Welcome and thank you all for coming, especially on this evening. Im Eileen Gillooly and. As the execuSociety Fellows andn center for the humanities here at columbia. Its my privilege as well as my pleasure to welcome you to this evenings celebration of lorraine dustins. New book rivals how science has learned to cooperate. This is the first of what we hope will be many cooperative hosted by the columbia Global Reports, which my colleague Nicholas Lemann will tell you minute. And the society of fellow at human centers, otherwise known as the of new book series in the society of fellows. Its a series which honors recent publications of the distinguished alumni of the society of fellows in the humanities at columbia, and which founded in 1975, is about celebrate its 50th anniversary. Before i introduce the speturn o nick, wholl be moderating the conference session, id like to thank all the many folks who helped to make this event possible, especially camille mcduffie, courtney knights, Allison Lindsay schramm, sylvia genetic, aaron fay, and our cosponsors, the columbia Journalism School, the Columbia Center for contemporary critical and its 1313 seminar series, and the Columbia Center for science society. Lorraine destin is director emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the history of science in berlin. A visiting professor in the committee on social thought, the university of chicago, a permanent fellow at the berlin for advanced study, and the alumna of the Columbia Society of fellows internationally acclaimed for her contributions to the history of science, shes the winner of awards and prizes and the author or editor of over 20 books, many of which coauthored or coedited with colleagues, thus showing herself example of how historians of science have learned to cooperate. They will deringer is an associate professor science, technology and society at mit. His Award Winning book, calculated values, finance, politics and the quantitative age, which he completed during his residency. The society of fellows is a history how numerical calculations became an authoritative mode of public reasoning. His Research Interests ranged widely time from early compound tables and changing social relations. Since in the english countryside in 1600s to the place of computer spreadsheets in the culture wall street in the 1980s as well as currently completing a book about the long history of present value as a computational that is the problem of determine what future property ought to be worth today on the stein guard is assistant professor in the department of history here at columbia, and had she not accepted a fellowship at harvard days before we invited her to interview with the Society Fellows at columbia, she too would be in a lot of the Society Fellows. Shes the author of axiomatic mathematical thought and high modernism just out year which examines the influence of axiomatic reasoning on. Middle midcentury American Intellectual thought from the natural and social sciences to literary criticism and modern design. Her current book project, accountable to democracy say mathematical reasoning and democracy in america 1922. Now examines how mathematical and Computing Technologies impacted electoral politics in the United States in the 20th century. And finally, nicholas is the Joseph Pulitzer second and edith pulitzer more professor of journalism, the director of columbia global report and dean emeritus of columbia Journalism School, a membeof for the human. The the American Academy of arts and sciences and the American Academy of political and social science. Nick is, also a staff writer at the new yorker and the author of six books, including think most recently transaction man the rise of the deal and decline of the american dream. Please help me welcome the speakers. Of okay. So give everybody a chance to just arrange ourselves. Welcome everybody. Im really glad youre here. And its wonderful to see a packed house like this for for this book. Then will plunge in. We have a were maybe like the Journalism School itself, columbia global sort of sits in some zone between journalism and academe. And in that spirit we have a more sort of free flowing style of putting on events than, people sitting at a table and reading statements. So im going to start by asking each of our panelists questions and then i hope that a little ways into that theyll start interrupting each other and asking each questions or responding and then, you k welg interactive with the audience so please i encourage you to do that. If you do go to the mike where we we have the good luck of being filmed by and they w recos National Television audience hear your question unless you say it into the mic so so when that time comes, a couple other i want to welcome the culture which is here selling the book our independent bookstore. I want to welcome several members. Columbias 1750 forces i 80, an alumni group who often come to our events and warm welcome to them and. Also want to thank the mellon foundation, which funded this book so. I, i, i promised lorraine i wouldnt use term personal journey even though were using more informal format. But i will say that the way i met lorraine is, you know, in journalism. Were always debating objectivity and its the kind of not the worlds most scintillating debate has this kind of stale quality to. And i was dean here, so i had to be in the debate. But i was getting a little weary of it. And i came across somebody told me about lorraines Journal Articles that, then, you know, turned into her book objectivit. And that just turned a light on for me. And i started this material to ourwas i was very much struck by this and other work shes done by how original and arresting and engaging it is. And you know, if we want to get back to objectivity, id be happy. But thats not our primary business. So when we started columbia reports, which is a nonprofit nonprofit action Book Publishing company, we bring out six books a year here at columbia, youee what they look like. Theyre all in the same format, but there are no wide range of topics and we live on book sales and fundraising. Hence the shout out to mellon. Um, when started, just about the first thing i did was call lorraine and we had a couple of conversations i heard about this book. Um, this was a fish that took a reallyon time to reel in, but, but now, almost ten years later, since we first started talking about it here is and were thrilled to have it out. Its also, you know, its history part of our journalistic impulse is to say, well, this is wonderful history, but whats the relevance to the present situation . I might slip and ask that, but i wont start with that. Okay. Um, so ill just start with how did you get onto this question . You may know from the book that theres theres two long ago scientific collaborative projects that were international or that that lorraine writes about one is called the cartesian oil and one is called the International Cloud atlas. So what got you on to these. Yes well. First of all, thanks to you to eileen and especially to alva and to wilt for being here and all of you it really did begin in another project as most do, which was about the archives of the sciences. So these are the sources which, some sciences gather in order to make possible the science of the future and examples include especially a astronomy in geology and evolutionary biology. For obvious reasons. And i became very struck by something which ran to a great deal of my training in formal rationality theory, namely that these long term actually survived and. The two examples in the book, examples of long term Scientific Collaborations that survive against the odd, but the one that i began with actually, which is not the book, in part because of the difference german and english was one of the humanities or the humanities really were in the vanguard of these Large International collaborative scholarly projects in the midnight 18th century. This was the great roman legal historian and Theodore Mommsen corpus in scripture on platinum, which was a collection of all the inscriptions of the roman empire. And this these are projects which start in the latter half of the 19th century. They survived two world wars. They survived of decolonization. They survived revolution as in the case of the corpus inscriptions in arab it survives reunited and there are multiple opportunities not only opportunities, from projects. And some people defect from these projects. There an enormous investment in time trouble money, but astonishing. Only they persevere. They survive so that in many ways the seed crystal for this book, which was the story, which was the puzzle contrary to all the dictates of theory, that people do jump ship instead, they at least a core of them from generation to generation. Were talking about projects last almost 100 years, sometimes than 100 years, actually actually manage to endure as collaboration once all of these questions, of course, were sharpened by the events of the past years that facing to a global crises, planetary Climate Change can see the pandemic only to yes. The these are moments at which, we would hope, for some form of international to deal with problems which are global and scale. The only groups which manage to global were the scientists reacting to both so that those were the two moments i think, which germinated this book. And so now lets go through the examples briefly and tell us about them. So the precondition for what im about to tell you is a technological precondition, which is in 1800. And it took 30 and 60 days to cross the atlantic, depending on the season, the weather. But by the end of the century, around90e to innovations in steamships and navigation, it takes only five days. What this makes possible are internal National Congresses not, Just International scientific congresses. The First International congress is in 1840. In londons for the abolition of slavery. But all kinds of face to meetings of people wish to organize on, if not a planetary, at least on an international scale. And the two examples which nick mentionedre two examples of in the scientific realm of these kinds of collaboration and the glacier, which is the great sky map, is was launched in paris in 1887, gathering the clegg de la creme of the worlds Astronomical Community and. The idea was to have a collaboration amongst observatory scattered all over the globe to photo graph the sky so that would have a record of what the sky looked like from the earth in, the year circa 1900 to pass on to astronomers of the future to. As they said, the astronomers of year 3000. So civilizations would rise, woul they always be astronomers and they would be grateful for this astro photographic record of this project was only supposed to take five years, dragged on until 1970, when the object loss was administered by the internationalstronomical union. But it is still much a part of Astronomical Research to these days because its record that we know about the appearance of new stars and the motions of socalled proper motions of the sohe other was a very different kind of operation it was the meteorologists who thought thata carefully calibras to, the types, the major types of clouds so that observers all over the would mean the same thing when they said cumulus, cumulus, nimbus stratus, etc. This was also a product of a much smaller and more Informal Group who met in uppsala,■l swen in august of 1894 to create the first International Cloud. The cloud atlas is now it must be its fourth edition in 2070, seen online and is still being used by observers all over the world to stand rise their perceptions and classify creations of clouds. Well, let me a couple of the things. As i have vowed not to use the term personal journey, i also found that to use the term key takeaways, but, you know, in the business school. But its counterintuitive. As you said at the outset, we have the image of scientists, people with big egos who are always competing each other. I got some of that from reading hits, work with her colleagues. And but here they are working together. So why are they working together . Yeah, thats a really good question. Oh, the so that the balance that has to be struck is between an intense, ferocious competition for the very scarce resource of recognition, honor of collaboration. You might ask well, why is the collaboration necessary at its necessary because there are too many things to■j investigate. This is a realized passion that dawns on the scientists in middle of the 17th century with the creation of the first academies. So they know theyve to somehow cooperate, but they consider each other to be arch rivals for fame and glory. And sometimes now as then, for academic positions and, the book is really about the delicate equilibrium that has to be to at all. And the message is not that this was a problem that was solved once and for all. Ts a work in progress and at any moment it could be. And i think it at the moment being destabilized a few things about. This one, i guess were working on this of in the covid high covid and it was striking i guess the way to put it is. Whats the difference between on zoom, which was not possible during the time described in your book, but is possible now and having inperson meetings which you describe with great spirit humor in the book . Well, well, for one thing, people cant get drunk on zoom in the same way they can. And myression, not the official protocols, these international collaborations, but the stuff find in the archives is that these were real quite boozy gatherings and that that was necessary because, you know, to go back to the cult to see how the project you just had to look at where. The astronomers stayed in paris. So the observatory in paris, i dont know many of you know paris, but its its on the bank. Its sort of on a hill at the end of the boulevard. So michelle, most of the delegates that came very sensibly stayed in that neighborhood, you know, where they could walk to the meetings. Where did the british stay . They stayed at the Hotel Anglais on the right bank where they could hold their private of war against. The french and the germans, as to what telescope was used, what was going to be used, and the only way in which those very fierce altercations could be settled was over nine course dinners at everybody got extremely tipsy and became best by the end of the meeting. Its really difficult to replicate that on zoom before. While im asking the next question, being advised that if you can move the mic a few inches from okay, so i assume a lot of people in the room seen the movie oppenheimer the impression i get from the book is that that could create a kind false positive impression about Scientific Collaboration in the sense that forobvious, one goves sponsoring the whole thing and everybody leaves they are and becomes a Government Employee in a very remote area. And thats the way to make a big breakthrough. But that idea runs to the way i your book about when collaboration is successful. I mean, the film. Has a problem which even more fundamental in which it is the very name suggests its centered on one individual and i mean, this is something that historians of science wrestle all the time, which is the scientists conceive of their■÷ history as a kind of Mount Rushmore of titanic figures. And its not as if there arent titanic figures. Its just that it is an intrinsically collect enterprise. You get only, you know, the only the faintest glimpse of that in the film, even though los alamos was the ultimate collaborative project and also theyre all theyre all there together with their families in a remote location, as you say, youve got to imagine the typical scientific as people going home to their home countries■x with their usual jobs, their usual preoccupy patients, and yet somehow theyve got to sustain the momentum, the commitments they made after those nine course dinners and the fourth toast to their colleagues in remote parts of the world. And thats more that its that sustained quality of collaboration as opposed to the intense, secluded, very highly funded proje of the los alamos kind, which is the template Scientific Collaboration. I want to push you to take it even one step further. If im not book, which is if you want a guarantee the failure of a Scientific Collaboration, you would have it be done only by one government and controlled by the right. And by taking taking it too far, i could imagine. I mean, the situation with los alamos was also anomalous in that it benefited hugely from the fact that had been a forced migration of some of the most talented scientists europe, like hans beta, for example, or john von neumann, who were part and essential of this collaboration. So even though it looks like an extremely american project, it was in Fact International project, but also just to a little more, if you3 a if youre a head of state, you would i want to do this right. So going to own the whole thing and control and make it, you know, a■ french, not an international project, but that impulse would not actually be to the work. Right . It depends on what it is. I mean, to take the case of the french because the french strength in mathematics wou b