The Role of Education in the Development of a National Science Tradition

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Education has played an important role in shaping distinctive traditions in science. Though we think of science as transcending national boundaries, the way in which fields of science have in fact evolved conceptually is in important part due to local concerns and circumstances. Although Scotland is a small country, its scientists were of major influence and importance in the nineteenth century. However, little is known of the way physics was taught at the universities nor of how traditions were established in the culture. Dr. Wilson's study shows the important role that Scottish institutions played in shaping a distinctive tradition in physics. His work sheds light both on current historiographical issues in the cultural influences on science and on the history of the rise of physics. Specifically, he is writing a history of the natural philosophy class as taught by the professors of natural philosophy in the Scottish universities. Though concentrating on the natural philosophy class, the study seeks to integrate a number of related themes: interactions between Scotland and other countries, the industrialization of Scotland, the history of Scottish higher education, developments within other Scottish subjects like engineering and moral philosophy, and the careers of Scottish students, as well as the changing definition and content of physics itself. Not only will the study contribute to our understanding of the development of physical thought within an important geographical-cultural region, but in doing so, it will also add to our comprehension of the conceptual development of the several internationally prominent physicists produced by Scottish universities during the nineteenth century. Dr. Wilson has established himself as a leading scholar of the nineteenth-century Scottish influence on British physics and higher education. His publications on the Stokes-Kelvin relationship, the results of his prior National Science Foundation support, are an important contribution to the internal and institutional history of British physics. Moreover, he has shown a distinct capability for distilling conclusions of broad significance from his work.