In War and Peace: My Life in Science and Technology Guy Stever Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, 2002. $29.95 (382 pp.). ISBN 0-309-08411-3
In War and Peace is the autobiography of Guy Stever (H. Guyford Stever), a remarkable scientist and university and government administrator. While still in his twenties, Stever mused, “In summing up my life in Britain, after those first few months in 1943, I realized that I had grown in my capability to help in large scientific affairs. I had worked with impressive people, particularly great leaders, in science, engineering, and government, in both countries [the US and Britain]” (p. 32). Indeed he had, and much more was to come.
Stever has probably served on and chaired more committees, commissions, and high-level panels than any other American scientist. For more than 60 years, he has been involved in American scientific and technological policy at the highest level and in many capacities. For example, he was a liaison and intelligence representative of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in Europe, a member of the MIT aeronautics faculty and an associate dean there, and president of the Carnegie Technical Institute and then of Carnegie Mellon University. He also directed the NSF, served as a science adviser to presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford, directed the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and was a 20-year member of the US Air Force’s scientific advisory board. Stever was active with the national academies. For example, he was the National Academy of Engineering’s foreign secretary. He was also a consultant to several major US high-technology companies, including TRW, Caterpillar Inc, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, and Schering-Plough Corp, and served on several of their boards of directors.
Stever has consistently been associated with leading figures in physics and science policy. When he was a graduate student at Caltech, the physics department included Robert Millikan, Robert Oppenheimer, William Fowler, Carl Anderson, and H. Victor Neher. Both Charles Townes and Pief Panofsky were fellow graduate students. I. I. Rabi recruited both Stever and his PhD supervisor, Neher, to the MIT Radiation Laboratory, where Lee DuBridge (the director of that lab), Vannevar Bush (the director of OSRD), and Theodore von Kármán (the leading aerodynamicist of the time) started him on his way. Stever notes that his years at MIT were the two happiest decades of his life—-largely because of his marriage to his lifelong wife and partner, Bunny Floyd, and because of the family they raised.
In War and Peace covers an enormous range of topics: radar and guided missiles; research on transonic and supersonic aerodynamics and on a possible nuclear-powered aircraft; the intricate diplomacy required to merge Carnegie Tech and the Mellon Institute into Carnegie Mellon University; and the guiding of that university, through periods of major student unrest to the position of a major US research center.
In government circles, after Nixon destroyed the White House science presence, Stever, as a National Science Board member and then as NSF director, was heavily involved in negotiating a new presence that—by congressional mandate—could not be eliminated by a president. From the time of chaos and confusion when Nixon abolished the science adviser position, to the time when Ford appointed Stever his science adviser, Stever provided a focus of common sense, credibility, and general calm, despite substantial provocation. I think the entire scientific community owes Stever an enormous debt for his role in reestablishing a stable foundation for US science policy at the highest political levels.
Not surprisingly, when Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, Congress requested that Stever chair an Office of Technology Assessment committee to examine the opportunities and risks of guided-missile defense, a field with which he was entirely comfortable. Stever was then also a member of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government, cochaired by Joshua Lederberg and William Golden. In that capacity, he was heavily involved in the commission’s 19 influential reports.
Through discussion of his own activities, Stever traces in his book the development of US scientific policies and politics from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency through Ford’s. However, it is not in his nature to gossip or to comment much about the personalities and activities of his coworkers. He is diplomatic, low-key, extremely persuasive, and fundamentally a nice guy. He attracted outstanding colleagues. Readers looking for any psychoanalysis of his colleagues will, unfortunately, be disappointed; Stever is just not that sort of person.
I enthusiastically recommend In War and Peace to everyone with any interest in public policy or in the machinations of American government. Apart from being a treasure trove of information, it is extremely well written, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
