2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
the specialists on these teams were clearly recognized, but so was the danger of
overspecialization in the training of new scientists. Both at Harvard and at
Princeton programs were designed to train “scientific generalists” with a
command of advanced statistics who would be able to supervise, coordinate and
administer such research teams. Statistics would enable the decision problems
to be solved when the relevant factors were either not clear cut, or the factors
involved too numerous or complex to be analyzed analytically. The computer
has replaced this notion of the “scientific generalist”. Over the last two decades
scientific computation has reached the point where it is on par with laboratory
experiments as a tool for research in physics. The computer is providing a new
window through which the natural world is being observed and analyzed in
exquisite detail. It has restructured the traditional roles of theorists and
experimenters. It also has made for a new notion of interdisciplinarity by building
new bridges between disparate subdisciplines, such as cosmology and condensed
matter physics, by virtue of common models and simulations. In addition, and
just as dramatically, the computer-based Internet has made it possible to
communicate easily and reliably huge amounts of information throughout the
world. These advances in computing and communication point to a structural
transformation of the ways in which understanding is gained in the various
subfields of physics. I shall illustrate this with examples from cosmology,
condensed matter physics and biophysics.
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Marija Sesic Museum of Science and Technology, Belgrade
The Electrical Icon: National Appropriations of Nikola Tesla, 1945-1999
The paper discusses the arguments and evidence which the Serbian and Croat
politicians, journalists and historians advance to determine the nationality of the
electrical innovator Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). Tesla is known as the author of
several major patents in the field of alternating electrical current and an advisor in
the construction of Niagara power plant. He lived in New York, but his work was
closely followed and celebrated in the Yugoslav lands where the issue of his national
identity became a matter of considerable controversy, due partly to the fact that
Tesla’s family, Serbian in ethnic and religious background, lived inside the borders
of the Republic of Croatia (at the time of his birth, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy).
In the period from the formation to the end of the ‘original’ Yugoslavia, Tesla’s
work was celebrated as intrinsically Yugoslavian. His motto ‘I am proud of my
Serbian origins and Croatian homeland’ was often cited in support national
toleration, despite the fact that no such claim was ever found in his writings. His
portraits appeared on banknotes, in fictional autobiographies, in the names of
scientific institutions, and theater performances. This paper will focus on some of
the most extraordinary uses of his scientific work and public image and, particularly,
on the ways in which his Yugoslavian identity disappeared after the fall of
Yugoslavia in 1991.
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