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Showcasing the international atom: the IAEA Bulletin as a visual science diplomacy instrument, 1958–1962

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2023

Matthew Adamson
Matthew Adamson*
Affiliation:
McDaniel College, Budapest, Hungary
*
Corresponding author: Matthew Adamson, Email: mhadamson@mcdaniel.hu
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Abstract

When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began operations in 1958, one of its first routine tasks was to create and circulate a brief non-technical periodical. This article analyses the creation of the IAEA Bulletin and its circulation during its first years. It finds that diplomatic imperatives both in IAEA leadership circles and in the networks outside them shaped the form and appearance of the bulletin. In the hands of the IAEA's Division of Public Information, the bulletin became an instrument of science diplomacy, its imagery conveying the motivations for member states to strengthen ties with the IAEA, while simultaneously persuading them to accept the hierarchies and geopolitical logics implicit in those relations, as well as to endorse the central position of the IAEA as a clearing house and authority of globally circulating nuclear objects and information.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 56 , Special Issue 2: Science, Technology and Visual Diplomacy , June 2023 , pp. 205 - 223
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science

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References

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27 The concept of the bulletin and questions of its distribution and cost, note by the Director General, 11 March 1959, GOV/274, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

28 Director general's note accompanying April 1959 IAEA Bulletin, 28 April 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

29 Numerous letters in IAEA, S-281-1(2). For the quoted request from Burma see Hla Nyunt, director, Burma Atomic Energy Centre, to the director general, IAEA, 2, June 1959.

30 V.J.G. Stavridi, director, UN Information Centre, Tokyo, to Lars Lind, 5 June 1959; Lars Lind to Martin Arostegui, director, UN Information Centre, Rome, 11 January 1960, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

31 Octacilio Cunha, CNEN (Brazil), to Sterling Cole, 8 June 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

32 Shri N.T. Gulrajani, public-relations officer, IAEC, to the director general, IAEA, Vienna, 22 September 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

33 See note, 3 June 1960, and F.E. Croxton, superintendent of information and records, Goodyear Atomic Cooperation, to Ray Schlueter, librarian, IAEA, 27 September 1960, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

34 Maurice Lorach, Editions laboratoires d’études et de publications scientifiques, Paris, to Lars Lind, 22 May 1959; Lars Lind to Maurice Lorach, 2 June 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

35 C.H. Gray, WPC secretary, to Lars Lind, 29 May 1959.

36 C.H. Gray to Lars Lind, 6 February 1961; Lind to Gray, 22 February 1961, IAEA, S-281-1(2). For the article see ‘World power conference and atomic energy’, IAEA Bulletin (January 1962) 4(1), pp. 29–31.

37 ‘A year of expansion. IAEA extends its operational activity’, IAEA Bulletin (October 1959) 1(3), pp. 2–6. Descriptions of PAMs would appear in the bulletin for years to come, meaning that mention of new member states appeared in the bulletin as well as the implied order in which they entered the scene, i.e. as recipients of assistance. For more on this crucial early IAEA practice see Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, op. cit. (7). See also Mehos, Donna and Moon, Suzanne, ‘The uses of portability: circulating experts in the technopolitics of Cold War and decolonization’, in Hecht, Gabrielle (ed.), Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011, pp. 43–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 ‘With the isotope unit to Athens’, IAEA Bulletin (July 1959) 1(2), p. 10.

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40 George Wendt to Lars Lind, 18 June 1959; Lars Lind to George Wendt, 24 June 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

41 Basil Larthe, Office of Public Information, UN, New York, to J.A. Cummins, IAEA, Vienna, 24 June 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

42 Lars Lind to V.J.G. Stravridi, director, UN Information Centre, Tokyo, 15 June 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2). Kenji Ito has analysed this diplomatically momentous episode. See Ito, Kenji, ‘Three tons of uranium from the International Atomic Energy Agency: diplomacy over nuclear fuel for the Japan Research Reactor-3 at the Board of Governors’ meetings, 1958–1959’, History and Technology (2021) 37(1), pp. 67–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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47 Lars Lind to Andrey Galaghan, 27 April 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

48 See ‘FAO and atomic energy’, IAEA Bulletin (July 1960) 2(3), pp. 25–7; ‘WMO and atomic energy’, IAEA Bulletin (September 1960) 2(4), pp. 20–1; ‘ILO and atomic energy’, IAEA Bulletin (January 1961) 3(1), pp. 23–5; ‘Co-operation with ENEA and INEA’, IAEA Bulletin (April 1961) 3(2), pp. 25–6; as well as ‘The OEEC European Nuclear Agency’, IAEA Bulletin (July 1961) 3(3), pp. 23–6. For more on IAEA relations with other UN agencies see Hamblin, op. cit. (1).

49 The IAEA statute can be found online at www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/statute.pdf.

50 S.K. Dhar to Perry D. Teitelbaum (Division of Economic and Technical Assistance), 15 February 1960, IAEA, S-281-1(2). For a glimpse into observations about nuclear power in the bulletin see ‘Nuclear power prospects’, IAEA Bulletin (September 1960) 2(4), pp. 3–7.

51 These missions and their immediate goals did not always jibe with the recipient member state's own notions of development and therefore did not always succeed in the ways the agency or the member states hoped. Mateos and Suárez-Díaz, op. cit. (3).

52 Cullather, op. cit. (12).

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54 Yaqub, Salim, Containing Arab Nationalism: The Eisenhower Doctrine and the Middle East, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004Google Scholar.

55 Merrill A. Bender to Amalendu Das Gupta, 27 July 1961, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

56 For instance, having thus alerted its readers to the IAEA manual on radioisotope safety measures, the agency received requests for the publication, thus reinforcing the IAEA effort to position itself as the central international node for radioisotope safety standards. See J.C.B. Thus to the IAEA, Vienna, requesting a copy of ‘Safe handling of radioisotopes’, (Safety Series no. 1), 24 June 1959, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

57 Fischer, op. cit. (45).

58 ‘Another survey in Latin America’, IAEA Bulletin (April 1962) 4(2), pp. 15–19. Roberto Soto, director of the Department of Endocrinology and Radioisotopes of the Rawson Hospital, Buenos Aires, to Montague Cohen, Radioisotopes Department, IAEA, 24 May 1962; Cohen to Soto, 5 July 1962, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

59 Lars Lind, memo, ‘Advertising in IAEA Bulletin’, 10 October 1962. WMO numbers from R.L. Muneanu, WHO External Relations Officer, to Lind, 24 August 1962, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

60 Lind, op. cit. (59).

61 Examples of requests for translation into other languages are found many times in the IAEA archives. For a unique one involving translation into Hungarian for Radio France's Hungarian section see Ladislas Bolgár to the IAEA, 21 January 1960, IAEA, S-281-1(2).

62 Turchetti, Simone, Adamson, Matthew, Rispoli, Giulia, Olšáková, Doubravka and Robinson, Sam, ‘Introduction: just Needham to Nixon? On writing the history of “Science Diplomacy”,’ Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2020) 50(4), pp. 323–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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