Mary Jo Nye

Mary Jo Nye ( born December 5, 1944 in Nashville ) is an American historian of science. She received the prestigious 2006 George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society. As early as 1999 she had the Dexter Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society receive.

Career

After studying chemistry at the University of Wisconsin ( BA 1965), Nye received his doctorate in 1970 at the University of Wisconsin in the history of science. From 1970 she taught as a professor at the University of Oklahoma. From 1991 they had there, the George Lynn Cross Research Professorship. In 1994 she moved to the Oregon State University, where she directs the graduate program for the History of Science since 1999 and from 1994 Thomas Hart and Mary Jones Horning Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History is.

She has worked as a visiting professor at the University of California, at the University of Cambridge (Churchill College), at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and at Harvard University. 1981/82 she was at the Institute for Advanced Studies, 1974/75 at the University of Pittsburgh (Andrew Mellon Fellow ) and 1989/ 90 at the Center for Historic Analysis Rutgers University.

It deals mainly with the history of chemistry and physics since the 18th century in Europe and the U.S. with a focus on social and cultural history of science, particularly experimental science, university education and political action by scientists. It also deals with philosophy of science, specifically the relationship between theory and experiment.

From 1994, she was Vice President of the International Union for the History and Philosophy of Science. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and corresponding member of the Académie Internationale d' Histoire des Sciences.

Publications (selection)

As an author

• Molecular reality; A perspective on the scientific work of Jean Perrin, London [ etc.]: MacDonald [ etc.], 1972
• Science in the Provinces: Scientific Communities and Provincial Leadership in France, 1860-1930, University of California Press, 1986, ISBN 0520055616
• Before Big Science: The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800-1940, Harvard University Press, Reprint 1999, ISBN 0674063821
• What Linus Pauling a Revolutionary Chemist? ( Speech of thanks for the Dexter Award) in: Bull Hist. Chem 25 (2000), 73-82.
• Blackett. Physics, War, and Politics in the Twentieth Century, Harvard University Press, 2004 - ISBN 0674015487 - about the English physicist Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett
• From chemical philosophy to theoretical chemistry: dynamics of matter and dynamics of disciplines, 1800-1950, Berkeley [u a ]: Univ. of California Press, 1993
• Michael Polanyi and his generation: Origins of the Social Construction of Science, University of Chicago Press 2011

As editor

• The invention of physical science: intersections of mathematics, theology and natural philosophy since the seventeenth century; essays in honor of Erwin N. Hiebert, Dordrecht [u a ]: Kluwer, 1992
• The Cambridge History of Science, Vol 5: The Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 0521571995
• The Question of the Atom: From the Karlsruhe Congress to the First Solvay Conference. From 1860 to 1911. A Selection of Primary Sources, Los Angeles: Tomash, New York: American Institute of Physics, 1984.
• Joan Richards, Roger Stuewer The Invention of Physical Science: Intersections of Mathematics, Theology and Natural Philosophy since the Seventeenth Century. Essays in Honor of Erwin N. Hiebert, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Volume 139, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992.
• Ramesh S. Krishnamurthy, Clifford Mead, Sean C. Goodlett, Marvin E. Kirk: The Pauling Symposium: A Discourse on the Art of Biography, Proceedings of the Conference on the Life and Work of Linus Pauling (1901-1994), Corvallis: Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections, 1996