Thank You and So Long, Roger Hahn

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Will Thomas

I’ve just learned that historian of science Roger Hahn of the University of California at Berkeley has died.  Prof. Hahn was responsible for the fine work, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666-1803 (1971), as well as the recent biography Pierre Simon Laplace, 1749-1827: A Determined Scientist (2005), a figure whom he had studied extensively.  A couple of years ago, I posted a short primer on the history of the Paris Academy of Sciences to the French Revolution based on Hahn’s book.  I never met Prof. Hahn, and he didn’t work in my area, but based on my own limited experience with his oeuvre, I can say that his work is a fine example of historiographical craft, melding multiple subject matters together into a coherent, informative narrative.  I will definitely be seeking out more of his work soon.

About Will Thomas

Will Thomas is a junior research fellow at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at Imperial College London. He is originally from Minnesota, and received his PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University in 2007. From 2007 to 2010 he was a post-doctoral historian at the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics near Washington, DC. There he developed the Array of Contemporary American Physicists resource. His primary interests are in 20th-century America and Britain, and in the histories of physics and the sciences of policy analysis. He maintains the blog Ether Wave Propaganda, usually posting about the problems of maintaining a constructive historiography, and about argumentative systems in all eras.
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2 Responses to Thank You and So Long, Roger Hahn

  1. Pingback: The Giant’s Shoulders #36: The ABCs of the History of Science « The Dispersal of Darwin

  2. Elisabeth Hahn says:
    August 10, 2023 at 12:58 am

    Hi, I am one of Roger Hahn’s daughters. So happy you appreciate my father’s work. It mattered so much to him that his work live on to nourish future scholars. Kind regards.

    Reply

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