Private Science: Biotechnology and the Rise of the Molecular Sciences (Chemical Sciences in Society) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0812234286 ISBN 13: 9780812234282

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998

Synopsis

The word "Biotechnologie," used to describe technology based on biological raw materials, was coined in Hungary in 1917 by Karl Ereky, who met the threat of wartime famine by intensive fattening of huge numbers of pigs. Today, 250 public companies and perhaps another thousand privately held corporations are represented by the Biotechnology Industry Organization—all of them in the business of altering the genetic make-up of living things—and their activities have become the subject of vigorous debate among scholars, policymakers, and numerous other groups. Private Science is a contribution to that debate, focusing particularly on the relationships among corporations, universities, and national governments involved in biotechnological research. Essays in this collection examine the political and economic operations of the biotechnology industry and place those operations in historical context, tracing the history of both the institutional frameworks within which they developed and the ideas, attitudes, and language which shaped, and continue to shape, their development.

The twelve essays in the volume focus on the relationships among corporations, universities, and national governments involved in biotechnological research. They examine the political and economic operations of the industry and place those operations in historical context, tracing the history of the institutional frameworks within which they evolved as well as the ideas, attitudes, and language which shaped, and continue to shape their development.

About this title

About the Author

Arnold Thackray's many roles in the public life of scholarship include founding and building both the Science History Institute and the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of History and Sociology of Science. Earlier, he was central to the creation of what would become the Churchill Archives Centre (the largest repository of Winston Churchill's papers) at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. He also served as treasurer of the American Council of Learned Societies for over a decade. Thackray has written or edited many books on the modern technosciences, from Atoms and Powers: An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry to Moore's Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley's Quiet Revolutionary.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812234286
• ISBN 13: 9780812234282
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Thackray Arnold