s c i e n c e, t e c h n o l o g y a n d m e d i c i n e i n t h e（s c i e n c e t e c h n o l o g y n d m e d我c n e n t h e）（37页）.docVIP

This paper was completed in 2008 and was due to appear in a volume of national studies which has not seen the light of day. John Pickstone died in February 2014. Please cite as David Edgerton and John V Pickstone, ‘Science, Technology and Medicine in the United Kingdom, 1750-2000’, unpublished paper (2008). SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND MEDICINE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, 1750-2000 David Edgerton and John V Pickstone The United Kingdom of Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland has been one of the major scientific nations from the seventeenth century to the present, as is evident from any history of scientific ideas or scientific lives. That relative strength needs stressing for some modes of writing have suggested relative weakness. For example, in a simple history of the emergence of modern scientific institutions, Britain might well be omitted, at least from the eighteenth century. In the conventional historiography of science organisations, the Royal Societies or Academies led the national scientific communities of the European enlightenment; then came the French Revolution and the creation (or re-creation) of the national museums and the professional schools for engineering and medicine; then the creation or re-creation of German state universities which pursued Wissenschaft by research. And in the later nineteenth century, Germany also pioneered the ‘science based’ industrial firm and developed elite technical high-schools and state laboratories. Research universities, technical high-schools, scientific corporations and state laboratories were taken up elsewhere, especially in the USA, and they dominated the science of the later twentieth century, not least through support by government agencies, both military and civil. Indeed, in such an account British institutions tend to appear as belatedly following foreign models. For scientific institutions, it would seem, Britain was a runner-up to Germany before WWI and to the USA thereafter. And yet in thi