Discorsi

Issue 4, January 1996

A Year in Review

As I prepared Discorsi a year ago, change was the watchword of the day. The death of Duane Roller, the resignation of Mary Jo Nye, and the retirement of Marcia Goodman all underscored ways in which the program in history of science at the University of Oklahoma was undergoing significant changes. The program review, which came to a conclusion in the spring of 1994, reaffirmed core aspects of the program and pointed to areas for adjustments, but the precise direction in which it would go was difficult to assess at year's end.

Today, that trajectory has become much more defined. The appointments of Peter Barker, Katherine Pandora, and Stephen Wagner have combined to clarify key areas of the program, and one of the goals for this issue of Discorsi is to introduce you to new faces in the department and the Collections. Combined with continuing faculty, the new appointments focus the program's human and material strengths in two areas: the history of medieval and early modern science in Islam and Western Europe, including issues of the transmission of science within and between these cultures; and the history of the field and social sciences in the modern world, including the history of biology and ecology, natural history, psychology, and geology. Within the Collections, efforts are under way to bring more of the program's resources to a wider community, through direct access to the Collections' catalogue and collection of photographic slides.

With all this activity, it has become clear that the program is a very different one than it was five years ago, or even one year ago. There are, of course, elements of continuity through change. The program's emphasis on a comprehensive treatment of the history of science remains strong, in both the collective areas of expertise of the faculty, and the individual faculty interests in issues that span chronological and disciplinary fields. Yet at the same time, the ways by which we provide undergraduate and graduate education already show signs of modification. One example of this is a joint teaching venture undertaken by Gregg Mitman and colleagues at the University of Minnesota and Arizona State University. Other faculty in the department have begun work on similar endeavors with other programs in the United States and abroad. Taken together, such initiatives promise to bring our students into closer contact with resources in the larger history of science community and offer our own resources in return.

A year ago, I encouraged readers to visit the department and Collections and sample some of the changes. I'd like to repeat that invitation. To those unable to travel to Norman, or who prefer virtual experiences, I add an invitation to visit our sites on the World Wide Web. The department's homepage is http://www.uoknor.edu/cas/hsci; for the Collections, go to http://www-lib.uoknor.edu/depts/histsc/index.htm. Both pages are linked, so that you can go from one to the other faster than you can walk across campus.

Steven J. Livesey

Professor and Department Chair

Joe Cain Named 1995-96 Mellon Fellow

The previous two issues of Discorsi have mentioned the $215,000 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to the History of Science Department and the History of Science Collections. Our first Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Katherine Pandora from the University of California-San Diego, was appointed to a faculty position in the History of Science Department. Joe Cain is the Mellon Fellow for 1995-1996.

Joe's research for the Mellon grant focuses on collaboration in science, especially across the social and biological sciences apparent in the partnership between psychologist Anne Roe and paleontologist George Simpson. This wife and husband team undertook many professional collaborations during their lives together, resulting in influential books, major conferences, and career-altering research projects. Each also influenced the research methods their spouses took and the kinds of questions they asked.

"So excited was each for the other," Joe notes, "that early in their romance, Simpson drew himself into Roe's research and Roe drew herself into Simpson's. This cross-over continued throughout their lives; they even published in each other's fields."

The Roe and Simpson example provides a robust case for the general study of collaboration in twentieth-century science. The two worked across disciplines and fields. They were trained to use sharply different approaches and methods. They lived their professional lives in fundamentally different social worlds. As husband and wife and as man and woman, they also had distinct social roles and expectations. In addition, as the years went by and each rose in stature within his or her respective community, their collaborative dynamic changed. Roe, for example, moved from junior partner to co-author after she published some landmark work. Later, as director of a research institute at Harvard, she acquired what should be called senior partner status in their joint projects. "This complex of collaborative relations makes the Roe and Simpson case a fascinating one to work with," Joe explains. "Besides," he adds, "Roe and Simpson were the loves of each other's lives. In addition to what it teaches us about the history of science, this is a wonderfully romantic story." Joe will be discussing this research in a department colloquium later in the spring. He also will be teaching a seminar in the spring semester on the general topic of collaboration in science.

Dr. Gregg Mitman, Principal Investigator for the Mellon Fellowship, is on sabbatical leave this year, so applications should be mailed to Dr. Marilyn Ogilvie, Co-Principal Investigator, at the History of Science Department, 601 Elm Street, Room 622, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019-0315 and postmarked by January 17, 1996 (Tel.: 405-325-2213; Fax: 405-325-2363 or 405-325-5068; e-mail: moglivie@uoknor.edu). The award will be announced by the end of March 1996.

Recent Degrees Granted

Mark Eddy completed a 1995 master's degree in the history of science with his thesis, "F. W. Farrar and the Role of Language in the Darwinian Theory of Mental Development." The thesis director was Katherine Pandora, and other members of the committee were Gregg Mitman, Kenneth Taylor, and Judith Lewis (from the Department of History). He moves now to prepare for the general examinations in the program.

Kiyoon Kim was awarded the Ph.D. in May following the completion of his dissertation, "Jean Senebier and the Genevan Naturalists." The committee was composed of Kenneth L. Taylor (chair), Gregg Mitman, Marilyn Ogilvie, Steven Livesey, and Tibor Herczeg (from the Department of Physics and Astronomy). Dr. Kim has returned to South Korea.

History of Science Collections News

As you know, Marcia Goodman, the Collections' first librarian, retired last December. Fortunately, Marcia continues to help us and was invaluable during the search for the new librarian. We were especially fortunate to appoint Stephen Wagner as her successor. (See the accompanying story on new faculty elsewhere in this issue.) Already in the first four months of his tenure, Steve has helped implement the Collections' Web page and led a colloquium on electronic resources in historical research. Our full-time staff members, in addition to the Curator and the Librarian, are Sylvia Legare and Kerry Meek.

On 15 September 1995, David L. Boren was inaugurated as the thirteenth president of the University of Oklahoma. To commemorate this event, the University Libraries purchased a beautiful lunar atlas, the Selenographia (1647), by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius, which is currently on exhibit in the Collections. As a part of the events surrounding the inauguration, the Collections hosted an open house attended by many distinguished visitors.

Marilyn Ogilvie left on a book-buying trip to London, Cambridge, and Prague on September 19. Although it lasted only two weeks, it was very successful. From this trip, the Collections acquired approximately thirty early titles.

Barker, Pandora, Wagner Join the History of Science Program

During 1995, the Department and Collections appointed three new faculty to key positions in the program. Peter Barker was appointed Professor of the History of Science. Previously, he was the first Director of the Science and Technology Studies graduate program at Virginia Tech -- the first of its kind in the country to house history, philosophy and sociology of science under one roof. He was responsible for developing the curriculum and recruiting the first students for the program. He has successfully directed master's and doctoral research in a variety of areas. His publications include three edited collections and more than thirty articles on topics in the history and philosophy of science. In the twenty years since completing his Ph.D., Professor Barker has delivered over sixty papers and invited addresses at universities and conferences in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Holland, France, Denmark, Israel, and Germany. He has organized and obtained funding for ten conferences and workshops over the same period and has served as a referee for many scholarly journals and university presses and as a peer reviewer for both NSF and NEH. His own research has been generously supported by both NSF and NEH. Between 1992 and 1995 he received $192,000 for a collaborative study of the astronomer Johann Kepler with Professor Bernard Goldstein of the University of Pittsburgh.

Katherine Pandora, whose primary interest is in the history of social science and American science, joined the History of Science Department this academic year as an assistant professor. Pandora received her Ph.D. in History/Science Studies from the University of California at San Diego in 1993. Pandora's degree reflects the fact that her studies included not only a primary focus in the history of science, but a concentration as well in the sociology and philosophy of science. She brings with her a lively interest in many aspects of scientific life, nourished by the opportunity to be a part of the UCSD Science Studies community, which as various times included such scholars as Robert Marc Friedman, Philip Kitcher, Bruno Latour, Sandra Mitchell, Chandra Mukerji, Martin Rudwick, Steven Shapin, Sharon Traweek and Robert Westman.

This spring, Pandora will be exploring opportunities at OU for setting up internship experiences for interested undergraduate and graduate students with members of the local scientific community, so that students can complement their historical studies with a 'real-world' immersion in scientific life. She is also interested in establishing similar opportunities for internships with regional museums, for those students working on issues related to science and the public.

In September, Stephen Wagner was appointed Librarian of the History of Science Collections and Assistant Professor of Bibliography. He is also Adjunct Assistant Professor of the History of Science. Steve has undergraduate degrees in physics and philosophy from the University of Maryland, both cum laude. He then attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he earned an M.A. degree in the history and philosophy of science and an M.L.S. in library science. He comes to OU from the Oncology Nursing Society, where he was Director of Archives, Records, and Library Services.

Department to Participate in Joint Training Program

The Department has just learned that a training and research grant proposal submitted by Professors Gregg Mitman, John Beatty (University of Minnesota), and James Collins (Arizona State University) has been funded by the National Science Foundation. Under the terms of the grant, a cohort of five graduate students from the three institutions and a postdoctoral fellow will travel to each participating institution for one semester, where they will participate in a seminar led by the faculty member at the institution and engage in field research. The focus of the program is "Nature, History, and the Natural Historical Sciences in the Twentieth Century." During the two-year period of the program, members of the group will examine the ways in which these sciences have been distinguished collectively from the rest of biology, particularly in the conceptions of nature and the natural, and the importance of history. In the final semester, students will return to their home institutions, to reflect on their experiences and engage fully in their dissertation research or writing.

Visitors and Speakers

The department and its students sponsored or co-sponsored the following speakers during 1995:

February 16, Michael J. Crowe (University of Notre Dame), "Religion and the Extraterrestrial Debate in 19th-Century America," and February 17, "Ten Misconceptions about Mathematics and its History."

March 6, Mi Gyung Kim (Chemical Heritage Foundation), "The Energetical Imperative: Science and Culture in Wilhelmian Germany." March 20, Naomi Oreskes (Dartmouth College), "The Rejection of Continental Drift: Theory and Method in American Earth Science." March 22, Alice Dreger (Indiana University), "The Conceptual and Practical Management of Hermaphrodites (and Other People of Troublesome Sex) by Medical and Scientific Men, 1880-1915, or, 'But My God Good Woman, You are a Man!'." March 29, Katherine Pandora (University of Oklahoma), "'Nature is Everywhere Gothic, Not Classic': William James and the Challenge of Radical Empiricism."

April 24, Howard P. Segal (University of Maine), "High Tech's Utopian Vision of America's Future: Historical Perspectives."

September 8, Linda Ehrsam Voigts (University of Missouri, Kansas City), "A Doctor and His Books: The Manuscripts of Roger Marchall (d. 1477)." Sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. September 15, Kenneth L. Taylor (University of Oklahoma), "The Domestication of Volcanoes in the 18th Century: Early Volcanology and the place of Volcanoes in the Economy of Nature." September 29 and October 6, Jamil Ragep and Peter Barker (University of Oklahoma), "Can There Be Real Science Outside the West? A discussion of Toby Huff, The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West (Cambridge 1993)."

October 13, Hanne Anderson (University of Aarhus/University of Konstanz), "The Discovery of Nuclear Fission."

November 3, Stephen Wagner (University of Oklahoma), "Surfing in Oklahoma: Using the Internet for History of Science Research." November 10, Bernard R. Goldstein (University of Pittsburgh), "Was There Anything Original in Ancient Greek Astronomy?" November 17, Joe Cain (University of Oklahoma), "Mayr-ed in the Process: Managing Community Infrastructure for Reform During the Evolutionary Synthesis."

December 4, Lutz Richter-Bernburg (University of Leipzig), "Medicine and Islam: A Roundtable Discussion." and "The Importance of (Not) Being Earnest about Salman Rushdie."

The Spring 1996 semester colloquium series will include the following speakers:

January 19, Steven Livesey and Stephen Wagner (University of Oklahoma): "Scholarly Research and Communication in the Electronic Age: Prospects and Problems."

January 26, Clara Sue Kidwell (University of Oklahoma): "Francisco Hernandez and New World Natural History."

February 9, Elizabeth A. Williams (Oklahoma State University): "A Hippocratic View of Medicine? Montpellier Physicians of the Eighteenth Century."

February 16, Ken Knoespel (Georgia Tech): TBA.

February 23, Joy Harvey (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University): "Darwin's Phylogenetic Trees."

February 29-March 1, Betty Smocovitis (University of Florida): TBA.

March 8, John Lewis (University of Oklahoma): "Winds over the World Sea: M. F. Maury and W. P. Köppen."

March 22, CMRS Symposium: "Literature, History, and Psychoanalysis in the Middle Ages."

April 5, Laurel Smith (University of Oklahoma): "Representing Ethnicity: Flaherty, Nanook of the North and the Innuit."

April 26, Joe Cain (University of Oklahoma): "An Intimate Partnership: Research Collaboration Between George Simpson and Anne Roe."

All history of science colloquia take place 3:30-5:00 p.m. in the History of Science Collections, Bizzell Library Room 516, unless otherwise indicated. For more information about the colloquium series or to add your name to our mailing list, contact Professor Peter Barker [e-mail: Barkerp@uoknor.edu; telephone: (405) 325-2213].

News Notes of Faculty and Staff

Peter Barker joined the department as Professor in the Fall semester. During the Spring he taught in the Science and Technology Studies program at Virginia Tech, and in the Summer he team-taught a short course at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. He also presented papers at conferences at Cambridge (England), Jerusalem, and the History of Science Society meeting in Minneapolis. A book completed this summer with Roger Ariew of Virginia Tech, Pierre Duhem: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science, will be published by Hackett during 1996. Barker continues to collaborate with Bernard R. Goldstein of the University of Pittsburgh on a long-term study of Kepler. A joint paper appeared in the Winter 1994 issue of the British Journal for the History of Science.

As the 1995-1996 Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Joe Cain is spending this academic year investigating collaborative processes in 20th-century biological and social sciences (see article on Mellon program). Joe earned his Ph.D. (1995) from the University of Minnesota, with a dissertation on community infrastructure in American evolutionary studies. While completing his dissertation, Joe also was an editor for the National Science Teachers Association.

Joe's additional studies focus on 20th-century evolutionary studies: the research underway, the people involved in that work, the methods used, and the community and work infrastructures created or co-opted during the research process. The nature of the evolutionary synthesis and the historiographical devices employed in its study are two of his core emphases at the moment.

In August 1996 Joe will become Lecturer in History and Philosophy of Biology at University College London.

Marcia Goodman finds it hard to believe that a whole year has passed since she retired from the History of Science Collections librarian position. "It's been a perfectly wonderful and enjoyable year for George and me. On my part there is not a great deal to show for this marvelous new-found freedom except for a lot of relaxation. George, on the other hand, remained quite busy and we had the pleasure of seeing his and Cheryl Lawson's book, Retracing Major Stephen H. Long's 1820 Expedition: The Itinerary and Botany, published last June by the University of Oklahoma Press." George and Cheryl remain hard at work pinpointing all locations of Oklahoma type plant specimens. In fact, the work on the Long expedition is a spinoff of this earlier project which could not be completed without knowing the itinerary and botany of that expedition.

While there have been no long travel excursions for the Goodmans, they have enjoyed spending many pleasant interludes at their condo on Grand Lake. Marcia continues to return to the Collections, although not every day. She has enjoyed getting to know and work with Steve Wagner, the new librarian. "I can honestly say that I feel comfortable turning this position, one that I coveted for so many years and thought no one could ever master, over to him. Steve comes not only with excellent credentials but, most importantly and essential for our History of Science Collections, an innate sense of the importance of detail. Steve told me not long ago that he was asked by one of his OU colleagues if it bothered him that I still came to the Collections. To my absolute delight, Steve replied, 'Not at all, we think alike!'"

Marcia plans to continue assisting with the Collections' projects, tidying up loose ends before turning to research projects. With the guidance of Aaron Poffenberger, her Mac now has sufficient memory to enter the world of the Internet soon.

David and Nancy Kitts celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary by returning to France for two months. At Thanksgiving, they traveled to Corvallis, where they visited Mary Jo and Bob Nye. In 1996, they plan to return to Norman for two months.

Steven J. Livesey was promoted to Professor and appointed chair of the department. He continues to work on his biographical database of medieval commentators on Aristotle and Peter Lombard's Sentences, which now exceeds 31,000 records. In the spring, he taught a seminar on issues in historical computing, with a field trip to the Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University. During a two-day research trip to the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library in Collegeville, MN, he used microfilms of Eastern European manuscripts, adding incipits of texts already in the database, and identifying other texts for inclusion. His paper, "Unique Manuscripts and Medieval Productivity: How Shall We Count?" should appear early in 1996 in the Halbgraue Reihe zur historischen Fachinformatik series.

Gregg Mitman was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor. The IPE program was extremely fortunate and proud to have Bruce Babbitt, the Secretary of Interior, launch the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Environment (IPE) Speakers Series in the spring. The year was also filled with opportunities for travel. In January, he gave talks at both Oregon State University and the University of Washington. In March, he presented a paper on recreating nature at the American Society for Environmental History in Las Vegas and witnessed a bit of recreating nature in casino land during an afternoon's visit to The Mirage. In early May, he traveled to MIT to present a paper on "Ecology and the Surveillance of Nature: Peering Outside the Keyhole of Laboratory 'Life'" at the Fifth Annual Mellon Workshop. After a frantic week of getting the house in order for the new Mellon fellow, Joe Cain, he and Debra headed for Wisconsin in the beginning of June, where he is on leave for the 1995-1996 academic year. A visit to the archives of the British Film Institute and Oxford University in July was followed by a trip to Leuven, Belgium for the meetings of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology. A series of sessions on the politics of conservation, organized by Gregg, Ravi Rajan, and Peter Taylor, led to a stimulating exchange among environmental historians and historians of ecology. Many of these discussions were continued in early August at the Dibner summer seminar on ecology and conservation biology held at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Together with John Beatty and Jim Collins, Gregg submitted a research and training grant to NSF on nature, history, and the natural historical sciences in the twentieth century (see the related story elsewhere in this issue).

Marilyn Ogilvie described the Collections to over 125 classes and visitors during the past year. She presented an invited paper to the American Association of Physics Teachers, and completed a book-length bibliography which will be published this spring by Garland Press. She also supplied a chapter for an edited volume, Creative Couples, to be published this spring by Rutgers University Press. She was a member of the Women's Prize Committee and the Nominating Committee for the History of Science Society, and was a member of the OU Speaker's Bureau and gave talks to various civic and educational groups.

In February, Katherine Pandora delivered a paper on the topic of "'Nature is Everywhere Gothic, Not Classic': William James and the Challenge of Radical Empiricism" at the University of Oklahoma during her interview for the position of assistant professor. In this piece she discussed James' critique of the 'half-way empiricism' characteristic of classical views of nature, and the challenges that a serious assessment of James' radically empiricist perspectives presents for contemporary science, American history, and the history of science. This piece was abstracted from the revisions she was making of her dissertation manuscript, "Dissenting Science: Psychologists' Democratic Critique during the Depression Era."

In the spring, Pandora made several trips to the University of Kansas for archival work in the records of the Midwest Field Station. The Midwest Field Station was established in the post-World War II years by psychologists Roger Barker and Herbert F. Wright in the attempt to devise methods for studying what they termed the 'ecological psychology' of behavior settings. These trips were funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.

In the summer, Pandora visited the Vassar University Archives in Poughkeepsie, New York to review anthropologist Ruth Benedict's papers, as well as conduct research at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park (which contains the papers of numerous New Dealers in addition to the papers of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt). Pandora was finishing up research for a piece entitled "Legacies of the 'Vassar School for Social Critique': Interdisciplinary Experiments in Cultural Criticism in 1930s America." In October, Pandora was invited by the Women's Studies Program to deliver a brown-bag presentation on her Vassar work-in-progress.

Pandora's husband, Ben Keppel, whose field is twentieth-century American history, was appointed Assistant Professor in the history department.

Jamil Ragep began the year with a trip to Rome to consult with the staff of the Enciclopedia Italiana regarding a volume on Islamic science. His travels continued during the Spring, first to give a lecture at the University of New Mexico's annual conference on Medieval Studies, and later to present two talks for the Mathematics Department at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Over the summer, he completed a study of precession in early Islamic science, and he and Sally Ragep have almost finished editing the proceedings of the two OU History of Science conferences held in 1992 and 1993 (to be published by Brill in Spring 1996).

Marc Swetlitz has continued in the department as visiting assistant professor for the 1995-96 academic year. He is completing research on evolution and ethics in the writings of Julian Huxley, George G. Simpson and C. H. Waddington and is teaching a graduate seminar, "Evolution and Ethics in Historical Perspective," this spring. During the past year, Marc introduced an innovative pedagogy in his undergraduate history of science survey course. Student essays focus on different critical thinking skills, and students are placed in permanent teams to complete team projects on different course topics. While initially skeptical, students eventually found both the critical thinking and team learning dimensions of the course to be enjoyable and intellectually rewarding.

Kenneth L. Taylor published "Nicolas Desmarest and Italian Geology," in the volume Rocks, Fossils and History, edited by G. Giglia, C. Maccagni, and N. Morello (Florence: Festina Lente 1995). During the Fall semester, he was appointed Fellow of the OU Humanities Institute, with a teaching-load-reduction to work on his new sophomore-level course "Lives in Science: History of Science Through Biography," to be offered for the first time in spring semester 1996. He taught (for the sixth time) in the OU Summer Scholars program, a summer multi-disciplinary science program for selected high school students from all parts of Oklahoma. A highlight of his year, in September, was a ten-day trip in Italy (Naples, the Aeolian Islands, and Catania) to participate in the 20th Symposium of the International Commission on the History of Geological Sciences. This traveling symposium afforded historians of the earth sciences an opportunity to see Vesuvius, the Phlaegrean Fields and Pozzuoli, the island volcanoes of Stromboli and Vulcano, and Etna. At the symposium he delivered the paper presented earlier at a department colloquium (q.v.).

Stephen Wagner began as History of Science Librarian in September 1995, and soon after as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Science. His research interests include the archives and bibliography of science, technology, and medicine, as well as the history of printing and publishing in these fields. He recently taught an advanced graduate seminar, "Science and Technology Archives," at the University of Pittsburgh. Steve has been Co-chair of the Society of American Archivists' Science, Technology, and Health Care Roundtable since 1992. He is currently on the American Association of the History of Medicine's Welch Medal Committee, which selects the best scholarly work in medical history published in the last five years, and the Society of American Archivists' Committee on Legal and Legislative Affairs.

Ruth Jones Eichholz (1915-1995)

Members of the OU History of Science community lost a dear friend when Ruth Eichholz died November 6, 1995, at her home in Lee's Summit, Missouri. Ruth was a valuable member of the History of Science Collections staff for over twenty years, starting in the early 1960s. Following the death in 1985 of her husband Erich Eichholz, Professor of German, Ruth went to live in the Kansas City area, to be near her son Thomas and granddaughter Amy.

Ruth was loved for her lively interest in the work and activities of students and staff in the History of Science. With Duane Roller, Ruth helped develop and build The Short-title Catalog of the History of Science Collections. Printed annually since 1961, The STC began primarily as a reference aid on Duane's book-buying trips in Europe. Now grown to nearly 1,200 pages, The STC continues to be used by Marilyn Ogilvie in selection and purchase of books, and is an excellent bibliographical resource for scholars, librarians, and professionals in the book trade.

At the cozy Eichholz home on McNamee Street, Ruth and Erich were gracious and enthusiastic hosts to generations of students and colleagues, Christmas-time parties being their specialty. Ruth and Erich were both skillfully engaged in a variety of hobbies and crafts. In the last decade of her life, Ruth became quite expert in the field of investment finance, and earned a considerable reputation as an amateur adviser in this area.

Shortly before her death, Ruth expressed her wishes should anyone desire to make a memorial contribution in her name: she asked that any gifts be made either to (a) the John Knox Village Foundation (a non-denominational fund to assist financially needy residents of the retirement community where she lived), 400 NW Murray, Lee's Summit, MO 64081; or (b) the OU Foundation, for the History of Science Collections, OU Libraries (100 Timberdell, Norman, OK 73072).

Those of us who knew Ruth have many fond memories of her, and we will miss her.

-- Ken Taylor

Graduate Student Research and Activities

JoAnn Palmeri continues to work on her dissertation, "Harlow Shapley, Cosmography and Culture in 1950s and 1960s America." She was awarded a grant-in-aid from the American Institute of Physics for travel to the Institute's archives for research on the dissertation. She co-organized a session, "Becoming a Science: Observation, Theory and Aesthetics in Twentieth-Century Cosmology," at the History of Science Society meeting in Minneapolis; as part of the session, she presented a paper entitled, "Scientists and the Postwar Popularization of Cosmology." During the fall semester, she was awarded a dissertation fellowship by the department in support of her continued research. She now resides in Sacramento, CA, where her husband, Terry, has joined a law firm.

During the fall semester, Daniel Barrett traveled to several archival collections, including the Smithsonian, pursuing materials for his dissertation, "Langmuir and the Atom: A Study in the Development and Subsequent Divergence of the Discipline of Physical Chemistry." During this period, he was supported by a departmental dissertation fellowship.

Kerry Magruder was released from a portion of his duties as planetarium director and assistant professor of natural sciences at Oklahoma Baptist University in order to pursue more extensive work on his dissertation, "From Cosmogony to Geology: Natural Order and Historical Contingency in 17th- and 18th-Century Theories of the Earth."

With partial support from the department, Maureen McCormick participated in the 1995 Dibner Summer Seminar held at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The seminar topic was "Ecological and Conservation Biology: Historical, Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives."

Stephen Gatlin is a new Visiting Student from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and writing his dissertation, "Science in the Service of the Aristocracy: William H. Sheldon's Promethean Psychology." This spring, he will teach a section of HSCI 3023, "History of Science Since the 17th Century."

Currently six students are writing Ph.D. dissertations, and three students are working on master's theses.

Gifts and Contributions Help Build the Program

The History of Science Collections and the History of Science Department have been pleased to receive gifts in support of several funds that support research and teaching activities of faculty and students. Gifts can be designated through the University of Oklahoma Foundation for these and other purposes. Recently, the Department and Collections have begun work on a project to support long-term goals in conjunction with the University's recently-announced five-year Reach for Excellence campaign. Among these goals are establishment of endowments for a distinguished professorship in the history of science, graduate fellowships in the history of science, a fund for small travel grants to enable scholars and students to travel to Norman to use the resources of the History of Science Collections, additional endowments for Collections acquisitions, and an annual history of science lecture and publication series.

During 1995, donors to the Department and the Collections funds were: Eleanor Barnes, James E. Brown, Mary Doyal, Archibald and Sarah Stanley Edwards, the Eichholz family, Kuangtai Hsu, Edwin Kessler, David B. Kirkpatrick, H. Lewis McKinney, Douglas L. McPherson, James A. Robinson, Kenneth L. Taylor, and Martha Ellen Webb. Donors of books to the Collections were: Peter Barker, Leon Ciereszko, the Echegary family, Archibald and Stanley Edwards, Dr. Jonathon Erlen, Robert Henry, Tibor Herczeg, Wendell Huffman, Steven J. Livesey, Eric Reissner, the family of Harold A. Shoemaker, Kenneth L. Taylor, Stephen Wagner, Tamás Weiszburg, Benjamin F. Whitney, and Hatten Yoder. We would like to express our gratitude to them for contributing to the history of science program.

Several readers responded to the drawing announced in the previous issue of Discorsi. The winner of the contest was Dr. Douglas McPherson of Mescalero, NM. We thank all who responded to our appeal, and hope that Dr. McPherson has enjoyed the volumes.

Donors are reminded that many companies have programs to match contributions to non-profit organizations, thus doubling one's support of the history of science. Gifts can be made through the OU Foundation, 100 Timberdell Road, Norman, OK 73019; Tel. 405-321-1174 (Ron D. Burton, Executive Director) or the OU Office of University Affairs, 730 College Avenue, Room 338, Norman, OK 73019; Tel. 405-325-3701 (David L. Maloney, Vice President for University Development).

Alumni News

In retirement from high-school teaching, John Eddy (Ph.D. 1977) is continuing his research on topics related to the life sciences in the eighteenth century, and has been teaching courses at Pikes Peak Community College.

As director of exchange programs at Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Jun Fudano (Ph.D. 1990) made several trips to the United States, Thailand, and Singapore to visit universities. Late in the year, he moderated a panel discussion on "The Past and Present of Engineering Education and Perspectives on its Future," held at KIT and involving presidents of universities in the United States and Japan. A grant proposal that he and his colleagues at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology submitted to the Japanese Ministry of Education has been funded, and will support the role of the liberal arts in engineering education. Hiroko presented a paper at the 1995 Spring Conference for the Association of Japanese Language Teaching in Tokyo; this resulted in the subsequent publication of a text and accompanying teaching video. In April, she was promoted to Associate Professor at KIT.

Kuang-tai Hsu (Ph.D. 1992) recently completed a paper, "The Impact of Western Ko Chih Hsueh on Chinese Scholars in the Late Ming and Early Ch'ing Period: The Case of Hsiung-Ming Yü's Ko Chih Tshao," to be published in a volume of papers presented at Taiwan University in May 1995. In January, 1996 he will present "Piaget's Impact on Kuhn's Structure" at a conference in Taipei celebrating the centennial of Piaget's birth.

Wendell Huffman (M.A. 1987) is cataloger in the Carson City (NV) Library and has been working as a historical consultant for the City of Folsom (California)'s redevelopment of their historic district. As a suburb of Sacramento, Folsom was the termination of the Sacramento Valley Railroad, and his activities for the city involve both archeological investigations of the site and opportunities to share his knowledge with interested people.

Clara Sue Kidwell (Ph.D. 1970) returned to the University as Director of the Native American Studies Program. Previously she was a member of the Native American Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley, and Assistant Director for Cultural Resources at the Smithsonian Institution.

After several years at the Darwin Correspondence Project, Marsha Richmond (Ph.D. Indiana 1986) has been appointed assistant professor in the Interdisciplinary Studies program at Wayne State University.

David E. Rowe (M.A. 1980) is Professor in the History of Mathematics and Science at the Johannes Gütenberg Universität, Mainz. He has several works in press, including "Abel's Theorem and its Role in Algebraic Geometry." During Spring 1996, he will be in residence at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology.

Barbara W. Sessions (M.A. 1971) operates a communications consulting firm. Founded in New York in 1983, it performs technical writing, desktop publishing, and public relations for businesses locally (in Oklahoma) and in the New York area. She and her husband, Don (B.S. Accounting 1968 and MBA 1970) head the OU Alumni & Friends of Love County, where they identify and help with scholarships for OU students in the Marietta area.

Liba Taub (Ph.D. 1987) has had a busy year taking up her new position as director of the Whipple Museum in Cambridge. She spent two weeks in September in Prague along with Marilyn Ogilvie. Her husband, Niall, accepted a position as Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of North London.

Electronic Connections

As noted above, both the Department and the Collections published homepages on the World Wide Web during 1995. The Department's page [http://www.uoknor.edu/cas/hsci] features information about departmental faculty and students, the graduate program, colloquia, and the Mellon Program. Also included is a list of related programs at the University of Oklahoma and other history of science sites, together with links to facilitate access. Previous issues of Discorsi may be found there as well.

The Collections' homepage [http://www-lib.uoknor.edu/depts/histsc/index.htm] features information about the history of the Collections, its operating hours, procedures, staff, and resources, together with links to other WWW sites. Within a short time, the Short-Title catalogue of the Collections will be available for inspection and searches. Long-range plans include placing digitized images of the photographic slide collection on the Web.

Both pages contain cross-links, and browsers may send messages to faculty, students and staff directly from the pages. For those who wish a list of e-mail addresses, we offer the following:

Peter Barker barkerp@uoknor.edu

Joe Cain joecainz@aol.com

Frank Claesges diamond@wvnvm.wvnet.edu

Mark Eddy ab4214@uoknor.edu

Stephen Gatlin gatlin@vtvm1.cc.vt.edu

Gary Kroll gmkroll@uoknor.edu

Steven Livesey slivesey@uoknor.edu

Kerry Magruder magruder@hypernote.com

Maureen McCormick mmccorm@uoknor.edu

Gregg Mitman gmitman@uoknor.edu

Jeanie O'Connell joconnell@uoknor.edu

Marilyn Ogilvie mogilvie@uoknor.edu

Katherine Pandora kpandora@uoknor.edu

Aaron Poffenberger akp@aol.com

Jamil Ragep jragep@uoknor.edu

Stella Stuart sstuart@uoknor.edu

Marc Swetlitz marcs9@aol.com

Kevin Tapp ktapp74858@aol.com

Kenneth Taylor ktaylor@uoknor.edu

Todd Timmons ttimmons@systema.westark.edu

Steve Wagner swagner@harikari.ucs.uoknor.edu