Australia is blessed, it seems, with a frightening abundance of treasures. A quick survey of our cultural institutions reveals an escalating ‘treasures race’, as libraries, museums, and archives bombard the public with accounts of their rarest, most beautiful, and most interesting items. The State Library of Victoria, for example, has published a lavish description of its ‘treasures’, and features them prominently on its redesigned website. The National Library of Australia also has an online display of its most treasured holdings, hoping to bring in sponsorship for a permanent ‘treasures gallery’. Meanwhile, the ‘Treasures Gallery’ at the National Archives of Australia is already up and running, while the South Australian Museum guides visitors around a ‘treasures trail’. The Australian Museum recently presented their ‘treasures’ in a special exhibition, and even the University of Melbourne has catalogued the highlights of its collections in a glossy book of ‘treasures’. Celebrating its 150^th birthday, the Museum of Victoria has made an impressive entry into the fray, with a well-designed treasures website, a treasures trail for visitors, and a beautiful volume simply entitled Treasures of the Museum.

All this treasure hunting might be seen a sign of conservative pressure upon our cultural institutions. Instead of seeking to enlarge their roles as places of research, interpretation and debate, it seems safer to fall back on familiar stereotypes of vaults and storehouses, keeping safe the nation’s heritage. Treasures are, by their nature, precious things — often protected by ‘lock and key’, ‘hidden’ from casual scrutiny. It is a label that promotes difference over familiarity, a feeling of reverence and awe over our ability to engage and connect. On the other hand, in an age of interactive exhibits and virtual museums, it is rather reassuring to realise that objects still provide such a potent source of meaning. Institutions trade on their treasures because we crave the experience of authenticity. We want the feeling of wonder, recognition and surprise that only comes from getting up close to the ‘real thing’.

In any case, cultural ‘treasures’ can be identified in a nuanced and reflective way, as Treasures of the Museum well demonstrates. Some of the objects it describes are beautiful, some are perplexing, some are funny, some are horrifying. Seemingly commonplace items are revealed as amongst the most challenging and evocative, such as the red vinyl suitcase with which Cuc Lam fled Vietnam in 1978. That most treasured of treasures, Phar Lap, is included of course. However, ‘the most famous quadruped in Australia’ is introduced by a guest contributor, Phillip Adams, whose recollection of his own childhood fascination, of ‘nose prints on the glass case’, focuses attention not on the object but on our own experiences and memories. The majority of entries, illustrated by a magnificent series of photographs, are by museum staff, and vary in quality and tone. Some are merely descriptive, others offer intriguing fragments of larger stories. There is much pleasure and interest to be gained from repeated dipping and browsing.

Whilst no doubt wishing to claim its own share of treasures, the National Museum of Australia chooses to cast itself not as a repository, but as a ‘storyteller’. Seeking to interpret the ‘national story’ is a brave undertaking, as evidenced by the criticism that has dogged the museum since its opening. Land Nation People: Stories from the National Museum of Australia is a determined restatement of the museum’s commitment ‘to telling the stories of Australia and Australians, and debating the key issues, events and people that have shaped and influenced our nation’. The book provides a condensed version of the museum itself, presenting major themes and selected objects from each of its exhibition areas: ‘First Australians’, ‘Horizons’, ‘Nation’, and ‘Tangled destinies’. With the exhibitions set to change in response to a review foisted on the museum by its critics, the book is an interesting historical document in itself. While the Museum of Victoria celebrates its long and illustrious past, the National Museum of Australia seeks to record the ambitions and achievements of its first few, turbulent years.

By unashamedly drawing attention to the process and practice of storytelling, the National Museum challenges curators, historians, and visitors to face up to the difficulties of narrative. With conservative commentators calling for the reinstitution of grand narratives of Australia’s progress all the way from Cook to cricket, there needs to be greater acceptance that the crafting of engaging and insightful stories from the complexities and contradictions of the past is hard, skilled, and creative work. There are no easy answers.

That said, there is nothing particularly innovative about the storytelling in Land Nation People. The stories are colourful and interesting, though rarely surprising, the themes are important, and like the Treasures of the Museum, the book assembles an intriguing collection of objects and illustrations. Indeed, despite the possible tension between ‘treasures’ and ‘stories’, there is much in the two books that is similar. The organisation of Treasures of the Museum also reflects the institution’s current structure, with the treasures divided into their respective collection areas of ‘Australian Society and Technology’, ‘Indigenous Cultures’, and ‘Sciences’. This is uninspired and unfortunate: Weary Dunlop’s medical instruments, for example, are uncomfortably tacked on to the end of ‘Sciences’, while the anthropological collections of Baldwin Spencer and Donald Thompson, featured in ‘Indigenous cultures’, are separated from their collectors who are locked up in the ‘Sciences’ section. If you are going to take a ‘treasures’ approach, why impose disciplinary boundaries at all? Interestingly, the companion website offers an alternative structure, grouping objects under such headings as ‘Celebrity’, ‘Messages’, ‘Journeys’, and ‘Survivors’.

More importantly, of course, both books are concerned with the relationship between object and story. ‘Museum objects’, remarks the Museum of Victoria’s CEO, ‘are like comets travelling through time and space, trailing streams of meanings’. Both books seek ways of making these meanings visible, and in doing so they reveal connections, contrasts and queries. This process is more explicit in Land Nation People, but Treasures of the Museum traverses much the same thematic territory, relying on assemblage instead of argument to explore the broader significance of its objects. The experience of immigration and arrival feature prominently in both, as does the complexity of indigenous culture. Both also seek to document ways in which we have come to know and understand the continent.

The ‘Tangled Destinies’ section of Land Nation People is most obviously concerned with the interaction of people and environment, but examples of change and adaptation are spread across both volumes. One has the story of William Farrer and his ‘Federation’ wheat, the other counters with the stump-jump plough. The sophistication of indigenous technology, and the ability of indigenous people to adapt to environmental and cultural change are well demonstrated. Both books feature a display of ‘Kimberley points’—spearheads crafted not just from traditional materials, but also from ceramics and glass.

Gesturing towards the supposed inventive streak within the Australian character, Land Nation People introduces two of the best known—and perhaps most overrated—Australian inventions under the banner of ‘Nation’. Yes, where would we be without the Victa mower and the Hills hoist? Treasures of the Museum takes us into less familiar realms with the black box flight recorder and the Shephard micro-ruling engine, which, in the late nineteenth century, pushed the limits of precision measurement. Technologies of measurement and control appear in a variety of guises, reflecting the desire of European settlers to define the limits and boundaries of their new possession. Artefacts from the geodetic survey of Victoria can be contrasted with the Anton Breinl’s hot-air cabinet, used to study the effects of the tropical climate on white workers—both speak to questions of possession and legitimacy. The clock used to maintain standard time throughout Victoria seems to have little in common with the field trowel used by archaeologist John Mulvaney. But both sought to redefine our conception of time: one brought local timekeeping practices within a centralised system, the other helped locate the human occupation of Australia within the immense span of deep time.

The natural sciences, of course, dominate the scientific collections of the Museum of Victoria, reflecting both the nature of the disciplines and the history of the institution. However, featured prominently amongst its ‘treasures’ are not just collections of birds, insects, minerals, and fossils, but the people who assembled them—the collectors themselves. John Gould, Alfred Russel Wallace, William Blandowski, and even Charles Darwin, make an appearance. This is an important inclusion, because it emphasises the process of collecting, the way in which scientific knowledge itself is constructed. Although most of the national science collections went elsewhere, the National Museum effectively uses the stories of Harry Burrell and Colin Mackenzie to similar ends. The lives and works of such individuals offers insight not just into the development of biology, but into the passion for collecting, understanding, and knowing, that motivates science in general.

While it is perhaps the historical and aesthetic dimensions of the scientific collections that make them most appealing, their continuing role in research is vitally important. Treasures of the Museum notes the scientific significance of the many type specimens within its collections, as well as the ongoing work of its staff to develop a cryogenic collection of tissue samples from rare and threatened species. Such a reminder that the collections themselves are living, growing things offers further complexity to the idea of ‘treasures’. Strangely, while the National Museum describes work to conserve and develop the National Historical Collection, there is little mention of its own research activities, particularly in environmental and indigenous history. Surely this too is a story worth telling.

This omission adds to the rather static feeling of Land Nation and People. As a snapshot of the museum, complete with obligatory corporate guff about its cutting edge multimedia technology and innovative architecture, the book seems to be more of a record of a visit­—a reminder or a souvenir—rather than something to be explored and enjoyed for its own sake. Treasures of the Museum, on the other hand, offers the twin pleasures of familiarity and surprise. Museum-tragics like myself, who spent happy days wandering amongst the old Swanston Street exhibitions, will discover many favourites amidst the ‘treasures’. One of the goldfield models is included, as well as the wax fruits and the working models case. At the same time, you have the sense that you are peeking behind the scenes, gaining access to wonders rarely seen in public.

The National Museum is committed to telling a diverse range of stories, but this worthy aim does not seem well-served by Land Nation People. The attempt to downsize the exhibitions for book consumption has taken away any feeling of exploration or uncertainty—it all seems a little too controlled. It is precisely this feeling of exploration that makes Treasures of the Museum so much fun to dip into. There’s more space here to imagine, wonder, and connect. There is much left unsaid, many questions unanswered, and the entries are frustratingly brief. But you are left with the feeling that there is much more to know, many more stories to tell, many more treasures to be revealed.

Few institutional histories could boast such a dramatic conclusion as Stromlo: an Australian observatory. The manuscript was substantially complete when a savage firestorm swept through the pine plantations flanking Mount Stromlo, destroying all the major telescopes and many of the observatory’s buildings. Among the losses was the Oddie Dome, built in 1911 to test the site – one of the first buildings in the nation’s yet to be inaugurated capital. This sudden twist of fate forced the authors to add an epilogue, providing both a poignant account of the fires, and an expression of hope for the institution’s future. Inspecting the scene shortly after the devastation, Prime Minister John Howard promised government assistance in rebuilding the site. Like many others, he lamented the loss of what he described as a ‘national icon’.

Institutional histories are often suffused with a sense of inevitability. Looking back from the security of a firmly-grounded present, the road seems straight and well-marked. The journey that is reconstructed is one where the end point is always known, where uncertainties and diversions are forgotten – a journey that lands neatly on the institution’s front doorstep. Institutional histories are often burdened, too, by the expectation that they will not merely tell a story, but provide a record of achievement. Written for the institution’s staff, as well as broader public, they can become bogged down in the details of personnel and projects. In this case, the fires of January 2003 add an unexpected final act to what is a fairly traditional story of growth and success. The force of nature intervenes to remind us of the limits of inevitability, to fashion from the end point another beginning.

The book is roughly divided into halves. The first six chapters recount the Mount Stromlo Observatory’s origins and early history, concluding with its incorporation into the Australian National University. The latter five chapters each describe the institution’s development under successive directors, from Bart Bok to Jeremy Mould. As the preface explains, this division also reflects the contributions of the two authors. Historian Tom Frame was largely responsible for the first half, while Don Faulkner, the observatory’s former Associate Director for Education and Outreach, took on the second after Frame’s appointment as Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force. I have to confess to a certain weary familiarity when I learned of the structure and division of responsibilities. Too often, it seems, the recent past is deemed to be the province of retired scientists rather than professional historians.

But despite my determinedly grumpy frame of mind, I was won over by the book’s engaging style, and ended up enjoying the second half more than the first. Even though the latter chapters mainly comprise a summary of the observatory’s changing research effort, they gain much from the author’s enthusiasm. The sense of excitement builds, particularly as the observatory pursues fundamental questions relating to the nature and history of the universe. The MACHO Project, an attempt to track down the universe’s ‘missing matter’, is probably the most well-known of these endeavours, having won the coveted front page spot in Nature. At times the narrative does fall back into lists of people and projects, but the feeling is less one of worthy commemoration than an expression of the joy of research. You are left with a sense of the observatory’s intellectual evolution, and a desire to get outside with a telescope.

Equally as fascinating are the personalities of the directors themselves. They were, to put it mildly, a diverse bunch, both in their research enthusiasms and their personal habits. As Ben Gascoigne observed of Richard Woolley and Bart Bok: ‘they were men of widely different character and temperament who detested each other’ (p. 131). The differences were perhaps not always so acute, but with contrasts such as those between the extroverted Bok and the shy Olin Eggen, or the refined patrician Woolley and the self-confessed larrikin Alex Rodgers, it is difficult not to see this line-up as a lesson in the differing styles of scientific leadership. And I am still trying work out how Eggen, whose working day was between noon and near-dawn, managed on one meal a day.

The way in which the passions of the directors shaped the observatory’s research priorities are interestingly observed, however, the impact of staff is not so easy to determine. Bok, for example, insisted that all staff and students undertake observational projects, forbidding purely theoretical studies. This is described as ‘especially hard’ on some researchers, but you are left wondering about the tensions that ensued (p. 151). The directors tend to loom so large within the narrative that it is difficult to form much of an impression of the community as a whole.

One characteristic that a number of the directors did seem to share was a peculiar sense of humour. Woolley, it is suggested, was ‘addicted to the one-line put-down’, demonstrated most painfully at the 1947 ANZAAS congress. When asked where he thought the exciting new field of radio astronomy would be in ten years’ time, he replied, ‘Forgotten!’ (p.108). This was perhaps one of the lowest points in the often frosty relationship between Mount Stromlo and the Sydney-based radio astronomers, a relationship that provides one of the connecting themes in the second half of the book. Even though collaborations between the optical and radio astronomers became increasingly common, the first signs of a lasting thaw did not emerge until Don Matthewson, who had worked both at Stromlo and in the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics, was appointed director in 1977.

The other major characters in the Stromlo story are the telescopes. Perhaps more than any other scientific institution, the history of an observatory is bound up in the history of its instruments. In Stromlo’s case, the telescopes existed before the observatory, as inaugural director, Geoffrey Duffield, gathered donated instruments from around the world even as he was lobbying the Commonwealth government for its creation. Successive directors continued arguing for bigger and better facilities. Woolley secured a 74 inch reflector, Bok obtained an additional site at Siding Spring, Eggen championed Stromlo’s interests in the development of the Anglo-Australian Telescope, while Matthewson pushed forward with the Advanced Technology Telescope. But even as each victory was won, the realisation firmed that neither Mount Stromlo, nor the continent as a whole, could provide a site that would enable Australian optical astronomy to compete with the world’s best. In later years emphasis shifted towards involvement in large, internationally-funded facilities overseas.

The early chapters, detailing the establishment of the observatory, don’t seem to carry the same sense of excitement. Duffield’s personality appears somehow more elusive, and his energetic efforts on behalf of solar physics become rather submerged in the detail of meetings and resolutions. Unfortunately, too, there is some confusion in the chronology. Even though the shifting political fortunes of the early twentieth century can be confusing, it doesn’t seem quite fair to make Liberal Prime Minister Joseph Cook a minister in the Fisher Labor government (p. 28). In fact it was Cook, not Fisher, who met with a high-powered delegation of astronomers during the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in 1914. A minor matter of detail, perhaps, but made more significant by the fact that the delegation also included Cook’s former leader, Alfred Deakin. Moreover, a slip of this kind seems to reflect a feeling that politicians and bureaucrats are essentially dispensable in what is, after all, a story of scientific achievement. Rather than being active participants, politicians and bureaucrats tend to be slow and uncertain, providing only obstacles for the determined, clear-sighted scientists. This hardly does justice to enthusiasm of Deakin or Littleton Groom, nor to the administration’s hopes for the Mount Stromlo site

Related to this is the book’s failure to offer any real explanation of its title – what is it that makes Stromlo ‘an Australian observatory’? Duffield’s campaign succeeded with the establishment of the Commonwealth Solar Observatory, later simply known as the Commonwealth Observatory. The institution was one of the first to be built in the nation’s capital, and would eventually become part of the Australian National University. It was one of the Commonwealth’s earliest forays into the realm of scientific research, and yet we are offered no suggestions as to how the observatory might have contributed to a sense of national prestige or hopes for national development. Instead of examining the place of science and education in the nation-building agenda, or the imperial cachet of the solar physics enterprise, we are directed instead towards the scientists’ powers of persuasion.

Despite a number of setbacks and difficulties, astronomy in Australia has benefited through the public support of a series of large and expensive projects. The Great Melbourne Telescope did not bring the success imagined of it, but it was followed in the twentieth century by the Commonwealth Solar Observatory, the Parkes radio telescope, the Anglo-Australian Telescope, and the Australia Telescope. The latter notably opened amidst a cloud of green and gold balloons, funded as part of Australia’s bicentenary celebrations. There has been a nationalistic element to the country’s astronomical ambitions. Perhaps such themes are reckoned beyond the scope of an institutional history, but we might at least have expected a greater attempt to locate Stromlo within its Australian context. The early history of Australian astronomy is granted little more than a paragraph, while most of the introduction is turned over to a hand-waving invocation of astronomical greats from Copernicus to Einstein. That the history of a major Australian scientific institution should regard it as more important to affirm its subject’s connection to the scientific revolution than to its local circumstances, seems to indicate a lingering sense of illegitimacy. In the aftermath of the 2003 bushfires we are left wondering what it is that makes the Mount Stromlo Observatory a ‘national icon’. As rebuilding begins, it would seem a question worthy of further consideration.

In the 1950s, CSIRO biochemist, Hedley Marston, became embroiled in what Roger Cross describes as ‘the single most important crisis’ of his professional life. Research into fallout from the British atomic tests in Australia brought Marston into bitter conflict with the government appointed Safety Committee. It was a dispute that involved many of the major players in the Australian scientific community, and one that culminated in ‘perhaps the most unseemly episode in twentieth-century Australian science’. This is a fascinating story of ‘jealousy, hate and power’ that takes us behind the facade of scientific detachment and adds to our knowledge of the politics and personalities involved in Australia’s atomic adventures.

Hedley Marston, Chief of CSIR/O’s Division of Biochemistry and General Nutrition, was approached by British authorities in 1955 to assist in studying the effects of radiation on animals. After initial firings in 1952-3, the British atomic testing program was about to recommence in the Monte Bello Islands, and at the newly-established mainland test site known as Maralinga. Marston decided to examine the take up of radioactive fallout in grazing animals by measuring the concentration of radioactive iodine in their thyroid glands. His research indicated that fallout was being deposited over a much wider area than the physicists on the Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee (AWTSC) had publicly admitted. Either they were fools or charlatans and Marston became increasingly determined to bring them down.

Roger Cross provides a detailed account of Marston’s anger and frustration as he tried to force the AWTSC, led by Leslie Martin and Ernest Titterton, to admit their errors. Attempts at mediation by Fred White, CSIRO’s Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Oliphant, Marston’s close friend, failed. Rancour and recrimination escalated as Marston strove to publish his findings, only to meet obstruction and delay. Even when his work was finally made public, the controversy continued, as the AWTSC sought to have a rebuttal accepted for publication. An unpleasant battle over who would have the last word was finally brought to a halt by Oliphant. In the end, Marston’s revelations seem to have had little immediate impact, but as Cross demonstrates, public opinion was already on the turn, as opposition to atmospheric nuclear testing, both in Australia and overseas, mounted.

Marston imagined himself a champion of science, a defender of truth, but Cross reveals a much more complex figure. Marston was egotistical and belligerent, ready to take the credit for his colleagues’ research into coast disease, and prepared to bully anyone who stood in the way of his ambitions. His high-standing within the agricultural community, and his carefully cultivated circle of influential friends, gave him a sense of power that he clearly relished. He was no anxious whistleblower. As Cross shows, most clearly in Marston’s correspondence with Oliphant, his attacks on the AWTSC were driven as much by anger and revenge, as by a desire to protect the public and defend the standards of science.

Roger Cross has given us a picture of a flawed man, a would-be hero barely able to rise above his own pettiness and insecurities. Our understanding of Marston and his bitter crusade is greatly enriched by Cross’s efforts to examine the personality of the man and not just the persona of the scientist. Unfortunately, we don’t gain as much insight into his opponents. Titterton clearly had an ego to match Marston’s, but Les Martin seems a much more enigmatic figure. From Cross’s account and other sources, it appears that Martin was uncomfortable with the public role assigned him as first chairman of the AWTSC. What doubts and torments might Marston’s provocations have engendered? Oliphant, as always, is difficult to pin down. At times he tries to soothe Marston, but on other occasions he carelessly fuels his friend’s burning rage. Might he have done more to help? It is a measure of the book’s success that such questions emerge. There can be no easy answers once we try to explore the human dimensions of scientific controversy.

The book provides a good read, even though the complex chronology of events makes it difficult to keep track of who said what to whom and when. It makes excellent use of oral and archival sources and is thoroughly documented. Of course, you end up wishing for a full biography of Marston, but that hardly detracts from the current volume. If only other attempts at scientific biography showed the same willingness to deal with their subject’s flaws and complexities.

Was this the most unseemly episode in twentieth century Australian science? Who knows? So little has been written about the feuds and conflicts. So much lies hidden behind euphemisms such as ‘a difficult man’, or ‘a controversial figure’. Roger Cross hopes that his story will aid our understanding of ‘the tensions that lurk behind the bland face of “science rhetoric” here in Australia’. Here’s hoping that others will follow his lead.

It’s rare for a book relating to the history of Australian science to draw the attention of the national media. But Australia’s Bid for the Atomic Bomb made the front page with its claims that the origins of major institutions such as the Snowy Scheme and the ANU could be found in the government’s frustrated longing for nuclear weaponry. Wayne Reynolds’ ‘controversial’ book, it was reported, made use of ‘recently declassified documents’ to ‘debunk’ conventional assessments of Australian government policy in areas such as defence, foreign policy, education and science. Exciting stuff… I just wish I liked the book more.

Reynolds weaves an intricate tale of a small nation with big ambitions. Imagining that the bomb would strengthen Australia both militarily and industrially, governments of both persuasions set out upon a doomed quest for atomic enlightenment. Hopes of a major role in an atomic-powered revival of the British empire were thwarted by Britain’s desire to renew its partnership with the United States. Disappointed, exploited and ultimately betrayed, Australian policymakers were nonetheless reluctant to give up on their dream. Reynolds tracks Australia’s hopes through a detailed web of negotiations, reports, and policy manoeuvres. The influence of the bomb, he argues, was felt across a wide range of government activities, from increased support for higher education to military involvement in Vietnam. Australia’s bid for the atomic bomb did much to shape its postwar priorities.

Detailed archival research in Australia, South Africa, Canada, the USA, and the UK, has armed Reynolds with an impressive array of sources, which he uses to demonstrate Australia’s active and continuing interest in joining the atomic club. The ultimate failure of this quest, he suggests, has encouraged historians to overlook its significance. By starting with the bomb, and looking again at many postwar initiatives, this book offers an interesting perspective on the motivations of successive Australian governments, and the machinations of super-power politics. Anyone interested in topics such as Australian defence and foreign policy, Cold War spy scares, and the organisation of science for defence, might profitably peruse its pages.

But Reynolds wants to do more than merely draw attention to a previously ignored strand of Australia’s postwar history. The bomb’s influence was decisive, he argues. ‘Behind the great reconstruction schemes of the Curtin-Chifley Labor government, and later the conservative Menzies government’, the book begins, ‘lay the nuclear deterrent weapons program’: ‘Many of the great national projects, such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme, the Woomera Rocket Range and the Australian National University, were in large measure based on the assumption that Australia would one day be a nuclear weapons state’ (p. 1). While book’s focus on the bomb provides most of its strength, originality and narrative drive, Reynold’s expansive claims demonstrate that there are dangers in relying on such a narrow framework.

The ‘origins’ of the Snowy Scheme, Reynolds argues, lay not in the desire for electricity or irrigation. Such features merely ‘describe what the scheme became’ (p. 54). Instead he stresses its role in defence planning, and as a possible location for nuclear power plants. No doubt such possibilities were canvassed, but how do you balance them against the range of alternative influences? Reynolds doesn’t try. His history apparently begins in 1945, and so the Snowy’s expression of long-standing nation building ideals is ignored, as is the growing desire to promote industrialisation, and the fondly-held dream of bringing life to Australia’s arid lands. All these are peripheral, the bomb is central.

Moreover, despite a brief nod towards ‘the problem of the states’, Reynolds ignores the constitutional hurdles that faced the Commonwealth in pushing ahead with the Snowy scheme. Water and power were under the control of the states, so emphasising the defence aspects of the project offered a means of bolstering Commonwealth authority. Reynolds does little to help us understand the balance between the rhetoric and the reality.

The ANU is similarly cast as a product of the government’s bomb-consciousness. Reynold’s highlights the involvement of Mark Oliphant and Ernest Titterton in the development of the bomb, and provides evidence of Oliphant’s continuing interest in the military significance of nuclear physics. But Oliphant was a complex and contradictory character, and missing from Reynold’s account are Oliphant’s moral anguish over the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his frequent statements in favour of nuclear disarmament, his involvement in the Pugwash Movement, and his decision to have nothing more to do with the development of the bomb. The influence of the bomb it seems, it to reduce everything to black and white.

Underlying such assessments, however, is a more fundamental problem. The book fails to address the relationship between the destructive power of the bomb and the promise of cheap and abundant energy, foreseen in the industrial application of atomic energy. Reynolds assumes that interest was primarily focused on the bomb, as ‘power reactors were seen to be a distant possibility at the end of the war’. It all rather depends on your definition of ‘distant’. Certainly there is much to indicate, in both published and unpublished sources, that Australian governments were excited by the prospects for industrial development offered by the atomic age. The payoffs might not have been immediate, but they were assumed to be inevitable. Australia’s desire for atomic information, and all the machinations that ensued, cannot simply be explained as a ‘bid for the bomb’.

Of course, government interest may have swayed between the peaceful and the military applications of the atom, and it would be interesting to chart such changes across the postwar period. But this book only gives us the bomb’s side of the story. Emphasis would also have differed across government agencies, and it seems significant that Reynold’s research has focused on defence and foreign policy records. Greater use of CSIRO and AAEC material might have balanced the picture.

Apparently, the original manuscript of the book ran to nearly a quarter of a million words, so perhaps much contextual material has been lost in the trimming. It’s also fair to recognise that works which dare to offer ‘new perspectives’ can often overstate their case in the struggle to be heard amidst the babble of academic orthodoxy. If Reynolds had simply moderated his claims, it would be a better, though less provocative, book. I must admit, too, that I would have found the book considerably less annoying if Reynolds wasn’t so keen to portray himself as the raider of the lost archives.

When I saw press reports describing the book’s use of ‘recently declassified’ files, I assumed the publisher’s publicity machine had been at work. But Reynolds apparent struggle to wrest the truth from secretive government bureaucracies provides a continuing theme throughout the book. Records are hardly worth a mention unless they are ‘declassified’. The procedures of access clearance and the thirty-year rule are made to seem mysterious and arbitrary, while missing files and supposed silences are merely grist to the mill of this determined secrets hunter. One bizarre example relates to David Rivett’s attempts to negotiate the placement of Australian scientists at the Chalk River nuclear facility in Canada. ‘Rivett’s biographer is silent about the attempts to send CSIR scientists to work at Chalk River’, Reynolds notes, ‘but Canadian records reveal that he entered into an involved correspondence with his counterparts in Ottawa at the beginning of 1946′. Are we meant to assume that there is something significant, sinister even, in this supposed ‘silence’. Rohan Rivett’s biography of his father is far from being a detailed account of his scientific career, why would we even expect this particular episode to be included? And why ‘Canadian records’? I’m pretty sure Reynolds could have saved himself an international airfare if he had looked in CSIRO archives.

Why does any of this matter? Maybe it doesn’t. Perhaps other readers will enjoy the added sense of drama. But it bothers me because much of the cultural power of the atomic bomb resides in this thing ‘the secret’. If we merely play to its mysterious allure, we risk reinforcing the barriers it has helped erect around knowledge and authority. The greatest failing of this book, I believe, is that instead of trying to unravel the power and fascination of the bomb, it has fallen victim to it. Just as Hiroshima brought fancies of a future dominated by the atom, so Reynolds finds the bomb behind every door, hiding at the back of every cupboard. Just as the atomic secret divided the postwar world, so Reynolds deploys his mastery of ‘secret’ files to carry his argument and deny alternatives.

Secrets are seductive. They offer knowledge, power, belonging – initiation into a world neatly divided into the knowing and the unknowing, us and them. The atomic bomb was revealed to an unsuspecting public as evidence of humankind’s increasing knowledge of the ‘secrets of nature’, but such secrets were not for sharing, they were a ‘sacred trust’ to be protected against misuse. Protected from whom? The idea of the ‘atomic secret’ gained its potency from the Cold War’s vision of warring ideologies – the good and the evil, the knowing and the unknowing, us and them. The ‘atomic secret’ was a lesson in global politics.

As holders of the ‘secret’, scientists enjoyed new authority and prestige, but a nagging concern remained – could scientists themselves be trusted with such knowledge? Elevation to the scientific ‘priesthood’ came at the cost of increasing political controls and a residue of public suspicion. Into this atmosphere of inflated hopes and exaggerated fears the Australian Atomic Energy Commission was born. It is perhaps not surprising then, that in his scorecard of the AAEC’s successes and failures, Clarence Hardy lists its first failure as ‘excessive secrecy’ (Atomic… p.230).

Hardy is a former employee of the AAEC, and his two books might be seen as an attempt to lessen this failure by offering some posthumous redress (the AAEC was replaced in 1987 by ANSTO). In his Foreword to Enriching Experiences, D.W. George (Chairman of the AAEC, 1976-1983) comments that ‘secrecy, no matter how necessary or worthily based, breeds both suspicion and resentment in those outside the inner circle of those “in the know”‘ (Enriching… p. v). He commends the book for ‘breaking down some of the secrecy’ surrounding the AAEC’s work on enrichment, and notes that one of his own objectives as Chairman was ‘to assure the Australian public that the Lucas Heights Establishment had no ulterior motives, no secret agenda’ (Enriching…p. vi).

However, there is fundamental irony at the heart of Hardy’s noble crusade, for even as he lifts the veil of secrecy, he invokes the authority of ‘inside’ knowledge. Hardy downplays his narrative presence throughout Atomic Rise and Fall, but in the Preface he differentiates his work from that of historians ‘with no personal knowledge of the AAEC’. Rather than opening the workings of the AAEC to scrutiny, he is establishing a rearguard defence against such writers as Ann Moyal and Alice Cawte, who, as D.W. George comments, were viewed by AAEC staff ‘as unfairly biased against the Commission and not impartial’ (Atomic… p. xi). While secrecy might have hampered the AAEC’s operations, it also renders the knowledge of participants as somehow more valuable, as more ‘true’. This is stated explicitly by Keith Alder, another AAEC old-boy, in his book Australia’s Uranium Opportunities, quoted extensively by Hardy. Alder decries the tendency of historians to rely on ‘old journalistic opinions and stories…They reflect peoples’ views on what they thought should happen, and this includes also archival material such as politicians’ correspondence and Cabinet papers. In many instances what actually happened is quite different – a difficult matter for historians’. Alder is a self-confessed ‘insider’ determined to counter ‘popular and false versions’ of the AAEC’s history by telling it how it ‘actually happened’.

Secrecy adds another layer to the boundary-setting activities that occupy any institution. We all claim privileged knowledge through our membership of social and institutional groupings. Scientists, in particular, wage periodic battles to bulwark their epistemological authority against the forces of anti-science, superstition or even emotion. AAEC insiders muster all three – the institutional, the scientific and the secret – to brew a potent, mythological rendering of an organisation abused by politicians, misunderstood by the public, and wrongly condemned by history.

Hardy begins both books with a summary of atomic energy research prior to the establishment of the AAEC in 1953. An understanding of the ‘world situation on atomic energy’, he claims, helps us to understand the ‘conception’ of the AAEC. The dual meaning of ‘conception’, incidentally, is deliberately invoked as Atomic Rise and Fall is structured according to Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man – the AAEC is anthropomorphised, cast as a player in a Shakespearean tragedy. But while a précis of postwar attempts to control atomic energy is obviously relevant to the formation of the AAEC, it is less clear why we are dragged through the relatively well-known stories of Hahn, Strassman, Frisch, Peierls, the MAUD Committee and the Manhattan Project. Moreover, these international inclusions emphasise some domestic absences. Given Hardy’s concern with the effects of secrecy, you might think that some political context would be useful. But the US embargo on defence secrets, the reformation of CSIR, and US suspicions of Mark Oliphant are barely mentioned if at all, with the reader merely referred to other sources (Atomic…p. 19).

Of course, it is easy to criticise a work for what it fails to include, however, the emphasis here is significant. The AAEC is presented as a footstep in the onward march of science, heir to a grand, progressive tradition. Hardy’s whiggish overture introduces the AAEC as a child born of science, not of politics. Government policies for postwar reconstruction and national development, within which atomic energy featured prominently, barely rate a mention. We are offered instead a succession of scientists, a catalogue of committees, and a growing sense of inevitability. Perhaps symbolic of the treatment of domestic politics, Doc Evatt, Minister for External Affairs in the Chifley government and first chairman of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, appears in disguise as ‘Dr Herbert Evans’ (Atomic… p.18).

When politicians do appear within the AAEC story, it is generally to thwart the hopes and plans of the well-meaning scientists. The AAEC is a victim, not a player in the world of politics. And so Billy McMahon cancels plans for a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay, Rex Connor implicates an unwilling AAEC in his ill-fated schemes for national development, Bob Hawke ends promising research on uranium enrichment, and Gareth Evans, suspicious of the AAEC’s secrecy, delivers the organisation its deathblow. Both Hardy and Alder are particularly critical of the Hawke government’s decision to close down work on enrichment, one of the AAEC’s largest and most successful research programs. They regard this as a ‘missed opportunity’, where political pressures steamrolled scientists and damaged the national interest. Just in case you miss the point, Alder’s book, Australia’s Uranium Opportunities, is subtitled – ‘How Her Scientists and Engineers Tried to Bring Her into the Nuclear Age but were Stymied by Politics’.

AAEC work on enrichment and separation is continuing, it seems, as the organisation itself emerges from the historical centrifuge free of political contaminants. This process is revealed in discussion of the military uses of atomic energy (i.e. bombs). Hardy and Alder reject suggestions by Moyal and Cawte that the AAEC Chairman, J.P. Baxter, advised against signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and encouraged consideration of a nuclear weapons program. Alder recollects that Baxter was opposed to the AAEC being involved in weapons-related work, but that surely is not the point. In the late 1960s the government was actively considering both the development of nuclear weapons and the establishment of a nuclear power plant. Baxter ‘took the lead’ in arguing for a reactor at Jervis Bay, and can hardly have failed to make the connection with the government’s interest in bombs. On the one hand, Hardy quotes approvingly Ann Moyal’s description of Baxter as having an interest in ‘the politics of science’ and a capacity ‘for simplifying complex technological questions and presenting them in a positive and sanguine light’ (Atomic… p. 113). And yet, on the other hand, he suggests Baxter was so politically naïve, or scientifically pure, as to not play the weapons card when seeking to garner support for the Jervis Bay project.

The secrecy surrounding the AAEC has not been dispelled – many silences remain. Hardy complains of the restrictions placed on him by the mythical ‘Official Secrets Act’ (‘Official Secrets’ are actually dealt with under the Crimes Act), and draws most of his references from the Commission’s Annual Reports. That, coupled with clumsy organisation, makes for a very dry and repetitive read. There are few of the anecdotes or the workplace legends that can make an insider’s history enjoyable and illuminating. Indeed, other than the senior management, the staff are virtually invisible. We learn that staff were ‘shocked’ by the government’s decision, in 1981, to divert some of the AAEC’s resources to non-nuclear energy research under the purview of CSIRO (Atomic… p. 160), and there are references at times to the staff’s ‘low morale’. But no feeling for the culture of the place is conveyed. D.W. George notes that ‘secrecy had a negative effect even on some of Lucas Heights’ staff’, and Hardy explains that the ‘excessive secrecy’ from which the AAEC suffered was as much a product of management policy as legislation. And yet we are given no glimpse of how this culture of secrecy operated, how it was maintained, or how it affected working conditions.

Hardy, Alder and George all offer a similar parting vision – one where a future Australia might finally recognise the contribution of the AAEC and take up some of the nuclear opportunities lost through political chicanery or public ignorance. In 1975, as the Commissioners became concerned about their possible involvement in the ‘Loans Affair’, they were careful to document proposals as being ‘at the direction of the Minister’. It strikes me that these books serve a similar function, labelling the history of the AAEC with the words ‘It wasn’t our fault!’, in the hope that future generations might treat the Commission more sympathetically.

As a suburban teenager, one of the highlights of my school holidays was a trip into ‘town’. This expedition into the wilds of central Melbourne always included a wander around the Science Museum, then housed snugly with the National Museum and the State Library behind the imposing columns of 328 Swanston Street.

Naturally I pressed all the buttons I could, making all the engines start and the models come to life. I played noughts and crosses against a ‘computer’ that regularly cheated. But most of all I just stood in front of the glass-fronted cases and marvelled at the collections — the rows and rows of swords, the wax apples, the radioactive sample with its chattering geiger counter. Between visits I embroidered complex daydreams where the deserted building was mine and all its treasures lay waiting.

The Science Museum is now a division of the Museum of Victoria, with a new site, a new building and a new name — Scienceworks. The long queues awaiting entry each weekend are evidence that Scienceworks, opened in March 1992, is a great success. It’s fun, and it’s informative, and everyone should go, ok?

Spotswood, one of Melbourne’s inner-western industrial suburbs, provides an ideal location for Scienceworks. The factories surround the museum like an industrial theme park, an authentic landscape where people and technology jostle for space and power. Walking from the station you pass a glass factory where red-glowing bottles can be glimpsed as they are propelled along the production line. Look up and the massive Westgate Bridge looms oppressively near.

The new Scienceworks building is itself styled along industrial lines, but the site has its own measure of Victorian grandeur — a disused sewerage pumping station constructed in the 1890s. Here visitors can view the steam engines (currently under restoration) that propelled Melbourne’s muck along the main sewer to Werribee. Interpretative signs tell not just of the technological achievements involved, but of the disease and sanitation problems of ‘Marvellous Smellbourne’, and of the experiences of workers at the pumping station — including those who had to keep the pumps clear of debris! Sydney may have its Powerhouse, but Melbourne has its ..umm… Pumphouse?

The new Scienceworks building has both permanent and temporary exhibition spaces. The four permanent exhibitions are Inventions, Energy, Travel and Materials. Each of these draws on the museum’s extensive collections to demonstrate not just scientific principles, but the role of science and technology in our everyday lives. Of course this latter phrase is one that slips readily from the tongues of science communicators, but how do you encourage people to make this connection?

One way is by using familiar, local examples. The Materials exhibition includes sections on the Bionic Ear and the Plastic Banknote. A cable tram and the obligatory Holden feature in Travel. The Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, which for some time sat forlornly in a corner of the entrance hall at Swanston Street, now occupies a more appropriate position in Inventions, together with the Black Box Flight Recorder and a periscopic rifle, invented in the trenches during World War One. Another old favourite from the former site is Carl Nordstrom’s detailed models of the Victorian goldfields, constructed in the late 1850s, which are used in the mining section of Materials. In some cases the stories behind the objects could be developed more, nonetheless they do provide reference points where visitors can make connections with their own experience.

The recognition factor is also cleverly exploited in another section of Inventions. Here levers, pulleys, and inclined planes are illustrated not just by hands-on exhibits, but by archival photographs called up on touch screens — what we see are the abstract principles at work on farms, in factories or homes. Visitors can begin to recognise pulleys or levers in their own life’s history — ‘Grandma had one just like that!’ In a similar way, the Energy exhibition challenges you to provide the energy for some ‘old-fashioned’ technologies, such as a manually-powered washing-machine and a hand-saw.

Other more critical connections can be made by focussing on issues related to technological development. This is most successfully achieved in the Travel exhibition, which asks visitors to consider, amongst other things, the impact of ‘Fordism’ and the nature of life on the assembly-line. Likewise, environmental issues are raised in both Materials and Energy.

What is lacking is a window onto the scientific workplace. There is little attempt to allow visitors to gain a feeling for the actual practise of science. ‘Performance science’ is presented in the Scienceworks theatre but this is altogether different from life in the lab. The Museum of Victoria is itself a working scientific institution, though you would hardly know it from the displays at Scienceworks. Presumably this is because of the separation of the Science and Technology and Natural History Divisions within the Museum structure, but surely there are ways in which the scientific work of the Museum can be displayed within the Scienceworks setting? Having been fortunate enough to have toured some of the natural history collections while they were still at the Swanston Street site, I can attest to the fascination of ‘raw science’ — science observed and experienced, rather than interpreted.

This sense of fascination relates to what the Senior Curator of Scienceworks, Martin Hallett, has described as the ‘evocative’ as opposed to ‘evidential’ function of museum objects. This ‘evocative’ role is, I believe, important in allowing people to perceive the significance of science and technology within the context of their own lives. This becomes clearer when Scienceworks is contrasted with the growing band of interactive science centres that supposedly allow you to ‘explore’ science. The types of exploration that can actually take place are constrained by the programmed nature of the exhibits. The expectation is that you will learn, not feel. Objects, however, can embody a wide range of messages, which need not be articulated for them to be effective. One Scienceworks exhibit that sticks in my mind was simply a display case in Energy full of electrical appliances — heaters, irons, tea-makers. Freed from any evidential function these appliances trigger personal responses — as with the wax apples and swords I remember so clearly. It is not so much the scientific content as the contact that is important. We can’t expect that science museums will suddenly make everything clear — ‘Oh yeah, science, I understand that’ — but they can encourage us to not understand science and technology in a meaningful way. We might not be able to explain the science, but we’ll have made some deep-seated connection with it.

History has an important role to play here and it is significant that Scienceworks has appointed a Curator of History of Technology, Richard Gillespie. By populating the scientific and technological landscape with people, issues, events, questions and problems, history opens up an intellectual and emotional space around the facts and theories. Is this a different sort of history, or history for a different audience? As the debate over the meaning of ‘public’ history continues, perhaps it is time for historians of Australian science to join the fray and begin to consider what public history means in the context of science and technology. If we are serious in wanting to help people understand the role of science and technology in Australian society and culture, it seems to me that we must allow them space to tell their own stories, to mount their personal exhibitions, to build their own daydreams. This is the space I wandered (wondered?) in as a boy, and I was pleased to find pockets still at Scienceworks.

The title of this book, Australian Science in the making, strikes me as somewhat ambiguous. In one sense it seems to indicate an ongoing process of creation, while in the other it appears retrospective, reflecting on the establishment or achievement of science in Australia. The difference is significant, I believe, for the two interpretations suggest disparate views about the nature and development of science. The former implies that a continual process of construction and negotiation is involved in producing what we know as ‘science’. Science is a process, or an activity, rather than a discrete entity. There is room, then, in this interpretation, for the work of the social historian or political reformer, who seeks to highlight the cultural roots and social implications of a science. The latter view, however, assumes that there are certain criteria which, when met, enable one to recognize science as ‘made’ or established. Such criteria would be formulated with reference to some fixed model of what science is, and would thus emphasize fulfilment or attainment of that model. This inherently conservative view clearly imposes limits upon the study of science, and thus upon any discussion of its social role. Nonetheless, I would argue, it is this latter conception of science which is embedded in the structure and much of the content of this volume. This raises important questions about the way science is perceived in Australian society, and indeed about the role of the history of science in maintaining such perceptions.

The idea that science can be ‘made’ through the achievement of a pre-established goal, would suggest that this book should be concerned with Australia’s scientific ‘arrival’. This theme fits well with the book’s role as a contribution to the 200th anniversary of the European invasion of this continent. It also seems reflected in the nationalistic cover design, which, in red, white and blue, sees the Southern Cross rising over ‘Australian Science’. More significantly though, such ideas are reflected in the organization of the text.

Australian Science in the making is a collection of articles relating to the historical development of science in Australia. As the editor notes in his Introduction, this is not intended as a comprehensive coverage of the field, but rather as an examination of certain questions bearing on the central theme of ‘Man’s [sic] attempts to understand nature in an Australian setting’. Topics range from ‘Aboriginal conceptions of the workings of nature’ to ‘Baron von Mueller: Protege turned patron’, ‘Science on service, 1939-1945′, and ‘The shaping of contemporary scientific institutions’. The fifteen articles are arranged in a chronological manner, but, most importantly, they are also divided into three sections: ‘Early days’, ‘Science in a colonial society’ and ‘Passage to modernity’. These three sections correspond to the three phases in the spread of Western science, proposed by George Basalla in 1967:

During ‘phase 1′ the nonscientific society or nation provides a source fo European science…’Phase 2′ is marked by a period of colonial science, and ‘phase 3′ completes the process of transplantation with a struggle to achieve an independent scientific tradition (or culture).

Here we find clear expression of a general developmental scheme for the ‘making’ of science, embodying the sort of emphasis on achievement which this volume outwardly manifests. Thus, in its implicit adoption of the Basalla model in its subject headings, this book presents modern science as the result of a victorious ‘struggle’ to create ‘an independent scientific tradition’ – ‘made’ according to a timeless pattern.

Basalla’s ideas are not, however, used without reservation or analysis. The Introduction and a number of the articles either examine the applicability of Basalla’s model, or refer to his more recent Australian critics, Inkster and MacLeod. Indeed, Inkster, with Todd, extends some of his earlier arguments in this volume, examining the nature and importance of institutional support in the development of the Australian ‘scientific enterprise’. Similarly, the Introduction echoes MacLeod’s criticisms of Basalla’s failure ‘to take proper account of the political, economic and social forces that have brought about the changes he describes’. However, although there is a recognition of some of the limitations of Basalla’s model – such that the volume itself can be seen as an attempt to modify the model by further elucidation of the Australian experience – it doesn’t go far enough. The book does not seek to reject Basalla’s conception of science as above national boundaries, and thus ultimately beyond cultural dependence.

This reluctance to fully commit the work to the cultural analysis of science, is demonstrated by the editor’s attempt to justify the use of the term ‘Australian science’. Such a justification is undertaken in deference to the perceived ‘international’ nature of science. Science can, of course, be readily seen as international at certain levels of its social structure – scientists interact with scientists from other countries – though there are very definite limits on such interactions. But the claim would seem to be stronger, that the content of science, by its nature, is international. If this is perceived to be so, then it is only because of our historical situation, which locates us within a particularly invasive scientific tradition. This tradition was created within certain expansionist cultures, and has, through transmission and colonization, been able to establish an ‘international’ network. It is cultural arrogance, rather than epistemological certainty, which encourages our tendency to equate ‘science’ with ‘modern science’ or ‘western science’. What is ‘international’ is hence taken to be universal. The interpretive limitations of this view are demonstrated by the first article in this same volume, by Hiatt and Jones, which indicates the sophistication and power of Aboriginal conceptions of nature.

The notion that science is ‘international’ is therefore ideological, rather than descriptive. It seeks to reinforce and maintain the prestige and authority of western science by detaching it from its cultural context. This book, in accepting the structure of Basalla’s diffusionist model, participates in this ideology, and thus presents western science as having a privileged epistemological position – its knowledge is assumed to be somehow superior to other, culturally specific forms of knowledge.

The use of developmental stages further helps to keep this ideology intact, as shown by the context and meaning of the term ‘colonial science’. This concept was probably first expanded upon by Donald Fleming, who compared the development of science in America, Canada and Australia. Fleming observed that science in these colonial societies was dominated by natural history – by observation and collection, rather than experiment and theory. He sought to explain this in terms of a ‘pioneering psychology’, which was ‘intellectually a psychology of abdication, of making over to Europeans the highest responsibilites in science’. While some aspects of Fleming’s characterization might be challenged by this book, ‘colonial science’ remains as an activity which is defined comparatively, in terms of its relationship with European science. ‘Colonial science’ is understood by examining what it lacks. Informed by, and reinforcing the ideology of internationalism, this approach identifies European science with ‘science’, and thus consigns Australian activities to some level of scientific immaturity.

‘Colonial science’ is thus not ‘science’, but a stage in a developmental model. It is defined in terms of its perceived destination, rather than by its cultural context. If culture plays a part in such investigations of Australian science it is as a hinderance or an obstacle. It is the medium through which the journey towards ‘modern science’ must be made; it influences, but it does not create; it is incidental, not constitutive. The reluctance to fully locate Australian science culturally is reflected in the use of geography as a causal factor in determining aspects of scientific development. The ‘frontier’ demands utility, and ‘isolation’ hampers research – the geography of Australia is seen as acting directly, rather than itself being understood or interpreted through a cultural filter.

The way in which this developmental model establishes claims about the nature of the scientific activity involved, and thus about the sorts of explanations required and analyses permissible, is made obvious by the changes in content which occur as one proceeds through the three sections of Australian Science in the making. As we move forward chronologically, the room for cultural factors diminishes; the need for such explanations decreases because we are heading towards ‘modern science’, which, in itself, requires no explanation. Indeed, the first section, ‘Early days’, contains some of the most interesting and interpretive work. In particular, the article by Hughes, ‘Philosophical travellers at the ends of the earth: Baudin, Peron and the Tasmanians’, makes some important comments about the study of anthropology.

The next section, ‘Science in a colonial society’, considers ‘colonial science’, which, as I have described, is understood in terms of its connections with European science, rather than its own cultural location. Nonetheless, its status as ‘not quite science’ allows some interesting studies of power and authority in the colonial-European context. Butcher’s ‘Gorilla warfare in Melbourne: Halford, Huxley and ‘Man’s place in nature”, and Lucas’s ‘Baron von Mueller: Protege turned patron’, raise some useful questions in this regard.

However, it is in the third section, ‘Passage to modernity’, that the implications of the developmental schema are fully evident. These articles concern ‘modern science’, the endpoint of the journey which this volume depicts. In contrast to the previous two sections they are largely descriptive, with little interpretation or analysis. The factors which impinge on ‘modern science’ are largely internal, such as personalities, funding and institutions. ‘Modern science’ requires no explanation. Its presumed special status enables it to be seen as completion, or fulfilment. All that remains is to catalogue the ways and means of its success.

An example of this sort of approach is the article by Courtice, ‘Research in the medical sciences: The road to national independence’. Indeed the title itself echoes Basalla’s ‘phase 3′. The article begins:

One of the outstanding achievements in the history of science in Australia has been the success of the biomedical scientists since the Second World War.

This is a history of progress, which concludes, somewhat predictably: ‘Australia’s medical scientists had reached the end of the long road to national independence’. It might also be noted that portraits of such ‘men of vision’,in a montage titled ‘Five noted Australian biomedical scientists’, illustrate the text in more ways than one.

The developmental model presented in this book, then, is one where the end is predictible, even inevitable. The good guys always win. This is because ‘science’ itself is endowed with a special self-explanatory status, which conveniently removes any sense of cultural determination. ‘Science’ can be no other way than it is. People serve only a functional role in its establishment. The only choices people can make are about the means of travel; the road itself is already marked.

This limitation is clearly shown in the last article, by Johnston and Buckley, entitled ‘The shaping of contemporary scientific institutions’. This draws upon a continuing thread through the book, which examines the development of science through the growth of an institutional infrastructure. It makes some interesting comments, but ultimately succumbs to a familiar sense of inviolability. It does not map out the social implications of such institutions; it does not suggest options; the bureacracy of science appears as alienating as the science itself. This approach can only lead us to the sort of science policy which seems to be flourishing in the current political circumstances – policy which does not question existing institutions, but rather seeks to make them more efficient.

The general point is, of course, that in using a model which assumes that science is somehow separable from culture, this book presents a fundamentally conservative view of science and society. The editor notes that science has ‘become a powerful social and economic force’, but there is no suggestion that political will can curb or direct this force. This volume does not encourage people to analyze the effects of science on their lives, nor does it empower them to make decisions about the role of science in our society. On the contrary, this book reinforces the ideological barriers which separate science from people’s conception of themselves as political actors. It shows ‘science’ as ‘made’ above culture, just as scientists are established in positions of authority above the people. It presents an elitist view, supporting established systems of power. This might seem hardly suprising since the book is published in association with the Australian Academy of Science, a self-professed scientific elite. It is also interesting to note that three of the seven articles in the third section of the book were written, or co-written, by fellows of the Academy.

This book will undoubtedly be an important resource for future research into the history of Australian science, though at $75 a copy it will hardly find its way onto the student’s bookshelf. However, the point I want to make is that any such work embodies ideas about the role of history and the nature of science. These are ultimately poltical questions, and assessed politically, this book presents a conservative model of history and of science. It is clear then that if, as historians of science, we seek to highlight the need for social change, and to present possibilities for doing so, we need to move beyond the sort of analysis that Australian science in the making represents.