Abstracts of the History of Science Society 2004 Austin Meeting 18 ...

David E. Zitarelli, Temple University (zit@temple.edu)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 3:30 - 5:30 PM - Hill Country D
The Moore-Kline Correspondence: A Portrait of Two Mathematicians
R. L. Moore (1882-1974) was one of the towering figures in American mathematics during the first half of the twentieth century.
During forty-nine years of teaching at the University of Texas he developed what has come to be called “the Moore Method,” one of
the most successful ways to train students to become creative research mathematicians. His first doctoral student, J. R. Kline (1892-
1955), developed into a leading mathematician at Pennsylvania. This talk will describe the picture of these two influential mathematicians
that emerges from their voluminous correspondence stored at the Center for American History and the University of
Pennsylvania. Connections with other leading mathematicians in the R. L. Moore School in Austin (1920-1955) will also be highlighted,
including some of the first international contacts for Americans with their German and Polish counterparts in the 1920s.
Benjamin Zulueta, California State University, Channel Islands (benzulueta@yahoo.com)
Friday, 19-Nov-04, 9:00 - 11:45 AM - Hill Country B
People of Science: American-Educated Chinese and the “Cold War of the Classrooms”
As students of Chinese immigration history have long known, post-World War II American needs for scientific and technological manpower
opened the door to the immigration of thousands of highly-educated Chinese during the 1950s. Known to historians as the
“stranded students,” many had come to the US for advanced studies in the natural sciences, engineering, or medicine, intending to return
to China to contribute to the development of their homeland. The onset of the Cold War and the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China in 1949 produced fundamental changes in their plans. Indeed, their concentration in fields of broad national security
import provided the rationale for official American efforts to encourage them to stay in the US, formally adjust their statuses, and
become permanent residents of the United States. The experiences of the stranded students represent only one component of Chinese
intellectual immigration during the early Cold War, however. Another cohort of highly-educated Chinese immigrated to the United
States during the 1950s, but as actual migrants rather than as status adjusters. They immigrated through the good offices of Aid Refugee
Chinese Intellectuals, Inc. (ARCI), a private American refugee relief organization established in 1952 by Americans concerned about
reports of a developing refugee crisis in Hong Kong, and especially about the plight of the highly-educated among the refugees. ARCI
was not simply a refugee relief organization; its program articulated a broad vision of safeguarding US national security that combined
concerns about the individual potentials of science, migration, and race to affect the outcome of the superpower struggle. Imbuing the
“minds” in the oft-cited struggle for “hearts and minds” in the developing world with an added valence, contemporaneous observers
labeled this combined Cold War front the “Battle for Brainpower,” or the “Cold War of the Classrooms.” In this paper, I describe the
evolution of the idea of the “Cold War of the Classrooms,” and locate ARCI’s formation, rhetoric, and activities within it.