Bromberg Joan Lisa
Department of the History of Science and Technology, Johns Hopkins University, 3505 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
Isis. 2006 Jun;97(2):237-59. doi: 10.1086/504733.
Historians have convincingly shown the close ties U.S. physicists had with the military during the Cold War and have raised the question of whether this alliance affected the content of physics. Some have asserted that it distorted physics, shifting attention from fundamental problems to devices. Yet the papers of physicists in quantum electronics and quantum optics, fields that have been exemplary for those who hold the distortion thesis, show that the same scientists who worked on military devices simultaneously pursued fundamental and foundational topics. This essay examines one such physicist, Marlan O. Scully, with attention to both his extensive foundational studies and the way in which his applied and basic researches played off each other.
历史学家已经令人信服地证明了美国物理学家在冷战期间与军方的密切关系，并提出了这种联盟是否影响了物理学内容的问题。一些人断言，它扭曲了物理学，将注意力从基本问题转移到了设备上。然而，量子电子学和量子光学领域的物理学家的论文，对于那些持有扭曲论点的人来说是典范，这些论文表明，从事军事设备研究的同一批科学家同时也在追求基础和基本的课题。本文考察了这样一位物理学家，马兰·O·斯库利，既关注他广泛的基础研究，也关注他的应用研究和基础研究相互作用的方式。
