2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
Japanese “theoretical physicists” did was mathematical elaboration of known
physical principles, rather than investigation of principles. I locate these
practices of “theoretical physicists” within the “culture of calculating” that
dominated Japanese physics, where physicists valued calculational skills and
indulged in advanced mathematics. Physicists developed such a culture under
disciplinary, social, and institutional constraints. First, physics in Japan was
in a close contact with mathematics. Japanese physicists shared the same
academic society with mathematicians at the universities, physics students
received intensive training higher mathematics. Second, social demands also
partially shaped the nature of “theoretical physics” in Japan. The technologies
that were changing the modernizing Japanese life and landscape, such as electric
engineering often required theoretical physicists to work out lengthy
calculations. Third, the institutional inflexibility at Japanese universities, where
little communication and cooperation existed between different specialties in
the 1920s, did not induce young experimentalists to turn to theory nor did it
encourage theorists to go beyond the domain of mathematics and to pursue
physical meanings of physics.
102
John␣ P. Jackson University of Colorado, Boulder
The Scientist as Social Activist:
The Career of Robert E. Kuttner, 1951-1982
Biochemist Robert E. Kuttner enjoyed academic and research posts at a number
of universities and hospitals. Kuttner believed that he had a responsibility to use
his scientific expertise in the service of society. Consequently he wrote dozens
of articles for popular journals explaining how science could help solve vital
social problems of the day. Of particular concern to Kuttner were the racial
problems of the United States. Between 1950 and 1980 he wrote about little
else. He was that rarest of creatures in the postwar United States a self-proclaimed
racist. Kuttner’s popular articles appeared in extremist journals and newspapers,
many of them edited by neo-Nazi publisher Willis Carto. Kuttner was not a
mere white supremacist, he was a Nordic supremacist, who proclaimed that the
Northern European was the “natural leader of the white race.” In his writings,
Kuttner maintained that civilization was racial in nature and slavery was a
beneficial institution for Negroes who were incapable of self-governance. Kuttner
was convinced that the public was being mislead by pseudo-scientific propaganda
of “racial equality” that was being propagated by Jews and Communists. This
paper will explore how someone with Kuttner’s extreme racial views could
nonetheless become a scientific expert witness before the Federal Courts and
Congress in the 1960s, become the chair of an Anthropology Department in a
U.S. university in the 1970s, and enjoy the widespread dissemination of his
racial views over a 30 year publishing career. One level of explanation is that
Kuttner was part of a well-organized coterie of like-minded individuals who