Dibner Institute Names Resident, Visiting and Postdoctoral Fellows For
1997-1998
The Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology is
pleased to announce the appointments of the Dibner Institute Fellows for
1997-1998. The Institute has appointed eighteen Resident, seven
Visiting, and seven Postdoctoral Fellows. They come from several
nations and pursue many different aspects of the history of science and
technology.
The following eighteen persons have been appointed as Dibner Institute
Fellows:
Kirsti Andersen, Associate Professor at the University of Aarhus,
Denmark, is the author of Brook Taylor’s Work on Linear Perspective. A
Study of Taylor’s Role in the History of Perspective Geometry, Including
Complete Facsimiles of His Two Books on Perspective, 1992. She has also
translated several key sources in the history of mathematics into
Danish. At the Dibner Institute she plans to prepare for publication
her many papers on the history of mathematical theory of perspective,
1435 to the end of the 18th century, and also to begin a study on the
history of logarithms.
Henk J.M. Bos is Extraordinary Professor in the History of Mathematics
at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Following the completion this
summer of a large monograph entitled “Descartes and the Early Modern
Traditions of Geometrical Problem Solving, he will continue work on a
sequel concerning the new mathematics of the period.
John K. Brown, Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, has
written The Baldwin Locomotive Works, 1831-1915: A Study in American
Industrial Practice, published in 1995, and Limbs on the Levee:
Steamboat Explosions and the Origins of Federal Public Welfare
Regulations, 1817-1852, published in 1989. His project while at the
Dibner Institute is titled “The Forges of Industry: Capital Equipment
Builders in 19th-Century America.”
Alan Chalmers, Associate Professor, University of Sydney, Australia, is
the author of Science and its Fabrication and many articles including
“Cartwright on Fundamental Laws,” in Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
74 (1996) and “Ultimate Explanation in Science,” Cogito, 9 (1995). At
the Dibner Institute he plans to continue work on a broad history of
atomism from Democritus to Einstein, tentatively titled “An
Epistemological History of Atomism.”
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Professor of Medical Science and Women Studies at
Brown University, is the author of Myths of Gender: Biological Theories
about Women and Men. Her next work entitled, “Body Building: How
Biologists Construct Sexuality,” will be published in 1997. At the
Dibner Institute she will work on a book titled “Edwin Grant Conklin:
Embryologist and Eugenicist.”
W. Alan Gabbey, Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, Barnard
College, is the author of “The Principia Philosophiae as a Treatise in
Natural Philosophy,” in Descartes: Principia Philosophiae (1644-1994),
eds. Jean-Robert Armogathe and Giulia Belgioioso; and “Spinoza’s
Natural Science and Methodology” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza,
ed. Don Garrett, 1996. At the Dibner Institute he will continue work on
a book provisionally titled, “Machines and the Spirits Within: Problems
of the Mechanical Philosophy in the Early Modern Period.”
Yung Sik Kim, Professor in the Program in History and Philosophy of
Science at Seoul National University, Korea, is the author of the
forthcoming book, “The Natural Philosophy of Chu Hsi (1130-1200).” His
most recent articles in English are “Chu Hsi on Calendar Specialists and
Their Knowledge: A Scholar’s Attitude toward Technical Scientific
Knowledge in Traditional China,” T’oung Pao, 78 (1992) and “Another Look
at Robert Boyle’s Acceptance of Mechanical Philosophy: Its Limits and
Its Chemical and Social Contexts,” Ambix: International Journal of
History of Alchemy and Chemistry, 38 (1991). While at the Dibner
Institute he will continue his research on neo-Confucian natural
philosophy and natural knowledge.
Ursula Klein is a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and at the
Max-Planck Institute für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Germany. She is the
author of Verbindung und Affinität. Die Grundlegung der neuzeitlichen
Chemie an der Wende vom 17. zum 18. Jahrhundert and “The Chemical
Workshop Tradition and the Experimental Practice. Discontinuities within
Continuities,” Science in Context , 9 (1996). At the Dibner Institute
she will explore the introduction of chemical formulas into chemistry.
Larry Laudan, Visiting Researcher, Instituto de las Investigaciones
Filosoficas, National University of Mexico, is the author, most
recently, of The Book of Risks, Beyond Positivism and Relativism, and
the forthcoming Italian translation of Science and Relativism. At the
Dibner Institute he will continue work on the third section of a book
about the relation between theory and evidence, in which he will explore
the differences, if any, between observational and experimental
evidence.
Rachel Laudan is the author of From Mineralogy to Geology: The
Foundations of a Science 1650-1830; with A. Donovan and L. Laudan;
Scrutinizing Science: Empirical Studies of Scientific Change; and
“Natural Alliance or Forced Marriage? Changing Relations Between the
Histories of Science and Technology,” Technology and Culture, 36
(1995). In her work at the Dibner Institute she will continue her
investigations for a work entitled “Chemistry Applied: Physiology and
Dietetics 1650-1800.”
Jesper Lützen is Professor of Mathematics, University of Copenhagen,
Denmark. He is the author of Joseph Liouville 1809-1882: Master of Pure
and Applied Mathematics; “Interactions between Mechanics and
Differential Geometry in the 19th Century,” Archive for History of Exact
Sciences, 49, (1995); and “Heinrich Hertz and the Geometrisation of
Mechanics,” to appear in Heinrich Hertz: Classical Physicist, Modern
Philosopher, ed. Baird D. Huges, R.I.G., and Nordmann. At the Dibner
Institute he will continue his work on Hertz’s mechanics.
Bruce Pourciau, Professor of Mathematics at Lawrence University, is the
author of “Reading the Master: Newton and the Birth of Celestial
Mechanics,” The American Mathematical Monthly, January, 1997; “Radical
Principia,” and “Newton’s Solution of the One-Body Problem,” Archive for
History of Exact Sciences, 44 (1992). The projects he will pursue at
the Dibner Institute are titled “The Early Mathematical Lemmas of the
Principia” and “Intuitionism: A Kuhnian Perspective on a Failed
Revolution.”
Miklós Rédei is Associate Professor in the Department of the History and
Philosophy of Science at Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary. He is the
author of Introduction to Quantum Logic; “Is there superluminal
causation in relativistic quantum field theory” in Perspectives on
Quantum Reality: Relativistic, Non-Relativistic and Field Theoretic,
and “John von Neumann — der mathematische Physiker,” in Jenseits von
Kunst ed. P. Weibel. In his work at the Dibner Institute he will
continue his studies for a biography of John von Neumann, the
Hungarian-born mathematician and mathematical physicist. He will also
edit a collection of essays about von Neumann as well as unpublished
papers by him.
Silvan Schweber, Professor of Physics and the History of Ideas, Brandeis
University, is the author of QED and the Men who Made It: Dyson,
Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga; “La Crisi delle Scienze Fisiche,” Kos
X, April (1994), and, with Cathryn Carson, “Recent Biographical Studies
in the Physical Sciences,” Isis, 85 (1994). He will continue his work
on a biography of Hans Bethe while he is at the Dibner Institute.
Hourya Sinaceur is Directeur de recherche de lère classe au CNRS de
Paris, France. She is the author of Jean Cavaillès. Philosophie
mathématique and Corps et Modèles. Essai sur l’histoire de l’algebre
réelle. At the Dibner Institute she will continue her research on Emmy
Noether’s influence and contributions in mathematics at Göttingen before
her emigration to the United States.
Roger Smith, Reader in History of Science, Lancaster University, United
Kingdom, is the author of Inhibition: History and Meaning in the
Sciences of Mind and Brain and the forthcoming “The Fontana History of
the Human Sciences.” His project while at the Dibner Institute is
titled “The Ethos of Pure Science and the Conceptual Framework of
Anglo-American Brain Science in the Interwar Decades.”
Mark Steiner is Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Hebrew
University, Israel. He is the author of “Wittgenstein: Mathematics,
Regularities, Rules,” in Benacerraf and his Critics, ed. Adam Morton and
Stephen Stich; “The Applicabilities of Mathematics,” Philosophia
Mathemetica, 3.3 (1995); and the forthcoming book, “The Applicability of
Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem.” At the Dibner Institute he
will continue his study of purely formal analogies in the history of
recent scientific discoveries.
David Wilson, Professor of History, Iowa State University, is the author
of Kelvin and Stokes: A Comparative Study in Victorian Physics ; “P.G.
Tait and Edinburgh Natural Philosophy, 1860-1901,” Annals of Science, 48
(1991); and the editor of the two-volume Correspondence between Sir
George Gabriel Stokes and Sir William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs.
While at the Dibner Institute he will continue work on a book
tentatively titled “Natural Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment.”
The following seven persons have been appointed as Dibner Institute
Visiting Fellows, fellows whose appointments are for less than a full
academic term:
Martin Campbell-Kelly, Reader in Computer Science, University of
Warwick, United Kingdom, has written (with William Aspray) Computer: A
History of the Information Machine and ICL: A Business and Technical
History. At the Dibner Institute he will continue his writing on L.J.
Comrie and the early development of volume production of mathematical
tables by the company Comrie established in 1937, Scientific Computing
Service Ltd.
Noah Efron is a Research Scholar at Harvard University. He is the
author of the forthcoming article, “Jewish Thought and Scientific
Discovery in Early Modern Europe: A Review Essay,” Journal for the
History of Ideas and, with Menachem Fisch, “Dean Simonton’s ‘Scientific
Genius’: A Review, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 13
(1991). At the Dibner Institute he will continue work on a project
entitled “Jews, Christians and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern
Europe.”
Jean Eisenstaedt, Chargé de Recherches at Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, France, is the author of “L’optique balistique
newtonienne à lépreuve des satellites de Jupiter,” Archive for History
of Exact Sciences, 50 (1996) and “Guido Beck in General Relativity,”
Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciencas, 67, Supl. 1 (1995). His work
while at the Dibner Institute will be on the subject “Arago and the
Prehistory of Relativity.”
Craig Fraser, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, Canada
is the author of Calculus and Analytical Mechanics in the Age of
Enlightenment . He will submit for publication in 1997, “Calculus of
Variations 1806-1916. Historical Studies.” His project while at the
Dibner Institute is titled “The Theory of Elasticity in 19th Century
Exact Science.”
Donald C. Jackson, Associate Professor of History at Lafayette College,
is the author of Building the Ultimate Dam: John S. Eastwood and the
Control of Water in the West and Great American Bridges and Dams. While
at the Dibner Institute he will continue his research on non-federal dam
construction and on the promotion of gravity dams by John R. Freeman.
George Saliba, Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science, Columbia
University, is the author of A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary
Theories During the Golden Age of Islam and the forthcoming “The Final
Quest in the Correction of Astronomical Principles, a critical edition
of Ibn al-Shatir’s ‘Nihayat al Sul fi Tashih al-’Usul.” His research at
the Dibner Institute will be devoted to a work entitled “Arabic Science
in Renaissance France: Guillaume Postel and Arabic Planetary Theories.”
George Stocking, Jr. is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and
Conceptual Foundations of Science at the University of Chicago. He is
the author of After Tylor, British Social Anthropology, 1888-1951; The
Ethnographer’s Magic and other Essays in the History of Anthropology;
andVictorian Anthropology. Professor Stocking is founding editor of the
annual, History of Anthropology. At the Dibner Institute, he will
explore the history of anthropology between World War II and the late
1960s in a project titled “Anthropology Yesterday.”
The Dibner Institute has made the following seven Postdoctoral
Fellowship appointments.
Joseph Dumit has been an NIMH Research Fellow in the Department of
Social Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and a Lecturer in
Anthropology at MIT this past year. He was the co-editor, with Gary Lee
Downey and Sharon Traweek, of the forthcoming book, “Cyborgs and
Citadels: Anthropological Intervents in Emerging Sciences and
Technologies” and wrote the chapter, “A Digital Image of the Category of
the Person, PET Scanning and Objective Self-Fashioning.” During his
appointment he will continue work on an historical study entitled,
“Drawing on Circuits: Diagramming Brains, Minds and Computers
(1930-1990).”
Tal Golan will receive his Ph. D. from the Department of History,
University of California at Berkeley in April 1997. The title of his
dissertation is “Science on the Witness Stand: Expert Testimony in U.S.
Courts, 1870-1923.” At the Dibner Institute he will continue his
investigation of the relations between the expanding scientific and
legal cultures in late 19th and early 20th century America.
Sungook Hong is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto,
Canada. He is the author of “Styles and Credit in Early Radio
Engineering: Fleming and Marconi on the First Transatlantic Wireless
Telegraphy,” Annals of Science, 53 (1996) and “Syntony and Credibility:
John Ambrose Fleming, Gugliemo Marconi, and the Maskelyne Affair,”
Archimedes, 1 (1996). The title of his project while at the Dibner
Institute is “A Social History of Radio: From Marconi’s Black-Box to
the Triode Revolution, 1890-1920.”
David McGee received his Ph. D. from the University of Toronto and is
now a Lecturer at Mount Allison University, Canada. He is the author of
the forthcoming “Before the Revolution: Building a Historical Model of
Design in Technology,” Technology and Culture and “Making up Mind: The
Early Sociology of Invention, Technology and Culture, 36 (1995). His
research while at the Dibner Institute is titled “The Trouble with
Science: Science, Design and Britain’s First School of Naval
Architecture.”
Jessica Riskin, Assistant Professor, Iowa State University, wrote her
dissertation, The Quarrel over Method in Natural Science and Politics
during the Late Enlightenment, on the relations of scientific and
political thought and culture in the Enlightenment. She is the author of
an article entitled “Meaningless Names and Eloquent Things in the
Chemistry of the Enlightenment.” Her work at the Dibner Institute will
be for a book titled “The Defecating Duck, or Scenes from the Early
History of the Idea of Automation.”
Dorit Tanay is a Lecturer in the Department of Musicology, Tel Aviv
University, Israel. She is the author of “The Image of Music and the
Body of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages: Rhythmical Procedures as
Cultural Representation,” Science in Context, 9 (1996) and “Jehan de
Meur’s Rhythmic Theory and the Mathematics of the 14th Century,”
Tractrix, 5 (1993). Her project while at the Dibner Institute is titled
“Music and the Transgression of Boundaries: A Re-evaluation of the
Interrelationship between Music and Science in the 17th Century.”
James R. Voelkel is Head Teaching Fellow, Department of History of
Science, Harvard University. He is the author of “The Importance of
Tycho Brahe: A View from America,” in Tycho Brahe Stjärnornas Herre,
1996 and the following contributions to The Encyclopedia of the
Scientific Revolution (in press): “Astronomy,” “Longomontanus,
Christian Severin,” “Praetorius, Johannes,” and “Rheticus, George
Joachim.” His current project is to publish the findings from his
dissertation, The Development and Reception of Kepler’s Physical
Astronomy, 1593-1609, in book form as well as to continue working on an
annotated translation of the Kepler-Fabricius correspondence.
MEMBERSHIP & RENEWAL INFORMATION
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Elisabeth Lloyd
ISHPSSB President 1997-99
6350 Arlington Boulevard
Richmond CA 94805 USA
Phone: (510) 642-4597; Fax: (510) 642-4164
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Peter Taylor, Chair
Past-President 1997-99
Swarthmore College
Department of Biology
Swarthmore, PA 19081
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President-Elect 1997-99
Department of Philosophy
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0126
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Michael Dietrich
Program Chair, 1999 Meetings
History and Philosophy of Science Program
University of California at Davis
Davis, CA 95616-8673
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Ana Barahona
Zapate # 6 - 9
Col. Miguel Hidalgo
Tlalpan 14410
Mexico
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University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics
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Secretary
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History of Science and Technology
435 Walter Library
University of Minnesota
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History of Science/Natural Philosophy
Mt. Angel Seminary
St. Benedict, OR 97373
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CONTRIBUTIONS FOR THE SPRING 1998 NEWSLETTER
The next issue of the ISHPSSB newsletter will be published in Spring
1998. Please send submissions (preferably via e-mail) to the editor,
Chris Young, [log in to unmask]
photo captions:
Lindsay Farrell, Douglas Allchin, and Paul Farber enjoy the bounty of
the Pacific Northwest.
Scenes from an interdisciplinary salmon dinner.
Gregg Mitman, son Keefe, and wife Deb dine with Past President Chip
Burkhardt (left) and Treasurer Ron Rainger (right).
Seattle, home of the 1997 ISHPSSB meeting. Clear skies courtesy of
local arrangements chair Keith Benson.
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