This paper examines the roles played by instruments and their associated practices in the development of the field of planetary geology. Specifically, remote sensing instruments and the images produced by instrument users are discussed. It is argued that through these instruments and images the first two generations of planetary geologists were able to 'domesticate' the planets and make them suitable for geological study. But this was not a straightforward process. The instruments themselves had to be 'domesticated' as geological tools, and (...) the definition of 'geologist' had to be broadened to include such tools and extraterrestrial terrains. This paper looks first at the first generation of planetary geologists associated with the mapping and study of the Moon in the 1960s and 70s, then focuses on the second generation that emerged during the exploration and mapping of Mars. Within this second section, the paper focuses on the introduction of one new type of instrument -- the orbiting infrared spectrometer, and examines three such instruments and the visual claims made with its images. (shrink)

From the 1950s to 1970s, physical techniques replaced many classical methods in the chemical and biological sciences. In this development, a novel type of method‐oriented scientists emerged, relying on cooperation with instrument manufacturers and forging close links with science‐funding agencies. Their main engagement was the development of methods and the improvement of instruments, responding to the needs of the chemical and biomedical communities. In the United States, an important institutional locus of such method‐oriented scientists were instrument centers, providing service to (...) regional and national groups of scientific users. This article analyzes the knowledge transfer involved in investigating the Biotechnology Resources Program of the National Institutes of Health, and presenting the example of one of these centers, the Stanford Magnetic Resonance Laboratory. (shrink)

Research methods and their developers play a crucial role in bringing together scientific fields. Scientists, who wish to have their methods acknowledged and used in another discipline have to bridge the gaps between different practices and worldviews, and they often experience hostility, incredulity, and in general feelings of ‘otherness’, while changing the established practice in a scientific field. Researchers representing newly emerging fields such as materials science have to overcome obstacles that are caused more by feelings of threat and fear (...) than by arguments rooted in epistemic or social considerations. In using the habitus concept of Pierre Bourdieu, I analyze in this article statements and observations of the scientists who in the 1950s and 1960s have introduced physical methods into chemistry and in so doing merged characteristic features of research communities into a new unit. The habitus of physicists, chemists and method-oriented researchers are shaped by hierarchical relationships inside the disciplines, and between them. Studying emotional expressions in interviews and self-descriptions gives access to hitherto neglected parts of the historical processes leading to new disciplines and fields. The brief case studies presented are seen as exemplars, and the analysis offered is intended more to provide a possible model for further research than as giving conclusive answers. (shrink)

Crucial to the establishment of a scientific discipline is a body of knowledge organized around a set of instruments, interpretive techniques, and regimes of training in their application. In this paper, we trace the involvement of scientists and engineers at Varian Associates in the development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers from the first demonstrations of the NMR phenomenon in 1946 to the definitive takeoff of NMR as a chemical discipline by the mid-1960s. We examine the role of Varian scientists in (...) constructing several models of NMR instruments for research scientists in the 1950s and the Varian efforts to influence the adoption of NMR as a standard tool for chemical analysis through Varian-supported publications, participation in scientific meetings, collaborations with academic chemists, workshops, and postdoctoral fellowships. Special attention is devoted to the development of the Varian A-60, the first commercial NMR instrument intended for the broadly trained chemist rather than a custom-built tool for the research specialist. Drawing on an examination of the use-rate of NMR instruments in chemical literature, the assessment of NMR in the chemical review literature by practitioners, and indicators of the establishment of a suitable funding environment for the growth of physics-based scientific instrumentation in the post-Sputnik era, we argue that the establishment of NMR as a discipline coincided with the adoption of the A-60 in the mid-1960s. During the period of our study, Varian Associates was a primary military contractor. This paper is intended to contribute to recent interest in the relation of military fundingto scientific enterprise during the Cold War and to the larger question of university-industry interactions in the growth of knowledge. (shrink)

SUMMARYModern methods of analysing biological materials, including protein and DNA sequencing, are increasingly the objects of historical study. Yet twentieth-century taxonomic techniques have been overlooked in one of their most important contexts: agricultural botany. This paper addresses this omission by harnessing unexamined archival material from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany, a British plant science organization. During the 1980s the NIAB carried out three overlapping research programmes in crop identification and analysis: electrophoresis, near infrared spectroscopy and machine vision systems. For (...) each of these three programmes, contemporary economic, statutory and scientific factors behind their uptake by the NIAB are discussed. This approach reveals significant links between taxonomic practice at the NIAB and historical questions around agricultural research, intellectual property and scientific values. Such links are of further importance given that the techniques developed by researchers at the NIAB during the 1980s remain part of crop classification guidelines issued by international bodies today. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of the impact of a major change in the "instrumentation space" of a given scientific domain. The domain under scrutiny is turbulent combustion. It has the peculcarcty of being developed, essentially since the 1940s, by the progressive interpenetration of two autonomous fields, the chemistry of combustion and the mechanics of turbulence. The analyzed change in instrumentation is a major one in that the new laser-based optical diagnostic techniques which, since the 1970s, invaded turbulent combustcon, allowed (...) for the first time the quantitative characterization of turbulent reacting flows. The impact of this new instrumentation on the relations between experimental and theoretical lines of work is analyzed. These relations concern both the global organization of the workplace and the scientific "division of labor" between theoreticians and experimentalists. The impact of the sudden availability of new experimental information on the cognitive structure of this borderland domain is also explored. (shrink)

This paper analyses how the Cold War influenced the discourses on basic research and on Science and Technology Policies of some leaders of the Argentine research community. It explores two key intersections to study the Cold War: the first between politics and policies; the second between the global and the regional/national. The basic assumption is that, just as there was no one Cold War, specific regional and national traits lent specific meanings to basic research. In dialogue with the literature on (...) Latin American history of STPs, on Cold War and on the conceptual history of science, the paper identifies three discursive configurations around S&T: the first refers to the semi-peripheral scientific context; the second is associated with the ‘democracy-totalitarianism’ dichotomy, and the third is linked to the ‘development-dependence’ dichotomy. Finally, the paper also traces some connections between these discourses and the institutional models proposed by different key actors of the research community to implement STPs. (shrink)