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Scientists against Time

James Phinney Baxter III

1

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12

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Scientists against Time

Scientists against Time won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize in History. This is the official history of the remarkable achievements of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II. It is the history of a rapid transition, from warfare as it has been waged for thousands of years by the direct clash of hordes of men, to a new type of warfare in which science becomes applied to destruction on a wholesale basis. It marks, therefore, a turning point in the broad history of civilization. The volume covers the whole span of scientific development, radar and radar countermeasures, loran, proximity fuses, the Dukw and Weasel, incendiaries and flame throwers, military medicine, including discussion of high altitude effects, penicillin and insecticides, and finally the Manhattan project and the atomic bomb. Throughout the entire book, one idea seems to stand out above all others, namely, that free men, working as a team, can outperform all the efforts of those who are driven by bureaucratic decrees. The reader is constantly impressed by the valuable results obtained by the pooling of the work of British, Canadian, and American scientists.

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Publisher
M.I.T. Press
Year
1946
Genre
History
Topics
World War II science and technologyOffice of Scientific Research and DevelopmentMilitary innovation (radar, penicillin, atomic bomb)

Awards

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