Michael Aaron Dennis and Eric Schatzberg are the third Annual recipients of the Fellowships in Aerospace History, a program supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The fellowships, administered by the AHA in cooperation with the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), the History of Science Society (HSS), and the Economic History Association (EHA), are awarded in an annual competition by a joint committee of representatives from each organization. This year’s committee was composed of Melvin Kranzberg, Georgia Institute of Technology (chair); Robert Wohl, University of California, Los Angeles (AHA); Alex Roland, Duke University (SHOT); Edward Constant, Carnegie Mellon University (HSS); and William Becker, George Washington University (EHA).
In 1982 Michael A. Dennis received a BA in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Arts and Sciences and a BSE in Decision Sciences from the university’s Wharton School. He is completing his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University in the history of science. The focus of his dissertation has been on university laboratories and the military at Johns Hopkins University and MIT. He has supplemented this training with fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution, the National Science Foundation and the National Air and Space Museum’s Space Science and Exploration Department.
In addition to delivering papers at meetings of the Society for the History of Technology/History of Science Society and the Center for the Study ofScience in Society Colloquium, he has also published “Accounting for Research: New Histories of Corporate Laboratories and the Social History of American Science” and “Drilling for Dollars: The Making of the US Petroleum Reserve Estimates 1921–25,” both appearing in Social Studies of Science.
The topic of Dennis’s fellowship research is “A Change of State: University Laboratories, Technical Knowledge, and the Shape of the American Polity, 1935–55.” His research uses the histories of two large and important university laboratories—the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory—as the foci for an understanding of academic-military relations in their historical context as well as the connections between military patronage and technical practice. After World War II the military became the largest patron of university-based scientific and engineering research; new fields such as electronics and nuclear science were created.
Eric Schatzberg received his BS degree in Engineering from Swarthmore College in 1979, including an additional undergraduate year in philosophy of science and sociology at the London School of Economics. He worked for four years as an engineer before entering the graduate program of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of History and Sociology of Science in 1983 to study the development of transport airplane technology between the world wars.
Schatzberg received his MA in 1985 and completed all PhD requirements except the dissertation in 1986. He has also attended an intensive two-month German language course in West Germany and completed a summer fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum on airplane materials and structures. He has presented papers at the university’s weekly workshop and at the annual conference of the American Society of Engineering Education.
The topic of his research is “Technical Choice in American Transport Airplanes between the World Wars.” He will explore the development of the transport airplane from the early enthusiasm for transport aviation in the post-World War I period to the dominance of the Douglas DC-3 in the late 1930s. He will specifically examine the institutions that influenced airframe development including not only the manufacturers but also the airlines, the military, government research agencies, and universities. During his fellowship term, he will do research at the California Institute of Technology, the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, and the National Archives.
Application deadline for the 1989–90 fellowship is February 1, 1989. The fellowship is for pre- and post-doctoral research in any area of NASA-related history. For information write the office of’the Executive Director, AHA, 400 A St. SE, Washington, DC 20003.
