Perspectives on Science

Episode 5 of the DNA papers examines the contributions of the organic chemist Phoebus Levene, who published a corpus of some 200 papers on the subject over a period of four decades, during which he made discoveries about the constituents of, and developed his ideas about the structure of, DNA. Among other things, he was the first person to correctly identify the sugar components of the nucleic aci...

This episode of the IsisCB Pandemics series features contributors who wrote and reviewed bibliographic essays surveying the literature about concepts fundamental to our understanding of pandemic and epidemic diseases, such as the broad disciplinary category of epidemiology, as well as the specific concepts of vaccinations and syndemics. Offering their perspectives on the significance of these topi...

An Albert M. Greenfield Forum in the History of Science In 2014, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Daniel J. Kevles and Peter Westwick were invited to write the 150th anniversary history of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and were given unprecedented access to its extensive archival collection, much of which had never attracted scholarly attention. Their manuscript, tentatively titled The National Academ...

Episode 4 of the DNA Papers features another chapter in the deep history of DNA in which the molecule itself doesn’t come up. As in the previous episode, the paper makes no explicit reference to either the molecule or its function. But the paper occupies an indisputable role in the history of DNA, because the discovery it reports opened the door to discovery of the function of DNA as the carrier o...

The papers discussed in episode 3 of the DNA Papers do not mention DNA in any way at all! And yet they are vitally important in any history of DNA because they provided the first step in bringing together a visible cellular component—the chromosome—both with ideas about heredity and about the chemical workings of living cells (DNA). The two papers, “On the Morphology of the Chromosome Group in Bra...

In episode 2 of the DNA Papers we discuss a cluster of papers from the late nineteenth century by the German physiological chemist Albrecht Kossel, who studied the chemical make-up of nuclein, and found and named its nitrogen-containing building blocks, probably best recognized today by their labels A, T, G, and C. Although work was deemed sufficiently important by his contemporaries to garner him...

This series offers discussions with the editors and authors of a special issue of the Isis Current Bibliography. It provides perspectives into the state of current scholarhip on the history of pandemics, and where the field might be heading in the future. Neeraja Sankaran and Stephen P. Weldon introduce the series. Get an inside view of the editorial decisions and motivations behind a special issu...

Judith Kaplan is a historian of the human sciences focused on nineteenth- and twentieth-century linguistics. She holds degrees in disability studies and the history of science, and is a National Science Foundation Research Scholar at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Dr. Kaplan's is working on a comprehensive history of modern linguistics while simultaneously explorin...

This podcast series illuminates the history of seminal discoveries and research through which we learned about the molecule that has been dubbed as the “secret of life” itself: DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid. Neeraja Sankaran introduces the series. She is a historian of science and medicine at the National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR, Bangalore, India. Her work focuses on the recent and nea...

The first episode of the DNA papers goes back to the nineteenth century when a young Swiss doctoral student, searching for the secrets of life by delving into the chemistry of cells, stumbled on to a hitherto unknown new chemical substance localized in the nucleus of pus cells. He named the substance nuclein; we now recognize it by the commonly used acronym for its chemical name: DNA. Friedrich Mi...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Joseph Malherek, author of Free-Market Socialists: European Émigrés Who Made Capitalist Culture in America, 1918–1968.   What is the surprising connection between socialism and the corporate focus group? How did socialists come to develop, of all things, the suburban American shopping mall?   Listen in as Joseph Malherek explains the socialist roots o...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Susan Brandt, author of Women Healers: Gender, Authority, and Medicine in Early Philadelphia. Drawing on extensive archival research in Consortium collections, Susan Brandt demonstrates that women of various classes and ethnicities in early Philadelphia found new sources of healing authority, engaged in the consumer medical marketplace, and resisted p...

Rana Hogarth is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois and an NEH Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Her research focuses on the medical and scientific constructions of race during the era of slavery and beyond. Professor Hogarth's first book, Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Ofer Gal, author of The Origins of Modern Science: From Antiquity to the Scientific Revolution. What is the role of history in telling stories about science? How and why do we know about how the planets orbit? Why are there cathedrals in South America, and what does that have to do with science? Listen in as Professor of History and Philosophy of Scie...

In this episode, we speak with Eugenia Lean, author of, Vernacular Industrialism in China: Local Innovation and Translated Technologies in the Making of a Cosmetics Empire, 1900–1940. Did the process of industrialization occur in the same manner around the world? How did a Chinese romance novelist create a cosmetics empire that outperformed Japanese and European brands? Listen in as professor of C...

Join us as we revisit our interview from April 2021 with Abraham Gibson, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of Feral Animals in the American South: An Evolutionary History. In his book, Abe Gibson tells the broader social and environmental history of the Southern United States by focusing on the domestication and subsequent ferality of dogs, horses,...

Join us as we revisit our spotlight on Aristotle's Masterpiece with Professor Mary Fissell, from October 2020. To see the visuals that Dr. Fissell references in the podcast, go to: www.chstm.org/video/83 Follow along with Professor Fissell as she discusses her research on this late 17th century sex, midwifery, and childbirth manual popular in England and America from its publication until well int...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Adam R. Shapiro, author of Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools. In his book, Adam R. Shapiro details the ways that the business practices of the science textbook industry of the early twentieth century, combined with a new push toward teaching a unified subject called "biology" in American hi...

In this episode of Perspectives, we speak with Stephen Weldon, author of The Scientific Spirit of American Humanism. In his book, Stephen Weldon uncovers how, at the beginning of the twentieth century, liberal ministers and rabbis created the humanist movement to accommodate religion to an increasingly scientific world and worldview. Joined by academic philosophers and prominent scientists in the...

In light of the COVID-19 epidemic and the sometimes fierce opposition to vaccination, join us as we re-examine our presentation from January 2019 on contemporary vaccine skepticism in America and its historical roots. What does the data show about present-day attitudes towards vaccination? How do these attitudes relate to changing social, political, and economic conditions? How are these issues me...

What would it take to "render justice" in science? In this roundtable discussion, our panelists discuss two episodes that demonstrate how scientific credit and recognition reflect the social and political order of the times. Ruth Lewin Sime and Robert Marc Friedman discuss the "Meitner Scandal," in which the world-renowned physicist Lise Meitner was denied a Nobel Prize for her work, despite being...

Richard Wetzell analyzes the history of "racial science" in Germany during the early years of the Nazi regime, demonstrating how medical doctors, physical anthropologists, and human geneticists wielded competing theories of race in order to influence public policy and maintain their professional status. Richard Wetzell is a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington, D....

How did scientists, policymakers, and government officials think about concepts such as "scientific freedom" and "Western science" during the Cold War? Join us in revisiting our interview with Audra Wolfe, author of Freedom's Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science. In Freedom's Laboratory, Dr. Wolfe examines the relationship between science, politics, and governance in the Unite...

How do we reconcile the positives and negatives of scientific and technological development? Join us in revisiting our interview with Susan Lindee, author of Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern War. In Rational Fog, Susan Lindee explores the way that science, technology and medicine were transformed by the military establishment and defense funding. She discusses how thousands of scient...

Andy Evans discusses the history of racial science in Germany before the Nazi takeover in 1933. Evans describes how Germany's nineteenth-century liberal anthropological tradition transmogrified into a hierarchical and racist "science" in the early part of the twentieth century. Andy Evans is Associate Professor of History at SUNY New Paltz, and is the author of, among other works, Anthropology at...