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History 181B:  Modern Physics
Class 38 (4/20/01)
The postwar expansion
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Outline Physicists and politics

     The Cold War and the advisory function
          Episode 1:  the H-bomb decision (1949-50)
          Episode 2:  the Oppenheimer case (1953-54)
     The Red Scare

     The state as funder

          Change of ideology in the U.S., change of scale elsewhere

          Why does the government fund basic physics research?
          2 case studies:  electronics, high-energy physics

          The Manhattan Project as the physicists' utopia

The postwar expansion

     Indicators of growth and status
     New experimental possibilities open up new fields

     American leadership
     And those who raised questions
     Physics Soviet-style
Names and terms
Primary Secondary
H-bomb = hydrogen bomb (fusion weapon, thermonuclear weapon)
Atomic Energy Commission
National Science Foundation
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
CERN = European Center for Nuclear Physics, Geneva
collective excitations		 General Advisory Committee (of the AEC)
Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2001