The history of science, medicine and technology at Oxford

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Restricted accessMoreSectionsView Full TextView PDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Cite this article Fox Robert 2006The history of science, medicine and technology at OxfordNotes Rec. R. Soc.6069–83http://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2005.0129SectionRestricted accessThe history of science, medicine and technology at Oxford Robert Fox Robert Fox [email protected] Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author Robert Fox Robert Fox [email protected] Google Scholar Find this author on PubMed Search for more papers by this author Published:18 January 2006https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2005.0129ReferencesNotes1R. W. T. Gunther, A history of the Daubeny Laboratory, Magdalen College Oxford (Oxford University Press, 1904). Google Scholar2R. W. T. Gunther, The Daubeny Laboratory register 1904–1915 (printed in Oxford for the subscribers by Oxford University Press, 1916); The Daubeny Laboratory register 1916–1923 (printed in Oxford for the subscribers by Oxford University Press, 1924). Google Scholar3R. W. T. Gunther, Early science in Oxford (14 volumes) (privately printed in Oxford, variously ‘for the subscribers’ and ‘for the author’, 1920–45). Google Scholar4Catalogue of a loan exhibition of early scientific instruments in Oxford opened by Sir William Osler after his presidential address to the Classical Association on 16 May 1919 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1919). Google Scholar5On Gunther's campaign and his role in the founding of the museum, see the account by A. V. Simcock, the museum's archivist and former librarian, in Robert T. Gunther and the Old Ashmolean (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, 1985). Google Scholar6I am indebted to Tony Simcock for his perception of Singer's time in Oxford. More generally, on this early period in the development of the discipline, see Simcock, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 65–75, and J. B. Morrell, Science at Oxford 1914–1939. Transforming an arts university (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997), pp. 261–263. On Singer, see also Charles Webster, ‘Medicine as social history: changing ideas on doctors and patients in the age of Shakespeare’, in L. G. Stevenson (ed.), A celebration of medical history (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, 1982), pp. 103–126. Google Scholar7A. C. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo. The history of science A.D. 400–1650 (Falcon Educational Books, London, 1952; since reissued under various imprints). Google Scholar8A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the origins of experimental science 1100–1700 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1953; reissued in 1971 by Clarendon Press). Google Scholar9A. C. Crombie, Styles of scientific thinking in the European tradition. The history of argument and explanation especially in the mathematical and biomedical sciences and arts (3 volumes) (Duckworth, London, 1994). Google Scholar10A. C. Crombie (ed.), Scientific change. Historical studies in the intellectual, social and technical conditions for scientific discovery and technical invention from antiquity to the present. Symposium on the history of science, University of Oxford, 9–15 July 1961 (Heinemann, London, 1963). Google Scholar11W. K. Hancock and M. M. Gowing, British war economy (HMSO, London, 1949); E. L. Hargreaves and M. M. Gowing, Civil industry and trade (HMSO, London, 1952). Google Scholar12M. M. Gowing, Britain and atomic energy, 1939–1945 (Macmillan, London, 1964). Google Scholar13M. M. Gowing (assisted by Lorna Arnold), Independence and deterrence. Britain and atomic energy, 1945–1952 (2 volumes) (Macmillan, London, 1974). Google Scholar14C. Webster, The Great Instauration. Science, medicine, and reform, 1626–1660 (Duckworth, London, 1975; Holmes & Meier, New York, 1976; 2nd edition published by Peter Lang, Bern, 2002). Google Scholar15For example, as the supervisor of the DPhil thesis of Mordechai Feingold on ‘Science, universities and society in England 1560–1640’ (1980), which led on to Feingold's book, The mathematical apprenticeship. Science, universities and society in England, 1560–1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1984). Google Scholar16C. Webster, Problems of health care. The National Health Service before 1957 (HMSO, London, 1988); Government and health care. The National Health Service 1958–1979 (HMSO, London, 1996). See also the same author's The National Health Service. A political history (Oxford University Press, 1998; 2nd edition published by Oxford University Press, 2002). Google Scholar17Harrison's own special interests, in war, imperialism, and medicine since 1700, are reflected in his main books: Public health in British India. Anglo-Indian preventive medicine 1859–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Climates and constitutions. Health, race, environment and British imperialism in India 1600–1850 (Oxford University Press, 1999), and Medicine and victory. British military medicine in the Second World War (Oxford University Press, 2004). Medicine and victory won the 2004 Templer medal book prize of the Society for Army Historical Research. See also the jointly authored volume: M. Harrison, S. Bhattacharya and M. Worboys, Fractured states. Smallpox, vaccination and public health policy in British India, 1800–1947 (Orient Longman, Hyderbad, 2005). Google Scholar18An important recent fruit of Pelling's work in this area is her book (with Frances White) Medical conflicts in early modern London. Patronage, physicians, and irregular practitioners 1550–1640 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2003). She has also prepared a valuable database of fellows of the College of Physicians of London and other medical practitioners between 1550 and 1640. This is available via the history of science portal (http://histsciences.univ-paris1.fr/databases/cpl) organized from the Université de Paris I (Sorbonne) by Pietro Corsi. An Oxford DPhil who worked with Charles Webster in the late 1970s, Corsi published an extended version of his thesis as Science and religion. Baden Powell and the Anglican debate, 1800–1860 (Cambridge University Press, 1988). Google Scholar19See, as an example of the work that Weindling published during his time in the Unit, Health, race and German politics between national unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1989). Google Scholar20P. Chakrabarti, Western science in modern India. Metropolitan methods, colonial practices (Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2004). Google Scholar21J. S. Rowlinson, Cohesion. A scientific history of intermolecular forces (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Google Scholar22R. Fox and G. J. N. Gooday (eds), Physics in Oxford 1839–1939. Laboratories, learning, and college life (Oxford University Press, 2005). The collaboration that led to this volume had its origins in the years 1992–94, when Graeme Gooday was attached to the Modern History Faculty as a Royal Society/British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow. Google Scholar23A grant from the Nuffield Foundation allowed an inventory of instruments, photographs, audio tapes and other records to be prepared by Katherine Watson; see K. D. Watson, Sources for the history of science in Oxford (Modern History Faculty, Oxford, 1994). The inventory for the Department of Physics is on pp. 1–33; those for other science departments occupy the rest of Dr Watson's book. A revised inventory, updated by Dr Sanders and currently by his successor as the department's archivist, Dr Jim Williamson, recently retired as university lecturer in physics and a fellow of St Cross College, is accessible on the departmental website (http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/history.asp). Google Scholar24See, for example, R. Fox and A. Guagnini (eds), Education, technology and industrial performance in Europe, 1850–1939 (Cambridge University Press; Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, 1993), R. Fox and A. Nieto-Galan (eds), Natural dyestuffs and industrial culture in Europe, 1750–1880 (Science History Publications, Canton, MA, 1999), and R. Fox and A. Guagnini, Laboratories, workshops, and sites. Concepts and practices of research in industrial Europe, 1800–1914 (Office for History of Science and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 1999). Google Scholar25Papers from these conferences have appeared variously in both hard copy and electronic form. See, for example, R. Fox (ed.), Centre and periphery revisited. The structures of European science, 1750–1914, a special issue of the Revue de la Maison française d'Oxford, vol. 1, no. 2 (2003), and the papers (now on the MFO's website at http://www.mfo.ox.ac.uk) from the conference on ‘History and the public understanding of science’, held at the MFO on 28 and 29 May 2004. Google Scholar26The association with Bologna has resulted in workshops and numerous other contacts at both postgraduate and faculty levels. See, for example, the volume of papers arising from an Oxford–Bologna workshop on laboratories: A. Guagnini (ed.), I laboratori dell'università (Centro internazionale per la storia delle università della scienzia, Università di Bologna, 1996). Google Scholar27For details, see the museum's website (http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk), which also carries a number of online versions of past exhibitions. Google Scholar28CUF lectureships are financed jointly by a college and the university, unlike university lectureships, which are entirely the responsibility of the university. Google Scholar29My most recent personal priority in research has been the completion of a book on French science in the ‘long’ nineteenth century: Science, scientism, and the savant. The public face of natural knowledge in France, 1814–1918 (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, to appear in 2007). Valuable support in the promotion of the international dimension of work in Oxford has come from a number of organizations. These include the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, of which I was president from 1995 to 1997, the newly formed European Society for the History of Science, to whose presidency I was elected in 2004, and the European Science Foundation, where Ian Maclean serves on the steering committee for the ESF's research programme in the history of science, ‘From natural philosophy to science’. Google Scholar30As examples of these contributions, see I. W. F. Maclean, Logic, signs and nature in the Renaissance. The case of learned medicine (Cambridge University Press, 2001), R. Briggs, Communities of belief. Cultural and social tension in early modern France (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989), and N. Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2002). Google Scholar31See, for example, L. W. B. Brockliss, Calvet's web. Enlightenment and the republic of letters in eighteenth-century France (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2002), and P. Slack, The impact of plague in Tudor and Stuart England (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1985). Google Scholar32Savage-Smith, Zimmermann, and Allan, all of them fellows of St Cross College, have done much, with other colleagues (including Francis Maddison, the former curator of the Museum of the History of Science), to promote the study of Islamic science and technology in Oxford. See, for recent examples of their work, E. Savage-Smith (with contributions by G. J. H. van Gelder et al.) A descriptive catalogue of oriental manuscripts at St John's College Oxford (Oxford University Press, 2005), E. Savage-Smith, F. R. Maddison, et al., Science, tools & magic, 2 vols (Oxford University Press, 1997), and J. W. Allan and B. J. J. Gilmour, Persian steel. The Tanavoli collection (Oxford University Press, 2000). With regard to work in progress, the article by Emilie Savage-Smith and Jeremy Johns, ‘The Book of Curiosities: a newly discovered series of Islamic maps’, Imago mundi, 55 (2003), 7–24, is a preliminary study of an important manuscript, now in Oxford, that is currently being edited and translated by a team headed by Savage-Smith. Another major ongoing project is the editing and translation, by Zimmermann, of the treatise by al-Razi, ‘Doubts about Galen’. Google Scholar33The integration of Oxford's historians of mathematics in the wider community is reflected in the collective volume, edited by J. Fauvel, R. Flood and R. J. Wilson: Oxford figures. 800 years of the mathematical sciences (Oxford University Press, 2000). Stedall's work has become a focus for a developing interest in seventeenth-century mathematics, including the work of Thomas Harriot, which also continues to be explored in the annual Thomas Harriot lectures at Oriel College (see note 36 below). Among works already published, see Stedall's A discourse concerning algebra. English algebra to 1685 (Oxford University Press, 2002), The greate invention of algebra. Thomas Harriot's treatise on equations (Oxford University Press, 2003), The arithmetic of infinitesimals. John Wallis 1656, translated from Latin to English with an introduction by Jacqueline A. Stedall (Springer, New York, 2004), and (with Noel Malcolm) John Pell (1611–1685) and his correspondence with Sir Charles Cavendish. The mental world of an early modern mathematician (Oxford University Press, 2005). Google Scholar34All three hold the position of senior research associate in the Museum of the History of Science, as does Robert Anderson, formerly director of the British Museum and now resident in Cambridge but a regular visitor to Oxford. Heilbron was professor and, for some years, vice-chancellor in the University of California at Berkeley. North went on to a chair at the University of Groningen after taking his DPhil in Oxford, for a thesis that was the foundation of his The measure of the universe. A history of modern cosmology (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1965), and holding the position of assistant curator in the Museum of the History of Science. Turner served for many years as assistant curator, later senior assistant curator, in the museum, before moving to Imperial College, London, where he held a visiting professorship in the history of scientific instruments from 1988 to 1998. For examples of recent books published by the Oxford-based senior research associates, see J. L. Heilbron, The sun in the church. Cathedrals as solar observatories (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, and London, 1999), J. D. North, God's clockmaker. Richard of Wallingford and the invention of time (Hambledon & London, London, 2005), and G. L'E. Turner, Renaissance astrolabes and their makers (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2003). Google Scholar35J. A. Bennett and S. Mandelbrote (eds), The garden, the ark, the tower, the temple. Biblical metaphors of knowledge in early modern Europe (Museum of the History of Science in association with the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1998). This volume grew from an exhibition organized jointly by the Museum of the History of Science and the Bodleian Library in 1998. The exhibition (of which an online version is available on the museum's website; see note 27) was accompanied by a series of research seminars and public lectures. Google Scholar36R. Fox (ed.), Thomas Harriot. An Elizabethan man of science (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000). This volume contains revised versions of the first 10 of the annual Thomas Harriot Lectures, inaugurated in Oriel College in 1990 and organized since then by Robert Fox. Google Scholar37The relations between the James Martin Institute (JMI) and the newly established James Martin 21st Century School have yet to be clarified. But the JMI is currently seen as one of a number of Oxford-based institutes associated with, and working in collaboration with, the school (see http://www.21school.ox.ac.uk). Google Scholar Previous ArticleNext Article VIEW FULL TEXT DOWNLOAD PDF FiguresRelatedReferencesDetailsCited by JARDINE B (2019) The museum in the lab: historical practice in the experimental sciences at Cambridge, 1874–1936, BJHS Themes, 10.1017/bjt.2019.6, 4, (245-271), . Fox R and Kokowski M (2017) Historiography of science and technology in focus. A discussion with Professor Robert Fox, Studia Historiae Scientiarum, 10.4467/2543702XSHS.17.006.7707, 16, (69-119), Online publication date: 18-Dec-2017. Bacchi A (2012) X-ray diffraction as a tool in the path from the design of an active pharmaceutical ingredient to the tablet on the shelf, Rendiconti Lincei, 10.1007/s12210-012-0199-8, 24:S1, (109-114), Online publication date: 1-Feb-2013. This Issue22 January 2006Volume 60Issue 1 Article InformationDOI:https://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2005.0129PubMed:17153170Published by:Royal SocietyPrint ISSN:0035-9149Online ISSN:1743-0178History: Published online18/01/2006Published in print22/01/2006 License:© 2006 The Royal Society Citations and impact PDF Download