Vol. 40, No.4, October 2011
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In Memoriam
Joshua Earl Haddock
(4 February 1982–2 July 2011)
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Joshua Earl Haddock (Josh), a Philosophy of Science Association member and rising graduate student in philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, died from injuries suffered in a fall while descending from a climb at Rumbling Bald near Lake Lure, North Carolina. He lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was finishing his dissertation in probability theory as a member of the Philosophy department at the University of Cincinnati. He will be awarded the Ph.D. degree posthumously.
Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on 4 February 1982, Joshua was a graduate of Smoky Mountain High School and Western Carolina University. He earned his M.A. at the University of Colorado in Fort Collins, where he hoped to return one day. Joshua became a falconer at the age of seventeen, and his love of nature, the mountains, hiking and climbing afforded him many opportunities to travel in local mountains and in the west.
Rob Skipper, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati, remembers Josh as a top student. "During the time Josh was a Ph.D. student in our department," he said, "I came to see that he was by far the most philosophically talented student we had. He had already started giving talks at excellent conferences, including a talk on probability at the Philosophy of Science Association—his first submitted paper was to be published in Philosophy of Science. I have no doubt he would've turned out to be a fantastic philosopher. More importantly, he was a good person."
More Information: http://www.philsci.org/remembrances/haddock.html
Roger Hahn
5 January 1932–30 May 2011
(HSS thanks the family of Professor Hahn for the following account of his career.)
Roger Hahn, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley, a leader in shaping the academic field of the history of science, died unexpectedly on May 30 in New York City.
Now widely recognized as a significant field of study, the history of science was an emerging discipline when Hahn, in 1953, was among the first students to graduate from Harvard College with majors in both science (physics) and history.
"Roger was the perfect colleague. We worked and taught together closely for thirty years without an argument," said John Heilbron, Professor Emeritus of History and a longtime friend and colleague of Hahn. "He was also a very good academic citizen, interested, friendly, knowledgeable, challenging—the sort of person, now increasingly rare, who helps to make the university greater than the sum of its parts."
One of his most notable and influential early works, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1971) provides a comprehensive account of the elite Paris Academy of Sciences from its founding under French Controller General of Finance Jean-Baptiste Colbert to its dissolution as a royal institution during the French Revolution, and its subsequent revision in the Napoleonic era. Articulating his view of science and scientific institutions in the context of their times, Hahn describes the Academy as "the anvil on which the often conflicting values of science and society are shaped into a visible form."
Hahn was born in Paris, France, on 5 January 1932. His family fled France to New York in 1941 to escape Nazi oppression. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1953 and earning an M.A.T. in Education from Harvard University the following year, Hahn later served in the U.S. Army, stationed at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), outside of Paris. In 1961, Hahn accepted a position in the History Department at UC Berkeley.
Among Hahn's many honors and appointments, he was twice named a National Science Foundation Fellow and was elected to the Council of the History of Science Society. He was also elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and member of the Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences, serving as its Vice President in 2005. Hahn was also a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and served as president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the West Coast History of Science Society. He was an active participant and a member of the Advisory Council for Humanities West.
"Above all, Roger was a true scholar, an excellent teacher, a wonderful, warm human being with a fine sense of humor, and a dear friend," said James Casey, a UC Berkeley Engineering Professor who was collaborating with Hahn on a publication concerning the theory of plasticity of metals. "His deep study of history had taught him to be philosophical about life, people, and politics. He had a realistic, balanced view of humanity." Roger Hahn is survived by his wife, Ellen Hahn of Berkeley, California; daughters Elisabeth Hahn of New York City and Sophie Hahn of Berkeley; and Sophie's husband Eric Bjerkholt and their children, Emil, Simon and Sarah Bjerkholt. He is also survived by his brother, Pierre M. Hahn of San Francisco, and his family.
More information: The full obituary may be found at the UC Berkeley History Department's website at http://history.berkeley.edu/hahnobit.html.