Pulitzer Prize History Winner
The Launching of Modern American Science, 1846–1876
by Robert V. Bruce
Summary
Bruce describes how the United States built the institutions, communities, and professional culture of science in the decades surrounding the Civil War. He examines universities, learned societies, government surveys, and the careers of researchers who turned a young nation into a scientific power. The book explains how Americans moved from amateur inquiry toward organized modern research.
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Historical Context & Significance
Bruce won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1988 for this account of the rise of American science in the mid nineteenth century.