Of all the many instruments that symbolized scientific endeavour in British India by the end of the nineteenth century, microscopes were among the most iconic, and yet, for both empirical and ideological reasons, their rise to scientific authority was slow and often contested. Moving from recreational use and marginal scientific status in the 1830s, by the 1870s microscopes were becoming integral to colonial education and governance and deployed across a wide scientific spectrum, their expanding use and heightened public presence facilitated by a rich and diverse visual culture. The eventual triumph of the microscope in India cannot be detached from its ongoing entanglement with local issues and agencies, its ascent to medical authority in particular constrained by scepticism about its utility. In this battle of instruments and imaginaries, microscopes – political emblems as well as material objects and scientific tools – pose critical questions about the visibility of science in a colonial context, about evolving techniques of seeing and representation, about the racialization of science and about the individual or collective authority of those who sought empowerment through the lens.

The study of the history of science is widely understood to be undergoing a profound and much-needed transformation, from a subject focused on Europe to one encompassing the entire world. Yet the aims of the field have always been global. During the decades after the Second World War the inevitable progress of Western science was seen as the key to its role in world history. From the 1970s the rise of cultural history and laboratory ethnographies undermined this assumption. Indebted to colonial anthropology, these approaches revealed that the power of science was not inherent, but the result of local and contingent processes. Explanation needed to be symmetrical in analysing practices of all kinds wherever they were found, from economics and divination in West Africa to supernatural healing and particle physics in the American heartland. The geographical and conceptual broadening of the field is thus a long-delayed outcome of developments extending back many decades. It also means that references to the ‘global’ in history of science – even more than elsewhere in the humanities – continue to resonate with the universalizing aims of the natural and social sciences.

The founding figures, advocates and engineers of the early Space Age are frequently hailed as ‘fathers’, ‘forebears’, ‘prophets’, ‘pioneers’, ‘visionaries’ and ‘heroes’, employing hagiographic, gendered and indiscriminate tropes that lack analytical value. Inspired by persona and celebrity studies, this introduction proposes an alternative approach to comprehend the historical significance and historiographical prominence attributed to global ‘rocket stars’ Qian Xuesen (1911–2009) in China, Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) in Sri Lanka, Vikram Sarabhai (1919–71) in India, Sigmund Jähn (1937–2019) in East Germany, Ulf Merbold (1941–) in West Germany and Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez (1942–) in Cuba covered in this special issue. Replacing ‘great-men’ hagiography with a theoretically grounded focus on celebrification processes and the making of national patriarchs from without – from person to persona – enhances nuance and reduces cliché in understanding the role technocelebrities played in the production of outer space as a key phantasmagoria of the twentieth century. As these six space personas operated and starred in geographical contexts distinct and distant from the spaceflight superpowers, the special issue advances the notion of a global Space Age as an alternative to the conventional bipolar Cold War variant and offers a foundation for its budding historicization.

This essay examines the working relationship between Charles Darwin and the Edinburgh gardener John Scott that developed in the wake of the publishing of the Origin of Species (1859). As the essay shows, Darwin sought to utilize Scott’s horticultural knowledge and experimental expertise in order to provide some of the specialized botanical evidence that the Origin was not intended to provide. Scott, meanwhile, sought to use Darwin’s patronage and tutelage in order to overcome his modest status as a gardener while making contributions to scientific knowledge. And for an intense two-year period (1862–4), Darwin and Scott’s relationship was productive and mutually beneficial: not only did Scott’s work supplement Darwin’s ongoing botanical research on sexual development and fertility, but also his Primula experiments appeared to provide ‘physiological’ evidence of speciation via selective breeding. What the essay argues, however, is that there were limits to what Scott was able to achieve due in part to his social standing and perceived character that ultimately cast a shadow over his findings.

The maritime expansion of the early modern period and the discovery of new continents necessitated a profound revision in traditional cosmology, bringing into question the millennia-old practices that were framed around that cosmology. Among these practices was astrology, which in the early modern period reached an unprecedented level of popularity through the development of the printing press. The application of the astrological corpus in tropical and southern latitudes questioned many of the foundational Ptolemaic concepts. At the core of this problem was the reversal of the seasons in the southern hemisphere. Since Ptolemy had firmly grounded the natural explanation of astrological attributes of the zodiac and the planets on the seasonal qualities, their reversal would imply a complete change in the zodiacal and planetary properties. Authors such as Girolamo Cardano, Tommaso Campanella and Athanasius Kircher addressed this matter, but it never became a central point of debate in the astrological literature of the period. However, practitioners in the New World, whose empirical view was very different to that of European authors, reached different conclusions. This problem offers an example of the difficulty in reconciling traditional authority with new knowledge. At the same time, it exposes the sharp contrast between the theoretical perspective of Europe-based authors and the actual experience of astrologers practising in the New World.

This article analyses the development of Arthur C. Clarke’s (1918–2008) persona as the ‘prophet of the Space Age’, focusing on its relation with his adopted homeland, Sri Lanka. Unlike many space personas, Clarke was not an astronaut or a political leader, but a writer and advocate for space technology who developed a global reputation as an authority on the future. In 1956, Clarke relocated from his native England to the former British colony of Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). This article examines how both Clarke himself and a wide range of organizations, nations and individuals, including many from Sri Lanka, contributed to the creation of a global ‘prophet’ persona. This includes Clarke’s public life in Sri Lanka, which came to embody the earthbound, satellite-focused space future he promoted. This persona was in turn used to project commercial and moral justifications for space technologies, especially through Western lenses and for Western audiences, but in numerous ways gave Sri Lanka an active role in the global Space Age.

Commonly referred to as the ‘father of spaceflight’ and ‘king of rocketry’, Qian Xuesen (1911–2009) is for many Chinese citizens the pre-eminent scientist of the twentieth century. Trained at the California Institute of Technology, he co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before returning to China in 1955, where he became instrumental in the space programme and the missile industry. This article investigates Qian’s ascent from aeronautical engineer known only within expert circles to China’s face of space. It charts his celebrification, particularly after the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and distinguishes five facets of a rocket star in the making. Transforming Qian into China’s quintessential technocelebrity and transfiguring his persona into the cornerstone of astrocultural production helped propagate spaceflight activities, rendering outer space an imaginable arena for both the state and the public. Yet, as the analysis of a comprehensive body of visual materials, media reports, biographies and obituaries shows, ultimately Qian’s carefully crafted persona is what Ernesto Laclau has termed an ‘empty signifier’. Qian is space, and space Qian, but little else. If historians are to understand the allure and inner workings of the global Space Age, then historicizing the orchestrated rise of non-Western space personas such as Qian Xuesen proves key.

In this paper, we dissect how different regimes of labour were crucial to the success of the British and Brazilian expeditions which observed the 1919 total solar eclipse in Príncipe and Sobral. We connect regimes of labour with degrees of invisibility and discuss plausible justifications for various absences/presences in the written records. We discuss reasons for the inclusion of Cottingham, the artisan–technician expert on clockwork mechanisms, into the teams; the entanglements of forced labour with scientific and technical work in Príncipe; and the various regimes of labour in place at Sobral. We argue that the impact of various regimes of labour in Príncipe and Sobral cannot be confined to the provision of infrastructural support, but include critical location choices, the possibility of scientific success during the observations themselves, and the processing of plates following observations.

This article examines the scientific legacy of the first Glasgow Botanic Gardens and the part they played in the global circulation of botanical knowledge, from their creation in 1817 to their relocation to the West End of Glasgow in 1841. Located in a thriving industrial city with strong commercial ties to the British Caribbean, the gardens stood at an important crossroads of political and economic interests, scientific discovery, cultural innovation and imperial motives. They were managed by the talented English botanist William Jackson Hooker, who strove to transform them into a training ground for prospective botanists and a leading scientific institution. Yet, like many other botanical establishments of similar stature at the time, the gardens encountered many financial setbacks that hampered their success and threatened the scientific ambitions of Hooker and his peers. This article discusses the extent of the gardens’ scientific contribution within and beyond the borders of Britain and seeks to determine the degree to which science in these gardens was constrained by economic factors.

Historical accounts of the Indian space programme inevitably invoke the figure of Vikram Sarabhai (1919–71), credited as the father of its early development in the 1960s. A physicist by training, Sarabhai was best known for his ‘leapfrogging’ vision, into which social applications of space technology would catapult developing countries out of poverty. By interrogating official and unofficial records, speeches, cinematic productions and obituaries, this article examines how Indian leadership utilized Sarabhai’s persona to substantiate the role of space flight in the nation’s domestic modernization and geopolitical leverage. Especially after his death in 1971, the making of Sarabhai into the pioneer of Indian space flight allowed India to fashion a geocentric appeal specific to its space programme, which construed the benefits of low-earth-orbit satellite communication to tackle unequal development. In the 1990s, Sarabhai’s image was further appropriated by international powers and actors to propagate the commercialization of satellite systems. Despite its elitist outlook and subscription to received notions of nationhood and modernity, a closer look into the public resonance of Sarabhai’s persona reveals how the geocentric promise of space flight in the Indian context contributed to the formation of post-1960s astroculture globally.

Sir Albert Howard helped popularize the idea of translating ‘Eastern’ practice into ‘Western’ science in the field of agriculture. His approach to composting has been foundational to organic farming and counterposed with the field of agricultural chemistry. This depiction of feuding ideologies – organic versus chemical – is based largely on Howard’s opposition to the fragmentation of scientific knowledge and its products, especially artificial fertilizer. One underexplored aspect of Howard’s contest with the agricultural research establishment is the role played by intellectual property. This article contributes to Howard’s historiography by examining three topics related to his life’s work that concern money and patents: (1) the financial support for the Institute of Plant Industry at Indore, (2) an artificial manure patented by employees at Rothamsted Experimental Station and (3) a rival method in British municipal composting. I argue that Howard’s ideological difference with agricultural chemists was not reducible to generating soil fertility with compost. Rather, the feud consisted of a larger debate about innovation, ownership and the societal benefits of scientific research.

With the economic and political support of the United States, in July 1947, Turkey signed contracts with the Westinghouse Electric International Company and J.G. White Engineering Corporation to construct its first international civilian airport, Istanbul's Yeşilköy Airport. As this article will argue, the building of Yeşilköy (1949–53), through a partnership with two American engineering firms, is essentially an early Cold War narrative of transnational exchange involving the multidirectional flow of technical knowledge, expertise and resources between the United States and Turkey; the circulation of geopolitically significant (and frequently competing) military, civilian and government actors; and the local and global implications of these transmissions. Yet the Yeşilköy construction narrative also illustrates how post-war technology transfer was a highly political process of constant adaptation, modification and negotiation. Fraught with unforeseen friction and thorny challenges, Yeşilköy exemplifies the complicated American Cold War strategy of creating and maintaining alliances through engineering knowledge, personnel and practices, often with unintended consequences. Moreover, as a case study, Yeşilköy opens a new window into the cautious science diplomacy that occurred along the Iron Curtain, while filling a notable historiographic gap with respect to aviation in early Cold War Turkey.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, is renowned for operating the world’s largest particle accelerator and is often regarded as a model of high-profile international collaboration. Less well known, however, is a key episode from the late 1950s, when CERN clashed with the research priorities of similar organizations. The issue centred on a CERN-sponsored study group on controlled thermonuclear fusion, which brought together scientists from CERN member states, as well as representatives from the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), the European Nuclear Energy Agency (ENEA) and the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). While their meetings succeeded in creating an international network for exchanging reports and coordinating projects to avoid duplication, the initiative failed to establish joint fusion research programmes in Europe. This article explores the reasons behind this outcome to provide insights into intergovernmental power dynamics and scientific competition and how these two factors favoured the creation of a new fusion research institution in the UK, the Culham Laboratory. In doing so, the article contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of science in European integration, while also highlighting that CERN’s involvement in application-oriented research remains an underexplored aspect of its history.

The burgeoning nineteenth-century public-museum sector built a significant part of its natural-history specimen collections through extensive international trading. The early 2020s has seen an upsurge of scholarly interest in this largely overlooked trade. Exchange was a distinctive aspect of the natural-history trade that reveals much about the diverse practices and motives of the institutional collectors. Economic-geographic benefits included conserving the limited financial resources of museums and exploiting complementarities in the geographic distribution of specimens. Collection management, institutional reputation, social connection and international diplomacy were also part of a complex mix of value making that shaped this important international trade. We analyse the exchange practices of the three largest museums in the Australian colonies in the final three decades of the nineteenth century who exchanged Australia’s ‘rare and curious’ fauna with collectors across the globe. By deploying and analysing extensive, comparative data on a particular form of natural history, zoology, and a particular kind of trade, exchange trading, among three Australian museums, this paper extends and enriches recent scholarship on the mobility of natural-history specimens and how they were traded.

East German Sigmund Jähn and West German Ulf Merbold were Germany’s first spacefarers. While their rivalry mirrored the superpowers’ space race in many ways, it differed in a significant aspect: Jähn and Merbold shared a common cultural and historical background. Going where no German had gone before, therefore, was as much a competition of democracy versus dictatorship, and/or capitalism versus communism, as it was about which state represented the ‘better’ Germany. Moreover, this rivalry did not end with the Cold War but reappeared with renewed vigour in the country’s eventual reunification process after 1990. Drawing on national archival and printed sources from all around the world, this article analyses collective projections and competing performances in the making of Germany’s most famous rocket stars, both before and beyond 1990. Discussing individual characteristics, cultural traditions and techno-scientific ambitions, it argues that descent rather than socio-technical prospect proved crucial in designating the progenitor of German space flight.

This article explores the emergence of nuclear medicine as a clinical research field in post-war Europe, focusing on the shaping of its disciplinary boundaries in the context of geopolitical divisions. It examines how this speciality was negotiated and established, highlighting the role of international exchanges involving researchers, radioisotopes and technologies. By bringing together physicists, radiologists and internists, nuclear medicine gained momentum in the 1950s, leading to the formation of first dedicated scientific societies, conferences and journals. Physicians working in Austria played an influential role in this identity-building process on the European level. They benefited from the networks of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the country’s political neutrality and their early emphasis on thyroid diseases. We argue that nuclear medicine emerged out of scientific-diplomatic practices that unified this diverse field of research while also setting it apart from more established clinical specialities. We will trace how physicians and medical facilities in Austria came into play as partners on both sides of the Iron Curtain and navigated these intertwined diplomatic and disciplinary dynamics, facilitating intra-European cooperation on epistemic, political and social levels.

Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, the first Cuban, Latin American, and person of African descent to travel to space, has experienced a significant evolution in his persona since his historic flight aboard Soyuz 38 in 1980. This article explores three pivotal phases in this transformation: first, his portrayal in the media as a pioneering Cuban cosmonaut, which positioned him among the socialist elite of the Space Age; second, the controversy regarding the identity of the first Black person in space, which brought renewed attention to Tamayo’s achievements; and third, the ongoing reconfiguration of his image through social-media platforms, allowing for broader engagement with diverse audiences. By applying the principles of persona analysis to a multilinguistic set of historical documents and images related to Tamayo, this study illustrates the malleability of his self-fashioning for different audiences and how it has adapted to reflect changing sociopolitical contexts and the evolving landscape of public representation in the digital age.

How water is perceived and represented has an impact on the relationships between a given society and its water infrastructure. Historians have identified a shift in the perception of water during the nineteenth century, which was connected to the development of chemistry. From an understanding based in Hippocratic medicine and natural history that treated it as an infinite variety of substances, water eventually became understood as a simple compound consisting of oxygen and hydrogen. This resulted in the abstraction of water from its social and environmental contexts, with consequences for the way water was managed. This article aims to demonstrate that such a view gives a mistaken intellectual coherence to a fragmented and conflicted process, which involved continuities, an adaptation of old frameworks to new social priorities, and fine changes in scientific thinking and practices. This paper examines the scientific and political debates concerning water infrastructure, surveys and analyses on water quality, medical reports and political measures in nineteenth-century Italy. Ultimately, the reduction of ‘waters’ to ‘water’ in Italy was more about determining who had the authority to assess water quality in the process of creating and stabilizing new power relations between the public and the private spheres than about the abstraction of water from its social and environmental contexts.

This epilogue considers the approach and conception of this collection, highlighting key analytical strands in the essays while also suggesting possible avenues of further research. It spotlights the global nature of their analysis, which offers one structural framework – individual scientific personas and the often transnational networks which they inhabit – as a possible avenue to imagine a so-called global Space Age. The epilogue also investigates possible frames for further analyses, particularly regarding gender and translation. Men dominate the pantheon of space personas, which, I argue, is a function of the way popular discourses about space travel are still dominated not only by patriarchal and often misogynistic tropes, but also by how we define ‘technology’ itself as essentially a male domain of activity. More broadly, we need further investigation of multiple and gendered erasures involved in the creation of male space personas. Similarly, the kinds of tools, work and strategies the space personas deployed to translate their visions across different social, discursive, cultural and temporal domains require attention. In particular, one can imagine that the afterlife of these personas will be susceptible to change and alteration as their messages, reputations, and principal attachments are continually reshaped by historical change, popular culture, and academic currents.