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DiscorsiIssue 1, January 1993In 1954 Duane H. D. Roller became the first Curator of the History of Science Collections, which was established by the gift of Everette Lee DeGolyer (OU class of 1911). In the course of almost forty years the Collections has come to house over 80,000 volumes, including 43 incunabula (books published in the fifteenth century) and 900 volumes published in the sixteenth century. In 1982 the Collections moved into its splendid new facilities on the fifth floor of the Doris W. Neustadt wing of Bizzell Memorial Library. This facility includes study carrels, seminar and conference rooms, and a public reading room. From its beginning, the Collections has formed the core of a teaching program in the history of science at the University of Oklahoma, first in the Department of History and, since 1971, in a Department of the History of Science. The Department, housed initially in Bizzell Memorial Library, moved in 1974 to the the sixth floor of the Physical Sciences Building. The Department offers undergraduate instruction, including general education courses, to sophomores and upper-division students, as well as graduate programs leading to the master's degree and the doctoral degree. Five full-time and one visiting faculty member, two adjunct faculty members, and two postdoctoral fellows supported by the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Program in the Humanities are resident in the Department during the 1992-1993 academic year, along with eighteen full-time and part-time graduate students. So many changes have taken place in the Collections and Department in the last five years that the time seems right for mailing out a Newsletter to inform alumni, friends, and students about recent activities and future plans in the history of science at the University of Oklahoma. If you would like to see the Newsletter continue, please let us know, and please send in information for the next Newsletter! This issue's editor is Mary Jo Nye, Department Chair, with support from the Graduate College.
The University's Strategy For ExcellenceThe Strategy for Excellence of the University of Oklahoma, published in 1988, designated the History of Science as an area of emphasis in the College of Arts and Sciences. A program review was completed in 1991 by a campus-wide committee chaired by Professor Keith Busby of the Modern Languages Department. Many alumni contributed to the review process by answering questionnaires about their experiences in the Department. The program review committee concluded that the department is a small, outstanding unit which brings distinction to the College of Arts and Sciences and to the University of Oklahoma, because of its dual emphasis on teaching and research, the breadth of its program, the national and international reputation of its faculty, and the excellent facilities of the History of Science Collections in Bizzell Memorial Library. Among the goals for the future are enhancing the quality of education and scholarship in the Department, obtaining continuing support for a postdoctoral fellowship program, and seeking an endowment for a distinguished chair in the History of Science Department. Crucial to these goals are the continued expansion and strengthening of the holdings of the History of Science Collections, as well as making the resources of the Collections available to the university community, to visiting scholars, and to the interested public. The close collaboration of activities within the Collections and the Department remains crucial to the welfare of both.
Retirements and AppointmentsIn the course of the last five years, considerable change has characterized the History of Science Collections and the History of Science Department through retirements and new appointments. David B. Kitts, David Ross Boyd Professor of Geology and the History of Science, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, retired in 1988. Duane H. D. Roller, McCasland Professor and David Ross Boyd Professor of the History of Science and Curator of the History of Science Collections, retired in 1990. Thomas M. Smith, Professor of the History of Science, retired in 1991. All have continued after retirement to involve themselves in various aspects of teaching, writing, or serving in administrative positions, as reported in the "News" section of the Newsletter. After national searches, a new curator has been appointed to the Collections and two new full-time faculty members have been appointed to the Department. Marilyn B. Ogilvie, who took her Ph.D. in the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma in 1973, accepted the position of Curator of the History of Science Collections in the summer of 1991. Dr. Ogilvie, who previously chaired the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, is Adjunct Associate Professor of the History of Science. F. Jamil Ragep joined the Department in 1990 as Assistant Professor. Dr. Ragep took his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1982 where he was a student of A. I. Sabra, and he has taught at Harvard, Stonehill College, and Brown University. Gregg Mitman returned to the Department in 1991 as Assistant Professor, after having spent the 1988-1989 academic year in Norman as one of our first Rockefeller Foundation postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Mitman took his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1988, where he was a student of William Coleman, and he has taught at the University of Wisconsin and the University of Minnesota. During 1991-1992 and 1992-1993, Pamela Gossin, University of Wisconsin Ph.D. 1989, has taught in the Department as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Dr. Gossin studied for the Ph.D. in both the History of Science Department and the English Department at Wisconsin, taught at Millikin University, and was a Rockefeller Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the department during 1990-1991. In the spring of 1992 Robert A. Nye, George Lynn Cross Research Professor of History, was appointed Adjunct Professor of the History of Science.
Rockefeller Foundation Humanities FellowsSince 1988, the University of Oklahoma has been a site for the Rockefeller Foundation Resident Fellowships in the Humanities Program. During 1988-1991 postdoctoral fellows focused on research on the "History of Science in Western Civilization" and during 1991-1993, on "Western Assimilation and Transformation of Classical and Islamic Science." In this last year of the Rockefeller Foundation program at OU, two fellows are in year-long residence. Paul Lettinck, (Free University of Amsterdam) is working on the topic of "The Reception of Aristotle's Meteorology in the Arabic World"> Marina Tolmacheva (Washington State University in Pullman) is working on the topic of "The Medieval Discovery of East Africa". Both will be participating in an international conference on the Norman campus in February. (See "February Conference" below.) Previous fellows and their topics of research have been Gregg Mitman (now Assistant Professor of the History of Science, University of Oklahoma): "Groups, Hierarchies, and Social Control: Animal Behavior Research in America, 1930-1950"; Henry Lowood (Bibliographer, History of Science and Technology Collections, Stanford University Libraries and Instructor in History of Science and Technology) and Robin E. Rider (Head, History of Science and Technology Program, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley): "Printing and the New Book of Nature"; Erik Sageng (Faculty Tutor, St. Johns College, Annapolis, MD): "The Geometria Organica of Colin MacLaurin and its Place in the Separate Development of 18th-Century British Mathematics"; Jole Shackelford (Minneapolis, MN): "Petrus Severinus and Danish Paracelsianism"; Pamela Gossin (now Visiting Assistant Professor in the History of Science, University of Oklahoma): "Cultural Contexts and Literary Exploration of Astronomy in the Works of Kepler, Newton, Halley, Flamsteed, the Herschels, and Proctor"; Joy Harvey (Darwin Correspondence Project, Manuscripts Library, Cambridge, England): "`Almost a Man of Genius': Clémence Royer, An Unusual Nineteenth Century Frenchwoman"; Sonja Brentjes (Karl-Sudhoff-Institute, Leipzig):"Assimilation and Transformation of the 'Introducto Arithmeticae by Nicomachus of Gerasa (2nd century A.D.) during the Islamic Middle Ages (9th -14th Century A.D."; and George A. Molland (Department of History, King's College, Aberdeen): "Roger Baron's relation to Earlier Science".
February ConferenceThe Department of the History of Science will sponsor a three-day symposium during 25-27 February 1993 on the topic "Transmission and Science: Cultural Exchange in the Premodern World." Twenty participants from Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, the Netherlands and the United States will present papers in five sessions on the institutional, cultural and philosophical implications of transmission. The speakers are Gerhard Endress, Michael H. Shank, Heinrich von Staden, Robert S. Westman, David A. King, David Pingree, Paul Lettinck, Marina Tolmacheva, Amos Funkenstein, Lorraine Daston, Alexander Jones, Tzvi Langermann, John Murdouch, A. I. Sabra, Mordechai Feingold, Peter Barker, Gary Hatfield, William Newman, Peter Dear, and Noel Swerdlow. The symposium is co-sponsored by the Department, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Oklahoma Foundation for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Meetings will be in the Forum at Oklahoma College for Continuing Education, and accommodations are available at the Sooner House Hotel (part of OCCE) at the rates of $32/night (single) and $40/night(double). A dinner is scheduled on Saturday evening, 27 February. For further information contact Steven J. Livesey or F. Jamil Ragep in the Department; Tel. 405-325-2213; Fax 405-325-2363; e-mail: aa9214@UOKmvsa.bitnet.
History of Science ClubThe History of Science Club, whose members are graduate students and other interested students in the history of science, has sponsored or co-sponsored talks, colloquia, and lectures during the last years. This year's Club president is Daniel Barrett, who took a bachelor's degree in liberal studies at Notre Dame University in 1989 and a master's degree in the history of science at Case Western Reserve University in 1991. During fall 1992, with co-sponsorship from the Honors Program, the Geology and Geophysics Department, the Speakers' Bureau, and/or the Oklahoma Scholarship-Leadership Enrichment Program, visiting speakers were Hugh Torrens (Department of Geology, University of Keele, U.K.), Robert Westman (Department of History, University of California at San Diego), Betty Jo Dobbs (Department of History, University of California at Davis), and Ronald L. Numbers (Department of the History of Medicine, University of Wisconsin). The Department also enjoyed colloquia presented by Emeritus Professor David B. Kitts (see "News" below) and by 1983 graduate Yasu Furukawa, Professor of the History of Science at Tokyo Denki University. Dr. Furukawa is a Visiting Scholar during 1992-1993 at the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry in Philadelphia. In Spring 1993 Kenneth R. Manning (Program in Science, Technology at Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will be a visiting speaker, co-sponsored by the Speakers Bureau, the Minority Graduate Students Association , and the History of Science Department.
Graduate Student AwardsThe first award of the $175 annual prize for a graduate student's essay in the history of science was made in the spring of 1992 to Samantha (Sam) McClintock, now a fourth-year graduate student who took her B.A. degree at Agnes Scott College in 1989. The 1991 essay is entitled "The 'Continuous' Debate Over the Influences of Galileo's Early Work".
Recent Ph.D. and M.A. DegreesHyesik Choi (M.A.,1991) is completing a second master's degree, in Library and Information Studies at OU. Scott Downie (M.A.,1991) is using his music and computer skills for PianoDisc in Sacremento, CA. Brad Cooper (M.A., 1992) is teaching at West Mid-High School in Nor man. Sarah Goodfellow (M.A., 1992) is studying for the doctoral degree in hisotry at Vanderbilt University. Michael N. Keas received his Ph.D. degree in December 1992. His doctoral dissertation, which received research support from the Fulbright Fellowship Program and the National Science Foundation, is entitled "The Structure and Philosophy of Group Research: August Wilhelm von Hofmann's Research Program in London (1845-1865)." The dissertation director was Professor Mary Jo Nye. Kuang-tai Hsu defended his Ph.D. dissertation in January 1993 before returning to Taiwan with his family. The doctoral dissertation is entitled "Nicolaus Steno and His Sources: The Legacy of the Medical and Chemical Traditions in His Early Geological Writings." The dissertation directors were Steven J. Livesey and Kenneth L. Taylor.
News Notes of Faculty and StaffMarcia Goodman is completing her 36th year of association with the History of Science Collections, where she has been Librarian since 1973. There are fears that she is thinking about joining George Goodman in retirement next year. She and Marilyn Ogilvie spent the spring break during 1991-1992 in Cambridge, England working on separate research projects. There they visited with OU alumna Marsha Richmond (assistant editor for the Darwin Correspondence Project), her husband Joe Lunn and their children Sarah and Laura. In July 1992 Marcia Goodman and Marilyn Ogilvie attended the American College and Research Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts preconference in Santa Cruz and the American Library Association annual conference in San Francisco. Marcia Goodman reports visits to the Collections and campus by many former students in the last couple of years: Mike and Judy Blitch, Tom and Pat Brewer, Van Cline, John and Julie Eddy (whose son Mark is a student in the Department now), Carolyn Embach, Betty Permetto Falato, Jun Fudano, Yasu Furnkawa, John Kocher, Mac Sudduth and son Andrew, and Liba Taub. Yaritza Ferrer de Valero and Maria Hidalgo de Portillo spent several weeks in the Collections gathering source materials on the history of technology and are now enrolled in the history of technology doctorate program at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Pamela Gossin was a program co-chair for the 8-11 October 1992 meeting of the Society of Literature and Science, which boasted the largest attendance of any SLS conference so far. Approximately 250 papers ranged in focus from a cultural analysis of Ovid's writings on cosmetics to Gerald Edelman's "Darwinian neurobiology" to virtual reality. Pam Gossin has been elected to the SLS Executive Committee for a two-year term; and she is editing the reference work Lit erature and Science: An Encyclopedia for Garland Press. She reports that she will pattern the taxonomy of the 2,000 page manuscript after the "natural" shapes of fractal "branching"! David B. Kitts, after his retirement, moved with Nancy Kitts to a new home in Santa Rosa, California. In addition to cycling on the roads of Sonoma County and the western United States, he is an active member of the North Bay Rowing Club, which houses his personally designed one-man racing scull. On a visit to Norman in October 1992 he presented a paper at a departmental colloquium on "Artificial Selection and The Origin" This study is part of his larger book-length manuscript on Charles Darwin's argument in the first four chapters of the Origin of Species. Steven J. Livesey presented a paper "Divine Omnipotence and First Principles: A Late- Medieval Argument on the Subalternation of Sciences" at the 27th International Congress on Medieval Studies, in May 1992. He has completed an edition and examination of commentaries on the Sentences and the Posterior Analytics by Antonius de Carlenis O.P. (d. 1460). Along with F. Jamil Ragep, he organized a conference on the history of mathematics, entitled "Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Ancient Mathematics in Islamic and Occidental Cultures", which took place in Norman in March 1992; negotiations are underway to publish the proceedings of the meeting. As a long-term project, work continues on a prosopographical database of medieval commentators on Aristotle's works and the Sentences. Gregg Mitman 's book The State of Nature: Ecology, Community, and American Social Thought (University of Chicago Press, 1992) is now available at local bookstores. During summer 1992 Gregg Mitman presented a paper at a conference on "The Transfer of Metaphors and Images between the Biological and Social Sciences" in Bielefeld, Germany and did archival research on animal behavior films (Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz) in Göttingen. He helped organize and teach a week-long seminar at Woods Hole, Massachusetts in August 1992 on "Individuality: Understanding Units and Levels of Organization in Biology" sponsored by the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. In November 1992 Gregg Mitman was OU faculty facilitator for the OSLEP seminar on the history of science and religion taught by Ronald Numbers of the University of Wisconsin. Mary Jo Nye was named George Lynn Cross Research Professor of the History of Science in 1991, and she became Departmental Chair in Fall 1992. A volume co-edited with Joan Richards and Roger Stuewer has just been published in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science series, entitled The Invention of Physical Science: Intersections of Mathematics, Theology and Natural Philosophy since the Seventeenth Century. Essays in Honor of Erwin N. Hiebert. Her recent research on social and intellectual interactions between chemistry and physics has been incorporated into a book to be published by the University of California Press in fall 1993, entitled From Chemical Philosophy to Theoretical Chemistry: Dynamics of Matter and Dynamics of Disciplines, 1800-1950. This research has taken her to archives in England and the United States, in addition to France, despite her preference for French cuisine. Robert A. Nye, who is well-known to recent graduate students in the history of science for his courses in European intellectual history, was appointed Adjunct Professor in the History of Science Department in the Fall of 1991. He became George Lynn Cross Research Professor of History in Spring 1992. His new book, which has a lengthy section of the history of the science and medicine of sexuality, will be coming out in January 1993 with Oxford University Press. It will bear the title Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France. He now is at work on a new project on the history of professional ethics and medical ethics in particular. Marilyn Ogilvie wrote a successful proposal for a Title IIC grant from the Department of Education to catalog the 1,700-volume backlog of fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth-century books in the History of Science Collections. She also is applying for funds from the Oklahoma Foundation for the Humanities to mount an exhibit and a videotape about the Collections that will travel around the state. She is teaching occasionally in the History of Science Department and is thinking about developing a new special topics course on the history of women in science. She has completed a book manuscript on the American biologist Alice Boring and an article on Boring in China will appear in the Journal of the History of Medicine. Valli Powell left the History of Science Department in 1989 in order to pursue full-time graduate studies in the Anthropology Department at OU, where she is studying for a Ph.D. degree. Clebbie Riddle succeeded Valli Powell in 1989 as Secretary of the History of Science Department. She has been assisted occasionally in the office by work-study students, and this year by Joy King, who is studying toward a nursing degree at the Health Sciences Center. F. Jamil Ragep has introduced into the curriculum a new undergraduate course on Islamic Science and Civilization, as well as graduate courses on Islamic and non-Western science. His two-volume Arabic edition, English translation, critical commentary, and interpretation of the Tadhkira of al-Tusi, the thirteenth-century philosopher, politician, and astronomer, is being pub lished by Springer Verlag in 1993. Duane H. D. Roller served as interim curator of the History of Science Collections during the search for a new curator from 1990-1991. This interim provided a year of transition which eased what might otherwise have been a precipitous change for everyone. He and Marjorie Roller have continued to travel in retirement as was customary in the past, visiting old haunts in Italy and the American West and adding new sites and sights in Alaska and the Caribbean. He continues to edit Landmarks of Science published by Readex Microprint Corporation. Thomas M. Smith, since his retirement in 1991, has been collaborating with Kent C. Redmond, Emeritus Professor of Fairleigh Dickinson University, in the editing, paring down, and identifying of significant episodes for a book-length monographic study. This study details the "real time" MIT computer R&D project of the 1950s, made possible by national-defense funding, that introduced reliable internal memory (on line over 99% of the time) and incidentally gave IBM, the manufacturer of the AN/FSQ-7, the technical expertise to dominate the computer market of the 1960s. Tom and Libba Smith recently have become grandparents. Kenneth L. Taylor has stepped down from chairing the department after thirteen years of distinguished service recognized in small measure at a departmental party and at a surprise dinner organized by the graduate-students at the beginning of the Fall 1992 semester. He has moved to an office on the southwest corner of the sixth floor, so that he can no longer hear the departmental telephone. His recent research concentrates on the ways the thought of 18th-century geological writers was guided by the intertwined themes of regularity (Natural law, normality, order) and singularity (accidents, abnormality, disorder). He presented a paper drawing on these themes at the October 1992 meeting of the Geological Society of America, where he met with geologists and historians of geology to plan a 1994 Penrose Conference fo cussing on doing history of geology from the `inside' (geologists) and the `outside' (historians). He currently chairs the U.S. National Committee on the History of Geology (USHIGEO). Please send any information you would like included in the next newsletter along with your name, degree, and address to:
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