The Making of Modern Science: Science, Technology, Medicine and Modernity: 1789 - 1914 / Edition 1

ISBN-13: 9780745636757 Publisher: Wiley Publication date: 11/16/2009 Series: History of Science , #1 Pages: 272 Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d) Of all the inventions of the nineteenth century, the scientist is one of the most striking. In revolutionary France the science student, taught by men active in research, was born; and a generation later, the graduate student doing a PhD emerged in Germany. In 1833 the word ‘scientist’ was coined; forty years later science (increasingly specialised) was a becoming a profession. Men of science rivalled clerics and critics as sages; they were honoured as national treasures, and buried in state funerals. Their new ideas invigorated the life of the mind. Peripatetic congresses, great exhibitions, museums, technical colleges and laboratories blossomed; and new industries based on chemistry and electricity brought prosperity and power, economic and military. Eighteenth-century steam engines preceded understanding of the physics under