John Wyon Burrow, 1935-2009
Professor John Burrow, who taught at Sussex from 1969 to 1995, died of cancer on 3 November at his home in Witney, Oxfordshire.
Sussex was the first university in this country to offer degrees in intellectual history, and John was the first to occupy the chair in this branch of history created for him in 1981. He held this post until he moved to the Chair of European Thought at Oxford in 1995, prior to his retirement in 2000.
John was first appointed to a ‘contextual’ post in the School of Social Sciences, where he taught the third-year course on the history and philosophy of the social sciences, otherwise known as ‘Concepts, Methods, and Values’ (CMV).
He had already published a path-breaking book, Evolution and Society (1966) that dealt with the influence of evolutionary theories on the social sciences during the 19th century. It was to herald the arrival of a more sophisticated way of writing the history of the social sciences.
Alongside two Sussex colleagues with whom he taught CMV, Professor Stefan Collini and myself, he went on to write a book on That Noble Science of Politics (1983) that extended this approach and laid the foundation for what later became known as the ‘Sussex school of intellectual history’.
Although John left Sussex in 1995, he retained a link through the Centre for Intellectual History, whose activities he supported by participating in its symposia.
In any future history of this university his career will be cited as vindication of the fluidity of the early structures and the distinction and distinctiveness of what could flourish within them.
Donald Winch,
Emeritus Professor (Centre for Intellectual History)