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Angela N. H. Creager - Life Atomic - 9780226323961 - V9780226323961
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Life Atomic

€ 43.21
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Description for Life Atomic Paperback. Series: Synthesis. Num Pages: 512 pages, black & white illustrations. BIC Classification: MMN; PDX; PHN; PNRL. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 232 x 153 x 37. Weight in Grams: 772.
After World War II, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began mass-producing radioisotopes, sending out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to scientists and physicians by 1955. Even as the atomic bomb became the focus of Cold War anxiety, radioisotopes represented the government's efforts to harness the power of the atom for peace—advancing medicine, domestic energy, and foreign relations. In Life Atomic, Angela N. H. Creager tells the story of how these radioisotopes, which were simultaneously scientific tools and political icons, transformed biomedicine and ecology. Government-produced radioisotopes provided physicians with new tools for diagnosis and therapy, specifically cancer therapy, and enabled biologists to trace molecular transformations. Yet the government's attempt to present radioisotopes as marvelous dividends of the atomic age was undercut in the 1950s by the fallout debates, as scientists and citizens recognized the hazards of low-level radiation. Creager reveals that growing consciousness of the danger of radioactivity did not reduce the demand for radioisotopes at hospitals and laboratories, but it did change their popular representation from a therapeutic agent to an environmental poison. She then demonstrates how, by the late twentieth century, public fear of radioactivity overshadowed any appreciation of the positive consequences of the AEC's provision of radioisotopes for research and medicine.

Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2015
Publisher
The University of Chicago Press United States
Number of pages
512
Condition
New
Series
Synthesis
Number of Pages
512
Place of Publication
, United States
ISBN
9780226323961
SKU
V9780226323961
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50

About Angela N. H. Creager
Angela N. H. Creager is the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University. She is the author of The Life of a Virus and coeditor of Feminism in Twentieth-Century Science, Technology, and Medicine, both published by the University of Chicago Press. She lives in Princeton, NJ.

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