Robert Poole (historian)
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Robert Poole (born 1957) is a UK-based historian, currently professor of history at the University of Central Lancashire, Preston.[1] He gained his PhD from the University of Lancaster in 1986, where he was associated with Prof Harold Perkin's Centre for Social History, organising the 1996 conference of the Social History Society on 'Time and the Construction of the Past'. He has also held positions at the universities of Keele, Edge Hill and Cumbria. He has also been Leverhulme Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Manchester (2000–01), an associate of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester (2010–17), an associate of 'The Future in the Stars' research programme, Friedrich-Meinecke Institut, Freie Universität Berlin (2012–16),[2] and visiting senior research fellow to the History Group, University of Hertfordshire (2013–15).
Poole's book Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth (Yale University Press, 2008),[3] a study of the first views of Earth from space and their impact, has been identified as one of the key works of the 'new aerospace history'.[4] He has lectured on 'Earthrise' and the cultural history of the space age in London, Washington, D.C., Lucerne,[5] Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen, broadcast on American public radio networks,[6][7][8] and in July 2009 wrote the op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times on the fortieth anniversary of the Lunar landing in July 1969 by Apollo 11.[9] Subsequent articles have explored the science fiction writer and techno-prophet Arthur C. Clarke,[10] '2001: a Space Odyssey and the Dawn of Man' in the 2015 collection Stanley Kubrick: New Perspectives,[11] and the myth of progress in '2001: a Space Odyssey'.[12] Another recent article, 'What was Whole about the Whole Earth?', provides a missing chapter to Earthrise.[13] In early 2016 he enjoyed a Short-Term Visitor Award at the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, to look at the recently acquired papers of Arthur C. Clarke.[14]
