Vol. 41, No.2, April 2012
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In Memoriam
Quick Links....
Notes from the Inside
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News from the Profession
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Upcoming Conferences
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Member News
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In Memoriam
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Teaching Old History to Promote New Innovation
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When Hippocrates Had A Headache
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History of Science on Stage: Experiences and Reflections
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A Dialogue in December: Building a Canadian-Indian Partnership
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Teach 3.11 Project Update: One Year after the Triple Disasters in Eastern Japan
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Caucus and Interest Group Update
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Spotlight on Washington: The History of Science in Policy
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Preliminary Program for the 7th Joint Meeting of the HSS, the British Society for the History of Science, and the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science
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Job Announcement
Robert Schofield
1 June 1923—30 December 2011
The History of Science Society thanks the family of Dr. Schofield for allowing us to reprint an edited version of the full obituary, available here.
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Robert E. Schofield, also called Bob or Scho, of Montgomery Township, NJ, died at his residence in Milford, Nebraska, Mr. Schofield attended Princeton University on a university scholarship and would have graduated with the Class of 1945. However, because of World War II, he accelerated his coursework and graduated with an A.B. in Physics in the spring of 1944.
After his war service ended, Bob returned to school to continue his graduate studies in physics. He was a teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and then a graduate student and Teaching Fellow in the History of Science and Learning Department at Harvard University from 1951 until earning a Ph.D. in the History of Science in 1955. Concurrently, he was a Fulbright Fellow at University College, London from 1953 to 1954.
Over the next 40 years, Bob continued his teaching in many schools. One of his proudest accomplishments was his teaching. With Dr. Melvin Kranzberg, he created the History of Science and Technology Program at Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University) in 1961. In 1980, with Dr. Richard Lowitt, he created the graduate Ph.D. program in History (Technology and Science and Agriculture) at Iowa State University. During his career as a graduate teacher, he was senior director for at least 12 students who obtained their doctorates in the History of Science and/or Technology, most of whom have continued as publishing and teaching scholars.
Author of some 35 articles in journals such as Isis, Annals of Science, Chymia, Technology and Culture and the Journal of the History of Ideas, he also authored the biography of Joseph Priestley for the New Dictionary of National Biography (England) and was editor of two books. His book The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth-Century England for which he received the HSS's Pfizer Award for best scholarly book in 1964. A collection of essays in his honor, Beyond History of Science (edited by Elizabeth Garber), was published in 1990.
In addition to being a founder of the Midwest Junto for the History of Science (along with Duane H.D. Roller and Robert Siegfried) and now in its 55th year, Dr. Schofield was a member of the History of Science Society, the Society for the History of Technology, the American Society for 18th Century Studies, the Academie Internationale d'Historie des Sciences (corresponding), the British Society for the History of Science and a Fellow at both the Royal Society of Arts and the American Physical Society.