2000 HSS/PSA Program 1 - History of Science Society

HSS Abstracts
influenced national consciousness, state policy, and drew a link between notions
and present and ancient Chinese heritage through the natural geography.
Buhm Soon Park National Institutes of Health
More Academic Than a University:
Three Freedoms and the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at NIH, 1961-
1981
H
S
S
This essay examines the characteristics of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology
as an intramural program of the National Institutes of Health during the first two
decades of its operation (1961-1981). My main focus is on the structure and function
of this laboratory in the particular institutional setting provided by the federal
government, which emerged as a leading patron for biomedical research after
World War II. NIH intramural programs in Bethesda had a clearly defined mission—
”better health through research”—in common, but a broad interpretation of
relevance to categorical diseases allowed various kinds of research activities in
many scientific and medical disciplines. In this complex environment of a
government agency, researchers inevitably encountered statutory and administrative
restraints on the one hand, and pressures for more responsive programs on the
other. Yet the disadvantages could be offset by “three freedoms” uniquely available
on the NIH campus: freedom to choose research topics without being restricted to
the subject of the grant proposal, freedom to devote almost all working hours to
research, and freedom from the need to develop “grantsmanship” skills. These
freedoms, the essay shows, ensured the autonomy of individual researchers in the
Laboratory of Molecular Biology, and fostered a scientific community that
encouraged a generous exchange of ideas, a facile initiation of collaboration, and
a flexible planning of research. The quality of their research products, in return,
helped to convince NIH administrators and outside reviewers of the value of three
freedoms in fulfilling the mission.
Richard␣ J. Sorrenson Indiana University
From the South Col to South Pole:
Sir Edmund Hillary and the British Commonwealth Expeditions
to Everest and Antarctica in the 1950s
Within less than a decade in the middle of the twentieth century, ambitious nations
demonstrated their Cold War vigor by hand picking men to do dangerous things
that had not been done before, had no direct economic utility, but were strangely
compelling: climbing Mt. Everest, crossing Antarctica, and orbiting the earth.
Only the two postwar superpowers (the USSR and the USA) could afford the
latter, but Britain, much reduced in influence and wealth after the brutal struggle
161