Listing of Sessions and Abstracts of Papers - History of Science ...

ology. This is not to say that other lines of approach were insignificant. In fact, empirically-oriented
climatological works such as those cultivated by Hubert Lamb played an instrumental role in raising the
issue of climate change and variability during the 1960s and early 1970s. On the other hand, many
meteorologists, from the very beginning, believed that climate and its change could only be properly
studied using physico-mathematical models. This tendency was particularly strong in Britain. Since the
early 1960s, the British Meteorological Office had begun to devote more of its climate research efforts
to the development of general circulation models (GCMs). Consequently, Hubert Lamb, despite his
international reputation as a pioneer of historical climatology, faced an increasing lack of support and
eventually decided to leave the Office. In this presentation, by tracing the historical and social contexts
of early GCM developments in Britain, I will demonstrate that styles of scientific practice, disciplinary
traditions, institutional cultures, as well as broad political environments all contributed to the transformation
of climate science during the 1960s and 1970s.
Kimmelman, Barbara
E-mail Address: kimmelmanb@philau.edu
Regulation and Debate in International Agricultural Industries: The Case of Antibiotic Feed
Additives In the U.S. and U.K.
Between 1948 and 1951 researchers in the United States and Great Britain discovered what is known
as the "antibiotic growth effect"--that the feeding of antibiotics at low levels to agricultural animals
resulted in enhanced growth. The general tone of both scientific and commercial publications reporting
this unexpected effect was enthusiastic--its discovery offered a fascinating scientific problem requiring
elucidation and also promised economic benefits to both producers and consumers of meat. But by the
1970s an alternative viewpoint had emerged in the face of growing worldwide concern about microbial
resistance to antibiotics and accumulating evidence that agricultural use of antibiotics was a contributing
factor. Actions by various national governments, non-governmental organizations, and voluntary associations
of scientists and medical practitioners have produced restrictions or bans on routine antibiotic
feeding of food animals. But the United States has lagged behind in both national and international
initiatives. In this paper, I compare the course of debate and regulatory action in the United States and
United Kingdom, and argue that the political culture of the U.S. encourages a voluntary approach to
restriction, rather than formal government intervention and regulation, which is tolerated better in
Europe.
Kinraide, Rebecca
E-mail Address: kinraide@hotmail.com
The many hats of the nineteenth-century science popularizer
The efforts of nineteenth-century science popularizers to disseminate science to a broad audience
have come under much recent investigation by historians of science. However, the many different roles
that some of these popularizers played has not been adequately examined. In this paper I will show how
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in Britain came to be a leading clearing-house of
scientific knowledge in the first half of the nineteenth century. Founded in 1826 as an organization to
oversee the publication of inexpensive works on science, history, literature and other forms of t the
needs of a great diversity of groups. Amateur and professional scientists, inventors, collectors, educators,
and the simply curious, looked to the SDUK to provide employment opportunities, chances for publication,
promotion, textbooks, and answers to queries. The volume and diversity of both offers of assistance
and requests for information indicates that there was a significant portion of the public interested in
science who may have felt excluded from the more formal institutions of science. The SDUK solicited
correspondence from its working-class readers and subscribers and was therefore viewed as being