Lynn Townsend White, Jr.

Lynn Townsend White, Jr. ( born April 29, 1907 in San Francisco, California, † 30 March 1987) was an American medievalist and historian of science specializing in the technology of the Middle Ages and its social impact.

White in 1934 received his doctorate at Harvard University. He was 1943-1958 President of Mills College in Oakland, and Professor of Medieval History at Princeton University, Stanford University, and from 1958 to his retirement in 1974 at the University of California, Los Angeles. At UCLA, he was the director and founder of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

For his book Medieval Technology and Social Change in 1963 he received the Pfizer Award of the History of Science Society. In 1964 he received the Leonardo da Vinci Medal and in 1970 the Mercer Award and the Dexter Prize. He was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Philosophical Society and the Académie Internationale d' Histoire des Sciences. 1971/72 he was president of the History of Science Society, 1972/73 of the Medieval Academy of America, and 1973, the American Historical Association. He was commander of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy (1971).

In his influential essay The historical roots of our ecological crisis he leads 1966, the ecological crisis as a result of the Industrial Revolution on a Judeo- Christian attitude of domination of nature with roots in the Middle Ages.

Writings

  • Medieval Technology and Social Change, New York: Oxford University Press, 1962, German translation: The Medieval Technology and Social Change, Munich 1968
  • Medieval religion and technology, University of California Press, 1978 ( collection of essays )
  • What accelerated technical progress in the Western Middle Ages?, History of Technology, Volume 32, 1965, pp. 201-220
  • Machina ex deo. Essays in the dynamism of western culture, MIT Press 1968
  • Latin Monasticism in Norman Sicily, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Mediaeval Academy of America, 1938
  • As editor: Frontiers of knowledge in the study of man, New York, Harper 1956
  • Educating our daughters. A challenge to the colleges, New York, Harper 1950
  • As editor: Transformation of the roman world. Gibbon 's Problem after two centuries, Berkeley, University of California Press 1966
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