Session J11: Science Across Borders

Sharing Data with Russia: Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel and the Geopolitics of Prussian Territorial Data

After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, Polish territory was redistributed once again between Prussia, Russia, and Congress Poland (which came under Tsarist rule). The exact determination of the border between Prussia and Russia was necessary for Russia to secure its foothold in eastern Europe. In 1829 Carl Friedrich von Tenner, Russian General Major and Chief of Topographical and Trigonometric Surveying, asked the Prussian government for permission to continue his triangulations of the Russian border through the Prussian cities of Memel and Königsberg [after 1945: Kaliningrad in the Russian Federation], where he proposed that a new Prussian-supported triangulation by Königsberg University's astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel link to his. At the time, Prussia's cartographic efforts were incomplete, imprecise, and even embarrassing. Bessel had for some time wanted to conduct triangulations, not for geopolitical reasons, but to determine the shape of the earth, a leading scientific problem of the nineteenth century. Positioned between a defeated France on the west and an expanded Russian Empire on the east, Prussia was reluctant to take anything but a conciliatory stance toward Russia. This presentation examines the geopolitical and scientific consequences of Prussia's willingness to share sensitive territorial data: data that immediately aided the Russian Navy in its hydrographical survey of the Baltic, that firmly established Russia's border with Prussia, and that unexpectedly elevated Prussia's status as a scientific power in the region.   

NASA's Other Science Diplomacy - Spacemobile Goes Abroad in the 1960s

In early 1961, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Franklin Institute, a Philadelphia, PA popular science museum, collaborated on a traveling science education program called the Spacemobile. Two Ford Econoline vans splashed with fancy graphics and the NASA meatball logo were loaded with rockets and spacecraft models and a team of science educators each, launching five decades of NASA science education and teacher training across the United States. Quickly going international in 1962, the program crossed the borders of 50 countries in Europe, Latin and Central America, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia by the end of the decade. NASA's Educational Programs Division, a small division of the Public Affairs Department, collaborated with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and the U.S. State Department to facilitate the international circulation of science education diplomacy at the height of the early Cold War. Using primary sources from NASA, the USIA, the Department of State, oral histories, and memoirs, I argue that the Spacemobile program tailored a 'neutral' space science lecture-demonstration to not only teach the basic science behind the space program, but to also influence foreign audiences to accept NASA's global reach, to align with the U.S. over the Soviet Union, and to improve the United States' global reputation. Thus, the Spacemobile program expanded U.S. geopolitical power through science education diplomacy, an overlooked mediator of NASA's international technoscientific collaboration during the Cold War.   

Negotiating Presence, Crafting Memory: The Elusive Life and Legacy of Hilde Levi

Hilde Levi (1909-2003) was a prolific, versatile, and successful physicist. During her 50-year scientific career, Levi conducted research on the frontiers of biophysics, taught radioisotope applications to medical professionals, pioneered radiocarbon dating of archaeological findings in Europe, helped produce the first Danish legislation on radioactive safety, and more. Despite her many and relatively recent achievements, Hilde Levi is almost forgotten today. In this essay, I draw on previously unstudied materials from the Niels Bohr Archive to paint a more complete picture of Hilde Levi's scientific career. I find that Levi employed complex social strategies to negotiate her presence in male-dominated spaces and advance her career, sometimes fulfilling rather than defying traditional gender roles. Furthermore, when comparing her oral history with other sources such as newspaper clippings, publications, and correspondence, I find that she crafted a historical memory which conceivably contributed to the forgetting of her as a successful scientist. This paper stands in conversation with and contributes to earlier work on how women in science create public personas, shape their own historical memory, and navigate other minority identities, such as being Jewish and a refugee.