Kärin Nickelsen: Cooperation and Competition in the Sciences. Strategies in Twentieth-Century Small and Big Biology

On 9 September 2019, Kärin Nickelsen will give a talk at Niels Bohr Archive Copenhagen on Cooperation and Competition in the Sciences: Strategies in Twentieth-Century Small and Big Biology.

The modern sciences have often been described, particularly in view of the twentieth century, in terms of competition alone. Yet, on closer inspection, it is obvious that cooperation is as omnipresent as rivalry. Even more important, only those actors can hope to succeed in competition who are also integrated into cooperative structures. At the same time, neither competition nor cooperation leads to stable configurations: today's partners can turn into tomorrow's rivals and vice versa.

This talk explores the resulting tension between these two modes of interaction in the sciences by inspecting two examples from different time periods: experimental photosynthesis studies of the mid-, and the human genome project of the late twentieth century. In both cases, cooperatively organized groups faced instances of sharp rivalry; the strategies to resolve the situations were, however, markedly different.

when: 9 September 2019, 2:15 pm

where: Auditorium A, Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, Copenhagen