Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2011
Volume 56, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 21–25, 2011; Dallas, Texas
Session X8: Migrations of Physicists |
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Sponsoring Units: FHP FIP Chair: Noemie Koller, Rutgers University Room: Ballroom C4 |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 2:30PM - 3:06PM |
X8.00001: Migration of scientists and the International Centre for Theoretical Physics -- a Personal and Professional Perspective Invited Speaker: Scientists migrate for a variety of reasons: political problems with their governments, lack of professional opportunities in their countries, the lure of better lives, financial security for them and their families, better education for their off-springs, and so forth. Migration usually occurs from poor and oppressed countries--the two categories are not one and the same--to the rich and the open. It has created, over time, a dilemma for the poor countries: in the midst of all their other problems, how to justify spending on higher education and research when that investment often results in the most enterprising of its citizens to leave their countries behind? (When migration has reversed direction occasionally, it is because of certain necessities of the scientists to be back in their countries or for opportunities that some individuals see for wielding greater scientific power.) The ideal of keeping the best scientists in their own countries, still ensuring that they remain scientifically productive and inspiring to the youth, is what provided the motivation for the creation of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, where I served as Director for some seven years. In this talk, I will present the story behind the formation of the Centre in 1964, explain its rationale, and analyze its evolution over time to accommodate the changing scene in world; I will discuss how some things have remained the same even as more of them have changed over time. Finally, I will remark on the broad needs of developing countries even though such needs are often very specific to a country. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 3:06PM - 3:42PM |
X8.00002: Physicists' Forced Migrations under Hitler Invited Speaker: When the Nazis came to power in early 1933 they initiated formal and informal measures that forced Jews and political opponents from public institutions such as universities. Some physicists retired and others went into industry, but most emigrated. International communication and contact made emigration a viable option despite the desperate economic times in the Great Depression. Another wave of emigrations followed the annexation of Austria in 1938. Individual cases as well as general patterns of migration and adaptation to new environments will be examined in this presentation. One important result of the forced migrations was that many of the physicists expelled under Hitler played important roles in strengthening physics elsewhere, often on the Allied side in World War II. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 3:42PM - 4:18PM |
X8.00003: Migrations and the Rise of High Energy Physics in Brazil Invited Speaker: There have been five phases in the development and evolution of High Energy Physics (HEP) in Brazil, that I review from a personal perspective. The Founding Phase (1938 - 1955) was followed by the Brasilia Phase that included an attempt by R. Salmeron, the first Brazilian physicist to work at CERN in its early years, to found an HEP institute at the University of Brasilia in 1960 - 1965. This was followed by my return from France during the redemocratization of 1985, after 21 years of miltary rule. The Expansion Phase (1984 - 1999) followed an ambitious plan that led to the spread of high energy physics to many key institutions throughout the country. The Evolutionary Phase (1984 - 2010), initiated with the strong help of Leon Lederman (Nobel Laureate, 1988) began with the strengthening of HEP groups and their participation in the major experimental collaborations, at the Tevatron at Fermilab and more recently at the LHC at CERN, with the strong support of the Brazilian funding agencies. The fifth Partnership phase (2011 - ) has just begun, as the high energy physics community and its supporting agencies work to make Brazil an Associate Member of CERN, and in this way to make the Brazilian community a full partner in the global effort aimed at discoveries at the Energy Frontier. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 4:18PM - 4:54PM |
X8.00004: Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet scientific migration: history and patterns Invited Speaker: Immigrant scientists from other European countries (predominantly German) were crucial in establishing the tradition of modern science in the Russian Empire of the 18th and 19th centuries. Since the 1860s, however, outgoing waves of scientific migration started originating in Russia, bringing important innovations to international science. The scale and patterns of migration varied greatly with the turbulent time. The talk will describe several landmark stages of the proceess and their cultural consequences: from opening higher education possibilities for women during the late 19th century, to post-1917 academic refugees and Soviet defectors, to the 1960s brain drain provoked by the launch of Sputnik, and to what can be called the first truly global scientific diaspora of Russophone scientists after 1990. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 24, 2011 4:54PM - 5:30PM |
X8.00005: Chinese/American Physicists: A Transnational History Invited Speaker: As part of a broader project on ``Chinese/American Scientists: Transnational Science during the Cold War and Beyond,'' this paper examines the movements of American-trained Chinese physicists following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. While a majority of these physicists chose to stay in the US (the ``stayees''), a number went back to China in the 1950s (the ``returnees'') against many obstacles during the McCarthy era. After the reopening of US-China relations in the 1970s, the two groups joined hands in promoting China-US scientific and educational exchanges, leading eventually to the coming to the US of a new generation of Chinese physics students and the return to China of some of the original ``stayees.'' This transnational history of Chinese/American physicists aims to illustrate the nature and extent of the Americanization of international science and the internationalization of American science in the post-World War II era. [Preview Abstract] |
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