Scientists, 1920-1950

SCIENTISTS, 1920–1950. American scientists did not engage in significant left-wing political activity until the very end of the 1930s. Although noteworthy individuals like General Electric research director Charles Steinmetz and psychologist and publisher James McKeen Cattell acted at times on their socialist beliefs prior to World War I, such efforts were at best sporadic and isolated. During the 1920s, even such meager radical activity subsided as scientists strengthened their ties to business and increasing numbers pursued careers in the rapidly proliferating industrial research laboratories. Few dared publicly to challenge the dominant conservative ethos at a time when the scientific establishment actively supported Herbert Hoover and career advancement depended on the blessings of an elite who considered unorthodox political views prima facie evidence of untrustworthiness in all judgments, science included. As science advanced, bolstered by corporate and philanthropic funding, scientists received much of the credit for the technologically based industrial prosperity of the 1920s. Confident about the future, scientific spokesmen proclaimed that good science necessarily translated into social progress, and trusted enlightened capitalists to continue making that possible.

During the 1930s, a combination of factors converged to overturn the conservatism that prevailed at the start of the decade. Serious unemployment and sharply reduced research funding eroded scientists’ 1920s optimism. On top of this, scientists suddenly found themselves being blamed for the technological unemployment popularly believed to have caused the Depression. Critics, including Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, upbraided them for their political conservatism and social irresponsibility. Such public opprobrium challenged their self-conception as society’s benefactors and inspired a number of scientists to reevaluate the facile equation of science and progress. Their exclusion from 1930s relief programs and antagonism to the New Deal’s “recovery through scarcity” approach also helped catalyze their political reeducation.

International political developments further heightened scientists’ awareness of the socioeconomic and political dimensions of scientific research. Beginning early in the decade, newly radicalized British scientists exerted considerable influence on their American colleagues. Eminent British scientists became spokesmen for the British Association of Scientific Workers (BASW) and articulated the view, commonly associated with crystallographer J. D. Bernal, that capitalism contradicted the ethos of science and inevitably frustrated realization of its liberating potential.

As the decade progressed, American scientists’ political views were also influenced by the growing perception of the Soviet Union as a land committed to a rational program of social and economic development based on science and technology. Believing that the Soviets had escaped the ravages of capitalist economic collapse during the 1930s, leading American scientists, including physicist Karl Compton, the chairman of President Roosevelt’s Science Advisory Board and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), contrasted Soviet beneficence toward science with the niggardly attitude expressed by American governmental, philanthropic, and corporate leaders and applauded the demonstrable progress made by Soviet science.

Nazi Germany served as a model of a fundamentally different sort. Thousands of German scientists escaped to the United States and Europe, bringing shocking tales of intellectual and political tyranny. This development reinforced American scientists’ growing awareness of the subordination of science to politics and alerted them to the dangers of repression at home as well as abroad. Uncertain of their status in the United States, most of these émigrés kept a low political profile until the 1940s.

Under the combined weight of these factors, signs of a leftward shift in the political attitudes of the scientific community became evident shortly past mid-decade. In a widely reported public address in mid-1936, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) president E. G. Conklin, a Princeton biologist, attacked the New Deal and called for “democratic socialism.” Conklin collaborated with other AAAS leaders to inaugurate a series of “Science and Society” symposia at semiannual association meetings beginning in December 1937.

The movement gained further momentum throughout 1938, peaking with three major events in December—the formation of the Lincoln’s Birthday Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom (LBCDIF), the formation of the American Association of Scientific Workers (AASW), and the election of Harvard physiologist Walter B. Cannon to the presidency of the AAAS, in an election in which all five top vote-getters were identified with the science and society movement and three were recognized leaders of the scientific Left.

Cannon’s election to head science’s leading membership organization, with more than 19,000 members and 750,000 affiliates, reflected the new strength of the scientific Left. Widely regarded as one of America’s premier scientists, Cannon, a socialist and militant antifascist, had been American science’s most visible leftist in recent years. Closely linked to Pavlov, whose initial enmity to the Soviet government had been overcome by the government’s munificent support for physiological research, Cannon delivered the keynote address at the International Congress of Physiology in Leningrad in 1935, an extraordinary event attended by some two hundred American scientists. Cannon remained the Soviet Union’s most vocal supporter among American scientists. In 1937 he seriously weighed an offer to chair the American Russian Institute. Cannon had also spearheaded the scientists’ antifascist movement as chairman of the Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy. The examples set by Cannon and fellow leftist A. J. Carlson of the University of Chicago, who between them totally dominated American physiology for years, contributed to the radicalization of a remarkable number of physiologists during this period.

The LBCDIF represented the culmination of many years of progressive efforts on the part of America’s leading anthropologist, Franz Boas. Boas had spent much of his long career employing science in the fight against racism. In the mid-1930s, he collaborated with other Columbia University faculty members, including sociologist Robert Lynd, Nobel Prize–winning chemist Harold Urey, engineer Walter Rautenstrauch, geneticist L. C. Dunn, and zoologist Selig Hecht, in supporting the Spanish Republic, exposing the unscientific nature of Nazi propaganda, and impeding the efforts of reactionary forces in the United States.

In December 1938, Boas released a “Manifesto on the Freedom of Science,” signed by 1,284 scientists and college presidents, which condemned Nazi racism and persecution of scientists and teachers and urged a stronger defense of democracy and intellectual freedom in the United States. From these signers, he extracted a core group of nationally prominent scientific progressives who turned Lincoln’s Birthday into a day of national demonstrations for democracy and intellectual freedom. Building on the successful mobilization of thousands of scientists and educators in twenty-six cities across the country, Boas and his collaborators decided to turn the LBCDIF into a permanent antifascist organization, the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom (ACDIF). Cannon, Urey, Dunn, Carlson, anthropologist Ruth Benedict, astronomer Harlow Shapley, Henry Sigerist, the world’s preeminent medical historian, pathologist John Peters, mathematician Dirk Struik, and physicist Arthur Holly Compton joined other nationally prominent scientists to form a steering committee. Boas remained as national chairman and classicist Moses I. Finkelstein (M. I. Finley) served as secretary.

In the following months, the ACDIF carried its antifascist message to high schools and colleges, launching a campaign to expose racist ideology in school textbooks, mobilizing the educational community against reactionary legislation, exposing the efforts of the New York State Chamber of Commerce to curtail public education beyond the point of literacy and fan anti-immigrant sentiment, turning spring commencement and Columbus Day into demonstrations for democracy as part of an ongoing effort to highlight the nation’s progressive legacy, and generally resisting mounting incursions against civil liberties.

December 1938 also witnessed the formation of the AASW, a more explicitly radical organization with close ties to the BASW. The AASW’s distinguished list of national sponsors included physiologists Cannon, Carlson, A. C. Ivy, and Ralph Gerard, pathologist Thomas Addis, physicists J. Robert Oppenheimer, A. Compton, and K. Compton, chemist Urey, geneticist H. J. Muller, anthropologist Boas, physician and historian Sigerist, mechanical engineer Rautenstrauch, and astronomer Shapley. Despite a significant national following among scientists, the association had a membership concentrated in the nation’s intellectual and scientific centers—the Boston-Cambridge area, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Berkeley. Conceived as a “unifying body for all progressive-minded scientists,” the AASW sought to apply science and the scientific method in restructuring American society. Like the ACDIF, the AASW fought against fascism abroad and defended civil liberties at home, exposing the Nazi destruction of German science and conducting a boycott of German scientific materials. Also alert to capitalism’s frustration of science’s potential in the United States, AASW branches supported expanded funding for scientific research, socialized medicine, science popularization, consumer education, and upgraded science education in the public schools. While concrete efforts were undertaken to implement some of these programs, for the most part the AASW remained more of an educational than an activist organization.

Despite the advent of war in Europe, both the ACDIF and AASW grew steadily in membership and influence until each was sandbagged by the introduction of anti-war resolutions in late 1939 and early 1940. The resolutions, which clearly echoed the new post-Nazi-Soviet Pact Comintern line in their subordination of antifascism to neutralism, staunchly opposed American entry into the war. Despite the implicit renunciation of both organizations’ vehement antifascism, the resolutions garnered substantial support. The ACDIF ultimately dropped the resolution in hopes of avoiding an open rift. The AASW, however, pursued the initiative, presenting a petition signed by more than five hundred scientists to President Roosevelt. The episode shattered the erstwhile harmony of the 180-member Boston-Cambridge branch. In June, several prominent members of the branch resigned in protest of alleged Communist domination. Subsequent testimony indicates that the charge was not entirely unfounded, as several physicists, chemists, and mathematicians from MIT and Harvard later admitted having been Communist Party members, including former AASW national coordinator W. T. Martin, an MIT mathematician. Although few actually defected, the AASW never regained its lost momentum. Nor could the ACDIF’s circumspection protect it from a debilitating onslaught of red-baiting by Sidney Hook and John Dewey of the Committee for Cultural Freedom (CCF), who alleged Communist domination. Capitalizing on mistrust engendered by the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the CCF managed to arrest ACDIF momentum in late 1939 by driving a wedge between liberals and radicals and dissuading financial backers. Although the ACDIF continued functioning during the war and the AASW persevered through the 1950s, neither again approached its initial promise or influence.

Wartime developments forced a profound transformation in the scientists’ postwar political agenda, as nuclear issues overshadowed all others in their import and immediacy. Late in the war, Manhattan Project scientists at Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory had prefigured future concerns in their futile attempt to block surprise military use of the bomb against the Japanese and demand that U.S. officials share the bomb secret with the Soviets in hopes of averting a postwar arms race. Subsequently feeling responsible for the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and aware how short-lived America’s nuclear monopoly would likely be, atomic scientists mounted a campaign for international control of nuclear weapons and civilian control of nuclear research in the United States. To coordinate this effort, Manhattan Project scientists launched the Federation of Atomic Scientists, which was soon broadened into the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). Hundreds of scientists participated in lobbying and educational efforts in Washington and elsewhere around the country, contributing significantly to the defeat of the May-Johnson bill, which would have imposed military control over atomic energy and stringent secrecy provisions. With the support of liberal and left-wing scientists, the McMahon bill (the Atomic Energy Act of 1946) was passed, establishing a civilian Atomic Energy Commission, but compromising on security-related issues. Although many left-wing scientists participated in this effort, the FAS deliberately strove to work within the system and disavowed radical intentions, even rejecting organized participation by the AASW.

Many viewed the scientists’ other chief priority, gaining international control of atomic energy, as part of a broader effort to improve relations with the Soviet Union and halt the arms race. Once-warm relations between American and Soviet scientists had cooled in the late 1930s, as the “Lysenko controversy” and resulting purges cut the Soviets off from the world scientific community. Wartime exigencies rekindled closer relations. In November 1943, the science panel of the Congress of American-Soviet Friendship met in New York to commemorate the tenth anniversary of U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union and established a permanent Science Committee of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship. With Cannon as an honorary co-chairman and L. C. Dunn as chairman, left-wing scientists played a prominent role in Science Committee efforts to strengthen ties between Soviet and American scientists. Changing its name to the American-Soviet Science Society in 1945, the organization continued to promote collaboration between the United States and the Soviet Union during the postwar period. MIT mathematician Dirk Struik served as chairman of the Massachusetts Council of American-Soviet Friendship.

Left-wing scientists also took a strong hand in shaping America’s postwar science policy. During the war, the AASW worked with Senator Harley Kilgore on drafting legislation for a government science agency, predicated on the belief that scientists should be accountable to the public, with research addressing social needs and its results and applications being made freely available. Following the war, Harlow Shapley and Harold Urey formed a Committee for a National Science Foundation, which mobilized support for a watered-down version of the Kilgore bill. Although Shapley and Urey exerted some influence over the final shape of the National Science Foundation established in 1950, their more democratic approach was largely superseded by the elitist version proposed by Vannevar Bush.
Left-wing scientists attempted to influence many of these developments through their participation in the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (ICCASP), which had been formed during the 1944 presidential campaign. Among the committee’s leaders were Albert Einstein, Peters, Rautenstrauch, Shapley, and Ernst Boas. The Science and Technology Division took active stands on a variety of issues, including full employment, the shape of a postwar science policy, international control and peaceful use of atomic energy, and opposition to oppressive postwar security measures. In late 1946, the ICCASP merged with the National Citizens Political Action Committee to form the Political Action Committee, one of whose divisions developed into the National Council of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions, chaired by Shapley, who, along with other members, actively supported Henry Wallace’s 1948 presidential bid.

Postwar security investigations of scientists began in 1947, when the House Committee on Un-American Activities initiated its probe of the atomic scientists. One of the first targets was physicist Edward U. Condon, head of the National Bureau of Standards. Condon, a former member of the LBCDIF and a recently outspoken proponent of closer relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, had served as technical adviser to Senator McMahon. In subsequent years, thousands of scientists were among the many citizens probed by congressional committees and government loyalty programs and hundreds lost jobs and security clearances. In 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy charged that the AASW and the American-Soviet Science Society represented the Communists’ two principal efforts to mobilize scientists. The ACDIF was also branded a “Communist front.”

While such charges lacked merit, a good number of scientists did join the Communist Party, especially during the 1940s. Historian Ellen Schrecker, in fact, estimates that close to half the academic Communists were scientists, showing how remarkable a transformation had occurred in scientists’ political attitudes in less than two decades.

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Kuznick, Peter J. Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Smith, Alice Kimball. A Peril and a Hope: The Scientists’ Movement in America, 1945–47. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.