In 2001 an ambitious project was launched to produce a definitive history of science in Denmark. This culminated in the four-volume work Dansk Naturvidenskabs Historie. The volume under review is a condensed version in English. Anyone curious about Danish science over the very long run will find here a concise and well-written introduction, providing enough depth and analysis to appeal to those already familiar with Tycho Brahe, H.C. Ørsted and the like.
The book has a clear structure dividing the last millennium into four periods. Each period-covering section contains an overview of events, including their social and political contexts, followed by six chapters treating various distinguishing aspects or epochs of that period. Illustrations are copious. The scholarship is deep but lightly worn, thanks to use of a non-specialist vocabulary and the tucking away of the notes at the back.
Helge Kragh writes the first two sections, covering the years 1000 to 1850. In the first section, taking developments to the early eighteenth century, he concentrates on events before and after Tycho Brahe, yet nevertheless managing to resituate him so that he does not eclipse the contemporaries who, Kragh shows, helped to create an environment conducive to scientific achievement. (Throughout the authors insist that the remembered heroes of Danish science did not arise solitarily and overnight, but were the products of a complex infrastructure, including informal networks.) The second section, ‘Naturalism, knowledge and the public good: 1730–1850’, looks at how Denmark has always relied upon the influx of foreign ideas. Kragh does a commendable job of bringing together the diverse interactions of the period, and the unique fusion of ideas that led figures such as Ørsted and J.F. Schouw to devote themselves to combining science, culture and education. Kragh uses the case of Ørsted and electromagnetism to open up Romanticism in Denmark as incorporating Enlightenment values within itself rather then being purely a reaction against those values. Overall Kragh presents a nuanced account of science at this time, bringing out the complex matrix of ideas and their manifestation in various guises.
The second half of the book is written by Peter C. Kjaergaard, Henry Nielsen and Kristian Hvidtfelt Nielsen. The third section, ‘Light over land’, offers an incisive analysis of the way in which Denmark during the 1850–1920 period reflected the trends in science in the rest of Europe. Kjaergaard describes the transition in the way in which science was portrayed in society and its increasing professionalization within Denmark. He also looks at how Jacob Christian Jacobson, the founder of the Carlsberg brewery, contributed to and became a dominant patron of science in this period – thus providing an interesting contrast to the patronage of Brahe by the monarchy in the sixteenth century as described by Kragh. After such stimulating historical writing, the final section, by Nielsen and Nielsen, is rather a letdown. It covers the shortest period (1920–1970) yet, due to its indiscriminate coverage, it is the longest of the sections. Seemingly every contribution, regardless of its significance, has been included. Nor does it help matters that the writing gets bogged down in specialist jargon.
Notwithstanding the disappointments of the final section, Science in Denmark successfully shows how a small nation has influenced and in turn was influenced by international scientific culture. It also accounts persuasively for the growth and prominence of science within Denmark. The non-Danish-speaking student of Danish science could hardly ask for more.
