Big Science in Australia: Histories and Futures

David Munns (John Jay College of the City University of New York)

Big Science, Down Under is the story of a new Australia in a new scientific age. New Big Science projects created a tension when local priorities clashed with international demands. New institution builders clashed with their older colleagues and rivals; a new American vision clashed with an older sedate British tradition. As this talk will describe, postwar Australian science made headline news, and scientists became national superstars. Big radio telescopes joined the campaign to seed clouds, grow new plants in hostile climates, and explore Antarctica. Big science enjoyed broad public support from the farmers and graziers of the country who embraced science to combat rabbits and fertilize crops. Shire Councils such as Sutherland in Sydney embraced immunisation against disease and the extension of sewers and electricity to homes, at the same time as hosting the Australia's only nuclear reactor. Radio enabled the School of the Air, joining the expansion of the prewar Royal Flying Doctor Service. Australian science helped eliminate the scourge of polio and reveal the dangers of Thalidomide. And because the history of Australian science is also a political history, the intersecting stories of postwar science and technology reshaped Australia’s sense of itself in the world, a role that Big Science continues to play today and into the future.