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John U. Nef (1899–1988)

1990; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tech.1990.a901687

1097-3729

Arthur P. Polella,

Research, Science, and Academia

Memorials JOHN U. NEF (1899-1988) ARTHUR P . M O I. E I. L A John Ulric Nef has never been as familiar a figure to specialists in the history of technology as other early contributors to the Held, such as S. C. Gilfillan, A. P. Usher, Lewis Mumford, or William F. Ogburn. Like these other pioneers, Nef came to his interests in technology from a neighboring field, in his case, economic history. Nef’s most famous work, The Rise of the British Coal Industry, published in 1932, amassed statistics that altered our fundamental understanding of the Industrial Revolution. Despite a demonstrated talent for specialized research, Nef never regarded himself as a specialist. He was a general historian, a man of letters with an abiding concern for the moral and cultural values of Western civilization. After publication of this book, his career was marked by ever-widening interests. In an unending quest for whole­ ness and unification of knowledge, he firmly resisted the mounting forces of specialization. His need for unity was typical of a generation that had experienced the social and cultural fragmentation engen­ dered by World War I and the contemporaneous explosion of scientific knowledge into a myriad of discrete fields. Nef knew of scientific specialization firsthand. His father was the eminent Swiss-born scientist, John Ulric Nef, Sr., founder of the University of Chicago Chemistry Department. Departing from his father’s career path and seeking broader understanding through history and the humanities, Nef undoubtedly gained from his father an abiding interest in the history of science and technology. When his father died in 1915, Nef became ward of his father’s colleague and friend, the philosopher G. H. Mead, eventually marrying Mead’s niece, Elinor Castle. Nef transferred to Harvard, which had established the nation’s first program in economic history, after studying history for one year at Dr. Molella is chairman of the Department of the History of Science and Technol­ ogy at the National Museum of American History. Permission to reprint a memorial in this section may be obtained only from the author. 916 John U. Nef (1899-1988) 917 John U. Nef Chicago. Heavily influenced by Harvard’s eminent economic histori­ ans Edwin Gay and Frank Taussig, he shared their broad parallel interests in social, political, and technological history. John Nef, Sr., and guardian George Mead both drew him to academe, but Nef resisted the conventional academic mold. After receiving his bache­ lor’s degree and pursuing one year of graduate study at Harvard, Nef chose to leave school and to study abroad on his own. In 1921, supported by substantial inheritances from both their families, Nef and his wife Elinor began a five-year European sojourn devoted to 918 Arthur P. Molella working and becoming “civilized.” Nef then undertook a daily regi­ men of research and writing on the coal industry. In Search for Meaning (1973), his autobiography, he also describes rapturously his immersion in the world of art. He befriended such painters as Paul Signac and Jules Pascin, acquiring a substantial collection of modern artworks well before their creators had become famous. Financially free to pursue his own course, he aimed to unify the creative arts and the humanities. Nef lived a life that was in itself an artistic creation, rich in beauty, friendship, and intellectual adventure. Nef, while a voracious reader, belonged to a post-John Dewey generation that reveled in learning from life experience rather than books, a generation that sought to develop the “whole man”—body, spirit, and emotion as well as mind. Nef’s more personal writings reveal a passionately sensual nature, embracing aesthetics, love, and sexuality as much as the pleasures of rational knowledge. (Enjoying fine wine, he even published his own consumer’s guide, Confessions of a Wine Taster.) While interested in the broad theoretical generaliza­ tions of history, this sensuality and passion for living anchored him in the material world and, one suspects, reinforced his lifelong interests in science and technology. On European sojourn, Nef appeared to derive as much joy from climbing over the archaeological remains of saltworks and coal mines as visiting cathedrals and art museums. This fascination with and direct knowledge of...