Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities / Edition 2

by A. Hunter Dupree

Overview

Now returned to print with a new preface by the author. Science in the Federal Government remains one of the finest and most comprehensive surveys of the history of American science. A. Hunter Dupree traces the evolution of the relationship bewteen government and science, emphasizing the continuous debate over the form, implementation, even the desirability of national science policy.

From the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to the onset of World War II, Dupress shows, federal involvement in science centered on key national interests-geographical exploration and expansion, agriculture and conservation, medicine and public health, industry and the military. Dupree examines the roles and the impact of significant individuals and such institutions as the Smithsonian, the Geological Survey, the national Academy of Sciences, and the National institutes of Health. In an extensive new preface, he discusses developments through the 1980s, paying special attention to the expansion of government-university partnership in the warek of Sputnik.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801833816
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	08/01/1986
Edition description:	revised edition
Pages:	488
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.09(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

A. Hunter Dupree is George L. Littlefield Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University and research associate at the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University. He is also author of Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities and the editor of several other works.

Table of Contents

Preface
Preface to the First Edition
1. First Attempts to Form a Policy, 1787-1800
2. Theory and Action in the Jeffersonian Era, 1800-1829
3. Practical Achievements in the Age of the Common Man, 1829-1842
4. The Fulfillment of Smithson's Will, 1829-1861
5. The Great Explorations and Survey's Will, 1829-1861
6. Bache and the Quest for a Central Scientific Organization, 1851-1861
7. The Civil War, 1861-1865
8. The Evolution of Research in Agriculture, 1862-1916
9. The Decline of Science in the military Services, 1865-1890
10. The Geological Survey, 1867-1885
11. The Allison Commission and the Department of Sceince, 1884-1886
12. Conservation, 1865-1916
13. Medicine and Public Health, 1865-1916
14. The Completion of the Federal Scientific Establishment
15. Patterns of Government Research in Modern America, 1865-1916
16. The Impact of World War I, 1914-1918
17. Transition to a Business Era, 1919-1929
18. The Depression and the New Deal, 1929-1939
19. Prospect and Retrospect at the Beginning of a New Era, 1940
Chronology
Bibliographic Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

The qualities that made Science in the Federal Government exemplary in 1957 still do so today. The book demonstrates that the history of science can be done as an integral part of political and social history, that the history of institutions need not be narrow and dull if it includes the human dimension of personalities and elites and social relationships. It succeeds admirably in treating technical aspects of science without letting them dominate the central organizational and human themes. Dupree's achievement has been and still is reassuring and inspiring.
—Isis

From the Publisher

Quite simply a modern classic, one of the most cited and sought after books of the last fifty years."

Alex Roland

For the general historian Dupree's book will in many ways be a revelation...The American genus takes on a new dimension as the history of one pervasive aspect of our national life-science in government-unfolds in the scholarly, well-documented, and reparkably readable narrative.

American Historical Review

The qualities that made Science in the Federal Government exemplary in 1957 still do so today. The book demonstrates that the history of science can be done as an integral part of political and social history, that the history of institutions need not be narrow and dull if it includes the human dimension of personalities and elites and social relationships. It succeeds admirably in treating technical aspects of science without letting them dominate the central organizational and human themes. Dupree's achievement has been and still is reassuring and inspiring.

Isis