Science policy is rarely considered part of the core of the science system, but is seen as peripheral, providing a framework for establishing priorities and allocating research funds, setting up institutional structures within which research programs can proceed with a continuous, predictable level of funding, and providing incentives for the wider transfer of knowledge and for the utilization of research results – usually for the benefit of the national economy. The various models of science policy are closely related to the profiles of national institutions and to the specific instruments of policy-making available to obtain their objectives.

Many observers agree that science policy in the highly industrialized countries has moved through distinct phases or “eras” since the end of World War II. These phases differ in the underlying patterns of scientific and technological change, in the issues on research agendas, in the preferred instruments for decision-making, in the modes of funding, and in the modes of research. It is also said that, in the use and regulation of science as a source of strategic opportunities, science policy is undergoing a process of internationalization, in that international cooperation is being promoted (Ruivo, 1994).

Other science policy analysts diagnose an increasing “denationalization of science”, evidenced by growth of trans-national research cooperation, even in less cost-intensive areas, the shift from public to private funding, and the regionalization of research (Crawford et al.91992). But international cooperation on one level does not necessarily preclude competition on another. The globalization of the economy, the wider geographical distribution of the sources of scientific and technological knowledge, and growing interdependenciesmake it clear that the configurations of cooperation and competition are not fixed, but fluid.

Many observers agree that science is currently passing through a period of dramatic transformation. At the end of his lucid analysis of science in a dynamic steady state, John Ziman concludes that there is no way back to the traditional habits of managing research, but there is also no obvious path forward to a cultural plateau of comparable stability.

We believe that the emergence of HTS sheds light on what these forces are and how they interact. In the beginning of this book, we compared the effects of the discovery of HTS on the research system to a building tested by being subjected to a transient load which reveals otherwise hidden strengths and weaknesses. Indeed, HTS can be seen as a case that shows how complex and fluid the present situation has become. Researchers can no longer expect to find an environment hospitable to their work, but are compelled to create one. We have seen that it takes extraordinary effort, time, and energy to set up the conditions under which research programs can run for a predictable period. Such efforts are no longer external to, but have become an integral feature of scientists' work. Nor are they limited to the small research group institutionally at home at the university.

The situation is also extremely fluid on the level of policy-making.

One of the most striking features of the establishment of HTS as a research field is that – at least in the crucial first phase – negotiations expanded beyond the narrow realm of policy expertise into the public arena. The exceptional breakthrough was greeted by the media with great enthusiasm and was judged as newsworthy for a considerable time. Though not actively participating, the public came to play an important role as enthusiastic supporters or critical observers of the field's evolution and as allies in developing an extensive rhetoric about the significance of the field's potential technological applications.

A trend toward increasing the degree of public staging of science and technology issues has become more and more visible in the course of the second half of the 20th century. Dorothy Nelkin argues that this is closely linked to the fact that the societies we live in are increasingly shaped by science and technology. Members of these societies are thus:

Indeed, press reports described the intense excitement gripping scientists and science policy-makers alike in these first months following the breakthrough in HTS, and they elaborated spectacular scenarios of future applications. The media eagerly seized on the notion of competition for technological and commercial advantage, playing up the potentially crucial role of the new materials in the development of an as yet unimaginable technology.

Discovered in 1911 at temperatures near absolute zero, superconductivity is the loss of resistance to electrical current some materials display when cooled below a “critical temperature”. The phenomenon was confined to scientific laboratories until the late 1950s, when first technological applications became feasible. It also took nearly half a century before a theoretical explanation of the phenomena – the BCS theory – was formulated. In the following two decades, numerous researchers contributed to the field, but no materials were found with critical temperatures higher than 23 Kelvin (–250° Celsius). By the mid 1980s, the scientific community had reached the consensus that superconductivity was a closed field, and that the dream of room-temperature superconductors should be abandoned.

But the year 1986 changed this situation dramatically. Two researchers at the International Business Machines (IBM) lab near Zurich, Switzerland, discovered a new class of materials among the ceramic oxides that display superconductivity at temperatures far higher than previously observed.

High-temperature superconductivity was born.

A surprising discovery and its consequences

Like a minor earthquake, the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in late 1986 sent a shock wave through the research systems of the industrialized countries, exciting scientists, policy-makers, and the lay public alike. We followed the course of the discovery, intrigued to observe and analyze what the tremor revealed: which structures of the system of science and research proved robust and resistant, and what gave way, crumbling under the unexpected shake-up?

But above all, we wanted to investigate what researchers, science policymakers, industry, the media – and through them the general public – would make of the event.

The discovery of materials that become superconducting at temperatures higher than previously observed or thought possible opened up a new research field. This chapter examines the individual, scientific, and institutional background of the discovery by Georg Müller and Alex Bednorz at IBM's Rüschlikon Laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland. The first section places the discovery in the context of the evolution, organization, and salient characteristics of the multidisciplinary field of materials science. Section 2.2 examines the industrial connection in an earlier period of technological optimism. We compare current hopes and efforts connected with the technological potential of HTS with the bright outlook for conventional or low-temperature superconductivity (LTS) in the 1960s and early 1970s. Few LTS applications materialized and only one proved commercially viable. What were the main reasons for the decline of the LTS field?

The third section presents a brief historical account of the study of conventional superconductivity and analyzes some of the factors that contributed to the new discovery, which was unexpected in terms of the discoverers themselves, the site, and the conventional wisdom refuted. Section 2.4 deals with the scientific community's reactions to the Zurich discovery. This highly unusual and intense period engendered some unconventional behavior in participants. Scientific excitement was flanked by passionate accounts in the media, which fueled public expectations about the technological and commercial significance of the breakthrough. Finally we describe the inevitable cooling-down phase that prepared the way for the establishment of national research programs.

Materials science as a research field

Individual scientists dominate the story of the discovery of HTS, but the initial event took place in the scientific and technological context of the field of materials science.

The emergence of HTS as a research field is an example of how positing a situation can make it real. Discourse and beliefs, rhetoric and persuasion, and a vision of a bright technological future – hardly supported by reliable facts at the time – acted as a catalyst. As the concept of “windows of opportunities” suggests, when new technologies appear on the market, new opportunities suddenly seem to exist, but the period in which they can be realized and exploited is brief (Perez, 1983; 1989). In the end, unsurprisingly, there are winners and losers. But while institutions maintained their structural grip and while path dependence and varying degrees of preparedness had their effects, for a short, compressed time, scientists' vision and rhetoric, policy constructs and persuasion succeeded in collusively reshuffling some of the more inert parts of the science system, before they resettled into the familiar pattern of institutional stability.

The emergence of a new research field underscores that the science system is not set once and for all; knowledge of its history is thus an essential prerequisite for understanding it: “The passage of time, and changes it brings in the factors and phenomena that interest us, are our single best resource” (MacKenzie, 1990: 7). The study of a process of change is hardly in danger of mistaking a moment for an eternal condition. But it is difficult to distinguish a unique event from more enduring developments that permit generalization. The participants we interviewed, the institutions we visited, the situations and choices reported to us, and above all the state of scientific and technological knowledge continue to change.