Austrian Nuclear Research (1900-1960)

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a new sub-field of physics and chemistry emerged centering on radioactivity. Its disciplinary structures were slow to crystallize. The early phase of this field was characterized by substantial international exchange between the European centers in Vienna, Paris, Berlin and Cambridge and a concomitant high degree of transdisciplinarity. Research on radioactivity was also marked by an unusual openness in respect to gender and gender politics. The volatile political and social context of nuclear research, which abruptly changed several times, acted to further, impede or block these initiatives to transcend diverse boundaries in science, politics, and society. The two central questions of the present project are: How did the agendas and foci of Austrian nuclear research, and the styles of work of the scientists, change within the framework of international cooperation and competition? How were these developments dynamically linked with the political, social and cultural shifts in European history in the 20th century? The historical analysis starts with the founding of the Vienna Institute for Radium Research (IRR), including the institutes for physics at the University of Vienna that worked in close cooperation with the IRR. The period under investigation extends from the late years of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire to World War I, the era of "Red Vienna," the "state of estates" (Ständestaat) and the Nazi dictatorship, down to the full restoration of Austrian sovereignty in 1955. The study will include systematic transnational comparisons with the other centers of European nuclear research, based in part on existing literature from the history of science, as well as exact reconstructions of the bilateral and multilateral cooperative links and relations with the international scientific community. In this way, the proposed project is expected to go beyond the historical reconstruction of nuclear research in Austria and shed light on the importance of nationality and internationality, both for framing politics and as mental and cultural points of reference for the behavior and actions of the scientific actors and the production of scientific knowledge under shifting constellations of war and peace, democracy and dictatorship.

With this project, the history of nuclear research in Austria has been examined for the first time in a long-term perspective: from the discovery of radioactivity at the turn of the 20th century to the referendum against the commissioning of the atomic power plant in Zwentendorf (1978). Particular consideration has been given to the National Socialist period, and the Second World War. Contrary to the findings of older research literature, our research has not been limited to the world-renowned Institute for Radium Research in Vienna, todays Stefan Meyer Institute for Subatomic Physics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Rather, the Institute and other sites of radioactivity and nuclear research in Austria can be understood as nodes in two overlapping and interlocking networks: first, the research landscapes of the Habsburg monarchy and the First Austrian Republic, and second, the global scientific community of radioactivity and nuclear research. The project centred on two questions: 1) The Radium Institutes privileged access to radium, one of the most rare and costly raw materials of the time, played an ambivalent role before and even beyond 1918, when natural radiation sources continued to be available in large quantities. These radium stocks ensured a flow of resources radioactive sources, sales revenues within a framework of international co-operation, and they attracted renowned guest scholars from abroad to Vienna. But they also consumed labour capacity, e.g. with the administration of the International Radium Standard, and they narrowed the epistemic framework for nuclear research. 2) Nuclear research sites in Austria were increasingly marginalised on the international scene since the early 1930s (and not as previously assumed from 1938). This was partly the result of the countrys restrictive science policy. In addition, artificial sources of radiation continued to gain in importance in nuclear research, devaluating the natural radiation sources available in Austria. 3) The expulsion of Jewish and politically undesirable scientists in the course of the Anschluss marked a caesura in terms of personnel. By contrast, the thematic orientation of nuclear research in Austria barely changed, even after its integration into the German Uranium Club. 4) At no stage nuclear research in Austria could be described in terms of pure basic research. The exploration of radiation and its use for scientific, industrial, and medical purposes were in fact two sides of the same coin. This correlation might be more important in a small country with limited human, infrastructural, and institutional resources. It might also have changed with the establishment and operation of large European research infrastructures in nuclear physics. The relationship between the size of a country and above mentioned correlations calls for a more detailed examination of interfaces between university-based and industrial research in an international comparison. An extremely interesting field of research is thus opened up, especially with regard to the history of nuclear science during the second half of the 20th century.