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Program Profile: University of Leeds
When was your program established and how has it developed since its inception?
The origins of History & Philosophy of Science at Leeds date back to 1954 when mathematician Mary Hesse encouraged the newly arrived philosopher Steven Toulmin to set up an HPS group. Three years later Toulmin hired June Goodfield and the historian of science Jerome Ravetz, who became a leading figure in the HPS community. Arriving at the height of McCarthyite inquisitions, Ravetz’s long stay at Leeds owed much to the US government’s withdrawal of passport rights from left-wing American scholars. Continuing to cultivate radical ferment, Ravetz nurtured a vigorous community of early modernist science, notably Charles Webster and Piyo Rattansi.
The next generation of Leeds HPS scholars: Robert Olby, Geoffrey Cantor, John Christie and Jonathan Hodge shifted research to more recent topics, as epitomized in their edited Companion to the History of Modern Science (Routledge 1990). The subsequent history of the program to 2006 has been told by Graeme Gooday in “History and Philosophy of Science at Leeds,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society 60 (2006), 183–92 http://www.hps.leeds.ac.uk/HPS/RSNR20050093p.pdf
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At present the Centre for HPS at Leeds includes:
- Stathis Arapostathis – history of electrical engineering and patents
- Geoffrey Cantor (emeritus) – history of science and religion
- Alix Cohen – Kant, anthropology and the history of the human sciences
- Steven French – philosophy of science and history of modern physics
- Graeme Gooday – history of electrical technology and intellectual property
- Gregory Radick – history of biology and human sciences, especially genetics
- Juha Saatsi – philosophy of science and history of physics
- Jonathan Topham – book history and history of science communication
- Sophie Weeks – Francis Bacon and early modern natural philosophy
- Adrian Wilson – history of medicine, philosophy of history.
What are the comprehensive exam fields?
To be admitted to our Ph.D. program, you must normally have a Masters degree in a relevant subject, or at least be on track to complete it. The HPS Centre currently offers three one-year Masters degrees of this sort, principally the M.A. in History & Philosophy of Science. This contains modules in “Modern Science,” “Current Research in HPS,” a 12,000-word research dissertation, a skills training module (e.g. “Historical Skills and Practices”); students must choose one elective e.g. in history of medicine, science communication, science and religion, history & philosophy of biology, or gender and science. We also offer M.A. programs in Science Communication, with a strong historical focus, and in the Philosophy of Physics.
What are the faculty, program, and resource strengths?
Our program strengths lie in the history of early modern science and medicine; nineteenth century life sciences, physics and technology; history of science communication; history of modern physics; and the history of intellectual property. Ph.D. students are supported by grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Department’s own funds, and University studentships.
Our department has been successful in obtaining funds from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy (BA) to lead internationally significant collaborative research projects. From 1999-2006 Geoffrey Cantor co-led a project funded by the AHRC and Leverhulme involving Topham and Gooday (among others) “Science in the Nineteenth Century Periodical” that produced two books and the free searchable database http://www.sciper.org/. Since 2007 Gooday has led the AHRC funded collaborative project involving Arapostathis and Radick (among others) “Owning and Disowning Invention: Intellectual Property, Identity and Authority in British Science and Technology, 1880-1920.” Gooday also leads the BA-funded Leeds branch of the international Tyndall Correspondence Project while Radick now has his own developing “IPBio Project” on intellectual property rights in contemporary biosciences.
Over the last five years, HPS at Leeds has built up strong working relationships with regional museums, notably the Thackray Medical Museum and the Leeds City Museum, as well as with national museums, such as the National Maritime Museum in London and the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum in Cornwall. We now have six students working on museums-related Ph.D. projects funded by the AHRC’s Collaborative Ph.D. awards. The Leeds program is also developing its own Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine incorporating resources from the Leeds Nobel Prize winner William H. Bragg, the pioneering molecular biologist William Astbury, and the prototype of the MONIAC analog computer for economic computation and modelling. Further nearby museums providing opportunities for collaboration include the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds and the National Media Museum in Bradford.
Leeds’ vibrant and international HPS community is ideal for graduate students wanting to study history of science, technology and medicine in the modern era, including book history. Our University Libraries hold excellent archival, journal and book collections for historical research, and comparably rich in book holdings is the Leeds Library – set up by Joseph Priestley in 1768 – which is the UK’s oldest surviving private subscription library.
Our graduate students have excellent job prospects: James Sumner (Ph.D. 2004) is now a lecturer in history of technology at the University of Manchester, and Sophie Weeks (Ph.D. 2007 ) commences as a lecturer in history of science at the University of Leeds in fall 2009.
What are some recent dissertations that have been produced by graduating students?
Current graduate students work on a wide range of topics, including the development of transatlantic Newtonianism; the development of ultraviolet and X-ray therapies for skin disease; the rise of medical trade catalogues; the development of agricultural genetics; lunatic asylums and sciences of the brain; anthrax in Victorian Yorkshire; nineteenth-century embryology; early telegraph technicians; science communication in Thailand; and the rise of the forceps in midwifery.
Doctoral theses from students graduating in the last five years include:
James Sumner, “The Metric Tun: Standardisation, Quantification and Industrialisation in the British Brewing Industry, 1760-1830”
Sophie Weeks, “Knowledge and Power in Francis Bacon’s Instauratio Magna”
Richard Gunn, “A Critical Examination of Lewis Mumford’s Account of Technics”
Christopher Renwick, “The British Debate about the Identity of Sociology, 1876-1908”
Josep Simon, “Communicating Physics in Nineteenth-Century France and England: The Production, Distribution and Use of Ganot’s Textbooks”
Further information about our HPS program can be found at: http://www.hps.leeds.ac.uk/
Further information about our graduate students can be found at: http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/PhilosophyPostgraduate/graduates.htm
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