Roy MacLeod

Roy MacLeod studied history and biochemistry at Harvard University and was awarded the AB degree summa cum laude.[1]

From 1963 to 1966 he studied the history of science at Cambridge University as a Fulbright Fellow and in 1967 he was awarded the PhD.[2]

MacLeod held the first junior research fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge from 1966 until 1970. Simultaneously, as a result of a visit to the University of Sussex at the invitation of Asa Briggs in 1965, he was also appointed a founding Research Fellow in the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) in 1966.[1]

Four years later, in 1970, while remaining a Research Fellow at SPRU, he was further appointed as foundation Reader in the History and Philosophy of Science at Sussex, where he set up a new subject group called the History and Social Studies of Science.[3]

In 1971 MacLeod co-founded the academic journal Social Studies of Science, focused on the history and sociology of science and technology, and he remained co-editor until 1992.[1]

In 1978 he left the University of Sussex to take up his first professorial position as foundation chair in Science Education at the Institute of Education at the University of London.

In 1982 he left London and moved to Sydney, Australia to accept the chair of Professor of History at the University of Sydney,[1][2] where he remained for the next 21 years.

While at Sydney he taught social, economic, and cultural history; Australian and Commonwealth history; medical history; military history; nuclear history; museum studies; the history of higher education; and the history of science and technology in Europe, India, Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific.[2]

In 2000 MacLeod was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the academic sociology journal Minerva, remaining in the position until 2008.[4]

In 2003 he retired from the University of Sydney and was conferred by that university with the title Emeritus Professor of History.[5] He is also an Honorary Professor at the University's Centre for International Security Studies, an Honorary Associate in the School of History and Philosophy of Science and an Honorary Member of the Sydney Nano Institute.[1][2]

Roy MacLeod is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London,[6] of the Royal Historical Society,[7] of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia,[8] of the Australian Academy of the Humanities,[2][9] and of the Royal Society of New South Wales.[10] He has twice been a fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in the United States (now the Science History Institute).[11]

In 2001 he was awarded the Doctor of Letters degree by Cambridge University[2] and received the Humboldt Prize[1] from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In the same year he was also awarded the Centenary Medal by the Australian government.[12]

In 2005 the University of Bologna awarded him a doctorate honoris causa.[13]

In 2017 the Royal Society of New South Wales awarded him its History of Philosophy and Science Medal.[10]

In the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for service to education, particularly to history.[14]

Some of his books are:[15][16]

• Treasury Control and Social Administration: Establishment Growth and the Local Government Board, 1871-1905 (1968)
• Perspectives on the Emergence of Scientific Disciplines (1976)
• The Parliament of Science: the British Association for the Advancement of Science 1831-1981 (1981)
• Days of Judgement: Science, Examinations, and the Organization of Knowledge in Late Victorian England (1982)
• The Government of Victorian London, 1855-1889: The Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries, and the City Corporation (1982) (co-authored with David Owen)
• Technology and the Human Prospect (1986)
• The Commonwealth Of Science: ANZAAS And The Scientific Enterprise In Australasia, 1888-1988 (1988)
• Disease, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Western Medicine and the Experience of European Expansion (1988) (co-authored with Milton Lewis)
• Government and Expertise: Specialists, Administrators and Professionals, 1860-1919 (1988)
• Nature in its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific (1988) (co-authored with Philip Rehbock)
• Health and Healing in Tropical Australia and Papua New Guinea (1991) (co-authored with Donald Denoon)
• Darwin's Laboratory: Evolutionary Theory and Natural History in the Pacific (1994) (co-authored with Philip Rehbock)
• Public Science and Public Policy in Victorian England (1996)
• The Library of Alexandria: Centre of Learning in the Ancient World (1999)
• Science and the Pacific War: Science and Survival in the Pacific, 1939-1945 (2000)
• Frontline and Factory: Comparative Perspectives on the Chemical Industry at War, 1914-1924 (2006)
• Archibald Liverside, FRS: Imperial Science under the Southern Cross (2009)
• For Science, King & Country: The Life and Legacy of Henry Moseley (2018)

• Official website