Atomic Tracings: Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine

Time: 6:00 p.m. lecture, 7:00 p.m. dessert and coffee

Location: CHF, 315 Chestnut Street

In her recent and highly acclaimed book, Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine, Angela N. H. Creager examines how the post-Hiroshima politics of atomic energy prompted the distribution of radioisotopes by the U.S. government and traces the consequences of their use across diverse contexts. This talk will explore one part of that broader project.

After World War II the U.S. government developed atomic energy for peacetime in the form of radioactive isotopes, produced in a former Manhattan Project reactor and distributed to civilian purchasers. These radioisotopes provided physicians with new tools of diagnosis and therapy and equipped biologists to trace molecular transformations from metabolic pathways to ecosystems.

This talk juxtaposes postwar developments in biochemistry, nuclear medicine, and ecology that grew out of this new supply of radioisotopes. In each of these areas one can see how governmental policy and infrastructure integral to the Cold War decisively shaped scientific opportunities and knowledge. Routine practices of radiolabeling and radiotracing remained in place long after the positive political valence of radioisotopes dimmed in the 1960s and 1970s, in the wake of the debates over radioactive contamination of the environment from atomic-weapons tests and nuclear waste.

Angela N. H. Creager is the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University, where she teaches history of science. She is the author of The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930–1965 and Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Her newest research focuses on the history of environmental health and regulation. She is currently president of the History of Science Society.