Herbert Butterfield

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Sir Herbert Butterfield (born October 7, 1900 in Oxenhope , West Yorkshire , † July 20, 1979 in Sawston , South Cambridgeshire ) was a British modern historian and philosopher of history who taught at the University of Cambridge .

Life

Butterfield was born in 1900 as the son of a textile factory worker. He attended Keighley Trade and Grammar School. From 1919 he studied at the University of Cambridge ( Peterhouse ). In 1924 he was a Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow at Princeton University in New Jersey. After completing his BA (1922) and MA (1926) he worked as a librarian . In December 1938 he gave lectures in the German Reich (Berlin, Cologne, Bonn and Münster). In 1944 he received the Chair in Modern History and in 1963 he became Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge (Peterhouse). From 1958 to 1971 he was James Scott Prize Lecturer at the Royal Society of Edinburgh , 1965/66 Gifford Lecturer at the University of Glasgow and in 1971 Sir Robert Rede's Lecturer at the University of Cambridge. His academic students included a. Patrick Cosgrave , Werner E. Mosse , JGA Pocock and Stephan Skalweit .

In 1938 he was editor of the Cambridge Historical Journal (until 1952). From 1955 to 1968 he was Master of Peterhouse and from 1959 to 1961 Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge. From 1955 to 1958 he was President of the Historical Association and founder and chairman of the British Committee for International Politics . Butterfield was an external auditor for the National University of Ireland and a member of the Commission on Higher Education of Irish President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh .

Butterfield was a Methodist lay preacher in the 1930s, and later turned to the Anglican Church . He was married and had three children. His estate is in the Cambridge University Library .

The philosopher of science Thomas S. Kuhn said that his The Copernican Revolution was influenced by Butterfield's The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800 .

He also became known and proverbial in the English-speaking world for his 1931 book, The Whig Interpretation of History , according to which the adjective Whiggisch was coined. What is meant is a historiography that interprets the past as a continuous development towards modern liberal and democratic conditions (according to the word origin in the sense of the English liberal Whig party) or another direction specified by the author.

Awards (selection)

Prices

  • 1922: Members' Prize
  • 1923: Le Bas Prize
  • 1924: Prince Consort Prize
  • 1924: Seeley Medal

Orders and decorations

Honorary doctorates

Honorary memberships

Memberships

Fonts (selection)

  • The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)
  • George III and the Historians (1957)

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas S. Kuhn : The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought . Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1957, ISBN 0-674-17103-9 , p. 283 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed October 9, 2016]): “All the general histories of science discuss the period and many of the problems covered by this book, but only Herbert Butterfield… has had particular influence on the structure of this book. "
  2. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Book of Members ( PDF ). Retrieved April 2, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Butterfield, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian and philosopher of history
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Oxenhope , UK
DATE OF DEATH 20th July 1979
Place of death Sawston , UK