Launch of the Digital Equatorium

I wrote this post for the Peterhouse Perne and Ward Libraries blog.  It is cross-posted from there with their kind permission.

28 May saw the launch at the Whipple Museum of the online Peterhouse Manuscripts Collection, housed in the Cambridge Digital Library. The collection aims to present highlights from the College’s collection of 276 medieval manuscripts, and will be developed as time and funding allow. High-quality images are presented alongside searchable transcription, commentaries and critical apparatus, making the Peterhouse manuscripts accessible to scholars around the world. Initial work on the collection has been made possible by generous funding from donors to the College, particularly Dr Joe Pesce.

The launch focused on the first manuscript to be digitised, the fourteenth-century Equatorie of the Planetis (MS 75.I). This manuscript has been at Peterhouse since at least 1538, but it was first brought to the world’s attention in the 1950s by the historian of science Derek (de Solla) Price. Price was a PhD student, conducting research into “the history of scientific instrument making”, and came to the Perne Library expecting to examine an unexceptional astrolabe treatise. He found something quite different, as he later recalled:

As I opened it, the shock was considerable. The instrument pictured there was quite unlike an astrolabe – or anything else immediately recognizable. The manuscript itself was beautifully clear and legible, although full of erasures and corrections exactly like an author’s draft after polishing (which indeed it almost certainly is) and, above all, nearly every page was dated 1392 and written in Middle English instead of Latin. [Science Since Babylon, enlarged edition, 1975, 26-27]

What Price saw, one cold December day in 1951...

Price realised straight away that the manuscript might be by the poet and astronomer Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400), whose Treatise on the Astrolabe, probably written in 1391, is a very early example of scientific writing in English. He quickly changed his PhD to focus exclusively on this manuscript, and the resulting thesis (published in 1955) included an edition and translation of the instrument treatise that takes up nine folios of the manuscript (alongside seventy folios of astronomical tables).

The instrument Price could not at first identify turned out to be an equatorium, a device designed to compute the positions of the planets. Few equatoria survive today, but they were popular tools of astronomy and astrology in the later middle ages. They were based on the models of planetary motion explained by the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (c.90-c.168) – essentially three-dimensional diagrams with moving parts. Medieval astronomers took pride in adapting and refining their predecessors’ designs, and the Peterhouse equatorium, whose construction is explained in detail in the manuscript, represents an improvement on the equatoria of notable astronomers such as Campanus of Novara (c.1220-1296) and Richard of Wallingford (1292-1336). Because the manuscript is a draft, we can see the author-translator working out and refining his ideas, learning new techniques and devising improvements as he goes.

Equatorium made at Cavendish Laboratory for
Derek de Solla Price, 1952. Now at Whipple Museum
of the History of Science, Cambridge (Wh.3271).

Price decided to build the equatorium, following the manuscript’s instructions. In an era when historians favoured intensive textual scholarship and did not particularly value reconstruction, this was unusual. So why did Price do it? The answer perhaps lies in his biography. He was from a working-class, Jewish background in the East End of London, and had taken his first PhD in metal physics at the South-West Essex Technical College in 1946. He came to Cambridge from the University of Malaya, where he had been teaching applied mathematics. He arrived in Cambridge in 1951, the year that the University set its first exams in History of Science, and the Whipple Museum of the History of Science opened. The discipline of history of science was in its infancy, and scientists and historians were competing for authority as its boundaries were laid out. In this context, Price clearly felt he needed to establish himself; the publicity surrounding the discovery of a manuscript that might be written in the hand of Chaucer allowed him to do that. Price had worked in the Cavendish Laboratory, helping organise its archives and historic apparatus, and had a good relationship with the Cavendish Professor Sir Lawrence Bragg. Bragg helped him organise a full-scale model of the equatorium to display at an event at the Royal Society in 1952. The model, pictured above, is now at the Whipple Museum. An account of its construction, later loss and rediscovery, has just been published in the Royal Society journal Notes and Records, written by current Petrean Seb Falk.

Now, though, another model of the equatorium has been made – but this one is virtual. Produced by programmer and designer Ben Blundell, in collaboration with Scott Mandelbrote and Falk, the model is embedded in the Digital Library website alongside the manuscript. It allows users to gain the full experience of using the equatorium, giving results for the longitudes of the planets very close to those achieved by modern astronomical computation. In order to produce the model, Blundell needed to create his own calendar that transitioned seamlessly between the Julian and Gregorian systems, and to write new programming language to simulate movement of the equatorium’s silken threads!

Virtual equatorie created by Ben Blundell for the Peterhouse
collection at the Cambridge Digital Library

It is hoped that visitors to the website will gain a new understanding of how the equatorium works and might have been used. It is based on a simplified version of Ptolemy’s planetary models, ignoring the planets’ motions in latitude, and by scaling the parameters of the different planetary models to give them all equally sized deferent circles, their motions in longitude can all be modelled on a single disc. A single epicycle is used, its radius corresponding in size to the common deferent radius; a rotating rule is fixed at its centre and marked with the radii of the planets’ epicycles, which are thereby traced out as it rotates. The longitudes of the planets are found by taking easily calculated linear components of their motion from pre-prepared tables, and transferring those values to the equatorium by laying threads on the scales on the circumference of the disc and epicycle. (For more information, see the explanation on the Digital Library website, and try the model there!)
Study of the manuscript has not been confined to its technical content. At the launch, Professor Kari Anne Rand explained how linguistic and palaeographic evidence has been used to locate the manuscript’s production to the periphery of London, and to cast doubt on its attribution to Chaucer. She showed how certain characteristic features of the scribe’s practised, informal hand appeared in another manuscript that she has found, raising the possibility that an alternative candidate for the authorship of MS 75.I may soon be identified.

Detail from British Library MS Burney 275, f.390v (early 14th century). The illustrator of this copy of Ptolemy's Almagest clearly had some understanding of the use of astronomical instruments.

Whoever wrote the manuscript was part of a thriving astronomical culture, based in but not restricted to the growing universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Instruments like this equatorium were used not just for astrology, or to model the movements of celestial bodies with greater ease, but as a route to greater comprehension of the cosmos. As the picture above indicates (and as Dr Catherine Eagleton reminded us at the launch), devices like astrolabes were familiar features of literate culture. The equatorium was undoubtedly a more complex device but, as the references to the Treatise on the Astrolabe in the Equatorie suggest, it might be a suitable next challenge for someone who had already mastered that more commonplace tool. If the fox could learn from nature with the help of his astrolabe, so too could the medieval English readers who, for the first time in the Peterhouse manuscript, had the opportunity to learn about equatoria in their mother tongue.

Cambridge in 1945

I've just come across this fantastic propaganda film from 1945.  It is a detailed picture of life in Cambridge as the second world war came to a close.  It's fascinating to see what's changed (co-education being the most obvious thing) and what hasn't (just about everything else!).

Readers of this blog might also be interested to see a clip of Sir Lawrence Bragg, then Cavendish Professor, lecturing - it's at 5:52.


Cambridge (1945) from British Council Film on Vimeo.

Hasok Chang and the disgruntled internalists

Regular readers beware: there are no astrolabes in this post!  Instead we'll be engaging with some hardcore historiography.  Comments welcome!

The "Histories of the Sciences" seminar series convened by Professor Nick Jardine at Cambridge's Department of History and Philosophy of Science is generally a low-key affair: at each session one or two texts, by important thinkers who have influenced the way the history of science is studied and written about, are introduced and discussed.  There's half a dozen students and rarely any controversy.

But Monday's session was different: a tense, packed room awaited the appearance in person of the important figure we were discussing: Professor Hasok Chang, who had come to discuss his keynote address at July's International Congress in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (iCHSTM).  For anyone who wasn't in Manchester in July and hasn't watched the address since, here it is:



We were examining the issues raised by Chang alongside a critique of his arguments.  This wasn't in a published paper: in what may well have been a first not only for this seminar series but the whole Department, it was a blog post.  That post was by Michael Bycroft, who recently graduated from this Department.  Because he is now working in Berlin, Dr Bycroft asked me to write up some notes from the seminar.  That's the reason for my current foray into shark-infested historiographical waters.

I don't have room in this post to explain Chang's paper (you'll have to watch the video or wait for its publication in the BJHS).  But suffice it to say that it was entitled Putting Science Back into the History of Science.  Put extremely simply, his argument was that greater focus on the technical content of past science would be of benefit both to history, and to current science.

Bycroft's critique made three main points (again, apologies for simplifying to the point of misrepresentation):

1. Chang could have defended purely internalist (content-focused) history of science more strongly against context-focused history.  In some ways he ended up defending a sort of hybrid.
2. Writers of internalist history of science should defend their work as a valid and valuable form of history.  They should not try and argue that its focus on content makes it superior to other ways of writing.
3. Internalist history can display many of the virtues normally ascribed to hybrid history of science.  For example, it can demonstrate the contingency of science (i.e. that science tackles problems that exist - or appear to exist - in the here and now, rather than advancing along a straight line towards The Truth).  And it can be a form of cultural history - after all, science is a cultural product.

In introducing his paper, Chang accepted these points, while stressing that he was not trying to suggest that internalist history of science was necessarily superior to other ways of doing history of science.

The Seminar
The discussion during the seminar was free-flowing, and I did not take any notes.  As I only have my vague memories to go on, I will not attempt to reconstruct it blow-by-blow.  Rather, I will try to group the points that were made under 4 general themes.

1.  Cultural history vs. rationality: a false dichotomy?
One point that was made focused on the early part of Chang's address, in which he set out to dismiss four false dichotomies that he believes are widespread misconceptions in history of science.  The third of these was between cultural history, which "treats our own civilization in the same way that anthropologists study alien cultures" (Robert Darnton), and the idea that scientists behave rationally.  Put simply, Chang's argument (at 9:53 in the video) was that rationality can still be meaningful even though we acknowledge that it is "fully embedded in and dependent on social, political and institutional settings."

The question that was raised was: what kind of rationality? Whose rationality?  Can we be rational historians writing in the twenty-first century and still aim to approach (or imitate) the rationality of people in the past?  The quite strident answer seemed to be that that is precisely what historians should be doing.  Our particular skill as historians must surely be to straddle two time zones.

2.  How can history stimulate science?
In my view, the most controversial claim Chang made (at 28:34 in the video) was that history of science can and should be looking to contribute towards new discoveries in science.  This point was not addressed directly but it was noted that there were few historians in university science departments, and we rarely look to push ourselves in that direction.  And even if history is rarely going to produce new scientific knowledge (and it's certainly arguable whether that should be its aim), it is surely a good idea for practising scientists to learn from history about the contingent development of their discipline (a point made fully by Chang at 20:43).

So perhaps it is in science departments that history of science can be most useful to society.  Where it is in them already, it seems to perform mainly a sort of ornamental function, helpful for PR purposes but totally divorced from any involvement in or effect on the main business of inevitable scientific progress.  Chang has argued in many papers that the history of science can play an important role in science education - and has practised what he preaches by talking to schoolkids about historical experiments in which water didn't boil at 100°C.  But historians are mainly reduced to carping on the sidelines as scientists fill the airwaves and the public consciousness with a view of history of science that is as embarrassing for real historians as Intelligent Design is for most evolutionary biologists.  (Rebekah Higgitt and others have written about how historians of science sometimes seem just to be spoiling everyone's party.)  Perhaps we can do better if we focus our efforts more at scientists.

3.  Isn't this all just obvious?  The insecurity of historians of science
Always one for practising what he preaches, Chang has just launched a new reading/discussion group called Coffee with Scientists, which aims to bring together scientists and historians, to the benefit of both.  It was one of those scientists who raised the commensense objection: DUH! Of course history of science needs to have science in it!  What's the point of studying something if you're not prepared to engage with its content?  This question, and those that followed along the same lines, occupied most of the seminar.

A key question was: if you engage with content, how critical can you be?  Chang himself had made the analogy with historians of art (at 14:29) - they have no problem being historians and art critics at the same time.  But historians of science feel uncomfortable exercising judgment in the same way, for fear of being branded "Whiggish".  Against this, Chang says (at 16:47) "we only need to make sure that our view of past science is not dictated by current scientific orthodoxy.  It is not necessary to abandon all judgment."

There was a sense from some in the seminar that historians of science are too insecure, and spend too much time justifying what we do.  We are obsessed with theorising our own discipline, and perhaps we should just get on and do it!  But it is precisely our desire to change things in the present - changing people's views of science - that forces us to justify ourselves, which is what theory seems to be for.  To take mainstream political history as an example: most of the time it is not especially interested in changing the present, so political historians look for little theoretical support.  But post-colonial history often has an explicit political agenda, and so tends to have far more theoretical baggage too.

4.  Is internalism superior?  Prove yourself!
This brought us back to internalist history of science, which was then presented as a solution to historians' insecurities.  Do we need to prove that we know what we're talking about?  A point was raised that had been made in a comment on Bycroft's blog post: the depth principle, which states that we need to know a lot more than we write about.  But should we have to wear that knowledge like a scout badge?

As time ran out in the seminar, the suggestion was made that we should emulate some notable historians of science, who have written one absurdly complex internalist work at the beginning of their career.  Their scientific credentials thus established, they have spent the rest of their working lives writing contextualist, cultural history of science - and no-one has dared accuse them of ignorance.

What's the conclusion?  I don't know.  I may come back and add one once I've had some more time to mull over the issues raised in the seminar.  For now, please join the debate and add your own comments.  And if you were at the seminar and feel I've missed, misrepresented or misunderstood something, please say so!

Museums and their Public

What do museums owe the public?  And what should the public give museums?

These questions have been on my mind recently, as I've been completing an internship at Cambridge's Whipple Museum of the History of Science.  The Whipple is part of Cambridge University and has an ambiguous relationship with the public.  It is open to all, and entrance is free.  But the founding charter of the Museum emphasizes its importance as "a teaching instrument and an accessory to modern research."  So it is first and foremost a resource for the University.

Visitors to the Museum sometimes ask if the opening hours - currently Monday to Friday, 12.30-4.30 - could be extended.  And the Museum has started opening on a few Saturdays each year.  But because it doesn't charge for admission, and is not publicly funded, it can treat its visitors as guests rather than customers: they are welcome, but their rights are limited.

Nevertheless, of course it's ridiculous to say that the public has nothing to offer the Whipple.  For starters, there is a donation box right in front of you when you walk into the beautiful 17th-century main gallery.  And the Museum has benefited in the past from bequests and legacies from large-scale individual donors, and will continue to welcome such gifts in the future.  Those donors are not all connected with the University.  Less directly, if the Museum is primarily a research institution, it needs researchers.  How will the next generation of reseachers gain access to, and become interested in, the material culture of science?  Finally, what's the point of doing research unless you're going to tell people what you've found out?

The question underlying all of this, of course, is: who is the public?  It's a question that has been implicit in a lot of recent media coverage of arts funding, with renewed discussion of the reintroduction of admission fees to publicly funded museums.  Among other points, it's been suggested that museums don't truly serve the general public - only a minority, from the middle and upper classes - so they shouldn't be publicly funded.  And I've heard several people ask why UK taxpayers should subsidise the vacation activities of foreign visitors to this country.  Maybe we should make tourists pay?

The new 1 WTC, set to be 1776 feet tall

These questions were put into new perspective for me when I visited the USA recently.  In New York I went to two top attractions: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero.  Both are open seven days a week, and they have the same policy on admissions fees: pay whatever you like.

The Met is quite secretive about this policy.  The word "recommended" does appear about the admissions fees on their website, but they advertise the principal benefit of membership (basic cost: $70/year) as free admission to the Museum, which would be odd unless most people were unaware that it is free anyway.  (Or almost free: I believe the official policy is that you must pay something, if only 1 cent.)  I certainly wouldn't have noticed unless I had been tipped off.  In fact the Met was recently sued for not making it clear enough that it was free - a charge vigorously contested by the Met's Director, who pointed out that not only are there clear signs that it is free, but also all their special exhibitions are free too - something that can't be said of our own cherished institutions such as the British Museum and National Gallery.

The Met Museum Cloisters: definitely worth a special trip uptown

So what does this policy tell us about the Met?  Simply, I guess, that it is there for the public, but that it needs to maximise its income (only a small proportion of its running costs come from the public purse).  Locals can come and go as they please, but by making visitors line up and collect a ticket, the Museum does its best to ensure that it extracts at least a small donation from them.  (I did pay something, albeit not the full recommended fee.)  By giving people the option to pay less (or more), visitors are forced to consider what the opportunity to see a world-class collection of culture is worth to them.  Is it worth as much as a trip to the cinema? A ticket to a sports game? Dinner at a restaurant?

A little history of science at the Met Museum Cloisters

Yes, I felt a little uncomfortable when I stood at the ticket desk and handed over my smaller-than-recommended banknote - but that's as it should be.  It made me think about the value of all this - and in any case, it's a small price to pay when you consider that the admissions fees not only fund the acquisition, conservation and presentation of the peerless collection, but also first-rate visitor facilities such as the excellent MyMet pages on its website, which together with free Museum wi-fi mean you can save any object to look at later, or download high-resolution images.  I wish all those people taking photos of the Monets knew about this!

The issue is a little different at the 9/11 Memorial.  The front page of their website has a large highlighted option to "reserve free visitor pass", though there is an online booking fee, and when I went to the Preview Site/gift shop to get a ticket on the day I visited, I was asked how much I wanted to donate.  Once again the question has to be: who is the public?  Who is this for?  Is it a memorial to the 3,000-odd people who died on that day in 2001?  A park for relaxation and contemplation amidst the hubbub of downtown Manhattan?  A defiant statement against terrorism from/for the people of the world?  Can it be all those things?

It could be argued that the best way to defy the terrorists would have been to redevelop the site as if nothing had happened, filling it with more high-rise hotels and office blocks.  Indeed I might (somewhat facetiously) note that the tight security measures - my bag was X-rayed and my ticket checked fully five times - suggest that, in some way, Osama bin Laden won.

Even without the airport-style security, it's hard to see people using this as a tranquil green space.  For one thing, the two huge waterfalls that fill the footprints of the Twin Towers are incredibly loud.  This means that visitors are not as hushed as I would have expected.  When I visited the makeshift memorial that preceded this one, in 2007, there was a respectful, awestruck silence; you could sense the raw emotion.  I didn't feel that this time.  Was it because of the noise?  Or simply the passing of time?

In Spring 2014 the 9/11 Museum, whose design, in the words of the architects, was "guided by the principles of memory, authenticity, scale and emotion", will open.  This, perhaps, will be a more reverent space.  But one with an admissions fee - perhaps $20-25.  (The Memorial park will remain free.)  I wonder what further changes will occur with time.  Will the security measures be eased?  As memories fade - remember that most kids starting secondary school next month weren't born on 11 September 2001 - will the Memorial become less a place of pilgrimage and more a peaceful spot for office workers and tourists to sit and enjoy a sandwich?  It will be very interesting to see how this site, its atmosphere, and its public, change.

Have you visited these places?  If so, I'd be interested to hear about your experiences - please leave a comment below.

Three Faces of Derek de Solla Price

This post is cross-posted from the Connecting with Collections blog.

I recently read a fascinating article about the early years of the discipline of history of science in Cambridge.  It was helpful to me in lots of ways but one idea the author, Anna-K Mayer, had was to examine various photographs of the key figures in that story - famous historians and scientists like Herbert Butterfield and Joseph Needham.  These men were public figures, and they took care over how they appeared in photographs.  So we can get an idea of the public image they wanted to create for themselves from the photographs that survive of them.

I thought I'd look at three pictures of Derek de Solla Price, the subject of my research, with a similarly critical eye.  They are from different stages of his career, but all three were published.  There is a question, of course, about how much control he had over them, but even at a young age he had a thirst for publicity - within a couple of months of finding the Equatorie of the Planetis manuscript he had splashed the story in The Times.  So I'm confident that from the start of his career he had a fairly clear idea of how he wanted to be portrayed.  Anyway, here's the first photo:

It's from Varsity, the Cambridge University newspaper, and accompanies the first article that was written about Price's discovery of the manuscript.  Smartly dressed but youthful, gazing directly into the camera, he is every inch the confident, upstart young academic.  His mouth is slightly open, as if eager to enlighten us about what he has discovered.  And of course he is superimposed onto a picture of the manuscript, linking himself as firmly as possible with his discovery and his newfound career as a historical detective.

The next is this photo, courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University:

In 1959 Price moved to Yale, where he became Avalon Professor of the History of Science, setting up a new department there.  This photo (left) was taken while he was at Yale, probably in around 1970.  It shows a more settled, thoughtful Price, who looks sidelong at us with a glance that is not unfriendly, but seems to assess us critically.  This is certainly how one would expect the avuncular expatriate English academic to appear.  The Englishness is emphasised with the pipe, which at that time would have reminded many people of former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (below).

Supermac

 The final photo was taken to accompany an interview with Price in the popular science magazine OMNI.  The photographer was Malcolm Kirk, a noted portraitist, and the date was August 1982, when Price was 60 - just a year before he died.

Price still has his pipe, but this is a wholly different shot.  With the pale-rimmed glasses and dark suit, he is more dignified than before.  He is photographed from above, making him smaller and certainly less intimidating than in the previous photo, but he is also leaning forward - there is no sense of retirement for this 60-year-old.  He looks straight at the camera, not aggressively, but inquisitively and again somewhat critically.  The strapline on the accompanying article called him "Yale's iconoclastic historian of science", and the photograph conveys a vivid impression of this.  With a model of the Antikythera Mechanism in front of him, this is no distant theoretician, but a man who knows about things - really complicated things.

It's always useful to remind ourselves that a picture, even a  photograph, can never be taken at face value.  It is the result of a huge number of decisions on the part of artist and subject: clothes; hairstyle, lighting, props, background, body language, facial expression, and so on.  We may not always control these consciously, but they can still be revealing.  And by comparing photographs from different times, we can get a good idea of how someone's image can change.  It may be an image they wish to promote, or an unvarnished self-image, or a combination of the two - but whichever it is, it gives us plenty to think about.

Why did Derek de Solla Price come to Cambridge?

This post is cross-posted from the Connecting with Collections blog.

In a previous post I introduced one of the main subjects of my research: the historian of science Derek de Solla Price.  Price, you'll recall, was studying for his second PhD here in Cambridge when he discovered the Equatorie of the Planetis manuscript in the library of Peterhouse.  As part of his research, he had what we're calling King Arthur's Table built at the Cavendish Laboratory.

Price c. 1948, shortly before coming to
Cambridge.  Courtesy of the Price family.

My research has raised lots of questions about Price.  These are interesting not only from a biographical point of view, but also for anyone curious about the atmosphere in which the history of science was launched as a separate discipline in Cambridge in the 1940s and 1950s.  The most obvious of these questions is: why did Price, at the age of 28, suddenly decide to become a historian of science?

This was a big decision.  In 1950 he already had a PhD in metal physics, and was teaching applied mathematics at the then University of Malaya, in Singapore.  He was aged 28, with a wife and baby daughter.  His work was going well: his boss at the University described him as "a very stimulating and helpful teacher."  But something made him give up his job and move halfway across the world.  He came to Cambridge with no prospect of a job and no real idea of what he was going to do.  Why?

With the help of the archives of Cambridge University and the Royal Institution, I have been able to go some way towards answering this question.  Fortunately, Cambridge's Board of Research Studies kept a file for Price, which still exists in the University archives.  In addition, Sir Lawrence Bragg, who was a mentor to Price (and about whom I've blogged previously), kept a good deal of correspondence relating to him; this is now at the Royal Institution.

When Price was considering coming to Cambridge, the historian C. Northcote Parkinson, who was a colleague of his at the University of Malaya but had previously been a fellow of Emmanuel College, wrote to the Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield.  (Parkinson is now best remembered as the inventor of Parkinson's Law, familiar to all students: work expands to fill the time available.)  Parkinson wrote:

A younger colleague of mine here, an applied mathematician with knowledge of physics, has been taking a great interest of late in the history of science...  I think his career may have suffered a little from the breadth of his interests...  His work latterly has been historical and he has been fortunate in having here a complete set of the Transactions of the Royal Society...

He tells me that he means to return to England in December on the general principle that if he does not return soon he will not return at all.  And he wants, if possible, to find a post as a lecturer in the history of science...  So I have taken the liberty of writing to you... to ask whether there is any opportunity going for Dr Price.

Sure enough, Price did return to England in December 1950.  He found a small house in Cambridge and from there wrote to A.R. (Rupert) Hall, who was the University's only lecturer in history of science, as well as part-time curator of the Whipple collection (which did not yet have a home).  Hall told Bragg about Price's letter:

I am not quite clear what he wants, but I shall be getting in touch with him immediately.  I know that he would like either a Research Fellowship or University post, but it seems to me that there is no chance of either for him at the moment here...

He would also like to work in Cambridge on a research grant, and I should be very pleased to see him here, and give him all the help I can...  But it does seem to depend rather on money from elsewhere.

Bragg suspected that there might be some pressing problem that made Price want to leave Singapore, and urged Hall to investigate.  Both Hall and Butterfield met with Price, who decided to submit an application to study for a PhD in early 1951.  Butterfield wrote to W. J. Sartain, the Secretary of the Board of Research Studies:

He definitely gave me the impression of a person moving to the History of Science as a result of a long-standing interest in the subject and a real internal urge.  I have had many applications from people wanting to try something on in the History of Science, but on the whole I am quite prepared to believe that Mr. Price is a person we ought to observe and take care of.

Finally, it's worth quoting Price's own words, in his application statement:

The subject of the research that I desire to pursue is "The History of Scientific Instrument Making"... Recent developments in the History of Science have clearly indicated the important role of changes in accuracy and design of instruments in the advancement of scientific knowledge...

My professional work as a physicist and my teaching experience have given me a rather wide acquaintance with the use and construction of scientific instruments, and it is this knowledge that I propose to use in the assessment of accuracy and design of early instruments.

So, contrary to Bragg's suspicions about professional problems, or fear about political upheavals in Malaya, it was a simple case of an unfulfilled passion.  (Of course there's certainly more to say about Price's implicit assumption that scientific knowledge and experience were the most important attributes in charting the apparent linear progress of the sciences.)  Price certainly showed his passion when he started his studies in Cambridge, wasting no time in making a name for himself.  He was, of course, to go on to become a successful academic and celebrated analyst of the growth of science.