He then began an industrial career in Yorkshire, before retreating into grammar-school teaching while also stumbling into the small coterie of individuals around Jerome Ravetz at Leeds University.

In October 1963 Thackray duly entered recently established Churchill College, Cambridge University, within a cadre of thirty fresh graduate students from multiple countries seeking to pursue many, varied academic fields.

Enjoying this new role, he pioneered the effort to secure the papers of leading British scientists including Sir James Chadwick, for what in 1973 would become the Churchill College Archive.

In September 1967 he intermitted his Fellowship to accept a one-year visiting lectureship at Harvard University, fully intending to return to the original Cambridge.

[6] As chairman of the brand-new HSS Department, Thackray drew on faculty members from such disciplinary areas of the university as history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, English, and American civilization.

In his years at Penn, Arnold Thackray additionally served as curator of The Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection in the History of Chemistry.

[9] A 1979-1980 task force led by historian John H. Wotiz[10] resulted in a recommendation to the American Chemical Society that it create a center for the history of chemistry.

The University of Pennsylvania agreed to a matching $150,000, composed in large measure of forgiven graduate-student tuition fees, plus a 25% decrease in Thackray's teaching load, without a reduction in salary.

CHOC's stated objective was "to discover and disseminate information about historical resources, and to encourage research, scholarship, and popular writing in the history of the chemical sciences and industries.

[15] Faced by these rapidly multiplying realities, Professor Thackray sought to move CHF to a home of its own somewhere in the greater Philadelphia (Wilmington, DE to Princeton, NJ) area.

The repurposed complex eventually included offices, archives, and space for the Othmer Library (itself steadily growing in size and stature as an internationally-acclaimed resource).

Also deemed essential was a capacious public museum designed by Ralph Appelbaum to appeal to those curious about science and its changing social and historical contexts.

[18] Under Thackray's leadership, CHF steadily expanded its scope, its sponsoring organizations, its repertoire of visiting academic scholars, and its activities around the country and overseas.

[19] An annual Othmer Gold Medal was inaugurated in 1997, to honor individuals contributing to science through innovation, entrepreneurship, research, legislation, and philanthropy.

A growing series of other medals and prizes followed, in partnership with relevant organizations in the USA and abroad, to honor pioneers in fields ranging from materials science to biotechnology.

Books that he has encouraged range from Journey: 75 Years of Kodak Research (1986)[31] and Out of Thin Air: A History of Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., 1940–1990 (1990) to varied studies of key individuals, as in George and Edith Rosenkranz : a memoir of their lives and times (2011, Syntex and the Birth Control Pill), Building a Petrochemical Industry in Saudi Arabia: the Life of Abdulaziz Abdullah Al-Zamil (2017), and Fred Kavli: The Man and His Legacy (2019, Kavlico and the Kavli Prizes).