Mordechai Feingold is the Van Nuys Page Professor of History at Caltech. He is the editor of the journals Erudition and the republic of Letters (Brill) and History of Universities (Oxford). He is the author of a number of books, including The Mathematicians' Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society in England, 1560-1640 (1984); The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture (2004); and Newton and the Origin of Civilization (2013), written with Jed Buchwald.
Giulia Giannini, Ph.D. (2008), is Associate Professor of History of Science and Technology at the University of Milan. She is the author of Verso Oriente. Gianantonio Tadini e la prima prova fisica della rotazione terrestre (Olschki, 2012).

This volume aims to furnish a broader framework for analyzing the scientific and institutional context that gave rise to scientific academies in Europe, from Italy to England, and from Poland to Portugal.