IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001200071

Hybrid Knowledge: The Transnational Co-Production of the Gas Centrifuge for Uranium Enrichment in the 1960s (2012)

Krige, John G. (Author)

British Journal for the History of Science
Volume: 45, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 337-357

DOI: 10.1017/S0007087412000350

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a special issue: “Transnational History of Science”
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Scientists Cross-national interaction Engineers Uranium Scientific communities; interprofessional relations 20th century, late United States Great Britain

The 'how' and the 'why' of knowledge circulation is explored in a study of the encounter between American and British nuclear scientists and engineers who together developed a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium in the 1960s. A fine-grained analysis of the transnational encounter reveals that the 'how' engages a wide variety of sometimes mundane modes of exchange in a series of face-to-face interactions over several years. The 'why' is driven by the reciprocal wish to improve the performance of the centrifuge, though this motive is embedded in the asymmetric field of the 'special relationship' in nuclear matters between the United Kingdom and the United States. The result of the encounter is co-produced, hybrid knowledge in which the national provenance of the contributions from each side of the Atlantic is at once diluted and a contested site for the affirmation of national power.

...More

Included in

Article Turchetti, Simone; Herran, Néstor; Boudia, Soraya (2012) Introduction: Have We Ever Been “Transnational”? Towards a History of Science across and beyond Borders. British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 319-336). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001200071/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Agnes Arnold-Forster; (2022)
The Social and Emotional World of Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Surgery: The James IV Association of Surgeons (/isis/citation/CBB857365189/)

Book Fleck, Christian; (2010)
A Transatlantic History of the Social Sciences: Robber Barons, the Third Reich and the Invention of Empirical Social Research (/isis/citation/CBB001250210/)

Article Vermeulen, Niki; Parker, John N.; Penders, Bart; (2013)
Understanding Life Together: A Brief History of Collaboration in Biology (/isis/citation/CBB001320293/)

Article Francis Newman; (2021)
Scientific ideologies on the move: Sino-British exchanges, scientific freedoms and the governance of science in Britain, 1961–1966 (/isis/citation/CBB098388047/)

Article Tang, Li; Hu, Guangyuan; (2013)
Tracing the Footprint of Knowledge Spillover: Evidence from U.S.--China Collaboration in Nanotechnology (/isis/citation/CBB001320128/)

Thesis Ganguli, Ina; (2011)
Labor Markets in Transition: Science and Migration after the Collapse of the Soviet Union (/isis/citation/CBB001567304/)

Article Nielsen, Henry; Knudsen, Henrik; (2013)
Too Hot to Handle: The Controversial Hunt for Uranium in Greenland in the Early Cold War (/isis/citation/CBB001212895/)

Article Neil H. Ritson; (2012)
The American Challenge in the UK Oil Refining Industry: Predation Or Rescue? (/isis/citation/CBB791602268/)

Book Maria Teresa Borgato; Christine Phili; (2022)
In Foreign Lands: The Migration of Scientists for Political or Economic Reasons (/isis/citation/CBB097240058/)

Book Peter Hempenstall; (2017)
Truth's Fool: Derek Freeman and the War over Cultural Anthropology (/isis/citation/CBB504459071/)

Book DeJong-Lambert, William; (2012)
The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair (/isis/citation/CBB001213212/)

Article Bocock, Jean; Baston, Lewis; Scott, Peter; Smith, David; (2003)
American Influence on British Higher Education: Science, Technology, and the Problem of University Expansion, 1945--1963 (/isis/citation/CBB000780258/)

Book W. Patrick McCray; (2020)
Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture (/isis/citation/CBB401442708/)

Book Munns, David P. D.; (2013)
A Single Sky: How an International Community Forged the Science of Radio Astronomy (/isis/citation/CBB001320933/)

Book Freeman, Richard B.; Goroff, Daniel L.; (2009)
Science and engineering careers in the United States: An analysis of markets and employment (/isis/citation/CBB001180390/)

Article Matthew Adamson; (2016)
Les liaisons dangereuses: Resource Surveillance, Uranium Diplomacy and Secret French–American Collaboration in 1950s Morocco (/isis/citation/CBB486368845/)

Article Golinski, Jan; (2012)
Humphry Davy: The Experimental Self (/isis/citation/CBB001231164/)

Thesis Yale, Elizabeth E.; (2008)
Manuscript Technologies: Correspondence, Collaboration, and the Constructionof Natural Knowledge in Early Modern Britain (/isis/citation/CBB001560657/)

Book Fox, Robert; Joly, Bernard; (2010)
Echanges franco-britanniques entre savants depuis le XVIIe siècle (/isis/citation/CBB001033277/)

Article Morita, Atsuro; (2013)
Traveling Engineers, Machines, and Comparisons: Intersecting Imaginations and Journeys in the Thai Local Engineering Industry (/isis/citation/CBB001213611/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}