John North (historian)

John David North ( born May 19, 1934 in Cheltenham, † 31 October 2008) was a British historian of science.

Life and work

North grew up in Yorkshire and studied mathematics and later philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford ( Merton College). He was then first teacher, but also acquired external degrees in mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of London. He taught physics at Magdalen College School in Oxford and conducted research from 1963 to 1968 at the University of Oxford with a Nuffield Foundation Fellowship in the History of Science. He was from 1968 Curator and Librarian ( Assistant Curator ) at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. At the same time he held at Oxford University courses on the history of science along with his mentor and friend Alistair Cameron Crombie from. In 1977 he became professor of science and history of philosophy at the University of Groningen, where he remained until his retirement in 1999. He has been a visiting professor at the Johann -Wolfgang- Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Aarhus University, Yale University, the University of Minnesota and the University of Texas at Austin. 2003 until his death, he was a Senior Research Associate at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. He died of cancer diagnosed in 2005.

North was known by a book about the history of cosmology, which first appeared in 1965 ( The Measure of the universe ) and evolved from his doctoral thesis. Next he published the writings of Richard of Wallingford and wrote his biography. In 1965 he had discovered in the Bodleian Library a draft very accurate continuous clock of Wallingford and as a curator at the Science Museum in Oxford, he was one of the leading international experts for scientific instruments of the Middle Ages. He also wrote books about Stonehenge (where he interpreted the system as an observation site of the winter solstice ), a history of astronomy, of historical horoscopes, the astronomical world view of Geoffrey Chaucer and the ambassador painting by Holbein in the National Gallery. Notes in the painting suggested to North on an exact date (16 clock on Good Friday 11 April 1533), exactly 1500 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, the will to North pointed at a small crucifix in the painting.

North was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and the Leopoldina. He was secretary of the Académie Internationale d' Histoire des Sciences ( from 1983 until his death as Honorary Permanent Secretary ).

He was married to Marion Pizzey since 1957 and had a son and two daughters.

Writings

  • The Measure of the Universe: A History of Modern Cosmology, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1965, Dover 1990
  • Viewegs History of Astronomy and Cosmology, Vieweg 1997 ( English original: Cosmos, a revision and expansion of his Fontana History of Astronomy and Cosmology, 1994).
  • Cosmos - An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology, University of Chicago Press 2008 ( revised edition of Fontana History of Astronomy and Cosmology )
  • The universal frame. Historical essays in astronomy, natural philosophy and scientific method, Hambledon Press 1989
  • Horoscopes and History, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts Volume 13, 1968
  • Richard of Wallingford: an edition of his writings, 3 vols, Oxford University Press 1976
  • Chaucer 's Universe, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988
  • Stonehenge: Neolithic man and the cosmos, Harper and Collins 1996
  • The Ambassadors ' Secret: Holbein and the world of the Renaissance, Hambledon Press 2002
  • God's Clockmaker: Richard of Wallingford and the invention of time, Hambledon Continuum 2006
  • Isaac Newton, Oxford University Press 1967
  • Editor with J. Roche: The light of nature: essays in the history and philosophy of science. Presented to Alistair Cameron Crombie, Dordrecht, Nijhoff 1985
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