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SUMMARY:A controlled environment: phytotrons\, Cold War life science\, and
  the making of the experimental plant - David Munns (John Jay College)
DTSTART:20161027T120000Z
DTEND:20161027T130000Z
UID:TALK67865@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:My talk tells of the quest to gain scientific and technologica
 l mastery over the environment in the life sciences. Because living things
  are a product of their genes and their environments\, alongside the famed
  discovery of genes there was the simultaneous discovery of the biological
  environment. To experiment on the biological environment plant scientists
  built wonders of twentieth century life science and environmental enginee
 ring: now forgotten laboratories called 'phytotrons'. To create phytotrons
 \, biologists became technologists because to learn about plants and anima
 ls meant learning about the technological systems that replicated and moni
 tored their development. In the Cold War they revealed the shape of the en
 vironment\, the limits of growth and development\, and the limits of contr
 ol over complex systems. There is no better time to remember the science o
 f the biological environment amid the challenge of climate change. When Lo
 s Angeles choked on smog in the 1940s\, city officials turned to the new p
 hytotron at Caltech for answers. Experiments proved the harmful effects of
  smog on plants and people which lead to the initial efforts to curb air p
 ollution. Now\, a half century later\, the phytotron's successors called b
 iotrons and ecotrons are discovering connections between life and a changi
 ng environment. I can only hint at the larger history of 'trons' that repl
 icated the worldview of the Cold War era in both phytotrons\, biotrons\, c
 limatrons\, and ecotrons as well as in cyclotrons\, cosmotrons\, and bevat
 rons. Indeed\, from the algatron to the zootron\, the history of science s
 ince 1945 is a world of trons.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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