Morus, Iwan Rhys 1964-

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Morus, Iwan Rhys 1964-

PERSONAL:

Born 1964. Education: Cambridge University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History & Welsh History, Hugh Owens Bldg., University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion SY23 3DY, Wales. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Wales, Aberystwyth, professor of history.

WRITINGS:

Frankenstein's Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century London, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1998.

(Editor) Bodies/Machines, Berg (New York, NY), 2002.

Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century, Icon Books, 2004.

(With Peter J. Bowler) Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

When Physics Became King, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

Member of the editorial board, British Journal for the History of Science.

SIDELIGHTS:

Iwan Rhys Morus is an historian whose interests include nineteenth-century science, medicine, and technology, as well as the history of the body and nineteenth-century popular culture. He has taught undergraduate courses in both Welsh and English. Morus's books include Frankenstein's Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century London, a study that notes the revolutionary theories and experimental discoveries of Michael Faraday, whose work is central to most histories of electricity covering this period. Morus profiles other pioneers, too, including William Sturgeon (1780-1850), the inventor of the electromagnet who, like Faraday, was a man from humble origins. Sturgeon was a soldier and a shoemaker before beginning his electrical experimentations; during the first half of the nineteenth century, he was an editor, instrument maker, and lecturer. At one point he and Faraday were rivals. Sturgeon was a founder of the London Electrical Society. The group discontinued meeting because of large debts; at this point, experiments in electricity were impressive but had not yet been put to commercial use. This was to happen in the 1840s and beyond. The second half of the book discusses these uses, including telegraphy, electrometallurgy, and medical therapy.

Sally M. Horrocks commented in Business History: "The main strengths of this book lie in the detailed pictures it paints of the worlds of electricity in nineteenth-century London, in its treatment of the work required to transform technologies of display into commercially successful innovations and its analysis of the process of experiment." "Frankenstein's Children will appeal to scholars from a wide range of historical and literary perspectives," concluded Richard J. Noakes in Victorian Studies. "It is an engaging, richly documented, and lucidly argued study that powerfully demonstrates how much more we can understand such conspicuous features of Victorian culture as scientific authority, electrical technologies, and the business of invention once we embed them in the fashionable, commercial, and industrial worlds that produced them."

In reviewing a related title by Morus, Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century, for Popular Science, a reviewer noted that this book is not strictly a biography, but "a description of the electrical world of the 19th century hung upon Faraday—a sort of Frankenstein's Children lite."

"Editor Iwan Rhys Morus sets out the goal of Bodies/Machines in an introduction that establishes some weighty expectations: to examine the diverse and complex ways in which bodies and machines have been imagined and articulated since the eighteenth century," reported Traffic reviewer John Bailey. "As it turns out, however, the collection's focus is more specific—each essay examines a specific emergence of the body-machine metaphor in the history of nineteenth-century thought, and then complicates this by demonstrating how such an emergence was never an untroubled birth."

Morus is also the author, with Peter J. Bowler, of Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey, an introductory college text. The book begins with an introduction that covers the developments in the history of science over the last three decades and the controversies that have arisen in that time. The first section focuses on the most important developments in modern science, including the Scientific Revolution and breakthroughs in physics, geology, and biology. The second section analyzes the discoveries that have forced society to rethink its moral, philosophical, or religious values.

In When Physics Became King Morus touches on Germany and France, but he primarily concentrates on physics in nineteenth-century Britain. He notes that in 1810 a dozen Cambridge University mathematics students, including Charles Babbage, George Peacock, and John Hershel, founded the Analytical Society, adopting the new mathematical analysis of the French. These young scientists advocated a science driven by merit and not, as it was at the time, controlled by the aristocratic Royal Society of London, then presided over by Sir Joseph Banks. One of their goals was to make the economy grow, particularly by employing more efficient practices. They succeeded in bringing change to the way mathematics was taught at Cambridge. Subjects such as analytical calculus were added and testing became more difficult, ensuring that the students with the best minds completed and benefited from the work, not those with the best social standing. Morus also includes a history of electricity during this period, both just as a subject of curiosity and as a component of physics. About the book, American Scientist reviewer Myles W. Jackson wrote: "Over the course of the book the reader becomes convinced that the history of physics is a story not of isolated geniuses disengaged from society in ivy-covered towers, but rather of a collection of individuals from diverse walks of life working together in concert. In short, When Physics Became King is a masterfully written historical analysis. Morus's bibliography is comprehensive and provides readers who wish to investigate a particular theme in further detail with an extremely useful resource."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 1999, Bernard Lightman, review of Frankenstein's Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century London, p. 1755.

American Scientist, September, 1999, Bruce J. Hunt, review of Frankenstein's Children, p. 475; November 1, 2005, Myles W. Jackson, review of When Physics Became King, p. 561.

British Journal for the History of Science, December, 2005, P.M. Harman, review of Frankenstein's Children, p. 484; December, 2006, Matthew Stanley, review of When Physics Became King, p. 610.

Business History, July, 2000, Sally M. Horrocks, review of Frankenstein's Children, p. 161.

Choice, April, 1999, D.H. Porter, review of Frankenstein's Children, p. 1479; November, 2005, A.C. Prendergast, review of Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey, p. 503.

Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, September 22, 2006, Marsha L. Richmond, review of Making Modern Science, p. 175.

History of Science, March, 2006, reviews of Making Modern Science, p. 119, and When Physics Became King, p. 121.

Isis, December, 2000, David Rhees, review of Frankenstein's Children, p. 788.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, June 22, 2007, Michael D. Gordin, review of When Physics Became King, p. 95.

Nature, December 3, 1998, Patricia Fara, review of Frankenstein's Children, p. 425.

Physics Today, April, 2006, Robert M. Brain, review of When Physics Became King, p. 67.

Science, September 30, 2005, John Tresch, review of Making Modern Science, p. 2167.

Technology and Culture, October, 2000, Aristotle Tympas, review of Frankenstein's Children, p. 810.

Times Higher Education Supplement, August 27, 2004, Frank James, review of Michael Faraday and the Electrical Century, p. 25.

Traffic, July, 2004, John Bailey, review of Bodies/Machines, p. 162.

Victorian Studies, January 1, 2001, Richard J. Noakes, review of Frankenstein's Children, p. 330.

Virginia Quarterly Review, January 1, 2006, Patrick LaRochelle, review of Making Modern Science, pp. 287-288.