From the Archives ∗

Abstract

In January 1947 Norbert Wiener, known primarily as the founder of cybernetics and as a mathematician of international repute, published in the Atlantic Monthly a letter to the scientific community entitled “A Scientist Rebels.” This letter and his subsequent activities established Wiener's reputation as a resister to cooperation with military research. The editor's introduction to the Atlantic Monthly publication stated, “The letter which follows was addressed by one of our ranking mathematicians to a research scientist of a great aircraft corporation, who had asked him for the technical account of a certain line of research he had conducted in the war.” Although the identity of the “research scientist” is not revealed in the Atlantic publication, a search of the Norbert Wiener collection housed in MIT's Institute Archives and Special Collections revealed two letters to Mr. George E. Forsythe, Physical Research Unit, Boeing Aircraft Company. Following the brief letter of 31 October 1946, Wiener wrote a more extensive letter to Forsythe on 2 December 1946, which then formed part of “A Scientist Rebels.” We have also included a letter written to Wiener by Leo Pach (MIT, Class of 1940) on 5 January 1947, as an example of the responses Wiener received from many concerned scientists and engineers.