Vol. 41, No. 4, October 2012
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Notes from the Inside
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Article: Finding Informal Opportunities for Work
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Innovations in Education Series
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News from the Profession
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Member News
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Jobs, Opportunities, and Fellowships
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Upcoming Conferences
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Past Conferences
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Employment Survey Results
Emanuela Appetiti and Alain Touwaide (both at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History) have been appointed by the board of trustees as members of the newly established Honorary Advisory Board of the Lloyd Library and Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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Robert Bud (The Science Museum, London) has been appointed the 27th Sarton Chair for the History of Science at the University of Ghent (Belgium). See below for the full announcement.
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Jared Buss (University of Oklahoma) has been awarded the 2012-2013 HSS Fellowship in the History of Space Science, supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) History Division. The fellowship funds a nine-month-long research project that is related to any aspect of the history of space science, from the earliest human interest in space to the present. The program is broadly conceived and includes the social, cultural, institutional and personal context of space-science history. The fellowship supports Buss's dissertation research, focused on the work and world of the science writer and space promoter Willy Ley. Because Ley wrote many pieces on natural history as well as on space, the dissertation incorporates literature on natural history and nature writing, and on Romantic values in science.
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Jamie Cohen-Cole has joined the American Studies Department at George Washington University as an assistant professor in history of science.
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Nathaniel Comfort's (The Johns Hopkins University) new book, The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine, has been published by the Yale University Press. Further information, including the book preface, can be found at http://genotopia.scienceblog.com/the-science-of-human-perfection-2/.
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Bernard R. Goldstein (University of Pittsburgh) and José Chabás have just published A Survey of European Astronomical Tables in the Late Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
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Matthew H. Hersch's (University of Pennsylvania) book, Inventing the American Astronaut, is forthcoming in October from Palgrave Macmillan. The book is based on his dissertation research which was completed while he was an HSS/NASA Fellow in the History of Space Science during 2009-2010. More information about the book is online.
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Christine Manganaro has been appointed an assistant professor in history of science at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
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Nancy J. Nersessian's (Georgia Institute of Technology) research group book, Science as Psychology: Sense-Making and Identity in Science Practice (Cambridge 2011) won the 2012 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association, Division 1.
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Don O'Leary's Irish Catholicism and Modern Science: From "Godless Colleges" to the "Celtic Tiger" (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 2012) was recently published. He is also the author of Roman Catholicism and Modern Science: A History.
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Michael A. Osborne (Oregon State University), was honored as a co-recipient of the Berendel Foundations Cantemir Prize for intercultural humanism for an article co-authored with Richard S. Fogarty entitled "Eugenics in France and the Colonies," pp. 332-46, in P. Levine and A. Brashford, eds. Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics (2010). He was also awarded a Visiting Director of Research post at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales for 2011-2012, and is currently Senior Fellow at the Aix-Marseille Institute for Advanced Study, 2011-2013.
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Richard Oosterhoff (University of Notre Dame) has been named as a Graduate Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies. His project title is "The Secrets of Numbers in the Circle of Jacques Lefèvre d Étaples: Mathematics and Print in the Northern Renaissance."
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Selected papers of John Parascandola (University of Maryland) on the history of modern pharmacology and drug therapy have been published recently by Ashgate Publishing in their Variorum series of collected papers. The book brings together nineteen of Parascandola's most important papers on these subjects. It is titled Studies in the History of Modern Pharmacology and Drug Therapy (Ashgate Variorum, 2012) (Variorum Collected Studies Series: CS991). Further information is available online.
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Marc Rothenberg (NSF) has been elected President of the Society for History in the Federal Government for 2012-13. Congratulations Marc!
Sarton Chair 2012 awarded to Prof. Robert Bud (The Science Museum, London)
The University of Ghent (Belgium) announces that on 22 November 2012 the 27th Sarton Chair for the History of Sciences, will be accorded to Prof. Robert Bud, Keeper of Science and Medicine of the Science Museum in London.
George Sarton (1884-1956), one of the founding fathers of the history of science as an academic discipline, was an alumnus of Ghent University. In 1912, one year after his graduation in physics and mathematics, he wrote to a friend: "J'ai décidé de vouer ma vie à l'étude désintéressée de l'histoire des sciences." He established two leading journals in the field (Isis in 1912 and Osiris in 1934) and was influential in founding the History of Science Society.
In 1984, at the centenary of Sarton's birthday, Ghent University decided to establish a Sarton Chair of History of Science. Each year the Sarton committee, consisting of representatives of the faculties of Ghent University, selects the Sarton chair holder and the Sarton medalists. The Sarton chair holder and the medalists are invited to lecture on the history of science in the faculties of the university. The lectures are published in the annual journal Sartoniana. The academic session takes place in the University Hall, at 4 p.m. The title of Prof. Bud's lecture is "Remaking ideas about science in public: The cases of biotechnology, penicillin and applied science in the twentieth century." Further information is available at www.sartonchair.ugent.be.
HSS's Newest Interest Group—Physical Science Forum
The organization meeting of the newly formed Physical Science Forum will be held during the HSS Annual Meeting on Friday, November 16 from noon to 1:15 p.m. at the conference hotel in San Diego (details will appear in the program). All those interested are welcome!
The Physical Science Forum's focus will be to further 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 and benefit the HSS and the profession by sponsoring HSS sessions and workshops, joint sponsoring sessions with other HSS Forums and Caucuses, and organizing social events at HSS meetings. For further information, contact Catherine Westfall at westfa12@msu.edu.
GECC and the Mentorship Program
The Graduate and Early Career Caucus (GECC) seeks to address the concerns and issues of graduate students and scholars in the early stages of their careers. As an official committee of the HSS, GECC offers a mentoring program and sponsors a session and social events at the annual meeting. The chairs and officers are graduate students and early career members of HSS, who act as liaisons between the standing committees of HSS and the student/early career constituency.
For HSS, and the Graduate and Early Career Caucus (GECC) in particular, the 2011 annual conference in Cleveland was an overwhelming success. The two sessions that GECC sponsored attracted large audiences, with standing room only if you came in late. The mixer for 4S, SHOT, and HSS graduate students and early career professionals was also extremely well attended, giving graduate students and early professionals in the three societies a chance to mingle in a relaxed and festive atmosphere. Thanks to all of you who bought raffle tickets in support of GECC; your purchases helped make our events a wonderful experience!
All of our events generated a lot of positive feedback, but perhaps our mentorship program produced the most effusive praise. Darryl Brock, a Ph.D. candidate at Fordham University who was paired with Dr. Stuart McCook (University of Guelph), commented that the mentorship experience was "successful beyond anything I could have imagined." Dr. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (University of Minnesota) met with her mentee, Jenna Tonn a graduate student at Harvard, for over two hours at the opening reception. As they discussed many of their intersecting topics at the reception, Dr. Kohlstedt was able to introduced Jenna to other historians who had related interests. At the same time, Dr. Kohlstedt said she received good insights in graduate student concerns that she could use to further student success as department head at the University of Minnesota. All in all, Dr. Kohlstedt said it was "a terrific experience." Clearly, both mentors and mentees had valuable experiences in Cleveland this year. Scott Prinster, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin who was paired with Dr. Richard Kremer (Dartmouth), perhaps said it best when he wrote afterwards "I hope that we'll continue this program in the future, because my classmates are jealous that they didn't sign up!" We certainly will, Scott! Special thanks to Rachel Mason Dentinger and Cera Lawrence for coordinating the mentorship program. If you are interested in being mentored or being a mentor at HSS's meeting in San Diego, please contact hssmentorship@gmail.com for more information.
Be sure to stay in touch with GECC by following our webpage (hssgecc.wordpress.com) or liking us on Facebook (History of Science Society Graduate and Early Career Caucus). GECC leadership for 2012 has remained largely intact, with Nathan Crowe (co-chair), Melinda Gormley (co-chair), and Rachel Mason Dentinger (mentorship coordinator) all returning to serve another year. We are fortunate that Sandy Clark has agreed to serve as communications officer, and we are grateful to Matt White for his service in that position. If you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, feel free to contact any of us through our GECC email, hss.gecc@gmail.com.
The STS Channel
For the past several months, HSS Council Member Carla Nappi, along with Patrick Slaney, a Ph.D. student specializing in history of science at the University of British Columbia, have been hosting the STS channel of the New Books Network. See http://newbooksinscitechsoc.com/
The list of interviews so far is here: http://newbooksinscitechsoc.com/list/. The interviews are typically about an hour long and are in-depth discussions of each author's book hosted by either Patrick or Carla. The interviews aim for a broadly interdisciplinary coverage of STS, but there is a strong weight toward history of science (especially taking into account the upcoming interviews for this fall, many of which are history-focused). Carla has also been hosting the East Asian Studies channel for the past year, which contains some good HoS-related interviews: http://newbooksineastasianstudies.com/list/.
Call for Resources: FHSAsia Pedagogical Resource for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology in Asia
The Forum for the History of Science in Asia (FHSAsia) is a special interest group of the History of Science Society that is devoted to the history of science, medicine, and technology in Asia, with all of those categories broadly and inclusively defined. The FHSAsia is in the process of compiling pedagogical materials to be hosted on the "Teaching Resources" section of our website. It can be very difficult to identify and access good materials to teach the history of science, medicine and technology as it relates to Asia, and this forthcoming FHSAsia resource is meant as a service that will help not just specialists in the field but also colleagues who would like to integrate more Asia-related pedagogical resources into their teaching of the history of science, medicine and technology. With that in mind, if you have materials that you would like to share please e-mail them to <carlanappi@gmail.com>. They will be compiled and uploaded over the next several months.
Resources might include:
- Syllabi
- Suggestions for primary or secondary source readings
- Sample assignments
- Links to useful web resources
- And, importantly, translations of primary source documents that you don't mind sharing.
These materials will ultimately be posted at http://fhsasia.blogspot.com/. Please feel welcome to write with any questions or suggestions.