Jerry Wiesner: Scientist, Statesman, Humanist—Memories and Memoirs , Edited by Walter A. Rosenblith MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003. $34.95 (612 pp.). ISBN 0-262-18232-7
The important and useful book Jerry Wiesner: Scientist, Statesman, Humanist—Memories and Memoirs describes the life and work of a great man. Jerome Wiesner’s academic career consisted of a variety of positions, all held at MIT. He became a professor of electrical engineering in 1950, was a wartime designer of radar devices, became an MIT academic officer who advanced to the presidency of that institution in 1971, and served as science adviser to President John F. Kennedy. He also held various advisory positions under Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson. Wiesner established many foreign communication channels and interacted with many world leaders while maintaining a lifelong interest in the arts. A dominant drive throughout his career was to steer the world toward more constructive military policies that emphasized arms control rather than the direct application of military power.
The memories and memoirs, edited by Wiesner’s lifelong friend and associate Walter Rosenblith, are a collection of essays by many authors (including Wiesner) and so are almost impossible to summarize in a short review. In addition to the essays, the book contains a scholarly listing of Wiesner’s contributions and key events in his life.
Wiesner’s own writings about his life and work started in 1980 and continued throughout the decade until he suffered a stroke in 1989. His written work illustrates his informal, direct, and scholarly approach to complex issues. Wiesner’s accounts in Rosenblith’s book include an interesting essay on the rise and fall of the presidential science advisory system that peaked with the prominence of the President’s Science Advisory Committee established by Eisenhower and declined thereafter until it ended when Richard Nixon abolished the committee.
Many of the book’s essays are fascinating. One example is Spurgeon M. Keeny’s account of his travels with Wiesner to Russia. Their goal was to search for the rumored highly sophisticated “cybernetic” methods for Soviet industry-wide production controls. Those methods turned out to be non-existent. A second example is an essay by Anthony Lewis of The New York Times entitled “A Voice of Reason,” which summarizes Wiesner’s lifelong dedication to a nonescalatory foreign policy that emphasizes arms control.
The separate accounts by a number of Wiesner’s professional associates—all of whom became close personal friends—present a recital of life at MIT during a critical period. Overall, the essays describe Wiesner as a cool but passionate leader in a variety of crucial contexts: student unrest, the struggle for racial and gender equality, and, repeatedly, efforts designed to redirect international conflict into controlled and peaceful patterns.
Several of the essays dealing with science advice to the government are of particular interest today in view of the extensive criticisms being voiced about governmental efforts to revise scientific findings to fit prescribed political outcomes. The issues are not new. The book relates how Nixon attempted to cut funding to MIT because his plans for the supersonic transport and for ballistic missile defense received adverse criticism from that institution. It also includes an account of how the Operations Research Society of America, a nongovernmental professional society, attempted to silence the critics of the antiballistic missile system by charging them with practicing operations research in an unprofessional manner.
After Wiesner’s stroke, others, particularly MIT historian Philip N. Alexander, compiled further accounts of his life. Jerry Wiesner: Scientist, Statesman, Humanist was initially conceived by Rosenblith, and was completed by his wife Judy upon the editor’s death in 2002. Above all, this collection of essays documents Wiesner’s remarkable career. As is evident in the extensive material in the volume, it was a labor of love.
