Rockefeller Archive Center

Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports are created by recipients of research travel stipends and by many others who have conducted research at the RAC. The reports demonstrate the breadth of the RAC's archival holdings, particularly in the study of philanthropy and its effects. Read more about the history of philanthropy at resource.rockarch.org. Also, see the RAC Bibliography of Scholarship, a comprehensive online database of publications citing RAC archival collections.

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Aspects of the History of Instrumentation in the Neurosciences at Rockefeller University: Nobelists Herbert Gasser and H. Keffer Hartline

January 1, 2010

This examination of the importance of scientific instruments in the history of the neurosciences begins with the premise that the role of instrumentation in the history of medicine and the history of science in general has been underreported. I suggest that the history of science and the history of medicine have overplayed the conceptualization of research projects, and the pursuit of theoretical confirmation, and have underplayed the central role of instrumentation. In fact, two historians of instrumentation have argued that, for the history of science, "the philosophical debate over whether theory drives experiment or experiment drives theory has tended to obscure the independent role of instruments in science." Looking backward into the early modern period, the eminent historian of science Derek de Solla Price stated that "the scientific revolution was largely the invention [,] improvement [,] and use of a series of instruments of revelation that expanded the reach of science in innumerable directions."

Historical Perspectives on Philanthropy and the Humanities in the United States and Australia

January 1, 2010

This morning I will explore historical links between philanthropy and the humanities, in part by looking at the Rockefeller Foundation's humanities program and certain aspects of the history of the humanities in Australia in the 20th century. I also will refer substantially to my own discipline -- the history of technology, science, and medicine -- and to my personal experiences. Further, I will make some recommendations regarding how humanists and philanthropoids might be more effective collaborators.

Intellectuals Flee from Fascism: Rockefeller Support of Social Scientists, 1933-1945

January 1, 2010

It is an honor to speak to you today on some aspects of the refugee scholars program of the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930s and 1940s. It is a particular honor to appear on the same platform with Professor Reiko Maekawa, whose scholarship I have known and appreciated for twenty-five years. I am similarly honored to appear with Professor Roberta Wollons, who was a colleague of mine at Case Western Reserve University. Both Professor Maekawa and Professor Wollons have made outstanding contributions to the field of American Studies, and I have learned much from them.

Little Science: the Paradoxes of Research and Education in the Sciences at Swarthmore College, 1935-1965

January 1, 2010

Much of the history of American sciences in the mid-twentieth century has focused on the triumph of "big science," based on the combination of federal funding, vast increases in the scale of instrumentation and experimentation, and the alliance of universities with agencies of government, particularly the military. This approach documents the vast and clearly consequential changes in American sciences that are necessary for understanding the creation of what President Dwight Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex," the space program, and the deep technological infrastructure that underpins most advanced science today. But it virtually ignores the education of the scientists themselves -- without whom, after all, there would be no science.

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