Publisher's Synopsis
Today, historians remember Archibald Liversidge principally for his role in inspiring the foundation of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science (now ANZAAS ). Far wider and deeper, however, ran the current of his influence, extending to the organization of Australasian science, the development of museums and technical schools, and the establishment of mining, matallurgy and applied chemistry as university subjects. For over a quarter of a century, Liversidge -- with David Orme Masson and Baldwin Spencer at Melbourne, and Ralph Tate at Adelaide -- dominated the Australian scientific stage.;"Imperial science under the Southern Cross" is an intellectual and social biography of Archibald Liversidge. It explores a range of questions associated with the diffusion of British and European science; the respective roles played by "metropolis" and "periphery" in imperial science; and the particular demands made upon scientific and technical education in a society whose wealth was based principally upon agriculture, farming, mining and trade. It inquires into the process of transplanting what Donald Horne has called the "memorised culture" of England, as well as a particular metropolitan vision of science, into the life of New South Wales. It describes some of the key events that shaped the character of "public science" and the politics of academic life. At the same time, it considers the nature of the progressive ideology of "practical idealism" advanced by Liversidge, and his contribution to the movement for imperial efficiency.;Roy MacLeod is Professor of History at the University of Sydney. He is the author and editor of a number of studies on the role of science in colonial Australia.
