Day, Peter (Author)
Science and technology are the most potent influences driving the modern world. Most science is done in laboratories but, apart from a generalized image of an anonymous building populated by white-coated figures, few people outside the sciences have any idea how such places come into existence or how they work. This memoir approaches both issues from the author's personal experience. Peter Day's career took him to many countries and laboratories, including the Royal Institution in London, arguably the oldest continuously operating laboratory in the world - and, of course, much else besides. He looks at a selection of these places through the eyes of an 'incomer', trying to understand how they came into being and what makes them tick. He was the first member of his family to go to university and introductory chapters sketch his early life in a small Kentish village and tortuous route into science, along with vignettes of Oxford 50 years ago, a long-lost world. Laboratories, like most other human constructs, are brought into being through the ambition and hubris of individuals, kept going by intellect and sharp elbows, and sometimes brought low by blind egoism. This book shares examples of all these traits of humanity, observed, if not by an outsider then certainly by an incomer. Peter Day is an internationally recognised materials chemist who has received numerous honorary Fellowships, degrees and Academy memberships. From a small village in Kent, his career took him to Oxford and industrial research laboratories in the USA, followed by Directorship of a European institute in France and the Royal Institution in London. As well as many technical papers he has published books and articles about the practise of science, people who carry it out and organisations where it is done.
...MoreDescription The observations of a materials chemist who has worked in many laboratories around the US and Europe.
Book
Gertner, Jon;
(2012)
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
(/isis/citation/CBB001212713/)
Book
Kikuchi, Yoshiyuki;
(2013)
Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry: The Lab as Contact Zone
(/isis/citation/CBB001421134/)
Article
Frost-Arnold, Karen;
(2013)
Moral Trust and Scientific Collaboration
(/isis/citation/CBB001320259/)
Book
Curtis, Rachel;
Leith, Catherine;
Nall, Joshua;
Jones, John;
(2008)
The Dyson Perrins Laboratory and Oxford Organic Chemistry 1916--2004
(/isis/citation/CBB000954681/)
Article
Clémence Pinel;
(March 2021)
Renting Valuable Assets: Knowledge and Value Production in Academic Science
(/isis/citation/CBB574556496/)
Article
Hentschel, Klaus;
Reinhardt, Carsten;
(2011)
Zur Geschichte der Materialforschung
(/isis/citation/CBB001033934/)
Article
Cutcliffe, Stephen H.;
(2009)
Lehigh University's Fritz Laboratory and the Five-Million-Pound Universal Testing Machine
(/isis/citation/CBB000951929/)
Article
Sui, Ping;
(2008)
The Science Sense of Bell Labs
(/isis/citation/CBB000952309/)
Article
Finlay, Mark R.;
(1990)
The industrial utilization of farm products and by-products: The USDA regional research laboratories
(/isis/citation/CBB001180634/)
Article
Hentschel, Klaus;
(2011)
Von der Werkstoffforschung zur Materials Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001033935/)
Article
Thea Goldring;
(2020)
Recovered or Perfected: The Discourse of Chemistry in the Nineteenth-Century Revival of Stained Glass in Britain and France
(/isis/citation/CBB755976997/)
Book
Kaji, Masanori;
Kragh, Helge S.;
Palló, Gábor;
(2015)
Early Responses to the Periodic System
(/isis/citation/CBB001422655/)
Book
Medawar, Jean;
Pyke, David;
(2001)
Hitler's Gift: The True Story of the Scientists Expelled By the Nazi Regime
(/isis/citation/CBB000101880/)
Article
Golinski, Jan;
(2012)
Humphry Davy: The Experimental Self
(/isis/citation/CBB001231164/)
Article
Andrews, Jonathan;
(2010)
From Stack-Firing to Pyromania: Medico-Legal Concepts of Insane Arson in British, US and European Contexts, c. 1800--1913. Part 1
(/isis/citation/CBB001232237/)
Book
Alexander Pechenkin;
(2018)
The History of Research on Chemical Periodic Processes
(/isis/citation/CBB757079672/)
Book
Gary D. Patterson;
Seth C. Rasmussen;
(2014)
Characters in Chemistry: A Celebration of the Humanity of Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB139436491/)
Book
Braun, Hans-Joachim;
Herléa, Alexandre;
(2002)
Materials: Research, Development, and Applications
(/isis/citation/CBB000201758/)
Article
Jonathan Aylen;
(2019)
Stalinism, autarchy, espionage and Marshall Aid: How US strip mill technology came to Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB310682480/)
Book
Linda M. Ambrose;
Joan M. Jensen;
(2017)
Women in Agriculture: Professionalizing Rural Life in North America and Europe, 1880-1965
(/isis/citation/CBB186986941/)
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