Vol. 38, No. 4, October 2009
Printer friendly version of Newsletter
Seated: Steve Kirkpatrick, Victoria Sharpe, Angela Creager, Anna Fay Williams. Standing: Roger Hart, Colleen Witt, Helen Hattab, Angela Smith, Bruce Hunt, Frank Benn, Alberto Martínez, John Zammito, Tom Williams, Cyrus Mody, and Anthony Stranges.
Lone Star Historians of Science
The Lone Star History of Science Group welcomed Angela Creager of Princeton University as the speaker at its 22nd annual meeting, held on 27 March 2009 at Rice University in Houston. Cyrus Mody hosted the meeting, which was sponsored by Rice’s Humanities Research Center.
Quick Links....
Notes from the Inside
-------------------------------------
News
-------------------------------------
Member News
-------------------------------------
In Budapest
-------------------------------------
HSS Fellowship in the History of Space Science
-------------------------------------
In the Service of
Galileo’s Ghost
-------------------------------------
Historians and Contemporary
Anti-evolutionism
-------------------------------------
Making Visible Embryos: Making a Virtual Exhibition
-------------------------------------
“Lusty Ladies or Victorian
Victims?”
-------------------------------------
Lone Star Historians of
Science
-------------------------------------
Centaurus: A New Face at a Respected Journal
-------------------------------------
World Congress of
Environmental History
-------------------------------------
Jobs, Conferences, Grants
Creager, a native Texan, earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and English at Rice before heading to UC-Berkeley to complete a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1991. She then moved into the history of biology and, after postdoctoral work at Harvard and MIT, has taught in the history of science program at Princeton since 1994. Her book The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930-1965 appeared in 2002, and she is currently studying how radioisotopes were used in biomedical research in the mid-20th century.
At the Lone Star meeting, Creager spoke on “Tracing Radioisotopes through the Biomedical Complex, 1935-1955: From Gift Exchange to Commodification in the Atomic Age,” focusing on the consequences of the transition from the early production of radioisotopes in cyclotrons to their mass-production in the X-10 reactor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the first big nuclear reactor built as part of the Manhattan Project, and their subsequent distribution for biomedical uses. As the nuclear arms race took off in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the U.S. government sought to emphasize its radioisotope program as a way to show that atoms could cure as well as kill. Deftly illustrating her presentation with anecdotes and images, Professor Creager showed how the intersection of military and biomedical concerns behind the radioisotope program both propelled and constrained efforts to promote nuclear medicine and biology. In particular, radioisotopes shifted from being “gifts” exchanged by individual researchers to commodities distributed and controlled by government agencies. After lively discussion of Creager’s talk, the group headed off to enjoy dinner and further conversation at the Black Lab restaurant (named for the breed of dog, not for some dark and mysterious experimental space).
Each spring, the Lone Star Group draws together historians of science, technology, and medicine from around Texas and the Southwest to discuss their shared interests and enjoy a friendly meal. Its constitution, adopted over dinner in an Austin restaurant in 1988, provides that there shall be “no officers, no by-laws, and no dues,” and the group remains resolutely informal. The next Lone Star meeting will be held at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, in April 2010. Anyone interested in attending should contact Tony Stranges of the Texas A&M History Department at a-stranges@tamu.edu.