ABSTRACT
On the face of it, the history of soil science would appear to have only limited appeal. First, it is history, and to some, like the British schoolboy in the 2006 lm The History Boys, that reduces it to “just one bloody thing after another.” And when it comes to an applied, practical science such as soil science, impassioned disputes do not immediately spring into most people’s minds, as they might with the histories of elds such as atomic physics, genetics, and climate science. It is, nevertheless, a history of people, ideas, and complex systems, and as such, an arena not immune from the passion and intrigues of controversy. As well, it deals with the ultimate source of our food-the soil.
