Quickening nature’s pulse : atomic agriculture at the International Atomic Energy Agency

Mutation breeders in the 1960s seemed poised to use atomic energy to speed up mutation rates in plants in order to develop new crop varieties, for the benefit of all people. Although skepticism had slowed this work in the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nurtured the scientific field, its community of experts, and an imagined version of the future that put humans in control of their destiny. The IAEA acted as a center of dissemination and support for experts and ideas even when they had fallen from favor elsewhere. Through the lens of the IAEA, plant breeding bore the appearance of a socially progressive, ultra-modern science destined to alleviate population pressures. Administrators at the IAEA also were desperate for success stories, hoping to highlight mutation plant breeding as a potential solution to the world’s ills. The community of mutation plant breeders gained a lifeline from the consistent clarion call from the Vienna-based agency to use atomic energy to understand the natural world and quicken its pulse with radioisotopes

Quickening nature’s pulse: atomic agriculture at the International Atomic Energy Agency

Mutation breeders in the 1960s seemed poised to use atomic energy to speed up mutation rates in plants in order to develop new crop varieties, for the benefit of all people. Although skepticism had slowed this work in the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nurtured the scientific field, its community of experts, and an imagined version of the future that put humans in control of their destiny. The IAEA acted as a center of dissemination and support for experts and ideas even when they had fallen from favor elsewhere. Through the lens of the IAEA, plant breeding bore the appearance of a socially progressive, ultra-modern science destined to alleviate population pressures. Administrators at the IAEA also were desperate for success stories, hoping to highlight mutation plant breeding as a potential solution to the world’s ills. The community of mutation plant breeders gained a lifeline from the consistent clarion call from the Vienna-based agency to use atomic energy to understand the natural world and quicken its pulse with radioisotopes

Seeing the Oceans in the Shadow of Bergen Values

Although oceanographers such as Roger Revelle are typically associated with key indicators of anthropogenic change, he and other scientists at midcentury had very different scientific priorities and ways of seeing the oceans. How can we join the narrative of the triumph of mathematical, dynamic oceanography with the environmental narrative? Dynamic methods entailed a broad set of values that touched the professional lives of marine scientists in a variety of disciplines all over the world, for better or for worse. The present essay highlights three aspects of “Bergen values” in need of greater exploration by scholars. First, how did the dominance of Scandinavian outlooks influence scientific questions across the broad spectrum of oceanography? Second, did oceanographers’ particular means of making the oceans legible through instrumentation challenge their ability to perceive the oceans differently? Third, given the immense quantity of data, was the historical legacy of the dynamic oceanographers more descriptive than they imagined?This is the publisher’s final pdf. The article is copyrighted by the History of Science Society and published by the University of Chicago Press. It can be found at: http://www.jstor.org/page/journal/isis/about.html