2010 history of science society prize citations source: isis, vol. … · 2019. 7. 4. · nathan...

2010 History of Science Society Prize CitationsSource: Isis, Vol. 102, No. 2 (June 2011), pp. 338-342Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/660143Accessed: 28-06-2017 14:27 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

The History of Science Society, The University of Chicago Press are collaborating with JSTORto digitize, preserve and extend access to Isis

This content downloaded from 129.11.21.2 on Wed, 28 Jun 2017 14:27:35 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

NEWS OF THE PROFESSION

2010 History of Science SocietyPrize Citations

NATHAN REINGOLD PRIZE

As a historiographically sophisticated, clearlyargued, well-written, and interesting contribu-tion to the history of science, Helen Anne Cur-ry’s “Vernacular Experimental Gardens of theTwentieth Century” fulfills each of the criteriaoutlined for the “ideal” Reingold Prize paper. Inaddition, her paper is an ambitious attempt toanswer big questions and deals with a largeswatch of time, ultimately demonstrating thatthe history of vernacular gardens adds an im-portant component to the history of horticulture,plant science, and genetics. Curry begins byasking, “Where are gardens in the life sciencesof the twentieth century?” With eloquent proseand an effective use of imagery, Curry thentakes us on a fascinating journey through “ver-nacular gardens.” Along the way she highlightsa persistent “tradition of amateur experimen-tal inquiry and participation in the productionof knowledge” that has often influenced thetrajectory and concerns of professional sci-ence. For example, Curry notes that vernacu-lar gardeners accepted “chromosome engi-neering” in one decade, only to reject “geneticengineering” in another, a difference that sheattributes to “amateurs’ ability to practice onetechnique but not the other in their own gar-dens.” In describing the history of vernaculargardens, Curry thus explains the origins of“authoritative amateurs willing to challengeprofessional science” now at the center oforganized opposition to the techniques ofmodern agriculture. This is just one exampleof how Curry effectively makes the case thatthese gardens were “not merely ‘intellectualweed patches’” and that they indeed meritattention in the history of science.

KRISTIN JOHNSON (Chair)DOMENICO BERTOLONI MELI

RICHARD KREMER

JOSEPH H. HAZEN PRIZE

The 2010 Joseph Hazen Prize goes to Dr.Michael Matthews, Associate Professor of Ed-ucation at the University of New South Wales,Australia. More than any other single individ-ual, Michael Matthews deserves credit for in-stilling the history (and philosophy) of sciencein science education.

Dr. Matthews has written or edited tenbooks that address the history and philosophyof science and its role in science education. Asone of his recommenders wrote, three are par-ticularly relevant to this award. ScienceTeaching: The Role of History and Philosophyof Science has served as a touchstone for re-search that teachers and scholars conduct inthe history and philosophy of science as itrelates to science education. Time for ScienceEducation: How the History and Philosophyof Pendulum Motion Can Contribute to Sci-ence Literacy formed the basis for the inter-national Pendulum Project and associatedpublications. Finally, The Scientific Back-ground to Modern Philosophy, an anthologyof primary scientific documents, has sold anenviable thirty-six thousand copies and intro-duced numerous humanities students to mod-ern philosophy’s roots in science. His numer-ous journal articles and book chapters haveaddressed the history and philosophy of sci-ence, science education, and the philosophy ofeducation.

As a Visiting Fellow in Philosophy at Flor-ida State University in 1987, Matthews initi-ated the International History, Philosophy,and Science Teaching Group, and he served asthe group’s Founding President. He is alsoPresident of the Teaching Commission of theDivision of History of Science and Technol-ogy of the International Union of History andPhilosophy of Science. Matthews served asthe Founding Editor for Science and Educa-

Isis, 2011, 102:338–342©2011 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.0021-1753/2011/10202-0009$10.00

338


tion: Contributions from the History and Phi-losophy of Science, a journal that will soonenter its twentieth year. To quote from anotherof his many recommenders: “There has beenno better friend or booster of the history ofscience, stressing that it has a vital role to playin educating young people, than Michael Mat-

thews. And he has preached this gospel acrossthe world, not just in America or in his home-land of Australia.”

FRITZ DAVIS (Chair)MURIEL BLAISDELL

MARK BORELLO

Sarton Medal winner Michael R. McVaugh.

NEWS OF THE PROFESSION—ISIS, 102 : 2 (2011) 339


DEREK PRICE/ROD WEBSTER AWARD

The 2010 Price/Webster Prize Committeeawarded the 2010 prize to Elizabeth A. Williamsfor “Neuroses of the Stomach: Eating, Gender, andPsychopathology in French Medicine, 1800–1870” (Isis, 2007, 98:54–79).

This article addresses the link drawn inFrench medicine between mental disturbanceand aberrant patterns of eating from 1800 to the1870s. Specifically, Williams describes the turnfrom “neuroses of the stomach”—that is, theidea that psychic disorder was seated in theabdominal viscera—to “hysterical anorexia” andrelated disease entities. Williams shows howFrench cerebralists, as opposed to the “visceral-ists,” sought to explain disturbances of appetite,digestion, and eating using their knowledge ofthe central nervous system. Williams asks:“What was it, then, specifically in the 1870s thatexplains the appearance of a new disease asso-ciated with these patterns of bourgeois sociallife?” Her essay suggests that historical studiesto date overemphasized sociocultural determi-nants, thereby neglecting the internal dynamicswithin biomedical science itself. Williams showsthat the emergence of anorexia was not seen as anew pattern of diseased behavior but, rather,emerged as a new clinical entity. Developmentswithin medicine itself largely, but not exclusively,explain the appearance of “hysterical” or “mental”anorexia in the 1870s.

The committee was especially impressed withhow Williams’s essay moved between the cul-tural, social, and internal aspects of her topic.The great strength of her work is her close andtextured reading of the research field itself,which facilitated her broader historical interpre-tations. Williams successfully links the internaland external aspects of psychic illness, and sheshows thereby how earlier accounts that over-emphasized “sociocultural determinants” havemissed the internal dynamics of biomedical sci-ence. In fact, this essay is an important correc-tive to an overreliance on context and culture.Through subtle rhetorical analysis and closereadings of diagnostic documents, Williams un-covers a forgotten shift in medicine that shemakes clear through the creative and useful cat-egories she offers. Her essay is particularly no-table for its sophisticated realignment of genderassumptions, showing that the gendering of eat-ing issues is historically contingent.

BENJAMIN ELMAN (Chair)SHARRONA PEARL

LLOYD ACKERT

MARGARET W. ROSSITER HISTORY

OF WOMEN IN SCIENCE PRIZE

The committee unanimously selects Marsha L.Richmond’s “The ‘Domestication’ of Heredity:The Familial Organization of Geneticists atCambridge University, 1895–1910” (Journal ofthe History of Biology, 2006, 39:565–605) aswinner of the 2010 Margaret W. Rossiter His-tory of Women in Science Prize. Richmond ar-gues persuasively not only that women madesignificant contributions to the development ofgenetics, but also that the domestic setting wasessential to overcoming the marginalized posi-tion of early British geneticists. Specifically, sheshows how fieldwork in private, nonuniversitysettings made family involvement not only pos-sible but crucial while simultaneously creating“domestic” social relations among researchers.Yet, as the field matured, the working conditionsthat had opened the door to women’s participa-tion gave way to a more restricted environment.By incorporating gender relations in the lab,field, and household, this richly documented andsubtly argued paper has enhanced our under-standing of the complex but often hidden rolesof women in scientific research.

ZUOYUE WANG (Chair)JOAN CADDEN

ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

SUZANNE J. LEVINSON PRIZE

It is with great pleasure that the committeeawards the Suzanne J. Levinson Prize for thebest book in the life sciences and natural historyto Gregory Radick for The Simian Tongue: TheLong Debate about Animal Language (Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 2007).

Radick’s book is a longue duree account of oneof the most puzzling problems at the intersectionof anthropology and the study of animal behavior.Where does our human language come from anddo nonhuman primates possess language or are weseparated by a language barrier? Radick has pro-duced an interdisciplinary synthesis weaving to-gether experimental designs and theoretical argu-ments as well as biographical and institutionalperspectives. The result is a richly contextual mul-tilayered account presented as convincing narra-tive. Radick’s work touches many biological andanthropological disciplines and research fields. Itthus opens up vast new lands for future historiansto map and explore. As a history of an ongoingscientific debate it also engages historians of sci-ence and working scientists alike.

The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about

340 NEWS OF THE PROFESSION—ISIS, 102 : 2 (2011)


Animal Language is a worthy winner of theSuzanne J. Levinson Prize, and we are certainthat this creative work will move the disci-plines of the history of biology and naturalhistory forward and bring them closer to thecurrent practice of science.

MANFRED LAUBICHLER (Chair)GARLAND ALLEN

SHARON KINGSLAND

WATSON DAVIS AND HELEN MILES

DAVIS PRIZE

The Day We Found the Universe is a beautifullywritten, informative book on a critical topic in thehistory of science. Through skillful, rigorous, andcreative use of archival and other sources, includ-ing oral histories, the author has made sense out ofdisparate, sometimes fragmentary data; crafted arich, complex, yet crystal-clear narrative; and de-picted a seminal moment in history. The discoveryof the expanding universe—the notion of galaxies,galaxies, and more galaxies forming our cosmos—involved starts and stops, twists and turns, and aplethora of intriguing characters from Einstein,Shapley, and Hubble to relatively obscure figuressuch as Henrietta Leavitt, Vesto Slipher, GeorgesLemaıtre, and Milton Humason. The narrative por-trays the inner workings of science and of astro-physicists in the 1920s and 1930s through com-pelling vignettes and life histories. Our committeebelieves that this book will reach a broad audience,including undergraduates in several fields of study,and will appeal to scientists, historians, and thegeneral reader alike. It is an exemplary choice forthe Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize.

Marcia Bartusiak is an award-winning authorand adjunct professor and executive director ofthe Graduate Science Writing Program at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.

KENNETH R. MANNING (Chair)EDWARD J. LARSON

MARIA M. PORTUONDO

PFIZER PRIZE

The Pfizer Prize Committee has awarded thePfizer Prize to Maria Rosa Antognazza for Leib-niz: An Intellectual Biography, published in 2009by Cambridge University Press. Antognazza hasfocused on a familiar figure, known to all histori-ans of science and philosophers and to many oth-ers. Yet up to now this giant of the seventeenthcentury has been examined in a fragmentaryway—some study his mathematics, some hisphysics, some his metaphysics, some his calculat-

ing machine, and some his interest in mining tech-nologies. Leibniz’s Monadology is widely read butis rarely understood in the context of his work as awhole. Almost all have viewed the vast amount oftime that he spent in historical studies as an unfor-tunate digression that kept him from what theyconsider his far more important work in mathe-matics and physics. An integrated view of histhought has been lacking.

In response to this fragmentation and withinthe compass of an intellectual biography, An-tognazza brilliantly explicates Leibniz’s life andthought as a coherent development. In this am-bitious and synoptic biography, she shows theunity of his diverse interests and the importanceof the Central European context for his work.The depth of her analysis is impressive—whetherdiscussing the infinitesimal calculus, physics,metaphysics, ethics, or theology, she successfullyanalyzes both the substance of his intellectualwork and its relationships to the complex social,religious, and political world in which he moved.She masterfully analyzes multifarious politicalmachinations in the Hapsburg Empire and theirconsequences for Leibniz’s patronage, career, andthought. With equal mastery she elucidates thecomplex religious context of his time and the waysin which Leibniz’s irenicism—his persistent,deeply felt attempts to harmonize diverse and of-ten conflicting points of view—both influencedhis metaphysics and represented his multifacetedresponse to a conflicted, often violent, and chang-ing religious situation. Likewise Antognazza un-derscores the seriousness and importance of Leib-niz’s historical work and points out his rigorousarchival approach to historical questions. Antog-nazza’s own meticulous attention to chronologicaldetail and command of a massive and complexgroup of primary sources brings new clarity toLeibniz’s relationships with his scientific contem-poraries and to his priority dispute with Newtonand the Newtonians. This masterful biographybrings Leibniz to life and makes the depth andcomplexity of his thought as a whole comprehen-sible for the first time.

PAMELA O. LONG (Chair)JOHN SERVOS

KAREN REEDS

SARTON MEDAL

The Sarton Medal is the most prestigious awardof the History of Science Society. It honors alifetime of scholarly achievement and is awardedeach year to a historian of science of outstandingmerit selected from the international scholarlycommunity. I am honored and delighted to have

NEWS OF THE PROFESSION—ISIS, 102 : 2 (2011) 341


been asked by HSS President Paul Farber tosummarize the scholarly achievement of thisyear’s Sarton Medalist, Michael R. McVaugh,William Smith Wells Professor of HistoryEmeritus, University of North Carolina.

Michael McVaugh has devoted his exception-ally productive career to the history of medieval,and more recently also early modern, Europeanmedicine. His output of books, articles, and texteditions, all marked by the most rigorous schol-arship, is indeed extraordinary; and despite hisrecent retirement, it shows no signs of slowingdown. His work commands the many and di-verse forms of knowledge, practice, institutions,and social contexts that shaped medicine and itspractitioners during those centuries. Equally im-pressive is his mastery of historical techniquesand approaches. He is at home with both textualand archival sources. And he has made contri-butions of major importance to all of the follow-ing: the intellectual, the social and cultural, andthe technological history of medieval medicineand natural philosophy.

Michael McVaugh received his B.A. fromHarvard and his Ph.D. from Princeton Univer-sity. He came to the Department of History ofthe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillas an assistant professor in 1964. This wouldremain his home department, with periods spentas a Directeur d’etudes invite at the Ecole Pra-tique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, and as a visitingfellow at Magdalen College, Oxford, and atClare Hall, Cambridge, and many periods ofresearch in Spain, until his retirement as Wil-liam Smith Wells Professor in 2007.

Among Michael McVaugh’s very numerousarticles are many valuable contributions to thehistory of learning in the university milieu, es-pecially the medical faculty of the University ofMontpellier. The focus of much of his work onthe kingdom of Aragon and his collaborativeprojects with Spanish colleagues also place himamong those scholars who have in recent yearscast much new light on medieval Iberian history.In a long series of articles and in his bookMedicine before the Plague (1993), he has pre-sented the results of his archival research intothe roles, interests, and regulation of medicalpractitioners in the kingdom of Aragon. ForMedicine before the Plague he was awarded theWelch Medal of the American Association ofthe History of Medicine, given for the best bookin the field published in the previous five years.

Yet another area to which Michael McVaughhas made important contributions is the historyof medieval surgery. His edition of and com-mentary on the massive Inventarium, or ChirurgiaMagna—“great surgery”—of Guy de Chauliac

(1997) made available a vast range of references,sources, and concepts relating to all forms of ex-ternal treatment of the human body. His recentbook, The Rational Surgery of the Middle Ages(2006), casts an entirely new light on the devel-opment and significance of surgery in the pe-riod. In it he explores the milieu and motivesthat led thirteenth- and early fourteenth-centurysurgeons to adopt reasoned knowledge and thelanguage of Latin learning and to insist thatsurgery involved theory as well as practice.

Central to much of McVaugh’s work is hisappreciation of the importance of textual scholar-ship and scholarly editing. As one of the origina-tors and general editor of the series Opera medicaomnia of Arnald of Villanova, published by theUniversity of Barcelona, and as editor of several ofthe volumes within the series, he has providedinvaluable new editions of works of a figure influ-ential in medicine, natural philosophy, and reli-gion, much of whose output was formerly avail-able only in manuscript or in early printed editions.The scholarly introductions, by McVaugh and oth-ers, to the volumes in this series constitute a majorbody of interpretation of Arnald’s medical writ-ings. As a collaborator in the project to publish themedical works of Maimonides in their Hebrew,Arabic, and Latin versions in critical editionsbased on the manuscripts, accompanied by newEnglish translations, Michael McVaugh is nowalso contributing to improved access to texts sig-nificant for the transmission and reception of nat-ural knowledge among the peoples of the medievalMediterranean world.

Michael McVaugh’s influence has been widelyfelt among historians of medieval and early modernmedicine and science; at the conference held at theUniversity of North Carolina in Chapel Hill on theoccasion of his retirement, the more than twentyspeakers represented a cross-section of internationalscholarship (I’m happy to report that the conferencevolume will appear this year). I am only one of manywho have benefited from his scholarly generosity. Iwas a graduate student when I first encountered hiswork and came to appreciate his characteristic com-bination of intensive textual analysis with keenawareness of the social context of both learned andpopular medical practice. My respect for his workhas only deepened with the years. Michael McVaughis a scholar of great distinction and a person of greatmodesty and integrity. I can think of no more suitablerecipient of the Sarton Medal.

HELENA PYCIOR (Chair)TREVOR LEVERE

JAMES BONO

HEINRICH VON STADEN

SANDER GLIBOFF

DEBORAH COEN

342 NEWS OF THE PROFESSION—ISIS, 102 : 2 (2011)


2010 history of science society prize citations source: isis, vol. … · 2019. 7. 4. · nathan...

Documents