Vol. 41, No. 3, July 2012
Printer friendly version of Newsletter
Member News
Quick Links....
News from the Profession
------------------------------------
Past Conferences
------------------------------------
Upcoming Conferences
------------------------------------
Member News
------------------------------------
How History of Science and Technology Can Forge Marketing Careers
------------------------------------
Writing Outside the Academic Box
------------------------------------
Photo 51—A Recent Addition
to History-of-Science-Inspired Theatre
------------------------------------
CRS Examines STEM Funding
at NSF
------------------------------------
OSTP Issues Progress Report on Public Access to
Scholarly Publications
------------------------------------
Recent Developments in
Big History
------------------------------------
Blogging, Tweeting, and Other Digital Activities
AAAS For a list of the newest fellows for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, please see Mark Largent's report on Section L for AAAS.
............
Nima Bassiri (Duke University) was awarded an ACLS New Faculty Fellowship (2012–2013) for the project Dislocations of the Brain: Subjectivity and Cerebral Topology from Descartes to Nineteenth-Century Neuroscience.
............
Richard C. Brown (Professor Emeritus, University of Alabama) has published his new book The Tangled Origins of the Leibnizian Calculus: A Case Study of a Mathematical Revolution. (World Scientific, 2012) The book originates in an unfinished seminar paper written for Thomas Kuhn in the fall semester of 1960 and consequently may hold the record for being the most delayed completion of a college assignment ever recorded! In time of composition, it even exceeds Leibniz's own multi-decade but unsuccessful effort to write a history of the Guelf family for his masters, the Dukes of Hanover. Professor Brown has also published a slightly earlier book Are Science and Mathematics Socially Constructed? A Mathematician Encounters Postmodern Interpretations of Science (World Scientific, 2009). More information is available at www.worldscibooks.com/mathematics/
7039.html and www.worldscibooks.com/
mathematics/8413.html.
............
Jimena Canales (Harvard University) was awarded an ACLS Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship (2012–2013) for the project Einstein Against Bergson: Think Twice.
............
Robert Goulding (University of Notre Dame) has been awarded an ACLS fellowship for the academic year 2012–2013. The title of his project is Renaissance Optics between Experiment and Imagination: The Mathematical Practice of Thomas Harriot. One reviewer wrote that "... this is a proposal for what in the sciences might be called basic or fundamental research of a particularly heroic variety."
............
Bert Hansen (City University of New York) has created a Web site for scholars interested in medicine in art in 19th century France in order to provide free access to the unpublished dissertation of his former student, Richard E. Weisberg:"The Representation of Doctors at Work in Salon Art of the Early Third Republic in France" (New York University dissertation, 1995). Richard suffered an unexpected illness in 2011 and died in May of that year. Although it was his intention to revise this nearly 900-page work into a book or journal articles, his time was consumed as founder and principal of Cobble Hill School of American Studies and adjunct professor of Educational Leadership at Touro College. His work provides substantial material on French images of physicians, including extensive quotations from primary sources. In addition to downloadable PDFs of individual chapters, the site includes biographical information and a complete list of the dissertation's 152 figures. The URL is http://faculty.baruch.cuny.edu/bhansen/weisberg.home.htm. For questions, write Bert.Hansen@Baruch.CUNY.edu.
............
Andrew Janiak (Duke University) was awarded an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship for 2012 for the project Émilie Du Châtelet and the Struggle between Science and Philosophy.
............
Adrian Johns (University of Chicago) was awarded an ACLS Fellowship for 2012 for the project The Intellectual Property Defense Industry.
............
Hannah Landecker (University of California, Los Angeles) was awarded an ACLS Fellowship for 2012 for the project American Metabolism: Food, the Body, and Time. Professor Landecker received the HSS's Suzanne J. Levinson Prize in 2008 (awarded to the best book on the history of the life sciences and natural history) for Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies (Harvard University Press, 2007).
............
Manfred Laubichler has been named a President's Professor at Arizona State University, joining 20 others at ASU who are established as leading researchers and also recognized for their substantial contributions to undergraduate education. He joins HSS members Richard Creath and Jane Maienschein, both of Arizona State University, in holding that distinction.
............
Gregg Mitman (University of Wisconsin-Madison) was awarded the 2012 William H. Welch Medal for his book Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape our Lives and Landscapes (Yale University Press, 2007). The award was presented at the American Association for the History of Medicine annual meeting in Baltimore, Md., in April. The Welch Medal is awarded to one or more authors of a book (excluding edited volumes) of outstanding scholarly merit in the field of medical history, published during the five calendar years preceding the award. Additionally, Professor Mitman and Paul Erickson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) won the 2012 Ralph Gomory Prize for their article "Latex and Blood: Science, Markets, and American Empire," which appeared in Radical History Review, spring 2010. This prize, made possible by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, recognizes historical work on the effects of business enterprises on the economic conditions of the countries in which they operate. The award consists of a $5,000 cash prize, presented at the Business History Conference annual meeting.
............
Maria M. Portuondo (Johns Hopkins University) has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of the History of Science and Technology at The Johns Hopkins University.
............
Sarah Richardson (Harvard University) was awarded an ACLS Fellowship for 2012 for the project The Maternal Imprint: Situating the Science Maternal Effects, 1900–Present.
............
Alan J. Rocke (Case Western Reserve University) has been given the title of "Distinguished University Professor," which accompanies the endowed chair (the Henry Eldridge Bourne Professorship) that he has held for 17 years.
............
Londa Schiebinger (Stanford University) is directing the Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, and Engineering project, an international collaboration funded by the European Commission, National Science Foundation, and Stanford University. Presented as a globally accessible, peer-reviewed website, Gendered Innovations: (1) develops practical methods of sex and gender analysis; (2) provides case studies as concrete illustrations of how sex and gender analysis leads to new knowledge and innovation. See the project at:
http://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/.
............
Alistair Sponsel has been appointed by the Vanderbilt University as an assistant professor of history. He comes to Vanderbilt from Harvard University, where he was manager of the U.S. branch of the Darwin Correspondence Project and a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in the Department of the History of Science. He received his Ph.D. in history of science from Princeton University in 2009. Sponsel studies the history of geographical exploration, the environmental and life sciences, the physical and earth sciences, and Britain and the British Empire, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. He recently completed a book manuscript on Darwin's theory of coral reef formation.
............
Katherine Zwicker recently completed a Ph.D. in history at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB, Canada). She will continue her research in the history of science, technology, and medicine as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK, Canada). The fellowship is funded by the SSHRC Strategic Knowledge Cluster Grant, "Situating Science."
Two New Interest Groups Form at HSS
The HSS Council has approved the formation of two interest groups: the Forum for the History of the Chemical Sciences (FoHCS) and the Physical Science Forum (PSF).
FoHCS's aim is to promote research, education, and communication on the historical, social, and philosophical aspects of chemistry and related chemical sciences and technologies. FoHCS will advance this goal by encouraging innovative research and teaching in the history of chemistry and the chemical sciences, by improving the visibility of such research within the History of Science Society (HSS), by fostering international communication and collaboration between individuals and institutions with an interest in chemical history, and by identifying and creating new opportunities and resources for scholars who study the chemical sciences. Long-time HSS member Sy Mauskopf was instrumental in leading the formation of this group, helping to organize a well-attended breakfast meeting of interested scholars at the HSS meeting in Cleveland in 2011. For further information, contact Seymour Mauskopf at shmau@duke.edu.
PSF will focus on furthering scholarship in the history of the physical sciences as broadly understood, including but not limited to: physics; earth, space, and atmospheric science; astronomy; and materials science. It will help forge a more coherent community for those with a core specialty in these sub-fields with a particular emphasis on developing the connections linking these sub-fields and exploring their resonance with wider scholarship. The ultimate goals are: to foster generative dialogue and interaction within such a community for the sake of refining historiography and deepening historical insights; to maximize scholarly contributions to the history of science; and to integrate historians of physical science more closely with the history of science community. The Forum will accomplish these goals by sponsoring HSS sessions and workshops, including joint sponsorships in cooperation with other HSS Forums and Caucuses, and by organizing social events at HSS meetings. For further information, contact Catherine Westfall at westfa12@msu.edu.
These interest groups join several other HSS groups: the Forum for the History of Science in America (FHSA), the Forum for the History of Human Science (FHHS), the Forum for the History of Science in Asia (FHSAsia), and the Earth and Environment Forum (EEF). The fora offer our members a chance to exchange ideas in a setting that is more intimate than the HSS annual meeting.
HSS Executive Office Receives a Special Gift
Long-time HSS member Miles Davis has donated a near-complete run of Isis to the HSS Executive Office. The gift includes the first issue of Isis (owned by his father Watson Davis, the former director of Science Service). The run continues almost uninterrupted to the present and includes issues that belonged to the personal collection of Miles and his late wife, Audrey Davis (former Secretary of the HSS and a pioneer for women in the history of science). The gift is particularly appreciated as we celebrate the centennial of Isis (established in 1912 and first published in 1913). We are grateful to Miles (and Audrey) for this generous donation.
Left: Audrey Davis; Right: Miles Davis
News from Vanderbilt's Center for Medicine, Health and Society
Laura Stark arrives at Vanderbilt from Wesleyan University, where she was assistant professor of Science in Society and of Sociology. Professor Stark works on medicine, morality, and the modern state. She is the author of Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research (Chicago, 2012) as well as several articles and book chapters on the history of ethics and on bureaucracy in everyday practice. Her current book project, The Life of the Clinic, uses archival documents and oral histories to explore the lives of "normal control" research subjects who enabled and sustained the first clinical trials at the US National Institutes of Health between 1953 and 1983. Professor Stark received her PhD from Princeton University in 2006; was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Science in Human Culture at Northwestern University from 2006 to 2008; and held a Stetten Fellowship at the Office of NIH History at the National Institutes of Health from 2008 to 2009. She is also Assistant Editor of the journal History & Theory.
Kenneth MacLeish, a recent PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, begins his faculty career at MHS after completing a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars postdoctoral fellowship at Rutgers University. Professor MacLeish is an anthropologist who studies how war takes shape in the everyday lives of people whose job it is to produce it—U.S. soldiers and their families and communities. His book, Making War: Everyday Life at Ft. Hood, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in fall 2012. Based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork at and around the U.S. Army's massive base in central Texas, the work explores the bodily, interpersonal and collective vulnerability that characterizes the daily experience of war making, both on and far beyond the battlefield. Professor MacLeish's current work explores the intersection of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with other areas of social, political and personal life in the U.S. by investigating ill and injured soldiers' experiences of Army medicine and the Veteran's Administration's complex disability evaluation and compensation processes.
Amy Non (Anthro/MHS) is currently completing a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars fellowship at Harvard University. Professor Non is a molecular anthropologist with an interest in researching the biological and sociocultural contributors to racial inequalities in health. Her work has specifically addressed the relative contributions of genetic ancestry and sociocultural factors to explain racial disparities in hypertension in Puerto Rico and in the US. Professor Non's ongoing research also investigates the biological consequences of racism and other psychosocial stressors, particularly during early life developmental stages. She specifically focuses on epigenetic modifications that may occur as a result of early life exposures to stressors which may ultimately be linked to the development of chronic diseases. Professor Non received a Masters of Public Health degree in fall 2009 and received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Florida in summer 2010. Further Information: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/mhs.
News from AAAS: A Report on Section L, History and Philosophy of Science
By Mark Largent, HSS Delegate and Secretary to Section L
After introductions of the officers and attending members, the two Philip Morrison fellowship recipients (Sean Cohmer and Elizabeth Yockey) were introduced and last year's minutes were approved. Barbara Rice, who coordinates the AAAS conferences, described AAAS's ongoing and future improvement to its online systems. She also reported that almost three-quarters of this year's sessions had an international presence.
The results of this year's elections added the following members to the section's officers: Davis Baird (Clark University) was elected the Chair elect; Naomi Oreskes (University of California, San Diego) was elected the Member-at-Large; Thomas Nickles (University of Nevada-Reno) and Robert Pennock (Michigan State University) were elected to the Electorate Nominating Committee; and Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis (University of Florida) was elected a Council Delegate. Mark Largent (Michigan State University) has agreed to serve as the section Secretary, as well as the HSS delegate to Section L.
This year's new fellows from Section L were announced:
Steven J. Dick, Retired, National Aeronautics and Space Administration: "For distinguished contributions to the history of astronomy and space science, and his leadership at the U.S. Naval Observatory and director of the NASA History Office."
W. Patrick McCray, University of California, Santa Barbara: "For distinguished contributions to scholarship and education in history of science, technology and instrumentation, particularly of intellectual and social interactions in recent astronomy and physics."
Carolyn Merchant, University of California, Berkeley: "For distinguished contributions to the field of history and philosophy of science, particularly for the history of the scientific revolution and gender and science."
Helga Nowotny, European Research Council: "For outstanding leadership in promoting international excellence in and understanding of science, policy, and education, most recently in courageous leadership of the European Research Council."
Rosemary Stevens, Cornell University: "For original work at the trans-disciplinary boundaries of public health, policy, and historical understanding of their social development, and for exceptional service to the professions.
Section Secretary Jonathan Coopersmith reported that Section L had $2,711 plus deferred funds of $919 in its budget. This amount is larger than usual because the section has not received its usual number of requests from graduate students for support. The section discussed how to encourage more graduate students to present posters at the 2013 AAAS meeting in Boston, MA.
The theme for next year's AAAS meeting will be "The Beauty and Benefits of Science." Section members discussed potential sections for next year's meeting focusing on visualization in science, the 40th anniversary of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the creation of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, the centennial of the Bohr atom, the concept of beauty in science, natural theology, the pure/applied distinction, the value and simplicity of science, science education, the 125th anniversary of the Geological Society of America, and the 1,000th anniversary of the compilation of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine.
[The members of Section L would like to offer a hearty "Thank you!" to Jonathan Coopersmith for his many years of service as Secretary of Section L. The secretaries of the sections provide essential continuity to ensure the smooth running of each group.]
A Report on Section X, Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering
By Jay Malone, HSS Delegate
The business meeting for Section X of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) took place on 17 February 2012. After welcoming everyone, Chair Rachel Levinson highlighted the section's campaign to let all AAAS members know that Section X can be their secondary or tertiary section. She announced the election of Peter Blair as chair elect, along with other election results, including HSS member David DeVorkin, who will serve on the Electorate Nominating Committee. Section Secretary Stephanie Bird informed attendees that Section X sponsored the most sessions of any other section in AAAS. She reported on a healthy budget of $4,600, with $2,300 being rolled over from last year. The Section received requests totaling $17,000 for travel, $2,500 of which was paid. Bird also relayed that X was working with Section L members in the hope that those in L would designate X as their secondary or tertiary group.
Ian King, AAAS director of membership and marketing, gave an overview of AAAS's Member Central portal. AAAS believes that the portal has led to a slight increase in membership as AAAS tries to build community. Each of the sections in AAAS are being given special section pages where they can highlight their activities. About 10 years ago sections had the opportunity for a AAAS web presence but few took advantage of this opportunity. AAAS is again pushing for a web presence with an intent to market the sections, which should begin in April 2012. Each section will list its history, its purpose, articles of incorporation, etc. The improvements are part of Director Alan Leshner's goal of providing a fundamental reappraisal of the AAAS structure.
As mentioned in the Section L report, the theme for the AAAS conference, to be held in Boston, Massachusetts (14–18 February 2013) is "The Beauty and Benefits of Science." Themes are designated by the president elect of AAAS and the 2013 version was taken partly from Eugene Wigner's "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" (1960). The deadline for symposium proposals was 30 April 2012 but poster submissions are still possible. Further information can be found at http://www.aaas.org/meetings/2012/program/
symposia/submit/.