| Abstract: | This paper explores the construction of scientists' expertise on international affairs through a study of the rhetoric of U.S. atomic scientists during public and policy‐making debates on the international control of atomic energy between 1945 and 1947. It explores the claims scientists made about the nature of their expertise on issues of diplomacy and international relations and how their expertise was produced and reproduced. The paper shows that scientists were able to successfully project themselves, in the public domain, as experts on political and diplomatic matters related to the atomic. In calling for the international control of atomic energy, scientists constructed their expert knowledge in contrast to, as they portrayed it, the failed expertise of diplomats and political thinkers. In boundary work through their speeches, articles, and government testimonies, scientists drew a line between the political and the scientific, but argued that, as scientist‐citizens, they were able to take their rational thinking from one realm into the other. |
