Shigeru Nakayama

Shigeru Nakayama (中山茂) (1928–2014) was a Japanese historian of science.

Life

Nakayama was born in 1928, in Amagasaki, and brought up there.^[1] He survived the Hiroshima atom bomb of 1945.^[2] He left Hiroshima Higher School in 1948, and graduated from Tokyo University with a degree in mathematical astronomy in 1951.^[3][4]

As a graduate student, Nakayama was a Fulbright scholar.^[2] He worked with Thomas Kuhn and then Joseph Needham.^[3] Besides those two scholars, he regarded Kiyosi Yabuuti (1906–2000) as one of his teachers.^[1] At Harvard in the late 1950s, he met fellow graduate student Nathan Sivin, with whom he worked for many decades. ^[5] Nakayama was on the staff of Tokyo University from 1960 to 1989.^[3] As Professor Emeritus, he was at Kanagawa University.^[6]

Nakayama died in Tokyo on Saturday 10 May 2014.^[7]

Works

• Japanese Studies in the History of Astronomy (1962)^[8]
• A History of Japanese Astronomy: Chinese Background and Western Impact (1969)^[9]
• Characteristics of scientific development in Japan (1977)^[10]
• Academic and scientific traditions in China, Japan, and the West (1984)^[11]
• Science, Technology, and Society in Postwar Japan (1991)^[12]
• A Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan: The Occupation Period, 1945-1952 (2001), with Kunio Goto and Hitoshi Yoshioka
• A Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan: Road to Self-Reliance, 1952-1959 (2005), with Kunio Goto and Hitoshi Yoshioka
• A Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan: Transformation period, 1970-1979 (2006)^[13]
• The Orientation of Science and Technology: A Japanese View (2009)^[14]