author
Robert P. Multhauf
1919–2004
A pioneering historian of science and longtime Smithsonian curator, he helped shape how museums and scholars tell the story of technology and chemistry. His books blend clear scholarship with curiosity about how everyday materials and inventions changed the world.
3 Audiobooks
Development of Gravity Pendulums in the 19th Century Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, Papers 34-44 On Science and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, 1966
by Victor F. (Victor Fritz) Lenzen, Robert P. Multhauf
Mine Pumping in Agricola's Time and Later
by Robert P. Multhauf
The Introduction of Self-Registering Meteorological Instruments
by Robert P. Multhauf
About the author
Born in 1919, Robert P. Multhauf studied at Iowa State University and later earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He became one of the early professionally trained historians of science to build a major career inside a museum, joining the Smithsonian in the 1950s and going on to serve as curator, head curator, and then director of the Museum of History and Technology.
Multhauf was especially known for his work on the history of chemistry and technology. Alongside his museum work, he played an important role in the field more broadly: he edited Isis for many years, served as president of the History of Science Society, and was later honored with the Leonardo da Vinci Medal from the Society for the History of Technology.
Readers coming to his books will find a writer interested not just in discoveries, but in the practical stuff of life—materials, machines, and the ways scientific knowledge moves into everyday use. That mix of scholarly depth and accessible subject matter helped make him an influential figure in both the history of science and the museum world.