Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford PDF
Preview Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford
CREATING Creating the Cold War University Creating the Cold War University The Transformation of Stanford Rebecca S. Lowen University of California Press Berkeley / Los Angeles / London This book is a print-on-demand volume. It is manufactured using toner in place of ink. Type and images may be less sharp than the same material seen in traditionally printed University of California Press editions. University of California Press US’ Berkeley and Los Angeles, California 7 University of California Press, Ltd. London, England V 1997 by Rebecca S. Lowen Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lowen, Rebecca S., 1959- Creating the Cold War university : die transformation of Stanford / Rebecca S. Lowen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-520-20541-3 (alk. paper) 1. Stanford University—History—20th century. 2. Universities and colleges—California—Sociological aspects—Case studies. 3. Universities and colleges —Research —Political aspects— California—Case studies. 4. Universities and colleges—Research— Economic aspects—California—Case studies. I. Title. LDzozo.L68 1997 378.794'73—dcao 96-5022 CIP Manufactured in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992(R 1997)(Permanence of Paper) In memory of my mother, Joan Koi berg Lowen, and for my father, Robert W Lowen Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix Introduction I i The Thirties 17 2 Stanford Goes to War 43 Z Eroding Departmental Autonomy 67 4 “Exploiting a Wonderful Opportunity” 95 5 A “Win-Win-Win” Relationship 120 6 Building Steeples of Excellence 147 7 Private Foundations and the “Behavioral Revolution” 191 8 The Undergraduates 224 ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES 2ZY NOTES 241 BIBLIOGRAPHY 291 INDEX ZOZ Acknowledgments One of the satisfactions in coming to the end of a project is the opportunity to acknowledge the many people, institutions, and organizations that made its completion possible. For their financial support, I thank the Center for International Secu rity and Arms Control at Stanford University for a MacArthur fellow ship in Peace and Security Studies; the National Science Foundation for a Science, Technology and Society fellowship; the Smithsonian Institu tion’s National Air and Space Museum for a Guggenheim fellowship; and the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics for a travel grant. To the administrators and staff of these organizations, I extend my gratitude. I should also like to thank the historians, students, and staffs of those institutions where, first as a graduate student and then as a postdoctoral scholar, I did most of the work on this book: the history department at Stanford University, the history of science department at Johns Hop kins University, and the National Air and Space Museum’s Division of Space History. A number of people deserve special mention. I had the good fortune to have as a graduate advisor a gifted and dedicated teacher and scholar, Barton Bernstein. I thank him for teaching me the historian’s craft, for his dependable interest in this project, and espe cially for his steady faith in my abilities. I should also like to thank Gregg Herkcn and Robert Smith of the Air and Space Museum for ensuring that I had access to a computer and a place to work and for creating, along with the other members of the space history division, a wonderfully congenial environment in which to think and write. I am especially grateful to Allan Needcll for the opportunity to present a ix X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS portion of this work in the Museum’s history of science seminar, and to Sharon Kingsland of the Johns Hopkins history of science depart ment for inviting me to present my work in the department’s seminar. I also offer my special thanks to those members of the Johns Hopkins community who welcomed this native Californian into their midst and helped me to make the adjustment to life in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area. A host of archivists and their staffs made possible the research on which this book is based. I am indebted to the extraordinarily capable, dedicated, and friendly staff of the Stanford University Archives, where I conducted the major portion of my research. I thank Archivist Rox anne Nilan for providing access to all relevant archival collections and for accommodating my work schedule; Hilary Shore and Robin Chan dler for responding patiently to my countless paging requests; and Linda Long for expertly answering my many questions and sharing her vast knowledge of the Stanford collections. I should also like to thank Margaret Kimball, Karen McAdams, Steven Mandeville-Gamble, Mark Dimunation, and Henry Lowood, Stanford’s physics librarian and an historian of science, for their assistance. Thanks are also due the archivists and staffs of the Hoover Institu tion, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the Niels Bohr Library of the American Institute of Physics, the Carnegie Institute of Washing ton, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the several university archives that I visited in the course of my research. I should like especially to thank Roger Anders of the Department of Energy for facilitating access to material related to the funding and construction of the Stanford Linear Accelerator; Allan Divack of the Ford Foundation for his cordial assistance with the foundation’s collections; and David Van Kcuren for mediating between me and the less-than-welcoming staff of the Office of Naval Research's Naval Research Advisory Com mittee. I am also very grateful to all those current and former members of the Stanford community who kindly agreed to my requests to interview them. I should particularly like to acknowledge the late Philip Rhine lander, who, although gravely ill, encouraged my visits and my ques tions. I also extend my very sincere thanks to the Termans—Lewis, Ter ence, Frederick, Jr., and his wife, Bobbie—who set aside an entire morning to answer my questions and share with me their memories of their father and grandfather and never once asked about, or attempted to control, the content of this project. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi Many people kindly read and commented on this book during its various stages of revision. Barton Bernstein, Gordon Chang, Peter Gali- son, Karl Hufbauer, Robert Kargon, Otis Pease, and David Tyack read the entire manuscript in its earliest incarnation, providing encourage ment and many helpful suggestions. I owe special thanks to Bruce Hcvly, who took time away from his own work to introduce me to the literature in the history of science and to read carefully every draft of this work that I shared with him. I also benefited from the comments of those who read the revised manuscript, in part or in its entirety: Brian Balogh, David DcVorkin, Carol Gruber, Christophe Lecuycr, Allan Needed, Larry Owens, Ed ward Shils, Spencer Wcart, and an anonymous reviewer for the Univer sity of California Press. I should like especially to thank Michael Bern stein for a helpful reading of the manuscript; Sigmund Diamond for his early endorsement of this project and for sharing with me a useful source; and Peggy Pascoe for her incisive reading of the introduction and her wise counsel over the years. I also owe many thanks to my superlative editor, Elizabeth Knoll (now with W. H. Freeman), for her enthusiasm for this book, for much sensible advice, and for her forbear ance in the face of many missed deadlines. This book is the better for the advice and criticisms I received; any remaining inadequacies are the responsibility of the author. My family and friends assisted me, in ways both concrete and intan gible, over the course of research and writing, and I am deeply grateful to them. In those instances when my pursuit of archival material took me away from the comforts of home, I was fortunate to be offered a place to stay and many wonderful meals by Ed and Rhoda Rossinow. I was also hosted innumerable times by Sara Lowen and Tom Omcstad, who provided excellent company, moral support, and, when needed, enjoyable diversions from the tasks of research and writing. For their steady support, I also thank: Todd Benson, Gloria Byrnes, Gertrude Kolberg, the late Marillyn Johnson, Chris and Samara Lowen, and Di ane Vik. During the writing of this book, I was indulged and cared for by my husband, Douglas Rossinow; I could not have completed this book without him. I thank him for listening, for his many thoughtful comments, for buoying me during low moments, for his fabulous sense of humor, and, not least of all, for doing all the cooking. Finally, I should like to acknowledge my parents, who had perhaps the greatest, if least easily articulated, influence on this work. Midwest erners by birth, children of the Great Depression, they participated in
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