Lawrence Badash (May 8, 1934, Brooklyn – August 23, 2010, Santa Barbara, California) was an American professor of the history of physical sciences, specializing in the history of physics, particularly the history of nuclear physics and nuclear weapons.[1]

Education and career

edit

Badash graduated in 1956 with a B.S. in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he was a Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) student. After serving three years as a naval aviator, he became a graduate in the physics department of Yale University but soon switched to the history of science. He became Derek de Solla Price's first doctoral student. Badash received his Ph.D. in 1964 and his Ph.D. thesis was eventually published in 1979 as the monograph Radioactivity in America: Growth and Decay of a Science.[1] He was a NATO Postdoctoral Science Fellow at the University of Cambridge.[2] In the history department of the University of California, Santa Barbara, he taught the history of the physical sciences. He joined the department in 1966 and retired as professor emeritus in 2002.[1]

Badash was a Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1984–1985.[3] He was elected in 1984 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)[4] and in 1987 a Fellow of the American Physical Society.[5] He served as president of the Santa Barbara chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU from 1982 to 1988 and from 1996 to 1999.[2]

His doctoral students include Jacob Darwin Hamblin.

Selected publications

edit

Articles

edit
  • Badash, Lawrence (1965). "Radioactivity before the Curies". American Journal of Physics. 33 (2): 128–135. Bibcode:1965AmJPh..33..128B. doi:10.1119/1.1971267.
  • Badash, Lawrence (1971). "The Importance of Being Ernest Rutherford". Science. 173 (4000): 873. Bibcode:1971Sci...173..873B. doi:10.1126/science.173.4000.873.
  • Badash, Lawrence (1972). "The Completeness of Nineteenth-Century Science". Isis. 63: 48–58. doi:10.1086/350840. S2CID 144042306.
  • Badash, Lawrence; Hodes, Elizabeth; Tiddens, Adolph (1986). "Nuclear Fission: Reaction to the Discovery in 1939". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 130 (2): 196–231. JSTOR 987181.
  • Badash, Lawrence (1989). "The Age-of-the-Earth Debate". Scientific American. 261 (2): 90–97. Bibcode:1989SciAm.261b..90B. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0889-90. JSTOR 24987366.
  • Badash, Lawrence (2003). "Marie Curie: In the Laboratory and on the Battlefield". Physics Today. 56 (7): 37–43. Bibcode:2003PhT....56g..37B. doi:10.1063/1.1603078.

Books

edit

References

edit
  1. ^ a b c Wang, Zuoyue; Neushul, Peter (2011). "Lawrence Badash". Physics Today. 64 (4): 70–71. Bibcode:2011PhT....64d..70W. doi:10.1063/1.3580500.
  2. ^ a b Neushul, Peter (7 September 2010). "Lawrence Badash: 1934-2010". The Santa Barbara Independent.
  3. ^ "Lawrence Badash". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
  4. ^ "Historic Fellows". American Association for the Advancement of Science.
  5. ^ "APS Fellow Archive". American Physical Society.
  6. ^ Heimann, P. M. (1971). "Review of Rutherford and Boltwood: Letters on Radioactivity edited by Lawrence Badash". The British Journal for the History of Science. 5 (3): 301–302. doi:10.1017/S0007087400011353. S2CID 144805841.
  7. ^ Anderson, David L. (1980). "Review of Radioactivity in America: Growth and Decay of Science by L. Badash". Physics Today. 33 (7): 45–46. Bibcode:1980PhT....33g..45B. doi:10.1063/1.2914164.
  8. ^ Heims, Stephen J. (1981). "Review of Reminiscences of los Alamos, 1943-1945 by Lawrence Badash, Joseph O. Hirschfelder, and Herbert P. Broida". Isis. 72 (4): 688. doi:10.1086/352901.
  9. ^ Mohan, Surinder (2010). "Book Review: A Nuclear Winter's Tale: Science and Politics in the 1980s". South Asian Survey. 17 (2): 358–360. doi:10.1177/097152311201700213. S2CID 155423803.
edit