Scientific Communication Across the Iron Curtain PDF
Preview Scientific Communication Across the Iron Curtain
SPRINGER BRIEFS IN HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Christopher D. Hollings Scientific Communication Across the Iron Curtain 123 SpringerBriefs in History of Science and Technology More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10085 Christopher D. Hollings fi Scienti c Communication Across the Iron Curtain 123 Christopher D.Hollings Mathematical Institute University of Oxford Oxford UK ISSN 2211-4564 ISSN 2211-4572 (electronic) SpringerBriefs inHistory ofScience andTechnology ISBN978-3-319-25344-2 ISBN978-3-319-25346-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-25346-6 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2015954967 SpringerChamHeidelbergNewYorkDordrechtLondon ©TheAuthor(s)2016 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesareexemptfrom therelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authorsortheeditorsgiveawarranty,expressorimplied,withrespecttothematerialcontainedhereinor foranyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade. Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerInternationalPublishingAGSwitzerlandispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia (www.springer.com) Dedicated to the memory of Jackie Stedall Abstract Drawingevidencefromarangeofdisciplines,Istudytheextenttowhichscientists were able to communicate with their counterparts on the opposite side of what became the Iron Curtain. I consider the scope that existed for personal communi- cation between scientists, as well as for the attendance offoreign conferences, and describe how these changed over the decades. Access to publications is also dealt with:Iaddressseparatelythequestionsofphysicalaccess,andoflinguisticaccess. In particular, I argue that physical accessibility was generally good in both direc- tions,butthatWesternscientistswereafflictedbygreaterlinguisticdifficultiesthan their Soviet counterparts, whose major problems in accessing Western research were bureaucratic in nature. (cid:1) (cid:1) Keywords Scientific communication Cold War science Academic exchange vii Preface The various bureaucratic, logistical, and linguistic problems that afflicted contacts across the Iron Curtain are well-recognised by historians, and have been subjected to a number of general studies.1 In the specifically scientific context, however, the vast majority of available investigations appear to focus upon those aspects of a particular discipline that emerged during the years of the Cold War, with com- municationsdifficultiesoftenbeingasecondarymatter.Thepurposeofthepresent book therefore is to provide an overview of the problems of Cold War scientific communications (principally in the academic context) in which these selfsame difficultiesarethemainfocus.Theaccountgivenhereintegrates(forthefirsttime, to the best of my knowledge) the political/ideological/bureaucratic problems that afflicted East-West contacts with those of a linguistic nature. Indeed, my main theses lie at the intersection of these issues. They are, first of all, that, where conferenceattendanceandpersonalcorrespondencewereconcerned,thedifficulties encountered were broadly similar across the sciences, but that we begin to see a markeddifferencebetweendistinctdisciplineswhenweconsidertheavailabilityof publications and the provision of translations. Second, I contend that the physical accessibilityofpublicationsfrom‘theotherside’wasgenerallymuchbetterthanis commonly supposed. Finally, I argue that Western scientists were afflicted by greater linguistic difficulties than their Soviet counterparts, who do not appear to havebeenoverlyaffectedbythelanguagebarrier—instead,theirmajorproblemsin accessing Western research were bureaucratic in nature. The material of this book is arranged as follows. I begin in Chap.1 by estab- lishing a rough framework for the study of scientific communication, and also set uptheconventionsandterminologytobeadoptedthroughout.InChap.2,Iturnto a general discussion of communications between scientists in East and West from the 1920s, up to around the 1980s; the focus in Chap. 2 is upon personal contacts between scientists, by which I mean correspondence and face-to-face meetings, usually at conferences. The scene is set in Sect. 2.1 by a short discussion of 1IsavedetailedreferencesfortheIntroduction. ix
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