Spencer R. Weart

Radioactivity and nuclear energy were entangled from the outset in an ancient web of associations: cosmic secrets of transmutation and life-force, mad scientists with death rays and monsters, apocalyptic destruction, a future golden age. Fear of nuclear war reinforced the links to psychologically profound symbols. The anti-nuclear-bomb movement tau...

This article reviews Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider. by Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne W. Kolb

People understood since antiquity that climate could change locally, but nobody imagined that human activity could alter global climate. In 1896 Arrhenius and in the 1930s Callendar promoted a theory of anthropogenic global warming caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide. Few found this plausible until the mid twentieth century, when new theoretical...

In this peculiar history, the main actors are committees and no seminal papers or scientific giants emerge. Seat-of-the-pants guesses made in the 1960s proved to be roughly correct, and the details are still being fleshed out today.

Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies

This article reviews The Rise of Nuclear Fear. by Spencer R. Weart

Until the middle of the 20th century, the discipline of climatology was a stagnant field preoccupied with regional statistics. It had little to do with meteorology, which itself was predominantly a craft that paid scant attention to physical theory. The Second World War and Cold War promoted a rapid growth of meteorology, which some practitioners i...

From ancient times people suspected that over the course of centuries human activity could change the climate of a territory. Meanwhile the discovery of ice ages in the distant past proved that climate could change all by itself, perhaps even globally, with momentous consequences for human life. It seemed obvious that such massive changes could onl...

The conversation on global warming started in 1896, when a physical chemist estimated that the mean global temperature would rise several degrees if the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was doubled. The topic eventually became one of the most passionate in the history of science. The author points out that climate experts were initially st...

Xubin Zeng (Eos, 91(15), 134-135, 13 April 2010) has done a valuable service in pointing out that the conventional statement that Earth would be at a temperature of -18°C if its atmosphere were removed cannot be sustained, because the calculation incorporates an albedo that includes clouds. However, his own calculation of -5°C is equally untenable...

With the coming of digital computers in the 1950s, a small American team set out to model the weather, followed by attempts to represent the entire general circulation of the atmosphere. The work spread during the 1960s, and by the 1970s a few modelers had produced somewhat realistic looking models of the planet’s regional climate pattern. The work...

People had long speculated that human activities might affect a region's climate. But a developed conjecture that humanity might change the climate of the entire planet first appeared in 1896: a calculation that carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion could gradually warm the globe. Scientists soon rejected the idea. Most people thought it incre...

In 2001 a panel representing virtually all the world's governments and climate scientists announced that they had reached a consensus: the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The consensus itself was at least a centu...

C.D. Keeling's measurements of the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since 1957, tracking a rise that threatens global warming, form one of the most important scienti.c data sets ever created. Yet the relatively small funding Keeling required was rarely secure. He could begin his measurements only because of a one-time injection of fu...

The American Institute of Physics founded in 1931 has seen many changes in Physics and its allied sciences in the past 75 years. Paul Dirac's proposal that electron has an antiparticle, Carl Anderson's cosmic-ray studies, Wolfgang Pauli's neutrino hypothesis, Ernest Lawrence's cyclotron that accelerated protons and Robert Van de Graaf's particle ac...

Only within the past decade have researchers warmed to the possibility of abrupt shifts in Earth's climate. Sometimes, it takes a while to see what one is not prepared to look for.

"In The Discovery of Global Warming Spencer R. Weart lucidly explains the emerging science, introduces us to the major players, and shows us how the Earth's irreducibly complicated climate system was mirrored by the global scientific community that studied it."--Jacket.

In the 40 years since its creation, the Niels Bohr Library has become the world center for preserving the historical record of modern physics and allied fields, and for helping people show this record to the public

(This interview, which was conducted by Spencer Weart on 21 April 1999, at the American Institute of Physics, College Park, Md., can be read in its entirety on the AGU portion of the Geophysics History Project Web site; see http://www.agu.org/history).

Responding to Eric Robinson, it is argued that evidence from ancient Greece is inadequate to provide reliable counter-examples to the democratic peace proposition, provided that the proposition is correctly defined. For the best-documented case, the Athenian invasion of Syracuse, the preponderance of evidence does make Syracuse a well-established d...

Spencer R. Weart's new book insists that democracies will never fight one another, but his slanted reading of the past is of little help in crafting a future without wars.

It is now a century since Syante Arrhenius published the idea: As human activity puts ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, global warming becomes ever more likely. (See figure 1 and the box on page 36.) His paper attracted notice, and one might suppose that knowledge of the so‐called “greenhouse effect” has grown steadily ever since. But t...

A list was compiled of virtually all significant military confrontations between republics throughout history. By including regimes only marginally republican, some forty cases were found from ancient Greece to the 1990s; about half of these had significant combat. Detailed historical investigation of each case reveals consistent patterns. A striki...

Michael Eckert, Helmut Schubert, & Gisela Torkar with Chritstine Blondel & Pierre Quedec: The roots of solid-state physics before quantum mechanics Lillian Hoddesdon, Gordon Baym, & Michael Eckert: The development of the quantum mechanical electron theory of metals, 1926-1933 Paul Hoch (with contributions by Kris Szyborski): The development of the...

This monumental work focuses on the field of solid-state physics now more properly referred to as condensed-matter physics which grew to maturity between 1920 and 1960. The questions that were posed, and answered, during this period, regarding the structure of solid matter and why some materials are good insulators or conductors, led to application...

Controversy over nuclear energy, both bombs and reactors, has been exceptionally durable and violent, exciting more emotion and public protest than any other technology. A main reason is that during the 20th century, nuclear energy gradually became a condensed symbol for many features of industrial and bureucratic authority (especially the horrors...

Many years ago, Albert Einstein surmised that the fate of nuclear power would be decided in marketsquares. He must have known that this is where debates are most spirited, animated, and emotional, and where facts can get overshadowed. This article discusses the public's attitude and understanding of nuclear energy issues.

In 1930 solid‐state physics did not exist. The very term was unknown; nor was there any intellectual or social entity to which the term could have applied. Certainly there flourished a number of specialties—for example, the electron theory of metals—that would eventually fall within the field of solid‐state physics. However, there was no feeling th...

A crazed scientist with a deadly “atomic robot” set out to enslave the human race in a recent Saturday morning cartoon show. He was no exception: Unstable scientists plotting to master and destroy can be found almost anywhere one looks in children's television and comics—and in a surprising amount of adult fiction as well. Probably no other pr...

Our thinking is inhabited by images-images of sometimes curious and overwhelming power. The mushroom cloud, weird rays that can transform the flesh, the twilight world following a nuclear war, the white city of the future, the brilliant but mad scientist who plots to destroy the world-all these images and more relate to nuclear energy, but that is...

This collection of essays examines the ways in which disputes and controversies about the application of scientific knowledge are resolved. Four concrete examples of public controversy are considered in detail: the efficacy of Laetrile, the classification of homosexuality as a disease, the setting of safety standards in the workplace, and the utili...

In the atomic bomb's “cosmic” powers, some saw a mad scientist's monster, others the harbinger of a Golden Age.

The International Project in History of Solid State Physics got underway in 1981, planning a large collaborative program to preserve and make known the history of this field. The Project's scholars and sponsors were spurred by the realization that although solid state physics is one of the most important influences on late twentieth civilization, i...

The International Project in History of Solid State Physics got underway in 1981, planning a large collaborative program to preserve and make known the history of this field. The Project's scholars and sponsors were spurred by the realization that although solid state physics is one of the most important influences on late twentieth century civiliz...

Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies

How was nuclear fission discovered? Many accounts of this, the most famous discovery in modern physics, are available. Yet when we enter the territory we find that the maps are worse than we might have expected. Some main features have not been mapped at all, or their shape and nature have been poorly explored. And this brings us to the general pro...

The study by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) of records management and appraisal at Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories is the most extensive such study thus far. Some eight-man years were spent, primarily on site at Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. These studies were supplemented by a questio...

In some periods great conceptual revolutions shake the world of physics; at other times research seems to plod ahead within the confines of an established framework. And the structure of the physics community must change in a way that somehow matches the changing style of research. What, then, has been the form of physics during our own lifetime, a...

A small group of scientists in Paris was among the first in the world to take nuclear fission dead seriously. During one extraordinary year the team wrote a secret patent, sketched a workable device, and persuaded government and industry to underwrite their research. The year was 1939. The secret patent was a crude uranium bomb. The device was a nu...

Around 1930 a new generation came to the leadership of science in France, determined to overhaul it from top to bottom. Already in their fifties or sixties by the time they achieved leading positions, they had long suffered under the direction of superannuated professors, and they had seen French physics, once first in the world, sink toward obscur...

The history of nuclear reactors gives us a singular opportunity to study what happens when the world's leading physicists, faced with the same problem, find solutions in complete isolation from one another. This paper takes as an example an elementary part of reactor theory, the four-factor formula. It was discovered independently at least six time...

"From its origins to the present day, American academic science has been permeated by the influence of American business". The reciprocal influence, of science on business and industry, has grown dramatically in the twentieth century. The rise of industrial research and its sustained vigour during this period is charted.

What are physicists to do if they make a discovery that promises to transform industry but also threatens to revolutionize warfare? Should they investigate the phenomenon within their traditions of free and open inquiry or keep the deadly secret to themselves? This is the dilemma that was faced by several groups of physicists who studied uranium fi...

A study of magnetic flux growth or growth failure in over 100 active regions is shown to indicate that most growth is connected with the emergence of a large batch of flux in the shape of a new arch filament system (AFS). During the recent sunspot maximum, new AFSs appeared at a rate of nearly one per day over the entire sun. Evidence is presented...

Sunspot region birth and growth, noting arch filament systems with H alpha time lapse movies

We have built an instrument that counts pulses from photomultipliers that look at four bands of solar continuum, recording the changes in intensity during an eclipse. We use a plywood spectrograph to select an ultraviolet band and interference filters for the others. The number of counts seen in 1/20 sec is displayed for the subsequent 1/20 sec on...

Solar magnetic fine structure production by gas motion in supergranular convection

Free standing tower astronomical telescope, discussing vibration problems in pedestal design

In movies of H spectra taken with the slit tangential to the solar limb we can observe motion of spicules both parallel to the slit and along the line of sight. We find strong evidence that, although most motion is along the axis of the spicule, some features move at right angles to their axes. Several cases were observed of features separating int...

Record surveying continued at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. A six-month period of work at Argonne National Laboratory included studies of records in the Director's Office, records documenting physics and accelerator activities, and particularly files documenting the history of the ZGS. A survey of historical and records management programs at vario...

Explains various aspects of the sun - its origin, physical properties, distance from the earth, and its importance as a source of heat and light.

Traducción de: The Discovery of Global Warming Obra en la que se recorre la lucha de los científicos por abrirse paso a través de las incertidumbres del cambio climático, se trata de ayudarnos a entender el atolladero en que nos encontramos para haber llegado a descubrir este fenómeno que afectará a nuestro bienestar personal, a la evolución de la...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Colorado, 1968. Includes bibliographical references. Typescript.