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In Memoriam

Martin J. Klein (1924-2009)
Martin Jesse Klein, Eugene Higgins Professor Emeritus of History of Physics and Professor Emeritus of Physics at Yale University and the former Senior Editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, passed away on March 28, 2009.

Martin Klein was born in New York City on June 25, 1924. He graduated from Columbia University at the age of 18 and earned his Master’s degree there two years later. After his war service during 1944-46, which primarily comprised sonar research, he completed his Ph.D. in physics at MIT in 1948. In 1949, having declined Edward Teller’s invitation to work for the nuclear weapons program, Klein joined the physics faculty at Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University), where he served for 18 years and completed his transformation from a theoretical physicist to a historian of physics. In 1967, he moved to Yale University, where he chaired the Department of History of Science and Medicine from 1971 to 1974, and was named Eugene Higgins Professor of the History of Physics and Professor of Physics in 1974. From 1978 to 1980 he also served in Yale’s prestigious William Clyde DeVane Professorship.

Klein was an authority on the lives and works of major physicists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Albert Einstein, Paul Ehrenfest, Josiah Willard Gibbs, and Niels Bohr. In 1970, he published his magnificent biography of Ehrenfest, which has been widely praised by both physicists and historians of science. He served for ten years (1988-98) as the Senior Editor of The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, further enhancing his reputation as one of the most profound analysts of Einstein’s life and work.

Klein lectured widely and published a large number of historical papers on topics ranging from the origins of thermodynamics and quantum theory to 19th-century mechanical explanations. He gave the George Sarton Memorial Lecture at AAAS (1969) and the Morris Loeb Lectures at Harvard (1975). He also held visiting appointments at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (1972), University of Amsterdam (1974 and 1993), and Rockefeller (1975-79) and Harvard (1989-90) Universities.

Klein received numerous honors. He was the winner of the first Abraham Pais Prize in 2005, awarded by the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics for exceptional accomplishments in the history of physics. The Prize Selection Committee cited Klein’s “pioneering studies in the history of 19th- and 20th-century physics, which embody the highest standards of scholarship and literary expression and have profoundly influenced generations of historians of physics.”

Klein was a National Research Fellow in Physics (1952-53), a two-time Guggenheim Fellow (1958-59 and 1967-68), and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society. He was elected to the Académie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences (1971), the National Academy of Sciences (1977), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1979). In the National Academy of Sciences, Klein was one of only three members who were not primarily scientists.

Klein is survived by his daughters Rona Klein of Bowling Green, OH, Sarah Zaino of New Haven, CT, Nancy Klein of El Sobrante, CA, and Abby Klein of New Haven, CT. In addition, he is survived by his former wives, Miriam Klein and Linda Booz Klein, and was predeceased by his wife, Joan Warnow-Blewett.

A memorial service is being organized by Martin Klein’s family in collaboration with Klein’s friends and colleagues. A session in memory of Martin will take place at the upcoming HSS meeting. Notices of these events will be posted on the HSS Web site.

– Danian Hu
(In preparing this obituary, I benefited from Roger H. Stuewer’s earlier report on Klein’s Pais Prize (http://www.aps.org/units/fhp/awards/pais/klein.cfm), from which I have quoted freely. I wish to thank Sarah Zaino, Linda Klein, Diana Buchwald, Daniel Kevles, Roger Stuewer, and Alan Shapiro for their comments and corrections.)

Marjorie Grene (1910-2009)
Philosopher of science Marjorie Grene passed away 16 March 2009 at age 98 after a brief illness. Marjorie Glicksman Grene, born 13 December 1910, was an important historian of philosophy (with books on Aristotle, Descartes, and various existentialist philosophers), epistemologist (with a special emphasis on perception and the contextual relations of knowers to the world around them) and a philosopher of science, publishing several books in the philosophy of biology.

After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in zoology at Wellesley College in 1931, Grene studied with such figures as Heidegger and Jaspers as an American-German exchange student 1931-33 and David Prall, Alfred North Whitehead, and C.I. Lewis at Harvard. Radcliffe awarded her a doctorate in philosophy in 1935 since women were not then formally admitted to Harvard. From 1937-1944 she was an instructor at the University of Chicago, where she participated in seminars run by Rudolf Carnap and Carl (Peter) Hempel. From 1944 to 1957 she continued to publish, but her main occupations were raising her family and running a farm, first in the US, then in Ireland. In 1950 she met Hungarian-British scientist-philosopher Michael Polanyi and served as his research assistant (largely by correspondence) for the conversion of his 1950 Gifford Lectures into his well-known book, Personal Knowledge. Her work with Polanyi led her to consider metaphysical and ethical issues in science, particularly biology, tackling questions as fundamental as what constitutes a person. She later was a founding member of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, the largest such organization of scientists, historians and philosophers.

Thanks in part to her work with Polanyi, Grene earned temporary positions at the University of Manchester (1957-8) and then at the University of Leeds (1958-60), before becoming a Lecturer in Philosophy at Queens University, Belfast (1960-65). She returned to the US, first as a faculty member, then as Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, which she built into a major department, with strengths in history of philosophy and philosophy of science. Since 1988, she had been Honorary University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech.

Marjorie Grene is survived by her daughter Ruth, who is on the Virginia Tech faculty in Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science, her son Nicholas, who is the Professor of English Literature in the School of English, Trinity College, Dublin, his wife Eleanor, six grandchildren, Sophia, Hannah, Jessica, Clement, Nick and Lucy Grene and one great-granddaughter, Nazyia Terry.

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