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Formation | 1924 |
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Type | Professional Society |
Headquarters | Science History Institute |
Location | |
President | Evelynn M. Hammonds |
Key people | John Paul Gutierrez (Executive Director) |
Subsidiaries | |
Affiliations | American Council of Learned Societies (member) |
Website | hssonline |
The History of Science Society (HSS), founded in 1924, is the primary professional society for the academic study of the history of science. [1] [2] The society has over 3,000 members worldwide. [3] It publishes the quarterly journal Isis and the yearly journal Osiris , sponsors the IsisCB: History of Science Index, [4] and holds an annual conference. As of January 2024 [update] , the current president of the HSS is Evelynn M. Hammonds. [5]
The History of Science Society was founded in 1924 [1] by George Sarton, [3] David Eugene Smith, [6] and Lawrence Joseph Henderson, [7] primarily to support the publication of Isis , a journal of the history of science Sarton had started in 1912 [8] in Belgium. [9]
George Sarton edited the journal Isis from 1913 until 1952, when he retired. Bernard Cohen served as managing editor of Isis from 1947 to 1952 and took over as editor from 1952 to 1958. [10] [11] Subsequent editors of Isis include Harry Woolf, 1959–1963; Robert P. Multhauf, 1964–1978; Arnold Thackray (1979–1985); Charles E. Rosenberg, 1986–1988; Ronald Numbers, 1989–1993; Margaret W. Rossiter, 1994–2003; Bernard Lightman, 2004–2014, H. Floris Cohen, 2014–2019. [12] and co-editors Alexandra Hui and Matthew Lavine. [13] Thackray also served as editor of Osiris from 1984 to 1994 [14] and was responsible to returning it to activity. [15] During its early years in America, the journal was published by the Harvard Printing Office. [10] It has since been edited from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, Cornell, Toronto, Utrecht, and Mississippi State University. [13] [2]
Papers from the Society are held by The Smithsonian Institution Archives. [16] The History of Science Society's "Forum for the History of the Human Sciences", in 1989, is considered to mark the inclusion of psychology and other social sciences in the history of science. [17] [18]
As of June 16, 2022, the University of Pennsylvania and the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, announced that they would become co-hosts of the History of Science Society, which had been located at Notre Dame University since 2010. [19]
HSS sponsors two special lectures annually:
In addition, the HSS awards a number of prizes:
I. Bernard Cohen was the Victor S. Thomas Professor of the history of science at Harvard University and the author of many books on the history of science and, in particular, Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin.
George Alfred Leon Sarton was a Belgian-American chemist and historian. He is considered the founder of the discipline of the history of science as an independent field of study. His most influential works were the Introduction to the History of Science, which consists of three volumes and 4,296 pages and the journal Isis. Sarton ultimately aimed to achieve an integrated philosophy of science that provided a connection between the sciences and the humanities, which he referred to as "the new humanism".
Isis is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press. It covers the history of science, history of medicine, and the history of technology, as well as their cultural influences. It contains original research articles and extensive book reviews and review essays. Furthermore, sections devoted to one particular topic are published in each issue in open access. These sections consist of the Focus section, the Viewpoint section and the Second Look section.
Daniel J. Kevles is an American historian of science best known for his books on American physics and eugenics and for a wide-ranging body of scholarship on science and technology in modern societies. He is Stanley Woodward Professor of History, Emeritus at Yale University and J. O. and Juliette Koepfli Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology.
Vijayanandi or Vijayananda was an Indian mathematician and astronomer who made contributions to trigonometry.
Osiris is an annual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research in the history of science. George Sarton oversaw the publication of fifteen issues from the establishment of the journal in 1936 until 1968. In 1985, the History of Science Society revived the journal and has published it annually ever since. It is now published by the University of Chicago Press.
Marshall Clagett was an American historian of science who specialized in medieval science. John Murdoch describes him as "a distinguished medievalist" who was "the last member of a triumvirate [with Henry Guerlac and I. Bernard Cohen, who] … established the history of science as a recognized discipline within American universities" while Edward Grant ranks him "among the greatest historians and scholars of the twentieth century."
Margaret W. Rossiter is an American historian of science, and Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science, at Cornell University. Rossiter coined the term Matilda effect for the systematic suppression of information about women in the history of science, and the denial of the contribution of women scientists in research, whose work is often attributed to their male colleagues.
Robert P. Multhauf (1919–2004) was an American science historian, curator, director, scientific scholar and author. He served as president of the History of Science Society in the year 1979-80, and was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 1987.
Jagdish Mehra was an Indian–American physicist and historian of science.
Sally Gregory Kohlstedt is an American historian of science. She is a professor in the Department of Earth Sciences and in the Program in History of Science and Technology at the University of Minnesota. Kohlstedt served as the president of the History of Science Society from 1992 to 1993. Her research interests focus on the history of science in American culture and the demographics of scientific practice in institutions such as museums and educational institutions, including gender participation.
Joan Cadden is Professor Emerita of medieval history and literature in the History Department of the University of California, Davis. She served as president of the History of Science Society (HSS) from 2006 to 2007. She has written extensively on gender and sexuality in medieval science and medicine. Her book Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Age: Medicine, Science, and Culture (1993) received the Pfizer Prize in 1994, from the History of Science Society, as the outstanding book on the history of science.
Arnold Thackray is an emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Initially an English chemist, he moved to the United States, where he founded or extended a series of institutions, initially in Philadelphia, then on a wider scale with the History of Science Society (HSS), Science History Consultants, and the Life Sciences Foundation.
An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research is a history of American education research written by Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and published by University of Chicago Press in 2000.
Richard Harrison Shryock was an American medical historian, specializing in the connection of medical history with general history.
Lao Genevra Simons (1870–1949) also referred to as Lao G. Simons, was an American mathematician, writer, and historian of mathematics known for her influential book Fabre and Mathematics and Other Essays. Simons was head of the mathematics department at Hunter College in New York.
Victoria Angela Harden is an American medical historian who was the founding director of the Office of NIH History and the Stetten Museum at the National Institutes of Health. Most known for organizing conferences and publishing works on the history of HIV/AIDS, Harden also authored books on the history of the NIH and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. She is a past president of the Society for History in the Federal Government.
Alix Cohen is a British philosopher and a Reader of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. She is known for her works on Kant's thought. She is the current Co-Editor with Sacha Golob of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.
Thomas Leroy Hankins is an American historian of science.