News | The History of Science Society

Vol. 41, No. 1, January 2012
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News From the Profession

Dibner Library Lecture

Snyder

Laura Snyder delivers the 2011 Dibner Library Lecture at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Laura J. Snyder of St. John's University delivered the 2011 Dibner Library Lecture this past December. Her talk, titled "The Philosophical Breakfast Club and the Invention of the Scientist," examined the creation of the word "scientist." In 1833, when the poet S.T. Coleridge stood up at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and demanded that its members stop calling themselves "natural philosophers," one man was ready with an alternative title: "scientist." In inventing the name for the modern man of science, William Whewell (pronounced who-ell) was continuing a task he and three of his friends had set for themselves two decades earlier. After meeting at Cambridge University in 1812, Whewell, Charles Babbage, John Herschel and Richard Jones discussed the sorry state of science at "philosophical breakfasts" held on Sundays after the compulsory college chapel services. They vowed to bring about a new scientific revolution.

Each of the four would go on to accomplish great things: Babbage invented the first computer, Herschel was a great astronomer who also co-invented photography, Jones became an economist of note who influenced Karl Marx, and Whewell spearheaded international research on the tides. But their influence goes farther: by the end of their lives these four had succeeded, even beyond their wildest dreams, in transforming science. The amateur natural philosopher—the country curate collecting beetles in his spare hours, or the industrialist studying the chemistry of flax-bleaching—became the professional scientist, who was trained at the university, belonged to specialized societies, published in scientific journals, and, eventually, could earn a living by scientific work. The invention of the modern scientist was brought about through the decades-long friendship of four remarkable men.

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Begun in 1992, the Dibner Library Lecture features a distinguished scholar who has made significant contributions to his or her field of study. The speakers may be chosen based on a recently published successful book, or well-received lectures, or entire scholarly output in subjects of the History of Science and Technology. The early lectures also emphasized bibliographical aspects and the scrutiny of the history of the book. Since 2000, the Dibner Library Lecture has become available in published form and since 2004 it has been video archived as well. The lecture series and its publication are made possible by the generous support of The Dibner Fund (former President David Dibner).

Dibner Library Lectures Available Online:

2006: Political Arithmetic. Joyce Chaplin (Harvard University) on "Benjamin Franklin's Political Arithmetic: A Materialist View of Humanity."
2004: Astronomy: Albert Van Helden (Rice University and the University of Utrecht) on the beginnings of telescopic astronomy.
2003: Metrology. Ken Alder (Northwestern University) on "The Measure of the World."
2002: Technology. Anthony Grafton (Princeton University) on "Magic and Technology in Early Modern Europe."
2001: The Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology at 25 Years: Celebrating the Collector's Vision and Its Legacy. Owen Gingerich (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard University) on "Icons of Understanding: Celebrating Bern Dibner's Heralds of Science."
2000: Scientific Discoveries. Kenneth L. Caneva (Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro) on "The Form and Function of Scientific Discoveries."
2000: Astronomy. Steven J. Dick (U. S. Naval Observatory) on "Extraterrestrial Life and Our World View at the Turn of the Millennium."

University of Chicago Press Gives Abrams Prize

Mark V. Barrow, Jr., Professor and Chair of History at Virginia Tech, has been selected as the winner of the 2011 Susan Elizabeth Abrams Prize, which is awarded biennially for the best book in the history of science published by the University of Chicago Press. The citation from the selection committee noted: "The 2011 Susan Elizabeth Abrams Prize is awarded to Mark V. Barrow, Jr. for Nature's Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology. A synthesis of original research and wide reading across several bodies of scholarship, the book traces changing conceptions of extinction from the eighteenth century to the present, concentrating especially on the role played by American naturalists. Barrow writes about extinct species, and the naturalists who fought to save species from extinction, with pathos and panache. Readers come away with a vivid sense of what has been lost, and also of the long struggles to save threatened species and raise awareness of extinction as a real—and avoidable—possibility."

Established in 2003 by the University of Chicago Press, the nation's largest academic publisher, this prize honors the contributions made by the late Susan E. Abrams—as editor, mentor, critic, and friend—to the history of science. The prize is awarded to a book that exemplifies the standards that Susan brought to bear on publication within the field: originality, exceptional scholarship, and well-crafted prose. The selection committee consisted of Gregory Radick, Michael Reidy, Neil Safier, and Andre Wakefield.

PACHS Newsletter

The December newsletter of the Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science is now available. Please visit the site for news about fellowships, events, and collections. PACHS is helping with the 3-Society Meeting in Philadelphia in July 2012. Please come and support the history of science.

Margaret Osler Papers Open for Research

The Margaret Osler Papers at Oregon State University Libraries are now described and open for research. Osler (1942–2010), who spent the bulk of her career at the University of Calgary, was a historian of science and philosophy who published widely on the connection between religion and early science. In particular, she focused on the work of Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton.

The Osler Papers include correspondence, manuscripts, research notes and photographs documenting Osler's scholarly activities and personal affairs. One highlight of the collection is Osler's extensive, though not complete, translation of Pierre Gassendi's Syntagma Philosophicum, a translation that was never published.

The papers also include a large volume of correspondence between Osler and her parents, as well as a wide array of manuscripts and subject files related to Osler's scholarly interests. A large number of photographs rounds out the collection.

The Osler Papers are one of five Historians of Science collections housed at OSU Libraries. The papers of historians of science are among the collecting focuses of the Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center, which is best known as the home of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers.

Launch of Dissertation Reviews

In an effort to help scholars in all fields keep up to date on recent scholarship, Dissertation Reviews, a new site, offers concise summaries and reviews of dissertations defended after 2009. The site seeks faculty, post-docs, and advanced graduate students to review recent dissertations in the history of science and related fields. Authors whose dissertations are reviewed receive private constructive criticism in addition to the published reviews.

To become a reviewer or learn more about the project, please see the project website.

History of Science Dissertation Abstracts Now Online

The latest list of recent doctoral dissertations harvested from the May 2010 issues of Dissertation Abstracts pertaining to the history of science can be viewed at: http://www.hsls.pitt.edu.

France's Musée Associatif Histoire Naturelle Launches New Online Library

MAHN-84 is pleased to announce the opening of its Digital Library. The Digital Library includes 13,454 digitized documents (old and rare books, new books and reprints on: Zoology, Botany, Entomology, Caving, and Biospeleology).

Library of Alexandria Launches Supercourse of Science

The Library of Alexandria has collected nearly 180,000 lectures and made them available for free to help in the education of scientists worldwide. The project currently holds almost 6 million slides on health, environment, computer engineering, and agriculture for professionals to use in developing lectures. In the coming years the Library hopes to collect over 3 million lectures with up to 90 million slides. All resources are available online at the Supercourse of Science website.

New Journal—Almagest

The Network of History of Science in Southeastern Europe has launched a new journal, Almagest: An International Journal for the History of Scientific Ideas, available through Brepols. The editors are Efthymios Nicolaidis and Constantine Skordoulis. Subscription information and an introduction to the aims of the journal are available at www.brepols.net.

University of Calgary Graduate Program in the History and Philosophy of Science

The University of Calgary Department of History and Department of Philosophy now jointly offer programs leading to a Masters in the History and Philosophy of Science. The program builds on particular research and teaching strengths in philosophy, history and classics at the University of Calgary and also draws on course offerings in the humanities, the natural and social sciences. The University of Calgary HPS program emphasizes a broad understanding of the history of science and medicine as well as an understanding of the philosophical issues that underpin science, such as the nature of scientific explanation and the relation between evidence and hypothesis.

The HPS program seeks excellent students (from Canada and abroad), who are highly motivated and have a great interest in interdisciplinary subjects. The University of Calgary HPS program has strong links to the STS program, the History of Medicine and Health Care program and the Department of Greek and Roman Studies. For further information, contact Dr. Megan Delehanty in the Department of Philosophy (mdelehan@ucalgary.ca) and Dr. Frank W. Stahnisch in the Department of History (fwstahni@ucalgary.ca), or see the department website.

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