Back to Search
Start Over
The Price of Gravity
- Source :
- Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences. 48:338-379
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- University of California Press, 2018.
-
Abstract
- This paper examines how various private patrons intervened to support research in gravitational physics from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Our analysis centers primarily on two wealthy and eccentric businessmen, Roger Babson and Agnew Bahnson, and their efforts to galvanize the study of gravitation. Not only did these patrons provide generous funding at a time when the subject of gravitation received few other institutional sources of support; they also helped to knit together a research community. Moreover, we trace the evolution of their patronage efforts, as scientists and patrons revised their arrangements to address what came to seem weak or ineffective features of the original efforts. These unusual philanthropic efforts played an outsized role in spurring what has been called the renaissance of general relativity during the middle decades of the twentieth century.
- Subjects :
- Gravitation
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
History and Philosophy of Science
Research community
Political economy
0103 physical sciences
World War II
Subject (philosophy)
The Renaissance
010303 astronomy & astrophysics
01 natural sciences
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 1939182X and 19391811
- Volume :
- 48
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........00ef1222a80f472d3a9961962b2cb255
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2018.48.3.338