The Liberally-Educated Chemist: Chemistry in the Cambridge Natural Sciences Tripos, 1851-1914

During the 1870s animal morphologists and embryologists at Cambridge University came to dominate British zoology, quickly establishing an international reputation. Earlier accounts of the Cambridge school have portrayed this success as short-lived, and attributed the school's failure to a more general movement within the life sciences away from museum-based description, towards laboratory-based experiment. More recent work has shown that the shift in the life sciences to experimental work was locally contingent and highly varied, often drawing on and incorporating aspects of museum work. Thus in order to understand the more general changes, studies of particular sites are needed. Here I examine the organisation of teaching at Cambridge, both in terms of the spaces in which it was taught and the ways in which teaching and examining were organised, to bring out the complexities of the 'revolt from morphology' and to show in more detail the institutional aspects that intertwined with intellectual change. Francis Maitland Balfour, as head of the Cambridge school, was able to make use of family connections and his own personal wealth to promote morphology. His successor lacked these resources, and once competition within the natural sciences at Cambridge intensified, morphology was unable to compete properly.

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Industrial recruitment of chemistry students from English universities: a revaluation of its early importance

Donnelly

1991

Brit. J. Hist. Sci

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In England, institutionalized locations for science in academe and industry sprang up at approximately the same time, that is to say, during the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War. By the latter date science was well established within most academic institutions and, more rudimentarily, in many industrial firms. Standardized forms of practice were to be found in both sectors, and there existed mechanisms for the transfer of personnel, knowledge and finance between the two. Both sites were of course surrounded and sustained by a network of other institutions and practices: scientific and technical societies and journals, patent and company law, government agencies and so on. Nevertheless, during the period just identified these two developed as the key occupational sites (outside schoolteaching) for men trained in science.

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The Liberally-Educated Chemist: Chemistry in the Cambridge Natural Sciences Tripos, 1851-1914

Cited by 7 publications

References 1 publication

The Natural Sciences and the Development of Animal Morphology in Late-Victorian Cambridge

The Natural Sciences and the Development of Animal Morphology in Late-Victorian Cambridge

The Natural Sciences and the Development of Animal Morphology in Late-Victorian Cambridge

Industrial recruitment of chemistry students from English universities: a revaluation of its early importance

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