Rob Iliffe

Rob Iliffe

University of Oxford

History of Science

Statement: I work on the history of science, specialising in the period 1550-1800. At the IAS I will be working on the history of narratives of scientific creativity from 1620-1980, particularly in connection with the role of the scientific imagination, and associated advice regarding how it should be nurtured, disciplined or even suppressed in order to promote scientific progress. I will look at a number of disputes and totemic creative episodes in the history of science and will examine how the accounts of these events were informed by ideas and practices in the realms such as politics, medicine, psychology and intellectual property. I will concentrate on Western European/US science but will place this work in context by considering how examples of creative work in the sciences were described and understood in China and the Soviet Union.

rlliffe@ias.edu

While at IAS: Office: W-214 Phone: 609-734-8347

Member in Residence for: Year