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

The history of twentieth-century dream research provides a case in point. When Eugene Aserinsky and
Nathaniel Kleitman first announced their discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) in 1953, they described
it as an objective sign of dreaming. This discovery (and its acceptance) was historically contingent.
It rested upon a series of developments in psychology and neurophysiology that had international
origins, but peculiarly American applications. The former included the use of sleep deprivation as an
experimental model by the French psychologist, Henri Piéron, around 1907, and the development of the
human electroencephalogram (EEG) by the German psychiatrist, Hans Berger, in 1929. These two
investigative strategies began to coalesce at the University of Chicago during the 1930s, when the
problem of sleep emerged as an important biomedical problem at the same time that psychoanalytic
psychiatry was reviving the dream. The convergence of these two fields through the shared practice of
physiological inscription generated the phenomena that became known as rapid eye movement.
Kroll, Gary
E-mail Address: gmkroll@ou.edu
Displacing Frontiers: The Pacific Science Board's Campaign for Conservation
This paper examines the work of the Pacific Science Board, an arm of the National Research Council
established to facilitate the work of American naturalists and anthropologists in the Pacific territories
that fell under U.S. trusteeship after World War II. The PSB functioned as a scientific advisory board
that provided the U.S. Navy with the information for sustaining both military colonization and the
benevolent governance of indigenous cultures. I introduce the history of the PSB as a new "big natural
history," a federally-funded effort to systematize and catalog Micronesia's natural and human resources.
I will also focus on the initiative to conserve and preserve island landscapes, a primary concern of
western naturalists at the end of the nineteenth century and start of the twentieth. PSB bureaucrats and
field workers viewed the Micronesian landscape as an extension of the American frontier, and they
transported those values forged in the American west to the Pacific. In the final analysis, the conservation
campaign in Micronesia failed not only because the goal was incompatible with the military concerns
of the U.S. government, but also because American naturalists viewed the region as a new U.S.
territory. They displaced their conceptions of the American frontier west on to a distant Pacific region
that resisted the tradition of American conservation strategies.
Krupar, Jason
E-mail Address: kruparj@hotmail.com
From Inner-Space to Outer Space: T. Keith Glennan and the Science Managers of the Early Cold
War
During his professional career, T. Keith Glennan served as the President of the Case Institute of
Technology, a Commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and the first Administrator
of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). Any one of these accomplishments might have
served as the capstones event in a distinguished career. Yet, Glennan undertook all three, sometimes
simultaneously. Glennan's multiple roles as a science/innovation manager typified in many ways the
growing influence in the immediate post-WWII years of the scientific/technical expert. The diversity of
Glennan's positions indicated both a level of managerial flexibility and innovation. The purpose of this
paper is to analyze the increased influence of science/innovation managers in the early Cold War, using
Glennan's career as a case study. The success of wartime scientific and technical programs, such as the
Manhattan Project of the development of radar, convinced politicians and the public to place their trust
in the capabilities of science to resolve critical issues. In addition, this study intends to explore what
constituted scientific expertise. Within science management differences developed between scientific
specialists promoted to managerial positions and innovation managers who assumed leadership posts.