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Why and How: Reflections in an Autobiographical Key

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2013

Daniel J. Kevles*
Affiliation:
Yale University E-mail: daniel.kevles@yale.edu

Extract

My first book, The Physicists, was conceived when I. I. Rabi visited Princeton in 1961–1962 as a Shreve Fellow in the History Department (see Kevles 1995). Some two years earlier C. P. Snow had published his influential provocation, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, and the academic world was abuzz with initiatives aimed at achieving better literacy in science among liberal arts majors. Rabi was a Nobel laureate in physics at Columbia University and his visit was one of Princeton's efforts to this end. It had been arranged by my mentor, Eric F. Goldman, a historian of modern America who had gotten to know Rabi through their mutual engagement with current issues in American democracy.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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