Greedy Science: Creating Knowledge, Making Money, and Being Famous in the 1980s

On the transformative role of greed in global science and technology during the 1980s.

In the 1980s, a transformative era emerged where profit-driven motives and an entrepreneurial spirit dominated scientific research and technological innovation. This collection of essays, edited by Michael D. Gordin and W. Patrick McCray, examines how greed reshaped the global scientific community through the relentless pursuit of money, fame, and celebrity.

Profiting off science and technology was not a new phenomenon, nor were the soaring ambitions of some of its most fervent advocates. However, the global currents of knowledge production in the 1980s saw major cultural and scientific shifts: the increasing frequency of university patenting, the rise of academic entrepreneurship, and collaborations between industries and academia, for example. Greedy Science seeks to survey and understand the full range of these changes. Through insightful essays, contributors examine case studies ranging from the biotech boom—driven by early oil-firm investments—to the speculative market strategies in personal computing and alternative energy. This period saw the rise of the celebrity status of scientists and raised questions about the moral complexities of scientific greed.

The authors argue that greed was an ever-present and expansive trait of science during this time, encompassing a host of behaviors such as covetousness, acquisitiveness, rapaciousness, and conspicuous consumption. Greedy Science provides a nuanced analysis of how market dynamics and the quest for personal gain profoundly influenced scientific advancements and public perception during a pivotal decade in science and technology.

Michael D. Gordin is the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Princeton University, where he is the dean of the college. He is the author of Einstein in Bohemia.

W. Patrick McCray is a professor in the department of history at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the author of Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture.