Skip to content ↓

Dibner Institute announces resident fellows for 2002-2003

The Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology has announced the appointment of 25 Dibner Institute Resident Fellows for 2002-2003.


The appointments are for 11 senior fellows, two senior visiting research fellows and 12 postdoctoral fellows, including five second-year renewals. The fellows are listed below with their research projects.

SENIOR FELLOWS

Robert P. Crease, a professor at SUNY, Stony Brook and an historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory--a new volume of the history of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, covering the period 1973-1997.


Robert DiSalle, a professor at the University of Western Ontario--an investigation of the evolution of theories of space and time in a work to be titled "Conceptual Analysis and the Conceptual Development of Physics."


Stephan R. Epstein, a professor at the London School of Economics--"Systems for the Production and Diffusion of Technical Knowledge in Europe, 1250-1750."


Jeanne Guillemin, a professor at Boston College--"Sir Frederick Grant Banting and Sir Paul Gordon Fildes: Science, Anthrax, and the Initiation of the UK Biological Weapons Program."


Jeff Horn, a professor at Manhattan College--research for "The Path Not Taken: French Industrial Policy in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1830."


Akihiro Kanamori, a professor of mathematics at Boston University--chapters on the early and more recent history of set theory for the forthcoming "A History of Mathematical Logic," and work toward a second volume of "The Higher Infinite," focusing on developments within the last 25 years.


Evelyn Keller, a professor at MIT and a MacArthur Fellow (1992-1997)--"Subjectivity in the Human Sciences of the Late 20th Century."


Patrick Malone, a professor of urban studies and American civilization at Brown University--"Waterpower in Lowell, 1821-1885."


Giuliano Pancaldi, a professor at the University of Bologna--"Enlightenment, Diversity, and the Cultures of Science and Technology."


Emily Thompson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania--"Sound Men: Engineering the Sound Revolution in the American Film Industry."


Richard Yeo, a professorial fellow at Griffith University, Australia--"Managing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe 1650-1800."

SENIOR VISITING RESEARCH SCHOLARS

Constance Barsky, director or the Program in Learning by Redesign at The Ohio State University--a catalog of technological history, with Kenneth Wilson.


Kenneth Wilson, Nobel laureate in physics and the Youngberg Professor in physics at The Ohio State University--Two projects: a catalog of technological history, with Constance Barsky; and, connected with the Sloan-Dibner project in the History of Recent Science and Technology, the conditions requisite for community-wide, sustained developments in science and technology.

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

Nimrod Bar-Am, a postdoctoral fellow at Haifa University, Israel--"Formalization and Induction: The Background to the Rise of Boolean Logic."


Alain Bernard, a teacher of mathematics in the secondary school at Lyc�e Apollinaire and an instructor of the history of mathematics at Versailles-Saint Quentin University, France--"Rhetoric and Mathematical Practice in Late Antiquity."


Fran��ois Charette, recent Ph.D. graduate of the Program in History of Science at Frankfurt University--"The Visual Language of Islamic Science."


Guido Giglioni, recent Ph.D. graduate from Johns Hopkins University--"Helmontianism and Late 17th-Century Anatomy: the Case of Francis Glisson."


Aren Maeir, an archaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology, Department of Land of Israel Studies, Bar Ilan University--"Changing Technologies in a World in Transition: The Development of Philistine Culture and Technology during the Iron Age."


H. Darrel Rutkin, a doctoral candidate at Indiana University--development of a book on the place of astrology in premodern western science circa 1250-1500.


Christopher Smeenk defends his dissertation at the University of Pittsburgh this spring--"An Inflationary Field: The Heyday of Early Universe Cosmology."

SECOND YEAR POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

Elizabeth Cavicchi, a lecturer and course developer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education--research on induction coil-making by 19th-century amateurs and the educational and historical ramifications of replicating their experiments.


Abigail Lustig, a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science--"Altruism, Biology and Society."


Alberto Martinez, a former Dibner Library Resident Scholar at the Smithsonian Institution--a book on the history of kinematics, the modern science of motion. He is also finishing a book titled "Physical Mathematics."


Alison Sandman, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the University of Wisconsin who spent a semester at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University--an examination of interactions among navigators, cosmographers and cartographers in Portugal, Spain, England, France and Holland to explore reasons for the spread of methods of celestial navigation.


Yunli Shi, a former professor in the Department of History of Science at the University of Science and Technology of China--"European Background of Jesuit Predictive Astronomy in 18th-Century China."

GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWS

Dibner Institute graduate fellowships have been awarded to six doctoral candidates writing their dissertations at Dibner Institute consortium-member institutions: MIT, Boston University and Harvard University.


Brendan Foley, MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society--the increasingly professional role of the mechanical engineers who studied at the United States Naval Academy from the end of the Civil War until 1890. Foley is a member of the Deep Water Archaeology Research Group at MIT, which uses robotics systems to investigate ancient shipwrecks.


Jeremiah James, the History of Science Department, Harvard University--the development of new research programs and their identities as scientific disciplines, built upon work done by Linus Pauling in the 1930s.


Montgomery Link, Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University--"The Mathematical History of the Canonization of First Order Logic as the Formal Language of Set Theory."


David Lucsko, MIT's Program in Science, Technology and Society--"Performance Tuning: The Evolution of a Modern Craft," a study of the wants and needs of those who choose to modify their automobiles for enhanced performance, the "high-performance aftermarket" or "hot rod industry."


Eden Miller, graduated from Princeton University in electrical engineering--"Designing Freedom, Regulating a Nation: Socialist Cybernetics in Allende's Chile."


Chen Pang Yeang, recent recipient of the Sc.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT now enrolled in MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society--"Transmission, Reception, and Interference: Radio Technology and Science, 1900-1940."

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 8, 2002.

Related Topics

More MIT News