Science for the People (SftP), Madison Collective was formed in 1969 at the University of Wisconsin by graduate students in science and technical research. In 1971, SftP moved into an office at the YMCA on Brooks Street in Madison. By 1973 the collective had two full-time paid organizers, Joseph Bowman and Doug Hansen. The collective became inactive sometime after 1974.
As an unincorporated educational and public interest research organization, each individual collective worked to bring useful scientific knowledge to the public via political action. Members were concerned with the ways in which government and business used science and dominated the politics of scientific research. SftP sought to expose this control of science and the subsequent “dehumanization of men and women [in science] by the productive relations of capitalism, its institutionalized forms of violence and destruction, and the myth of scientific neutrality.” Nationally, SftP often coordinated programs with Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action (SESPA), which worked to bring the country to a socialist society.
Madison Collective members were not only active in SftP/SESPA, but were also interested in China, Science for Vietnam, and ending the war in South East Asia. The collective's major local activity was protesting the work of the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. To support their activities, the members of the collective wrote and published a book, The AMRC Papers, exposing the military nature of the AMRC work and its contribution to the war in South East Asia.
