Vol. 42, No. 2, April 2013
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Notes from the Inside
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Article:
Medical Traditions: An Emerging Discipline
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Article: The Past, Present, and Future of a Treasure Trove
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Article:
"Grandma got STEM"
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Article: Lessons from Uneasy Careers…
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Member News
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News from the Profession
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Upcoming Conference
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Why Did HSS Conduct A Climate Survey?
Tara Abraham (Department of History, University of Guelph) has recently guest-edited the September 2012 issue of the Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, entitled "Warren S. McCulloch and His Circle." The issue focuses on neuropsychiatrist and cybernetician Warren McCulloch (1898–1969) and the ways in which his life and his circle of collaborators, influences, and students can illuminate the wider contexts of the past and present.
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Vasso Kindi and Theodore Arabatzis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) have co-authored Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Revisited (Routledge, 2012).
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Monica Azzolini (University of Edinburgh) has published The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan (Harvard University Press, 2013).
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Roland A. Boucher has presented his findings on Ancient Metrology at the Sigma Xi SW Region Research Conference in January 2013 at the University of Texas, Dallas. The title of his presentation was "The Pendulum and the Foot in Ancient Metrology."
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Eric W. Boyle (Office of History, National Institutes of Health) has published his Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth Century America (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2013).
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Chunjuan Nancy Wei and Darryl E. Brock (Fordham University) co-edited a book Mr. Science and Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution (Lexington Books, 2013). They co-authored a chapter—"Introduction: Reassessing the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution"—and Brock authored another chapter: "The People's Landscape: Mr. Science and the Mass Line."
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William Kemp and Henri-Paul Bronsard have published "The Type of the French Renaissance," in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Book Review, New York, vol. 106:2, June 2012, ISSN 0006-128 x, p. 231-256.
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Peter Byrne was appointed Journalist-In-Residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, from January to April 2012. His biography The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III (OUP, 2010) has just been released in paperback, and is now published in a German translation (Springer, 2012).
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Gary L. Cameron (Visiting Professor, Grinnell College) has published a paper "Perfecting 'a Sharper Image': Telescope-Making and the Dissimenation of Technical Knowledge, 1700-1820" in the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 2012. He plans to attend a workshop "The History of Amateur Astronomy: Current Research, Future Prospects" at The Observatory Museum, Stockholm, 3–5 September 2013 and hosted by the Center for History of Science at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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Joyce E. Chaplin (Harvard University) has published Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit (Simon & Schuster, 2012).
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The second edition of Lesley Cormack's and Andrew Ede's (University of Alberta) A History of Science in Society: From Philosophy to Utility (University of Toronto Press, 2012) has been published.
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Chris Crenner (History and Philosophy of Medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine) is the new editor for the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. The journal will add a commentary section this year to provide a new forum for discussion of the wider implications of scholarship in the field.
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Nathan Crowe has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position in the history department at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.
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Andrew Ede has been appointed the Director of the Science, Technology and Society Program at the University of Alberta, Canada. The appointment started September 2012.
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Donald Forsdyke (Queen's University, Canada) has reviewed in Biological Theory (2013) the historical development of ideas regarding introns. He focused on the largely unrecognized work of microbiologist Darryl Reanney (deceased 1994) in Australia. The article, entitled "Introns First," may be accessed online from the publisher (doi:10.1007/s13752-013-0090-6), or from the author's webpages.
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Judy Grabiner (Pitzer College) has been named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics.
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Eugene Garfield, now 87 years old, continues to serve on a few Boards, including Annual Reviews of Palo Alto and the Chemical Heritage Foundation of Philadelphia. He also provides a bibliographic alerting service for the SIG on Metrics for the American Society of Information Science and Technology, which is based on the Thomson Reuters Web of Science. He has maintained his interest in the history of science by supporting various named Fellowships and Lectureships at the CHF and Drexel University. These include the History of Chemical Information (Theodore Herdegen, History of Chemical Engineering (Noshir Mistry), History of Information Science (Paul Otlet), and the History of Intellectual Property (Arthur Seidel). Details can be found at www.chemheritage.org.
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Paul Hoyningen-Huene (University of Hannover) has published Systematicity: The Nature of Science (Oxford University Press, 2013).
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Toby E. Huff (Harvard University) has published a paper "Law and Science" on the academic questions that deals with the Western legal system and how it aided the rise of modern science. (Springer Science+Business Media, DOI 10.1007/s12129-011-9268-1).
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Christine Keiner has an essay "How Scientific Does Marine Environmental History Need to Be?" in the January 2013 issue of Environmental History (which features a special marine forum).
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Sally Gregory Kohlstedt (University of Minnesota) and David Kaiser (MIT) have edited Science in the American Century: Perspectives on Science, Technology and Medicine: Readings from Isis (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
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Ed Larson (Pepperdine University) has been chosen as one of the inaugural DeVos Fellows for the National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.
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Roger D. Launius (Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum) has edited a new book Exploring the Solar System: The History and Science of Planetary Exploration (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
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Gildo Magalhães' (University of São Paulo) new book about the history of electrification in Brazil has been published under the title of História e Energia: memória, informação e sociedade (Alameda, 2012).
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Marjorie C. Malley's book, Radioactivity: A History of a Mysterious Science (Oxford University Press, 2011) has been translated into French as La radioactivité: Une mystérieuse science (De Boeck, 2013).
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Adrienne Mayor's (Stanford University) article "Making Sense of Nonsense Inscriptions Associated with Amazons and Scythians on Ancient Greek Vases" co-authored with John Colarusso, a linguist specializing in Caucasian-Black Sea languages, and David Saunders, vase painting specialist at the Getty Museum, is forthcoming in Hesperia: Journal of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens).
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Karen Parshall (University of Virginia) has been named an Inaugural Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. The Fellows of the American Mathematical Society program recognizes members who have made outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics.
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Stuart Peterfreund (Northeastern University) published Turning Points in Natural Theology from Bacon to Darwin: The Way of the Argument from Design (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
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Lawrence M. Principe's (Johns Hopkins University) The Secret of Alchemy was recently published by the University of Chicago Press.
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Lisa Rosner (Richard Stockton College of New Jersey) has been promoted to Distinguished Professor of History.
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Andrea Rusnock (University of Rhode Island) has been awarded an ACLS Fellowship for 2013-14 for her project "The Early History of Vaccination: An Environmental History."
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Voula Saridakis (Lake Forest College) was awarded an American Colleges of the Midwest (ACM)—University of Chicago Faculty Development Grant for her project "World History in the Windy City: Understanding the Past through an Exploration of Chicago Objects."
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Londa Schiebinger, Hinds Professor of History of Science at the Stanford University, has launched Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environment, a globally accessible web site: http://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu. Gendered Innovations 1) develops cutting-edge methods of sex and gender analysis for scientists and engineers; and 2) provides twenty-four case studies as concrete illustrations of how gender analysis leads to new knowledge. The international, interdisciplinary project involved sixty collaborators from engineering, basic science, medicine, and gender experts. Funded by Stanford University, the European Commission, and the National Science Foundation, the project was presented at the National Science Foundation, the National Academies, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, November 2012, and will be presented to the European Parliament, May 2013. Web site materials are free and can be used in classes.
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Victoria Sweet has published God's Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine (Riverhead, 2012). It has been reviewed in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Health Affairs, the Financial Times, and by the BBC. The paperback will be coming out April 2, and the audio version, narrated by the author, at the end of April.
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Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti were appointed Honorary Member and Corresponding Member, respectively, of the Accademia di Storia dell'Arte Sanitaria (Italian Academy for the History of Medical Arts).
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Glen Van Brummelen (Quest University Canada) has published Heavenly Mathematics: The Forgotten Art of Spherical Trigonometry (Princeton University Press, 2013).
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Laura Dassow Walls (University of Notre Dame), Vera Kutzinski and Ottmar Ette have co-edited Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas (Berlin: Verlag Walter Frey 2012). It is an interdisciplinary/trans-hemispheric/trans-Atlantic collection that puts history of science in dialogue with politics, economics, literature, art, and culture. More information is available at http://www.avhumboldt.de/?p=8915.
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Philip K. Wilson (Penn State University) and W. Jeffrey Hurst have published Chocolate as Medicine: A Quest over the Centuries (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2012).
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William R. Newman, Distinguished Professor and Ruth Halls Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Indiana University, Bloomington is the recipient of the 2013 HIST Award of the Division of the History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society. This award is the successor to the Dexter Award (1956-2001) and the Sydney M. Edelstein Award (2002-2009), also administered by the Division of the History of Chemistry.
Newman was introduced to the history of chemistry by Otto T. Benfey in the 1970s as a student at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He did his graduate work at Harvard with the medievalist John Murdoch, also working with the classicist and historian Robert Halleux at the Université de Liège. Newman's doctoral dissertation was later published as The Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber (1991), which consisted of an edition, translation, and study of one of the most famous alchemical works of the Middle Ages. Newman demonstrated that this early 14th century Latin alchemical treatise, attributed to Pseudo-Geber, was not a translation of a work of the 8th century Arabic writer, Jabir ibn Hayyan, but an original work by Paul of Taranto. Thus in his doctoral dissertation, Newman laid to rest the Jabir-Geber problem.
Much of Newman's subsequent work has focused on the continuity between alchemy and chemistry in the seventeenth century. Two books, Gehennical Fire (1994) and Alchemy Tried in the Fire (2002, with L.M. Principe) deal with George Starkey. Newman identified the alchemical writer Eirenaeus Philalethes ("peaceful lover of truth") to be the Harvard-educated chemist George Starkey (1628-1665). Starkey became Robert Boyle's tutor, was Isaac Newton's favorite alchemical author, and wielded a possible influence on the works of John Locke and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Newman and Principe have advocated the use of the terms "chymistry" and "chymist" to apply to the chemically related work of people such as Newton. Newman's 2004 Promethean Ambitions deals with the division between natural and artificial products that has been a problem for chemistry since its origin. His most recent book, Atoms and Alchemy (2006), argues that the atomic theories of the nineteenth century were decisively prefigured by a form of chymical atomism that displaced the dominant early modern scholastic matter theory. Newman's novel thesis is that later alchemists were concerned with chemical change in general, not just on the narrowly focused and futile searches for means to transform natural materials into gold. For the last seven years, Newman has devoted most of his time to the Chymistry of Isaac Newton Project, an on-line edition of Newton's alchemical writings hosted by Indiana University. In addition to his appointment in the Indiana University Department of History and Philosophy of Science, he is Director of the Catapult Center for Digital Humanities and Computational Analysis of Texts, also at Indiana University.
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Roger H. Stuewer (University of Minnesota) has been chosen to receive the 2013 Pais Prize for the History of Physics in recognition of his intellectual contributions to the field, as well as for his untiring efforts in fostering its development. In its citation, the Pais Prize Selection Committee recognized him "for his pioneering historical studies of the photon concept and nuclear physics, and for his leadership in bringing physicists into writing the history of physics by helping to organize and develop supporting institutions and publications."
[Photo: Roger Stuewer (center) being congratulated by Gloria Lubkin and Greg Good]
Stuewer's research on the history of the light quantum was published in the definitive scholarly volume, The Compton Effect: Turning Point in Physics (1975), as well as a series of widely read articles. This body of work explains why Einstein's 1905 proposal that light consists of individual quanta was rejected for almost two decades by virtually all physicists until it was confirmed by Arthur Compton's X-ray scattering experiments, published in 1923. Drawing upon Compton's research notebooks and many other archival resources, Stuewer's analysis was set in the context of attempts to understand the nature of X-rays and gamma rays.
During the 1980s, as one of the first historians to examine the discovery of the neutron and the rise of nuclear physics, Stuewer again combined his scientific knowledge with a deep understanding of the social, political, and institutional contexts of his subjects to write a series of pivotal articles. These influential publications include "The Nuclear Electron Hypothesis" (1983); "Rutherford's Satellite Model of the Nucleus" (1986); and "The Origin of the Liquid-Drop Model and the Interpretation of Nuclear Fission" (1994). His studies of early nuclear physics culminated in a brilliant demonstration of how the liquid-drop models as developed in Berlin and Copenhagen influenced the work of Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch and led to their famous formulation of the theory of uranium fission.
Throughout his lengthy career, he has brought the history of physics to wider audiences and helped practicing physicists contribute to the history of physics in collaboration with historians. Stuewer edited several volumes in the history of science—for example, Nuclear Physics in Retrospect (1979), the proceedings of a historical symposium on nuclear physics in the 1930s, which he organized and sponsored at Minnesota in 1977. Among the participants and contributors were Hans Bethe, Otto Frisch, Maurice Goldhaber, Edwin McMillan, Rudolf Peierls, Emilio Segrè, John Wheeler and Eugene Wigner. His model for this gathering became the basis for subsequent symposia and scholarly volumes on the history of particle physics organized by Laurie Brown and others. In 1997 Stuewer and John Rigden founded and began serving as the co-editors of the journal Physics in Perspective. Among the most prestigious journals in the history of physics today, it publishes articles by a mixture of physicists, philosophers and historians.
Stuewer has also been highly productive in building social institutions to help physicists and historians work together. For example, he established the Program in History of Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota, which in 2007 merged with its Program in History of Medicine to form the largest such program in the United States. Its success is due in part to Stuewer's insistence that both scientists and historians be included. He served as Director of the Program from 1975 to 1989. Stuewer was also a co-founder of the APS Division of the History of Physics—and its successor, the Forum on the History of Physics—having served on its Organizing Committee in 1979–1980. He has served on the DHP and FHP Executive Committee, and as the Forum Chair and Forum Councilor, representing it on the APS Council. The series of annual Seven Pines Symposia, which Stuewer founded in the mid-1990s, has had a significant impact on the history and philosophy of physics by bringing together prominent physicists and leading historians and philosophers of physics for discussion of key issues in the foundations of modern physics. (This article was adapted from the AIP announcement written by Lillian Hoddeson and Michael Riordan and found at http://www.aps.org/units/fhp/newsletters/spring2012/hoddeson.cfm.)
New Books in Science, Technology, and Society (NBSTS) Podcast
By Carla Nappi (University of British Columbia)
For the past several months, Patrick Slaney and I have been co-hosting a podcast devoted to interviews with authors of new books on science studies, with "science studies" here being defined for maximal inclusiveness. The channel is part of the larger New Books Network founded and maintained by Marshall Poe, and you can find it here: http://newbooksinscitechsoc.com/ (You'll notice a link at the top of the page that says "List of Interviews": click on it and you'll find yourself looking at the archive of interviews that we've already posted.) The interviews, most of which are conducted via Skype, last anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes.
Each New Books Network host has her own approach to interviewing, and I'll tell you a little bit about mine. For me, the interviews help to humanize the books and translate them for a wider range of readers than might otherwise encounter them. Each conversation is based on a close reading of the book at hand, and is meant to create a space to celebrate and talk in detail about a book in a way that differs substantively from that of the typical academic book review. These interviews are not about criticizing, judging, or situating the book within a narrow subfield. Instead, they are meant to explore and celebrate the work by (ideally) looking closely at each chapter and pulling out some of the most interesting contributions that each work makes to the larger field of knowledge-making. I like to keep the personal questions to a minimum, and I tend to use whatever personal questions that I do ask to situate the current book within the larger trajectory of the work of the person-as-author.
Based on the feedback I have received in the past several months, people are using these interviews in several different ways. They are free and downloadable, so many of our listeners (including both STS scholars and members of wider interested publics) listen to them in their in-between hours to keep up with some of what is being published in STS. Some colleagues have been assigning relevant interviews on course syllabi. Members of book prize committees are listening to interviews to get more background on works they are considering. I have even heard of faculty assigning interviews to graduate students for whom English is a second language, to practice listening to conversational academic dialogue in their fields.
To the extent possible, I am aiming to contribute a broadly trans-disciplinary coverage to the channel. Philosophy, sociology, literary studies, history, anthropology: they are all warmly welcome on NBSTS, and part of what I am trying to do when I choose books is to create more of a conversation among the many fields that contribute to the social and humanistic understanding of science, technology, and medicine. I believe in a scholarly practice anchored in wide reading across disciplines as a way to achieve more creative and boundary-breaking work, and I am trying to bring this aesthetic to the channel. Of course, since I am balancing this work with the other demands of a full-time faculty job, a New Year's resolution to start getting a more humane amount of sleep, and banjo lessons on the side, I am not always able to fit as many different kinds of books into the monthly schedule as I would like. I am working on it, though.
Stop on by the web site, browse around, come explore the new media landscape of academic work with us. And please do be in touch if you would like to recommend a book (including your own) for an interview!
HSS Council approves Joint Caucus
The Council of the Society has formally recognized a new caucus: the Joint Caucus of Socially Engaged Philosophers and Historians of Science (JCSEPHS). The proposal was brought to the HSS by our colleagues in PSA. Initial activities will include a designated webpage that could contain a blog; the JCSEPHS syllabus modules project (initial organizer Zvi Biener, University of Cincinnati); news of events of targeted interest including workshops, lectures etc.; items on the history and current activities of socially engaged POS/HSS; and suggestions for reading groups/virtual reading groups.
It is also hoped that the Caucus can sponsor special sessions focused on how research in the history and philosophy of science can contribute to activities more directly involving the public and issues of public concern. These may be in the regular programs of the meetings of HSS and PSA, as a satellite meeting adjacent to the meeting, or as special sessions occurring outside the regular meetings times. The manifesto for the Caucus appears below:
Manifesto for Joint Caucus of Socially Engaged Philosophers and Historians of Science
JCSEPHS was founded in 2012 to promote research, educational and public activities in history and philosophy of science that constructively engages matters of social welfare. JCSEPHS seeks to bridge scholarly research and public debate on science funding, research ethics, race and gender in science, risk assessment, climate science, the status of embryos, genetically modified foods or organisms, and other scientific and technological matters involved in public policy debates.
This vision of socially engaged philosophy of science is not new. In 1929, the famous Vienna Circle of philosophers published their manifesto, The Scientific Conception of the World: The Vienna Circle. Their pamphlet envisioned a progressive future for philosophy that was vitally linked to developments in physics, biology, and social science, to advances in logic and the foundations of mathematics, as well as to progressive movements in the arts, social democracy, and public education. "The Scientific Conception of the World serves life," the manifesto concluded, "and life receives it."
Things have changed since the 1920s. Yet JCSEPHS agrees that historians and philosophers of science are well equipped to investigate the complexities of scientific thought and practices in the real world, and that they should join public conversations about them. To those ends, JCSEPHS supports socially engaged research, participates in public discussions with leaders in government or business who shape policy and opinion, and promotes widespread understanding of science's relations to society and social welfare.
Silvan Schweber's George Sarton Memorial Lecture
By Jed Z. Buchwald (Caltech)
Silvan S. (Sam) Schweber, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Richard Koret Professor Emeritus in the History of Ideas, at Brandeis University, gave the George Sarton Memorial Lecture in the History and Philosophy of Science at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting this past February in Boston, Massachusetts. Schweber spoke to a crowd of over a hundred scientists, historians, and reporters about the life and work of Hans Bethe, with whom he and F. de Hoffmann wrote the influential 1955 text, Mesons and Fields. He has since written extensively on the history of 20th century physics.
Schweber began with an account of Bethe's early years. Bethe's father, Albrecht Bethe, was an assistant to the Strassburg University physiologist Richard Ewald and was strongly committed to an evolutionary view. This influenced Hans, whose work in physics embraced evolutionary, historical processes, such as the life and death of stars. Bethe studied with the great physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who with others had developed the foundations of what became known years later as the old quantum theory. Bethe, then twenty years old, joined Sommerfeld's seminar at Munich in the spring of 1926, just when Schrödinger's seminal papers on wave mechanics were being published. Subsequently an assistant professor at Tübingen, Bethe lost his job in 1933 after the Nazi accession to power since his mother, though a convert to Protestantism when young, had been born Jewish. After a Fellowship in England, in February, 1935 Bethe joined the physics department at Cornell, where he remained until the end of his life.
During the 1930s, Schweber continued, the frontier shifted to nuclear physics, to which Bethe made seminal contributions. With Stanley Livingston and Robert Bacher he co-authored three articles on the subject that became known as the "Bethe Bible." His work led in 1938 to an explanation of energy generation in stars, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1967. World War II transformed Bethe's life. He was the "paradigmatic example" of physicists' importance to the war effort and, afterwards, to the Cold War as well. Schweber explained Bethe's specific ability to translate technical mastery of the microscopic world of nuclei and atoms into macroscopic properties, thereby contributing to the design of such devices as radar junctions and atomic bombs. Bethe was an acknowledged leader at both Los Alamos and at MIT's Radiation Lab.
Bethe's managerial experiences during the war aided him in creating with Bache the Newman Lab at Cornell, dedicated to the investigation of the structure and forces governing atomic nuclei, a lab that, unlike others, was decidedly not inter-disciplinary, dedicated as it was entirely to research on high-energy physics. From the mid 1950s to the early 1970s Bethe and his students focused on the nuclear many-body problem. He was also instrumental in evolving an understanding of the different levels of physical description, indicating how parameters at a given level of quantum mechanical description are determined by a lower-level theory. His work here influenced many other physicists, including Richard Feynman and Freeman Dyson.
After the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb in 1949, Schweber related, Bethe became deeply engaged with working out a response to the perceived threat. He played a crucial role in the early 1960s in negotiations leading to the above-ground nuclear test-ban treaty of 1963. In his later years, and following the election of George W. Bush in 2001, Bethe became particularly concerned with the ever-decreasing role of scientific expertise in governmental decision-making. The Bush administration's preference for political and military considerations over scientific realities left Bethe's faith in the power of reason and rationality to effect change deeply shaken.
A Conference in Honor of Sally Gregory Kohlstedt
"Practicing Science, Engaging Publics: A Conference in Honor of Historian Sally Gregory Kohlstedt" will be held on 20 April 2013 at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. This public event will feature talks by former students of Sally, tributes to Sally's influence in the field, and a celebratory banquet. In conjunction with this conference, funds are being raised to endow a graduate student research travel fellowship. For more information, see http://www.sgk2013.com/.
Churchill Workshop at Indiana University
By Sander Gliboff (Indiana University)
From left to right: Brad Hume, Judy Johns Schloegel, Ann Mylott, Mark, Borrello, Alice Dreger, Marsha Richmond, Alistair Sponsel, Fred Churchill, Natasha Jacobs, Paul Farber, Sandy Gliboff, Jane Maienschein, Gar Allen
Last December 7-8, the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University had the pleasure of welcoming friends, alumni, and colleagues to a Workshop on the History of Biology in Honor of Fred Churchill, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.
Fred and his students have had formative influences on the history of biology. When Fred left Harvard for IU in 1967, the field was only beginning to move beyond the "harder" biological sciences, such as physiology, that engaged in quantification and experimentation. Evolution, morphology, and cell biology were poorly covered. Little work was being done on biology in the German context, and even less in the American.
Fred and his students changed all that. Fred's own papers on August Weismann, turn-of-the-twentieth-century embryology, early genetics and cytology, protozoology, and IU biologists such as Alfred Kinsey, all broke new ground. And students, such as Jane Maienschein and Ron Rainger, along with Fred's Harvard cohort Garland Allen, made inroads into modern American biology. Paul Farber branched into eighteenth-century French natural history and the history of bioethics and race. Marsha Richmond focused on the German-American geneticist Richard Goldschmidt, helped edit the Charles Darwin correspondence, and went on to do award-winning work on women in genetics. Mark Borrello has done interdiscplinary work on history and philosophy of evolutionary theory, ecology, and environmental issues. Alice Dreger has become a public figure through her essays and lectures on sexuality and medical ethics. Fred's students have also been mainstays of our professional organizations, especially the HSS, and journals such as the JHB. All this, of course, is only a sampling.
The HSS was well represented at the Workshop. Executive Director Jay Malone drove down from South Bend, Indiana. Two past presidents (Jane Maienschein and Paul Farber) and the current secretary (Marsha Richmond) were also there, along with recent and current members of Council, including Judy Schloegel.
At the Friday afternoon session, chaired by Jutta Schickore, Fred's last Ph.D. student, Mark Borrello had the honor of giving the first talk. He shared his insights on current issues in evolution and "Evolving Individuals." Alice Dreger, who studied with both Fred and Ann Carmichael, spoke on methodological problems in doing contemporary history, as illustrated by her case of "Off-Label Use of Prenatal Dexamethasone for Fetal Sexual Normalization." Following this opening session, we withdrew to IU's University Club for a reception in Fred's honor.
At an informal Saturday morning session we presented Fred, an avid birdwatcher, with a copy of The Hawaiian Honeycreepers, by H. Douglas Pratt, inscribed by all the participants, to take with him on his upcoming trip to Hawaii. We also swapped reminiscences and read written messages. Alistair Sponsel showed off his undergraduate notebook from Fred's History of Biology class. A message from John Beatty recalled tales of a larger-than-life Fred: of Fred flying around the Midwest with Norwood Russell Hanson; of how Jane and Ron always outshone John in Fred's Darwin seminar; and how a stern Fred still was willing to pass John on exams, even after he had melded the two Geoffroy St. Hilaires into one very accomplished person. (Some of these tales were so vastly improved in the re-telling that they seemed like new to Fred.) Anita Guerinni recalled the hospitality and friendship of Fred and Sandy. Others, too, emphasized their close ties to each other and to Fred during their student days. Nick Hopwood, Ted Davis, and Sean Quinlan also sent greetings. And on behalf of IU's HPS Department, I expressed my appreciation for all the good work that has made our program a center for history of biology and history of German science.
The formal talks continued Saturday with Jane Maienschein on "Understanding Embryos, from Wilhelm Roux to Synthetic Biology Today." Current IU grad student Ashley Inglehart talked about early-modern conceptions of formative principles in "Malpighi, Galen, and the Egg." Garland Allen spoke on "Eugenics and Conservation," and Marsha Richmond on "Women and Academic Biology." Another current grad student, Ryan Ketcham discussed "Science, Intuition, and Art" as reflected in later scientists' assessments of Goethe. And Paul Farber spoke on "Darwinian Evolution and Human Race." Fred himself gave the last talk: a preview of the recently completed draft of his long-awaited Weismann biography. In the evening we reconvened for dinner in downtown Bloomington.
In attendance, aside from those already mentioned, were also Elof Carlson, Ann Carmichael, John Cash, Jerry Churchill, Michael Dunn, Vreneli Farber, Ron Giere, Brad Hume, Natasha Jacobs, Noretta Koertge, Joe Lunn, Ann Mylott, and many current faculty and grad students.
As department chairman and principal organizer of the Workshop, I would like to thank all the participants, department staff members Becky Bledsoe and Peg Roberts, my assistant organizer Travis Weisse, and photographers Hannah Kasak-Gliboff and Marsha Richmond. Funding was provided by a workshop grant from IU's College Arts and Humanities Institute (CAHI), as well as by an anonymous Grateful Student. Thanks also to Sandy Churchill and Renate Kasak for help with the planning, and of course to Fred, not only for his scholarship and teaching, but also for connecting us all and for letting himself be fussed over.
Ronfest: A Conference in Honor of Ronald L. Numbers
On 15 and 16 February 2013, approximately fifty people from the United States and abroad attended a conference in Tallahassee, Florida, entitled "Science Without God: Religion, Naturalism, and the Sciences." The conference honored Ron Numbers, who retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in December of 2012 after a long and distinguished career. The site of the conference was particularly fitting, for it was at Florida State University that Numbers began his career as a graduate student in history (he received his M.A. there in 1965). Hosted by Michael Ruse (Florida State University) and presided over by Peter Harrison (University of Queensland) and Jon Roberts (Boston University), the sessions of the conference featured eighteen papers that addressed various aspects of the interaction of science, religion, and naturalism and the ways in which they fostered or hindered an understanding of nature, human nature, and society. Generous support for the conference was provided by the Historical Society's program in Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs (RIHA), Florida State University, and the Department of Medical History and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At the conclusion of the conference guests—a significant number of whom were Ron's current or former students—were treated to a fish fry at the home of Michael Ruse. The evening also included a "roast" of Ron by members of the group.
Photo Montage: The Many Faces of Ron Numbers
Top: L to R: Michael Ruse, the mature Ron Numbers, Jon Roberts, and Peter Harrison – Photo courtesy of Jon Roberts
Bottom Left: The young Ron Numbers, ca. 1962-63, as a student at Southern Missionary College (now Southern Adventist University. Photo courtesy of Stephen Weldon)
Bottom Right: The huggable Ron Numbers – Photo courtesy of Lanny Lightman
HSS in San Diego: The post-meeting survey
By Mousa Mohammadian, HSS Student Assistant
Responses to the survey's General Aspects of the Meeting section suggested general satisfaction among attendees with the HSS/PSA Joint Meeting in San Diego. The pre-registration procedure and the host city generally garnered high satisfaction. The meeting hotel had some critics, especially regarding the distance from the downtown, but the overall response to Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina was positive (we had hoped that the distance from downtown would be ameliorated somewhat by the use of shuttle buses on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings).
Most participants reported that the isolation of the hotel did not affect their attendance in sessions. Among those who said that the hotel's location did influence their attendance, most of those indicated that it increased their number of sessions visited. Most participants did not use the buses provided in the evenings by the hotel for traveling to particular spots of the city; this was at least partly the result of insufficient advertising. The book exhibit and HSS program received positive marks (our thanks to program co-chairs, Janet Browne and Dave Kaiser). With respect to signage for meeting space, session rooms and audio-visual service, feedback indicated general satisfaction, though there were some negative remarks. Although some of the problems cited were out of our control, we will try to anticipate and correct these issues at our future meetings.
The Thursday Night Joint Reception with PSA was generally satisfactory. Accessibility and the quality of food and beverages received positive marks, but there were some criticisms about the variety of food options and the overcrowding. Similar sentiments were expressed with respect to the Saturday night joint reception on the Bayview Lawn. The amount and variety of food received some critical comments, but the quality of food and beverages, reception duration, venue, and accessibility all received good marks.
The Blue Marble event at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography was rated highly by those who attended (our deep thanks to John Alaniz for his work in organizing this). The location, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, was described as "superb" by one attendee. Moreover, the quality of presentations and duration of the event were rated highly. However, there were concerns cited about the shuttle between the hotel and the Scripps Institution, both in regard to publicity and to the number of available shuttles (the event unfolded on a tight budget). There were numerous diverse suggestions about the form and content of similar events at future meetings, but there was considerable consensus among the survey participants that these sorts of events should be scheduled for Thursday before the formal start of the HSS meeting.
The questions regarding cross-over attendance between HSS and PSA participants yielded striking results. Less than 20% of survey participants attended sessions jointly sponsored by both HSS and PSA, although this could be a bit underreported, as it may not have been obvious which sessions appeared on both programs. Only one PSA respondent reported attending any other HSS sessions; HSS respondents were similarly parochial in their session attendance. Running counter to this trend were two HSS participants who attended 10 or more PSA sessions; this may suggest that they were philosophers of science who presented papers for HSS (we personally know a couple of them!). However, this is not to suggest that the joint meetings are not valuable; joint events like the plenary (which featured a standing-room only session on Kuhn's Structure) and co-sponsored sessions create opportunities for socializing and for informal discussions between scholars in our two disciplines, thus providing countless opportunities for collaboration.
Although few participants used the space for scholars with young families (provided by the hotel for lactating and nursing mothers and for children with their caretakers), the idea was widely praised by the survey participants. HSS will try to provide similar spaces at future meetings.
As we look ahead to future events, respondents most frequently identified the program and the host city as the most important factors in attending meetings. A majority of participants would attend a conference outside of the U.S. and Canada, although some said it would depend on the cost of travel and availability of funding. With respect to the scheduling of HSS/PSA joint meetings, less than 20% reported that attending a meeting scheduled close to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday was problematic; although this is a relatively small minority, the percentage is not trivial. However, room rates were considered much more important than meeting dates. Moreover, most people think that it would be better to have one or two sessions on Thursday afternoon to decrease the number of concurrent sessions, which numbered as high as 12 in San Diego.
The Executive Office appreciates input from all of the attendees regarding all aspects of the meeting. We strive to make the meetings run smoothly and allow attendees and presenters to focus on the events and papers. We did receive numerous compliments from both HSS and PSA attendees, and we appreciate the kind words; they were a salve to frayed nerves on the closing Sunday. The criticisms and suggestions are also of great value, as the success of a meeting rests ultimately on the judgment of the attendees. We hope that you will be able to join us in Boston in 2013 and in Chicago in 2014. Your input will help us make those meetings better for all.
In Memorium: Erwin N. Hiebert
1926—2012
Erwin Nick Hiebert, 93, of Belmont, Massachusetts, passed away peacefully on 28 November 2012, in Waltham, Massachusetts. An active and prolific scholar and teacher to scores of students who became well-known academics in the field, he was also a devoted husband, father, and grandfather.
Erwin Hiebert was born on 27 May 1919 in Waldheim, Saskatchewan, the third of seven children of Tina Harms and Cornelius N. Hiebert, a renowned Mennonite Brethren minister. Pursuing his early curiosity and passion for science (chemistry and physics), Hiebert attended Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas for two years and then transferred to nearby Bethel College, where he received his B.A. degree in 1941, majoring in Chemistry and Mathematics. In 1943 he received his M.A. in Chemistry and Physics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. While in Hillsboro, he met Elfrieda Franz; the two were married in 1943. They moved immediately to Whiting, Indiana, where he accepted a job as a Research Chemist at Standard Oil Company of Indiana. In 1950, they relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, where Hiebert received his Ph.D. in 1954, with a double major in History of Science and Physical Chemistry.
Hiebert enjoyed a long, illustrious academic and research career. His first teaching post, from 1952 to 1954, was an Assistant Professorship of Chemistry at San Francisco State College. He subsequently became a Fulbright Lecturer (1954-55) at the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik in Göttingen, Germany. The following year, Hiebert became an Instructor in the History of Science at Harvard University, a position he held from 1955 to 1957. From 1957 to 1970, he taught in the Department of History of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, serving as Chairman from 1960 to 1965. Hiebert joined the faculty of the Department of History of Science at Harvard University in 1970, whereupon the family moved permanently to the Boston area, settling in Belmont. He was Chairman of the department from 1977 to 1984, and was Professor Emeritus at Harvard from 1989 until his death in 2012.
Hiebert headed a variety of regional, national, and international History of Science organizations. In 1967-68, he was elected President of the Midwest Junto for the History of Science; in 1971-72, he was Vice President and then President in 1973-74 of the History of Science Society. He was a member of the Academie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences starting in 1971 and Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975. In 1981, Hiebert became Chairman-elect of the History and Philosophy of Science Section (Section L) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and in 1982, Chairman, serving until 1986. He was also President of the Division of the History of Science of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS-DHS) from 1982 to 1985. Hiebert was a Member of the Advisory Committee of the 18-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970-90) and served on editorial boards of numerous other major publications and journals.
Hiebert was the author of three books (The Impact of Atomic Energy, 1961; Historical Roots of the Principle of Conservation of Energy, 1962; and The Conception of Thermodynamics in the Scientific Thought of Mach and Planck, 1968) and numerous articles. His research and teaching focused on the 19th- and 20th-century history and philosophy of science, in particular, atomic and molecular physics, nuclear physics and chemistry, energy and thermodynamics, physical chemistry and chemical physics, electrochemistry, the structure of matter, low temperature physics, science and Marxist thought, the interactions of Western science and religion, scientists as philosophers of science, and musical acoustics. At his death he was completing a publication on the implications of the science of acoustics for music composition and instrument construction.
Hiebert was perhaps best known for his teaching, evident in the generations of students (altogether 37) who worked with him on their doctoral degrees and who have populated academies throughout North America and Europe. They benefitted from the thoughtful and thorough guidance and encouragement that he provided them and were all also frequent guests in Erwin and Elfrieda Hieberts' warm and hospitable home, typically keeping in touch with "E and E" throughout their careers and beyond. He was known for the intellectual zeal with which he engaged students in his seminars and notably never taught the same course the same way twice; he was perpetually looking for ways to bring new understandings to topics of research and study. One of his strongest convictions was that in order to study the history of science, it was essential to have basic grounding in the science itself. Hiebert was the recipient of two Festschrifts: Historia Mathematica: Papers in Honor of Erwin N. Hiebert, ed. Joseph Dauben (1980), and The Invention of Physical Science, eds. Mary Jo Nye, Joan Richards, and Roger Stuewer (1992).
Hiebert was preceded in death in September 2012 by his wife of 69 years, Elfrieda Franz Hiebert, and is survived by his three children: Catherine Hiebert Kerst of Silver Spring, Maryland; Margaret Hiebert Beissinger and husband Mark Beissinger of Princeton, New Jersey; and Thomas Nels Hiebert and wife Lenore Voth Hiebert of Fresno, California. He also leaves seven grandchildren. Hiebert was keenly dedicated to scholarship for virtually his entire life. From his early years in the classroom in Winnipeg to the last year of his life, he was passionate about exploring the world of science and interpreting how earlier scientists and philosophers had also explored it. He will be remembered as a devoted researcher and teacher but above all as a committed, caring, and beloved husband, father, and grandfather.