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There has been a tendency to view science in nineteenth-century France as the exclusive territory of the nation’s leading academic centers and the powerful Paris-based administrators who controlled th

The papers in this volume represent the first attempt at a coherent analysis of the institutional structure of French science and technology in the nineteenth century. They treat both research and education and cover the main developments in the period from the establishment of the Napoleonic University in 1808 to the outbreak of the First World War. The papers reflect the intense interest in the social history of French science since the Revolution and convey a vivid impression of different modes of thought in a particularly active field of research. The contributions stress and develop more clearly than in any previous study, the theme of structural change in a complex interlocking network of institutions. Far from being an unresponsive monolith, France's system of scientific research and education proved capable of significant modification and expansion, especially in the later nineteenth century. To an extent that has not been fully recognised by historians, the French did respond

In his long and distinguished academic career, historian Robert Fox has specialized in the modern history of physical science, particularly in France, from 1700 onward. In Science Without Frontiers, h