Charles Webster FBA is a historian and retired academic specialising in the history of medicine and science. He was Reader in the History of Medicine and Director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 1988 (when he was also a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford), and a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, from 1988 to 2004. Webster was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1982. [1] [2]
Webster's parents were eastern European political refugees and he spent most of his adolescence in Nottingham. His first job, at the age of 16, was as a laboratory technician for Boots. He studied at night school for his A levels and went on to earn a degree in botany and microbiology from University College London. Webster then moved to Sheffield to train as a teacher, working from 1959 to 1965 as a science teacher at the City Grammar School. He began private historical study while teaching and published his first research paper in Nature in 1962. [3]
Webster's first academic appointment was in the philosophy department of the University of Leeds. In 1968 he was elected a research fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, taking up the appointment in 1969. He was appointed a university reader in the history of medicine, also attached to Corpus Christi, in 1972. He remained in this post until 1988 when he was elected a senior research fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, where he remained until his retirement in 2004. [3]
Among Webster's former doctoral students is Howard Hotson, Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St Anne's College. [4]