ABSTRACT
Wartime success, an intensifying Cold War, and the threat of nuclear Armageddon reshaped the landscape of American science. New state agencies, like the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Science Foundation, were established in 1946 and 1950, respectively, and, after the shock of Sputnik in 1957, a Presidential Science Advisory Committee was lodged within the White House. An unprecedented system of national laboratories, presided over by the Atomic Energy Commission, united the interests of science and defense; universities harnessed their missions to federal funding and military research; and the economy pivoted on military R&D. The new climate bolstered fields like oceanography, the chemistry of antibiotics, materials science, space science, nuclear and high-energy physics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid state physics which spawned, for example, transistor radios and computers, and nourished the belief that science would secure both the Good Life and the nation's place in the world. Encouraged as well were thermonuclear weapons and doomsday strategies, spy satellites and electronic battlefields, intercontinental ballistic missiles, laser-guided bombs, and loyalty investigations. The years after the war were bountiful, but also frightened, suspicious, and, at times, paranoid. These qualities deeply influenced the character of post-war science.
