Introduction

Bob Coats was an exceptional scholar. His work covered a wide range of periods and places, from eighteenth-century Europe to the contemporary United States. Furthermore it spanned different disciplines — economic and social history, intellectual history, philosophy of science, and the sociology of knowledge. What makes him exceptional is the way he helped open new fields of research within these areas: the study of American economics, the professionalization of economics, and the recent internationalization of economics were all fields where his work dramatically broadened the agenda for subsequent scholars. Without work such as his, these fields would have been very different indeed.