Few would question the value of advanced research today. Considered key to the health and wealth of a nation, research universities receive ample support, especially when global university rankings draw countries into a new level of international competition. Our age has come to assume that an academic career, characterized by the pursuit of new knowledge, starts with a doctorate, generically known as the PhD. Doctoral education prepares the student for a career in academia or industrial research and develop-ment, and culminates with the presentation of novel research results in a dissertation that is based on years of original research in a specialized field. This established pattern of research education, taken for granted today, first emerged in parts of the West only in the nineteenth century, and even later in the other parts of the world. This volume studies the emergence and development of research education across disciplines in major areas of the globe—Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia—over the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries.