Behind the scenes of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the quintessential American lab. Nobel laureate Ernest O. Lawrence and renowned physicist Edward Teller founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1952. A new ideas incubator, the Lab was at the heart of nuclear testing and the development of supercomputers, lasers, and other major technological innovations of the second half of the twentieth century. Many of its leaders became prominent figures in the technical and defense establishments, and by the end of the 1960s, Livermore was the peer of Los Alamos National Lab, a relationship that continues today. In The American Lab, former Livermore director C. Bruce Tarter offers unparalleled access to the inner workings of the Lab. Touching on Cold War nuclear science and the technological shift that occurred after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he traces the Lab’s evolution from its founding under University of California management through its transfer to private oversight. Along the way, he highlights important episodes in that journey, from the invention of Polaris, the first submarine-launched ballistic missile, to the Lab’s controversial role in the Star Wars program. He also describes Livermore’s significant responsibilities in stockpile stewardship, the program that ensures the safety and reliability of the US nuclear arsenal. The book portrays the lab’s extensive work on thermonuclear fusion, a potential source of unlimited energy; describes the development of the world’s largest laser fusion installation, the National Ignition Facility; and examines a number of smaller projects, such as the Lab’s participation in founding the Human Genome Project. Finally, it traces the relationship of the Lab to its federal sponsor, the Department of Energy, as it evolved from partnership to compliance with orders, a shift that affected all of the national laboratories. Drawing on oral histories, internal laboratory documents, and the author’s personal experiences from more than fifty years as a Lab employee, The American Lab is an illuminating history of the Lab and its revolutionary work.

The national laboratories have occupied a central place in the landscape of American science for more than fifty years. Deeply researched and lucidly written, The National Labs is the first book to trace the confluence of diverse interests that created and sustained this extensive enterprise. Westwick takes us from the origins of the labs in the Manhattan Project to their role in building the hydrogen bomb, nuclear power reactors, and high-energy accelerators, to their subsequent entry into such fields as computers, meteorology, space science, molecular biology, environmental science, and alternative energy sources.

The debate over scientists' social responsibility is a topic of great controversy today. Peter J. Kuznick here traces the origin of that debate to the 1930s and places it in a context that forces a reevaluation of the relationship between science and politics in twentieth-century America. Kuznick reveals how an influential segment of the American scientific community during the Depression era underwent a profound transformation in its social values and political beliefs, replacing a once-pervasive conservatism and antipathy to political involvement with a new ethic of social reform.

The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.

Closing in the present day with a discussion of the 2017 March for Science and the prospects for science and science diplomacy in the Trump era, the book demonstrates the continued hold of Cold War thinking on ideas about science and politics in the United States.

This book offers an original and rounded examination of the origin and sociological contributions of one of the most significant, yet continuously ignored, programs of social science research ever established in the United States: the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory. Under the leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois, this unit at Atlanta University made extensive contributions to the discipline which, as the author demonstrates, extend beyond 'race studies' to include founding the first American school of sociology, establishing the first program of urban sociological research, conducting the first sociological study on religion in the United States, and developing methodological advances that remain in use today. However, all of these accomplishments have subsequently been attributed, erroneously, to White sociologists at predominately White institutions, while the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory remains sociologically ignored and marginalized. Placing the achievements of the Du Bois led Atlanta Sociological Laboratory in context, the author contends that American Jim Crow racism and segregation caused the school to become marginalized and ignored instead of becoming recognized as one the most significant early departments of sociology in the United States. Illuminating the sociological activities - and marginalization - of a group of African American scholars from a small African American institution of higher learning in the Deep South - whose works deserve to be canonized alongside those of their late nineteenth and early twentieth century peers - this book will appeal to all scholars with interests in the history of sociology and its development as a discipline, race and ethnicity, research methodology, the sociology of the south, and urban sociology.

Describes in general how scientists can use handwritten research notebooks as a tool to record their research in progress, and in particular the legal protocols for industrial scientists to handwrite their research in progress so they can establish priority of invention in case a patent suit arises.