The Neutron's Children Nuclear Engineers and the Shaping of Identity

The first nuclear engineers emerged from the Manhattan Project in the USA, UK and Canada, but remained hidden behind security for a further decade. Cosseted and cloistered by their governments, they worked to explore applications of atomic energy at a handful of national labs. This unique bottom-up history traces how the identities of these unusually voiceless experts - forming a uniquely state-managed discipline - were shaped in the context of pre-war nuclear physics, wartime industrial management, post-war politics and utopian energy programmes. Even after their eventual emergence at universities and companies, nuclear workers carried the enduring legacy of their origins. Their shared experiences shaped not only their identities, but our collective memories of the late twentieth century. And as illustrated by the Fukushima accident seven decades after the Manhattan project began, this book explains why they are still seen conflictingly as selfless heroes or as mistrusted guardians of a malevolent genie.

1 - Introduction: the neutron and its progeny
2 - New knowledge for new purposes
3 - Implanting industrial cultures
4 - The atomic nursery
5 - 'Like children in a toy factory'
6 - A state-managed profession
7 - Nuclear specialists at work
8 - Unstable impressions
9 - Conclusions: careers from the Manhattan Project to Fukushima

Sean F. Johnston is Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Glasgow, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Chartered Physicist (Institute of Physics). He has worked as a scientist, researcher and development manager at North American and British firms and at the University of Leeds, and as an historian at the Universities of York and Glasgow. Johnston is a recipient of the Paul Bunge Prize of the Hans R. Jenemann Foundation, administered by the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker, for the history of scientific instruments and of the George E. Davis Medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, for a history of chemical engineering co-written with Colin Divall, and has been International Scholar of the Society for the History of Technology. He lives in southern Scotland, where he teaches and researches the historical, social and philosophical aspects of science and technology.