Mikuláš Teich

Mikuláš Teich (24 July 1918 – 16 August 2018) was a Slovak-British historian of science, best known for the series of histories in national context which he co-edited with Roy Porter. He was married to the economic historian Alice Teichova.

Mikuláš Teich was born in Kassa (Košice) on 24 July 1918, and grew up in an assimilated Jewish family. He studied medicine at Masaryk University, where he became politically active. After the German invasion in March 1939, he and his older brother decided to emigrate, and arrived in London in April 1939. Helped by the Montefiore family, he studied for an external university degree in chemistry at University College, Exeter. He went on to study at Leeds University, joining the Communist Party alongside Alice, who became his wife in 1944. After he gained his doctorate in 1946, they returned to Prague. However, Teich was there labelled a “destructive element” and lost his job in the chemistry department. He managed to build another career in the history of science, and was reinstated as a Party member in 1963. After the repression of the Prague Spring, he and Alice managed to escape to West Germany and on to England. There Joseph Needham found him employment at Caius College until he became a founding fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. He remained a Fellow of Robinson until the end of his life, on 16 August 2018.