Sputnik made it evident that the US science and technology lead was not absolute. It obviously ment something for research resource allocation and university education in the west. “The alarm raised by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957 inspired thousands of young Americans to become engineers, physicists, and chemists” as Science writes (14 mars) (the graph is from that article). That is probably true, but the policy shift and money pumped into technoscience was probably more important than Sputnik having ‘inspired’ individuals to study science and engineering. Sputnik rather ‘inspired’ politicans to fund science like never before. Follow the money!
The graph is interesting, though. Note the decrease in physics PhD:s after the end of the cold war (and after the onset of a more life sciences-oriented era).
Science also writes about US researh policy people wanting 9/11 to become a new ‘Sputnik event’.
Read more about Sputnik in Roger D. Launius mfl ed., Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty years since the Soviet satellite (London, 2000; 2002).
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