Steven Shapin
| Steven Shapin | |
|---|---|
 Shapin in 2008 | |
| Born | New York, United States |
| Education |
BA in Biology MA in History & Sociology of Science PhD in History and Sociology of Science |
| Alma mater |
University of Pennsylvania Reed College |
| Occupation | Academic |
| Employer | Harvard University |
| Known for | Research on the history and sociology of science |
| Title | Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University |
Steven Shapin is a historian and sociologist of science. He is the Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University.
He has written broadly on the history and sociology of science. His books on 17th-century science include Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (1985, with Simon Schaffer); A Social History of Truth (1994), The Scientific Revolution (1996, now translated into 18 languages), and, on modern entrepreneurial science, The Scientific Life (2008). A collection of his essays is Never Pure (2010). His current research interests include the history of dietetics and the history and sociology of taste and subjective judgment, especially in relation to food and wine.
His honors include the John Desmond Bernal Prize and the Ludwik Fleck Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science, the Robert K. Merton Prize of the American Sociological Association, the Herbert Dingle Prize of the British Society for the History of Science, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Derek Price Prize of the History of Science Society, a Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and, with Simon Schaffer, the 2005 Erasmus Prize. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2014, he received the George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society for career contributions to the field.[1]
He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and he has written for Harper's Magazine and The New Yorker.
Academic career
Shapin was trained as a biologist at Reed College and did graduate work in genetics at the University of Wisconsin before taking a Ph.D. in the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania in 1971. From 1972 to 1989, he was Lecturer, then Reader, at the Science Studies Unit, Edinburgh University, and, from 1989 to 2003, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego, before taking up an appointment the Department of the History of Science at Harvard. He has taught for brief periods at Columbia University, Tel-Aviv University, and at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. In 2012, he was the S. T. Lee Visiting Professorial Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
Bibliography
- With Barry Barnes (ed.), Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1979.
- With Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the air-pump : Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life ; including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by Simon Schaffer, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985; 1989; new edition, 2011
- A social history of truth: civility and science in seventeenth-century England, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
- The scientific revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
- With Christopher Lawrence (ed.), Science incarnate: historical embodiments of natural knowledge, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
- The scientific life: a moral history of a late modern vocation, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
- Never pure: historical studies of science as if it was produced by people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, and struggling for credibility and authority, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, 568 pages (ISBN 978-0801894213).
References
External links
- Faculty home page
- Works by or about Steven Shapin in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- An interview with Steven Shapin *An interview with Steven Shapin
- Steven Shapin to join London's School of Advanced Study as S. T. Lee Visiting Professional Fellow .
- Curriculum Vitae of Steven Shapin
- http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-to-think-about-science-part-16-1.464997
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