Author: Rosenblith, Walter A.
Title: Jerry Wiesner, Scientist, Statesman, Humanist : Memories and Memoirs
Description: Cambridge [MA], MIT Press, (2003). orig.cloth, dustwrapper.. 24x18cm, xxiv,612 pp. Minor rubbing. An ink mark to top page-edge. VG. ¶ The recurring theme of Jerry Wiesner's varied and distinguished career was what Senator Edward M. Kennedy calls "a passionate involvement to make a better world, and a safer world". His odyssey as a public citizen included work as an acoustician for folklorist Alan Lomax in the Library of Congress, research at MIT's radiation lab and at Los Alamos, service as President John F. Kennedy's Special Assistant for Science and Technology and his years at MIT as professor, dean, provost and president. At Los Alamos he recieved what he called "a valuable education on issues that were to occupy a large part of my life". The lessons learned informed his later work on nuclear disarmament; he was a pivotal adviser on both the 1963 partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the 1972 ABM Treaty and an early member of the Pugwash Group, an organization of scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain. His many accomplishments as president of MIT similarly reflected his conviction that science and technology cannot be separated from society. Jerry Wiesner had long planned an autobiographical book that would combine personal experience and historical interpretation, covering his wide range of interests, but the commitments of his postretirement life and a serious stroke in 1989 kept him from completing it...." - Publisher's description.

Keywords: Scientific Biography, American Scientists, United States, Jerome B. Wiesner, Electrical Engineer, Engineers, Engineering, History of Science, Massachusetts, Educators