Velvet Revolution at the Synchrotron: Biology, Physics, and Change in Science.

摘要

In the last twenty years, the U.S. Department of Energy, which funds most accelerator-based science, has spent about $2 billion annually to operate and construct facilities, mostly accelerators serving various disciplines. Although funding has remained high (and in fact, has increased with the 2006 construction of the $1.3 billion Spallation Neutron Source) a sea change has occurred: in 1980 the most expensive accelerators were for particle physics; in 2010, the most expensive accelerators, like the Spallation Neutron Source, were for investigating biological and other materials.Given the magnitude of the investment we should understand this change and how it has affected federally sponsored knowledge production. A few of us have begun the task, working from a historical perspective. It was welcome news that this book appeared with a description from a sociological point of view of the shift away from particle physics at Cornell University's synchrotron, one of the smaller U.S. laboratories funded by the National Science Foundation.