1999/12/01 by John V. Pickstone · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #History of Science and Natural History #Biographical and Historical Analysis #Digital and Traditional Archives Management
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0007087499003799
openalex publication_date 1999/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/14
Before the Second World War, few scholars knew how to incorporate science, technology and medicine into social, political or economic history. Nowadays many historians know the methods: university courses, books and (some) museums manifest their skills. For the ‘greats’ of science, and for many lesser figures and groups, we are able to relate scientific ‘works’ to ‘lives’, contexts and audiences, with an analytical sophistication matching the best of current intellectual and cultural history. This progress in historiography owes much to the intellectual and institutional bases built in the 1950s and 1960s, not least in the universities of northern England. Among the pioneers, Donald Cardwell was a perspicacious and persistent innovator, especially in Manchester, where he helped develop both a school of historians and a marvellous museum of science and industry.