Emeritus Prof. Roy MacLeod

AB Harvard University; PhD, Litt D Cambridge University
Room J403 Brennan MacCallum Building

+61 2 9351 2855

Roy MacLeod is Professor Emeritus of (Modern) History at the University of Sydney, and an Honorary Associate in the History and Philosophy of Science. He was educated in history, the biochemical sciences, and the history of science at Harvard University (summa cum laude), in sociology at the London School of Economics, and in history and the history of science at Cambridge, where he took the Ph.D degree in 1967.

In 1966, he was elected a Junior Research Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and in the same year became a founding Fellow of the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex. In 1970, he was appointed foundation Reader (and Chairman) in the History and Social Studies of Science at Sussex, and remained a Senior Fellow at SPRU until 1978. Between 1978 and 1982, he held the foundation chair in Science Education at the Institute of Education in London University. In 1982, he moved to Sydney, where until 2003 he taught social, economic, and cultural history; the history of science, medicine, and technology; military history; nuclear history; museum studies; the history of higher education; and the history of science in the expansion of Europe in Africa, India, Asia, Australasia and the Pacific.

He has held senior visiting positions in history and the history of science at Indiana, the Free University (Amsterdam), Harvard, Cambridge (Pembroke College, Clare Hall, and Wolfson College); in the history of ideas at the ANU and the University of California, Santa Cruz; in the history of ideas at the University of Umeå; in university history at the University of Oslo, and in cultural history, at the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, where he has several times been a directeur d'etudes associé. He has lectured in Korea, China, Japan and India, and has been a consultant to the Nobel Foundation, the IDP, the ARC, the ADI, Australian Antarctic Division, OECD, UNESCO, and the Office of National Assessments. He has held a Fulbright Fellowship, an Hon. Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, a Regents Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution; the Edelstein International Fellowship in the History of Chemistry (University of Pennsylvania, Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem); the Rhône-Poulenc Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science and the Ministère des Affaires Ètrangères of France; and the Fowler Hamilton Fellowship at Christ Church, Oxford.

In 1978, he co-founded the Research Centre for History of Science and Technology (RCHST) at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. At Sydney, he has been a co-founder of the University's Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and its Centre for the Human Aspects of Science and Technology; and is a member of its Research Institute on Asia and the Pacific.

He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, the Royal Historical Society of England, the Australian Academy of Humanities, and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. In 2001, he was awarded the Litt.D degree by the University of Cambridge, and in 2005, he received an honorary degree in Arts and Philosophy from the University of Bologna. In 2007, he was awarded a Humboldt Prize by the German Government. In 2005, he was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor at Green College, University of British Columbia. In 2006-07, he was a Leverhulme Visiting Professor in History and the History of Medicine at Oxford University. In 2008, he returns to the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia as the Gordon Cain Fellow, and as a visiting scholar in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1971, he co-founded the quarterly journal Social Studies of Science, and was its co-editor until 1991. He is currently Editor of Minerva, and serves on the editorial boards of seven other journals, including History and Technology (Atlanta); Science Communication (Washington, DC), the Pacific Circle Bulletin (Honolulu), Science, Technology and Society (New Delhi), Health and History (Sydney), Science Studies (Helsinki), and the Journal of War and Culture Studies (London).

He is the author or editor of twenty-two books and about 120 articles in the social history of science, medicine and technology; military history, museum history, Australian and American history, European history; research policy, and the history of higher education. Information about current projects is available upon request.