Basalla was born in 1928. He completed his Ph.D. in the history of science at
Harvard University in 1963. His dissertation,
Science and Government in England 1800–1870, was supervised by
I. Bernard Cohen. He became an assistant professor of history at the
University of Texas at Austin in 1964, and was appointed an associate professor at the University of Delaware in 1971. He retired to become a professor emeritus in 1999. Basalla died on September 5, 2025, at the age of 97. == Books ==