This essay explores the significance of political and ideological context as well as experimental culture for the participation of women in radioactivity research. It argues that the politics of Red Vienna and the culture of radioactivity research specific to the Viennese setting encouraged exceptional gender politics within the Institute for Radium Research in the interwar years. The essay further attempts to provide an alternative approach to narratives that concentrate on personal dispositions and stereotypical images of women in science to explain the disproportionately large number of women in radioactivity research. Instead, the emphasis here is on the institutional context in which women involved themselves in radioactivity in interwar Vienna. This approach places greater importance on contingencies of time and place and highlights the significance of the cultural and political context in a historical study while at the same time shedding light on the interrelation between scientific practices and gender.
Nach der Entdeckung der Radioaktivität und der ersten radioaktiven Elemente durch Henry Becquerel, Marie und Pierre Curie begannen deutsche Wissenschaftler mit Untersuchungen, die zur Entdeckungen weiterer radioaktiven Elemente und der Wirkung und des Charakters der Radioaktivität führten. Dabei war in den ersten Jahren ein Freundeskreis um Justus Elster, Hans Geitel in Wolfenbüttel und Friedrich Giesel in Braunschweig, die ihre wissenschaftliche Arbeit meist neben ihren beruflichen Verpflichtungen durchführten, äußerst produktiv. Dieses interdisziplinäre Zentrum war bereits sehr erfolgreich bevor entsprechende Radiuminstitute in Wien, Paris und an anderen Orten gegründet worden waren. Neben ihrer Forschungen wurden viele andere Wissenschaftler mit radioaktiven Präparaten und wissenschaftlichen Geräten versorgt. ; After discovery of radioactivity and radio-active elements by Henry Becquerel, Pierre and Marie Curie German scientists started with investigations, which resulted in the discovery of new radioactive elements and the character and the effects of radioactivity. Very productive have been a circle of friends with Justus Elster, Hans Geitel and Friedrich Giesel in Brunswick and Wolfenbüttel, who have mostly done the scientific work beside their professional duties. This interdisciplinary center was successful working before institutional governmental radium institutes in Vienna, Paris, and other places are founded. Besides their research, other researchers all over the world were delivered with radioactive preparations as well as instruments and glassware that they could start their research about radioactivity.
"Mound Laboratory, Miamisburg, Ohio, operated for United States Atomic Energy Commission, U.S. Government Contract No. AT 33-1-GEN-53." ; "Monsanto Research Corporation a subsidiary of Monsanto Chemical Company." ; "Date: September 2, 1952 ; Issued: Mar 27 1961." ; "MLM-591 ; Chemistry--General ; (TID-4500, 16th Ed.)." ; Includes bibliographical references (p. 37). ; U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Contract ; Mode of access: Internet.
What could it mean to be a physicist specialized in radioactivity in the early 20th century Vienna? More specifically, what could it mean to be a woman experimenter in radioactivity during that time? This dissertation focuses on the lived experiences of the women experimenters of the Institut fr Radiumforschung in Vienna between 1910 and 1938. As one of three leading European Institutes specializing in radioactivity, the Institute had a very strong staff. At a time when there were few women in physics, one third of the Institute's researchers were women. Furthermore, they were not just technicians but were independent researchers who published at about the same rate as their male colleagues. This study accounts for the exceptional constellation of factors that contributed to the unique position of women in Vienna as active experimenters. Three main threads structure this study. One is the role of the civic culture of Vienna and the spatial arrangements specific to the Mediziner-Viertel in establishing the context of the intellectual work of the physicists. A second concerns the ways the Institute's architecture helped to define the scientific activity in its laboratories and to establish the gendered identities of the physicists it housed. The third examines how the social conditions of the Institute influenced the deployment of instrumentation and experimental procedures especially during the Cambridge-Vienna controversy of the 1920s. These threads are unified by their relation to the changing political context during the three contrasting periods in which the story unfolds: a) from the end of the 19th century to the end of the First World War, when new movements, including feminism, Social Democracy, and Christian Socialism, shaped the Viennese political scene, b) the period of Red Vienna, 1919 to 1934, when Social Democrats had control of the City of Vienna, and c) the period from 1934 to the Anschluss in 1938, during which fascists and Nazis seized power in Austria. As I show, the careers of the Institute's women were shaped in good part by the shifting meanings, and the politics, that attached to being a "woman experimenter" in Vienna from 1910 to the beginning of the Second World War. ; Ph. D.
Risk disputes are often characterized by tensions between technical and cultural understandings of risk and by communication practices that reflect those differing perspectives. This study considers how participants in risk debates draw upon and combine aspects of technical and cultural rationality as broad orientations to risk in expressing their views and formulating persuasive appeals during risk debates. Rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke's (1984) concept offrames of acceptanceis used to analyze a case study involving competing priorities for radium stored at the Fernald site, a former Department of Energy nuclear weapons facility. A rhetorical analysis is conducted using the transcript from a 1995 public meeting during which local residents and a nuclear medicine expert discussed priorities of Fernald site cleanup versus providing radium stored on site for promising cancer research. Two tensions are identified that fostered disagreement among discussants: the first a tension between a local or global context for the controversy and the second a tension between competing definitions of public participation for this issue. This study analyzes the rhetorical strategies by which participants in the Fernald radium debate articulated these tensions and argues that technical and cultural rationality (Plough & Krimsky, 1987) acted as sources of rhetorical invention influencing participants' individualframes of acceptanceand the ways they defined and interpreted the situation and crafted persuasive appeals.
AbstractThis article traces the history of India's first tertiary cancer hospital, Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH). TMH was originally conceived in 1932 as a philanthropic project by the Tatas, an elite Parsi business family in Bombay. The founding of TMH represented a form of philanthro-capitalism which both enabled the Tatas to foster a communal acceptance for big businesses in Bombay and provide the Tatas with the opportunity to place stakes in the emerging nuclear research economy seen as essential to the scientific nationalist sentiment of the post-colonial state. In doing this, the everyday activities of TMH placed a heavy emphasis on nuclear research. In a time when radium for the treatment of cancer was still seen as 'quackery' in much of the world, the philanthro-capitalist investment and the interest in nuclear research by the post-colonial state provided an environment where radium medicine was able to be validated. The validation of radiotherapy at TMH influenced how other cancer hospitals in India developed and also provided significant resources for cancer research in early-mid twentieth century India. Ultimately, this article identifies ways in which cancer comes to be seen as relevant in the global south and raises questions on the relationship between local and global actors in setting health priorities.
The objective of this work is to make visible the relevance of one of the characters who were victims of scientific exile after the Spanish civil war. This is Antonio Chamorro Daza, an Assistant Professor of Practical Classes of the Faculty of Medicine of Granada, who was surprised in Berlin by the military uprising, was subsequently tried by the Court for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism and disabled for the professional exercise in Spain. As a political refugee in Paris, he was part of the elite of researchers who turned their efforts into experimental research on the hormonal origin of breast cancer, based on the so-called laboratory medicine, with remarkable findings, recognized in the large number of publications in those that were taken into account. The working group was led by the French doctor Antoine Lacassagne, who decisively influenced the future of Antonio Chamorro. ; El objetivo de este trabajo es visibilizar la relevancia de uno de los personajes que fueron víctimas del exilio científico tras la guerra civil española. Se trata de Antonio Chamorro Daza (Huesa, Jaén, 1903-Banyoles, Girona, 2003), un Profesor Ayudante de Clases prácticas de la Facultad de Medicina de Granada que, sorprendido en Berlín por la sublevación militar, posteriormente fue juzgado por el Tribunal para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo e inhabilitado para el ejercicio profesional en España. Como refugiado político en París, formó parte de una élite de investigadores que volcaron sus esfuerzos en la investigación experimental sobre el origen hormonal del cáncer de mama, basándose en la llamada medicina de laboratorio, con notables hallazgos, reconocidos en el gran número de publicaciones en las que se les tuvo en cuenta. El grupo de trabajo estuvo dirigido por el médico francés Antoine Lacassagne, quien influyó decisivamente en el porvenir de Antonio Chamorro.
Agradecemos a Mikel Astrain, Fernando Girón y Rosa Mª Moreno sus sugerencias para la redacción definitiva de este trabajo. Sin la colaboración de Alain Poussard y de Isaac Borja Araujo Figueroa nuestras fuentes estarían incompletas. ; El objetivo de este trabajo es visibilizar la relevancia de uno de los personajes que fueron víctimas del exilio científico tras la guerra civil española. Se trata de Antonio Chamorro Daza (Huesa, Jaén, 1903-Banyoles, Girona, 2003), un Profesor Ayudante de Clases prácticas de la Facultad de Medicina de Granada que, sorprendido en Berlín por la sublevación militar, posteriormente fue juzgado por el Tribunal para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo e inhabilitado para el ejercicio profesional en España. Como refugiado político en París, formó parte de una élite de investigadores que volcaron sus esfuerzos en la investigación experimental sobre el origen hormonal del cáncer de mama, basándose en la llamada medicina de laboratorio, con notables hallazgos, reconocidos en el gran número de publicaciones en las que se les tuvo en cuenta. El grupo de trabajo estuvo dirigido por el médico francés Antoine Lacassagne, quien influyó decisivamente en el porvenir de Antonio Chamorro. ; The objective of this work is to make visible the relevance of one of the characters who were victims of scientific exile after the Spanish civil war. This is Antonio Chamorro Daza, an Assistant Professor of Practical Classes of the Faculty of Medicine of Granada, who was surprised in Berlin by the military uprising, was subsequently tried by the Court for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism and disabled for the professional exercise in Spain. As a political refugee in Paris, he was part of the elite of researchers who turned their efforts into experimental research on the hormonal origin of breast cancer, based on the so-called laboratory medicine, with remarkable findings, recognized in the large number of publications in those that were taken into account. The working group was led by the French doctor Antoine Lacassagne, who decisively influenced the future of Antonio Chamorro.
6 pags., 5 figs., 1 tab. ; There is sparse direct experimental evidence that atomic nuclei can exhibit stable "pear" shapes arising from strong octupole correlations. In order to investigate the nature of octupole collectivity in radium isotopes, electric octupole (E3) matrix elements have been determined for transitions in Ra222,228 nuclei using the method of sub-barrier, multistep Coulomb excitation. Beams of the radioactive radium isotopes were provided by the HIE-ISOLDE facility at CERN. The observed pattern of E3 matrix elements for different nuclear transitions is explained by describing Ra222 as pear shaped with stable octupole deformation, while Ra228 behaves like an octupole vibrator. ; The support of the ISOLDE Collaboration and technical teams is acknowledged. This work was supported by the following Research Councils and Grants: Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) Grants No. ST/P004598/1, No. ST/L005808/1, No. ST/ R004056/1; Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany) Grants No. 05P18RDCIA, No. 05P15PKCIA, and No. 05P18PKCIA and the "Verbundprojekt 05P2018"; National Science Centre (Poland) Grant No. 2015/18/M/ ST2/00523; European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework research and innovation programme 654002 (ENSAR2); Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Grant (EU-CERN) 665779; Research Foundation Flanders and IAP Belgian Science Policy Office BriX network P7/12 (Belgium); GOA/2015/010 (BOF KU Leuven); RFBR (Russia) Grant No. 17-52-12015; and the Academy of Finland (Finland) Grant No. 307685.
Wie veränderte sich die Radioaktivitäts- und Kernforschung in Österreich seit der Entdeckung des Kernzerfalls im späten 19. Jahrhundert bis zum Ende des Zweiten Weltkrieges? Dieses Buch bietet eine profunde Analyse lokaler Forschungstraditionen im politisch-sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Kontext. Die Studie verortet das Institut für Radiumforschung in Wien und andere österreichische Standorte der Radioaktivitäts- bzw. Kernforschung in zwei sich überlagernden Netzwerken: Einerseits im regionalen Forschungsraum der Habsburger Monarchie, der Ersten Republik und des "Dritten Reiches" und andererseits in der globalen Gemeinschaft der "Radioaktivisten". Sie zeigt anhand neuer Archivquellen, welche Rolle die in Österreich vorhandenen Ressourcen im globalen Netzwerk der Kernforschung spielten. ; At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a new sub-field of physics and chemistry emerged centering on radioactivity. Its disciplinary structures were slow to crystallize. The early phase of this field was characterized by substantial international exchange between the European centers in Vienna, Paris, Berlin and Cambridge and a concomitant high degree of transdisciplinarity. Research on radioactivity was also marked by an unusual openness in respect to gender and gender politics. The volatile political and social context of nuclear research, which abruptly changed several times, acted to further, impede or block these initiatives to transcend diverse boundaries in science, politics, and society. The two central questions of the present project are: How did the agendas and foci of Austrian nuclear research, and the styles of work of the scientists, change within the framework of international cooperation and competition? How were these developments dynamically linked with the political, social and cultural shifts in European history in the 20th century? The historical analysis starts with the founding of the Vienna Institute for Radium Research (IRR), including the institutes for physics at the University of Vienna that worked in close cooperation with the IRR. The period under investigation extends from the late years of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to World War I, the era of "Red Vienna," the "state of estates" (Ständestaat) and the Nazi dictatorship, down to the full restoration of Austrian sovereignty in 1955. The study will include systematic transnational comparisons with the other centers of European nuclear research, based in part on existing literature from the history of science, as well as exact reconstructions of the bilateral and multilateral cooperative links and relations with the international scientific community. In this way, the proposed project is expected to go beyond the historical reconstruction of nuclear research in Austria and shed light on the importance of nationality and internationality, both for framing politics and as mental and cultural points of reference for the behavior and actions of the scientific actors and the production of scientific knowledge under shifting constellations of war and peace, democracy and dictatorship.
