrogen liquefier was set up at the physics department of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras as part of the Indo-German partnership at IIT Madras between 1959 and 1974. As a generic research technology with many applications, cryogenics became crucial for a solid state research agenda for semiconductor development. After initial difficulties, Ramaswami Srinivasan at IIT Madras and Gustav Klipping of the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin built a successful collaboration based on mutual trust and on Indian and German scientists travelling and working in each other's laboratories. If the initial motivation of the Indo-German partnership was informed by the logic of Cold War development policy, Klipping and Srinivasan developed their collaboration into a vibrant cryogenic research network around different actors, instruments, and skills moving between India and the Federal Republic of Germany.

The making of the Homo Polaris: human acclimatization to the Arctic environment and Soviet ideologies in Northern Medical Institutions.

This paper examines the history of the Soviet human acclimatization project in the North and Siberia, which spanned from medical experiments in Stalin's forced labor camps to the subsequent wave of industrialization in the region. The author argues that human acclimatization in the North was a settler colonial science project aimed at facilitating Russian administrators and engineers in asserting control over the territory and its resources, while creating a new homogeneous 'indigenous population' in Siberia and the North. This envisioned population, referred to as Homo Polaris by the author, was intended to emerge through a two-way transformation: the adaptation of Indigenous peoples into Soviet ideologies and practices, and the acclimatization of settlers coming from the European part of the country to the Arctic environment. Although the administrators and medical doctors were unable to achieve this biopolitical objective, the complexities and dialogues surrounding these transformations shed light on the late Soviet settler-colonial ideologies and their impact on social life in Siberia from the 1950s to the 1980s. The research is based on a comprehensive analysis of both published and archival works by scholars involved in the project.

The Cold War in pharmacology: a bibliometric analysis of Berlin's contributions to Naunyn­Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology (1947-1974).

After World War II, Berlin was divided into the West, controlled by The United States, the UK, and France, and the East, controlled by the Soviet Union, resulting in a Cold War for decades. This bibliometric study analyzes the influence of the Cold War on pharmacological research in Berlin by evaluating publication patterns in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology from 1947 to 1974 (n = 383). The publications highlight the political disparities in scientific output, exacerbated by the founding of the Free University of Berlin (FUB) as a countermeasure to Soviet repression, promoting academic freedom in West-Berlin. Researchers in West-Berlin published many more papers in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology than researchers in East-Berlin and received much more citations. West-Berlin adopted English as a scientific language much more rapidly than East-Berlin. West-Berlin and East-Berlin focused on totally different research topics. This paper demonstrates how political freedom, financial support, and internationalization boosted research productivity in West-Berlin. In contrast, political suppression, financial scarcity, and restricted international ties hindered scientific development in East-Berlin.

The potential of historical spy-satellite imagery to support research in ecology and conservation.

Remote sensing data are important for assessing ecological change, but their value is often restricted by their limited temporal coverage. Major historical events that affected the environment, such as those associated with colonial history, World War II, or the Green Revolution are not captured by modern remote sensing. In the present article, we highlight the potential of globally available black-and-white satellite photographs to expand ecological and conservation assessments back to the 1960s and to illuminate ecological concepts such as shifting baselines, time-lag responses, and legacy effects. This historical satellite photography can be used to monitor ecosystem extent and structure, species' populations and habitats, and human pressures on the environment. Even though the data were declassified decades ago, their use in ecology and conservation remains limited. But recent advances in image processing and analysis can now unlock this research resource. We encourage the use of this opportunity to address important ecological and conservation questions.

Changing the guard: Organizational science and social psychology in the US army.

The US Army employed organizational and behavioral sciences in the context of the emerging Postindustrial political economy to shape its new strategic thought in the 1980s. This article examines how a group of military intellectuals in the Army applied ideas from these sciences to promote officer decision-making and decentralization while maintaining the Army's culture and ethics. They had significant reservations about bringing new ideas from the social sciences into the Army because Robert McNamara's modern cybernetic strategy had scarred the Army's morale and sense of self during the Vietnam War. Instead, the intellectuals carefully adapted ideas into the Army with an unsentimental attitude as it emerged from its post-Vietnam decline so it could fight complex maneuver warfare. Their strategic thought in the late Cold War made the Army a flexible global-spanning force for the unipolar moment in the 1990s and early 2000s.

How a Scoville aneurysm clip fought in the Cold War and helped to establish neurosurgery in Iceland.

It can be said that the specialty of neurosurgery in Iceland had its beginnings on November 30, 1971, with the arrival of a huge American C-130 Hercules aircraft. It was carrying a small package containing Scoville aneurysm clips. They were sent to the late Bjarni Hannesson (1938-2013), who had received his neurosurgical training in 1967-1971 at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (then known as Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and located in Hanover, New Hampshire). He used one to clip the right posterior communicating artery aneurysm of a 34-year-old fisherman, who recovered well. The apparent reason for the use of such a huge aircraft for such a small payload is to be found in the sociocultural politics of the Cold War. It involved the continued presence of the American base at Keflavík, where the C-130 landed. The base was under pressure to be closed by Iceland's left-leaning, nominally communist government. The C-130's arrival generated welcome publicity for the continued operation of the American base, which is still there.

[Innovations from the Baltic Sea region: Nils Alwall, Lembit Norviit, Adolfs Martins Steins and the artificial kidney]. / Innovationen im Ostseeraum: Nils Alwall, Lembit Norviit, Adolfs Martins Steins und die künstliche Niere.

In connection with the construction of one of the first practical dialysis machines, medical historians emphasize the work of the Swedish physician Nils Alwall. Together with his colleagues, he developed a device in the 1940s that could implement the combination of dialysis and ultrafiltration with membranes (cellophane tubes). Little known is the involvement of the physicians Lembit Norviit from Estonia and Adolfs Martins Steins from Latvia, both coauthors of the influential research article Clinical extracorporeal dialysis of blood with artificial kidney that was published in The Lancet in 1948 and the transfer of knowledge between Estonian, Latvian and Swedish researchers.

Arbovirology and Cold War Collaborations: A Transnational History of the Tick-borne Encephalitis Vaccine, 1930-1980.

This article analyzes the history of immunization against tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) and specifically the processes that led to the creation and application of TBE vaccines in the Soviet Union and Austria. Rather than presenting the development of TBE vaccines from the perspective of national scientific schools, the article investigates their history as a transnational project, focusing on the connections among the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Austria, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It argues that biomedical research on TBE was profoundly intertwined with political and military agendas and depended on civil international cooperation as well as Soviet, American, and British military concerns, infrastructures and funding. The article consists of four parts that discuss (1) the identification of the TBE virus and the creation of the first TBE vaccine in the Soviet Union in the 1930s; (2) the internationalization of TBE research and vaccine development in the 1940s-1960s; (3) the history of TBE research and virology in Austria in the 1930s-1960s and the role of the US military funding; and (4) the cooperation of Austrian virologist Christian Kunz with the Microbiological Research Establishment Porton Down in the UK leading to the development of the Austrian/British vaccine against TBE in the 1970s.

Timeless spaces: Field experiments in the physiological study of circadian rhythms, 1938-1963.

In the middle of the twentieth century, physiologists interested in human biological rhythms undertook a series of field experiments in natural spaces that they believed could closely approximate conditions of biological timelessness. With the field of rhythms research was still largely on the fringes of the life sciences, natural spaces seemed to offer unique research opportunities beyond what was available to physiologists in laboratory spaces. In particular, subterranean caves and the High Arctic became archetypal 'natural laboratories' for the study of human circadian (daily) rhythms. This paper is explores the field experiments which occurred in these 'timeless spaces'. It considers how scientists understood these natural spaces as suitably 'timeless' for studying circadian rhythms and what their experimental practices can tell us about contemporary physiological notions of biological time, especially its relationship to 'environmentality' (Formosinho et al. in Stud History Philos Sci 91:148-158, 2022). In so doing, this paper adds to a growing literature on the interrelationship of field sites by demonstrating the ways that caves and the Arctic were connected by rhythms scientists. Finally, it will explore how the use of these particular spaces were not just scientific but also political - leveraging growing Cold War anxieties about nuclear fallout and the space race to bring greater prestige and funding to the study of circadian rhythms in its early years.

"The Warmth of His Continuing Interest": Henry K. Beecher, the Bioethics Revolution, and Pharmaceutical Industry Funding of Academic Medical Science in Cold War America.

This paper examines anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher's funding relationship with pharmaceutical manufacturer Edward Mallinckrodt, Jr. Beecher is a familiar figure to both medical ethicists and historians of medicine for his role in the bioethics revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, his 1966 article "Ethics and Clinical Research" is widely considered a turning point in the post-World War II debate about informed consent. We argue that Beecher's scientific interests should be understood in the context of his funding relationship with Mallinckrodt and that this relationship shaped the direction of his work in important ways. We also argue that Beecher's views on research ethics reflected his assumption that collaboration with industry was a normal part of how academic science is conducted. In the conclusion of the paper we suggest that Beecher's failure to consider his relationship with Mallinckrodt as worthy of ethical deliberation has important lessons for academic researchers who collaborate with industry today.

Science diplomacy on display: mobile atomic exhibitions in the cold war: Introduction to Special Issue.

Despite the increasing interest in science exhibitions, there has been hardly any work on mobile science exhibitions and their role within science diplomacy - a gap this thematic issue is meant to fill. Atomic mobile exhibitions are seen here not only as cultural sites but as multifaceted strategic processes of transnational nuclear history. We move beyond the bipolar Cold War history that portrays propagandist science exhibitions as instances of a one-way communication employed to promote the virtues of the two major and conflicting political powers. Instead, Science Diplomacy on Display follows mobile atomic exhibitions as they move across national borders and around the world, functioning as spaces for diplomatic encounters. Exhibitions play a vital role not only in the production of knowledge and the formation of political worldviews but also as assets in diplomatic negotiations and as promoters of a new worldview in which nuclear stands at the centre. They are powerful iconic diplomatic devices, that is systems of representations that capture the diplomatic processes in action and make the nitty-gritty details of international relations visible. This issue seeks to trace the multiple and often contradictory meanings that mobile exhibitions took on for various actors.

The ingredients of a successful atomic exhibition in Cold War Italy.

The organization of the mobile atomic exhibition, Mostra Atomica, designed by the United States Information Service to travel through Italy in 1954-55, had to meet technical, scientific, artistic, and political challenges. The head of the group in charge of the exhibition was architect Peter G. Harnden whose pedigree in the intelligence and training in architecture were an ideal match for leading the unit dedicated to exhibitions. The political sensitivity of the Mostra Atomica also required the intervention of the Italian Ministry of the Interior to guarantee safe mobility and secure shows. In every major town, American and British diplomats attended the local opening ceremony, while the very symbol of science diplomacy was Enrico Fermi, whose recorded message praised international cooperation. All in all, the USIS campaign promoting peaceful applications of nuclear physics was successful in reaching and involving Italian society. Visual and spatial aesthetics were particularly relevant: the geometrical design of the exposition rooms conveyed a strong sense of modernity that contrasted with the artistic heritage of Italian cities. The present article is based on archival files, newspaper reports, and photographs that document who was responsible for planning, setting up, and reporting this Cold War propaganda event.

Apocalipse pop: representações do fim do mundo em canções brasileiras da década de 1980 / Pop apocalypse: representations of the end of the world in Brazilian songs from the 1980s

Resumo Esta pesquisa, com o uso da metodologia sócio-histórica, aborda a relação entre a produção cultural e as visões sobre a ciência e a tecnologia na década de 1980. Analisa um repertório de canções lançadas nesse período que apresentam temática apocalítica por conta do contexto de Guerra Fria e das crises ambientais. A análise se fundamenta nas noções de horizonte de expectativas de Koselleck e nas expectativas decrescentes de Arantes. As canções estão agrupadas na temática nuclear e na temática ambiental. Observa que essas canções da década de 1980 representam uma mudança da expectativa nacional com relação ao futuro, apresentando um temor acerca de desastres nucleares ou ambientais.

Abstract This study utilized socio-historical methodology to investigate the relationship between cultural production and views on science and technology in the 1980s by analyzing a repertoire of songs released during this period containing apocalyptic themes due to the context of the Cold War and environmental crises. This exploration is based on Koselleck's notions of the horizon of expectations and on Arantes' concept of decreasing expectations. The songs centered around nuclear power and the environment. We observed that these songs from the 1980s represent a shift in national expectations about the future, exhibiting fears related to nuclear and environmental disasters.

A sociologia latino-americana na Guerra Fria Cultural: Florestan Fernandes, Aldo Solari e o Ilari / Latin American sociology in the Cultural Cold War: Florestan Fernandes, Aldo Solari, and ILARI

Resumo O que a colaboração entre Florestan Fernandes, Aldo Solari e o Instituto Latino-americano de Relações Internacionais, órgão do Congresso pela Liberdade da Cultura, explica sobre as ideias do sociólogo entre 1969 e 1972? A análise de documentos oficiais do instituto e correspondências e textos de Florestan e Solari sugere que esse episódio revela um sociólogo preocupado com a manutenção de espaços científicos num continente marcado pelo autoritarismo, o que permite matizar a periodização entre fases "acadêmico-reformista" e "político-revolucionária". Argumenta-se que, do ponto de vista do instituto, a parceria com Florestan era crucial para produzir legitimidade intelectual para suas ações.

Abstract What does the collaboration between the sociologist Florestan Fernandes, Aldo Solari, and the Latin American Institute of International Relations (ILARI), an organ of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, tell us about Fernandes's thinking between 1969 and 1972? The analysis of official ILARI documents and correspondence and texts by Fernandes and Solari suggests that this episode reveals Fernandes's concern with defending space for science on a continent marked by authoritarianism, thereby enabling a more nuanced understanding of his trajectory than one marked by two distinct phases, "reformist-academic" and "revolutionary-political." From ILARI's perspective, the partnership with Fernandes is revealed as critical in lending its actions intellectual legitimacy.

Struggling for survival: The popularization of Darwinism and the elite's fight for power in Franco's Spain (1939-1967).

In the late 1940s in Spain, a group of young scholars, most of them newly appointed university lecturers, gained control of Arbor, the promotional journal of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC: The Spanish National Research Council), the institution that General Franco had founded after the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) to organize Spanish science. This group constituted the intellectual core of the more reactionary, Catholic traditionalist faction of Franco's regime, and they coveted greater political power, in competition with other factions of the regime. Lacking the opportunity to launch an overt political campaign within a dictatorship, the group started a fight for the cultural conquest of Spain. In this cultural struggle for hegemony, journals, magazines, cultural associations, publishing houses, newspapers, and cultural centers became their weapons. By analyzing this faction's views on and activities within the popularization of science, particularly regarding theories of evolution, this article argues that popular discourse on science played a critical role in the cultural struggle both as a "safe" channel in which to forward their claims and as a tool to gather popular attention through topics of general interest. A covert political campaign was conducted through the popularization of science and this, in turn, fueled the construction of a public sphere for science in a dictatorial context. Scientific popularization became a much-appreciated tool to achieve cultural hegemony and, as such, it also became a central element in constructing and legitimating the ideological foundations of Franco's regime.

Introduction: Science popularization, dictatorships, and democracies.

The study of science popularization in dictatorships, such as Franco's regime, offers a useful window through which to review definitions of controversial categories such as "popular science" and the "public sphere." It also adds a new analytical perspective to the historiography of dictatorships and their totalitarian nature. Moreover, studying science popularization in these regimes provides new tools for a critical analysis of key contemporary concepts such as nationalism, internationalism, democracy, and technocracy.

[Rethinking the Cold War? New Studies on the Cold War]. / Den Kalten Krieg neu denken? Neue Studien zum Kalten Krieg.

Using global, transnational, and cultural-historical perspectives, recent studies deconstruct the binarity of the Cold War. The studies show that certain frames of interpretation, such as interdependence, convergence of systems, globalisation or decolonisation, had already been combined with the narrative of the Cold War by contemporaries. This enriches the picture of domestic positions and foreign policy interests of the West vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. However, recent research also shows that there is a lack of studies in economic or media history that focus on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

The birth of a Ministry of Public Health in Colombia, 1946-1953: Cold War, invisible government and asymmetrical interdependence / El nacimiento de un Ministerio de Salud Pública en Colombia, 1946-1953: Guerra Fría, gobierno invisible e interdependencia asimétrica

Abstract This article studies the shift from a Ministry of Hygiene in Colombia to a Ministry of Public Health, from 1946 to 1953. This was not only a new name for the ministry, but a transitional process from government policies based on European public hygiene towards institutionalizing the North American model of public health. The process involved negotiations between local government representatives and the Currie Mission, which was sent to Colombia by the Inter-American Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Inter-American Cooperative Health Service. These negotiations took place via asymmetrical relationships of interdependence, within the framework of the "invisible government" implemented by the United States in Latin America during the Cold War.

Resumen Este artículo estudia el cambio de un Ministerio de Higiene en Colombia a un Ministerio de Salud Pública, de 1946 a 1953. Este no fue solo un nuevo nombre para el ministerio sino un proceso de transición de políticas gubernamentales basadas en la higiene pública europea hacia la institucionalización del modelo norteamericano de salud pública. El proceso involucró negociaciones entre representantes del gobierno local y la Misión Currie, que fue enviada a Colombia por el Banco Interamericano de Reconstrucción y Desarrollo y el Servicio Cooperativo Interamericano de Salud. Estas negociaciones se dieron a través de relaciones asimétricas de interdependencia, en el marco del "gobierno invisible" implementado por Estados Unidos en América Latina durante la Guerra Fría.

Radiation Risk in Cold War Mexico: Local and Global Networks.

After WWII, global concerns about the uses of nuclear energy and radiation sources in agriculture, medicine, and industry brought about calls for radiation protection. At the beginning of the 1960s radiation protection involved the identification and measurement of all sources of radiation to which a population was exposed, and the evaluation and assessment of populations in terms of the biological hazard their exposure posed. Mexico was not an exception to this international trend. This paper goes back to the origins of the first studies on the effects of radiation and on radioprotective compounds in the Genetics and Radiobiology Program of the National Commission of Nuclear Energy founded in 1960, at a time when the effects of radiation on living beings and radiation protection demanded the attention of highly localized groups of scientists and the creation of international as well as national institutions, and its connection to dosimetry and radiation protection until the 1990s. This historical reconstruction examines the circulation of knowledge, scientists, and their material and cognitive resources, to show that radiobiology, with dosimetry and radiation protection as cases in point, not only were carried out with high international standards in parallel with international agencies, but also reflected local material needs, including the standardization of new experimental techniques.