How Science Became Militarized : The Case of the University of California at Berkeley

This paper will examine how science became militarized, focusing on a few years from the late 1930s, when the plan to construct the 184-inch cyclotron emerged, through the early 1940s, when the University of California set up a system to mobilize for war.Part I will describe the close relationship that grew up between Ernest O. Lawrence（1901_1958）, inventor of the cyclotron and head of the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory（the Rad Lab）, and his supporter Alfred Lee Loomis（1887_1975）, who, as an investment banker and amateur scientist, brought Lawrence into contact with industrialists in the course of developing the 184-inch cyclotron. Part II discusses the way Loomis brought Lawrence into the web of military-industrial ties. The urgent need to develop a high-power, high-frequency oscillation tube, which was a component technology needed for both radar and the cyclotron, provided common ground for getting Lawrence involved in defense research. Part III will focus on the question of overhead to explore the University of California\u27s handling of defense research contracts at a time when the government was creating a system to mobilize science and engineering for the war. This process led to the development of big science, which has the following three characteristics: the development of equipment that utilizes advanced technology; the need for enormous research funds; and the organization of researchers and thorough division of labor in the laboratory. Each of these characteristics engenders another aspect: The first leads to close cooperation between the research laboratory and industry in developing the technology; the second invites investment by huge foundations and contracts with the government and the military; and the third makes it impossible for researchers to continue their research except as part of a project and team, thereby robbing them of their independence. Some of the changes in the socioeconomic foundations of science and technology that were promoted by a special kind of coercion during the war became built into the postwar social structure in the form of the military-industrial-academic complex, making it impossible to think of postwar policy without them