Harriet Zuckerman

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Harriet A. Zuckerman
Born(1937-07-19)July 19, 1937
New York City, US
Alma mater Vassar College, Columbia University
AwardsFellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1979) & American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985).
Scientific career
FieldsSociology of science
Institutions Columbia University, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
External videos
Nuvola apps kaboodle.svg Harriet Zuckerman, 20th Anniversary Symposium—Exhibitions Research Teaching: The Bard Graduate Center at Twenty, November 14, 2013.

Harriet Anne Zuckerman (born July 19, 1937) is an American sociologist and professor emerita of Columbia University. [1]

Contents

Zuckerman specializes in the sociology of science. [2] She is known for her work on the social organization of science, scientific elites, the accumulation of advantage, the Matthew effect, and the phenomenon of multiple discovery.

Zuckerman served as the Senior Vice President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation from 1991 to 2010, overseeing the Foundation's grant program in support of research, libraries and universities. She is known as an authority for her studies of educational programs, and her support of research universities, scholarship in the humanities, graduate educational programs, research libraries, and other centers for advanced study. [3]

Education

Harriet Zuckerman received her A.B. degree from Vassar College in 1958 and her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1965. [1] She held a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship from 1958-1959. [4]

Career

Zuckerman was a Lecturer in Sociology at Barnard College in New York City from 1964-1965. She returned to Columbia University an Assistant Professor of Sociology in 1965, where she served as Project Director of the Bureau of Applied Social Research. She became an Associate Professor in 1972, and a Full Professor in 1978 . She chaired the Sociology department from 1978-1982. [4] In 1992, she retired from Columbia University, becoming a professor emerita. [5]

Zuckerman served as president of the Society for Social Studies of Science in 1990-1991. [6] In 1989, she joined the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as a senior advisor, becoming the Senior Vice President in 1991. [4] She retired from the Vice Presidency in May 2010. [3]

Work

Zuckerman's research has focused on the social organization of science and scholarship. She is the author of the 1977 book, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States, which has been credited with defining the direction of work in the field for the next two decades. [7] As a basis for her research, Zuckerman used a database to examine more than 60,000 academics, in a powerful demonstration of the self-reinforcing dynamics of American academic culture. Zuckerman's findings, particularly her "fundamental notion" [8] of "accumulation of advantage", questioned assumptions about creativity, achievement, eminence, and greatness. [9] [8] [10] [11] [12]

The empirical data Zuckerman analyzed, along with work by Robert K. Merton and others, documented ways in which women scientists were "systematically disadvantaged in educational attainment, productivity, funding, lab space, and recognition". [13] Zuckerman and others have carried out subsequent work on prizes and other rewards; their impact on productivity, collaboration, and authorship; [14] and on the effectiveness of interventions whose intention is to support women and members of other underrepresented populations.

Scientific Elite is also a fascinating introduction to the phenomenon of multiple discovery in the fields of science and technology. [4] Zuckerman further examined conditions and processes influencing the introduction and adoption of scientific ideas in later work. In 1978, she introduced the idea of "postmature scientific discovery". [15]

To qualify as postmature, for it to evoke surprise from the pertinent scientific community that it was not made earlier, it must have three attributes. In retrospect, it must be judged to have been technically achievable at an earlier time with methods then available. It must be judged to have been understandable, capable of being expressed in terms comprehensible to working scientists at the time, and its implications must have been capable of having been appreciated.--Zuckerman & Lederberg, 1986. [16] [17]

The sociologist of science Robert K. Merton later credited Zuckerman as a co-author of his work on the Matthew effect, writing '“It is now [1973] belatedly evident to me that I drew upon the interview and other materials of the Zuckerman study to such an extent that, clearly, the paper should have appeared under joint authorship.” [18] The overlooking of Zuckerman's contribution can be considered an example of a pattern which she noted, which has been nicknamed the Matilda effect by science historian Margaret Rossiter. [4] [19] [20] Zuckerman married Merton in 1993. [21]

Bibliography

Awards

Zuckerman is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1979) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1985) and a Guggenheim Fellow (1981-1982), among others. [4] [22] She is also a member of the American Philosophical Society. [23]

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 Reports of the President and of the Treasurer. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1980. p. 116. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  2. ↑ Synonyms for the term "sociology of science" include "science of science" ("Science of Science Cyberinfrastructure Portal... at Indiana University" Archived February 19, 2013, at the Wayback Machine ; Maria Ossowska and Stanisław Ossowski, "The Science of Science," 1935, reprinted in Bohdan Walentynowicz, ed., Polish Contributions to the Science of Science, Boston, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1982, pp. 82-95) and the back-formed term "logology" (Christopher Kasparek, "Prus' Pharaoh : the Creation of a Historical Novel", The Polish Review , vol. XXXIX, no. 1, 1994, note 3, pp. 45-46; Stefan Zamecki, Komentarze do naukoznawczych poglądów Williama Whewella (1794–1866): studium historyczno-metodologiczne [Commentaries to the Logological Views of William Whewell (1794–1866): A Historical-Methodological Study], Warsaw, Polish Academy of Sciences, 2012, ISBN   978-83-86062-09-6, [English-language] summary, pp. 741-43). The term "logology" provides convenient grammatical variants not available with the earlier terms: i.e., "logologist", "to logologize", "logological", "logologically".
  3. 1 2 The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: Reportfrom January 1, 2009through December 31, 2009 (PDF). The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. 2010.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Harriet Zuckerman papers, 1887-2014, bulk 1963-1992". Columbia University Libraries. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  5. ↑ "Student Guide". Columbia University. Retrieved May 26, 2021.
  6. ↑ "Past Presidents and Council Members". Society for Social Studies of Science. Retrieved May 26, 2021.
  7. ↑ Gordukalova, Galina F. (1997). "'Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States' (Reprint Review)". The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy. 67 (3): 306–308. doi:10.1086/629960. JSTOR   40039731 . Retrieved May 26, 2021.
  8. 1 2 Chang, Ho-Chun Herbert; Fu, Feng (December 2021). "Elitism in mathematics and inequality". Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 8 (1): 7. arXiv: 2002.07789 . doi:10.1057/s41599-020-00680-y. S2CID   211146164 . Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  9. ↑ de Haan, J.; Leeuw, F. L.; Remery, C. (February 1994). "Accumulation of advantage and disadvantage in research groups". Scientometrics. 29 (2): 239–251. doi:10.1007/BF02017975. hdl: 1874/427863 . S2CID   43849982.
  10. ↑ Wagner, Caroline S.; Horlings, Edwin; Whetsell, Travis A.; Mattsson, Pauline; Nordqvist, Katarina (July 31, 2015). "Do Nobel Laureates Create Prize-Winning Networks? An Analysis of Collaborative Research in Physiology or Medicine". PLOS ONE. 10 (7): e0134164. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1034164W. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134164 . PMC   4521825 . PMID   26230622.
  11. ↑ Zuckerman, Harriet (1977). Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States. New York: The Free Press. pp. 61, 248, 250.
  12. ↑ Ochse, R. (1990). Before the Gates of Excellence: The Determinants of Creative Genius. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 44. ISBN   9780521375573 . Retrieved May 26, 2021.
  13. ↑ Silbey, Susan S. (October 13, 2019). "The Every Day Work of Studying the Law in Everyday Life". Annual Review of Law and Social Science. 15 (1): 1–18. doi:10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110316-113326. hdl: 1721.1/130420 . S2CID   197720487 . Retrieved May 26, 2021.
  14. ↑ Li, Jichao; Yin, Yian; Fortunato, Santo; Wang, Dashun (April 2020). "Scientific elite revisited: patterns of productivity, collaboration, authorship and impact". Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 17 (165): 20200135. arXiv: 2003.12519 . doi:10.1098/rsif.2020.0135. PMC   7211484 . PMID   32316884.
  15. ↑ Garfield, Eugene (January 16, 1989). "Essays of an Information Scientist: Creativity, Delayed Recognition, and Other Essays" (PDF). Current Contents. 12 (3): 3–10, 16–23. Retrieved May 26, 2021.
  16. ↑ Hook, Ernest B. (2002). Prematurity in Scientific Discovery: On Resistance and Neglect. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 272. ISBN   9780520231061 . Retrieved May 26, 2021.
  17. ↑ Zuckerman, Harriet; Lederberg, Joshua (December 1986). "Postmature scientific discovery?". Nature. 324 (6098): 629–631. Bibcode:1986Natur.324..629Z. doi:10.1038/324629a0. PMID   3540684. S2CID   29415953.
  18. ↑ Merton, Robert K. (1988). "The Matthew Effect in Science, II: Cumulative Advantage and the Symbolism of Intellectual Property" (PDF). Isis. 79 (4): 606–623. doi:10.1086/354848. S2CID   17167736.
  19. ↑ Rossiter, Margaret W. (1993). "The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science" (PDF). Social Studies of Science. 23 (2): 325–341. doi:10.1177/030631293023002004. S2CID   145225097 . Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  20. ↑ Knobloch-Westerwick, Silvia; Glynn, Carroll J. (February 2013). "The Matilda Effect—Role Congruity Effects on Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis of Communication Research and Journal of Communication Articles". Communication Research. 40 (1): 3–26. doi:10.1177/0093650211418339. S2CID   206437794.
  21. ↑ Stones, Rob (March 22, 2003). "Professor Robert Merton Sociologist who coined the 'self-fulfilling prophecy' and other 20th-century neologisms" . The Independent. Archived from the original on May 9, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2021.
  22. ↑ "Professor Harriet Anne Zuckerman". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved May 24, 2021.
  23. ↑ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved December 16, 2021.
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