Vol. 40, No.4, October 2011
Printer friendly version of Newsletter
Member News
Quick Links....
Dark Clouds Above Boerhaave Museum
-------------------------------------
Notes from the Inside
-------------------------------------
News
-------------------------------------
Conferences
-------------------------------------
Jobs and Fellowships
-------------------------------------
Member News
-------------------------------------
In Memoriam
-------------------------------------
Jobs, Conferences, Grants
Peter Alagona (UC Santa Barbara) has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. The CAREER Program supports the early career development of teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. The award provides a financial stipend to support research activity for a period of five years. Peter's work has focused on history and environmental studies, on the University of California's Natural Reserve System, and on the role of biological field stations in American environmental history.
............
Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney) has been awarded an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship (2012–16)—the only historian to receive one. His project aims to reveal intense scientific debate about what it meant to be human in the southern hemisphere during the twentieth century, placing Australian racial thought in a new context. Through comparative study, it shows the distinctive character and scope of racial ideas in southern settler societies, and assesses their global impact. The $2,125 million (AUD) research award includes funding for at least two post-doctoral fellows and two PhD scholarships over its five-year duration.
............
The paperback edition of Jimena Canales' A Tenth of a Second: A History is now available from University of Chicago Press.
............
Matt Dowd received the Adler Planetarium's Adler-Mansfield Prize for his contributions to public understanding of astronomy. He received the award from Marv Bolt at the Tenth Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop, co-hosted by the University of Notre Dame and the Adler, which Dowd has organized for many years.
............
Michael R. Dove's book, The Banana Tree at the Gate: The History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo, was just published by Yale University Press. The book begins with the Hikayat Banjar, a seventeenth-century native chronicle from Southeast Borneo, which characterizes the irresistibility of natural-resource wealth to outsiders as "the banana tree at the gate." Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world-system.
............
Andy Fiss, who recently received his PhD from Indiana University's Department of History and Philosophy of Science, is now starting as the Mellon postdoctoral fellow for the Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at Vassar College. He is particularly excited since this position allows him to return to his alma mater—Fiss graduated from Vassar in 2005.
............
Donald Forsdyke has released a new set of videos in his "Evolution Academy" series. Following an introductory set of twelve 15-minute videos on "Evolutionary Principles" and a second set on "Natural Selection," there is now a third set, on "Blending Inheritance," posted online. The list of titles may be viewed on his web page, http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/videolectures.htm.
............
David S. Jones has left his job at MIT to join the faculty at Harvard as the first A. Bernard Ackerman Professor of the Culture of Medicine. His time will be split between the Department of the History of Science at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
............
Toby Huff's most recent book, Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution: A Global Perspective, is now available in paperback from Cambridge University Press.
............
Harry H. Mark has just published Optokinetics: A New System of Optics, now available online and in print.
............
Emily Pawley has been appointed Assistant Professor of History at Dickinson College, where she will be teaching history of science and environmental history.
............
Volker Remmert took up the professorship for history of science and technology at the University of Wuppertal (Germany). Additionally, his book, Picturing the Scientific Revolution: Title Engravings in Early Modern Scientific Publications, has just been published by St. Joseph's University Press.
............
Jonathan Seitz's new book, Witchcraft and Inquisition in Early Modern Venice, has been published by Cambridge University Press.
............
Long-time HSS member Phil Sloan (University of Notre Dame) was featured in the National Catholic Reporter, for his many contributions to the study of the history and philosophy of biology and his contribution to the stem-cell debate. The full article may be found at http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/reagan-v-freud-science-v-religion-population-and-islam; Phil's work is profiled in Part II, "Science and Religion." Reprinted with permission of National Catholic Reporter, 115 E Armour Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64111, www.ncronline.org.
............
Elliot Sober (University of Wisconsin-Madison) was elected President of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (DLMPS) at the General Assembly of the DLMPS held in Nancy, France, 22 July 2011. Professor Sober begins his four-year term as president on 1 January 2012.
............
Mark Solovey has been awarded a fellowship at Harvard's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. The Center's theme this year is "The Politics of Knowledge in Universities and the State." At the Warren Center, he will investigate "The Politics-Patronage-Social Science Nexus, from the War in Vietnam to the War on Terror." Solovey joins fellow HSS members Gregg Mitman, Jamie Cohen-Cole, and Jessica Wang, who also have fellowships at the Warren Center this year. Solovey's forthcoming edited volume on Cold War Social Science, will be published January 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan.
............
Virginia Trimble and D. J. Saikia edited a special issue of the Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India (March 2011), which contains some of the talks given at a meeting held in October 2010, at the University of Chicago in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nobelist S. Chandrasekhar.
............
Roger Turner will be teaching American history and the history of science as an adjunct professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
............
Richard Weikart's book, Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress, was recently released in paperback by Palgrave Macmillan.