Martin Harwit

Martin Harwit (born 9 March 1931) is a Czech-American astronomer, author, and was director of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. from 1987 to 1995. He is known for his scientific work on Infrared astronomy, as a professor at Cornell University.[1]

Martin Harwit
Born (1931-03-09) 9 March 1931
Prague, Czechoslovakia
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology
AwardsBruce Medal (2007)
Scientific career
ThesisMeasurement of Fluctuations in Radiation from a Source in Thermal Equilibrium (1960)
Doctoral advisorWilliam Allis

Enola Gay controversy

In 1994 Harwit became embroiled in public debate when his work on the Enola Gay exhibit, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1945 Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was accused of being "revisionist history" for including Japanese accounts of the attack and photographs of the victims,[2] and for presenting an exhibit script that critics alleged "depicted the Japanese as victims of a United States motivated by vengeance."[3]

Two of the lines about the war in the Pacific became infamous:

For most Americans this war was fundamentally different than the one waged against Germany and Italy—it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism.[4]

The immediately preceding two sentences did acknowledge that

in December 1941, Japan attacked US bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and launched other surprise assaults against Allied territories in the Pacific. Thus began a wider conflict marked by extreme bitterness.

Those lines, in turn, were immediately preceded by

Japanese expansionism was marked by naked aggression and extreme brutality. The slaughter of tens of thousands of Chinese in Nanking in 1937 shocked the world. Atrocities by Japanese troops included brutal mistreatment of civilians, forced laborers and prisoners of war, and biological experiments on human victims."[5]

The controversy led Harwit to resign as director of the National Air and Space Museum in May 1995.[6]

Honors

Named after him

Works
  • In Search of the True Universe. Cambridge University Press. 2013. ISBN 978-1-107-04406-7.[7][8]
  • Astrophysical Concepts (1st edition 1973,[9] 4th edition 2006) ISBN 978-0-387-32943-7; Harwit, Martin (2013). pbk reprint of 2nd edition. ISBN 9781475720198.
  • Cosmic Discovery: The Search, Scope and Heritage of Astronomy (1981) ISBN 978-0-7108-0089-3[10]
  • An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (1996) ISBN 978-0-387-94797-6

References
  1. Mather, John C.; Boslough, John (2008) [1996]. The Very First Light: The True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey Back to the Dawn of the Universe (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Basic Books. p. 112. ISBN 978-0-465-00529-1.
  2. Winners and Losers of the Information Revolution by Bernard Carl Rosen
  3. "Chronology of the Controversy". Enola Gay Archive. Air Force Magazine.com. Retrieved 2011-09-01.
  4. "Controversy FAQ" (PDF). Enola Gay Archive. Air Force Magazine.com. Retrieved 2013-06-01.
  5. The Crossroads: The End of World War II, The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War
  6. TELEVISION VIEW; Fifty Years Later, Still the Day After: Article The New York Times; Published: 30 July 1995
  7. Fraser, Craig (2014). "Review of In Search of the True Universe: The Tools, Shaping, and Cost of Cosmological Thought by Martin Harwit". Isis. 105 (4): 828–829. doi:10.1086/680263. ISSN 0021-1753.
  8. Oppenheimer, Rebecca (2014). "Review of In Search of the True Universe: The Tools, Shaping, and Cost of Cosmological Thought". Physics Today. 67 (10): 54–56. doi:10.1063/PT.3.2554.
  9. Bychkov, K. V. (1975). "Review of Astrophysical Concepts by Martin Harwit". Soviet Astronomy. 18: 667. Bibcode:1975SvA....18..667B.
  10. Mcgee, R. X. (2016). "Review of Cosmic Discovery: the Search, Scope and Heritage of Astronomy by Martin Harwit". Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. 4 (4): 493–494. doi:10.1017/S1323358000021615. ISSN 1323-3580.
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