Email: karl.harrer@all-souls.ox.ac.uk
Personal Biography
Charles Webster is of East European political refugee parentage. His early upbringing was mainly in Nottingham. His first employment, at the age of sixteen, was as a laboratory technician at the Boots Company. After a night school ‘A’ level education, he entered University College London, where he took a degree in Botany and Microbiology. He then trained as a teacher in Sheffield, after which, from 1959 to 1965, he was a science teacher at the City Grammar School, Leopold Street, Sheffield. Simultaneously he began private historical studies. His first historical paper was published in the journal Nature in 1962. After a short spell in the Philosophy Department at Leeds University, in 1968 he was elected to a research fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. After a delay, he took up this appointment in 1969. In 1972, he made the transition to a University Readership, also attached to Corpus. He remained in this post until 1988, when he became a Senior Research Fellow of All Souls College, a post which he retained until his retirement. Currently he is an Emeritus Fellow at both Corpus and All Souls.
Research
As a school teacher, fortuitously, the opportunity arose for work on the Hartlib Papers, a massive archive relating to the civil war period compiled by Samuel Hartlib (1600-1662). This collection was assumed to have been destroyed, but it remerged in 1933, after which it was worked upon privately by George Turnbull, who published a detailed résumé of its contents in 1947. The archive was transferred to Sheffield in 1962 and now resides to the new University Library there. As time permitted, Charles Webster built upon the work of Turnbull and this continues to the present day. In addition, he has taken a special interest in the history of health care, especially with respect to the National Health Service, about which he has published extensively, partly in the capacity as the Official Historian of the National Health Service (1982-1997). He is currently near the conclusion of a major biography of Samuel Hartlib.
Selected Publications
Samuel Hartlib and the Advancement of Learning (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1970)
The Great Instauration: Science Medicine and Reform 1626-1660, (London: Duckworth, 1975)
From Paracelsus to Newton; Magic and the Making of Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)
The Health Services since the War, 2 Volumes (London: HMSO, 1988, 1996).
Paracelsus, Magic, Medicine and Mission at the End of Time (London/Yale: Yale University Press, 2008)