Robert Edwin Schofield

Background

Robert Edwin Schofield was born on June 1, 1923, in Milford, Nebraska, United States. He was a son of Charles E. Schofield, a minister, and Nora (Fullerton) Schofield.

Education

Schofield graduated from Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in 1945. He then received his master's and doctor's degrees from the University of Minnesota, in 1948 and 1955 respectively.

Career

Schofield career began at the Fercleve Corporation & Clinton Labs in Oak Ridge, where he was appointed as a research associate for 2 years from 1944. For 3 years from 1948, he served at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory of General Electric Company in Schenectady at the position of a research associate. After that period of his career, Schofield moved to the University of Kansas as an assistant professor, beginning in 1955. He became an associate professor and stayed at the university until 1959. Next year he began his 12-year period at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, holding a position of an associate professor. From 1972 to 1979 Schofield worked at Case Western Reserve University as a Lynn Thorndike Professor. He served at the Iowa State University as a professor of history from 1979 until his retirement in 1993.

Schofield created the History of Science and Technology Program for graduate and undergraduate studies at Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University). In 1980, with Dr. Richard Lowitt, he created the graduate doctor's program in History (Technology and Science and Agriculture) at Iowa State University.

Among his writings were books titled Lunar Society of Birmingham, Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley, Mechanism and Materialism, and Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley. Schofield was also the author of more than forty science and technology articles published in periodicals, such as Isis, Annals of Science, Chymia, Technology and Culture and the Journal of the History of Ideas.

Achievements

• In 1963 Schofield won the Pfizer Prize from the History of Science Society for his book The Lunar Society of Birmingham. For the book The Enlightened Joseph Priestley he received the Roy G. Neville Prize from the Chemical Heritage Foundation in 2006. Additionally, Schofield was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in An Age of Reason

    (Robert Schofield explores the rational elements of Britis...)

    1970
  • Plato's Dialectic at Play: Argument, Structure, and Myth in the Symposium

    (In The Enlightened Joseph Priestley Robert Schofield comp...)

    2004
  • The Lunar Society of Birmingham

    (A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Ei...)

    1963
  • The Enlightened Joseph Priestley

    (A Study of His Life and Work from 1773 to 1804 by Robert ...)

    2009
  • The Enlightenment of Joseph Priestley

    (A Study of His Life and Works from 1733 to 1773)

    1997

Interests

• avid reading, book collecting, cabinet making

Connections

Schofield was married to Mary-Peale Smith. The marriage produced a child - Charles Stockton Peale.

Father:

Charles E. Schofield

His father was a minister.

Mother:

Nora (Fullerton) Schofield

child:

Charles Stockton Peale

Wife:

Mary-Peale Smith