Christine von Oertzen

Introduction: Historicizing Big Data

The history of data brings together topics and themes from a variety of perspectives in history of science: histories of the material culture of information and of computing, the history of politics on individual and global scales, gender and women’s history, as well as the histories of many individual disciplines, to name just a few of the areas covered by essays in this volume. But the history of data is more than just the sum of its parts. It provides an emerging new rubric for considering the impact of changes in cultures of information in the sciences in the longue durée, and an opportunity for historians to rethink important questions that cross many of our traditional disciplinary categories.

Machineries of Data Power: Manual versus Mechanical Census Compilation in Nineteenth-Century Europe

The advent both of punch cards and of the electric tabulating machine, which was invented in 1889, are typically described as key milestones in the development of modern data processing, bringing about a fundamental and inexorable transformation of information technology. This essay aims to decenter the American Hollerith revolution by assessing precisely how punch cards and machine processing transformed established manual techniques and practices of census compilation. By focusing on the Prussian census bureau and its long-standing reluctance to mechanize, this essay reveals an unremarked European revolution in data processing during the 1860s, when a new notion of “data,” novel paper tools, and a carefully nurtured workforce, including many women working from home, yielded unprecedentedly refined census statistics. The essay argues that manual concepts, technologies, and practices of data power—rather than punch cards and Hollerith machines—heralded the modern information age.AbstractThe advent both of punch cards and of the electric tabulating machine, which was invented in 1889, are typically described as key milestones in the development of modern data processing, bringing about a fundamental and inexorable transformation of information technology. This essay aims to decenter the American Hollerith revolution by assessing precisely how punch cards and machine processing transformed established manual techniques and practices of census compilation. By focusing on the Prussian census bureau and its long-standing reluctance to mechanize, this essay reveals an unremarked European revolution in data processing during the 1860s, when a new notion of “data,” novel paper tools, and a carefully nurtured workforce, including many women working from home, yielded unprecedentedly refined census statistics. The essay argues that manual concepts, technologies, and practices of data power—rather than punch cards and Hollerith machines—heralded the modern information age.

Whose world? Internationalism, nationalism and the struggle over the ‘Language Question’ in the International Federation of University Women, 1919–1932

This paper focuses on how the International Federation of University Women, founded in 1919, sought to reconcile its mission of fostering internationalism with the interests of its over thirty national member organisations. Nowhere was the challenge to its internationalist ethos greater than in post–First World War Germany. Being one of the last European member associations to join the IFUW in 1926, the Germans immediately requested their language to be used alongside English and French. The article reconstructs the struggles preceding the admission of Germany to the IFUW and the subsequent disputes over the ‘language question’ to explain why and on what terms the Germans first contested and eventually agreed in 1932 to accept the new Anglo-American and French dominance as world languages.

Finding Science in Surprising Places: Gender and the Geography of Scientific Knowledge. Introduction to ‘Beyond the Academy: Histories of Gender and Knowledge’

The essays in this special issue of Centaurus examine overlooked agents and sites of knowledge production beyond the academy and venues of industry- and government-sponsored research. By using gender as a category of analysis, they uncover scientific practices taking place in locations such as the kitchen, the nursery, and the storefront. Because of historical gendered patterns of exclusion and culturally derived sensibilities, the authors in this volume find that significant contributions to science were made in unexpected places and that these were often made by women. The shift in focus to these different sites and different actors broadens the spectrum of what counts as science and where science happens. That is, in moving beyond the parameters of formal academic structures, this special issue seeks to recast the ways in which the production of science itself is defined and to engage readers in the redesign of the boundaries of our discipline.

World Community under Threat

The year 1933 brought a radical break for both the Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund (DAB) and the international network of academic women. When the Nazis came to power and immediately began to impose the “Fuhrer principle” onto German society, voluntary and interest groups found themselves under massive pressure either to close down completely or to bow to the Nazi Party’s demands, which included the expulsion of all Jewish mem-bers. Neither academic nor women’s organizations were spared. The federation of German women’s associations (BDF), led by Agnes von Zahn-Harnack, resolved its own dissolution on May 15, 1933; several of its member bodies quickly followed its example or had anyway already ceased to exist.

Global War, Global Citizens, Global Mission: The Anglo-American Project of an International Federation of University Women

The origins of a world alliance of women academics date back to the United States’ entry into World War I. Three days after President Wilson’s declaration of war on Germany on April 6, 1917, the general meeting of the supraregional federation of American women college graduates, the ACA or Association of Collegiate Alumnae, was held as planned in Washington, DC. Under the impact of events, the delegates decided—in common with their peers all over the country—to place their organization at the service of the nation. 1 A War Service Committee was appointed to draw up and implement practical measures. The new Committee’s eight members included the presidents of Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Mount Holyoke colleges (Carey Thomas, Ellen Pendleton, and Mary Woolley), along with the ACA’s president, Lois Kimball Rosenberry, and its general secretary, Gertrude S. Martin. 2

Continuity, Memory, and the Cold War

The development of the atom bomb and its detonation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed both the landscape of science and the fabric of international organizations forever. When the United Nations was founded in summer 1945, a new era began for the IFUW, which was granted permanent observer status in all UN bodies and an advisory role in UNESCO.1 This new international framework transformed the IFUW: previously limited mainly to the North Atlantic sphere, the women’s network now assumed global dimensions. By 1968, the number of nations it represented had grown to 50, including states from all continents. Associations of university women formed in Bolivia and Chile; in Thailand, Japan, and Korea; in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Burma; in Egypt, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria; in Iran and Turkey. The federation’s focus shifted to postcolonial problems, poverty, and human rights, with a high priority on promoting educational opportunities for girls. From the mid-1950s onward, less and less significance accrued to professional, and especially research, opportunities for female graduates in Europe.2

Marked by Persecution

Thanks to the rich archival material in London and Washington, it is possible not only to reconstruct the IFUW network’s assistance to refugees, as I did in chapter 6, but also to trace the individual destinies of the university women who faced exclusion, dismissal, and exposure to persecution after the German university women’s organization DAB aligned itself with the Nazi regime. Without the continuity of the international organization outside Germany, the research I present here would have been impossible—because the DAB’s Jewish members disappeared almost without trace from the German sources immediately after its Nazification. Fortunately, the extensive correspondence of the BFUW, AAUW, and IFUW contains a wealth of information on how the marginalized and persecuted former DAB members in Germany and occupied Europe responded to the traumatic loss of their rights.

Reactions in Central Europe: The German Case

In the immediate aftermath of the world’s first global conflict, there was no question of admitting Germany to the IFUW. The fact that the IFUW steered clear of the Central Powers, and especially Germany, arose from the initiative’s orientation on work within the Entente, which lasted well beyond the armistice. The IFUW did not differ in this respect from the academies of science and the other international scientific and professional associations. Germany was also excluded when the new International Research Council (IRC) was formed, under American leadership, between October 1918 and spring 1919, with the task of intensifying the inter-Allied scientific cooperation that had begun during the war. Early on in this founding phase, the IRC passed a resolution ruling out both official and personal contacts with the Central Powers. Before these countries could be readmitted into the international academic community, said the IRC, “the Central Powers must renounce the political methods which have led to the atrocities that have shocked the civilized world.”1