Zmud, L. Ya. M. A. Gukovsky on the way to Leonardo da Vinci: the History of Science and Technology in the 1930s, in: Proslogion: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Social History and Culture, 2023. Vol. 6(2). P. 38–62.
Leonid Yakovlevich Zhmud’, Doctor of Philosophy, Principal Academic Researcher at the Saint Petersburg Branch of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology named after S. I. Vavilov, Russian Academy of Sciences (199034, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Universitetskaya embankment, 5)
l.zhmud@spbu.ru
Language: Russian
The paper covers the early period of M. A. Gukovsky’s scholarly work, the 1930s, when his major study on the history of science, “The Mechanics of Leonardo da Vinci”, was written; in 1939 it was defended as a doctoral dissertation though published only in 1947. Gukovsky had been educated by scholars of the old school, such as L. P. Karsavin, I. M. Grevs, A. I. Khomentovskaya, but did not immediately become a historian. His scholarly and organizational activities in the Commission for the History of Knowledge and the Institute for the History of Science and Technology began after the “great break” that sharply increased the ideological pressure on the humanities. In articles and reviews of this time, Gukovsky appears as a scholar of a new generation, capable both to combine academic scholarship with a Marxist understanding of history in general and the history of science and technology in particular and to form a new methodology for their research, meeting the challenges of the time.
Keywords: M. A. Gukovsky, N. I. Bukharin, history of science and technology, Commission on the History of Knowledge, Institute of the History of Science and Technology, Renaissance, Marxism
URL: http://proslogion.ru/71-zmud/
DOI: 10.24412/2500-0926-2023-71-38-62
