Science, Medicine and Technology since 1900
You should answer four questions in total. Answer one question from
Section A and three questions from Section B. All questions carry equal
weighting.
Begin each answer on a separate sheet.
Write legibly and on only one side of the paper.
Answers must be tied up in separate bundles, marked 1, 2, 3, etc.
according to the number of the question.
Attach a completed coversheet to each bundle and complete a master
coversheet listing all questions attempted. It is essential that you write
your examination number and not your name on the coversheet and on
each bundle.
You may not start to read the questions printed on the subsequent
pages of this question paper until instructed to do so by the
invigilator.
Page 2 of 2
SECTION A
1. ‘Science and medicine were more political after World War II than they
had been before.’ Assess this claim.
2. How has the relative importance of industry, academia and government
in the development of technologies changed since 1900?
3. ‘The history of medicine since 1900 simply mirrors that of the sciences
more generally.’ Assess this claim.
SECTION B
4. How, and with what effects, did the work of laboratory scientists make its
way outside the laboratory in the period 1900–1945?
5. Discuss the significance of science and technology to ‘New Imperialism’
at the beginning of the twentieth century.
6. How did the creation of nuclear weapons change the sciences?
7. How were scientists and other technical experts involved in global
economic development after World War II, and with what consequences?
8. ‘Instruments of social control.’ Is this a fair summary of twentieth-century
innovations in genetic, genomic and reproductive medicine?
9. ‘Clinical trials in twentieth-century medicine left no room for physicians’
judgment, let alone the agency of patients.’ Assess this claim.
10. How did public health policies after 1950 reflect global Cold War
tensions?
11. What resources were most important for the development of relativity
physics in the early twentieth century?
12. Is the trajectory of science after 1945 best exemplified by the history of
the particle accelerator, the satellite, or the computer?