PrincetonUniversity
 

After earning her Ph.D. in biochemistry, Angela Creager won a National Science Foundation fellowship to learn a new discipline. Now an associate professor of history at Princeton, she teaches classes on the history of science and has just published her first book.

Photo: Denise Applewhite

Creager catches the bug for history of science

by Steven Schultz
As a graduate student in biochemistry, Angela Creager worked at the forefront of her field -- studying with top people and applying the latest techniques to the most current questions.

By the time she received her Ph.D., however, Creager was more interested in problems that had long since been solved and techniques that nobody had used in decades.

It was not a fall from grace -- just a change in career. Creager, now associate professor of history at Princeton, studies the history of biology. She has just published her first book, the story of how a seemingly obscure tobacco virus played a pivotal role in the birth of molecular biology.

"I tell people I'm an expert in obsolete knowledge," she said. "But I don't mean to trivialize it; it really is fascinating. And it helps you be more humble about current knowledge and its claims about being the final truth."

So while her colleagues in labs push forward the boundary of scientific knowledge, Creager works to establish where those boundaries used to be and to understand the cultural and scientific forces that helped propel people past them. In many ways, however, the pursuits offer some of the same rewards.

"When you do historical research, just like in a lab, you can be surprised by your findings," she said. "I love that about history. I love that you can be surprised."

Read the full story in the Weekly Bulletin.