Industrial methods, and industrially produced instruments, reagents and living organisms are central to research activities today. They play a key role in the homogenization and the diffusion of laboratory practices, thus in their transformation into a stable and unproblematic knowledge about the natural world. This book displays the - frequently invisible - role of industry in the construction of fundamental scientific knowledge through the examination of case studies taken from the history of nineteenth and the twentieth century physics, chemistry and biomedical sciences.

Autorentext

OTTO SIBUM Fellow Researcher, Max Planck Institut fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin JEFF HUGHES Lecturer in History of Science and Technology, University of Manchester TERRY SHINN is conducting research ANTHONY TRAVIS Deputy Director, Sidney M. Edelstein Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel JORDAN GOODMAN Senior Lecturer in History, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology NICOLAS RASMUSSEN Lecturer in History of Science, University of Sidney PETER KEATING Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Quebec (Montreal) ALBERTO CAMBROSIO Associate Professor, Department of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University (Montreal) VIVIEN WALSH Senior Lecturer in Innovation and Technology Management, UMIST NELLY OUDSHOORN Lecturer, Department of Science and Technology Dynamics, University of Amsterdam

Inhalt

Notes on the Contributors General Introduction PART 1: TOOLS AND RESEARCH MATERIALS, THE INDUSTRIALIST AS PRODUCER Introduction Part 1 An Old Hand in a New System: Brewing Culture in Jame's Joule Heat Measurements; H. Sibum Sealing Wax and Strings, Plasticine and Valves: Industry, Instrumentation and the Emergence of Nuclear Physics; J. Hughes Instrument Hierarchies: Laboratories, Industry and Divisions of Labour; T. Shinn Theory from Practice: Portraying the Constitution of Synthetic Dyestuffs in the 1860s; T. Travis Can it Ever be Pure Science? Pharmaceuticals, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and Biomedical Research in the 20th Century; J. Goodman PART 2: STANDARDIZING TOOLS, OPERATORS AND PRACTICE: THE INDUSTRIALIST AS REGULATOR Introduction Instruments, Scientists, Industrialists and the Specificity of Influence: The Case of RCA and Biological Electron Microscopy; N. Rasmussen Disciplining Cancer: Mice and the Practice of Genetic Purity - Ilana Lowy & Jean-Paul Gaudilliere Interlaboratory Life: Regulating Flow Cytometry; Peter Keating & Alberto Cambrosio PART 3: ORGANIZATION OF RESEARCH AND POLICY: THE INDUSTRIALIST AS MANAGER Introduction Industrial R&D and Its Influence on the Organisation and Management of the Production of Knowledge in the Public Sector; V. Walsh Shifting Boundaries between Industry and Science: the Role of WHO in Contraceptive R&D; N. Oudshoorn Index