Improving Scholarly Access to Oral History Interviews in the History of Physics, Astronomy, and Allied Fields

FAIN: PC-50130-07

American Institute of Physics, Inc. (College Park, MD 20740-3841)
R. Joseph Anderson (Project Director: July 2006 to August 2010)

The digitization and mounting on the Internet of 500 oral history transcripts and brief audio excerpts of interviews with notable physical scientists.

The Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics proposes to digitize substantial parts of its collection of oral history transcripts, along with brief selections of the associated audio, and put them on the Web to make them accessible to researchers and a resource for education and public understanding. The interviews shed light on interviewees' education, employment, engagement with government and other institutional and social structures, as well as their scientific practice. Historians, philosophers, journalists and media producers have conducted, and later used, these interviews to explore biographical, social, and cultural questions about some of the most important developments of recent history such as the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons, the cultural and military dimensions of the space race, and the growth of secrecy in American government and science. The proposed project will start in May 2007 and end in May 2009.