Vol. 38, No. 4, October 2009
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News
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Notes from the Inside
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News
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Member News
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In Budapest
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HSS Fellowship in the History of Space Science
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In the Service of
Galileo’s Ghost
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Historians and Contemporary
Anti-evolutionism
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Making Visible Embryos: Making a Virtual Exhibition
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“Lusty Ladies or Victorian
Victims?”
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Lone Star Historians of
Science
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Centaurus: A New Face at a Respected Journal
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World Congress of
Environmental History
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Jobs, Conferences, Grants
Cartooning Evolution
Mark Aldrich has collected and posted images of cartoons
on evolution culled from numerous newspapers
and journals. With many images on Darwin and the Scopes Trial, Cartooning
Evolution provides a rich
repository of tongue-in-cheek representations of evolution. For further
information, visit http://sophia.smith.edu/~maldrich/evolution.
Evolution: A Journal of Nature, 1927-1938 available online
Evolution: A Journal of Nature was published 1927-1938 by a New York-based
group of pro-evolutionists
following the 1925 Scopes Trial. The magazine included commentary on
events, resources for teachers, and
reviews/advertisements for supporting materials. For further information:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/cain/projects/
ejn.
Generation to Reproduction: Wellcome Strategic Award for Cambridge History of Medicine
The University of Cambridge has secured major funding in the history
of medicine from the Wellcome
Trust. A strategic award of £785,000 for five years from 1 October
2009 will allow a cross-disciplinary group
of researchers to take a concerted approach to the history of reproduction.
The research will provide fresh
perspectives on issues ranging from ancient fertility rites to IVF.
A strongly grounded account, building on a
lively field of historical investigation, will offer a fresh basis
for policy and public debate. For more information:
http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/generation/ or contact generate@hermes.cam.ac.uk.
Recent Doctoral Dissertations in the History of Science
The latest batch of recent doctoral dissertations pertaining to history
of science has been downloaded to
http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/guides/histmed/researchresource
/dissertations/index_html.
Because of budget cuts at the host institution these dissertation lists
are now bimonthly. For further Information:
http://http://www.hsls.pitt.edu/guides/histmed/researchresource /dissertations/index_html
Official Web site of the 14th Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science
The official Web site of the 14th Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, which will be held in Nancy (France), 16-19 July 2011, is now available at http://www.clmps2011.org.
International History & Philosophy of Science
Teaching
Group Newsletter
The latest IHPST newsletter is available on the web at: http://www.ihpst.org/newsletters.html
2009 James T. Cushing Memorial Prize in History and
Philosophy
of Physics
The John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, along
with the Graduate Program in History
and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame and the Advisory
Committee of the James T.
Cushing Memorial Prize in History and Philosophy of Physics has awarded
the 2009 prize to Hanneke Janssen.
She is being honored for her Master’s Thesis—“Reconstructing
Reality: Environment-Induced Decoherence,
the Measurement Problem, and the Emergence of Definiteness in Quantum
Mechanics.”
Notice of Closure of the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists
The University of Bath Libraries announces the closure of the NCUACS at the University of Bath to take effect 31 October 2009. If you have any queries concerning this closure, please address them to Howard Nicholson, University Librarian, University of Bath at H.D.Nicholson@bath.ac.uk. In the 22 years since the Unit moved to Bath, it has secured the future of and processed nearly 200 scholarly archives now placed in many institutional libraries throughout the UK. For further information: http://www.bath.ac.uk/ncuacs/.
2010 Archaeoastronomy Workshop Announced
The 2009 Conference on Archaeoastronomy of the American Southwest
(CAASW) advanced the study and
practice of archaeoastronomy of the American Southwest. To continue
to build upon the success of the 2009
conference, a two-day technical workshop to be held 11-12 March 2010
has been scheduled to include such
topics as methodological principles, surveying techniques, mathematical
modeling, standardization of terms
and forms, and more. For further Information: http://www.caasw.org or e-mail administrator@caasw.org.
“Fathers of Astronomy”
In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, the Frazier International History Museum presents the mini-exhibition, Fathers of Astronomy, featuring authentic, first-edition books written by ground-breaking scientists Galileo and Copernicus as well as the “Nuremberg Chronicle.” The exhibit closes 3 January 2010. For more information: http://www.fraziermuseum.org or call (502) 753-5663.
Colloquium on the History of Psychiatry and Medicine, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard
The Colloquium on the History of Psychiatry and Medicine
offers an opportunity to clinicians, researchers,
and historians interested in a historical perspective on their fields
to discuss informally historical studies in
progress. Colloquiums will be held on 19 November, 17 December, 2009,
each from 4:00 – 5:30pm. For
further information e-mail David G. Satin at david_satin@hms.harvard.edu
or call/fax: 617-332-0032. For
further information: https://www.countway.harvard.edu/menuNavigation/historicalResources.html.
Call for Proposals: Book Series in History of Medicine
Praeger is looking for potential projects for a book series entitled Healing Society: Disease, Medicine, and History. The object is to publish books that offer reliable overviews of particular aspects of medical and social history while incorporating the most up-to-date scholarly interpretations. Books are intended to be narrative surveys that serve as practical introductions or handbooks to their topics. Some topics of particular interest (although proposals on any appropriate topic would be welcome) are: history of caesarean section; history of pandemics (in general, or a particular disease such as influenza); history of drugs of abuse (or a specific drug such as opium); history of specific disabilities, diseases and medical conditions (e.g., cerebral palsy, bipolar disorder, leprosy, yellow fever, etc., either comprehensively or within a specific country/time period with appeal to a broad, general English-speaking audience). If interested, contact John Parascandola at jparascandola@verizon.net. For further information: http://www.praeger.com/praeger.aspx.
CFP: Special Theme Issue: Religion and Biotechnology
Papers are welcome for a special theme issue of the European
Legacy that will seek to delineate, analyze and
discuss the current stage of the relationship between religion and
biotechnology and the impact of all sorts of
human genetic engineering on traditional theological attitudes to life
and the notion of the human person.
The special issue is expected to present as many religious positions
as possible and offer a representative array
of themes and methodological approaches, encompassing discussions in
epistemological, ethical, historical
or socio-political terms. Submission deadline: 31 August 2010. To submit
please contact: Byron Kaldis at
bkald@eap.gr.
Paolo Rossi Monti awarded the 2009 Balzan Prize
Paolo Rossi Monti, an emeritus professor at the University of Florence, has been awarded the 2009 Balzan Prize for the history of science. He was honored for his contributions to the study of the intellectual foundations of science from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. Each prize carries an award of one million Swiss francs, half of which must be used for research.
American Association for the History of Nursing Awards
At its 26th annual conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
the American Association for the History of
Nursing awarded the Lavinia L. Dock Award for Exemplary Historical
Research and Writing to Julie Fairman
(University of Pennsylvania) for her Making room
in the clinic: Nurse practitioners and the evolution of
modern health care (Rutgers University Press). The Mary Adelaide Nutting
Award for Exemplary Historical
Research and Writing was awarded to Barbra Mann Wall (University of
Pennsylvania) for the article“ Catholic Sister Nurses in Selma,
Alabama, 1940-1972,” which
was published in Nursing History Review in
2009. The article analyses the complex roles that race, gender, and
religion played in the practice of health in
the southern United States in the mid-20th century. The AAHN’s
Teresa E. Christy Award recognizes excellence
in historical research and writing done while the research was a doctoral
student. This year the award
was presented to Jacqueline Margo Brooks Carthon (University of Pennsylvania),
for her dissertation “No
place for the dying: A tale of urban health work in Philadelphia’s
Black Belt.” For further information, go to:
http://www.aahn.org.
PACHS Fellowships
The Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science offers fellowships
for Dissertation Research (one-month,
with a $2,000 stipend) and Dissertation Writing (nine months, with
a $20,000 stipend) for doctoral candidates
whose projects are concerned with the history of science, technology
or medicine. One-month fellowships
are for students who wish to use the collections of two or more of
the Center’s member institutions,
which include some of the premier repositories of primary source materials
in the United States. Nine-month
fellowships are for students who wish to participate in our interdisciplinary
community of scholars while
completing research and writing their dissertations. Applications must
be submitted online by 4 January
2010. For more information on the Center’s fellowships, resources
for research, events and activities, see www.pachs.net.
Kenneth O. May Medal
Ivor Grattan-Guinness, a historian of mathematics and logic, has received the Kenneth O. May Medal for outstanding service to the history of mathematics. The medal was bestowed by the International Commission for the History of Mathematics (ICHM) on 31 July 2009 at the 23rd International Congress for the History of Science. The May Medal is named for the mathematician and historian of mathematics who was instrumental in starting the ICHM.
In Memoriam: Olga Amsterdamska
Olga Amsterdamska, sociologist of science and historian of science and medicine, died Thursday, 27 August 2009, from cardiac insufficiency, a complication of myositis. Olga was born in Lodz, Poland in 1953. She studied philosophy and sociology at Yale University (BA, 1975) and completed her graduate education in sociology at Columbia (PhD 1984). Her dissertation, written under the supervision of Robert K. Merton, was published as Schools of Thought: The Development of Linguistics from Bopp to Saussure (Reidel, 1987). Since 1984 she has worked at the University of Amsterdam, first in the Department of Science Dynamics and more recently in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her research focused on social studies of science and medicine, particularly the historical development of the biomedical sciences and their relations to medical practice. She will be greatly missed by all her colleagues and friends.