The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite

by Ann Finkbeiner

The Jasons are a well-guarded group of world-class scientists, briefly outed in the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, who have been meeting every summer since 1960 to tackle classified problems that the Defense Department cannot solve. Among many stunning innovations, they helped invent our electronic battlefield and Star Wars missile defense technology, and are now looking into ways to improve our intelligence gathering. Recounting the unknown story of these brilliant, stubbornly independent thinkers, Ann Finkbeiner takes advantage of her unprecedented access to this elite group to explore the uncertain bargains between science and politics. It is a story older than Faust and as timely as tomorrow’s headlines.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Politics, Military Fiction, American History

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a novel, it is documenting actual events from unclassified sources. It has been well researched. Don't expect some spy thriller story to be told. Thus, for some this may come across as a dry history book read, but it is also an interesting part of our history. I have known a number of the people mentioned, and the book is largely accurate on the things I know about.
My rating for the book may be higher than that of the average reader because of I am more interested in the subject than an average reader.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good insight, but lame writing.... too many "and then this happened... and then this happened.... and then this happened" for my liking.... and the subject matter, although insightful, feels a little too shallow for my expectations. I was expecting more Ms Finkbeiner.

I would recommend The Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin by Francis Spufford for a more insightful and rigorous journalistic view on some of the historic moments in the applied science arena, eg Concorde, mobile (cell)phone technology.... and alot more fun to read too!

[Djuna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I refuse to finish this book. It was horrible. As far as I can tell, the author interviewed a series of people, and with no attempt to apply logic, deeper meaning, or narrative flow, typed the notes out in paragraph form and pasted them together in a random order to form a book. Blech.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.0) Fascinating characters, interesting stories

Felt a bit like interview clips organized by theme. There was some chronological arc to the book, which I appreciated, but then later references to earlier committees and acronyms weee a bit lost on me. Later chapters weee a little more themed and then the quotations started piling up. Not sure the structure I would have enjoyed best, but some narrowing of the individuals relied on could have focused a bit more. It’s amazing to have interviews with this spectacular set of minds though, so I understand not wanting to waste any (not to mention the scientists’ time).

Learned some and appreciated all of the La Jolla references and connections. Also learned that I took (at least) two courses from JASONs, heh. Wonder how many more?

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this book were interesting and other parts a chore to get through. I was interested in how a group of brilliant (mostly) physicists would approach problems dealing with nuclear weapons, national defense, and other classified matters. I was impressed how they all jumped in and learned oceanography when the Navy needed help with submarine projects—they just loved learning new things. Their work on putting mirrors in telescopes, which remained unnecessarily classified until the French started publishing their work in the same field, was outstanding.

There were interesting tidbits and insights into the personalities of the various scientists and how they worked together, and what projects they chose to focus on.

There was a lot of political discussion, which did not interest me very much, and all the work done during the Vietnam War seemed pointless. There were long stretches of the book that were dull.

For anyone concerned, at the end of the book there are notes, sources, and an index.

[Cheri Vause · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having worked in the astro-physicist community, and lived among engineers, I can rightly say that the arrogance knows no bounds, although there are a few who are truly nice people, and humble. The same can be said for the PhDs in academia. The Jasons, a group of physicists who meet for several weeks out of the year to brainstorm, are a perfect example of people who meddle, who use people's lives to see if some scientific theory works. Although I'm for pure science experiments, I am not for sending our boys into the battle fray just to see if some new doodad works or not, such as Viet Nam's electronic field. It worked, sometimes. This book is not an expose, but just a chronicling of a group of men, and later a woman, who met and came up with inventions and ideas for the CIA and the military, and later, the astronomical community with a laser guide and adaptive optics, although we can credit the French for their contribution to the field before it was declassified.

The author writes an accurate account of the good, the bad, and the ugly of the Jasons, a group of physicists who gathered together at the end of the war (WWII) to bounce ideas off of each other and invent things that would help our country. Noble ideas, but... Viet Nam is a perfect example of science too early to be released.

The greater tragedy was the MX program, of which I was a part, and the missiles are in pieces in a warehouse somewhere, after millions were spent in erecting new buildings, hiring engineering staff and administrative people, plus liaising with the military on site. The arguments over that program even made it to comedians who joked about putting missiles on RVs because no one could come up with a good idea for launching the thing. I recall they wanted to put the MX in the Minute Men silos but would have to super-harden them in order for the MX to launch. The debate raged, and it seems that the Jasons came up with their own idea of a submersible vehicle (SUM) for launching the MX. It would have been good to have been a part of program that actually worked and was thought-out well before production, but it seems that those in charge at the time really liked to do things backward. It's why Viet Nam was such a cluster you-know-what. If the Jasons were so noble they should have stepped up and said so.

Should they exist? In a sense, I'm glad they do, but I'm hesitant to give a full-throated yes. As I said earlier, I believe in pure scientific research. But the Jasons need to be monitored by an outside person who isn't an arrogant physicist, nor are they military. The Jasons were caught up in their own experiments and often, could not see the forest for the trees. An excellent read for anyone who wants to know the back-story of the goings on inside the DEEP STATE.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book isn't that great--it turns out my graduate research advisor, Robert Gomer, was a member of The Jasons. This was a bunch of physicists (mostly) that advised the POTUS about scientific issues, post WWII. Originally is was about 60 men (eventually they had a woman or two), who were part of the Manhattan project. Originally supported by (D)ARPA, they met for a couple of months in the summer to write papers on nuclear proliferation, test ban treaties, the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, climate change, .... Other members included Freeman Dyson, Charles Townes, Hans Bethe, Steven Weinberg. I don't know the current status of The Jasons; DARPA was objecting to supporting them.

The things that made this book work for me were:
1. I didn't know this group existed;
2. I didn't know my research advisor was a member of them.

[Geoff Duncan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful. Never has there been a bigger chronology of uninteresting crap. Despite having only 20 pages left, I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

[Carlyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite is a telling and examination of the Jason advisory group. It discusses the formation of Jason, a scientific advisory group to the US government, their main achievements, and how they have fared as cultural and technological landscapes change. If you’re looking for a spy thriller or a good story this is most likely not the book you are looking for. The book is more of an in-depth biography of Jason, at its core, it is a discussion of how ethics and science intertwine. The writing seems somewhat lame at times, and the book it often bogged down by its inability to connect different points very well. As someone who is not very familiar with scientists during WWII or the Vietnam War, I found reading very slow going. Often the book would bring up a multitude of scientists who it had mentioned once or twice before, but who I did not quite remember. There was also a good amount of information crammed into small sections which made the book somewhat dry.

However, I found the main ideas and overall structure to be engaging. I found the discussions about how Jason has changed over the year and how it has tried to stay relevant and useful. During one such discussion, Finkbeiner says "Jason says their scientific diversity has been their biggest change." In order to tackle a variety of problem scientist from other fields are needed, but this fundamentally makes Jason into a more disjointed organization. Initially, the scientists brought in all had some relation to physics and so the physicists were able to work well together: “the physicist training and that of Jason mathematicians, astronomers, geophysicists, oceanographers, and computer scientist have considerable overlap.” This allowed for a range of topics, but still a on task united Jason. However, the introduction of biologists, whose field has very little in common with physics, started a more disjointed Jason. How does a group of somewhat unrelated people work together to create effective solutions? I found the book’s discussion of topics like this interesting, although somewhat superficial.

One thing I really liked about the book were sentences like this one: "once that aunt and nephew sat on that log, calculating how an atom gave up its energy an atomic bomb was inevitable." They show, to me, the potential the book had. I find the section the quote was from very interesting, and it didn’t get bogged down by the sheer amount of information. Overall, I found the book to be very informative, but somewhat dry and hard to get through. I would recommend it to people who want to learn in depth about Jason, or generally about how scientific advisory groups have acted during the late 1900s and now.

[Don Kilcullen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating look inside some of the most secretive work done by some of our most brilliant scientists for the U.S. government. Originally an offshoot of the Manhattan Project, the early Jasons were all male and almost all physicists. They would meet in the summer for about six (6) weeks when their respective colleges and universities (almost all of the original group held academic research appointments) were on summer break. Briefers from the Department of Defense (DOD) would brief them on particular problems DOD was having or ask about the feasibility of some technological project DOD wanted to launch. The Jason’s were free to accept or reject any problem they were briefed on. Generally, they took on whatever problem seemed most interesting to them. Some of the greatest scientific minds of the latter half of the twentieth century including Freeman Dyson and Richard Garwin have been Jasons. Jasons now include not only women but scientists from a wider range of disciplines such as biology, chemistry and computer science. Jason membership is by invitation only - no matter how good your scientific credentials are this is not something you can apply for.
One of the things I found most interesting about the Jasons was how some of their research has spilled over into non defense applications. One of the most fascinating stories is how Jason research resulted in a concept known as “adaptive optics”. One of the biggest limitations to ground based telescopes has always been the limits atmospheric distortion places on the clarity of telescope observations in outer space. The adaptive optics concept almost totally eliminates that atmospheric distortion. The result is that now there are no less than three (3) multi billion dollar ground telescopes under construction since now the only limit on ground telescopes will be the size of the mirrors.

Any reader with the slightest sense of intellectual curiosity will be gripped by this book.

[Stan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really not so secretive as not overtly public. The story of the top minds in America who were offered positions to work on scientific problems facing post WWII America. These were summer positions, a couple of weeks and could be turned down. It all depended on whether the problem intrigued the scientist.

The book is rather dry, but does show the rise of DARPA and the people who wroked there.

[Bob Ragsdale · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the title and abstract are very quite promising, the book itself was not well formed or written. There are a lot of very interesting bits in it but because it lacks a good structure or narrative it became, for me, a real slog to read. It is exceptionally rare that I don't finish a book that I pick up. I did not finish this one.

[Angeline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like another reader, I'm not sure I'll ever finish this book. It starts out OK, with a history of how the JASONs came to be, but then it descends into a laborious and poorly written series of Vietnam era events that seem to go on forever with no purpose or end in sight. Yawn...

[Jaqi C · Rating 1 out of 5]

Super interesting premise but just not for me. I really struggled to stay focused and interested and frankly just struggled to read it. However I think that it’s still super interesting and informative.

[Jeremy Krantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mildly interesting but does get boring towards the end.

[IcarusScaleModels · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful look behind the curtain at one of the US governments bleeding edge scientific research groups.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Jasons are the most powerful people you've never heard of. An elite advisory group composed of a veritable who's who of American physics, the Jasons have been providing cutting edge scientific expertise to the Department of Defense and other agencies for nearly fifty years.

Finkbeiner manages to depict both the personal charisma and fascination of the Jasons, and their murky ethical role. True genius is strange, and appealing, and a large part of why Jason persists is the pleasure that it's members take in working with each other; a pleasure echoed in Finkbeiner description of interviews with luminaries such as John Wheeler (many worlds interpretation, black holes) and Freeman Dyson (polymath of the 20th century).

However, at the same time that they break new intellectual ground for the sheer joy of it, Jason is an integral part of the defense establishment, and works to improve weapons. Smart bombs, combat sensors, and strategic missile defense can all be traced back to Jason, and this book does an excellent job putting a human face on a scientist's many obligations: to knowledge, to humanity, and to his or her country. Jasons see themselves as patriots, but have been labelled as war criminals. On balance, even as advance the science of death, the Jasons have injected sanity and reason into nuclear armaggedon. The science that makes the comprehensive test ban treaty possible was pioneered by Jason, while adaptive optics and oceanic tomography have advanced natural science.

For good or ill, Jason is a unique organization, and one that any scholar of science policy should be familiar with as an exemplar of what can be done at the very top of science.

[George Dobbs · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book provided a view into a 50 year period from around 1955 to 2005 from the point of view of how the scientists interacted with the military. At first it was about trying to get the atomic genie back in the bottle with atomic test verification and then there was the ugliness of Vietnam. After that more work on ballistic missile defense. Then some branching out to climate and other topics. Jason is a group of elite scientists originally associated with DARPA.

This book felt like it could use a good editor. At times it seemed like a whole lot of names. This book would be useful as a source for someone studying this subject deeply, but it was too detailed for an overview. The last section was biographical notes on various scientists which I skipped.

I am however left with a better understanding of the post-WWII period.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biography of the Jasons, a loose group of top US scientists who independently work on both classified and non-classified projects of their own choosing, mostly for the Defense Department. I knew the names of many of the physicists named in the book (and who I didn't know were Jasons), and was surprised to discover that a former academic adviser of mine is now a member. It was an interesting glimpse into this secretive group of scientists and their role in US science policy throughout the cold war and beyond, mostly through interviews with members, supplemented with material from unpublished internal histories from both the DoD and the Jasons themselves.

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The subject seemed very interesting when I grabbed this at the bookstore but it quickly disappointed after reading the first few pages. First of all, there are way too many people to keep track of and many are introduced only a couple times. After realizing this, I decided to just forget who did what and focus on the main accomplishments of this highly regarded group of scientists. I would have liked the author to discuss the social atmosphere of the time so I could better relate what the scientists were focusing on and why (especially since the author had many 'holes' in the story due to confidentialty of the Jason's studies).

[Frederick Bingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of the Jason study group. It was founded after WWII to give advice to the military. It consisted of elite scientists from universities around the country. During the early years it met only during the summer at a variety of locations. Later, it started meeting exclusively in La Jolla. It was mostly physicists to begin with, but eventually included oceanographers, computer scientists and biologists among others. There are extensive interviews with people I knew during grad school, Ed Frieman, Bill Nierenberg, Walter Munk, Henry Abarbanel. Some of the issues the Jason group worked on were nuclear non-proliferation, test ban treaties, the Vietnam war and climate change.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic book on the history of the Jasons. Before reading, I had no idea that these people existed, althought it seems like they always should have. Even though I am not a scientist, nothing in this book went over my head, and I found every part of it completly facinating. That credit should go to Ann Finkbeiner for taking a vast subject and putting it into a concise history of a very important group of people. If you enjoy government, science or history in general you should read this book.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a mostly non-technical history of the Jasons - a group of top scientific minds that provide independent recommendations to the US government and military. I liked it in general, but wished for more information on some of the technical topics, like adaptive optics (though I understand that a truly complete history is impossible due to classification issues). I first heard of the Jasons in Sharon Weinberger's "Imaginary Weapons" (and in "The Jasons" there is a brief reference to the hafnium bomb project that is the main focus of "Imaginary Weapons").

[Andrew McBurney · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great book to read. The style is a little unconventional, with the author often discussing her interviews with Jasons as she writes about them - it works, though, since this is a portrait of a group of people, and they themselves are just as interesting as the work they have done. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the nexus between pure science, applied science, and defense policy.

[Ty · Rating 1 out of 5]

i was hoping that this book would at least be interesting, if a bit dry, but i was sorely disappointed. the story of the group of freelance scientists who have been advising the US govt on technical issues since the Cold War dissolves into tales of petty academic feuds. a couple of interesting revelations about sonar and radar technologies, but i could not bring myself to finish. quitting 1/2 way through.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entertaining and remarkable history of an elite scientific organization still in existence.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biography en masse of some of America's scientific elite, primarily focused on the cultural evolution of the group after the Manhattan Project. Very readable.

[John]

nonfiction,science,history

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Very interesting. Picked it up used on Broadway and was completely fascinated.

[Michael Kotsarinis · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK and thoroughly researched but I can't say it was engaging.