Lynn Townsend White Jr. (April 29, 1907 – March 30, 1987) was an American historian of technology and college president. He was an instructor in medieval history at Princeton University from 1933 to 1937, a professor at Stanford University from 1937 to 1943, president of Mills College, Oakland, California, from 1943 to 1958, and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1958 until 1987. He is best known for the controversial book Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962) and for controversial articles on religion, technology, and ecology such as "Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered" (The American Scholar, 1958) and "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis" (Science, 1967). White helped to found the Society for the History of Technology and was its president from 1960 to 1962. He won the 1963 Pfizer Award for Medieval Technology and Social Change and the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 1964.
Lynn Townsend White, Jr in the context of 10th century
The 10th century was the period from 901 (represented by the Roman numerals CMI) through 1000 (M) in accordance with the Julian calendar, and the last century of the 1st millennium.
In China, the Song dynasty was established, with most of China reuniting after the fall of the Tang dynasty and the following Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The Muslim World experienced a cultural zenith, especially in al-Andalus under the Caliphate of Córdoba and in the Samanid Empire under Ismail Samani. The Abbasid Caliphate continued to exist but with reduced central authority. Additionally, there was a cultural flourishing for the Byzantine Empire, which also reconquered some lost territories, and the First Bulgarian Empire, as well as the Holy Roman Empire during the Ottonian Renaissance. The historian Lynn White mentions of the period that "to the modern eye, it is very nearly the darkest of the Dark Ages ... if it was dark, it was the darkness of the womb". Caesar Baronius described it as the Iron Century, because it was 'iron in its harshness and in its sterility of goodness', while Lorenzo Valla gave it the similar name "Age of Lead and Iron".
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