Nationalism and Internationalism in Science, 1880–1939: Four Studies of the Nobel Population

by Elisabeth Crawford

• ISBN13: 9780521524742
• ISBN10: 0521524741
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-07-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The founding of the Nobel Prize in 1901 confirmed the internationalisation of science. The workings of the Nobel institution rested on an international community of scientists who forwarded candidates for the prizes. Along with the candidates and eventual prizewinners, they constituted the Nobel population, which in the fields of chemistry and physics between 1901 and 1939 numbered over one thousand scientist renown from twenty-five countries. Crawford uses this Nobel population for prosopographic studies that shed new light on national and international science between 1901 and 1939. Her four studies examine the following problems: the upsurge of nationalism among scientists of warring nations during and after World War I; the existence of a scientific centre and periphery in Central Europe; the élite conception of science in the United States; and the effective use of the Nobel prizes in an organisation whose primary purpose was to further national science.

Table of Contents

List of tables and figures	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(10)
PART I. CONCEPTUAL AND HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ISSUES
Methods for a social history of scientific development	11	(17)
First the nation: national and international science, 1880--1914	28	(21)
PART II. CRITICAL AND EMPIRICAL STUDIES
Internationalism in science as a casualty of World War I	49	(30)
Center-periphery relations in science: the case of Central Europe	79	(27)
National purpose and international symbols: the Kaiser-Wilhelm Society and the Nobel institution	106	(19)
Nobel laureates as an elite in American science	125	(22)
Bibliographical essay	147	(4)
Index	151