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Recent Awards & Honors
(continued from What's New)
Katherine Pandora | Sabbatical Leave at Harvard, 2001-2002
During the 2001-2002 academic year, Professor Katherine Pandora spent her sabbatical leave at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University. The topic of her research program was “The Children’s Republic of Science in Nineteenth-Century America: Lessons in Natural Knowledge for the Rising Generations of a New Nation.” The project investigated vernacular discourse about the natural world, particularly through the medium of American children’s literature, examining how these works contributed to the making of scientific Americans in an era in which the meaning of both ‘scientific’ and ‘American’ was in flux across an array of cultural arenas. Particularly through the works of Samuel Griswold Goodrich (1793-1860) and Jacob Abbott (1803-1879), she asks fascinating questions about both the intentions and the results of authors of juvenile literature in the nineteenth century.
Professor Pandora’s year also included time spent on another important aspect of her professional life, the use of web technology in teaching. In 2001, she received funding from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University for an ECHO [Exploring and Collecting History Online: Science and Technology] project, her Webfolio of oral history of childhood experiences with science and nature. Her Webfolio will be launched in Spring 2003 when she teaches HSCI 1133, “Science and Popular Culture.”
Peter Barker | Sabbatical Leave in Copenhagen, 2002
During the Spring 2002 semester, Professor Peter Barker held a sabbatical leave in Copenhagen, funded by a fellowship at the Danish Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. During his leave, Professor Barker completed a book [co-authored with Hanne Andersen (University of Copenhagen) and Xiang Chen (California Lutheran University)], The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which defends and extends Thomas Kuhn’s account of concepts and categorization, using techniques from cognitive psychology, and shows how the main features of Kuhn’s account of scientific change can be recovered through these techniques. At the same time, he had the opportunity to examine historical materials that are only available in Copenhagen, including written records from early Lutheran universities at the Royal Library and rare books in the history of astronomy at the Danish National Library.
Professor Barker’s leave also initiated additional collaborations between the history of science program at OU and those elsewhere. When he left Denmark in August, Professor Stig Andur Pedersen of Roskilde University invited him to become one of two international evaluators for a new national graduate program in history of science and allied fields. Doctoral students from all over Denmark will participate in this program, part of which requires a six-month training experience outside the country.
Kenneth L. Taylor | C. B. Hudson/Torchmark Presidential Professor
At the Spring 2002 Tribute to the Faculty, Professor Kenneth L. Taylor was named C. B. Hudson/Torchmark Presidential Professor. Presidential Professors are those faculty members who excel in all their professional activities and who relate those activities to the students they teach and mentor. These professors inspire their students, mentor their undergraduate and/or graduate students in the process of research and creative activity within their discipline, and exemplify to their students (both past and present) and to their colleagues (both at OU and within their disciplines nationwide) the ideals of a scholar through their endeavors in teaching, research/creative activity, and service. Professor Taylor is the department’s second recipient of this award.
Katherine Pandora | Associates Presidential Professor
At the Spring 2000 Tribute to the Faculty, Professor Katherine Pandora was awarded an Associates Presidential Professorship. Presidential Professors are those faculty members who excel in all their professional activities and who relate those activities to the students they teach and mentor. These professors inspire their students, mentor their undergraduate and/or graduate students in the process of research and creative activity within their discipline, and exemplify to their students (both past and present) and to their colleagues (both at OU and within their disciplines nationwide) the ideals of a scholar through their endeavors in teaching, research/creative activity, and service. Professor Pandora is the department’s first recipient of this professorship.
Liba Taub | OU College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Alumna
Among the four individuals chosen as the Outstanding Alumni of the OU College of Arts and Sciences for 1999 is Liba Taub, who represents the Humanities. Taub received her Ph.D. in History of Science from OU in 1987. An expanded version of her dissertation, "Ptolemy's Universe: The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy's Astronomy," was published as a book in 1993. After graduating, she was named a Mary Isabel Sibley Fellow in Greek Studies and held a research fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. Taub has taught in the history departments at the University of Kentucky, Northwestern University and Loyola University, and served as curator and head of the History of Astronomy department at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Currently, she is curator of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge, England, where she was awarded a Pilkington Teaching Prize for excellence in 1998. She is also a fellow and tutor at Newnham College.
Steve Livesey | NEH-Sponsored Research Leave, 1998-1999
Professor Steve Livesey spent a research year abroad in Paris working on a biographical database of authors of medieval commentaries on Aristotle and Peter Lombard's Sentences. These two groups of texts were the primary pedagogical tools used by students and masters in the nascent European universities of the 12th and 13th centuries. Professor Livesey's database provides a tool that can be used to locate such texts and analyze the groups of individuals who produced them; during this research year he was able to increase the number of records in the database by 12.5% (from 39,763 to 44,752) and also re-evaluate items in the database under the light of additional research. Among the various libraries and research institutes he consulted in Paris were the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes, the Institute historique allemande, and the Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne; he also visited libraries and archives associated with the Universities of Krakow and Prague, two of the most influential late-medieval institutions of Eastern Europe. This research was made possible by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers, and additional support from OU's College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Oklahoma Research Council, and the President's International Travel Fellowship Program.
Kenneth Taylor | 1998 Sue Tyler Friedman Medal Winner
Professor Kenneth Taylor has been chosen as the Geological Society of London's 1998 recipient of the Sue Tyler Friedman Medal for "distinguished contributions to the recording of the history of geology." President R.F.P. Hardman especially noted that Taylor had explored the 18th century "with outstanding thoroughness and insight," conveying an understanding of the franchophone context of 18th-century geoscientific culture that is unsurpassed in the English-speaking world, and using the career of Nicholas Desmarest to reconstruct "for modern readers a lively scientific community." The Medal, which is not confined to those with a geological background or to Fellows of the Society, is awarded annually on a world-wide basis without regard to nationality considerations. Previous medallists include Martin Rudwick (Univ. of California, San Diego); Stephen Jay Gould (Harvard University); Francois Ellenberger (Univ. de Paris-Sud); David Oldroyd (Univ. of New South Wales); and Gordon Herries-Davies (Trinity College, Dublin). Taylor is past president of the History of Earth Sciences Society.
F. Jamil Ragep | Kuwait Prize in Arabic and Islamic Scientific Heritage
Associate Professor F. Jamil Ragep was awarded the distinguished Kuwait Prize in Arabic and Islamic Scientific Heritage in 1997 for his in-depth critical study of a medieval Islamic astronomical memoir, Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's Text on Astronomy. The Kuwait Prize is designed to recognize intellectual achievements that serve the interests of scientific advancement and to support efforts to raise the standard of culture in various fields. It is awarded to one or more researchers who have contributed considerable original, distinguished and published work in the past 10 years in the field of the prize. Department chair Steven Livesey noted that "Ragep's research focuses on the history of Islamic astronomy, bringing to bear contextualist and historicist views on the subject matter. This is an especially rare quality within this field." The prize includes a cash award of 30,000 Kuwaiti dinars -- approximately $100,000 -- the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences shield, and a certificate of recognition.
Doctoral Students | NSF Dissertation Research Grants
(1999) || Mark Eddy, "Architects of the Self: Social Scientists and the Construction of the Individual in Postwar America" (dir., Asst. Prof. Katherine Pandora)(1998) || Gary Kroll, "Exploring the Oceanic Frontier: American Naturalists as Amateur Conservationists" (dir., Prof. Gregg Mitman)
(1997) || Maureen McCormick, "Cold War Conservation: International Science, National Resources, and Reproductive Limits" (dir., Prof. Gregg Mitman)
(1996) || JoAnn Palmeri, "Harlow Shapley, Cosmography and Culture in 1950s and 1960s America" (dir., Prof. Gregg Mitman)