The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite by Finkbeiner Ann

Author:Finkbeiner, Ann [Finkbeiner, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2006-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

In 1981 Jason traded its home with SRI for another one with Mitre, the federal contractor that had originated at MIT, that charged lower overhead than SRI, and that was bigger and had an office handy to the sponsors in Washington, D.C. New members continued coming in, again at the usual rate of one to three per year. One was Jason’s first woman member, Claire Max. In 1979 Sam Treiman, who had dropped out over the Vietnam studies in 1968, rejoined. Treiman noticed that in the interim his friends in Jason seemed to have become more a part of the establishment: “The older Jasons by now had had a lot of experience, a lot of contacts, knew their way around Washington better,” he said. “On the whole, the age was more establishmentarian.”

Meanwhile among these new, younger Jasons, mildly revolutionary thoughts had been ticking. Rich Muller had found out that the per diem fees were based on the members’ university salaries, so that younger members from less munificent universities were paid less. Will Happer said that he’d never been sure how the fees were decided: “it all seemed very secretive and capricious.” The reasoning was that older Jasons were more eminent and needed higher fees to counterbalance the higher consulting fees they could command. Muller argued with the steering committee that the difference in fees was “the source of some jealousy,” and his argument “carried the day.” After that all Jasons made $250 per day. Muller said the “real upside is that a source of disharmony was eliminated, and the system makes Jason more attractive for younger members.”

In 1981 Jason set aside the afternoon of one of its summer study days for another Whither Jason meeting and discussed possible changes in its optimal size, its mix of members, the kinds of studies it should do, and its governance. One new Jason, William Press, a Harvard physicist who practiced a combination of astrophysics and computer science, thought that though some Jasons dropped out and others had joined, “Jason had not gotten the ethos that it should be self-renewing.” Another Jason charted the Jasons by years of service and found the chart had two peaks, one at six years and a larger one at twenty-two. Jasons noticed that all six of their chairmen—Murph, Hal Lewis, Ken Watson, Ed Frieman, Richard Garwin, and now William Nierenberg—had been either primeval or early Jasons. “And we could see what would happen eventually,” said Happer. “Our chairs would be seventy years old.” Over the next few years Nierenberg, the chair, slowly began putting younger Jasons on the steering committee, either because he had personal feuds with most of the older members or because he liked the idea of self-renewal: probably both. During the summer study of 1984—Bill Press thought it was a kind of watershed—most projects were led by younger Jasons.

That same summer Nierenberg announced that Jason would hold a gala celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. Younger Jasons didn’t much like the idea because it seemed self-congratulatory,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.