The role science plays in modern life may hardly be overestimated. In medicine, military weapons, energy production, or environmental degradation -to mention only some notorious issues- crucial problems of modern societies involve science. The History of Science Unit aims to promote the understanding of science and technology as social factors that are in turn shaped by historical, cultural and social forces. We think that an interdisciplinary approach is essential to understand the role science played in the past and will play in the future. We offer both undergraduate and graduate courses designed to study science and technology in society.

The History of Science Unit is a research group formally recognized and supported by the AGAUR (Agency for Management of University and Research Grants of the Government of Catalonia) it is also funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Our research interests range from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century, but mainly focus on the following issues: the history of mathematics and mixed mathematics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and their relations with Renaissance art, literature and philosophy; the history of the twentieth century large scientific and technological complex, in particular the European nuclear energy programs and twentieth-century pharmaceutical research and production system; the history of science in Francoist Spain and the history of science in the European periphery; and the relation between science and power in twentieth-century Europe.