Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
In September 1999 Pugwash held its 49th annual conference in Rustenburg, South Africa, bringing together more than 120 scientists and policy specialists from over 40 countries to discuss a wide range of security, environmental, energy, and development issues. Especially in the past few years, Pugwash has expanded its network in developing countries, having held its 48th conference in Mexico in September 1998 and having sponsored a workshop on public health issues in Havana, Cuba, in October 1998.
Given recent setbacks in the framework of nuclear weapons controlincluding te rejection by the US Senate of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the failure of the Russian DUMA to ratify the Start II treaty, and the nuclear tests conducted by India and PakistanPugwash is refocusing its efforts on engaging the scientific community and the public in the search for ways to further reduce nuclear arsenals. In addition to recent workshops held in New Delhi, India, Pugwash is organizing meetings in 2000 to analyze the threats to nuclear stability posed by ballistic missile defense, unaccounted-for fissile material, and a weakening of the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
In August 2000 the 50th Pugwash Conference will be held in Cambridge, England. George Rathjens, professor of political science emeritus at MIT, serves as Secretary General of the Pugwash Conferences; Jeffrey Boutwell, former program director of the Academy's Committee on International Security Studies, is the new secretary of US Pugwash. Information on these and other Pugwash activities can be found on the Pugwash website at www.pugwash.org.
Edwin Land and the House of the Academy
As the Academy continues to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its house in Cambridge, A. Hunter Dupree, professor of history emeritus at Brown University and a Fellow of the Academy since 1967, has provided a special perspective on Edwin Land's gift to the Academy. In his New England Quarterly review of Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land by Victor K. McElheny, Mr. Dupree notes Land's career as founder and leader of the Polaroid Corporation and his role as president and benefactor of the Academy.
"The statement that most nearly reveals the full meaning of Land the person and the career," Dupree writes, "is the building of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge. Land had served as president of the Academy from 1951 to 1953. He saw the organization as embracing all of the realms of knowledge and craft in the comprehensive eighteenth-century sense of 'ars et scientia.' Founded in 1780 at the suggestion of John Adams, the Academy in its early years had mainly Bostonians as members. In the mid-nineteenth century it had put heavy emphasis on natural history and had provided a forum for the discussion of Darwin's ideas. By 1955 it was still largely regional in its membership and had sold both its library and its house in Boston. In rented quarters it began a revival that saw membership become national, with all disciplines on equal footing, and its activities worldwide in their influence.
"Land was a driving force in these developments. In 1952 he wrote a letter to a young historian conferring on him a small grant from the permanent science fund. Unlike an object sold in the market in expectation of a return, the grant only begins to work as it leaves the control of the donor and becomes an instrument to help the free scholar judge and measure the world around him. Lands $1,000 contributoin to the historian in 1952 is still at work as I write this review.
"By the mid-1970s, influenced by the art historian Agnes Monzan and doubtless impressed by the expanding reach of the Academy in the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. and Mrs. Land and the Rowland Foundation undertook the entire funding of a new building to be located in Norton's Woods in Cambridge. Land worked closely with the architects Gerhard Kallmann and Michael McKinnell to create the plan for what they called 'A House of the Mind.' At the groundbreaking ceremony on 2 April 1979, Land made a statement on the role and function of the Academy in its new house that is deemed so important that a plaque bearing the message is permanently mounted."
On that occasion, Land observed that
This Academy's function is to associate many specialized lines of concentration by gathering the individuals in whom they are embodied...
The transfer of concepts as models from one field another requires intimacy, informality, and friendliness because the transfer is usually not a conscious process...
The great historic periods of spectacular human advance, within time spans of relatively few human generations, may have been periods in which society made possible the concentrated interplay of the separate contributions of creative individuals. There is no way in which we can tell whether we are entering such a period of history, but whether or not we are, the role of the Academy seems clear.
Mr. Dupree concludes that "the splendid instrument for creative thinking that [Land] conceived and housed in Norton's Woods in Cambridge points to the future with hope."
Fellows are encouraged to visit the House of the Academy to view the exhibit of drawings created by architects Kallmann and McKinnell as they developed their concept of the House in the late 1970s. As Mr. Dupree points out, and as these drawings demonstrate, Land greatly influenced the architects with his determination to build "a refuge from the unstructured intensity of the surrounding world, an informal and friendly place where creative and talented minds will share ideas." His vision is clearly evident in the themes and metaphors that shaped the design of the building.
Excerpts from the New England Quarterly, v. 72, September 1999. "Edwin Land: Inventor, Maker of Instruments, and Creative Philanthropist" by A. Hunter Dupree. Copyright held by the New England Quarterly. Reproduced by permission of the publisher.