Sonja Brentjes is an independent scholar in Berlin. She is the author of several articles on Islamic science, including "Between Doubts and Certainties: on the Place of History of Science in Islamic Societies" (NTM, 2003). Her research at the Dibner will take a wide view of Islamic science, asking whether different types of dynasties and courts in the Islamic world sponsored different types of scientific activities.

David Cahan, Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, is the editor of Herman von Helmholtz and the Foundations of Nineteenth-Century Science (California, 1993) and editor and translator of Helmholtz's letters to his parents and a collection of Helmholtz's philoso­phical essays. He plans to finish his biography of Helmholtz during his fellowship year at the Dibner Institute.

Olival Freire Jr., Professor, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Brazil, is the author of the book, David Bohm e a Controversia dos Quanta, 1999 and numerous articles in Portuguese and English. His project at the Dibner Institute will explore changes in the quantum controversy and the consensus and dissension in physics in the second half of the 20th century.

Giora Hon, University of Haifa, Israel, is well known for such historical and philosophical writings on error in science as "Towards a Typology of Experimental Errors: An Epistemo­logical View" (SHPS, 1989) and "Putting Error to (Historical) Work: Error as Tell-tale in the Studies of Kepler and Galileo" (Centaurus, 2004). At the Dibner Institute he will work on a monograph on error and experimentation and continue his joint effort with Bernard Goldstein on the history of the concept of symmetry.

Cesare Maffioli, who teaches at Ecole Européenne in Luxembourg, is author of Out of Galileo: The Science of Waters: 1628-1718 (Erasmus, 1994) and editor, with A. Fiocca and D. Lamberini, of Arte e Scienza delle acque nel Rinascimento. His project while at the Dibner Institute is to continue work on a volume entitled “The Way of Waters: From Art to Science 1557-1697,” which examines the changing relationships between the mechanical arts and the mathematical sciences during the Scientific Revolution.

Prasannan Parthasarathi, Professor of History at Boston College, is the author of The Transition to a Colonial Economy: Weavers, Merchants and Kings in South India, 1720-1800, Cambridge University Press, 2001. His work while at the Dibner is titled "Technology, the State, and Economic Development in Eurasia, 1700-1900," which will explore how the presumed diverging economic organization, social structure and cultural values affected the growth of technology in Europe and Asia during these two centuries.

Conevery Valencius, on the faculty of the Department of History, Washington University, St. Louis, is author of The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land (Basic, 2002). The book she will be working on at the Dibner Institute, entitled “The River Ran Backward: The Great New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812,” will be a history of these intraplate earthquakes and the continuing impact they have had on seismology.

James Voelkel, an independent scholar, is the author of The Composition of Kepler's ‘Astronomia Nova’ (Princeton, 2001) and Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy (Oxford, 1999). At the Dibner Institute he will be producing the first English translation of Kepler's Rudolphine Tables, with commentary, tracing the influence these tables had on 17th century astronomy and comparing them with other planetary tables of the time.

Sara Wermiel, an independent scholar who is currently a Visiting Scholar at MIT, is the author of The Fireproof Building: Technology and Public Safety in the Nineteenth-Century American City (Johns Hopkins, 2000). At the Dibner Institute she plans to complete her book-length study of the engineering accomplishments of American architect-engineers in the nineteenth century and the emergence of structural engineering as an engineering specialty at the end of this century.

W. Ford Doolittle, is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, and a Member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences. As a molecular geneticist he has been one of the seminal figures in the new science of molecular phylogenetics. At the Dibner Institute he intends to complete his book, “Tree of Life, Web of Life,” which will place in historical context current controversies in microbial molecular phylogenetics.

Science Writer Fellow

Seth Shulman is a free-lance writer, whose most recent book, Unlocking the Sky, 2002, is a historical narrative about aviation pioneer Glen Curtiss and the birth of the airplane. He has written two other books and hundreds of articles for magazines such as Smithsonian, The Atlantic, Parade, Discover, Rolling Stone and Time. His project while at the Dibner Institute will be the exploration of the relationship between Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison

Peter Bokulich received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2003. His dissertation analyzed attempts to use Bohr's complementarity to resolve conceptual difficulties surrounding quantum descriptions of black holes. At the Dibner Institute he is completing a book entitled The Consistency Criterion: Debates over the Quantization of Fields, which analyzes controversies in 20th century physics over whether the electromagnetic and gravitational fields can be, or must be, quantized. This is part of Bokulich's larger project of investigating the applicability and limitations of various scientific concepts. Several of his published papers can be found on his web page.

Claire Calcagno holds a Ph.D. in Archaeology and an M.St. in Maritime Archeology from the University of Oxford (Merton College). She was recently a Visiting Scholar in MIT's STS Program, working in the Deep-Water Archaeology Research Program. She is the author of "Aeneas' Sail: the Iconography of Seafaring in the Central Mediterranean Region during the Italian Final Bronze Age," forthcoming in the Proceedings, 10th International Symposium on Boat and Ship Archaeology, Oxbow Press, and "Creative Mischief: Harold Edgerton's Engineering Contributions to Maritime Archaeology," forthcoming in Common Ground: Archaeology, Art, Science and Humanities. Proceedings, International Congress of Classical Archaeology, Oxbow Press. Her project at the Dibner Institute will focus on H.E. Edgerton and the innovative technology he introduced to underwater archaeology, and on the processes of cross-disciplinary interaction amongst archaeologists, engineers and oceanographers.

Dane T. Daniel received his Ph.D. from Indiana University, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, in September 2003. His dissertation was Paracelsus' Astronomia Magna (1537/8): Bible-Based Science and the Religious Roots of the Scientific Revolution. His research, funded in part by the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst), involved a three-year period in Berlin that also produced several publications, including "Paracelsus on Baptism and the Acquiring of the Eternal Body," in Paracelsian Moments, ed. Williams and Gunnoe (2002); and "Paracelsus on the Lord's Supper: Coena Dominj Nostrj Jhesu Christj Declaratio. A Transcription of the Leiden Codex Voss. Chym. Fol. 24, f. 12r-29v," in Nova Acta Paracelsica (2002). At the Dibner Institute he will prepare his dissertation for publication, translate the Astronomia Magna into English, and continue his engagement with Paracelsus' unedited theological manuscripts.

Gerard J. Fitzgerald received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2003. He is currently working on a book-length manuscript, expanding on his dissertation on the medical and technological history of airborne disease. He is also completing a chapter on the history of industrial microbiology for a forthcoming Dibner publication, “The Business of Life: A Century of Life Sciences, Industry, and Biotechnology in International Perspective.”

Kristine Harper received her Ph.D. in History of Science from Oregon State University in 2003. She has finished a book-length manuscript, “Weather by the Numbers: The Genesis of Modern Meteorology,” based on her dissertation. At the Dibner Institute she will be working on a new book on the history of efforts on weather control techniques in the post-World War II era and their reception within the private sector and the U. S. government.

Takashi Nishiyama is a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University, writing a disser­tation entitled “Swords into Plowshares: Civilian Application of Wartime Aeronautical Technology in Modern Japan, 1918-1963,” based on extensive archival work he has carried out in Japan. At the Dibner Institute he will be continuing his research on technology transfer from aeronautics to the high-speed bullet train in post-War Japan.

David Pantalony, who received his Ph.D. from the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto, and recently worked as a curator of scientific instruments at Dartmouth College, is the author of the following articles in press: "Rudolph Koenig's Workshop of Sound: Instruments, Theories and the Debate over Combination Tones," in Annals of Science, and "Seeing a Voice: Rudolph Koenig's Instruments for Studying Vowels Sounds," American Journal of Psychology. He is co-author of a book soon to be published on Dartmouth's collection. At the Dibner he is completing a book about the nineteenth-century Parisian instrument maker and scientist, Rudolph Koenig

Chen-Pang Yeang received his Ph.D. from MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society, writing a dissertation on long-distance radio-wave propagation and technologies for dealing with interference from 1900 to 1940. His principal project while at the Dibner Institute will be to turn his dissertation into a book, though he also intends to expand upon research he has done on Newton's theory of comet orbits.

Dibner Institute Graduate Fellows

Alexander Brown, a student in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology and Society, received first class honors from University of Otago, New Zealand. The title of his thesis is “From Apollo I to Columbia: Accidents, Politics and Engineering Cultures at NASA, 1967-2003.”

Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University received the A.B. from Harvard, magna cum laude. The title of her dissertation is “Representing Poison: Scientists, Healers and the Transformation of Plant Medicine in Ghana (1850-2000),” in which she explores the interactions between scientists and healers vying for control of information on therapeutic plants.

Peter Shulman, a student in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology and Society, received his B.S. in Mathematics from MIT. He is the author of “Science Can Never Demobilize: The United States Navy and Petroleum Geology, 1898-1924,” History and Technology, 2003. His dissertation will explore the history of alternative energies in the United States, 1890s – 1940s.

Jenny Leigh Smith, a student in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology and Society, received theB.A. from Macalester College. Her dissertation, “The Soviet Farm Complex: Socialist Agriculture in an International Context, 1948-1972,” explores the long-term implications of agricultural industrialization in the Soviet Union.

Katrien Vander Straeten, is a student in Boston University’s Center for Philosophy and History of Science. In 2003 she received the Ph.D. with Greatest Distinction from the Free University of Brussels. The tentative title of her dissertation at Boston University is “Reasons & Causes: Kant’s Debt to Leibniz with regard to Causality.”

Anya Zilberstein, a student in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology and Society, received the B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. For her dissertation she will explore the history of agriculture in the Atlantic colonies of the British Empire, late 17th–early 19th century.