Institutional history of science is a well-established area of research. Historians have produced valuable studies on scientific societies and academies, and, as part of the on-going interest in scientific patronage, a growing number of scholars are now investigating the transmission of scientific knowledge at court. Studies of colleges, such as the Gresham College and the Casa de la Contratacíon, have shed more light on science teaching outside the universities. General histories of universities and case studies on single universities and on professors have contributed to revise the old view of universities as hostile to scientific change.

Historians of science no longer dismiss the study of university teaching as irrelevant to the development of scientific knowledge, and a more nuanced account of the role of science in universities has become to emerge. Thanks to Charles Schmitt’s reassessment of Renaissance Aristotelianism, science historians are now investigating early modern university curricula, though scientific textbook is still a rather neglected subject. The last decades saw a substantial amount of research in science teaching in Jesuit colleges and detailed studies on the Jesuits’ contribution to science. A strong impulse to research in science teaching came from the publication of various journals devoted to the history of universities, and in particular from History of Universities, which saw the light in 1981.

The conference is planned in response to the increasing interest in science teaching among historians of science and aims at offering scholars an opportunity to present the results of their work and to discuss current research in the field. The conference will address issues relating to teaching in universities, religious orders, colleges and courts, as well as scientific curricula, dissertations and textbooks. The focus will be on natural philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, physics, geography and chemistry. Medicine teaching will not be included – being too large a subject in itself. The period covered will be approximately from the mid-sixteenth century to the early decades of the eighteenth century.