[4] He then spent one year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying chemical engineering before transferring to Harvard to pursue history in 1941.
[4] He was then drafted into the US Army for World War II and served as a captain and company commander[5] in the 94th Chemical Mortar Battalion after attending officer training school.
[19] The second continued the theme by contrasting the negative effects for the sciences of the disorder during the French Revolution and its aftermath: "because of the constant reshaping of committees and legislative bodies, scientific aims were not easily achieved.
"[19] At the same time, however, war induced new cooperation between science and industry, and Napoleon's Egyptian expeditions inspired significant new scientific developments in botany, topography, and ethnography.
[19] Gillispie was awarded the lifetime achievement George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society in 1984[5] and retired from Princeton's faculty in 1987.
[20] In 2012 he was presented with a festschrift, A Master of Science History: Essays in Honor of Charles Coulston Gillispie, edited by Jed Buchwald.