Janet Martin-Nielsen

Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Politics at the Center of Greenland

Book summary

Since the first attempts by Europeans to penetrate into Greenland’s interior in the 18th century, the island’s geometric center, Eismitte, has been one of the most forbidding but scientifically rich locations in the Arctic. Tracing its history from European contact through the Cold War, this study shows how Eismitte was a setting for scientific knowledge production as well as diplomatic maneuvering, providing new insights into the history of polar exploration and the intertwining of scientific and geopolitical considerations. Author Janet Martin-Nielsen draws on new research in private, government, military, and institutional archives in multiple countries and languages to explain how this remote place became a highly charged site of collaboration, contestation and competition.

Praise

“Greenland is all over the news these days.  But, until you’ve read this path-breaking book on its under-studied history of science and politics, you cannot understand the world’s largest island or appreciate its central place in climate change research and debates.  Drawing on painstaking research in multiple languages on two continents, Martin-Nielsen has produced an innovative, elegantly written, highly accessible book that tells a riveting story not only of science and politics, but also of the real people doing science—as well as heroic exploration, sub-zero camping, dangerous weasel driving, and Cold War politicking—in one of Earth’s most inhospitable places.”

• Mark Carey, University of Oregon

“This book is a resounding success. Its virtues are many. It provides a broad, thoroughly researched account of science in Greenland, which we have been lacking. It gives this account not through a linear history which would have been tedious, but through a particular theoretical and geographical lens: that of a single place. From that place Janet Martin-Nielsen makes broad outlooks to give interesting and important side stories of the many dimensions, political, military, scientific, technological, and emerging environmental (climate), without which there had been no science and no installations at Eismitte.”

• Sverker Sörlin, Professor of Environmental History, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

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Academic Work

Selected Publications

2014

Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “‘An Orgy of Hypothesizing’: The Construction of Glaciological Knowledge in Cold War America.” In: Ice and Snow in the Cold War, ed. Christian Kehrt, Franziska Toma & Julia Lajus. 2014 (forthcoming).

2013

Martin-Nielsen, Janet. Eismitte in the Scientific Imagination: Knowledge and Power at the Center of Greenland. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Heymann, Matthias & Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “Introduction: Perspectives on Cold War Science in Small European States.” Centaurus, Vol. 55, No. 3, 2013, p. 221-242.

Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “‘The Deepest and Most Rewarding Hole Ever Drilled’: Ice Cores and the Cold War in Greenland.” Annals of Science, Vol. 70, No. 1, 2013, p. 47-70. (Named as one of the ten most-downloaded History of Science Articles published in Taylor and Francis Journals in 2013.)

2012

Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “‘The Other Cold War’: The United States and Greenland’s Ice Sheet Environment, 1948-1966.” Journal of Historical Geography, Vol. 38, No. 1, 01.2012, p. 69-80.

Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “‘It Was All Connected’: Computers and Linguistics in Early Cold War America.” In: Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production, Liberal Democracy and Human Nature. ed. Mark Solovey & Hamilton Cravens. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. p. 63-78.

2011

Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “A Forgotten Social Science? Creating a Place for Linguistics in the Historical Dialogue.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 47, No. 2, 2011, p. 147-172.

2010

Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “Redefining What Matters : Syntactic Explanation in American Linguistics, 1955–1970.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 55, No. 3, 2010, p. 331-358.

Martin-Nielsen, Janet. “‘This War for Men’s Minds’: The Birth of a Human Science in Cold War America.” History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 23, No. 5, 2010, p. 131-155.

Press

“Science Waged Cold War Battle Over Greenland”, Dan Vergano, USA Today, 23 January 2012.

Selected Talks

2013

Layers of Secrecy: A Big State, a Small State and the Cold War. Northern Nations, Northern Natures (Stockholm) (invited)

Performing Sovereignty: The Control of Scientific Knowledge in Cold War Greenland. Cold War Science: Lorentz Center - International Center for Workshops in the Sciences (Leiden) (invited)

2012

Between Man and Ice: Technology and Glaciological Exploration in Greenland, 1929-1966. SHOT (Society for the History of Technology) Annual Meeting (Copenhagen)

2011

Rethinking the Postwar Social Science Space. Aarhus University History and Philosophy of Science Colloquium (Aarhus) (invited)

At War With Nature: Scientific Knowledge, Military Strategy and Arctic Geography. Geographies and the History of Science: 4th Norwegian Conference of History of Science (Oslo)

2010

Linguistics, Computers and Professional Actors in the Historical Dialogue. Babel: Visual and Linguistic Computer Metaphors in Computing Conference (Amsterdam) (invited)

Whither Linguistics? 7th History of Economics as History of Science Spring Workshop (Paris) (invited)

2009

The Most Advanced of All Social Sciences? Linguistics in Cold War America. XXIII International Congress of History of Science and Technology (Budapest)

‘It Was All Connected’: Computers and Linguistics in Postwar America. University of Amsterdam Program in the History of Computing Colloquium (Amsterdam) (invited)

Us Against the World: Science Publishing, Underground Literature and American Linguistics, 1957-1970. British Society for the History of Science Conference (Leicester)

2008

Re-considering the Chomskyan Revolution: A History of American Linguistic Pedagogy, 1957-1968. MEPHISTOS Conference (Austin)

The Mathematization of American Linguistics, 1952-1968. Three Societies: 6th Joint Meeting of the BSHS, CSHPS and HSS (Oxford)

The Mathematization of Natural Language Syntax, 1957-1968. Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics Conference (Vancouver)

Selected Service

2013

Journal Special Issue Co-Editor (with Matthias Heymann), ‘Science and Politics at War: New Relations in the Postwar Era’ (Centaurus, Vol. 55)

2011

Event organizer: Science and Politics at War: New Relations in the Postwar Era (Conference, Aarhus)

Event organizer: The Cold War in Northern Environments: Geographies of Knowledge, Militarism, National Identity and Scientific Practices (Workshop, Aarhus)