Prof. Angela N. H. Creager, Department of History, Princeton University

"Nuclear Legacies: A History of Radioisotopes in US Science and Society"

Abstract: The US government developed atomic energy for peacetime after World War II in the form of radioactive isotopes, produced in a former Manhattan Project reactor and distributed to civilian purchasers. These radioisotopes provided physicians with new tools of diagnosis and therapy and equipped biologists to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosystems. In research fields such as biochemistry, nuclear medicine, and ecology, one can see how government policy and infrastructure integral to the Cold War decisively shaped scientific opportunities and knowledge. Routine practices of radiolabeling and radiotracing remained in place long after the positive political valence of radioisotopes dimmed in the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of the debates over radioactive contamination of the environment from atomic weapons tests and nuclear waste. The talk will conclude with reflections on the complex legacies of the US government’s nuclear activities, which contributed to scientific and medical advances but also fostered public distrust of polluting technologies.

Bio: Angela N. H. Creager is the Thomas M. Siebel Professor in the History of Science at Princeton University, where she is currently chair of the Department of History. Professor Creager graduated from Rice University with a double major in biochemistry and English and completed a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where she developed an interest in the history of biology. Supported by postdoctoral awards, she retrained as a historian of science at Harvard University and MIT before joining the faculty of the Princeton History Department. Her first book, The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930–1965 (2002), shows how a virus that attacks tobacco plants came to play a central role in the development of virology and molecular biology. Her second book, Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine (2013), traces how and why artificial radioisotopes were taken up by biologists and physicians and examines the consequences for knowledge and radiation exposure.