Doctoral Dissertation Research: Nuclear Arms Control in American Science, Politics, and Culture

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IntroductionThis doctoral dissertation improvement grant supports research in history of technology. Specifically, the project will examine efforts to prevent nuclear war, to control it, defend against it, and even to disarm and disable its possibility, efforts loosely collected under the broad canvas of Nuclear Arms Control, from the beginning of the missile age in the late 1950s through the end of the Cold War. It focuses on the scientific, political and institutional work of nuclear experts who were involved in various nuclear arms control efforts in this period. It follows their activities in a variety of venues: university-based research, defense consulting, public political engagement in the national media and the U.S. Congress, and in new non-state arms control organizations. The grant is predominantly for covering travel expenses for conducting archival research in Washington D.C., Ithaca, San Francisco, and San Diego.Intellectual MeritThe project will demonstrate how the structure of arms control work and the very meaning of Nuclear Arms Control shifted and multiplied in this period. In the 1960s, arms control was itself a Cold War pursuit, the nuclear security state's own prerogative. By the 1970s and 80s, arms control had taken on some of the connotations more familiar to a twenty-first-century observer, as an enterprise the state itself seemed reluctant or simply unable to properly execute. The project seeks to chart and explain this broad shift in practice and meaning by showing how it emerged from a changing interaction between experts, the federal government, and the public. Numerous scholars have documented American efforts to design and construct nuclear weapons, by contrast with documenting what was done to prevent nuclear war.Broader Impacts The results of this project will be of interest to historians of modern U.S. politics and historians of science, alongside the full range of scholars of the nuclear age and the Cold War. Besides publishing a scholarly book and scholarly articles based on the dissertation research, the researcher intends to write articles for audiences beyond that of professional historians. Two general areas of broader impact are envisioned. One is the community of professional physicists, which has had a long and complex relationship with nuclear weapons and the challenges of nuclear arms control. Another is the security policy and international affairs community, which has an enduring interest in arms control policy, missile defense, and the legacy of the Cold War. In sum, the project has the potential to contribute broadly to thinking about nuclear weapons and the relationship between foreign policy, domestic politics, and science and technology.