Robert J. Richards

Robert John Richards ( born 1942 ) is an American historian of science. He is a professor at the University of Chicago and deals with the history and philosophy of biology (particularly evolutionary biology ) and psychology.

He studied at the University of Nebraska with a Master 's degree in Biological Psychology and History of Science at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in this subject. In addition, he received his doctorate in philosophy at St. Louis University. He is since 1981 Assistant Professor, Associate Professor since 1984 and since 1991 professor at the University of Chicago and since 1992 director of the Fishbein Center for the History of Science. In 2004 he was Morris Fishbein Professor of the History of Science and Medicine in Chicago in 2011 and Distinguished Service Professor of the University. In 1983 he was a visiting professor and 1989 Fidia Lecturer at Harvard University.

Richards wrote a book about the influence of Romanticism on the science in the early 19th century by Charles Darwin on the German spiritual life (especially in Ernst Haeckel and up to the Nazis ). Currently, he is concerned with a philosophical and scientific historical review of Darwin's Origin of Species.

In 2011, he received the George Sarton Medal. 2004/5 he was Guggenheim Fellow. He is a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen ( 2010).

Writings

  • The Meaning of Evolution: The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin's Theory, University of Chicago Press, 1992
  • The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the struggle over evolutionary thought, University of Chicago Press 2011
  • The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe, University of Chicago Press 2003
  • Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior, University of Chicago Press, 1988 ( received the Pfizer Award)
  • Published by Abigail Lustig, Michael Ruse: Darwinian Heresies, Cambridge University Press 2004
  • Published by Michael Ruse: Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species, Cambridge University Press 2008
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