Current Students and ABDs |
Alumni of the Program |
P. Samantha Lewis [email] (B.A. Johns Hopkins)Alistair Sponsel [email] (B.A. (History), B.S. (Biology) Indiana; MSc Imperial College, London) studies the history of modern science. He is interested in the history of experiment and of science training, especially with respect to life sciences in the twentieth century.
Renee Raphael [email] (B.A. Harvard) plans to study Renaissance humanism and its interaction with emerging empiricism. She is especially interested in examining the effects that developments in science and technology and the discovery of the New World had on the relationship between the two intellectual traditions.
Jeris Stueland [email] (B.A., B.S. Michigan State)
Doogab Yi [email] (B.S., M.A. Seoul University) has broad interests in the interaction of computers and engineering with the biological and social sciences, particularly in the 20th century adoption of “systems” theories by natural and social scientists.
James S. Byrne [email] (B.A. Columbia) studies medieval natural philosophy, mathematics, and logic with a focus on thirteenth and fourteenth-century scholasticism. He seeks to understand what might be called ?scholastic science? within the wider context of the scholastic system. In particular, he is interested in the application of logical and mathematical techniques to various natural and theological subjects.John P. DiMoia [email] (B.A., M.Ed. Temple; M.A. Georgetown) studies the cultural, intellectual and social foundations of American psychometrics, with a particular emphasis on their legacy in the post-World War II period. More broadly speaking, he is interested in tracing the psychometric impulse from its origins (e.g., statistics, anthropometrics) to its contemporary manifestations, especially in terms of public policy, education, and linguistics.
Gabor Katona [email] (M.A. (Philosophy), M.A. (Art) University of Pecs, Hungary)
Catherine Nisbett [email] (B.A. Grinnell)
Nicholas S. Popper [email] (B.A. Haverford)
Carla S. Nappi [email] (A.B. Harvard (Paleobiology), A.M. Harvard U. (History of Science) works on understanding the interplay of language and science, focusing on using linguistic & philosophical tools to understand the role of language in the history of Chinese sciences and in the biological sciences. Her current projects include looking at the relationship between Classical Chinese literary conventions and natural sciences, and understanding scientific definition in the biological sciences.Tania Munz [email] (B.A. Univ. of Chicago, M.A. Univ. of Minnesota) works on the history of animal behavior. In particular, she's interested in studies of lower organism and the history of ethology.
Joseph November [email]
Matt Wisnioski [email] (B.S. Johns Hopkins, Materials Science & History of Science) I have a general fascination with all aspects of the history of science, though I am most interested in 19th and 20th century physical sciences and technology. I like to think about questions of how technology and theory interact, and how culture and society shape science and vice-versa.
Daniela Bleichmar [email] (A.B. Harvard, History of Science) works on the use of images in early modern and Enlightenment natural history and medicine, particularly in transatlantic colonial projects involving Europe and Latin America. Her current project examines the ways in which images functioned as mediators between field experience and book experience and between native knowledge and European knowledge.Emily Brock [email] (B.A., St. John's College; M.A., University of Oregon, Ecology and Evolution) works on topics centered around the uses of biology in industrial settings in the United States and Britain. Of particular interest are the formation of academic forestry and the application of biological thinking to commercial logging.
Joe Conley [email] (B.A. Univ. of Pennsylvania; MSc Imperial College, London) is interested in American environmental history, 20th century U.S. history, and the history of biology. His dissertation will explore the response of American business to the modern environmental movement, with a focus on the use of public relations, advertising, and science. It will investigate the origins and development of the backlash against environmentalism that emerged as a powerful political force in the 1980s.
Jane Holt Murphy [email] (B.A., Yale, Mathematics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) is interested in Islamicate and European science. Her current project is a study of the encounter between Cairene and Ottoman scientific communities and the French savants who accompanied Napoleon?s troops in the occupation of Egypt, 1798-1801. This project examines the relationship of rationality, scientific experiment and state and social authority in these two cultural milieus.
Ole Molvig [email] (B.A. University of Wisconsin, Physics, Astronomy, and History of Science, 1998.) In his dissertation, "From Kosmogonie to Kosmologie: Defining and Debating the Study of the Universe, 1900 - 1930," he examines early-twentieth-century approaches to the origin and structure of the physical universe before and after Einstein's theory of General Relativity. He emphasizes how the practice of the universe's study changed from one of geo- astrophysics to theoretical physics, and what these changes meant to Europe's scientific and popular audiences.Rebecca Press Schwartz [email]
Jamie Cohen-Cole [email]Marwa El-Shakry [email]
Manfred Dietrich Laubichler [email] (M.S. University of Vienna, Austria - 1991, zoology; Ph.D. Yale Univerity - 1997, biology; M.A. Princeton University - 1998, history) works on topics in the history of biology and on conceptual and mathematical problems in evolutionary developmental biology. His thesis is devoted to the history of theoretical biology. He is also affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science as a vistiting scholar.
Elizabeth Merchant [email]
Jakub Novak [email]
Gail Schmitt [email]
Suman Seth [email] (B.Sc. (Hons.) University of Sydney, Physics and Applied Mathematics, Honours degree in Physics) Currently working on his dissertation, (tentatively) entitled "From Chaos to Coherence: Constructions of Theoretical Physics in Imperial Germany, 1890--1918." The project is a cultural history of a community of physicists and the means by which they come to conceive of themselves. It seeks to embed what is often seen as an esoteric discipline within its cultural context, dealing with the relationship of science to Germany's rapid industrialisation, the rise of the engineering profession, pedagogical and political discourses. Other interests include the histories of gender, colonialism and science and European cultural and intellectual history.
Jay Turner [email] (B.S. Washington and Lee University, Neuroscience, 1995; A.M. Brown University, American Civilization). Jay studies American environmental history. Presently Jay is writing his dissertation on the history of the National Wilderness Preservation System (1964 to present). The wilderness movement serves as a window into the changes in the political and scientific strategies of the larger environmental movement. Jay's interest also include the history of conservation biology, urban history, and regional planning.
Erika Wojcuk [email]