Christopher Wright papers, 1957-1974

Christopher Wright was a physicist who studied science policies in relation to other aspects of contemporary life In 1944, Wright, then an 18-year-old student at the University of Chicago, was sent to Los Alamos, N.M., to do experimental work in the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb. After World War II he earned a bachelor's degree with high honors at Harvard University.

After teaching philosophy at Williams College and doing research at the University of Chicago Law School, he became executive director of the Council for Atomic Age Studies at Columbia University in 1958. In 1966 he was appointed director of the Institute for the Study of Science in Human Affairs, also at Columbia.

From 1972 to 1975 Mr. Wright was with the Rockefeller Foundation, after which he joined the staff of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, In 1979 he was named by the Carnegie Institution of Washington as its first staff member to undertake science policy studies.

Atomic Age Studies Council Given Carnegie Endowment. The Columbia University Council for Atomic Age Studies has received a $30,000 grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The grant will be used to survey present and proposed studies dealing with the effects of science and technology on world affairs. Christopher Wright, executive director of the Council and supervisor of the survey, said that his study aims at estimating the needs for "persons trained to understand and anticipate the interactions between scientific development and foreign affairs." The survey, he added, will also attempt to determine whether "formal training on this subject can be given to certain kinds of scientists and to specialists in foreign affairs." The Council, consisting of eleven Columbia professors and an executive staff, has been studying science in modern society since 1957. Among its members are Dean John G. Palfrey and Professors" I. I. Rabi, Charles Frankel, and Maurice Ewing. It is expected that the newly endowed report will be available for wide dissemination by the end of 1962.