UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

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Dr Sean F Johnston

Dr Sean JohnstonReader in History of Science and Technology
University of Glasgow
Room 313, Rutherford-McCowan Building
Crichton University Campus
Dumfries
DG1 4ZL

Tel: +44 (0)1387 702038
Fax: +44 (0)1387 702005
Email: s.johnston@crichton.gla.ac.uk

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Teaching

Undergraduate:

Postgraduate:

The Science Studies courses at the Dumfries Campus explore the cultural and intellectual changes wrought by science, technology and medicine, and draw upon the disciplines of history, philosophy and social studies of science and technology.

Research interests and opportunities for research students

Sean Johnston's research interests focus broadly on cultural and social history, and in particular on the history of relationships between science, technology and technical communities, especially the emergence of new technical professions and the consolidation of new scientific knowledge.  A recent research topic has been the history of holography, and his current focus is the emergence of nuclear specialists.  He is affiliated with the Centre for Business History and the Centre for the History of Medicine in the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow Gilmorehill Campus.

The Dumfries Campus library is supported by the excellent holdings at the Gilmorehill campus, where the Special Collections Department holds the papers of some of the most influential scientists of the 19th and 20th centuries. There are also local archives with material relevant for postgraduate studies (MPhil or PhD) in the history of science and history of technology.

Background

Before joining the University of Glasgow, Sean was a research historian at the University of York, and taught both history and philosophy of science and physics as a Research Fellow at the University of  Leeds.  He obtained his PhD in History & Philosophy of Science from the University of Leeds, and BSc and MSc degrees in Physics from Simon Fraser University in Canada. Prior to his doctoral studies, he worked as a physicist and development manager at Canadian and British firms, including a national optics laboratory, a satellite image analysis centre and a cyclotron facility. One of his instruments was designed for the Space Shuttle; another comprises a measurement network that observes the aurora borealis in the Canadian arctic.

Publications

Sean Johnston has published some three dozen papers, book chapters, encyclopaedia articles and translations and over two dozen book reviews on the history and sociology of science and on applied physics.

He has written five books:

History of Science: A Beginner's Guide (Oxford: OneWorld, 2009)

Holographic Visions: A History of New Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

Science in The Shadows: A History of Light and Colour Measurement (Bristol: Institute of Physics Press, 2001), awarded the 2003 Paul Bunge Prize of the Hans R. Jenemann Foundation for the History of Scientific Instruments

Scaling Up, a history of British chemical engineering, in collaboration with Prof. Colin Divall at the University of York (Kluwer, 2000), awarded the 2001 George E. Davis medal of the Institution of Chemical Engineers

The historical study Fourier Transform Infrared: A Constantly Evolving Technology (Chichester: Ellis Horwood, 1991)

A sixth book, The Neutron's Children, is currently in progress.

Scholarly Activities

Grants:

Research is currently supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC); previous funding from the British Academy, Shearwater Foundation, American Institute of Physics and Carnegie Trust.

Memberships: