'In scope, conceptual finesse, and wide-ranging erudition, this is a ground-breaking book. Building on its core theme of the fashioning, deployment, and eventual fading, since the 1960s, of the concept of applied science, it offers insights of profound importance not only for historians of modern Britain but also for decision-makers and commentators concerned with the direction of research policy in our own day.' Robert Fox, University of Oxford

'Bud has given us a deliciously complicated story about the origins in the early nineteenth century of 'applied science' in Britain and its subsequent long-term history up to the end of the twentieth century. Changing meanings had vast implications for the development of government, educational and research institutions, industry, and an enlightened public.' Bernard Lightman, York University

'Born on the same day as Frankenstein's monster, the term Applied Science has captured many people's hopes and fears … Robert Bud, for the first time, in a rich and nuanced historical study, reveals what Applied Science meant, and why it mattered in the British context.' Jon Agar, University College London