Science on the Run

Catalog description

Science is seen to be both universal – transcending national borders and personal subjectivity – and intensely local – situated at particular laboratories and dependent on specific political systems. This tension makes it valuable to study how scientists move across borders, sometimes by choice, sometimes not. As scientists are displaced, how do they maintain intellectual communities? How do national and ethnic identity connect or clash with scientific research? How does science work against a backdrop of political crisis and the movement of peoples? The course will be built around a series of case studies including Albert Einstein's life as a refugee; scientists fleeing Nazi, Soviet, and McCarthyite persecution; postcolonial "brain drain"; immigration policy connected to science; and economic migrants such as Nikolai Tesla.