Sven Widmalm

SELLING EUGENICS: THE CASE OF SWEDEN

This paper traces the early (1910s to 1920s) development of Swedish eugenics through a study of the social network that promoted it. The eugenics network consisted mainly of academics from a variety of disciplines, but with medicine and biology dominating; connections with German scientists who would later shape Nazi biopolitics were strong. The paper shows how the network used political lobbying (for example, using contacts with academically accomplished MPs) and various media strategies to gain scientific and political support for their cause, where a major goal was the creation of a eugenics institute (which opened in 1922). It also outlines the eugenic vision of the institutes first director, Herman Lundborg. In effect the network, and in particular Lundborg, promoted the view that politics should be guided by eugenics and by a genetically superior elite. The selling of eugenics in Sweden is an example of the co-production of science and social order.

Science and neutrality: The nobel prizes of 1919 and scientific internationalism in Sweden

Science and Neutrality : The Nobel Prizes of 1919 and Scientific Internationalism in Sweden

The Svedberg and the Boundary Between Science and Industry: : Laboratory Practice, Policy, and Media Images

This paper discusses The (Theodor) Svedberg as an exponent of an ideology of science that has come to be associated with post‐war science policy: that fundamental research should be supported by government in order to stand free from demands of interest groups like industry—precisely because this is most beneficial for interest groups like industry. This ideology is interpreted in terms of boundary work and of inherent contradictions in scientific modernism. Examples are drawn from three areas. First, Svedberg’s work on the ultra centrifuge is considered. It is argued its development reveals a close interdependence between science and engineering obscured in presentations where it was described as the sole intellectual property of the scientist. Second, Svedberg’s role in policy is considered. He was a vocal proponent of the ideology of science mentioned above and with the creation of research councils for technology (1942) and natural science (1946) these views were incorporated into the foundation of policy. Third, Svedberg’s media persona is analyzed. Newspapers and magazines portrayed him as the embodiment of ideals that chime with those expressed in contemporary policy. These are all seen as examples of misdirection, turning attention away from the deep embeddedness of science in networks of technology, creating the impression that technology is, in the last analysis, a product of the scientific intellect.

Auroral Research and the Character of Astronomy in Enlightenment Sweden

Abstract The observation of the magnetic effects of the aurora borealis by Olof Hiorter in the 1740s was hailed by Swedish scientists as one of the major discoveries in contemporary research. This article investigates the political and academic context of the discovery, focusing on the astronomical ideals promoted by Hiorter. He used the discovery in order to buttress the importance of his own scientific character – technically competent, hard-working and research-oriented. He contrasted this ideal with the character of an ordinary university professor who was described as more of a bureaucrat, interested in science only as long as it could boost his reputation, and not averse from stealing results of technically more competent underlings. Hiorters opponents at the university decried his lack of theory and devalued the importance of technical skill. This conflict is discussed in the context of ideals concerning cultural, political and economic values of science and scientists.

Innovation and Control: Performative Research Policy in Sweden

This essay analyses the growth of an “innovation paradigm” in Swedish research policy from the 1990s and analyses how this paradigm is expressed in the government’s recent research policy bill that is currently being implemented. The discussion of the bill highlights some apparent paradoxes. First, the bill uses the notions of basis research and innovation interchangeably. Thus, for example, it proposes to increase the Swedish Research Council’s resources for supporting basic research, but it also demands that the council direct more of its resources to support work that is important for the country’s high-tech industry. Second, the bill strongly emphasises economic as well as academic competition. Scientific and economic competitions are described as if there were no significant difference between the two. The bill assumes, for instance, that the quality of research can be measured by its success on a (publishing) market. The analysis of the bill relies on the notion of performativity. The bill is seen as a performative act aiming simultaneously to change the practices of research and the language in which it is discussed. If the bill’s policies succeed, the paradoxes mentioned above will fade away as traditional research practice disappears.

The Nobel science prizes and their constituencies

The impact of the Nobel science prizes has often been explained by the fact that they are international or that their monetary value is extraordinary, facts that do help explain the sensation created by the prizes at their inception. Their continued high status is often explained with reference to the success of the Nobel Committees of the Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Karolinska Institutet in picking laureates whose achievements enhance the prizes’ status, thus maintaining a virtuous circle, increasing or at least maintaining the cultural capital of prizes and laureates alike. But if we want to understand the Nobel Prizes’ importance as a broad historical phenomenon, we better avert our eyes somewhat from the blinding light of the prizes themselves, the laureates, and the award ceremony. Instead, we should focus on the prizes’ stakeholders, what may be described as the “Nobel constituencies,” with the Swedish scientific community (Friedman, 2001) and the “ultra elite” (Zuckerman, 1996) of laureates being only the most obvious ones. The elevated status of the prizes among experts, and their influence on countless imitators (English, 2005), depend on the acceptance of their uniqueness by enough important people, by important institutions, by the media, and by broad segments of the general public. Perhaps the Swedish scientific community has reaped the greatest benefits from the prizes. But in a more general sense, they have been an international resource for the construction of scientific ideals that are recognizable as parts of modernity. In this special issue, the Nobel constituencies are seen through the prism of mass media: the press, television, film, medialized oral presentations, and the Internet. Media are also a Nobel constituency—they would not pay notice to the prizes otherwise. Because of their perennial spotlight on the prizes, images of science and of scientists are disseminated to audiences who have an interest in, or are enticed by, topical scientific issues as well as prominent researchers associated with important discoveries. Because of the notoriety of the prizes among experts and the general public alike, they constitute a resource for a variety of purposes and interests.

United in Separation : The Inventions of Gel Filtration and the Moral Economy of Research in Swedish Biochemistry, ca. 1950-1970

ArgumentThe Uppsala school in separation science, under the leadership of Nobel laureates, The (Theodor) Svedberg and Arne Tiselius, was by all counts a half-century-long success story. Chemists at the departments for physical chemistry and biochemistry produced a number of separation techniques that were widely adopted by the scientific community and in various technological applications. Success was also commercial and separation techniques, such as gel filtration, were an important factor behind the meteoric rise of the drug company Pharmacia from the 1950s. The paper focuses on the story behind the invention of gel filtration and the product Sephadex in the 1950s and the emergence of streamlined commercially oriented separation science as a main activity at the department of biochemistry in the 1960s. The dynamics of this development is analyzed from the perspectives of moral economy and storytelling framed by the larger question of the social construction of innovation. The latter point is addressed in a brief discussion about the uses of stories like the one about Sephadex in current research policy.

MICHAEL RAND HOARE, The Quest for the True Figure of the Earth: Ideas and Expeditions in Four Centuries of Geodesy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. XII, 275 pp., ISBN 0754650200.

The quest for the true figure of the earth : Ideas and expeditions in four centuries of geodesy

Quantifying Sunshine: : Knut Ångström and the Standardisation of Pyrheliometry

title SUMMARY /title The paper describes and analyses the work of Knut Angstrom, physics professor at Uppsala University from 1896 to 1910. Angstroms research focussed mainly on radiation measurement. His magnum opus was the so-called electric compensating pyrheliometer, a device for measuring the heat content of radiation, for instance to study the energy distribution in spectra. The instrument was launched as a finished product around 1900, rapidly enjoying a widespread use, and thus elevating the Uppsala department to the status of standards institution, i.e. an institution setting and upholding technical norms in a well defined scientific area. This status was acknowledged in 1905, when the International Union for Co-Operation in Solar Research assigned the Uppsala department the task of controlling standardisation in this area of solar research. The paper analyses Angstroms technoscientific style in its institutional setting, showing in particular how it facilitated the creation of a scientific community of solar researchers, with Uppsala as its administrative centre.