HST Alumni
Newsletter
Issue No. 1,
September 2002
In this issue:
.
. . [Message from the Director]
.
. . [Updates from Our Alumni]
WELCOME
This first edition
of our Alumni Newsletter
inaugurates a new tradition in the Program of History of Science and
Technology
as we try to keep in touch with our former students and allow you to
more
readily keep up with your classmates. The Program was formally
established
and granted the power to offer graduate degrees in 1979, although Roger
Stuewer and I came in 1972, and Ed Layton 3 years later. We have now
awarded
36 degrees ? 25 doctorates and 11 masters -- since our first degree was
awarded to Eda Kranakis in 1982. That is certainly enough for an alumni
newsletter! We intend to distribute it at least annually. Most of this
first newsletter consists of your own biographical updates.
This past year we
awarded five Ph.D.s,
the most ever. Five new students started earlier this month, and they
will
assuredly continue the tradition of the five who just completed their
studies
here. All of our students are always way above average, even better
than
in Lake Woebegone, so that the Program continues its lively tradition.
Of our five recent graduates, Mary Thomas is raising her two daughters
and will be on the faculty of the Program next Spring to fill in for
Jennifer
Alexander who will be on leave; David Sepkoski has a two-year visiting
assistant professor position at Oberlin College; Karin Matchett has a
two-year
post-doc at Yale University, where she will be working with Dan Kevles;
Kevin Francis will continue his faculty position at Mount Angel
Seminary
in Oregon; and Juan Ilerbaig, who defended his dissertation last spring
is currently living in Miami, FL, where his wife Claustre teaches
economics
at the University of Miami, and planning to apply for a postdoctoral
fellowship.
Last spring we
launched a redesigned
web page for the program, and you might want to look at it at http://www.physics.umn.edu/~hsci/.
It will bring you up to date on our current students and faculty. If
there
is sufficient interest, it should be possible to add an alumni section.
Let us know how we can help you. For example, we could distribute our
list
of alumni addresses. Incidentally, we have lost touch with two of our
graduates:
Brian Nicholson (Ph. D. 1988), and Natalie McIntire (MS, 1993). Do any
of you have a recent address for either of them? If so let Barbara
Eastwold
know.
The drive for
Graduate Student Fellowship
funds has been partly successful and continues. Your generous
contributions
have played an important part in our success. The Tomashes have pledged
$150,000 and we have raised nearly $50,000 for the Roger Stuewer fund.
The university is still matching contributions to the Roger Stuewer
Fellowship
Fund, so that if you wish to make a contribution this year, it will in
effect be doubled. Contact Barbara or me to make a contribution, which
is, of course, tax deductible.
Many of us,
faculty and students,
will be at the HSS meeting in Milwaukee this November. We hope to see
you
there, and remember that the Program always hosts a reception for the
Minnesota
crowd one evening, usually Saturday.
Alan Shapiro
ALUMNI UPDATES
Charles Atchley
(1991)
Dixon, IL
(July 2002) Soon
after graduation
with my Ph.D. in December 1991, I flew to Melbourne, Australia, to give
a talk at the University of Melbourne on the acceptance and discovery
of
the neutrino, the subject of my dissertation. During the next year I
taught
physics, astronomy, and engineering courses at Minneapolis Community
College.
In 1993 I
accepted a position as
Dean of the Industrial Technology, Mathematics, and Science Division at
Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC). Some of the highlights for me
during the five years I held this position included writing and
securing
grants to initiate programs in Geographic Information Systems and
Arboriculture,
setting up a multi-disciplinary research, education, and demonstration
program on energy conservation and geothermal energy, and creating a
partnership
between my Division's construction trades programs and the regional
community
social service organization to build and manage two six-plex apartment
buildings for low-income residents. This latter grant and project won
two
Shining Star Awards from the Iowa Department of Economic Development.
The
downside of these five years was the dissolution of my 20-year marriage.
Since 1998 I have
been employed as
Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Sauk Valley Community College
in
Illinois. During the last academic year, I also wrote and subsequently
taught a course on Women, Gender, and Science that was inspired by a
course
taught by Sally Gregory Kohlstedt.
For all the
professional activities
in which I have engaged, I am continuously reminded of the critical
analysis
skills that I received from the faculty in the History of Science and
Technology
Program. Exceedingly special thanks is due to Roger Stuewer, my thesis
advisor.
Charles E.
Atchley, Professor
Physics/Mathematics
Sauk Valley
Community College
173 Illinois, Route 2
Dixon, IL 61021
Tel: (815) 288-5511
x215
Email: atchlec@svcc.edu
Brett Steele
(1994)
Santa Monica, CA
(December 2001 )
As an alumni of
the Program for the History of Science and Technology at the U of M
(Ph.D.
1994), I wanted to let it be known that, yes, there is a professional
life
beyond the academy. I am now employed as a Policy Analyst at the RAND
Corporation,
having completed my postdoc fellowship at the Dibner Institute last
December
and received enlightenment at MIT's Security Studies Program. Hence I
am
working primarily for the Arroyo Center, the research institute for the
U.S. Army, where I am involved with projects addressing military
transformation,
strategic and operational mobility, civil-military relations, and the
anti-access
capabilities of Third World countries. During my off hours I am
currently
completing The Heirs of Archimedes: Technology, Science and Warfare
— 1350-1800 (an edited volume for MIT Press), as well as upgrading
our condo in downtown Santa Monica with my wife, Tamera; step-son, Ian;
and Westie-dog, Kepler (yes, he actually runs in elliptical orbits).
Brett Steele
RAND Corporation
1700 Main Street, PO
Box 2138
Santa Monica, CA
90407-2138
Tel: (310) 393-0411
ext. 6110
Email: bsteele@rand.org
John P.
Jackson, Jr. (1996)
Boulder, CO
(July 2002) I
left Minnesota in 1993
right after taking my comprehensive exams. I wrote my dissertation in
Tallahassee,
Florida, while becoming a new parent. The dissertation is finished, the
kids are still "in process" - Maggie is now 8 and Jack is 5. After
finishing
my dissertation (Ph.D. 1997), I worked on transforming it into book and
recently published it as: John P. Jackson, Jr., Social Scientists
for
Social Justice: Making the Case Against Segregation (New York: New
York University Press, 2001). An article from the book won a prize from
the American Psychological Association for the "Best Article in History
of Psychology for the Year 2000."
In 1998, my wife,
Michele, was recruited
to a new faculty position at the University of Colorado-Boulder. I am
now
a faculty member in the Department of Communication here. My new
position
has led me to focus more on the rhetorical aspects of science and
society.
For example, I recently took part in a two-week summer seminar led by
David
Depew of the Program in the Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of
Iowa.
My current
research project is on
how scientific arguments were used to defend racial segregation in the
American South during the era of "massive resistance" to integration in
the 1950s and 1960s. This book is also under contract to NYU press and
should be completed in the fall of 2003.
In addition to
the "segregationist
science" book, I am working on a book with Dr. Nadine Weidman of
Harvard
University on a general history of the race concept in western science
for ABC-Clio under the editorship of Mark Largent, previously of the
University
of Minnesota, now at the University of Puget Sound. This book should be
finished in Spring 2003.
Where not on
fire, Colorado is a
terrific place to live. While not writing and reading, I play with the
kids.
John P. Jackson,
Ph.D.
Department of
Communication
270 UCB, Hellems 94
University of
Colorado
Boulder CO 80309-0270
Tel: (303) 492-8739
Email: john.p.jackson@colorado.edu
Stephen
Johnson (1997)
Grand Forks, ND
(December 2001) I
am now an associate
professor in the Space Studies Department of the University of North
Dakota.
Since graduating from the HST program in 1997, I have been learning the
ropes of faculty and scholarly life, and have had a number of
interesting
projects. My doctoral dissertation has been crafted and re-crafted a
few
times since 1997, and is now being advertised in the spring catalog as The
Secret of Apollo for The Johns Hopkins
University Press. They
expect it to be in print late spring or early summer. I also have a
second
book coming out, called The United States Air Force and the Culture
of Innovation. This one should be out any day now, published by the
United States Air Force. While the former concentrates on the
development
of systems management methods in the space industry, the later compares
these methods with others developed in the early computer industry, in
particular on the SAGE program. I am only now beginning to write
seriously
on my research from a project begun at the Babbage Institute on the
early
history of cognitive psychology. That will take a couple years at
least,
and I will soon be starting another project, hopefully the first public
history of NORAD, the U.S.'s central command and control system for
continental
air defense and space operations. This promises to be an exciting and
important
study of a much-referred-to, but little-studied computer and
communications
system. It is essentially the largest and most critical large-scale,
real-time
computer system in existence, since its development in the early 1960s.
It literally controls the fate of the world in its detection of nuclear
weapons, and directing the counterattack. On the teaching front, I
currently
teach four courses on a two year rotation: History of Astronomy and
Cosmology,
History of the Space Age, Commercialization of Space, and Management of
Space Enterprises.
I have also been
developing a doctoral
program at UND for Space Studies. Like the HST program, it is
interdisciplinary,
except even more so... involving business, history, political science,
physical science, and engineering. The program will use partnerships
between
Space Studies and several other departments around the university, and
will be offered on campus and also at a distance. This latter
consideration
has involved much discussion and debate, but we are now convinced that
we can create a high-quality doctoral program that involves both
traditional
on-campus and innovative distance education methods. Our department has
been actually doing distance education in ways that others only talk
about.
This was one reason I came to UND. Finally, I actually live in Colorado
Springs, even though I'm a faculty of UND. I am the first "distant
professor",
to go along with our many (over 200) distant students. If this works,
we
may well have many others. If our Ph.D. program is approved this
spring,
as we expect, we will be hiring 9 new faculty. It is possible that one
or two of these could potentially be historians with interests in space
politics and/or space business. Current HST students and other HST
grads
might want to keep this in mind. We would start hiring next academic
year.
I have been the
editor of Quest:
The History of Spaceflight Quarterly, since 1998. We are always
looking
for scholarly space history articles.
Stephen B. Johnson
Associate Professor,
Space Studies
Dept.
Editor, Quest
University of North
Dakota
Grand Forks, ND 58202
Tel: (719) 487-9833
Chris Young
(1997)
Milwaukee, WI
(July 2002) Chris
Young is currently
an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Alverno College.
This is a full-time, tenure-track position, beginning fall 2002. He
wrote In the Absence of Predators: Conservation and
Controversy on the Kaibab
Plateau, published by University of Nebraska Press (2002), based on
his dissertation. He is currently at work on a volume for the Science
and
Society handbook series from ABC-CLIO to be titled Science and the
Environment.
Chris has taught part-time at Alverno since moving to Milwaukee in
2000.
He has also taught at Cardinal Stritch College in Milwaukee, the
University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and North Central College in Naperville,
Illinois.
He worked for a year as assistant director of the Center for 21st
Century
Studies at UWM.
From 1997 to
2000, he taught history
of science and general science at Mount Angel Seminary, south of
Portland
in Oregon. Chris completed his Ph.D. at Minnesota in 1997. Wife
Michelle
works for Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee. They attended the 2002
All-Star
Game at Miller Park.
Chris Young
Alverno College,
Department of Biology
Email: cyoung@aero.net
Website: websites.aero.net/cyoung
Diana Kenney
(1998)
Marston Mills, MA
(July 2002) I've
been working as
an editor and writer since receiving my master's in the HST program.
Presently,
I am enjoying the fleeting years of working part-time while our son
Joseph
(now 4) is a preschooler. I free-lance; my ongoing contracts include
MIT
Press Journals and HealthLeaders, Inc. I also work a few nights a week
on the copy desk at the Cape Cod Times, the daily newspaper of Cape
Cod,
Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard (Mass.). I also write dance and theater
reviews for the Times.
My husband, son
and I moved to Cape
Cod in 2000, and I love living just a few minutes from beautiful
beaches.
It's hard not to have a sense of well-being here, though I do miss the
city. My husband and I are still performing (we are dancers) with a
Baroque
and Renaissance ensemble, and I take classes in Cambridge with a renown
Baroque dancer. I also still study and perform classical Indian dance
(Bharatanatyam).
Best wishes to my
former colleagues!
Oh, I now possess Brett Steele's cat (a long story).
Hope you are well.
Diana Kenney
74 Captain Baker Road
Marstons Mills, MA
02648 USA
Tel: (508) 428-2722
Email: dkenney@capecod.net
Michael S.
Reidy (1999)
Bozeman, MT
Since earning my
degree, I taught
for a year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of
Oklahoma
in the Department of the History of Science, and have since accepted a
position as Assistant Professor at Montana State University in the
Department
of History and Philosophy. I am teaching courses in the history of
science
and European history, including a Western Civilization survey course
and
upper division courses in British history. This Spring I am co-teaching
a course entitled "Evolution: its History, Science, and Impact" with a
professor in the Department of Cell Biology. This is part of a larger
goal
of mine to bring together the humanities and sciences in a productive
dialogue
here at Montana State. My research has focused heavily on the social
organization
of science in the early Victorian era, specifically the "subordinate
laborers"
Whewell worked so closely with during his tidal studies. I am working
diligently
to wrap up a book manuscript on that subject. In addition, I am
contributing
a manuscript, along with Erik Conway and Gary Kroll, on science and
exploration
as part of the Science and Society Series under contract with ABC-Clio.
My collaboration with Alan Gross continues, and our book, Communicating
Science The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present,
came
out this past year, of which I am third author. No wife and kids yet,
although
the skiing and climbing and hiking in the Bozeman area is keeping me
busy
enough.
Michael Reidy
Department of
History and Philosophy
Wilson Hall 2-155
Montana State
University-Bozeman
Bozeman, MT 59717
Tel: (406) 994-5252
Email: mreidy@montana.edu
Kai-Henrik
Barth (2000)
Washington, DC
(August 2002)
After defending his
dissertation in June 2000, Kai began a two-year NSF Postdoctoral
Fellowship
at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where he worked
in
the program for Science,
Technology, and International Affairs (STIA).
Kai taught
sections of the program's
core class (STIA 305: Science and Technology in the Global Arena) and
his
first own class STIA 404 on Science in International Affairs, which
focused
on three contemporary issues: genetically modified organisms,
biological
weapons, and climate change. The class addressed the role of science
and
scientists in the making of foreign policy and international
agreements.
In particular, the class highlighted the tensions between scientific
uncertainty
and precautionary policies.
Kai continues his
research for his
book, Scientists and the Making of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,
which
analyses how scientists shaped the political-technical content of a
major
international agreement over a period of four decades. In May 2001 he
interviewed
a number of former Soviet officials and scientists in Moscow, including
Gorbachev's science advisor Yevgeni Velikhov. These interviews are now
integrated into the book's sixth and seventh chapters, which cover the
role of scientists as transnational actors in the test ban treaty
debate
throughout the 1980s. Also, Kai continued his research about the
National
Academy of Sciences' role in international arms control talks. He
interviewed
leading U.S. arms control experts associated with the Academy and
conducted
archival research in Boston and Washington, DC.
In October 2001
Kai gave an invited
paper at a Cornell University workshop on "The Earth Sciences in the
Cold
War." His contribution, "The Politics of Seismology: Nuclear Testing,
Arms
Control, and the Transformation of a Discipline," is now under review
for
publication in the journal Social Studies of Science. Also, Kai
organized
a special session for the History of Science Society's annual meeting
in
November 2001 in Denver. The session, entitled "Beyond Cold War
Borders:
Examining the Politics of Science in International Affairs," included
his
own paper, "Transnational Science, International Affairs: Scientists
and
Arms Control Initiatives in the 1980s." He is currently preparing this
paper for publication in the journal Minerva.
In addition, Kai
was selected (together
with John Krige from the Georgia Institute of Technology) to be guest
editor
of Osiris volume 21. The edited volume will have the title
"Science,
Technology, and International Affairs: Historical Perspectives" and is
scheduled for publication in July 2006.
For the academic
year 2002-2003 Kai
has accepted a Visiting Assistant Professor position at Georgetown
University's
Security Studies Program, where he will teach two classes on historical
and technical aspects of science, technology, and war. For more
information
see ssp.georgetown.edu/faculty.html#barth.
On a personal
level, Kati and Kai
are the very happy parents of a little boy, Per-Niklas Barth, who was
born
on December 18, 2001. He is a VERY energetic and boisterous kid, has
two
teeth, crawls through our apartment, and is ready to walk. We call him
the "sonshine" of our life. For photos see his own web page at www.scholz-barth.com/PNB/index.html.
Kai-Henrik Barth
122 4th Street SE, #2
Washington, DC 20003
Email: khb3@georgetown.edu
Alberto
Martinez (2000)
Cambridge,
MA
(August 2002) Al
Martinez left Minneapolis
in December of 2000, after ending his dissertation woes, to recover
some
mental health in the salubrious clime of St. Blasien in the Black
Forest.
Afterwards, he moved to Washington DC to become Resident Scholar at the
Dibner Library on the History of Science and Technology, researching
the
history of kinematics and associated controversies in the algebra of
negative
numbers. He recently completed a book on the latter subject, including
a chapter, aptly titled, like his talks at the Smithsonian: "Much Ado
About
Less than Nothing." Meanwhile, since the Fall of 2001, he is currently
a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Dibner Institute at MIT, where he
continues
readin' writin' n 'rithmetic, on kinematics, algebra, and Einstein,
while
eating too many cookies because they never buy chips or Ritz crackers
at
the Dibner.
Alberto Martinez
Dibner Institute
MIT E56-100, 38
Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02139
Email: wendigo00979@yahoo.com
