Book cover: Angela Creager: Life Atomic (2021)
Publication
Yuanzili de shengming: fangshexingtongweisu zai kexue he yixue zhong de lishi 原子力的生命: 放射性同位素在科学和医学中的历史 [Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine]

Chinese Translation of the Book "Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine", University of Chicago Press 2013 translated by Wang Juechun 王珏纯.

After World War II, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began mass-producing radioisotopes, sending out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to scientists and physicians by 1955. Even as the atomic bomb became the focus of Cold War anxiety, radioisotopes represented the government’s efforts to harness the power of the atom for peace—advancing medicine, domestic energy, and foreign relations. In Life Atomic, Angela N. H. Creager tells the story of how these radioisotopes, which were simultaneously scientific tools and political icons, transformed biomedicine and ecology. Government-produced radioisotopes provided physicians with new tools for diagnosis and therapy, specifically cancer therapy, and enabled biologists to trace molecular transformations. Yet the government’s attempt to present radioisotopes as marvelous dividends of the atomic age was undercut in the 1950s by the fallout debates, as scientists and citizens recognized the hazards of low-level radiation. Creager reveals that growing consciousness of the danger of radioactivity did not reduce the demand for radioisotopes at hospitals and laboratories, but it did change their popular representation from a therapeutic agent to an environmental poison. She then demonstrates how, by the late twentieth century, public fear of radioactivity overshadowed any appreciation of the positive consequences of the AEC’s provision of radioisotopes for research and medicine.

Publisher
Zhejiang da xue chu ban she 浙江大学出版社
ISBN
978-7-308-21635-7
Year
2021
Pages
512
Language
Chinese
Series
Kexue yu shehui yicong 科学与社会译丛