Dr Carsten Timmermann
Contact details
Wellcome Research Fellow (MSc, MA, PhD)
Simon Building
Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9PL
Tel: +44 (0)161 275 7950
Email: Carsten.Timmermann@manchester.ac.uk
Websites:
Research Interests
I am a Wellcome Research Fellow in the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. In my research I focus mostly on issues in the history of medicine and the biomedical sciences in the twentieth century. In recent years I have been working on the history of non-communicable diseases in the post-war era, particularly in Britain but also in the US and Germany (East and West). Since 2003 I have been involved (along with John Pickstone, with whom I wrote the grant proposal, Emm Barnes, Elizabeth Toon and Helen Valier) in a collaborative reasearch project on the history of cancer research and cancer services in post-war Britain, funded by the Wellcome Trust. I have also done work on the history of cardiovascular research, especially high blood pressure, in post-war Britain and both German states, looking at novel drug therapies since the 1940s and the rise of essential hypertension as a 'risk factor'.
Research interests include
- (bio)medical sciences since the nineteenth century
- cancer research and cancer therapy in the post-war period,
- the history of hypertension drugs,
- medical innovations and medical technologies,
- connections and conflicts between epidemiology and laboratory research,
- debates over civilisation and disease,
- social rationalisation and the 'crisis of medicine' in interwar Germany.
Biography
I originally studied biochemistry at the Freie Universitaet Berlin (Diplom in 1993 - roughly equivalent to an MSc - supported by a studentship from the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) but got interested in the history of science fairly early on. While working in a laboratory at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, I attended courses in the Science Studies Programme at University of California, San Diego. I then enrolled for an MA in History and Social Anthropology of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester (1995, supported by a Wellcome Trust Studentship) and completed a PhD, also at the University of Manchester, on Weimar Medical Culture: Doctors, Healers and the 'Crisis of Medicine' in Interwar Germany (1999, supported by a Wellcome Trust Studentship). Since 1999, I have worked first as a Wellcome Trust Research Associate and later as a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. During this time I have been a frequent visitor, sometimes for longer periods, at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin and have collaborated closely with colleagues in continental Europe, the United States and Canada.
Publications
2008
Timmermann C (2008) Clinical Research in Postwar Britain: The role of the Medical Research Council. IOS Press Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century: 231-54.
Valier H, Timmermann C (2008) Clinical Trials and the Reorganisation of Medical Research in Post-World War II Britain. Medical History 52: 493-510.
Timmermann C (2008) How does a Drug become Medicine? Hexamethonium and the Treatment of High Blood Pressure, 1940s-1950s. MPIWG Ways of Regulating: 153-163.
2007
Timmermann C (2007) Karl Heinrich Bauer, Alfred Grotjahn, John McMichael, George W Pickering, Dickinson W Richards, and Ottomar Rosenbach. Greenwood Press Dictionary of Medical Biography: 6.
Timmermann C (2007) As Depressing as it was Predictable? Lung Cancer, Clinical Trials, and the Medical Research Council in Postwar Britain. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 81(1): 312-334.
2006
Timmermann C (2006) Hexamethonium, Hypertension, and Pharmaceutical Innovation: The Transformation of an Experimental Drug in Post-war Britain. Palgrave Macmillan Devices and Designs: Medical Technologies in Hist. Perspective: 156-174.
(2006) Devices and Designs: Medical Technologies in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan(ST&M in Modern History): 298.
Timmermann C (2006) A Matter of Degree: The Normalization of Hypertension, circa 1940 -1970. Routledge Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal: 245-261.
Timmermann C (2006) To Treat or Not To Treat: Drug Research and the Changing Nature of Essential Hypertension. Routledge The Risks of Medical Innovation: 133-147.
2005
Cantor D, Timmermann C (2005) Lung Cancer. Scribner Tobacco: 320-326.
Timmermann C (2005) Americans and Pavlovians: the Central Institute for Cardiovascular Research at the East German Academy of Sciences and its precursor institutions as a case study of biomedical research in a country of the Soviet Bloc (c 1950-1980). Routledge Medicine, the Market and the Mass Media: 244-265.
2001
Timmermann C (2001) Rationalising 'Folk Medicine' in Interwar Germany: Faith, Business and Science at Dr Madaus & Co. Social History of Medicine 14: 459-482.
Timmermann C (2001) Constitutional Medicine, Neo-Romanticism and the Politics of anti-Mechanism in interwar Germany. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75: 717-739.
Timmermann C (2001) A Model for the 'New Physician'? Hippocrates in Interwar Germany. Ashgate Reinventing Hippocrates: 302-324.
2000
Timmermann C (2000) Wer darf heilen und wer nicht? 'Kurpfuscherei' und die Krise der Medizin in der Weimarer Republik. Boehlau Lügen und Betrügen: 133-149.