Mott T. Greene

Mott T. Greene ( born 1945 ) is an American historian of science.

Greene studied at Columbia College and the University of Washington where he received his doctorate in 1978. He taught at the University of Oregon and is a professor at the University of Puget Sound ( Magee Professor of Science and Values).

He dealt with the history of science in the ancient world and the geology of the 19th century, also wrote about the genre of science biography and is working on a biography of Alfred Wegener.

His book on natural science in the pre-Socratic Ancient is a collection of essays and addresses various aspects of the ancient history of science, among others, Egyptian mathematics, traces of past volcanic eruptions in Greek myths, Thales as a hydraulic engineer, the identity of the Soma plant of Indian and Iranian religious rituals (which he brings with hallucinogenic drugs in combination ), and generally the concept of history.

In 1983 he was MacArthur Fellow.

Writings

• Geology in the Nineteenth Century. Changing Views of a Changing World, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1983
• Natural knowledge in preclassical antiquity, Johns Hopkins University Press 1992