Lynn Thorndike

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Lynn Thorndike (* 1882 in Lynn, Massachusetts, USA; † 1965) was an American historian of medieval science and alchemy. Among his books on magic and science are: A History of Magic and Experimental Science (8 vol., 1923–58), spanning the period from early Christianity through early modern Europe; and Science and Thought in the Fifteenth Century (1929). Thorndike also wrote The History of Medieval Europe (1917, 3d ed. 1949) and translated the medieval astronomical textbook De sphaera mundi of Johannes de Sacrobosco.

Thorndike began teaching medieval history at Northwestern University in1907. He moved to Western Reserve University in 1909 and stayed there until 1924. Columbia University lured him away in Fall 1924 and he taught there until he retired from teaching in 1950. Thorndike continued to publish for an additional ten years.

He believed in contradicting the famous historian, Jacob Burckhardt. Instead of viewing the Italian Renaissance as a separate entity of the Middle Ages, he believed most of the political, social, moral and religious phenomena which is the Renaissance seems almost equally characteristic of Italy at any time from the twelfth to the eighteenth century.