October 2007 Newsletter Vol. 36 No. 4
Program Profile: The University of Oklahoma
When was your program established and how has it developed since its inception?
In 1949 an alumnus of the University, Everette Lee DeGolyer, began a series of gifts of books to the University, and the University in turn agreed to the condition that a faculty member be hired to teach the History of Science. Beginning with an initial gift of 129 volumes, the History of Science Collections had grown to 600 volumes two years later, including a presentation copy of Galileo Galilei’s Sidereus nuncius (Venice, 1610); Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (London, 1665); Robert Boyle’s Sceptical Chymist (London, 1661); Hrabanus Maurus’ Opus de universo (Strassburg, 1467); Johann Kepler’s Harmonices mundi (Linz, 1619); Antoine Lavoisier’s Traite elementaire de chimie (Paris, 1789); Nicolaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543); and Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (London, 1687). The first faculty position in the history of science was established in 1954. An additional one was established in 1959, a third in 1964, a fourth and a fifth in 1970. In 1971, a separate department was established, which now includes 11 faculty, with two additional historians of science appointed in the university’s Honors College. The program includes specialists in the history of science, technology and medicine, with chronological interests from the middle ages to the present.
How is the history of science organized at your institution?
Although historians of science were initially appointed in the Department of History, with an oversight committee that reported directly to the President of the University, in 1971 an autonomous department was created, and over the past 36 years, the program has doubled in size. In addition, we have two historians of science who work in the Honors College, and we maintain a close connection the History of Science Collections in the Library, where all faculty and graduate students have studies and work space.
What are the comprehensive exam fields?
In consultation with program committees, students select four distinct doctoral fields: (1) the doctoral field supports his/her dissertation research and may be defined by period, region, and/or theme; (2) the secondary field may be defined by period, region, and/or theme, or it may be a research tools and methods field and is closely related to a student’s research interests but in a manner distinct from the doctoral field, thus providing a different thematic focus, methodological/theoretical perspective, or context than the doctoral field; (3) the outside field is typically (but not necessarily) supervised by a faculty member outside of the department and is intended to support the student’s research interests by providing a different perspective on or a different context for the student’s research topic; and (4) the complementary field and is intended to provide the student with a broader perspective on the history of science than found in his/her three research fields.
What are the faculty, program, and resource strengths?
Our faculty’s interests span the history of science from the medieval world to the twentieth century. We are especially strong in four areas:
– medieval and early modern science (Professors Peter Barker, Kathleen Crowther, Steven Livesey, Kerry Magruder, Rienk Vermij)
– natural and social sciences in the modern world, especially biology and ecology, natural history and psychology (Professors Hunter Heyck, Piers Hale, R. Richard Hamerla, Magruder, Suzanne Moon, Marilyn Ogilvie, Katherine Pandora, Sarah Tracy and Stephen Weldon)
– history of technology, and pedagogical applications for technology in history of science (Heyck, Magruder, Moon and Pandora).
– interrelationship between science and religion (Barker, Crowther, Hale, Livesey, Magruder, Vermij, Weldon).
The University also houses the History of Science Collections, which contains more than 92,000 volumes, including 55 incunabula and more than 900 16th-century titles. The Collections’ holdings emphasize both the intellectual and social contexts of scientific inquiry, ranging from the works of individual scientists to such supporting materials as textbooks, popular works on science, and journals of scientific societies and academies as well as current publications in the history of science. A generous endowment made by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation encourages scholars from around the world to use resources in the Collections.
With the School of Library and Information Studies, the department offers a dual-degree program for students planning for a career in librarianship as a science librarian, as a curator of a rare book and manuscript collection in the history of science/health sciences, or as a public historian or archivist in the history of science.
The department also is a key resource in the production of tools and publications for the discipline. Stephen Weldon is the Bibliographer for the History of Science Society and is chair of the DHST’s World History of Science Online project. Suzanne Moon is Associate Editor of Technology and Culture. Katherine Pandora has initiated a blog on science and popular culture that was formally rolled out during the past year (see http://scipop.net/). And Steven Livesey is producing a database of information on medieval commentators on Aristotle’s works and Peter Lombard’s Sentences, published sequentially by Brepols Publishers in their International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages-Online, eventually to be released as a relational database.
What are some recent dissertations that have been produced by graduating students?
– Perez, Kimberly, “Fancy and Imagination: Cultivating Sympathy and Envisioning the Natural World for the Modern Child” (2006)
– Tredwell, Katherine, “The Exact Sciences in Lutheran Germany and Tudor England” (2005)
– Heidarzadeh, Tofigh, “Theories of Comets to the Age of Laplace” (2004)
– Eddy, Mark, “Architects of the Self: Social Scientists and the Construction of the Individual in Postwar America” (2004)
– Kroll, Gary, “Exploration in the Mare Incognita: Natural History and Conservation in Early Twentieth-Century America” (2000)
– Palmeri, JoAnn, “An Astronomer Beyond the Observatory: Harlow Shapley as Prophet of Science” (2000)
– Magruder, Kerry, “Theories of the Earth from Descartes to Cuvier: Natural Order and Historical Contingency in a Contested Textual Tradition” (2000)
Current students are completing dissertations on Newtonian theology, the biblical view of science in Antebellum America, modern biology and ecology, and the earth sciences.
Please provide an anecdote that personalizes or gives a human face to history of science at your institution.
When Duane H.D. Roller arrived at the University of Oklahoma, one of the first things on his agenda was to write Mr. DeGolyer to inquire about the annotated 1632 edition of Galileo’s Dialogo, the first book that he had given to the University of Oklahoma. In response to Roller’s questions, DeGolyer explained that he had paid $1,000 for the book (and had probably been cheated because he had purchased it from a none-too-trustworthy Roman bookseller), and that he did not know whether the changes in the book were actually made by Galileo. The only way to be sure, he explained, would be to have the writing authenticated by an expert in Galileo’s writing, Stillman Drake. Drake came to the University of Oklahoma, where he pronounced the handwriting genuine and vastly increased the value of the Collection.
The program’s alumnae include three distinguished women: Clara Sue Kidwell (Ph.D. 1970), currently Director of the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and formerly Assistant Director of Cultural Resources at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, and Director of the University of Oklahoma’s Native American Studies Program; Marilyn B. Ogilvie (Ph.D. 1973), current Curator of the University of Oklahoma History of Science Collections; and Liba Taub (Ph.D. 1987), Curator of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge, England.
First Image:Duane H. D. Roller, the first Curator of the Collections, stands next to Marcia Goodman, the first Librarian of the Collections. The photo was taken in 1976 on the publication of The Catalogue of the History of Science Collections of the University of Oklahoma Libraries.